Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

One day she made the expedition she had often thought of, but had hitherto avoided, partly from an unwillingness to be sentimental. But now she felt that sentiment was not the guiding motive, but rather a dispassionate curiosity to see a once familiar place with a different eye. She drove, therefore, to a certain street between Western and Vermont. The houses looked much as she remembered them—a little shabbier with age, and there were gaps in what had once been a careful line of palm trees. The frame house she was looking for had been renumbered, but was otherwise unchanged— the same wide porch, and the swing door whose sound in banging she could still catch in the ear of her mind. She drove round the block to see the house again, and as she repassed, the swing door opened and a child emerged. His brown face was so happy that she had an impulse to stop and talk to him, but he scampered into a neighbour’s yard before she could think of an excuse. She then noticed other coloured children playing near by, and it seemed indeed that the whole district had undergone that kind of racial change that real- estate people deplore; but to her, because of the child’s face, it was part of a deep content that came on her as she drove back to her apartment.

When she got there, decision had been added to this new mood. She wrote immediately to Norris at the Hotel Bolivar, Montevideo, Uruguay:

“DARLING NORRIS—I’m writing this before I change my mind, before I feel scared about it. I’m so glad you’re having an interesting trip, but there was something in your last letter—the one from Rio—that I didn’t answer; I felt I couldn’t at the time, but now I suddenly feel I can and must. You asked what I thought you should do about going into the bank as your father wants, and my answer is No—not yet, anyhow, till you’re stronger and back at home and unless you then feel happy and aren’t in the cynical mood that your letter showed. Well, there you are, darling—my advice—you asked for it. DON’T GIVE IN—to anything or anybody. I wish I could offer my own life as a shining example, but you know it wouldn’t be—and yet, in a sense, I haven’t often let myself be pushed around too far, and when I have it’s been my own choice as well as my own fault. And in case your father reads this (and why shouldn’t you show it him?—I’d like him to know my attitude—perhaps it might even influence him a little), I’ll add the news that the picture is finished and I’m looking forward to seeing both of you again if he’ll send me a line so that I can match my plans with his. Actually I haven’t any particular plans —I don’t want to make any till I know his and yours. I’ve missed you both very much but I’m not sorry I came out here for the picture—I think it’s turned out the way I wanted it and you know what that is. Well, this seems about all, perhaps in some ways it’s more than enough, but the fact is, I’m so used to covering pages with nothing but chit-chat that I’d better send it off before I’m appalled at having had the nerve. But you’ll forgive me, because you know how much I care for your happiness. My love, darling, as always.—CAREY.”

Without a re-reading she air-mailed it from the box on the pavement outside. Then she took her car and drove to the mountains, returning towards dusk. The fact that the mailbox had been cleared by then gave her the feeling of having made a decision which she did not regret, but whose magnitude she might not yet have fully explored.

During this waiting period, before the film was released, she saw little of Paul, but what she heard about him was characteristic. He had money in his pocket and was spending it, not exactly on luxuries, but with an eccentric abandon that was even more consuming—but of course that would not matter if the picture were successful. And if it weren’t, perhaps money would even then be the least of his problems.

She did not see much of Greg, either, though she heard that he and Paul had been to San Francisco together and had later stayed at Greg’s house at Carmel. Apparently they were close friends and Greg’s admiration for Paul had in no wise diminished. There was an interview in one of the film magazines in which Greg talked of him in terms so extravagant that the shrewd outsider’s deduction would be that the picture must be bad enough to need it rather than good enough to deserve it; and so indeed were many deductions made, though not so shrewdly.

Of all the strangers she had met and talked to in this strange part of the world the one she liked most was a man who had nothing to do with pictures —a certain Professor Lingard, who did not even look like a professor. He was an astronomer; about thirty, sandy-haired, pink-cheeked, angular, diffident, not really at home at the party to which, for some obscure reason, he had been invited, yet enjoying himself from an angle schoolboyish enough to be charming. Carey found herself next to him for supper; he talked about his work at an observatory on a mountain top and was interested because she had driven near it and knew where it was. Apparently he lived there during part of the year, in a small cottage within walking distance of his job; he said she ought to drive up there some night and take a look through the big telescope. She told him she would like to. “Give me a ring first and I’ll let you know if the sky’s clear enough,” he then said, and she wondered if this were an ‘out’ because she had taken his invitation too seriously.

Later in the evening he whispered to her: “I often wonder what it feels like to be famous,” and she was just about to answer modestly but first-personally when she realized that his glance was scanning the other guests and that he evidently didn’t take her to be one of the famous ones at all. That’s what comes of being friendly to nice nobodies at this kind of party, she thought; they assume you must be a nice nobody yourself. “I don’t know,” she answered, glad to have spared both of them embarrassment. “Almost everybody here is a household word except me.”

“Ah, but you will be soon,” he said, “if you’re in pictures.” He spoke comfortingly, as to a junior who had tried several times for an examination and failed. She was amused and also touched. There was not only a winsome naďveté in his attitude, but a pleasure to her in finding someone who did not know her name, or if so, did not know it WAS a name—who had never heard of her recent role in Morning Journey (as had everyone else in the room), but who treated her as if she were a young girl full of dreams and ambition.

She said: “I doubt it. I’m a bit old, you know, for a new career.”

“But you ARE in pictures, aren’t you?”

“I’ve just finished a part in my first one.”

“Well, the main thing, I suppose, is to get a start. And you really are beautiful.”

“Oh, thanks.” She even felt herself blushing.

“Do drive up some time and look through the telescope.”

She smiled and repeated her promise, satisfied now that he really meant it.

More weeks passed; the rainy season ended, the first hot spell of the year wiped the freshness off the hills. The skies became tawny-grey, the sun shone as through muslin.

Suddenly two rumours got around, both from sources hard to define or investigate. First, that Carey was separating, or had separated, or was about to separate, from Austen Bond. Previous rumours that she was about to be ‘reconciled’ with Paul had somehow ignored the existence of a Mr. Bond, and for that reason she had herself ignored them more easily; but now, in gossip columns and on Sunday radio broadcasts, the stories, though untrue, had greater logic. She did not know whether to take trouble to deny them or not; once a woman telephoned her and, after receiving a denial, made the tart rejoinder: “Okay, darling, but I write a column, so I hope you aren’t just saying that on general principles.”