Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

“Well, I’m neither,” Randolph said, untruthfully. “And that applies to you too, I should think.”

“I KNOW him,” she answered, with scorn or pride, whichever he decided it was.

After the last day’s shooting there came the anti-climax to which there was no parallel in the theatre, where rehearsals mount in a crescendo of tension, culminating in opening night and followed by either level activity or quick extinction. But movie-making offers a unique period of waiting while all the sub-assembly lines catch up—printing, distribution, publicity; and the nearest to opening night excitement that can happen at all is the sneak preview. Nearest, but still distant.

One rainy evening Carey drove out with Paul, Randolph, Greg, and several high personages from various studio departments—a convoy of limousines traversing interminable boulevards to converge eventually on a rather ordinary cinema in what seemed a less than ordinary suburb. Unannounced and unheralded, Morning Journey was there to be submitted to the verdict of an audience that had come to see something else. The distinguished visitors to whom it all mattered so much sat in a roped-off row at the back of the theatre, just behind the folks to whom it all mattered so little. There was the end of another picture to be endured, then a Mickey Mouse cartoon and a newsreel; finally, without any fanfare, Morning Journey began. The audience was small because of the weather, and Carey, unused to half-empty theatres, thought there was only tepid enthusiasm, but she was aware that the picture itself bored her by now, and that the popcorn noises were standard procedure and did not in any way reflect either the patrons’ visual enjoyment or lack of it. She was next to Paul, who kept cursing the music, which had been composed and arranged without his approval. Owing to his unfortunate tiff with the musicians this was actually the first time he had heard most of it, and he disliked it intensely.

There was, however, some scattered applause at the end of the picture, which was also the end of the show. Greg had left a minute before the curtain, anxious to reach the manager’s office before anyone spotted him for autographs; the others, unlikely to be so bothered, stayed in their seats while the audience filtered out. Then they joined Greg in the tiny office, waiting for the cards on which each patron had been invited to say whether he thought Morning Journey was Excellent, Good, or only Fair. There was also a space for ‘Remarks’. (The possibility that any Majestic picture might be downright Bad had been ignored.) About two hundred cards, duly filled in and collected by the ushers, were presently handed to Randolph by the theatre manager, a hard-bitten and presumably unprejudiced fellow who said he had liked the picture himself and thought his people had liked it too, but he couldn’t be sure—they were a tough bunch. Carey wondered why Randolph had chosen a tough bunch. Anyhow, the visitors were soon back in the cars, swishing through the endless unknown streets and across flooded intersections. Nobody talked much and everyone was glad to be dropped at his front door. “We’ll meet again tomorrow,” Randolph announced. Carey also wondered why he didn’t look at the cards during the drive; she decided he was enjoying peculiar power in a peculiar way.

It was still raining in the morning when the same group reassembled in Randolph’s office, the cards having by this time been sorted and placed in three heaps on his huge glass-topped desk. His pleasure in delaying the outcome had become definitely sadistic; one heap was much larger than the others, but his encircling arms as he leaned forward prevented closer observation. Paul was the only one who, not having come to pray, was able to scoff. “Our tribute to democracy,” he muttered, staring at the cards as at the trappings of some dubious religion. “He must have liked them because He made so many of them. A non sequitur if ever there was one. What about fleas, hookworms, boll-weevils?” Nobody answered.

At last Randolph spoke, smiling rather coldly as he referred to figures on his desk. “This is what you’re all waiting for, no doubt. Out of 215 cards we have 133 Excellents and 61 Goods. I think we can regard that as satisfactory —as far as it goes. Of course we can’t predict what the critics will say, or the big exhibitors… Would anyone like a whisky and soda so early in the morning?”

Put this way, the invitation drew no affirmative except from Paul, who said: “Sure. Why not?” So Randolph was forced to go to the small refrigerator concealed within an imitation bookcase whose false-fronted books were sets of Dickens and Thackeray. Everybody all at once began to smile and chatter —again except Paul, who glowered over his cigar as he watched Randolph’s reluctant hospitality.

Nobody looked at the cards, save at a few that had been put aside on account of some obscenity. These Randolph handed round for laughs. There were always two or three out of every batch. But here yet again Paul was the exception. He did not laugh. Indeed, he was rather prim about certain things —much more so than Carey, who could enjoy most jokes that most people found amusing.

After the sneak preview Randolph decided to shorten the picture by ten minutes’ playing time to suit the requirements of double-feature exhibitors. Paul protested, but not so energetically as might have been expected; he was going through his own anti-climactic period—the mood in which, after a job was done, he found it hard to take continued interest in it. Already, from certain hints he let fall, his mind was beginning to revolve on other ideas. It was during this period also that Carey gained an impression that Randolph would not be terribly disappointed if the picture did not do too well. Not, of course, that he would sabotage his own product, but there seemed a lack of zeal in his proddings of the publicity department—a lack which must certainly have communicated itself. The fact was, he disliked Paul so much that he could take real pleasure from the prospect of his downfall, while at the same time he had an alibi for himself whatever happened, since it was on record that he had objected to the contract that had forced Paul into the company’s employment. And at the back of his mind there grew intoxicatingly the notion of a future picture with Carey in it which he himself would direct. His real hope was that Morning Journey would turn out to be one of those half-and-half failure-successes in which he could fix praise and blame just where he wanted each.

Carey could not enjoy her leisure during those further weeks of waiting. Unlike Paul, she was unable to generate new ideas to take the place of old ones, and the absence of daily work only made more room for her own private worries. She spoke of these to no one, not only because they were so intimate, but because something centrally sane in her makeup told her continually that she deserved no sympathy; by so many reckonings she was fortunate. Surely there could be no doubt of it when she looked back on her life. Yet she felt, at times, acutely unlucky as well as unhappy. She did not know what she wanted to do next, or where she wanted to go, and the fact that there were choices made the future harder to contemplate. Perhaps she would stay where she was till the fate of the picture was decided, then take the trip she had vaguely promised herself.

Another thing that few would have thought credible and for which she blamed only herself was that she was often lonely. In a place full of interesting people she had so far been too busy to make friends, and the occasional parties she went to were apt to be unrewarding—not dull, but somehow devoid of a quality for which she could think of no single word but merriment. It seemed to her that many of the interesting people were also too busy to make friends, that many of the laughing people were laughing too hard to make merry, and that many of the interesting, laughing, and busy people were also as lonely as herself. Sometimes, after such a party, she had a spiritual hangover that sent her driving random miles in her rented car, as if to kill the memory of an evening that had been full of excitement yet fundamentally distraught. And even if her personal mood were responsible for much that seemed amiss, there were things to which she felt her own reaction was not subjective at all; the geographical heartlessness of the city, the miles of streets where nobody walked, the rigid charm of the professionally decorated interiors, the air of insecurity that was more sinister, somehow, than the perhaps greater insecurity of stage life.