Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

Paul gave her an affectionately derisive pat. “You’re so practical, Carey. I’m glad I can answer yes. Malcolm once worked with Reinhardt in Germany.”

“I shouldn’t have thought that would have recommended him to you.”

He began to chuckle in lazy anticipation of a point about to be scored. “Ah, but Reinhardt FIRED him. I checked up on it. They disagreed. You know, Carey, he practically told Reinhardt to go jump in a lake!” He added, still chuckling: “And in German, I hope.”

He had had this grudge against Reinhardt ever since their first and only meeting, though the real reason why the two had apparently disliked each other on sight was doubtless that they were both dictators and perfectionists. At any rate, they had had a fantastic tantrum about something —fantastic because in its final stages Reinhardt had volleyed in German and Paul in English, both shouting together, with a Reinhardt minion translating like mad between them, and Carey standing by in much embarrassment but with an awareness that she would find the incident exquisitely funny in retrospect. Which she always did—as now.

For the one thing she had held on to, throughout all the routines of effort and failure, effort and success, was a sense of humour. It was an odd humour, rooted in a profound acceptance of the incongruities of life and perhaps also in that background of Ireland and Catholicism which, though she might seem to have lost both, was—at a deeper level—beyond her power to surrender. Paul, she knew, did not laugh in the same way or at the same things; especially he could not laugh at himself. But gradually, over a period of years, he had grown used to the way she laughed at him, and at themselves; he believed he had conceded her the privilege, and she never let him realize it was something neither of them could have prevented. Nor did he know how many times her own special humour had eased him out of trouble. When he was most unreasonable there was a way her mouth could twist which was hardly a smile, yet could bring the temperature down like a breeze through an opened window.

So in admitting that she would have been nothing without him, she had private knowledge that he without her would have made extra enemies and kept fewer friends. The one field in which he was almost impeccable and infallible was the theatre itself—that abstraction which to him was far more than the building or even the play. The theatre freed him from all that made muddle in his life, so that on the stage decision came to him purely and instantly from something deeper than his mind and sharper than his brain. When he directed her in comedy he seemed even to understand her sense of humour, doubtless because he was then in control of it. To understand anything he had to be in control. “I’m right when I do what I want,” he had once told her. “I’m wrong when I try to compromise or please others.” He meant, of course, in his work, but it was perhaps natural that an arrogance so unarguably justified should tend to become a habit elsewhere.

Those weeks at Mapledurham during that summer of 1929 were somehow crucial to Carey; it was as if the Everyman-Beringer affair acted like a catalyst, intensifying a vision of things already seen obscurely. Her life with Paul, she realized, had acquired a texture. She must guard him constantly from the kind of mundane error he was prone to; on the other hand, in anything touched by his infallibility she must not try to influence him at all, and for her own ultimate sake as much as his. The problem lay in the delimiting of worlds. Perhaps it was a good thing, she reflected with a twisted smile for herself alone, that popes should not marry.

Thus, when she saw that the Everyman collaboration was more than a whim, she ceased to be openly critical of it, though she kept a watchful eye on Malcolm. That young man spent most of his time at Mapledurham, walking over from Moat Farm early in the morning and returning late at night; he and Paul were closeted together (the old-fashioned phrase seemed to suit the situation) for five or six hours each day. Usually Paul had discussed all his work with her, seeking not advice, but a sounding-board for his ideas; about this Everyman project, however, he became gradually less confiding. Once when she taxed him with this he answered that he knew she didn’t approve what he was doing, so he had chosen not to worry her.

“But Paul, I’d worry still more if I thought you had secrets from me.”

“Well, it’s no secret any more. I’m going to make a film with Malcolm in Germany.”

“GERMANY?”

“They have the best techniques there—and in France—they’re the only places where the art of the film isn’t dying of infantile paralysis.”

“And it’s all… arranged… already?”

“Practically all.”

“Including the financing angle?”

“Sure. No trouble about that.”

She was at the breakfast-table with him (the only meal of the day guaranteed to be without Malcolm) when this conversation had sprung up, and she had an idea that unless she had broached the subject he would not have told her, even yet. She said at length, calmly: “I suppose you’re sure what you’re doing is the right thing, Paul.”

“No, I’m not sure, this time. It’s a new venture—an experiment. That’s why I’ve kept you out of it… But if it’s a success you can count on me—one of these days I’ll make you into a movie star.” He laughed and added: “Besides, you’d hate to walk out of a play that still has a few hundred nights to run.”

“I would, I’ll admit that. But it isn’t going to be easy for me, away from you.”

“Oh, you’ll manage. A play like that can jog along.”

“I wasn’t thinking about the play… When do you go?”

“Sail on August twenty-fifth.”

“You’ve even fixed that?”

“Have to book far ahead, the boats are crowded.”

“Yes, I know, but… well, when do you expect to come back?”

“Before Christmas… Carey, you’re not really upset, are you?”

“Darling, if you’re doing what you feel you have to do, then everything’s fine so far as I’m concerned. That’s the way I discipline myself—if I didn’t, you’d never put up with me. It’s a bit of a miracle, really, the way we manage to put up with each other. But I’ll miss you, Paul. That’s something I CAN’T help.”

She didn’t miss him nearly as much as she had expected; indeed, she was rather startled to find how much smoother in many ways life was without him. Provided he was doing what he wanted in that infallible world of his, she could face the few months of his absence with something more than equanimity. She missed him most at the rehearsals before the beginning of the new theatre season, for she knew there were things he would not have tolerated, that the play could have benefited from the kind of sprucing-up he would have given it; on the other hand, it was booked solid till January and the audience at the reopening laughed as loudly and as often as ever, not noticing (she was sure) the lack of that little extra quality that Paul could always squeeze out of a performance. Perhaps the squeeze did not matter so much, in a comedy. She was torn between a schooled integrity that insisted it did matter, and a feeling of relaxation in being able to do a competent job night after night without having to worry about what Paul had said to offend one of the carpenters, or the house-manager, or somebody from a newspaper.

He wrote to her, fairly frequently but irregularly, from Berlin, giving her little information about the Everyman project, but conveying an impression that all was going well with it. He hardly ever mentioned Malcolm, and her own gossip about New York and the play never drew his answering comment. She was not surprised at any of this. Again, so long as he was all right, doing the work that satisfied him, she was content. She went to a few parties and enjoyed herself, discovering reluctantly how pleasant it was not to watch for danger across a crowded room, for Paul’s feuds with so many people had always made acceptance of a party invitation something of a risk. More often, though, she spent pleasant hours by herself—reading, shopping, attending matinées of other plays on her own free afternoons. Life went easily—at the theatre, at her apartment, and in a curious way within her inmost self.