Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

As soon as she realized he was at that moment quite probably in jail, she felt cool, rather indignant, and also very slightly amused. Apparently no one had been hurt, just a few fenders dented, it was not a serious case. But she was indignant because she knew he could not have been drunk; he never did drink too much, he had got over all his excesses in youth, he always said contemptuously, but that of course did not include his central excess of being exactly what he was. She could imagine that this might be what had caused the trouble with the police. It had been the same, once, in New York —and then there had been that more serious trouble in London, when only the judge had finally believed him. He would certainly not have been at his best on his way home from that Critics’ Dinner.

She reached the corner where the mountain road joined the main highway; from there the driving was much safer, with easier curves and fewer cliffs; the sky, too, was lightening a little. All at once she felt uncontrollably sleepy. She pinched herself to keep her eyes open till she came to a roadside space behind some trees. There she parked and put the top up, intending to take no more than a short nap, but when she woke there was bright sunshine and it was 10 A.M. by her wrist-watch.

Dismayed by having lost so much time she drove on, listening to the radio for more news about Paul. But there was nothing except a mention that the case would come up that morning—might possibly, she surmised, be in progress at that very moment. Some of the more important bulletins ignored the matter altogether, and this reminded her that it was not, after all, an earth-shaking event. That was the trouble with this movie world; its own belief that it tremendously mattered was more infectious than one realized.

Suddenly she laughed aloud as she had laughed on the way down the mountain in darkness, but this time at something that occurred to her. Mr. Hare had asked about Paul threatening her with a gun, and she had found the question completely mystifying, till now she recalled that studio lunch-hour when, in her dressing-room, Paul had rehearsed the shooting scene from his old German picture, taking the man’s part himself and picking up one of the metal tubes that his cigars came in. Someone must have seen and heard all that from a distance… how absurd! She wished she had thought of the explanation in time to tell Mr. Hare. And that reminded her of several appointments that morning —publicity at the studio, lunch with Mr. Hare… of course she could not keep either of them, she must see Paul first. It came to her quite naturally now that she must see him as soon as she could, just to say she was not particularly angry (as everyone would assure him she was). And because everyone would assure her she ought to be, she did not want to see or talk to anyone else before seeing him. She would let him know she had been a little upset at the time, but after all… did it matter? What DID matter? Did ANYTHING matter? Poor little Fitzpomp had probably taken his own life because he thought that nothing mattered. On the other hand it was possible to think so quite happily if there were only the merest loophole, one’s own private SOMETHING tucked away in mind—like Bach, or even the square roots of telephone numbers…

When she reached the streets she stopped at a drug store for coffee and also to telephone Paul at his apartment. She hardly expected him to be back there yet, but it was just possible. She did not leave her name, and the desk clerk (meaningfully, she thought) said he had not been in since the previous day. She drove on through the suburbs. The noon news on the radio told her that the case had ended in a fifty dollar fine. Not so bad. She telephoned his apartment again from quite close; still he was out. Then she parked across the street and waited. If he did not come within an hour or two she would try some other way.

He came within half an hour, driving up in a taxi, alone. She made a U-turn, meeting the kerb behind the taxi; the man saw her manœuvre and was about to drive off again when Paul also saw her and made some wild gesture. “Here—HERE!” she called out, holding open the door of her car while Paul fumbled with money on the pavement. Why on earth doesn’t he give the man a five or a ten quickly? she thought; but that too was like Paul —a big tip, which came from him often, was an expression of his mood, not of any need to get special service. At last he had counted it out and was clambering into the seat next to her. “I thought at first you were someone from a paper,” he began breathlessly, with no hello or greeting and no seeming surprise that she was there. “But I guess they’ve had all they can use.”

“Sure,” she said, making a fast gear change. “You’ve given them all they can use.”

But then, as she turned the car round the block and headed west along the coast highway, she eyed him sideways and thought he looked rather ill as well as tired and unkempt; and that made her continue, less severely: “The best way to talk is to drive—that is, if you want to talk. I don’t know what you want, but I didn’t think you’d get much peace today at your apartment. But it’ll all die down soon, don’t worry. You’re not that important.”

“You’d have thought so this morning—from the crowd. The judge got mad at them.” There was just the faintest twinkle of pride as he said that, and it annoyed her.

“Did you count the house?” she asked, and that annoyed him. As so often when they met they had to go through this phase of mutual annoyance. She went on: “Tell me what happened.”

He gave her what she expected, and had thought she might as well get over, once and for all—a vivid description of an innocent man’s martyrdom. She could judge that from the moment the police arrested him he had made things as unpleasant for himself as possible—refusing to call a lawyer or post a bond. “I thought I might as well get the full value of an experience out of it,” he said. “And I did, and it was interesting. Quite HORRIBLY interesting, Carey. It gave me an idea for a modern Inferno— the purely visual degradation—”

He went on with the details and she wished she hadn’t started the subject; a modern Inferno was just an idea for him to forget, if only because he was always personally influenced by the current enthusiasm of his mind. She interrupted him to say: “You’d like a wash and a shave and a good long rest, I imagine.”

“No, don’t stop yet. I’m glad you met me like this. And you’re right about the apartment—I wouldn’t get any peace there. They don’t like me. They’d let anybody up to disturb me.”

“You don’t look very well.”

“My God, did you expect me to BLOOM after a night in a tank with a lot of drunks and perverts? Sorry—I didn’t mean to snap at you. To tell you the truth, the whole thing EXCITED me—gave me a headache too. One of those bad ones. Of course, not from drinking.”

“I know. I knew it couldn’t really be that. Why did the police think it was?”

“Ach… those fellows. I couldn’t walk in a straight line. And it’s a fact, I couldn’t. Any more than I could park the car. I never was good at that, anyhow.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No, but I’d like some coffee.”

“We’ll stop somewhere.”

“We’ll be recognized.”

“I doubt it. And what if we are? Who cares?”

“I’ll pull my hat down.”

“It isn’t you they’re likely to recognize.”

“No? After all the photographs in the papers? You know how they do it, Carey? The man with the camera squats on his heels and shoots upwards through the bars, so that the nostrils gape and the eyebrow shadows reach half-way across the forehead. And then, God help them, they say the camera can’t lie. Of course it can lie. Because the Eye can lie. In the beginning was the Eye. Long before the Word. The Eye can tell no more truth than the brain behind it —the Eye lied when the first caveman saw a shape one night and hurled a spear and found he’d killed his wife instead of a sabre-toothed tiger!”