Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

Carey caught herself insisting that this encounter was a joke which they must both share with the girl, whoever she was. She was afraid they would hear her footsteps and turn, and for some reason she wanted to choose her own time; she stopped therefore, partly to gain breath and partly in the sheer fascinatedness of being able to count now in seconds, after the minutes, hours, days, and weeks of waiting. She felt curiously elated. And the flowers and the girl’s hair and the blue seen through the green and the snow-capped mountains dazzling in the distance—it WAS all rather like an opera, or like that recurrent crisis in an opera when something silly but quite tuneful is about to happen. “PAUL!” she cried out abruptly. She had not known till then how silent everything was, except for the murmur of the waterfalls. Strange, she thought, that she had not heard them talking together. It was so odd of Paul to be walking, and even odder for him not to be talking.

He turned, stared, muttered something either to the girl or to himself, then began back along the trail, towards her, the girl following him. He was somewhat short-sighted and could not, she knew, recognize her at such a distance, but surely he must have known her voice. But then she realized that her voice had not sounded like her own voice at all.

“Hello,” she said conversationally, but projecting a little, as she would have done on the stage.

Then came, in a rush, the inevitable exclamations and counter- exclamations. “CAREY! For heaven’s sake! YOU? You didn’t tell me you were coming! Why on earth didn’t you write? Carey, I can’t BELIEVE it’s you…”

“Oh, Paul, I ought to have let you know, but I made up my mind so suddenly and I thought if you’d gone back to Germany I didn’t want to interfere with your plans—I mean, if you hadn’t been here it would have been all right—it’s such a glorious place and I needed a vacation—it was either here or Florida, and there’s no comparison, is there? And besides, YOU don’t tell ME everything, why should I tell you?—that’s fair, isn’t it?… My goodness, you’re looking well!”

It was true. His usually pale face was bronzed, and he had lost nearer twenty than ten pounds, she would have judged. She had never seen him in such condition and it was doubtless absurd of her to reflect that, in a certain sense, it didn’t suit him.

Then the girl came up, and Carey gasped, for she was a blond beauty, Wagnerian perhaps, but slim and exquisite, the flaxen hair framing the face like an ivory miniature.

Paul said: “This is Miss Wanda Hessely—she plays the lead in the picture.” He turned to the girl and said, in very bad German: “This is Carey Arundel.”

Carey smiled and the girl smiled back.

Paul said: “She doesn’t speak English and I still can’t manage much German, but I can tell you she’s a fine actress.”

“That’s wonderful. I hope I’m not interrupting your morning.”

Carey hadn’t intended that to be sarcastic, it was simply what she sincerely felt, but as soon as she said it she wished it had sounded differently. Already she was half-regretting the whole trip; to meet Paul was one thing, but to sneak up on two people gathering wild flowers in a wood was somehow too naďve. Besides, she knew Paul had his own ways of rehearsing privately with actors—perhaps there was a flower scene in the picture and they had been taking themselves off to some quiet spot where Paul would have her go through a part. But to think that was perhaps also naďve. Already she knew that any twinge of jealousy she felt had not come from seeing the girl, but from hearing Paul call her a fine actress.

Paul said: “Oh no, we were just out for a stroll. Nowhere special. Wanda loves flowers. Let’s go back to the hotel and have a drink… She talks French, if you can remember enough.”

They walked back together, Paul between them. The girl was not only lovely, she was charming and spoke enchantingly, with a quality of voice that Carey knew must set her high in Paul’s regard; and though Carey had not used her French for years, it began to ripple fast between them by the time they reached the hotel. Paul, indeed, was left rather out of things; he kept glancing first to one side and then to the other, as if uncertain whether what was happening was altogether what he wanted. He was a bad linguist, and could not follow the conversation. “So you DO remember your French,” he commented ruefully, as they chose a table on the terrace.

“Of course. And since she doesn’t know English I’ll tell you this much in front of her—she’s just about the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. Is she well known?”

“She will be. She’s my discovery—she used to work in a department store. A natural actress. You should see some of the rushes.”

“I’d like to. May I?”

“They’re in Berlin.”

“But aren’t you making part of the picture here?”

“We were shooting a few mountain scenes, but that’s all done now. We’re just killing time for a while.”

“A nice place to do it. Everybody must be very happy.”

“No, the others have gone back to Germany till there’s more money. Mine turned out to be not nearly enough. You’ve no idea how costs run up. I sold out half my interest. I had to—we couldn’t have gone on without.”

“So you spent all your money and now you only own half the picture?”

“Maybe not even that, by the time we’re through. But if I’d kept it in stocks, what then?”

“Exactly. You were so right.”

“I didn’t know I was right. I just knew I wanted the money… And it’s a good picture, Carey, really it is.”

“Oh, Paul, I’m very happy about that.”

“Are you? You LOOK happy.”

“Why shouldn’t I be? I’ve owed myself a real vacation for years. Last summer at Mapledurham wasn’t much of one.”

“I know. Because you didn’t like Malcolm. Maybe you were right about him just as I was about the stocks.”

“You mean accidentally right?”

“Well, you couldn’t have KNOWN.”

“Couldn’t have known what?”

“Oh, well, let’s not hold a post-mortem.”

“He told me he hadn’t seen eye to eye with you—that was the phrase. I suppose you had a big row.”

“An IMPOSSIBLE row, Carey.”

“You’re pretty hard to collaborate with.”

“Oh, it hadn’t anything to do with that.”

“So he said, too.”

The waiter came and Paul, without consultation, ordered three double Amer Picons, which Carey thought rather massive for that time of the day, but she was too preoccupied to ask for anything else.

“What was the row about, then?”

“Wanda, mainly. He didn’t like her.”

“You mean, in the part?”

“That as well.”

“As well as what?”

“Oh, it was all rather personal.”

“Perhaps he was jealous.”

“Not in the way you’d expect.”

She laughed. “Darling, how do you know what I’d expect?”

“That’s enough in English. Say something to her in French.”

She spoke across him to the girl; she said: “My husband tells me you’re very wonderful in the picture.”

She watched the girl’s response, and saw shock (if there were any) mingle with pleasure at the compliment into a cool shyness, half disconcerted, half serene. The more Carey studied her the more she found her utterly delightful. They talked on till the drinks came, less and less importantly; by that time Paul looked forlorn again and was itching for a chance to interrupt.

“You two seem to be hitting it off together,” he said, at the first opportunity. “Hitting it off” was his favourite phrase for success in any and all human contacts.

“Paul, I think she’s adorable.”