Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

“Yes, yes, I know. All right. That’s how it shall be then. Seventy-five for you and ten for Paul as director—”

“I thought you said a hundred for me? Not that I care particularly— “

Michaelson scribbled figures on his pad as if they were too difficult to work out mentally. “I could hold out for a hundred, Carey, and I’m certain I could get it—if you’d settle for Paul on a technical adviser basis. Otherwise…”

She smiled. “I see. Seventy-five’s okay.”

He smiled back. “You think he’s worth the difference?”

She kept on smiling. “The difference less a whole lot of income-tax. Yes, I’ll sign. The main things are the details. I want you to protect him all you can—in case they want to put him off halfway through or something.”

He kept on smiling. “Seems like we’re both expecting trouble with that guy.”

“An old habit of mine, Micky. Do your best for him. I don’t know what you can ask in the way of authority or control—probably not much. But try to get the limit. I’ll be out there to smooth things. I haven’t met many picture people, but I guess they’re human.”

“Very. Human enough to be your admirers.” He beamed with gallantry, then became businesslike. “So you approve the deal I’ve outlined?”

“Yes.”

“And you think he’ll approve it too?”

“My God, he’d better.”

“Perhaps he could drop by and see me himself. We’ll roll out a bit of red carpet.”

“Let me talk to him again first. How long before we sign?”

“It’ll take a week or so to set the thing up.” Michaelson continued, on the way to the elevator: “As I thought, they all took it as proof you were going back to him. I told them you weren’t, but they offered me odds on it. So what would probably have been only in Variety—I mean, about the contract—may hit the gossip columns. If it does, remember it’s not my fault—I warned you of a leak from the other end. Hollywood’s one big leak—you’ll find that out.”

She knew then she must tell Austen without delay, for it would be unthinkable to let him hear or read of it.

She told him that night, after they had left Norris, and while he was mixing his customary nightcap. After considering all kinds of excuses and evasions, she finally decided on the plain truth. She said she had been offered a good contract to make a picture in Hollywood with Paul directing, and she had accepted. She explained the nature of the deal and spared none of the details of Paul’s unpopularity and the unlikelihood of his ever getting a job without herself as bait. “It’s his last chance,” she said, perhaps over- severely, as if he were a bad boy whom she had to discipline. “I’m giving it to him not because he deserves it but because I think he’s good in his own line—too good to be allowed to go on being unlucky for the rest of his life. As for myself, I’m not specially anxious to be in a picture, though I dare say it’ll be interesting, but however it turns out I certainly don’t plan a new career. It’s just this once. I want you to know that.”

He was silent for a long while after she had first thought she had finished. She kept remembering additional details and adding them, but still he was silent. Then he went to the decanter and poured himself another drink.

He said at length: “I don’t want you to do it at all.”

“I’m sorry, Austen. I was afraid it wouldn’t please you, but I wish you could realize that I feel I have to.”

“I don’t see why you feel you have to do anything unless it’s what you want.”

“Then I suppose it’s true that I want to do it.”

“As I thought.” His voice was quietly strained. “So for this desire, or compulsion, or sense of obligation—whatever it is—you’re ready to break up all we have here together…”

“Oh no, no—why?—why should that happen? Surely it has nothing to do with—”

“Carey, it’s come to the point I hoped it never would—I’ve got to tell you what I really think of Paul. Discount some of it, but not much, because I hate him. He’s the only person I’ve ever hated. And it’s for one reason only—that he not only drove you half out of your mind when he was with you, but he hasn’t let you alone since. The mere thought of him —his very existence anywhere—can threaten your happiness and therefore mine. I’ve known that for a long time.”

“You’re really exaggerating, Austen. He never drove me half out of my mind.”

“You should have seen yourself when I met you. It’s what first made me notice you—because I’m not normally the sort of person who picks up strange actresses on shipboard.” He smiled a wintry smile. “But that broken look you had, the look of being utterly lost and spiritless—”

“I don’t remember it was as bad as that.”

“You don’t? Then that’s what living a sane life these last fifteen years has done—the life you’re now planning to give up. Perhaps you don’t remember the nervous wreck you were while you were rehearsing that play?”

“The one that flopped? Oh, heavens, yes, but you can’t blame that on Paul. He’d never have let me do it if he’d been around.”

“But he wasn’t around, was he, and that’s the point… that he’d deserted you and you were like a drowning person all that time. Fortunately—by some miracle—you began to learn to swim on your own.”

“With you to help me, Austen, I admit that.”

“I don’t want your admission as if it were only my due. I want you to stay here, with me, for your own sake and mine, and I don’t want you ever to see or communicate with Paul again. I can’t put it straighter than that.”

Because he was not a man to plead, the note in his voice embarrassed her, as if she were eavesdropping on something unseemly. She knew he was genuinely trying to master his emotion and not, as an actor might, to exhibit it with an appearance of struggle for concealment. She began tidying things on her dressing-table, to ease both of them through a bad moment; and suddenly, as in times of crisis before, the sense of dual personality came on her and she herself was acting, Carey Arundel playing the part of the second Mrs. Bond.

“But it’s all fixed up, Austen.”

“Then unfix it. Change your mind—break your word if necessary. And if you’ve signed anything, leave that to me.”

“I haven’t signed anything yet. But it’s all fixed up.”

“You’re afraid he’ll try to hold you to a promise? Leave that to me too.”

“It isn’t that at all. As a matter of fact HE had to be persuaded, not I. It’s just that I WANT him to do this job and he can’t get it unless I’m in the thing too. They wouldn’t take him without me. I explained it all just now.”

“So you really intend to go on with this?”

“Yes, I do. I’m sorry, Austen.”

He came over to her and touched her shoulder. She felt his hand cold. She saw how pale he was, the grey look of misery, and when she reached up to touch his hand it was icy. “It doesn’t mean any break between you and me,” she said with kindness. “At least I don’t know why it should.”

“Carey, how can you SAY that? How can you think of DOING this? How COULD you?” He seemed brought up against an impasse of incredibility. “Without even consulting me… I can’t understand it…”

“It’s my work, Austen, if you argue it out on those lines. I never promised I’d give it up for good. I don’t want to do it all the time— you know that—but I can’t think of it as something you have a right to veto.”

“I’ve never tried to, when it was the work itself you wanted. But HE’S your reason now. You’ve been frank enough to say so. And he’ll ruin you. He’ll wear you out again—and you’re older, you won’t be able to stand it. He CONSUMES—you used that word once yourself. And he has no loyalty, nor integrity, nor even common fairness. As you say, you don’t remember those things now. There are things you probably don’t even know of… all the time he was refusing you a divorce, for instance, he was living with a German girl—a film actress…”