Nothing So Strange (22 page)

A week passed, probably the laziest of my life, and
doubtless it did me
good. I had been leading a rackety sort of existence in recent years, all
work and travel, full of interest and sometimes excitement, but a bit hard on
the nerves. I began to realize what I had missed when I woke up on those
bright summer mornings, stared at the mountains, and remembered I had nothing
to do all day. I pottered about the gardens and sun-bathed by the pool,
enjoying myself with all the greater abandonment because I knew how this
dolce far niente
routine would begin to bore me within measurable
time. And I took long naps in the afternoon and chatted to my father during
and after dinner. He had been perfectly agreeable to having Brad as a house
guest, but he wondered how Brad would like it; and then he told me something
I had not known before— that in the summer of 1938 Brad had written him
a rather bitter letter, blaming him for everything.

“What do you mean—
everything
?”

My father looked uncomfortable. “Oh, the whole business. It was a wild
letter—the kind I could forgive because the boy was so obviously not
himself when he wrote it. You see his wife died before they could release
her.”

“You mean she died in the Nazi prison?”

“Or wherever it was they were keeping her…. I could understand how he
felt, so when he blamed me I didn’t hold it against him.”

It was like my father to cling to any edge of circumstance in which he
could be an injured party.

He continued: “I answered his letter but there wasn’t much I could say. He
didn’t write again … so you see how it is … if he comes here….”

“I guess he won’t then. But you didn’t mind my asking him?”

“Oh, not at all. And if it’s still on his conscience that he blamed me
unjustly—”

“I should hardly think it would be.”

My father shook his head wearily; I could see he had already chalked up
Pauli’s death as his own tragedy more than Brad’s—one further proof of
some vast unluckiness clinging to everything he touched. Which was absurd, if
one appraised the opulence of Vista Grande. But it was also true that the
possession of money had never outweighed his own personal failure to attain
some ideal—and what exactly that was I have often wondered—maybe
some impossible combination of Maecenas and Napoleon. Something impossible
for these days, anyhow.

“Did he give you any details about Pauli’s death?” I asked.

He shook his head again, not so much negatively as helplessly. “It wasn’t
a sensible letter. Accusations … reproaches … not like him at all.”

Yes, that was true; it was unlike him. I remembered I had told Mr. Small
during our first interview that Brad never had a grudge even when he ought to
have had one. My father evidently thought that in 1938 he ought not to have
had one.

“You didn’t keep the letter?”

“No…. I think your mother took it—and you know what happened to
letters when
she
got hold of them….” The flicker of a smile.

“You were with her when the letter came?”

“Yes—we were staying with Princess Franzani at Cannes. A whole batch
of forwarded mail arrived there—matter of fact, I think she opened it
first.”

I had heard about that visit to Princess Franzani. It was the last time my
father and mother appeared socially together before the breach. They had
agreed to patch things up for a last try, but perhaps a house party at Cannes
was not the happiest background; and since it was presumably my father’s
choice (the Franzanis being
his
friends) it was like him to have made
that final blunder. Anyhow, the patching didn’t work and the divorce was
started soon afterwards.

I could see that these memories were distressing him, but I had to ask one
last question. “What did my mother think of the letter?”

“She didn’t say much. She talked of writing to him herself, but I don’t
know whether she ever did. As you know, she often said she was going to do
things and then forgot about them….”

It was curious how my mother’s faults—numerous enough, especially
the small ones—were all neatly assembled in his memory, ready to be
smiled over sadly, or indulgently excused. But her virtues, of which she had
some big ones, gave him no task at all. Not that he denied their
existence—merely that they did not fit the mood in which he could keep
himself, a weather-worn Hamlet, always in the center of the stage.

When I looked at him across the dark expanse of oak dining table, with the
silver gleaming in candlelight and the paneled walls carrying the eye into
sepia shadows, I saw why it was my mother had finally tired of him. She
wanted
life
; he wanted something else. I believe that of all the
treasures of Vista Grande the only one she would have keenly appreciated was
Dan’s face. She loved beauty—physical beauty—and in people more
than in views and things.

Wednesday I lunched with Mr. Chandos. I had a special qualm
about gas
after my father’s assurance that I could use all I wanted, so I refused the
Cadillac and chauffeur and compromised on borrowing Dan’s midget car to drive
myself; which doubtless sizes up my patriotism well enough, for with only
small extra trouble I could have taken the bus from the main road. Mr.
Chandos was very affable and decided on lunch at the Brown Derby. We made the
short distance from the studio in his rather rakish sports car; he drove with
a certain abandon that fitted his conversation but made me feel I should not
be happy on a long trip with him. We were already in the midst of an argument
by the time we left the parking lot; he was saying that his early training as
a maker of B pictures, mostly comedies, had given his mind a kind of
contamination he did not think it could ever quite shake off. “For instance,”
he said, as we passed a gas station, “if I notice a thing like that—”
and he pointed—“I immediately think of how you could get a laugh out of
it. Fade-in the drawing room of an apartment high above the
street—there’s a woman singing opera at a grand piano—exaggerated
tremolo and considerably off key. Camera then moves out of the window down to
the sidewalk where a young man can hear the voice—he has a quizzical
look, as if he too isn’t sure whether he likes it or not. Then he walks on
and sees
that
, and you get your laugh.” The “that” was a notice in the
gas station that said “We Fix Flats.” “Isn’t it terrible? And done with
practically no mental effort at all—that’s the danger of it.”

“I’ve seen worse gags on the screen,” I said, smiling.

“But to go through life with an eye for them—it’s the worst kind of
occupational disease.”

“Journalists have it too. Anything to catch the reader’s attention —
nothing much to catch his mind. And yet if you catch his mind by even a
little, it’s worth it, and sometimes only a gag can do it. A few good gags
about the world’s future might help to ensure that it has one.”

“Don’t let them hear you talk like that in any studio.”

“Why not?”

“They might offer you a writing job at four figures a week.”

“It wouldn’t tempt me.”

“I’m glad of that, but also curious. Aren’t you interested in money?”

“Of course I am, but I earn enough the way I like without doing something
I don’t think I should like.”

“And you haven’t any uncles and aunts in Scranton whom it would be nice to
send help to, and your father isn’t still struggling along at a job he can’t
properly afford to retire from?”

“No. My father’s well enough off to support himself whatever happened to
me.”

“Oh?” he said; and then suddenly the idea dawned on him, later than it
does to most people. “Why … he’s not by any chance … or
is
he? …
Are you the daughter of …
the
Waring …
Harvey
Waring?”

I nodded.

“That’s odd. Somehow I didn’t connect you with him at all.”

“There’s no reason why you should.”

“Now what exactly do you mean by that?”

It was as good a way as any other into the kind of talk we had during
lunch. We dawdled over coffee till nearly three, then he drove me back to the
studio where my car was, having made another lunch date for the following
Wednesday. Again we had discussed almost everything except the book and the
picture, and I still thought I liked him—perhaps more than after the
first meeting.

When I reached Vista Grande towards dusk I found two notes awaiting me,
one from Brad to say he would be glad to come and would arrive at San
Bernardino the following day at 5:20 P.M.; the other was from Dr. Newby to
say he happened to be traveling to Los Angeles on business and so could
accompany Brad and hand him over to me if I were to meet the train; of course
in that case I would be careful not to disclose any previous acquaintance we
had had.

I wired back to Brad that I would meet the train.

I took Dan’s midget car again and was at the station by
five. It was very
hot, at the low level, and the great wartime trains kept pulsing through in
both directions, like part of some tremendous heartbeat in a creature too
large for comprehension. The soldiers leaned out of the windows, bronzed and
sweating, ready to whistle at a girl because doing so, in this war, appeased
some of the loneliness that was also too large to be comprehended.

Presently the train came in, and I thought at first he wasn’t on it; the
windows I ran alongside were full of other faces. Then I caught sight of Dr.
Newby, half hidden behind a Pullman porter. He let Brad get down and approach
me, and when that happened I forgot all about the doctor till he came up to
us a moment later.

We stared at each other, Brad and I; then we shook hands rather solemnly
and I said: “Hello, Brad.”

“Hello,” he answered.

We went on staring and the moment stretched itself into impossibility. At
length I asked if he had any luggage.

“Yes, a suitcase. They’ll put it out.”

“Did you have a nice trip?”

He said slowly, still staring down at me: “Not very. It was crowded. And
the cooling system didn’t work.”

Then Newby came up, and I was glad in one sense, because it gave Brad the
necessary job of introducing us. But Newby seemed to enjoy overdoing the show
of never having met me before. “Well, well….” he beamed, pumping my hand up
and down. “So
this
is the young lady?… Lucky fellow…. Take good
care of him, Miss Waring.”

“You bet I will.”

“And no night clubs. Plenty of sleep … fresh air … and your own
charming companionship. I envy him the cure!”

The porters were shouting “All aboard”; Newby remained waggish to the
last.

Then we walked along the platform to the piled-up luggage. Brad found his
suitcase and carried it to the car in the station yard. “The fool,” he
muttered. “He’s the doctor who’s supposed to have been looking after me.”

I said nothing, because already I had forgotten Newby again and it was
Brad I was thinking of, trying to decide what he was like, as if a first
impression might tell me something clairvoyantly. I couldn’t see anything
wrong with him at all. Of course he looked older, much older; but then he
was
much older, so was I; seven years make a difference, even without
a war. I said: “It’s hot here, but cooler up in the mountains where we’re
going. You know California? It was hot in Arizona too, I expect. Why do they
put hospitals there? Good for lungs, I suppose….”

As we entered the car he told me I looked very well.

“Yes, I’m all right. I’m fine. You look all right too.”

“I enjoyed your book. It was in the hospital library.”

“Was it?… By the way, I looked up what you said on the card—page
117. The
Egmont
Overture in the Burggarten…. Yes, I remember that so
well.”

We threaded through the town traffic, then took the road to the mountains.
At two thousand feet the air was noticeably fresher; at four thousand a cool
breeze held the warmth of the sun in pockets. The nameless mountains clothed
in chaparral rose all round us. I wondered aloud if he were nervous of
mountain roads, but he said no.

“Only of flying, then?”

“How did you know that?” he asked sharply.

And of course I couldn’t have known it without being told; it was a slip.
I covered it as best I could. “Elementary, my dear Watson. You’re a flyer out
of hospital. Injured flyers often have nerves afterwards—about flying.
The ones I’ve met did, anyhow.”

“I wasn’t a flyer, as you call it; I was a navigator. I could fly, and
damn well, but I was too old to be an Air Force pilot … too old at thirty-
one, that’s a nice thing.”

I seemed to have touched a sore spot, but at least it tided over the slip
I had made; he had evidently accepted my explanation. He went on: “You don’t
fly yourself, do you?”

I do, all the time; I love it, and I’m taking lessons; I’ve done seven or
eight hours solo already. I said: “Sometimes.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I won’t if you’d rather I didn’t.”

The strain lifted from his face; he smiled and said that was sweet of me.
But I was not too happy over his swift change of mood. There was something
odd and rather frightening in the casual way he accepted the idea that I
would change a habit just to please him. It was either arrogance of a kind I
had never seen in him before, or else he knew I had made the promise without
intending to keep it, and he was yet able to find satisfaction in the promise
alone.

He asked me again about my book, how successful it had been, the Hollywood
sale which he had read of, and so on. I told him about Mr. Chandos and my
studio visit. He said then he was glad I hadn’t visited him at the hospital
because we shouldn’t have been able to talk like that.

“Why not?”

“Newby would have listened all the time.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have mattered—there’s nothing confidential about
it…. Not that I’d choose to have him around, though.”