Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (12 page)

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t sleep on the living-room couch because of my party,” Rona said slowly.

Peggy was watching her with amusement. Still the little romantic, she thought affectionately. Does she imagine that Jon and I never have some moments of disagreement? “Jon wasn’t going to stand for that,” Peggy said. “He yanked me into bed with him. He was furious—his old quarter-deck manner. And after all you can’t stay mad at someone in a double bed, can you?”

“I suppose not.” Rona was smiling now. “Then it ought to be easy to lower the divorce rate. Just enforce double beds and abolish all Martinis.”

“One thing I do ask you, Rona. Next time you give a party, don’t have Mary Fyne along.”

“I don’t intend to,” Rona said.

“She isn’t a friend of yours, is she?” Peggy was now very much the elder sister.

“Not particularly,” Rona said, which was a miracle of understatement. “Scott says she’s a product of her environment,” she added.

“Strange how we never use that phrase when we are describing pleasant people,” Peggy said, with a shrewd eye for Rona’s face. So it was Scott who thought
la belle
Fyne ought to be at the party... “Does Scott ask people because he dislikes them?” she asked with a smile. “How original of him.” Then her amusement left her, and she listened intently. “That sounds to me like your little angel Barbara. I bet it’s a drink of water, this time. Why, that’s impossible! She was almost awash before she went to sleep.”

“I’ll go. You finish the sandwiches.”

“If it’s another drink she wants, remind her that there’s a water shortage, will you?” Peggy called after Rona. Then she wrapped the sandwiches carefully in waxed paper and a dampened towel to keep them moist. Egg and sardine sandwiches would do very nicely; pity she hadn’t bought some ham, too. But not at a dollar sixty-five a pound, she reminded herself hastily. She cleared the kitchen table and washed the bowls and knives.

Rona returned. “Another drink,” she reported. And she had slipped off the white cow-boy belt from Bobby’s waist and left it hanging over the head of his bed while he slept.

“Not
too
much?” Peggy asked.

“Only a sip,” Rona assured her.

“Good. I do get tired racing to Barbara’s cot at five in the morning. Now,” Peggy looked round the neat kitchen with the children’s clothes drying nicely, “that’s all, I think. Jon will look after the drinks.” She straightened Barbara’s high chair, painted a bright red to disguise the scratches Bobby had made on it in his day. “I’ll have to make new curtains,” she said, shaking her head at the window. “I’ve been pricing that plastic stuff. It’s quite cheap by the yard.”

Now it was Rona who was amused.

“And what’s so funny?” Peggy asked.

“You. No one would ever guess that a few years ago all you knew was how to write a PhD thesis on Marcel Proust.”

“And how I racked my brain to try and find the answer to him,” Peggy said, “while all he really wanted was to climb back into Mama’s arms, poor little man. Oh, well—that thesis did teach me how
not
to bring up a son.”

They went along the narrow hall to the bedroom to comb their hair and wash their hands. Peggy was silent, partly because the children were in the room next door, partly because she was seeing something in a new perspective. It’s odd, she was thinking—Rona feels guilty because she can afford to buy more than I can. And I have guilt because I got a college education before father died, and Rona couldn’t get a degree except by working in an office through the day and taking classes at night. But perhaps that is why we are such good friends, each of us with our little sense of respect for the other. Now, if only Rona finds as wonderful a husband in Scott as I’ve found in Jon, everything will be all right. Everything, as Bobby says, will be tremendous.

She laughed softly and began to tell Rona of Bobby’s new additions to his language.

Paul Haydn and Jon Tyson had got back to normal with each other very quickly. But all the time they were talking, joking or being serious, Paul was watching Jon. And Jon, in his own quiet way, was conscious of it.

“Have I changed such a lot?” he asked suddenly.

Paul said, “I don’t think so.” He ruffled his hair as he used to do when he was worried. I hope not, he was saying to himself.

“What’s bothering you?”

Paul decided to risk it. “Look, I need your advice. Besides, this concerns Rona. Remotely. But still, it concerns her enough so that I think you ought to know.”

At the mention of Rona, Jon’s face changed.

“This has to do with
Trend
,” said Paul hurriedly.

Jon relaxed. “Oh, with
Trend
,” he said.

“Rona said she had told you about the Blackworth incident.”

“Yes.” Jon was surprised, a little puzzled. “I must say I thought it was harsh of Weidler to fire Blackworth because he had slipped up on some contributor’s idea of modern housing. That isn’t like Weidler.”

“That is all Rona knows?”

Jon nodded. “Is there more to the story?”

“Yes. I saw Weidler this morning.”

“You did? Getting squared away quickly, aren’t you?”

Paul said, “It begins to look as if there isn’t much time to waste.” He hesitated. Then he said. “I can’t tell you the full story, yet. Weidler’s all for secrecy, the blasted fool. But I’d like to tip you off—you can smell a dead rat under the floor as quickly as anyone. I’ll give you a general direction and let you follow it yourself. Because you and Peggy are the only relatives that Rona has.”

“This is a serious business, then?” Jon was alert.

Paul nodded. He stared at the faded roses on the rug at his feet, wondering how to begin. “You’re in education, Jon. Do you think propaganda is a powerful force? Could it be dangerous? Supposing an enemy of this country had its sympathisers carefully planted here? Supposing these propagandists were trying to infiltrate such businesses and professions as radio, the Press, films, schools and colleges, the theatre, publishing?”

“That’s a damned silly question,” Jon said almost angrily. “You ask how dangerous it might be?” He looked at Paul unbelievingly, but Paul kept silent. “This is the twentieth century, with communication easier and more powerful than it’s ever been. The trouble with those who see no danger, who think we are perfectly safe if only we invent more hideous bombs, is that they are still living with a nineteenth-century idea of peace. Wars haven’t changed much except in bigger and better holocausts. But peace, as we are going to see it in this century, is something quite altered. A lot of new dangers are going to stay with us permanently just because we’ve invented a lot of peacetime conveniences that make life so interesting. It isn’t only armies we have to fear today: it’s words, words abused and corrupted and twisted.”

Still Paul said nothing.

“You see,” Jon went on patiently, “a hundred years ago, fewer people could read, fewer people were educated, and fewer people thought they could argue about international conditions. Also, in those days, propaganda spread more slowly and less widely. But now we’ve got a vast public who read their papers, discuss books and articles, go to the movies and the theatre, listen to their radio, watch television, and send their children to schools and colleges.”

“And a public,” Paul interposed, “who have enough to do with arranging their own lives without analysing all the things they read or hear. They’ve got to trust the honesty of those men who deal with the written or spoken word. Just as the journalist, or the movie director, or the teacher, has got to trust the honesty of the business-man and workers whenever he buys a refrigerator or a car or a shirt. Isn’t that right?”

Jon looked at him, and then he smiled. “And I thought I had to convince you—you with all your experience in Germany.”

“Well, you never can tell who needs convincing, these days,” Paul said gloomily.

There was a short silence. Jon, who had been studying his hands spread out on his knees, suddenly looked up. “I think I begin to smell that rat under the floor,” he said. “Blackworth is one of the men whom workers and business-men have got to trust. And he’s betrayed that trust?”

Paul said, “I can’t tell you the story yet, Jon.”

Jon rose and went to a bookshelf heaped with old numbers of magazines. “Rona always sends us a copy of
Trend
each month. Peggy’s been reading them—I’ve been too busy lately. But let me see...” He consulted an index of contents with the expertness of the trained scholar. “What has Blackworth been putting out, recently?”

Paul crossed the room and looked over Jon’s shoulder. “Try this issue,” he suggested, and pointed to the name of William Slade. “Know William Slade?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Ever heard of a man called Nicholas Orpen?”

“Why,” Jon said slowly, “yes... Didn’t he cause an uproar in the university world before the war? He is, or was, a Communist. He admitted that, at the time.”

“William Slade is Nicholas Orpen. And if you read that article, you’ll see Orpen is still a Communist.”

Jon stared blankly at Paul. Then he looked down at
Trend
incredulously.

“Don’t blame
Trend
,” Paul reminded him.

“So that was why Blackworth got heaved out... And Rona started it all.” He looked worried. “I’ll keep this to myself until you give me clearance. But—well, thanks for tipping me off.”

“I heard the first rumour against Rona today,” Paul said. “After I left Weidler this morning, I dropped into the Plaza for a drink. I met a man there I used to know well. We lunched together. Then, talking casually, he brought up Rona’s name. He had heard at a party, just the night before, a silly story. He thought I ought to suppress it before it got any bigger. Rona, it seems, made a pass at Blackworth. When he turned her down, she cooked up a story to get him fired—just in time for my return.”

Jon said, “No! No one could invent such a petty piece of filth.”

“Someone has,” said Paul. “It’s got the smell of a man called Murray who saw me at Rona’s party. I’m sure that added the second part to the story—‘just in time for my return.’”

“I’ll smash his—” Jon recovered himself.

“I felt the same way. But that isn’t the way to fight this.”

“I know it isn’t,” Jon said savagely. “But what can we do?”

Paul ruffled his hair again. “And. I thought I could let down my guard once I was back in the States. I guess I was in the nineteenth-century state of mind when I was crossing the Atlantic.”

“But that story is so damned petty,” Jon said, worriedly. “It’s the Communists’ way of getting back at Rona, is it?”

“Yes. Character assassination, they call it. It’s generally petty. If they can’t find out anything against a man, they invent it. Some of the things I’ve heard in my one week home have been unbelievably petty—things you and I would laugh at, if they weren’t all part of a big pattern. A tragic pattern for us, if we don’t become aware of it.”

Jon said, “They may get away with a lot of things, but in the end people will damned well see through them. You can’t fool all the people all of the time.”

“That was a wise remark—for the nineteenth century,” Paul said. “But would Lincoln make it now, seeing totalitarian propaganda as clearly as he would see it? What’s the good of realising you’ve been fooled, if it’s too late to do anything except be a yes-man or a refugee or a concentration camp victim?”

“Or fight.”

“A pity if being fooled in the twentieth century means the bloodiest civil war on record. State against state—oh, yes, ten or fifteen years of efficient propaganda would boil up imagined grievances—and class against class, groups against groups. No Communist army would need to invade the United States by force. They could walk in after the propagandists had done their work.”

“Do the men who are working for Communist propaganda know just what they are getting into?”

“It’s obvious some haven’t thought everything out: they are following a daydream. But those who are power-grabbers know quite well what they are doing: they don’t care what happens as long as they can feel they’re the Big Bosses.”

“But the dreamers are just as guilty as the power-grabbers, for the results will be the same.”

“Is Nicholas Orpen a power-grabber, or is he a dreamer?” Paul asked suddenly.

“Orpen?”

“He interests me. Few people I’ve met today can tell me anything about him. Weidler happened to remember him. And you did. But that’s all I’ve found, so far. The rest of us have forgotten him completely. Is that what he’s been aiming for? You know, I couldn’t even find a photograph of him in the newspaper files I looked up this afternoon. I spent dinner reading his article in
Trend.
He’s clever—the subtlest of the bunch that Blackworth steered into print. What do you know about him, Jon?”

“Well, as far as I remember—”

“As far as that, honey?” asked Peggy, as she and Rona came into the room.

Rona smiled and said, “Hello, Paul, you’re looking awfully serious, both of you. What on earth were you discussing?”

Paul said, “Jon was telling me about a man called Orpen.”

Rona’s smile froze. “Nicholas Orpen?” she asked slowly. “Do you know him?”

“I met him once, long ago. But I’ve often wondered about him.”

Paul looked at her for a moment. “All right, let’s hear about Orpen, Jon.”

“I’ll pour some beer, first,” Jon said. “Or would you rather have rye, Paul?”

“Beer’s fine. I like this room, Peggy.” He made easy conversation with the two women while Jon went into the kitchen. Peggy was pleased with his compliment. She liked the room too. It had been simply awful, she told him proudly, when they had first come to the apartment. But Rona had helped her paint the woodwork, and all the hideous standpipes running up the walls had been covered with asbestos and then disguised by the curtains, and Jon had fixed the bookcases. As for the furniture...well, it was frankly bits and pieces; but even if it couldn’t claim a Period, sandpapering and waxing had revived a lot of unexpected charm.

“Once the children are older,” Peggy said, “we can get a room the way we want it. But now, I come in here and find a tricycle beside the waste-basket, or a rag doll put to bed on a couch, or a brick castle under the coffee table. I’ve asked Rona what style of interior decoration you could call that, but she’s no help.” She smiled to Rona, trying to draw her into the conversation without any success. “Are you still living in a hotel, Paul?” What’s gone wrong with Rona? she worried.