I'm Dying Laughing (16 page)

Stephen laughed. Godfrey looked gloomier still.

‘You should see the joy on their faces, their faces shining as they all sit round the table and laugh. The father wears a black cap, the mother wears a white cap and a collar and calls her husband “Jacob my crown, Jacob my little bird”—Stephen, my crown, my king—’ she said turning to him, with tears in her eyes, very flushed and smiling—‘doesn’t it sound wonderful? And so surely the growing up of those children is the father’s and mother’s reward?’

Now Emily’s eyes were sparkling and her lips twitching with suppressed merriment, ‘Try to find me a picture like that in an Irish family or an American family, where everyone’s trying to squeeze the last nickel out of the old man because he’s an old-timer anyway and if he had any heart, he’d die and let them have the insurance to get through college; and where Ma’s weeping her eyes out at Clark Gable and thinking how Tommy Firefly III nearly proposed to her at Junior Prom in the Year 1899 and how—’

‘Emily!’ said Stephen loudly.

‘You shut up a minute, Stephen,’ said Emily gathering speed; but after a few moments, Stephen broke in again.

‘As long as Emily hasn’t seen it, she can describe it in detail. What Emily saw, she experienced through the window of a bungalow while she was racing past in a racing two-seater to get a fire-story from a pal she had on the payroll at the Kallikak firehouse.’

Emily said angrily, ‘You are a liar, Stephen: I did see those things.’

‘Sure you saw them.’

Stephen grinned at Millian who was sitting beside him, ‘Emily had to work so hard and so long for the
Kallikak News
rag and the
Halifax Weekly
and the
New York Evening Crimes
that she got into the way of seeing things. She had to see things or she didn’t hold her job, and believe me Emily is the best seer the other side of the Rockies.’

‘That’s true,’ said Emily.

‘I know it’s true.’ said Stephen.

Jim Holinshed, who with various grimaces had been toying with his ice-cream spoon, was making signs to the servant to fill the glasses, bring coffee; and now continued in a gentle voice a conversation he had begun before.

‘Vera has her memories and I tell her nightcap tales of the days of yore.’

He smiled at his wife with lowered eyelids, his face forward and his pretty hand poised over the lace mat. He murmured clearly, ‘I believe I have a son in Denmark, so I have been told, and I went to see him some years ago. Heidi’s married and the boy doesn’t look like me, though his name is James, quite an elegant name in Denmark. That was when I went to Paris, just before the war; Vera and I were married, but Vera let me go. A girl-friend of mine from other days was crossing on the same boat and Vera and I thought it would be a good thing if I were to test our marriage; for I’d always felt—had a yen, you might say, unlovely expression—been attracted by this girl physically. I didn’t tell Vee about the girl at the time, well, not this particular girl, unnecessary to cause useless mental stress and insecurity without good reason. If we clicked, I thought I could tell Vera later, after we’d tested it. Well, I was justified. We didn’t click. She was quite a bitch. I found out—where babies come from—of course—and thought I was caught; but she turned out to be a four-alarm bitch. She landed in Paris with some professor she’d picked up on the boat. She was a—very pretty girl and had real physical charms—for others as well as for me; and she was no virgin, even before I met her.’ He paused and smiled round the table with an air of boyish grace and saluted his wife delicately, with his lifted glass. He laughed, ‘Vera won, didn’t you Vera? This—dame—’ (every time he used a vulgar expression, he did it with a refined, amused air as if conceding himself courteously to popular taste) ‘this sweet little rounded blonde tigress—got typhoid. The professor quit and she had me tied so that I ran round Paris looking after her, might have caught it myself—didn’t think of Vera and the children, or if I did, I thought Vee’d had a man before and she’ll get one again, if she’s good enough. And I knew I had enough life insurance for the kid—my kid if the pregnancy comes through; and there are the war bonds—plenty of them. So I thought, if she recovers, I leave the goddamn—bitch. And if she dies, I’ll die too, of love. Just to show it can happen here. She got better. I followed her to Berlin where she had a man to look up—and there she turned out to be—more of a bitch than before. In the meantime, I wasn’t frustrated, by any means—but even I finally told her I was going to check out and I did, in good order. I took the first train that came along—to Hamburg and there took a boat to Denmark to see if it was true about my boy James. Heidi was a nice girl too. I left her in the lurch; but you know what women are, they’re tenacious. Coming along the quay I found a girl and I was so fed up, I asked her to come along. I took her along. I asked her her name, “Regina,” she said; the queen. So I took the little queen along. I forgot the Berlin nuisance right away and when I got into Copenhagen I was quite embarrassed, for I didn’t want to go and see Heidi and her child any more. But I took the little queen along and I told Heidi, “This is my wife”. Heidi put us up too; for a couple of weeks. It was really amusing, the girls playing against each other and neither knowing everything. In the meantime, I was writing to Vee, telling her everything. That’s what’s good about us, I tell Vee everything. You see marriage—after a few years—had begun to drag me down. Vee had been married before and she was quite motherly about it. You understood, didn’t you, Vee?’

‘Yes,’ said Vera, looking at him directly and then quietly at the others.

‘And that—with one thing and another—some episodes I’ve left out, not really printable—must be censored except for Vee’s ears—was how I came back home just before the war broke out.’

‘Yes, yes, really, fancy that,’ Emily had been saying, fidgeting in her chair and drawing on the plate with a bit of bread. Stephen had been listening quietly, smiling occasionally. To Godfrey and Millian the story evidently was not new.

Holinshed laughed tranquilly, ‘There was a girl in New York who seemed to know a lot but I would have missed the plane. I was coming back to Vee—and I refused. To refuse experience is wrong.’

Emily, all of a sudden, said loudly, ‘I don’t think experience is something outside you you have to seek. I think experience is inside you.’ She opened her mouth, shut it, then said, ‘Well, anyhow, I don’t see how married people can betray each other: to me, it’s betrayal. I don’t call it old-fashioned. I don’t see how a woman can look at her husband, if she’s even thinking about another man. How can she look him in the eye, how can she speak to him in an honest tone, discuss the weekly bills with him? It’s dishonest. I think it’s the same with men. After all, being loyal is an experience, too.’

Millian looked across at her with a faint superior smile; and Vera said, ‘Let’s go into the other room, shall we? The Byrds will be along soon; and a doctor and his wife, they’re progressives, and a man called Evans and some others.’

The two friends Bowles and Holinshed began consulting in low tones by the piano and Stephen was talking to Millian. Katsuri had arranged bottles and glasses for the evening’s entertainment. Emily and Vera went in to look at the two young children, who were sleeping. The two women did not come back for some time. They looked at the house, the kitchen, the linen closets, the larder, the small backyard built of stones; at Vera’s pictures, the library where Jim worked when at home. There was a private class in socially significant writing organized by Holinshed and Bowles. These classes and intimate political meetings were held in the bigger rooms. Vera worked on two women’s committees, and twice a week worked on a voluntary committee which collected clothes for the British.

Emily exclaimed, ‘Why the British? I wouldn’t give them our torn underwear. Well, we haven’t any. They’re our enemies; there isn’t one of them that doesn’t think we’re ignorant savages, a dollar in one hand, a stick of chewing gum in the other and a bottle of Coca-Cola clenched in the teeth; and in our pants pocket a writ of dispossess, pay up or be damned!’

She burst out laughing, ‘Well, they’re right! That’s what we do. Goddamnit! Why do we go out of our way to prove we’re just like foreigners think we are. Well, OK, I’ll give you some clothing for the British, not torn either. It does me good to think of them going about in what Giles and Lennie wouldn’t wear.’

Vera laughed but said sturdily, ‘They’re our allies. We all believe in the united front.’

‘For my money, the united front, the way it’s being worked, is a pentagon front, facing five ways, but all against Russia. Look at all the intellectuals who felt they were out on a limb, who got into $600 handmade uniforms and sat in Hollywood-land doing important secret work in firms for which they were paid not only by the studio but also by the Government. It was an unmixed blessing for the brainy reds who were tired of being called un-American Kremlinites, fifth columnists, fellow travellers and Russian agents. I don’t blame them. Who wants to be called a traitor to his country? Though it’s only the communists themselves who are true to their country, real patriots who see the future of their country—’

She stopped a moment, burst out, ‘It’s in this country that the word traitor means most of all. A traitor in England is just one of a long line of shabby individuals who had no guts; but in this country, it’s the blackest and lowest.’

‘Don’t you think that when we’re working for the war effort and buying bonds we believe in the united front?’

‘I think they were sick of being out on a limb and they fell on spy-watching and social services and desk-militarism with a glad cry.’

‘Well, I disagree with you there. Jim’s new book is to show how ten years of work in the people’s movement brings a man logically on the day of Pearl Harbor to American loyalism.’

‘What does he do then?’

‘He joins the fire patrol.’

Emily yelped with laughter and ‘Oh, ho, ho,’ said she, ‘excuse me, Vera.’

Vera reddened.

‘It’s as plain to me as the war memorial in Kallikak. It’s philosophic decadence; and the unions’ no-strike pledge was betrayal. We’re all just glad to belong.’

Vera said coldly, ‘You’ll see it won’t turn out that way. Why should there be war between the worlds? Unity and eventual peace is the best pledge either of our worlds has. It’s the best refuge for American progressive democracy and Russian recovery.’

Emily burst out with, ‘Not one of you can see a stone’s throw around the corner! Haven’t the words meant anything to us? Surely the Russian system is the bitter enemy of everything our system stands for! And surely it’s us or them! You mean it isn’t as bad as typhoid to every congressman and his flock that we’re the allies of Russia?’

‘So you really have been against the united front and the second front and a peaceful solution?’ said Vera, in a very hostile manner and going towards the door.

Emily chuckled sadly and said, ‘Oh, I guess it’s maybe the sere, the yellow in me. I feel like a poor old cracked and tarnished buggy in my Grandpa’s shed. I don’t seem to understand politics, though I always thought I did. I’m some kind of dope. Still, is there anyone you know who can explain to me, not yell at me, why in the USA alone of all the world, a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist Party of the working class is considered unnecessary and even harmful? Why are we friends with every political crook because of the lesser-evil policy? Why do we hush-hush on the good old class struggle? You mean all that’s abolished for the USA? I thought Lovestone got thrown out for being an American exceptionalist? Are we just going to sit down to a love-feast? No advantage taken, no profit, no imperialist urges? Are the contradictions of capitalism all solved now and leading Marxists are going to get a chance at the presidency? But isn’t the fight won in a way? Isn’t this the hour of triumph of the Soviet Union? And shouldn’t we say it? That we’ve got what we fought for? And why is it wrong, if we believe it, to say “Up the Labour Republic”? I suppose I’m just an Old Bolshevik and ought to be retired.’

Vera had become stern, cold, very pale. But she said, ‘Moffat Byrd’s going to be here this evening and he’ll explain to you how we feel. But you ought to be careful what you say. I’m saying this as a friend. As a matter of fact, Emily, I’m against this evening’s meeting. They’re coming here tonight for a specific purpose, to straighten you out, both of you, I mean. I think it’s wrong. I think you should have been told.’

‘What is it? They’re going to give us a working over? Why? I’m just as much a Trotskyist as the green man in Mars. Stephen agrees with you absolutely. Hence I’m driven to mumbling to myself in my workroom, and I make seditious speeches at the anniversary meeting of the Soviet Union. Do you know what I said?’

‘Yes,’ said Vera looking at her fixedly.

Emily laughed, ‘Yes, I guess you do. Everyone else too. I guess I’ve made trouble in this duck-pond. But no one has yet given me a good answer. The Soviet Union is winning and we’re to say that Lenin said Rockefeller is progressive.’

‘He did say that.’

‘Well, then our martyrs were all wrong. They should just have laid down and let the American progressive steamroller squash them flat. Let us all be slaves here, wear gags and we’ll be honourably serving American progressive capitalism.’

Vera said, ‘You’re very much in error. Let’s go and join the others. I think this discussion should be general and I think Moffat Byrd can show you just where you’re wrong. But you ought to get closer to the people, hear how they think and you ought to read the
Labor Daily
regularly.’

‘That’s the last straw. I write for the damn rag. I’m an editor.’

‘I know you are; and when you first came out, you and Stephen, we thought for one thing you’d been sent—’ She bit her lip and hastily continued, ‘There was some confusion, we thought your opinions were official. But Moffat Byrd soon realized they were not.’

She had paused inside the door and looked at Emily a little more friendly. She said quickly, in a lower tone, ‘Don’t you think you ought to accept more discipline? Do you think your own individual opinion is so important? I don’t believe you’re just a Bohemian; and for that matter, we’ve all talked it over and put it down to your coming from New York. Everyone here knows that New Yorkers are more Bohemian, more individualist than we are; especially writers. There you’ve got the nineteenth-century view of writers. Here, we’ve got a mass of working writers who are unionised, work for big bosses, just like factory workers. The writer working in a cellar on his own ideas, is almost unknown: it belongs to the handloom epoch. This gives us a different and more modern viewpoint. We understand that New York writers, when they first come here, bring along a heap of out-of-date fetishisms and individualist attitudes. We’ve put it down to that; and we’re conscious of your importance as a humorist and family writer. It’s very important that you shouldn’t go wrong. Your family books appeal to the people. You’re important.’