Against my will I listened: for what? a scream? a shot? some movement by the police outside? but in any case I would probably hear nothing, for Granger’s party was warming up. The hôtelier, who had a pleasant untrained voice, began to sing and as a new champagne cork popped others joined in, but not Granger. He sat there with raw eyes glaring across the room at me. I wondered if there would be a fight: I was no match for Granger.
They were singing a sentimental song, and as I sat hungerless over my apology for a Chapon duc Charles I thought, for almost the first time since I had known that she was safe, of Phuong. I remembered how Pyle, sitting on the floor waiting for the Viets, had said, ‘She seems fresh like a flower,’ and I had flippantly replied, ‘Poor flower.’ She would never see New England now or learn the secrets of Canasta. Perhaps she would never know security: what right had I to value her less than the dead bodies in the square? Suffering is not increased by numbers: one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel. I had judged like a journalist in terms of quantity and I had betrayed my own principles; I had become as engagé as Pyle, and it seemed to me that no decision would ever be simple again. I looked at my watch and it was nearly a quarter to ten. Perhaps, after all, he had been caught; perhaps that ‘someone’ in whom he believed had acted on his behalf and he sat now in his Legation room fretting at a telegram to decode, and soon he would come stamping up the stairs to my room in the rue Catinat. I thought, ‘If he does I shall tell him everything.’
Granger suddenly got up from his table and came at me. He didn’t even see the chair in his way and he stumbled and laid his hand on the edge of my table. ‘Fowler,’ he said, ‘come outside.’ I laid enough notes down and followed him. I was in no mood to fight with him, but at that moment I would not have minded if he had beaten me unconscious. We have so few ways in which to assuage the sense of guilt.
He leant on the parapet of the bridge and the two policemen watched him from a distance. He said, ‘I’ve got to talk to you, Fowler.’
I came within striking distance and waited. He didn’t move. He was like an emblematic statue of all I thought I hated in America—as ill-designed as the Statue of Liberty and as meaningless. He said without moving, ‘You think I’m pissed. You’re wrong.’
‘What’s up, Granger?’
‘I got to talk to you, Fowler. I don’t want to sit there with those Frogs tonight. I don’t like you, Fowler, but you talk English. A kind of English.’ He leant there, bulky and shapeless in the half-light, an unexplored continent.
‘What do you want, Granger?’
‘I don’t like Limies,’ Granger said. ‘I don’t know why Pyle stomachs you. Maybe it’s because he’s Boston. I’m Pittsburgh and proud of it.’
‘Why not?’
‘There you are again.’ He made a feeble attempt to mock my accent. ‘You all talk like poufs. You’re so damned superior. You think you know everything.’
‘Good night, Granger. I’ve got an appointment.’
‘Don’t go, Fowler. Haven’t you got a heart? I can’t talk to those Froggies.’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘I’ve had two glasses of champagne, that’s all, and wouldn’t you be drunk in my place? I’ve got to go north.’
‘What’s wrong in that?’
‘Oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? I keep on thinking everyone knows. I got a cable this morning from my wife.’
‘Yes?’
‘My son’s got polio. He’s bad.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You needn’t be. It’s not your kid.’
‘Can’t you fly home?’
‘I can’t. They want a story about some damned mopping-up operations near Hanoi and Connolly’s sick.’ (Connolly was his assistant.)
‘I’m sorry, Granger. I wish I could help.’
‘It’s his birthday tonight. He’s eight at half past ten our time. That’s why I laid on a party with champagne before I knew. I had to tell someone, Fowler, and I can’t tell these Froggies.’
‘They can do a lot for polio nowadays.’
‘I don’t mind if he’s crippled, Fowler. Not if he lives. Me, I’d be no good crippled, but he’s got brains. Do you know what I’ve been doing in there while that bastard was singing? I was praying. I thought maybe if God wanted a life he could take mine.’
‘Do you believe in a God, then?’
‘I wish I did,’ Granger said. He passed his whole hand across his face as though his head ached, but the motion was meant to disguise the fact that he was wiping tears away.
‘I’d get drunk if I were you,’ I said.
‘Oh, no, I’ve got to stay sober. I don’t want to think afterwards I was stinking drunk the night my boy died. My wife can’t drink, can she?’
‘Can’t you tell your paper . . . ?’
‘Connolly’s not really sick. He’s off after a bit of tail in Singapore. I’ve got to cover for him. He’d be sacked if they knew.’ He gathered his shapeless body together. ‘Sorry I kept you, Fowler. I just had to tell someone. Got to go in now and start the toasts. Funny it happened to be you, and you hate my guts.’
‘I’d do your story for you. I could pretend it was Connolly.’
‘You wouldn’t get the accent right.’
‘I don’t dislike you, Granger. I’ve been blind to a lot of things . . .’
‘Oh, you and me, we’re cat and dog. But thanks for the sympathy.’
Was I so different from Pyle, I wondered? Must I too have my foot thrust in the mess of life before I saw the pain? Granger went inside and I could hear the voices rising to greet him. I found a trishaw and was pedalled home. There was nobody there, and I sat and waited till midnight. Then I went down into the street without hope and found Phuong there.
3
‘Has Monsieur Vigot been to see you?’ Phuong asked.
‘Yes. He left a quarter of an hour ago. Was the film good?’ She had already laid out the tray in the bedroom and now she was lighting the lamp.
‘It was very sad,’ she said, ‘but the colours were lovely. What did Monsieur Vigot want?’
‘He wanted to ask me some questions.’
‘What about?’
‘This and that. I don’t think he will bother me again.’
‘I like films with happy endings best,’ Phuong said. ‘Are you ready to smoke?’
‘Yes.’ I lay down on the bed and Phuong set to work with her needle. She said, ‘They cut off the girl’s head.’
‘What a strange thing to do.’
‘It was in the French Revolution.’
‘Oh. Historical. I see.’
‘It was very sad all the same.’
‘I can’t worry much about people in history.’
‘And her lover—he went back to his garret—and he was miserable and he wrote a song—you see, he was a poet, and soon all the people who had cut off the head of his girl were singing his song. It was the Marseillaise.’
‘It doesn’t sound very historical,’ I said.
‘He stood there at the edge of the crowd while they were singing, and he looked very bitter and when he smiled you knew he was even more bitter and that he was thinking of her. I cried a lot and so did my sister.’
‘Your sister? I can’t believe it.’
‘She is very sensitive. That horrid man Granger was there. He was drunk and he kept on laughing. But it was not funny at all. It was sad.’
‘I don’t blame him,’ I said. ‘He has something to celebrate. His son’s out of danger. I heard today at the Continental. I like happy endings too.’
After I had smoked two pipes I lay back with my neck on the leather pillow and rested my hand in Phuong’s lap. ‘Are you happy?’
‘Of course,’ she said carelessly. I hadn’t deserved a more considered answer.
‘It’s like it used to be,’ I lied, ‘a year ago.’
‘Yes.’
‘You haven’t bought a scarf for a long time. Why don’t you go shopping tomorrow?’
‘Oh yes, of course. I forgot.’
‘You have not opened your telegram,’ Phuong said.
‘No, I’d forgotten that too. I don’t want to think about work tonight. And it’s too late to file anything now. Tell me more about the film.’
‘Well, her lover tried to rescue her from prison. He smuggled in boy’s clothes and a man’s cap like the one the gaoler wore, but just as she was passing the gate all her hair fell down and they called out “Une aristocrate, une aristocrate.” I think that was a mistake in the story. They ought to have let her escape. Then they would both have made a lot of money with his song and they would have gone abroad to America—or England,’ she added with what she thought was cunning.
‘I’d better read the telegram,’ I said. ‘I hope to God I don’t have to go north tomorrow. I want to be quiet with you.’
She loosed the envelope from among the pots of cream and gave it to me. I opened it and read: ‘Have thought over your letter again stop am acting irrationally as you hoped stop have told my lawyer start divorce proceedings grounds desertion stop God bless you affectionately Helen.’
‘Do you have to go?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t have to go. I’ll read it to you. Here’s your happy ending.’
She jumped from the bed. ‘But it is wonderful. I must go and tell my sister. She will be so pleased. I will say to her, “Do you know who I am? I am the second Mrs Fowlair.”’
Opposite me in the bookcase The Rôle of the West stood out like a cabinet portrait—of a young man with a crew-cut and a black dog at his heels. He could harm no one any more. I said to Phuong, ‘Do you miss him much?’
‘Who?’
‘Pyle.’ Strange how even now, even to her, it was impossible to use his first name.
‘Can I go, please? My sister will be so excited.’
‘You spoke his name once in your sleep.’
‘I never remember my dreams.’
‘There was so much you could have done together. He was young.’
‘You are not old.’
‘The skyscrapers. The Empire State Building.’
She said with a small hesitation, ‘I want to see the Cheddar Gorge.’
‘It isn’t the Grand Canyon.’ I pulled her down on to the bed. ‘I’m sorry, Phuong.’
‘What are you sorry for? It is a wonderful telegram. My sister . . .’
‘Yes, go and tell your sister. Kiss me first.’ Her excited mouth skated over my face, and she was gone.
I thought of the first day and Pyle sitting beside me at the Continental, with his eye on the soda-fountain across the way. Everything had gone right with me since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry.
March 1952—June 1955
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