Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

Even while he was writing he knew that part of him was counting on a negative answer or none at all, a rock-ribbed alibi for the rest of his life, so that he could always tell himself he had done his best, he had asked her anyway, it was fate and not he that had foreclosed. But at this the battle was joined again, the feeling in his bones against the arguments of his brain. Eventually he tore up the letter and wrote another, shorter and much more urgent; he told her he MUST see her again; he would come to Dublin if necessary and if she were still there, but if not, then somehow, somewhere, ANYWHERE…

By return came a note as short as his own. Legal matters, she said, had cropped up in connection with her stepfather’s small estate; there was a lawyer in London she had to visit almost immediately—wouldn’t London be as convenient for a meeting as Dublin?

More so, of course. He left Paris the next morning, having wired her to reach him at the Ellesmere Hotel, Euston Road. It was a cheap but respectable place, all he could afford, and he remembered it because during the war he had worked in an office of the U.S. Army just across from Euston Station. That part of London he knew as well as New York, or Reedsville, Iowa, and for the same reason: he had been lonely there.

The battle continued during his cross-Channel journey; first he was buoyant at the thought of seeing her so soon, then he half regretted having planned the meeting at all. As he entered the gloomy lobby of the Ellesmere Hotel he even hoped for some unavoidable hitch (but it would HAVE to be unavoidable)—perhaps his wire had never been delivered, perhaps her own London trip had been cancelled. Yet when, at the desk, he asked if there had been any enquiries for him and was told no, he felt acutely dismayed. The dismay increased during the next few hours; he couldn’t think what he would do with himself in London if she did not come; perhaps he ought to wire her in Dublin again. He unpacked in the comfortless third-floor bedroom; once the telephone rang, but it was the manager asking if he were a British subject —“I shouldn’t have bothered you, sir, but I noticed you gave an address in New York—we have to keep a record, you know, sir.” Paul had sprung to the instrument with such eagerness that he hardly knew how to reply through the deflation he felt; he stammered: “What’s that? Yes— I mean no—not British… American… By the way, I’m expecting a call —you’re sure there hasn’t been one so far?”

It came much later, about nine o’clock, and he had waited in the bedroom all the time, not caring to go out for dinner—having no appetite, he discovered, and as time passed, not even the inclination to read. He lay on the bed and wondered what was still happening to him—a new experience, and he had always thought he would welcome one, whatever it was; yes, he DID welcome it; all over the world there must be millions of young men concerned, as he was, about a girl; reassuring to find himself like so many others… or WAS he? Suppose someone were to offer him there and then a play to direct, a great play, wouldn’t that have power to preoccupy, to excite, to thrust everything else out of his mind? Wouldn’t it? Or would it? After her first words—“Paul, is that you?”—he knew the answer; by God yes, it’s I, it’s me, bring on the play, bring on a thousand plays, here I am, Paul Saffron, you haven’t heard of me yet, but you will, you WILL…

“Carey… Where are you?”

“I didn’t know when you’d arrive—I’ve only just got here myself —the train was late… Oh, darling, it’s so good to hear your voice again.”

“It IS? YOU feel like that too?… Carey, I… I’ve so many things to ask… Where’re you staying? How long will you be in London? I want to see a lot of you… I do hope you won’t be busy all the time…”

“As much as you want—it’ll be several days at least. I’m staying with an aunt at Putney.”

“PUTNEY?”

“That’s not far out. About an hour… Oh no, I’m not there yet—I’m at the station—Euston—I told you—I’ve only just arrived—”

“EUSTON?… Then what are we wasting time like this for? Just across the street! Listen, Carey—under the clock in the station hall… got that?… A couple of minutes…”

He hung up, raced down the stairs rather than ring for the crawling lift, and on his way across the lobby called out to the clerk in sheer exuberance: “Yes, I’m American—what do I have to do—register with the police or something?”

“No, sir—just for our records. Was that the call you were expecting?”

He snapped out a “You bet” that was lost in the segments of the revolving door.

Crossing the Euston Road (and it was drizzling with rain as it had been so many times before), he thought of Dante’s saying that the bitterest of all pangs was to remember happier days; put that in reverse and it was equally true, for there was actual relish now in thinking of the war year that he had spent so safely and drearily in London. Not that it had been London’s fault; he had liked the people and the city too, so far as it belonged to them in his mind and not to the associations of army life. That he had hated, utterly and absolutely, more probably than he would or could hate anything else in life. The little square where the hut had been was now just a square again, rain-drenched lawns covering so much drab and unrecorded experience; he could still call back the smell of that interior, its mixture of stale smoke, gas heaters, chewing gum, human sweat. Men had swarmed in continuously from the great near-by terminals—Euston, St. Paneras, King’s Cross; and it had been his job (the snob job, given him because of his better education, forsooth!) to handle the officers, telling them where they had been allotted rooms, what to see in London during a few days’ leave, the best shows, where to find the best women. (Much joking about that, especially from an angle neither flattering to him nor true about him—but what could he do, or say? So he had joined in the laughs, Pagliacci-style.) It was all so ‘cushy’, to use the overworked British adjective then current—‘cushy’ to sit out the war in London with a telephone in one hand and filing cabinets within reach of the other—practically a hotel clerk in uniform, humorously servile, falsely jocular. He and a dozen other clerks took turns at the job, day and night; they fed at a canteen and slept on army cots in a commandeered boarding-house in Southampton Row. They had varicose veins, weak hearts, hernias; he had his pituitary trouble. They were decent fellows, and he tried to conceal from them his passionate hope that when the war was over he would never see any of them again. Once or twice there were air raids, spicing the routine with excitement rather than danger—Zeppelins like silver cigars in the blue-black sky. On his time off he wandered all over London, visiting museums and art galleries, but his secret contempt for the who, what, and when of military life made him fumble into all kinds of trouble about dress and saluting. He got to know a few girls, one of whom, chance-met in the next seat at a concert, became a friend until she had waited for him once outside the army office and been shocked by overheard badinage. Neither of them had had enough importance to the other to be able to think it merely funny. He had made one man friend also, an English policeman who sometimes idled into the office at nights for a chat over the stove. The policeman had a sister in Alberta and a romantic feeling about America as a whole. He took Paul several times to supper at his little house near the Angel, Islington. Paul liked him from the moment he had said: “If I ‘ad your job, mate, I’d shoot meself. ‘Avin’ to put up with all them jokes from them officers and no chawnce to answer back—it’s worse’n bein’ a bloody bar-tender. Specially when they all think you’ve got it so cushy.” It was true; he knew how he was envied by some of the men on their way to the Front, and how little they guessed there could be any way in which he envied them. Yet he did, and then he didn’t, so many times; there had been conflict, even in those days, between physical distaste (fear, too, but no more than anyone else had) and a mental longing to put himself to the test, to find out if he could face what other men faced.