Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

That week-end at the farm made proof, if he had ever needed it, that Carey could come close to his heart and mind if she wished. Whether this was likely he could not yet decide. But he guessed that her husband’s return (in September, she had said) would set limits to whatever had not been accomplished before.

“You must be looking forward to it,” he said, as they inspected the stables and milking-sheds that Sunday morning.

“Oh yes,” she answered eagerly, and then added, as if she were having to think it out: “Yes, I think so.”

“Only that?”

She laughed. “It’s really quite a lot. I couldn’t ever really explain just how I DO feel about Paul.”

He took that as a closure of the subject till she went on: “It’s strange —I’m quite happy without him so long as I know he’s happy. I don’t miss him, exactly, and I know when he does come home what a to-do there’ll be —everything upside down, the whole of my life in an uproar. He CONSUMES people. It’s probably good for me, though—I’m naturally rather lazy.”

“How’s his film progressing?”

“All right, I suppose. He doesn’t write much about it.”

“Don’t you ask him?”

“Yes, and he doesn’t answer.”

“So he doesn’t answer, and you don’t miss him, and you don’t really want your life to be in an uproar, and yet… there must be an ‘and yet’.”

“There is… but I don’t know what it is.”

“It might be love.”

“Yes, it might, mightn’t it? I expect we all love differently.”

They walked some way while he told her about the farm, the way he had acquired it, and his plans for development. Apparently it had been only half arable land at first, and he had made a point of reclaiming more and more each year, clearing, liming, and fertilizing; he had taken a scientific interest in soil conservation and had experimented with different kinds of crop rotation. Everything that modern farm management could do was still in progress, for he had good men working for him; but the way he talked of it somehow conveyed a revival of his own interest after a long interval, and he could guess that she sensed this. So he said abruptly: “I misled you when I asked you here. I gave you an impression that these week-ends were a normal thing for me. Actually this is the first time I’ve been here since my wife died.”

“Yes, the Rushmores told me.”

“You must have thought I hadn’t been very frank.”

“I don’t think it matters, now that I know.”

“I’m glad you know. Fran and I were so very happy.”

“I was told that too.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever have the nerve to face all the memories— places we did this and that, the walks we took—Sunday morning walks just like this… My boy Norris comes home from school soon. Will you spend another week-end here and get to know him?”

“I’d like to very much.”

He took her arm. “Good—because we must make the most of our time, mustn’t we, before your play opens?”

“Yes, I’ll be pretty busy then, one way and another.”

He was fairly sure that the same interpretation of that was in both their minds.

She visited the farm again in August, but this time he had no one else there except Norris and Aunt Mildred. He had expected Norris to like Carey, and the boy did, but it somewhat amazed him that she seemed to enjoy the meeting for its own sake. He himself was devoted to his son, but he found it hard to establish contact with a somewhat difficult eight-year-old, and he had set the age of fifteen in his mind as a date from which he and Norris could really begin to understand each other. And of course it would be easier still, later on. He looked forward most of all to a young man, home from Harvard, discovering his father as an equal.

“He’s so friendly and intelligent,” Carey said. “It’s fun to talk to him.”

“Because you know how.”

“Well, most children are actors, so we have that in common… Paul used to say he could make an actor of any child under ten—and UNTIL he was ten.”

“Did… does Paul like children?”

“I think he would have, if we’d had any. Whenever he directed children in a play he was like a rather sinister Santa Claus, if you can imagine such a thing. They were fascinated.”

“As you were too.”

“Me? Oh no, I wasn’t taken in for a moment.”

“I meant that you must have been fascinated in some kind of way— when you first met him… A man so… so remarkable…”

“Oh, THEN! Yes, I was seventeen and he came to Dublin on business. He was the first brilliant man I ever knew. And the MOST brilliant. He always has been. I only wish he’d be brilliant now about the new play.”

“It’s worrying you?”

“Not exactly. It’s just that I’m not excited enough. One ought to be excited about a new play.”

“Or else not be in it at all?”

“But the part’s made for me—written for me, in fact. I don’t know what there is wrong—maybe nothing. I expect I’ll be all right on the night. That comes under the heading of famous last words.”

“You don’t get nervous?”

“Heavens, yes. Paul does too—he can lose ten pounds during rehearsals. And that doesn’t do him any harm either.”

“He’s a big man?”

“BIG?” The word seemed to amuse her. “Well, he’s… I think I’ve got a photograph.”

She opened her handbag and found a snapshot. “I took this several years ago—it’s good because it doesn’t flatter like the professional ones.”

Paul was unlike anything Austen had in the least expected, and from then on, in a curious way, he thought of Carey a little differently.

He said: “A personality—one can tell that… And what a pretty garden!”

“It is, isn’t it? Only a small place, near Stroudsburg, not really as beautiful as here, but I used to love it.”

“You don’t go there any more?”

“We had to sell—or rather, I had to—last year. I lost a lot in the market and I didn’t think I could keep up two homes.”

“Didn’t you once tell me Paul sold out at the top?”

“Oh yes, HE did. He was smart—or else lucky.”

He gripped her arm. “I’ll tell you one way he’s lucky, and that’s to have you… I hope he realizes it.”

“But I’m lucky too. I’d never have been successful on the stage without him.”

“You’re very modest to say that. Does he agree with you?”

“You bet he does. HE’S not modest.”

She laughed, and he had again a feeling which only now he was able to put into words for his own private consideration later: that Paul did not make her happy, but that in some incurable way she was able to take delight in him.

She had scored such a definite hit with Norris that it was obvious to assume another meeting soon. Austen was pleased on the boy’s behalf, but he was also glad for himself because it meant a further stage in their own advancing friendship. He knew by now that he was very much in love with Carey.

They met often during the weeks that followed. She visited the farm at week-ends, when there were sometimes, but not always, outside guests; she dined frequently at the house in the East Sixties, where there was usually only Aunt Mildred with them. He realized that she found, both at the farm and at the house, some kind of comfort that appealed to her. As the rehearsals for the new play got under way, he guessed that what he could offer, if nothing else, was actually a refuge from the theatre—a place where she could not be reached on business, where she need not talk or even think about it if she wished not to. He had once called for her at her own small apartment, and during the short time he was there had heard her end of several long telephone conversations; they had sounded to him as if the play were in trouble of some kind, though when he hinted this she said lightly that it was no more than usual. But she had seemed harassed and glad to escape.