Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

She said: “I didn’t expect to be remembered, so it doesn’t bother me at all to find I’m not. You, of course, can’t understand that… Why don’t we lunch somewhere on Upper Broadway?”

“Suits me. Take us to the best place you know, driver.”

“On Upper Broadway? All among the hoi polloi? Okay, buddy.”

He drove them to a restaurant that was supposed to look like an English chop-house. Paul tipped him extravagantly and was very regal with a head waiter who was not used to regality; the table waiter, however, turned out to be a Frenchman on whom he could lavish exuberant conversation in that language. Carey noted that though his command of it was fluent, his accent was execrable. Eventually, having manœuvred themselves into the centre of a whirlpool of fuss, they were served with exactly the kind of average food they would have got with no fuss at all. Paul ate voraciously, seeming not to be aware (thank heaven) of any deficiencies. She remembered he had always had that sort of innocence; a steak that sizzled was good, and crępes suzette pleased him so much as a spectacle that he could enjoy them even when they were leathery. Until the coffee stage they had the waiter almost constantly at hand for Paul to demonstrate his French on and his personal importance to; finally, however, having brought Paul a double brandy, he edged behind the scenes with obvious readiness to escape.

And then for several moments Paul had nothing to say. She wondered if he were actually uncomfortable to be alone with her, and if his behaviour had been designed to postpone that as long as possible; he looked deflated, as so often when the stimulus of an audience had been removed. How well she knew that look, the look that said: “I have spent all my brilliance on others; now you, my wife, are privileged either to share my silence or talk me out of my fatigue…” But she was not his wife now, nor was she disposed to assume an old function. She watched him quizzically, till at length he broke the silence himself by saying, with a sudden sweetness that touched her more than she had been prepared for: “It’s good to see you again, Carey. I’m glad you’re happy.”

She controlled herself to ask how long he intended to be in New York.

“I’m sailing in a few hours.”

“Back to Europe? TODAY?”

“Midnight. It’s been just a short visit. Less than a week. I was in time for what I came for.”

“Some of those top-price movie rights?”

“No. My mother died.”

“Oh, Paul…” She reached out her hand to touch his across the table. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, or I’d have—”

“Nothing anybody could do. A chill and then pneumonia. She kept herself alive till I got here.”

“I can believe that, Paul. She was always devoted to you.”

“Yes, she really was, and so was I to her. I had her over with me in Europe for a few years, but she hated foreigners and after the Munich crisis she insisted on coming back. She wanted me to come back also, and I promised I would, as soon as I’d cleared up existing commitments, but I wonder if I should have. I wonder. The promise made her happy, anyway. And now, of course… “

She said: “Now you don’t have to do anything unless YOU want to.”

“That’s about it. When something happens like this you feel lost and free at the same time… YOU didn’t like her, did you?”

“I liked her more, I think, than she did me.”

“That may have been partly my fault—I mean, how she felt about you. I let her think I didn’t care for you much. It pleased her. But then, of course, it made her think I’d be better off without you.”

It was on her tongue to ask: “Have you been?”—but she quelled the impulse, feeling nevertheless that he read the question in her eyes. After a pause he went on, perhaps evading it in his own way: “And once she got an idea, no matter how absurd it was, she wouldn’t let it go. For instance, she insisted there was going to be war last September. I told her it would all blow over, as of course it did, but that didn’t stop her fidgeting.”

“It hasn’t stopped a good many other people, Paul.”

“I know. And there’ll probably be more scares. But actual war—my bet’s still against it, and I do have hunches about things, don’t I? Remember when I sold out at the top before the crash?”

She remembered. She remembered also that it had not been any hunch of his at all, but the simple fact that he had wanted money at a particular time for a particular purpose. Presumably since then he had built the whole situation into drama, with himself as the clairvoyant speculator; and if that could give him pleasure at such a time as now, she had no wish to spoil it.

She said: “I only hope you’re right about things in Europe. I’m not nearly so optimistic.”

“You read too many newspapers. If you were working you wouldn’t have time. What kind of job could an artist do if he worried over headlines every morning? The artist never did believe in security, so he isn’t upset to find it doesn’t exist. And he’d always rather take chances than play for so-called safety. Why, I’m taking a chance now, merely being here.”

“How do you make that out?”

“Your husband could cause me a lot of trouble if he knew I was on this side of the Atlantic. He could sue me over that Everyman affair—maybe he could even have me arrested or jailed or something.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Paul. First, he wouldn’t, and second, I’m pretty sure he couldn’t. Anyhow, if you’re really going about in fear of arrest, why did you want to lunch at Twenty-One where just about all New York would recognize you?”

“Taking a chance, as I said.”

But she knew it wasn’t that at all. It was just a secondary drama he had improvised to embellish the occasion. More and more, as she talked to him, she wondered how she could ever have accepted his tricks and tantrums, all that mercurial pretence and deviousness, as part of the norm of life; she wondered how her nerves had survived the wear and tear of those feverish years. And yet she knew she was excited to see him again, an old excitement without any of the old heart-strain. For she had no qualms about him now, or anxieties on his behalf; he was a success, as he had always wished to be, and she could enjoy the spectacle warmly, but with detachment. Her enjoyment, moreover, eased everything between them, so that he began to bask in it happily—too happily even to show off his French again when the waiter reappeared. He ordered another brandy, in English, and launched suddenly into a declaration of his future plans—a picture, he said, based on the Book of Job. For over an hour he talked about this, not grandiloquently or boastfully, but with the subdued eloquence of a mature mind operating at a peak of capability; and she was entranced. She knew then that the years had increased his stature in his own infallible world, and listening to him, she felt a certain dreamy contentment, a pride in having been once his wife, in being still whatever she was to him even if they should never meet again. She wondered if they would, not hoping it especially, but with an awareness that she was storing up a reserve of memories impossible yet to assess or classify. To have met Paul, for these few hours before he returned to Europe, to have heard him talk about something which in due course the world would perhaps find worth talking about—how remarkable it might all seem in retrospect. Presently she realized he had stopped talking and was staring at her.

“You’re not listening, Carey.”

“I WAS… I think it’s a great idea… GREAT.”

But this time he seemed to derive no pleasure. He said, in a troubled voice: “You say you’re happy. Tell me, what sort of a man is he?”