Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

“CHOICE?… But my dear boy…” It was impossible, of course, to say what was in his mind.

“Besides,” Norris went on, enjoying the effect of his own casualness, “if I waited to be drafted I think I’d have to be a conscientious objector. So you ought to be glad I’ve spared you that to worry about.”

Actually Norris was only just in time, for he was on a troopship in mid-Atlantic on the day of Pearl Harbour.

For Austen the war, on the emotional level, was his anxiety over Norris. The boy was at Tobruk, then at El Alamein; he was risking his life, and it was not part of Austen’s plan that this should have happened. In a sort of way he was proud, and he was also aware that countless other parents were suffering like himself; but neither pride nor anxiety increased his sense of fellowship with his countrymen as individuals, any more than the fortune he had made after the market crash had diminished his sympathy with the victims. So far as his own personal affairs were concerned, it was not too difficult to bring even the war into the master plan. Indeed, one of the changes it made in his life suited him very well, for within a few weeks of Pearl Harbour he had accepted a dollar-a-year job in Washington, and it could truthfully be said that he had never worked so happily as when he found himself serving his country. Was this patriotism? He was honest enough not to assume so, and sensible enough not to deny it if others called it that. The truth was that the war, by enabling him to take a Government post without giving up his firm, had made it comfortingly possible to serve God and Mammon, had put the future and the past in some sort of temporary truce.

As for Carey, the war led indirectly to the fulfilment of her own teasing dream about Norris—that he should, sometime, see her in a play. But it happened far differently from anything she had envisioned. To begin with, it was not a first night, but nearer a hundred and first, and Norris, who should have been starry-eyed, was almost condescendingly cynical. Perhaps this was just another disguise for his real emotions, whatever they were, but she had not reckoned on it any more than she had pictured him clumping into her dressing-room in a uniform that made him both shy and truculent.

She herself had returned to the stage in the autumn of 1942, and for a number of reasons, none of them separately decisive, but all contributing to the event. First, there were Austen’s frequent absences on business, that took him mysteriously by air across oceans and continents, so that she was left increasingly alone and for the first time in her life lonely. Austen had never had a wide circle of acquaintances, and this had suited her well enough when he was with her all the time, but as soon as he was gone (and with Norris also away) she realized how many friends she had practically given up since her marriage. Most of them were in the theatrical world, and once she re-established contact with them it was inevitable that the idea of a play should crop up. She was still remembered by producers, and since her biggest success had been in a rather trifling comedy, the fact that wartime audiences favoured light entertainment brought her many approaches. The lure of the stage, so harped upon and romanticized, did not specially operate; on the contrary, the FEAR of the stage, the memory of strain and tension, nearly made her say no to every proposition. Then a play came along that exactly suited her style; she was good, the critics were warm, it made a hit, and at the back of her mind was always the escape clause that if she got bored, or felt herself too spent, she could give up. Perhaps because of this she enjoyed success for the first time in her life without qualification.

Nor had Austen opposed the idea; if he had, she would probably not have indulged what had originally been hardly more than a whim. But he merely cautioned her against overwork and stressed the escape clause. He seemed to regard the whole thing as covered by some aura of wartime expediency, like his own missions abroad and the loss of his butler to become a butler in uniform.

Norris had enlisted in the A.F.S. for a year, but it was the spring of 1943 before he came home for transfer to a regular medical unit. He had sailed from Egypt on a slow boat round the Cape; it had dumped him in a southern port where red tape had held him for days before he could get a furlough. It was like him not to wire the news of his return until he could give the time of his arrival in New York; he did not want his father to start doing things on his behalf. As it happened, Austen was away at the time, and it was Carey who met him at Penn Station. The train was late and, after an almost frantically embarrassed greeting, she had to leave immediately for the theatre. She had thought he would want to go home for a good meal and a rest, but instead he said he would rather have a bath at the station, see the show, and take her to supper. She was too excited to argue about it, so she arranged for him to have one of the house seats and asked him to come round to her dressing-room afterwards. This he did, joining the group of admirers whose shrill and fashionable chatter made him stay in the background till she caught sight of him. By this time her excitement over his return had become part of her usual exuberance after a performance, and she could view him with a certain detachment. He was handsome enough, she perceived, to transcend the ill-fitting uniform; that is, it looked even more eccentric on him than he did inside it. She gave him a lavish welcome, her pride masquerading as motherliness, for she felt, as always after a show, extravagant in all her emotions, both genuine and acted.

“WELL!” she exclaimed, embracing him as she wouldn’t have done except at such a moment. “What’s the verdict? How did you like it?”

“I laughed,” he answered, and then, with careful timing, added, “quite often.”

He had probably thought this out as a thing to say, and it served a purpose by giving him status among the elegant civilians.

She exclaimed gaily as she introduced him around: “Can you imagine— Norris has never seen me in a play before! That’s a fact! Darling, don’t you dare tell what you think of me!”

“Oh yes, I will. You were much better than I expected.”

More amusement, amidst which he thankfully reverted to the background till the others had left and he could remind her she had promised to have supper with him.

“Why, of course. I’ve been looking forward to it all evening. Oh, Norris, did you REALLY enjoy yourself? I warned you it wasn’t the kind of play you’d choose.”

“It wasn’t,” he answered. “But to see you on the stage was fun. You’re GOOD, aren’t you? So sure of yourself, up there—the audience eating out of your hand—your eyes bright and your voice and movements so perfectly controlled… but I guess all that just proves I’m as naďve as father says I am.”

“I didn’t know he did… but please go on. I’d rather have your opinion than most people’s.”

“Well… the sheer competence of it all impressed me—just as I’m impressed by championship tennis or Capehart record-changers or H. V. Kaltenborn adlibbing… The way you got the laughs—even the fact that you remembered all the lines. And then, on a different level, I was impressed by the play.”

“You WERE?”

“Because of the remarkable team-work between actors and audience. Both had to forget how stupid the thing really was.”

She giggled. “I shall quote that as my own… You did laugh, though, or were you just saying so out of politeness?”

“Sure I laughed. Couldn’t help it. You had me eating out of your hand, too. But I’d have enjoyed you better in something more important— something worthier of your abilities.”