Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (15 page)

“You were asked?”

“Sure. Murray and one or two of the others kept calling me. That crowd give a lot of parties. Discussion groups, they call them. Bob has been going regularly, though. He loves them. He meets writers and people who can give him advice about his novel, and he talks his head off and they listen respectfully. He’s one of the intellectuals now. That’s his idea.”

Rona said, stubbing out her unsmoked cigarette, “What is Orpen like when you talk to him?” Her voice was too controlled; too lifeless. Paul looked at her sharply.

“Oh, he’s just a vague little man,” Milton replied. “He doesn’t say much, keeps in the background almost. At least, that’s the way he behaved when I met him. He lives on a dreary street, and the house looks shabby. But he has fixed himself up quite nicely. His room looks civilised.”

So it all began here, Jon was thinking bitterly, here in my apartment. This is where the path to Orpen’s door started. What fools both Scott and I have been... I’ll drop him the hint. Murray and Thelma...butterflies and grape clusters my God! And then Jon began to wonder morosely if any of his other pupils had been steered in the same direction. But no, he thought sharply, that’s insulting Scott’s intelligence. Scott liked Milton Leitner, and Robert Cash just tagged along with Milton as he usually did. Scott’s mistake was to have a man like Murray at any of his parties, that was all. I’ll drop him a hint.

“Civilised!” said Peggy bitterly. She was thinking of what might happen to Robert Cash. Perhaps it was already happening—he had left early, trying to hide his anger, just because someone had mentioned Nicholas Orpen in a disrespectful tone of voice. She looked anxiously at Jon, who was saying nothing at all, just sitting there brooding. That was a bad sign.

“I’m going to get some more beer,” she announced. “Or would anyone join me in some tea?”

“I must leave,” Rona said, and rose abruptly.

“But Scott?”

“He couldn’t make it after all. He was detained. He got deep into a talk with a French journalist who used to fight in the underground. Perhaps he’ll get a story out of it. So...” Rona smiled for everyone’s benefit, “...I told him to stay with it. It’s a long way up here, you know.”

“What a shame, Rona!”

“I’ll see Rona safely home,” Paul said.

“You don’t have to bother,” Rona said. “Really, Paul.”

“Well, I’d like to think of you getting safely home,” said Peggy. “It’s midnight, now.”

Rona laughed. “Still worrying about mugging in the Park?”

“Just avoid the Park at night!” Peggy said, less amused.

“All right, darling,” said Rona with mock obedience as she went to find her coat. But she made no more polite protests when she found Paul waiting for her in the hall.

Peggy started to prepare quietly for bed. In five hours, Barbara would be brightly awake. So she left Jon and Milton talking together in the living-room. And she was fast asleep by the time Jon came to her. She didn’t waken when he moved her gently over to her own half of the bed. But as he kissed her and smoothed the sheet over her bare shoulders and kissed them too before he covered them, she stirred sleepily and smiled and drew her body closer to his. He relaxed then, his arm lying over her waist. But he couldn’t fall into sleep. He was staring at the shaded windows, going over in his mind all he had heard, going over it and over...

* * *

Paul shook hands at the main entrance to Rona’s house. It had been an easier journey back here than he had imagined. In some ways, he added. Rona treated him naturally as a friend. In some ways, that was easier; in others, it reminded him very sharply of what he had lost. Each time he saw her, he felt that more bitterly. I may have to avoid seeing her, he thought. It made him feel all the more wretched to realise that she seemingly didn’t feel this way at all. Her whole life was bound up with Scott’s now. That was her one interest.

“I’ll wait here until you open your door,” he suggested.

“You’re as bad as Peggy. I don’t think I’ll find any thieves around.” But she smiled, and shook his hand, and went quietly upstairs. She turned, when she reached the landing, to give him a wave. “Good night, Paul,” she said softly. Then she was out of sight.

He waited, listening to her footsteps. Then he heard a low voice calling, “Okay. All clear,” and a door was closed.

He left the hallway, and went out into the street, closing the front door behind him, rattling the handle to make sure the door had locked. He crossed over the street and stood for a few minutes watching the light in her living-room. Then it was switched off.

A policeman came out of the shadows, looking at him closely. “That’s okay, Bud,” he said. “She’s gone to bed, can’t you see?”

Paul grinned and moved away.

“I’ll keep an eye on her. Particularly,” the cop called after him, with an answering grin.

Paul walked toward Park Avenue. His footsteps made him feel still more solitary. This was the bad hour of a night, the hour when you realised you were alone.

8

Paul Haydn slept as little as Jon Tyson that night. At six o’clock he gave up the struggle, rose, and pulled back the heavy curtains from the window. It was grey and bleak outside, as bleak as in this room. Spring was coming late this year. April looked like early March. It was tweed-suit weather.

He shaved, had a shower, and dressed. He took one more look at his room, decided that the people who lived alone in hotels must be the ones who filled the cafés and bars of New York every night, and left. At this hour, the corridors were silent and the elevators quiet. But downstairs, the hotel was already functioning. Early arrivals and departures were grouped at the desk in the lobby, while their families waited for them, half-hidden behind the large potted palms. Down a shallow flight of marble stairs, soft-carpeted, there was the giant dining-room. He found it closed, with chairs up-ended on tables and vacuum cleaners humming. But farther downstairs, near the entrance, the coffee shop was open with a fine welcoming fragrance of bacon and eggs. He entered it, after buying a newspaper at the cigarette stand, along with a couple of magazines from the hundred on display. After breakfast, he would get a haircut at the barber shop across the lobby, and have his shoes shined; and he’d telephone Brownlee from one of the booths at the coffee shop door. Then he thought, I’m slipping back into New York ways all right: I’m accepting all those little timesavers and conveniences without an eyebrow raised in astonishment.

He chose a table rather than the counter so that he could read in peace. He would order ham and eggs, a double orange-juice, and plenty of coffee. Luxury, he thought again. He wondered what the travelling salesman sitting at the table next to his would say if he were to lean over and exclaim “Luxury!” Paul knew what he would get. A startled look, a hasty conciliatory smile, and a quieting “Sure, sure!” Then the man would pretend to read his paper again, but after a minute or two he would look up and say, “You a stranger here?” And by a stranger he meant foreigner. For he himself might come from a small town or farmlands, but he wasn’t a stranger to New York. He knew what to expect. If he hadn’t found it, he would have been the one to do the exclaiming, a very forthright and frank exclaiming. (American tourists complain so much, they said abroad.)

The waitress repeated her question, pencil waiting. She smoothed an imaginary wrinkle on her crisp organdie apron, and studied her white buckskin shoe. I’ll get a slightly darker shade next time, she decided, looking at her nylon stockings.

“Sorry?” he half-said, half-asked.

“Hot buttered toast or hot rolls or bran muffins? Marmalade or strawberry jam? Cream with the coffee? Prunes, figs, or would you prefer cereal?” She lifted the double-paged menu and snapped it shut. “It’s all on the dollar ten breakfast,” she explained. She straightened the clean ashtray, placed a napkin in front of him, added an extra knife.

“You choose,” he said with a smile, “I’m bewildered.”

She gave him a startled look.

“All right,” he said, “just bring on everything you can think of. And make that a double portion of ham and eggs.” He began reading the newspaper, turning through its fifty-four large pages carefully. Luxury, he thought again. Then he wondered how long it would take him to forget that this
was
luxury—three weeks? Three months? And he would be accepting all this as something completely natural, nothing to be amazed over, just as the travelling salesman accepted it over at his table as he dropped a tip and lighted a cigar with the band left defiantly on.

“Sump’n funny in the papers this morning?” the waitress asked him as she brought him the orange-juice and found him smiling broadly. Then she moved briskly over to the next table, slipped the tip into the pocket of her neatly cut green uniform, and began wiping the table carefully with a damp cloth before she began to set it afresh with its white mat and clean silver for the next customer.

* * *

Paul waited until nine o’clock had arrived before he telephoned Roger Brownlee, colonel retired sir. By that time, he had had a lot of conversations—with the waitress, the barber, the shoeshine boy, the doorman, a hotel clerk, and a couple of visitors in the lobby. (One was a farmer all the way from Ohio, the other was a locomotive engineer in town for a convention.) They were quite free with their opinions. That was another thing about the United States—no scarcity of opinions. But at nine, he called a halt to his one-man Gallup poll. And as he waited for Brownlee to answer his ring, he found he was more anxious than he had admitted. What if Brownlee wasn’t in town, what if he wasn’t in his office on a Saturday morning? Then what? A week-end of waiting and worry.

But Brownlee answered. He didn’t sound too surprised to hear Paul Haydn’s voice. He was pleased, but not surprised.

“I thought it was about time to see you,” Paul said.

“Fine. What about twelve-thirty? At the Central Park Zoo? I’ll meet you on the terrace there for lunch. All right? Fine. See you then.”

That was all. Paul Haydn found himself smiling. Same old Roger, whether he wore a colonel’s eagles or an under-stated suit from Brooks.

He left the hotel then. He had plenty to occupy him for the next three hours. Yesterday he had visited the Bowery, the day before that—the Upper East Side. Harlem, Riverside, the Battery, Washington Heights, Greenwich Village, Broadway, Yorkville—he had covered nearly all the island on foot during this last week. Just our roving reporter, he thought, as he stepped into the busy street.

Men and women were hurrying to work. The trucks were backing up against the sidewalks. The buses were filled to standing room. Cars were parked in continuous rows. Taxis sounded their horns impatiently. Another day, another dollar.

* * *

The terrace, which ran the full length of the zoo’s cafeteria, was already crowded when Paul Haydn arrived at twenty minutes past twelve. Although the day was still cool, and the morning had been overcast, the children were out in full force. They were not going to let a little thing like weather keep them away from their Saturday visit to the zoo. On the broad terrace, the small green tables were optimistically shaded with large sun-umbrellas. Mothers and fathers were concentrating on carrying out the trays which they had piled high with food chosen from the self-service counter indoors, while some small boys proud of being alone were trying to reach their tables with their plates unspilled. All was confusion and happiness. Voices in every degree of possible tones, high and clear, low and muted, deep bass, pleasant, harsh—and in every degree of excitement, from the two-year-old eating chopped chicken to the independent little boys ploughing into hot dogs—formed a busy orchestra tuning up before a major performance.

Paul saw a free table, a small one for two, and made his way quickly toward it. It was at the edge of the terrace, next to the low wall topped by flower boxes. Sitting there, he could look over the flowers to the large quadrangle of pavement and grass plots and fruit trees which surrounded the central part of the zoo—the pool and rocks on which the seals were now posing to an admiring audience. The new grass was brightly green, the fruit trees had a sprinkling of pink dust over their thin black twisting branches. The sun was coming out after all, the skies were going to be blue again, the bright balloons were being sold from white carts, the children in their gaily coloured clothes were scattered like confetti over the sombre grey paths. And on the terrace, the excited talk went on around Paul, the babel of happy sound, the clatter of plates, the arguments, the advice, the admonitions. (Yes, we’ll see the lions being fed... Tie that balloon to your chair or you’ll lose it... Eat it all up, now!... I
know
the sun is shining, but keep your coat on!... If you don’t drink that milk... Have you lost the spoon
again
?) But four children at the table beside Paul’s were silent. Some time earlier that morning their clothes, thin and cheap, had been clean. Now they were dirty and torn. The youngest of the children was a girl scarcely three, the others were boys reaching up to perhaps nine years old. They had walked here from the far East Side, probably, for a day in the Park. They were waiting silently, their faces and hands streaked with dust from the near by playground, their eyes fixed on the oldest brother who had just arrived at the table with five frankfurters and five bottles of milk. Now, he was smearing each frankfurter with mustard and presenting it—in right order, the youngest got hers first—with a solemn air. If he had been carving a Thanksgiving turkey, he couldn’t have been more serious, more patriarchal.

“Hello!” Roger Brownlee said, pulling out the iron chair opposite Paul with one hand while he placed a tray with the other on the table. He looked thin and spare in a dark flannel suit; his brown felt hat was pushed back on his white hair. “Hope you like frankfurters,” he said in his quiet voice, indicating the tray. “Thought I’d save time. Damn, I’ve slopped the coffee.” He placed a paper napkin under each cup. “Well, how’s everything?” He glanced with a smile at the children, then at Paul, who still seemed a bit startled by his sudden appearance. “You look well,” Brownlee went on, borrowing the mustard from the children.