Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (26 page)

At that moment, Rona came back into the room and Ettley’s train of thought was cut short. She was wearing her hat and jacket, she was pulling on her gloves. She said, “I’d like it very much if we could ride downtown together.”

And William Ettley, watching her face, seeing no sign there of recrimination, no petulance round her mouth, no sullen temper in her eyes, wondered if Scott knew just what he was in danger of losing. Then he smiled, and took Rona’s arm. He realised, at that moment, that he believed more in Rona than he had let Jon Tyson think. Or himself, either. When he said good night to Jon and Peggy, there was an added warmth in his voice and his handshake.

Peggy stood in the hall, looking at the closed door for a few moments. “It all depends on Scott and on Rona,” she said sadly. “All the good will in the world won’t have any results unless they really mean what they say.”

Jon was at the telephone. “I’m going to ’phone that son of a bitch,” he said savagely, glancing at his watch. “He’ll be in the office by this time, damn him to—”

“Jon!” Peggy said, pointing to the children’s room. “Okay, okay,” Jon said, lowering his voice.

“Remember you’re a professor, now, honey,” Peggy said with a smile. But she hoped Jon would speak bluntly to Scott. Someone had to, someone who didn’t care if he hurt Scott. That was the trouble. Rona and William Ettley were always trying to soften any blows for Scott. That was the trouble. But that was what she did to Jon, and what Jon did for her. If you loved someone, that was what you did instinctively. So, where did that leave Scott Ettley? Was he in love, or only half in love? Was that all he ever could be, half in love with a girl and the other half kept for himself?

Peggy cleared away the dinner dishes. By the time she had washed them, Jon came back from the ’phone. “No,” she said, “I’ll dry. You’d better start working on those exam papers, Jon.” She glanced worriedly at the kitchen clock. It was five minutes past nine. “Well, what did Scott say?”

“He wasn’t there. He isn’t in the office tonight. I hung on to that ’phone until I made quite sure of that. He wasn’t expected, either.”

“Jon!”

“Yes. Exactly.” Jon’s voice was grim. Never told a lie in his life, William Ettley had said.

“Perhaps he’s at his apartment?”

“I tried that, too. No answer.”

Peggy found a dry dish towel. “Stop worrying, darling. Get those old tests graded. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.” And let’s say nothing more about this, her voice suggested.

Jon went through to the living-room and turned on the lamp at the desk. When Peggy came to join him, she brought a length of green material, her sewing-box, and an envelope of paper patterns. She didn’t speak, but concentrated on spreading the cloth over the rug and pinning the pieces of pattern in place. Jon watched her as she sat back on her heels, studying her jigsaw puzzle. “If I juggled it a bit,” she was saying to herself, “I might have enough for a dress for Barbara too.”

Jon rose, walked over to where she knelt, bent down and kissed her.

“Thanks, darling,” Peggy said, smiling up at him. “But what for?”

“I just felt like it. I’m a lucky guy.”

She rose and hugged him. “And that’s for you. Oh, Jon, I’m a lucky girl.”

Then they both went back to their work.

14

Just before nine o’clock, even as his father and Rona were saying good night to the Tysons, Scott Ettley left his apartment. He was inconspicuously dressed, and he didn’t take a taxi. Instead, he walked toward Fifty-ninth Street and Madison at an unhurried pace, and the route he followed was haphazard, as if he were out for an evening stroll and found much to interest him in the shop windows which he passed.

He reached the busy intersection, its sidewalks still crowded, its garish lights warming the faces that passed under them. It was five minutes before the half hour. He went into a large drugstore for a pack of cigarettes, and then glanced through its rack of fiction near the door. He found nothing to buy there seemingly, for at half-past nine he returned a cheap edition novel to its proper place, and then went out into Madison Avenue. Nicholas Orpen was buying a newspaper from the corner stand at Fifty-ninth Street. He looked at Scott for a moment, didn’t recognise him, pocketed his change, and started walking toward Fifth Avenue. Scott lighted a cigarette and followed him.

He might pretend to smile at Orpen’s precautions but he enjoyed them. They emphasised his sense of excitement, his feeling of immense responsibility. And he knew he had been right in his decision. This, he told himself, is something bigger than anything else I know; this is bigger than Rona or I. We aren’t important, not compared with this. And it is all the more important with each sacrifice made for it. I have come so far, I must go on. Or everything I have done is meaningless, and everything I have believed is blankness. His face still had the same look of unhappiness that it had worn all of this day, but now there was a certain look of grim satisfaction round his lips. Nothing that was good was ever achieved easily. Power, as Orpen had so often told him, was for those who had earned it. Those who would not make the sacrifice would gain nothing in the end.

By the time he had followed Orpen by bus to Columbus Circle, by subway to upper Broadway and Seventy-second Street, by foot to Eighty-sixth Street and Amsterdam Avenue, Scott Ettley was beginning to lose some of his enthusiasm for Orpen’s precautions. No one was following them; no one was interested. Orpen liked playing conspirator. Or was he hoping to impress Scott with the importance of tonight’s meeting? Ettley couldn’t guess. But he was relieved when Orpen at last spoke to him as they waited together in the darkness for a cross-town bus.

“Well?” Orpen said. “Made your mind up?”

“I’m here.”

“You use your head...” Orpen said with a smile.

Scott Ettley looked at him.

“...in following a man,” Orpen added. “You learn quickly.”

Yes, Ettley thought, Orpen had always been a good teacher: discipline first, complete obedience, and then praise. Scott Ettley’s feeling of animosity disappeared. He admitted, grudgingly, that Orpen had given him a little lesson in caution and security that he was always going to remember. Then he wondered what had aroused this sense of criticism toward Orpen. And he was uneasy. Orpen’s sardonic smile made him all the uneasier. Orpen had felt that animosity, that grudging submission. And Orpen seemed to know the reason why it was there. Then even that proof of Orpen’s infallibility aroused Scott’s annoyance again. Determinedly, almost bitterly, he forced himself to stop brooding about Orpen, to think only of the meeting, to try and recapture that sense of excitement and responsibility that had silenced his unhappiness as he had followed Orpen from Madison Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street.

“What next?” Scott Ettley asked, smiling, outwardly at ease again. A bus was approaching, now.

“We’ll keep separate on the bus. We’ll walk together after that. I’ve some things to ask about, before we appear at the meeting.”

Scott nodded, and drew apart slightly. He searched for his fare. Another passenger joined them, and they boarded the bus as strangers. But as the bus followed the short run through Central Park, taking them eastwards once more, Scott had a good idea of what Orpen would ask. Orpen would want to know what had Scott decided to do about Rona. What
can
I do? Scott thought as he stared out at the Park’s black shadows, at the high towers rising into the dark sky with a blaze of lighted rooms, what can I do except let us drift apart? Didn’t Orpen see that this couldn’t be hurried, that you can’t love a girl one day and then pretend to forget her on the next? And if Orpen challenged him with being a coward, he would admit it. He couldn’t face Rona. He wasn’t able to do that. All right, so what? Orpen had won. Wasn’t that enough? Careful, Scott told himself, stop this bitterness against Orpen. It isn’t he who has won; it is something bigger than Orpen or Rona or myself, something bigger than all this city and its lighted sky and the millions who stare up at it.

When the bus stopped at Fifth Avenue, Scott Ettley got off first, and it was Orpen who had to follow him, catching up with him as he walked slowly down Fifth Avenue on the tree-shadowed side by the Park’s east boundary. “Am I going the wrong way?” he asked Orpen.

“No, this will do,” Orpen said with a narrow smile. He began his questions and they were mostly what Scott Ettley had expected.

Scott answered briefly, without hesitation. It was a good feeling to know that he could recognise Orpen’s next move. A new stage in my life, he thought. Until now, Orpen had done all the leading. Then he noticed that Orpen’s worry (he was always most sardonic when he was worried) wasn’t altogether directed at him. Orpen
was
worried. Orpen was disguising it. Orpen had troubles of his own. Scott Ettley became so sure of this that he didn’t even allow his amusement to be shown when they approached Thelma’s apartment house on Park Avenue. In the last three blocks he had guessed it would be their destination.

“You may have to wait a little,” Orpen said, glancing at his watch. “It’s an important meeting tonight. We have a visitor. A tourist. From Prague.”

Scott was impressed. A tourist? That was very high level indeed. And there was an odd quality in Orpen’s voice that strengthened Scott’s interest in the visitor from Prague.

Orpen noticed his glance. “You probably won’t see him,” he said brusquely, putting Scott into his proper place once more. Then, in marked silence, they entered the apartment house.

Orpen was annoyed with himself. I was too abrupt, he thought. Then he smiled, this time with real amusement. He was thinking of the way he had helped Scott Ettley all along this road. From the beginning, he had advised and taught and cautioned and protected and persuaded. It was on his strong recommendation that Scott had reached this stage of his career so quickly. Or did Scott really believe that everyone in the Party got the same chance? Was he congratulating himself on his special virtues that had marked him out from the others? Orpen’s smile turned into a laugh quickly covered by a fit of coughing.

“Don’t worry about the night elevator man,” Orpen said, as they waited in the private lobby to Thelma’s apartment. “Or about the night doorman. Souls of discretion.” His amused eyes seemed to be saying, Yes, Scott, I can still tell you a thing or two.

The door took some time to open, this evening. When it did, the butler stood there. But his coat was off, and his face was smiling. They entered quickly, and he double-locked the door behind them. He held out his hand to Orpen. From the music-room, its doors closed firmly, came the sound of someone practising Chopin, not well, but determinedly.

“Bill!” Orpen said in way of greeting, as he gripped the man’s hand.

Scott Ettley hoped he hid his surprise. He shook Bill’s hand, in turn. Bill? Scott had always know him as Martin, the very correct and stupid butler who was the only servant who stayed in the apartment. The rest of Thelma’s servants left after dinner. It was difficult nowadays, Thelma had often explained to her friends, to find any servants who would live on the premises. Most seemed to have homes of their own and wanted to get back to them each night. It was a common enough explanation in New York housekeeping, and no one had ever disbelieved it. Everyone had thought, privately, that Martin might be a stiff-necked old idiot, but Thelma was lucky to have him around especially when Charles started getting drunk.

But now Bill was walking ahead with Orpen, and Scott Ettley was left to follow. Bill took them to a narrow door in the hall, opened it and gestured for them to enter. He listened to the sounds of the piano from the music-room, and smiled. “Thelma may not play good, but she plays loud,” he remarked. “That’s all we need, anyway.” He closed the narrow door and led them into a short dark passage. It was Scott’s guess that these must be the servants’ quarters, now so little used. But the sound of the piano could still be faintly heard, ebbing and flowing as Thelma interpreted the emotion of the music.

“Where’s that son of hers tonight?” Orpen asked suddenly.

“Charles started drinking at ten o’clock this morning. He’s in his room, dead to the world.” Bill’s voice held no interest.

“I always feel happier when he is out of the house,” Orpen said.

“Better this way. Then we don’t have to worry about him returning unexpectedly. He’s so drunk he wouldn’t recognise Thelma,” Bill said cheerfully. “If you lived in this place, you wouldn’t be afraid of Charles.” He opened the second door in the corridor. “You wait here,” he told Scott Ettley. “Oh, by the way,” he added, dropping his voice almost to a whisper, “when we meet Peter remember he’s all for the formalities. A great stickler is Peter. Comrade this. Comrade that. Just his European way. But remember!” There wasn’t any humour now in Bill’s voice. He and Orpen exchanged a look. There was a tightening to Orpen’s lips. Bill was impassive.

“Peter is next door, now?” Orpen asked in a low voice.

Bill nodded. “He seems anxious to see you tonight.”

There was something almost ominous in the phrase. Scott Ettley thought he saw a shadow cross Orpen’s face. But Orpen was saying “Good!” as if he meant it. Then Bill gestured impatiently, and Scott entered a small empty room, poorly lit, sparsely furnished. Bill closed the door behind him.

Scott sat down on a hard wooden chair and waited obediently. As the minutes dragged on, he became almost paralysed with nervousness. Suddenly, he remembered Nicholas Orpen’s words to him last night: “You’re entering the big league, now.” He fumbled with a pack of cigarettes. It had been more comfortable in the minor leagues, he thought. He loosened his tie, relit his cigarette, and then studied the furniture. What, he was wondering, what is this job I’ve to do? The question had lain at the back of his mind all day, all evening, ever since Orpen had told him about it yesterday. But he hadn’t allowed him to speculate about it, not until this moment. Why even speculate now? He had accepted it. Orpen had made sure of that. All that was left to know was the assignment itself.