“I suddenly feel I don’t know anything about you at all.”
“Why did you ring the shop?”
I had meant to ask the question calmly, matter-of-factly, but it came out sounding sharp. Accusatory. Of all the questions, I thought, which shouldn’t have sounded sharp or accusatory!
She looked at me as if we couldn’t be speaking the same language. And then she said, “Yesterday morning, before coming in here, I went to the library. I sat down at a table to look at my novels and there was a big book about modern artists lying on the table.” Her tone was utterly flat. “I remembered your man’s name and I looked him up.”
Incredibly, for the first second or two, I didn’t take in the implications.
“He was born in 1919,” she said. “And he doesn’t have four sons. The book said he was a bachelor.”
“Oh…? Oh, did it, now?” There didn’t seem much else to say.
“So you admit it? You lied about that, as well?”
I shrugged. Said bitterly: “Congratulations on your new job!”
“Have you gone mad—in addition to everything else?”
“My mistake—I thought you must have joined the CID!”
For a moment she looked almost sorry for me. “It didn’t say he wasn’t married or that he had no children. I just put two and two together.”
“I see. How clever. I thought you’d already done that, when I told you about the car.”
“I was still hoping against hope.”
“That wasn’t the way it appeared.”
“All yesterday I couldn’t get it off my mind. At three o’clock this morning I decided to have it out with you. I rang the shop at five-past-nine and imagine how I felt, when…”
“Well, yes, and now you have had it out with me! I hope it’s made you very happy.” It felt as if I hadn’t any fight or energy remaining.
“Happy? I should like to kill myself—that’s how happy it’s made me!” She had unintentionally raised her voice. She looked about her quickly and lowered it again to an intense whisper. “We can’t go on like this,” she said.
“All right. What do you suggest? A divorce?”
She didn’t answer; she didn’t have the chance. I was suddenly aware of a small and busy presence: bouffant-haired, sharp-eyed, inquisitive. “Why, if it isn’t John! How are you, John? I thought your mother had a new boyfriend. I’ll swear you grow bigger every time I see you. Doesn’t it seem like that to you, Norma?”
“Oh, yes!” It was ludicrous, grotesque, to see the way my mother’s manner altered. “Yes, it does, Bea! I suppose that one day he may actually stop!”
It shouldn’t have fooled anyone, I thought—least of all this shrewd little manageress—and yet the woman prattled on as if she’d noticed nothing.
“I’m sure he must eat you out of house and home. Whatever do you do? How’s life in the great big wicked city, John?”
“Fine,” I said. “Just fine! Couldn’t be better!”
“Oh, Mrs Karminski, you’ll never believe it, this is Mrs Wilmot’s little boy. I knew him when he used to wear short trousers. Isn’t it amazing that she could have a son so tall?”
“And so handsome, too,” nodded Mrs Karminski, fumbling with her bill, and her handbag, and her shopping basket.
“Yes but—hush!—it never does to tell them that.”
I could see that the waitress and the cook and everyone else on the premises would soon get drawn in to the act. I murmured my thanks to Mrs Karminski and then—gratefully—saw her turn towards the shiny black hairdo and heard her whisper, “I am sorry, dear, but I don’t think the fish today was quite up to standard.”
“I’m off,” I said to my mother.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll talk later.”
“Not today we shan’t! I’ll be catching the next train back to London.”
“No—I forbid you to go back until we’ve spoken about this! And don’t forget to say goodbye to Mrs Watson,” she added in the same fierce undertone.
I disregarded this entirely; Mrs Watson was in conference with Mrs Karminsky.
“Oh, and by the way,” I said, “you’ll have to think up some sort of story to tell Aunt Clara. I went to the house first.”
That was my parting shot.
In a florist’s window I saw:
This year, on Mother’s Day, why not let flowers convey a message that’s sometimes hard to put into words?
“Wish you’d caught my eye earlier!” I told the window.
The train wheels pounded out an insistent, infuriating melody.
“The moment I saw you
I heard a skylark sing;
November was April
And down the street came spring…”
I closed my eyes but couldn’t stop the tears dribbling out beneath the lids. What was the matter with me? Had I forgotten how to be a man?
Had I forgotten the art of self-reliance?
Was this one of the side effects of being a kept boyfriend: of having all the usual economic difficulties lifted, all the boring household jobs removed, many of the everyday decisions—decisions bound up with becoming a responsible, dignified, self-respecting adult—taken from my shoulders?
A boyfriend. A gigolo.
Was I getting spoiled? Soft? Was the place I had my hair cut called Delilah’s?
In short, I wondered … was I gradually, if very gently, being emasculated?
19
On leaving Charing Cross I went straight to the gym for what I hoped would be another gruelling workout. But my performance was distinctly below par and it didn’t offer me release. When I called for Elizabeth my despondency was still strong. I hadn’t even bothered going home to change. By ‘home’ I meant the Embankment.
But it was incredible how swiftly I recovered; not like some you could mention—some, who could be thrown into a day-long (week-long) gloom, without having half so good a reason.
And, believe it or not, this was currently what was going on. I’d rung Oliver when I left the gym and was soon surprised that he’d even managed to drag himself to the telephone. Hearing the lifelessness in his voice, and the brevity of his responses, I immediately thought Oh God, what now? But I knew, of course. It must be the disappointment of my book.
Except that, if this were indeed the case, how typical that I should have been able to suppress my feelings, whereas he…! And which of us, would you have said, had the better right not to suppress them?
Well, I assumed it was the book but—who knew?—it could have been anything. Yet, whatever it was, you’d have supposed that on this occasion he might have done his utmost to hold back.
But, anyway, I felt determined to put it all out of my mind; the whole lot; everything. I felt determined to have fun.
So Elizabeth and I went first to a pub and then to a new and fashionable restaurant; she was lucky to have got a table. Although I had only one Scotch at the pub, this affected me rapidly—well, admittedly it was a double and I’d eaten scarcely anything since breakfast (and then not very much, either). Added to which, we each drank several glasses of wine and afterwards I had an Irish coffee. Moreover, Elizabeth seemed extra sweet—she must have sensed that something was the matter.
But finally it was Rachmaninoff who set the seal on my recovery; for ever since I had seen a revival of ‘Brief Encounter’ his Second Piano Concerto had been unquestionably my favourite piece of music. Leaving the Festival Hall I was as full of resilience as ever. Oliver was certainly mistaken about my novel … the Danish soloist, both during her performance and after, had provided the perfect accompaniment to every major incident in Timothy’s childhood and early twenties—sometimes a passionate and tumultuous score, sometimes a touchingly wistful one—and elicited all the pathos inherent in the comedy; all the poignancy to which Oliver had so plainly been oblivious. Even that unhappy episode in The Copper Kettle now appeared less intractable, and mercifully remote, and once more life was most emphatically for getting on with. As we
strolled back across the bridge, holding hands as always, I felt like a brave little orphan who had battled his way head-high through the storm (and found the golden sky and sweet silver song of a lark which Mr Hammerstein had promised). I remembered that Elizabeth had really been an orphan; and that made me feel protective and still more Olympian.
Oddly enough, though, the more cheerful I became, the less so did she. Perhaps she’d thought I was unhappy about her imminent departure … which actually to some degree I was. When we were halfway across the bridge, Big Ben started striking, and we leant over the parapet and faced towards Westminster. Everything seemed unnaturally quiet when the last of those eleven booms had faded. I was about to say, “Can you imagine anyone not being able to stand here like this, to revel in such a view?” when Elizabeth suddenly gave a sigh.
“I like London,” she said. “I like it better than anywhere.”
“Paris? Vienna? San Francisco?”
“Better than anywhere.”
My hand rested on hers. It felt companionable. I listened to the soft, mesmerizing slap of the river as it washed against the bridge. Elizabeth gestured to a path which the moonlight had made across the water.
“Five days from now,” she said, “it may be looking much the same. But I shan’t be around to see it.”
“A hundred years from now it may be looking much the same. But neither of us will be around to see it.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because this is possibly my last time.”
“No, it isn’t. I’ll bring you here tomorrow! And Sunday—and Monday—and Tuesday! But yes,” I said, more seriously, “I do know what you mean.”
“I reckon I’d better try to catch some rare fever. Sufficiently bad I can’t be moved, but not so bad my parents feel they have to stay. The trouble is—that sort of fever hasn’t yet come on the market.”
“Do I detect the signs of incipient rebellion?”
“I love my parents. But sometimes I wish I were freer.”
“Ah, yes … The story of all our lives!”
“Though, obviously, it isn’t just the place I’m going to miss.” She was still gazing at the water.
“It isn’t?”
“But I guess that’s foolish. Aren’t places usually all tied up with … with the people whom you’ve met in them?”
Her voice caught on that second half of her sentence, and I realized she was crying.
“Here! What’s this?”
I touched her shoulder and the next moment she was in my arms.
“You know,” I said, “you don’t absolutely have to leave, do you?”
As I spoke I was rhythmically stroking her hair. It smelled good.
“Don’t I?”
“You could always tell your parents you want to stop here for some reason. Want to stop here, say, to get married. Or something else equally trivial. Guess what, you poor scrap? I’d marry you! You could always tell your parents that.”
I said it lightly, of course, expecting her to smile through her tears, before replying in similar vein. (“Yes, that would be nice … Why didn’t I think of that?”)
But for a long time she didn’t reply in any vein. I was on the verge of adding in a rallying sort of way, “That was a joke, you know,” when she again forestalled me. She drew back and gazed into my face. By the light of a nearby lamp I saw her cheeks glisten…(‘gossamer tracks of stardust’ was a phrase I’d written in my book). She looked young and trusting. Vulnerable. Gamine.
“Were you being serious?” she asked.
I instantly realized two things: the first, that Elizabeth clearly couldn’t have been regarding these many past weeks simply in the light of some fly-by-night holiday romance; and the second, that—astoundingly—at this very moment a sum of well over a million dollars might be winging its way along the wire to meet me … winging its way, singing its way … I had merely to say the word!
‘Astoundingly’ hardly covered it. The only time I had given the matter so much as a minute’s thought had been during the weekend of our first encounter; and even then I had assumed she would be unattainable.
But, my God! The life now beckoning was a life of luxury and ease. (No—I had luxury and ease already.) The life now beckoning was a life of independence.
Master in my own house. No further need to play second fiddle.
Not to anyone.
Plus … the most perfect escape from that whole sorry situation in Folkestone.
You almost had to wonder whether—in the complete, unexpurgated history of the universe—anything else could ever have been quite so fortuitous.
“Serious?” I said. “Serious about what? That I’d marry you, if that was the only way you could contrive to stay in England?”
“Yes.”
I waited a few seconds before answering.
“My goodness, Elizabeth! I didn’t think I stood a chance, not in a month of Sundays—but if I hadn’t meant it, do you really suppose that I’d have said it?”
“Maybe you were feeling sorry for me? I was being an awful sap.”
“I don’t often propose out of sympathy.”
Then suddenly she was laughing and hugging me—I was laughing, too. Three old men who’d been approaching had to make a detour. They muttered and stared.
And, for the next sixty minutes or so, it was all giddiness and unreality. Plan-making and protestations. We began sauntering in the direction of the hotel and then—roughly opposite the spot where, last November, Oliver had sat waiting in the parked car—we spontaneously whirled round and started back towards the other side. Reckless about the lateness of the hour … or, at least, all ready to be. But then Elizabeth said: “No, there’s no point in making them cross. On the contrary! We must do everything we can to keep them sweet.”
She was sweet, I told her. She was sweet and she was sensible and she was loving and she was loaded. “And you’re mine. Isn’t that sensational?”
So I serenaded her. “‘Because you’re mine, the whole world sings a melody…’” I held my arms out, in an attitude of beatific welcome. “Come back, Mario Lanza! All is forgiven!”
So I sang and danced and played the fool; kept up an incessant flow of nonsense. And she joined in—we even waltzed together—yet all the while she was steering me, resolutely, towards the hotel.
At the entrance I said: “I’m coming up!”
“No, not tonight, Johnny. It’s better I prepare the way. Come back tomorrow. As early as you like.”
“Five a.m.?”
“Suits me.”
“We’re getting married,” I said to the commissionaire, who was standing nearby, pretending not to notice.
“Congratulations, sir. Congratulations, Miss.”
“I’m not doing badly, would you say?”
“Not badly at all, sir.”
And it wasn’t until I was on my way home—please God, to a more responsive Oliver—that my first mild misgivings started to appear.
20
I returned to the Savoy—not at five a.m.—but at eleven. I left about an hour later.
And the following day, Sunday, I telephoned Elizabeth from a callbox.
“Oh, thank heaven,” she said. “I’ve been on tenterhooks.”
“Are your parents there?”
“No. Can I meet you? For ten minutes?”
“Obviously you can. I’ll come to the hotel.”
“No, don’t do that. Let’s say the Adelphi. In quarter of an hour?”
I caught a taxi but she was already there. Although it was so short a time since we’d seen ‘Auntie Mame’, the photographs outside the theatre imbued me with nostalgia. How pathetic! We went into the first café we found open and I ordered coffees.
But it wasn’t going to be hard to play the suffering hero.
(John Wilmot—one of the most exciting new stars ever to grace the Metro firmament—caught here in a tensely dramatic scene from this year’s most distinguished hi
t, ‘The Parting’.)
“I was so anxious,” she said, “when you didn’t call me.”
“But I did.”
“I mean yesterday. I didn’t stir from the telephone all afternoon.”
I looked down at the table and for a moment chewed my lip. “To tell you the truth I felt a bit shaken.” She reached across and took my hand. “Also, I half promised your father that, for a day or two, I’d let you be.”
“So that was it,” she said. “He wouldn’t really go in to what happened between you—not with me, anyway. He told us you behaved like a gentleman and seemed very reasonable.”
“Well, that’s something, I suppose.”
“But it didn’t cheer me up a great deal.” She let go my hand. “Darling,” she said softly—and I thought at first her hesitation had simply to do with the endearment. “I want you to stop behaving like a gentleman.”
“Don’t ask the impossible!”
She didn’t smile.
“But what is it you mean?” Surely it wasn’t bed she had in mind?
“I want us to elope.”
I stared. Suddenly the script had gone all haywire. “Elope?”
She nodded.
“Elizabeth … Perhaps you haven’t considered this for quite as long as you ought to?”
“On the contrary. I was already considering it on Friday night, while we were still on Waterloo Bridge. I love you, John Wilmot. And I’m determined to marry you.” She paused. “And that’s the only way.”
“Listen.” I groped frantically for the best manner in which to Renounce a Great Love. “Listen, Angel Face…”
But why? I stopped. What had changed since Friday? I had allowed a few irrational qualms to escalate; to grow out of all proportion. Yet, otherwise…? And was I truly going to let a few irrational qualms stand in the way of everything which had then appeared so good?
The Man on the Bridge Page 13
