Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

‘Guess again, brother,’ Gretchen said. ‘I’d like some more wine.’ She extended her glass.

Johnny poured the wine, almost filling her glass, then signalled to the waiter, who was out of earshot, for another bottle. He sat in silence, immobile, brooding. Gretchen was surprised at his outburst. It wasn’t like Johnny at all. Even when they had been making love, he had seemed cool, detached, as technically expert at that as he was at everything he undertook. By now, the last roughnesses, physical and mental, seemed to have been planed away from the man. He was like a highly polished, enormous, rounded stone, an elegant weapon, siege ammunition.

‘I was a fool,’ he said, finally, his voice low, without timbre. ‘I should have asked you to marry me.’

‘I was married at the time. Remember?’

‘You were married at the time you met Colin Burke, too. Remember?’

Gretchen shrugged. ‘It was a different year,’ she said. ‘And he was a different man.’

‘I’ve seen some of his pictures,’ Johnny said. They’re pretty good.’

‘They’re a lot more than that’

‘The eyes of love,’ Johnny said, pretending to smile.

‘What’re you trying to do, Johnny?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Ah, hell. I guess what I’m doing is being bitchy because I made such poor use of my time. I now brighten up and ask polite questions of my guest, ex-wife of one of my best friends. I suppose you’re happy.’

‘Very.’

‘Good answer.’ Johnny nodded approvingly. ‘Very good answer. Lady found fulfilment, long denied, in fulfilling second marriage to short but active artist of the silver screen.’

‘You’re still being bitchy. If you want, I’ll get up and leave.’

“There’s dessert coming.’ He put out his hand and touched hers. Smooth, fleshed, round fingers, soft palm. ‘Don’t leave. I have other questions. A girl like you, so New York, so busy with a life of your own - what the hell do you do with yourself day after day in that goddamn place?’

‘Most of the time,’ she said, ‘I thank God I’m no longer in New York.’

‘And the rest of the time? Don’t tell me you like just sitting there and being a housewife, waiting for. Daddy to come home from the studio and tell you what Sam Goldwyn said at lunch.’

‘If you must know,’ she said, stung, ‘I do very little just sitting round, as you put it. I’m part of the life of a man I admire and can help, and it’s a lot better than what I had here, being important and snotty, secretly screwing, and getting my name in magazines and living with a man who had to be dragged up from the bottom of a bottle three times a week.’

‘Ah - the new female revolution - ‘ Johnny said. ‘Church, children, kitchen, Jesus, you were the last woman in the world I’d’ve thought…”

‘Leave out the church,’ Gretchen said, ‘and you’ve got a perfect description of my life, okay?’ She stood up. ‘And I’ll skip dessert. Those short, active artists of the silver screen like their women skinny.’

‘Gretchen,’ he called after her, as she strode out of the testaurant. His voice had the ring of innocent surprise. Something had just happened to him that had never happened before, that was unimaginable within the rules of the nicely regulated games he played. Gretchen didn’t look back, and

she went out the door before any of the flunkeys in the restaurant had time to push it open for her.

She walked quickly towards Fifth Avenue, then slackened her pace as her anger cooled. She was silly to have become so upset, she decided. Why should she care what Johnny Heath thought about what she was doing with her life? He pretended he liked what he considered free women because that meant he could be free with them. He had been turned away from the banquet and he was trying to make her pay for it. What could he know of what it was like for her to wake up in the morning and see Colin lying beside her? She wasn’t free of her husband and he wasn’t free of her and they were both better and more joyous human beings because of it. What crap people believed freedom to be.

She hurried to the hotel and went to her room and picked up the phone and asked the operator for her own number in Beverly Hills. It was eight o’clock in California and Colin ought to be home by now. She had to hear his voice, even though he detested talking on the phone and was most often sour and brusque on it, even with her, when she called him. But there was no answer and when she called the studio and asked them to ring the cutting room, she was told that Mr Burke had left for the night.

She hung up slowly, paced the room. Then sat down at the desk and drew out a sheet of paper and began to write: ‘Dear Colin, I called you and you weren’t home and you weren’t at the studio and I am sad and a man who once was my lover said some untrue things that bothered me and New York is too warm and Billy loves his father more than he does me and I am very unhappy without you and you should have been home and I am thinking unworthy thoughts about you and I am going down to the bar to have a drink or two drinks or three drinks and if anybody tries to pick me up I am going to call for the police and I don’t know how I’m going to live the two weeks before I see you again and I hope I didn’t sound like a conceited know-it-all about the mirror sequence and if I did forgive me and I promise not to change or reform or keep my mouth shut on the condition that you promise not to change or reform or keep your mouth shut and your collar was frayed when you took us to the airport and I am a terrible housewife, but I am a housewife, housewife, housewife, a wife in your house, the best profession in the whole world and if you’re not home the next time I call you God knows what revenge I shall prepare for you, Love, G.’

She put the letter into an airmail envelope without rereading it and went down into the lobby “and had it stamped and put it into the slot, connected by paper and ink and night-flying planes to the centre of her life three thousand miles away across the dark great continent.

Then she went into the bar and nobody tried to pick her up and she drank two whiskies without talking to the bartender. She went up and undressed and got into bed.

When she woke the next morning, it was the phone ringing that woke her and Willie was speaking, saying ‘We’ll be over to pick you up in half an hour. We’ve already had breakfast.’

Ex-husband, ex-airman Willie drove swiftly and well. The first leaves were turning towards autumn on the small lovely hills of New England as they approached the school. Willie was wearing his dark glasses again, but today against the glare of the sun on the road, not because of drink. His hands were steady on the wheel and there was none of the tell-tale shiftiness in his voice that came after a bad night. They had to stop twice because Billy got carsick, but aside from that the trip was a pleasant one, a handsome, youngish American family, comfortably off, driving in a shining new car through some of the greenest scenery in America on a sunny September day.

The school was mostly red-brick Colonial, with white pillars here and there and a few old wooden mansions scattered around the campus as dormitories. The buildings were set among old trees and widespread playing fields. As they drove up to the main building, Willie said, ‘You’re enrolling in a country club, Billy.’

, They parked the car and went up the steps to the big hall of the main building in a bustle of parents and other schoolboys. A smiling middle-aged lady was behind the desk, set up for signing in the new students. She shook their hands, said she was glad to see them, wasn’t it a beautiful day, gave Billy a coloured tag to put through his lapel, and called out, ‘David Crawford,’ towards a group of older boys with different-coloured tags in their lapels. A tall, bespectacled boy of eighteen came briskly over to the desk. The middle-aged lady made introductions all around and said, ‘William, this is David, he’ll settle you in. If you have any problems today or any time during the school year, you go right to David and pester him with them.’