I'm Dying Laughing (70 page)

Emily, after brandy, when they were standing about, found herself talking with great animation to Austin Humphreys. He complimented her: she was a dramatic speaker: no wonder she had had a Broadway success. Emily grimaced, ‘You remind me of a film I saw. A girl wanted to go on the stage and recited Lady Macbeth’s speech. The talent-scout said she would make a wonderful comic. Well, that’s me. Medea in my heart and what comes out of my typewriter is the funny-mediocre.’

Humphreys was amused and kept detailing her rosy, plump but haggard clown’s face, her merry smile, the curly, untidy hair, the fat-ringed neck, her excited, active, fat body. She had again become very fat and was wearing a handsome black silk suit with a skirt that folded round the waist. Emily told Humphreys, ‘I am very, very happy, deleerious, simply floating! If you only knew! These last few months in Paris Stephen has been simply sick with despair.’

‘Why, though?’

‘Because he was treated as an outcast and his whole life, so gracious, so noble, so beautifully, effortlessly right, so dedicated, was lost. He had burnt his bridges and found himself in a howling wilderness.’

‘I thought they published those articles of his you showed me?’

‘Ah, yes, they did! How like them! A cent of encouragement, a dollar of contempt. It means nothing. And Stephen must keep his family; work, work, work. He wanted creation and to relearn. I worked and his adopted son was rich and he getting poorer and lonelier; he was in a torment that does not bear thinking about.’

Fabia said impatiently, ‘But really why should he care? He’ll come into money, he’s got this quarterly allowance and you are used to making money. I think he’s quite well off. I wish we were as well off.’ She laughed selfishly and impatiently.

Emily, who of course had already explained all the family circumstances to her guests, said, ‘Ah, he has a sensitive and deeply and often-wounded spirit. And when the last days came, our bitter hour, just before dear Anna reached us, and he went round all Paris begging for work, a final, humiliating, desperate effort to find work that he could do, honourable work, he came home desperate. I feared for him. He felt it was the end; that he had lost his dignity as a man, as a father of sons, as a husband to me. He said we would never respect him again; he was finished. He could go on no longer.’

‘Well, I suppose he was in the dumps all right,’ said Humphreys, looking at Emily with interest.

Fabia, though bored, liked Emily too. She said, ‘But I gathered it was all right now. What happened?’

Emily smiled gloriously. She almost trumpeted, taking a swipe at her glass, half-full of brandy, ‘In this darkest hour, when he was so endlessly searching, he quite suddenly touched on the idea of going into a private news service or a talent agency in literature and through a chance introduction he heard of Douglas Dolittle. Dolittle is a friend of Johnny Trefougar. Stephen was broken by the many, many hopeless interviews and, more in fear than despair, he wrote to Dolittle. How unlikely it seemed!’

She called, ‘Douglas, oh, come here, dear Douglas.’

Dolittle turned round slowly, looking at them with his foggily-lighted eyes; then he smiled and came towards them. Emily emptied her glass, gave it to Humphreys to fill, reached up and kissed Douglas Dolittle on the cheek, put her arms round him, hugged him, laughing excitedly and then put her arm through his and, when Humphreys came up, through his.

‘It happened that Douglas also knows Dale, one of Stephen’s cousins. We wrote to Dale. Dale wrote to Douglas and did a thing so beautiful for Stephen, that I feel I shall be forever touched with joy, when I hear or think of the very words
human being
and
cousin
.’

She said hastily, ‘And Dale had absolutely no axe to grind, nor did Douglas, nor Johnny Trefougar. Douglas was tied up but he moved heaven and earth for Stephen, a man he hardly knew. And so Stephen is going to get this chance in Paris after all; not only because of his essential talent and passion and vision; but because of his profound knowledge of literature, his taste; and above all, his force and instinct. And what a combination it will be.’

She looked brightly into Dolittle’s face.

‘What a combination it will be! Douglas is interested in ideas, he is a hunter of genius pursuing genius. Dolittle and Howard, the future Gaudeamus Press. I assure you that the day before yesterday when all was settled and the conversation between Anna and Douglas and Stephen had been held and Stephen came home with an immense bouquet of roses and this silver bracelet and said, “My darling, it’s to be,” I burst into a howl and sobs, I fell down on the floor and it took Christy darling and Stephen and Marie-Jo to raise me. They put me on the couch and were lovely to me and I don’t think I ever spent a more delicious, deleerious, strangely beautiful evening in my life. Oh, real life, a destiny! The relief! What pure, beautiful, perfect, floating grace and ease. If that could last forever, that feeling of Elysium! I felt almost as when Giles, my own child was born.’

She bore them over to Anna and put her arm in Anna’s. Anna covered her first recoil but remained stiff. Emily carolled, ‘Anna made all this possible for us, for she said she would lend us the money, without a word of asking, without a hint, with the simplicity of a fine heart, out of sympathy, intuition, generosity, tremendous, fine generosity. Anna made all this happiness and perfection possible. But I think, Anna, your confidence in him and in us did more than all in these blissful three days to buoy Stephen up. If Anna believes in me, Stephen said, that is a new world, the world is orchestrated at last, it is new and too good almost to be true. But true it is,’ she said, hugging Anna’s arm, ‘that is the meaning of mother and son, of mother’s love, son’s love. As we mothers know. So we enter upon a new chapter of our lives and may this one be a lovely, lovesome, joyful one. We have blessed our good fortune in you, Anna dear, how many times, and so often spoken of how we love you. Dear Douglas, and Dale, sweet, dear Cousin Dale, who realized at once, seeing Stephen’s desperate needs, his soul needs, his genius and his exact situation in time and place, what it was necessary to do—and did it!’

Anna withdrew her arm.

Emily turned round, her bosom bursting the seams in the new tailored suit, raised her rosy cheek, rosier still in the black dress, ‘And Anna really cured him of despair and complete breakdown. She changed the world. It’s all over, the blackness; it’s all glorious and new, the morning of our lives, the rosy dawn. Ah, I’m incoherent, absolutely, I know.’

She looked joyfully at Dolittle and Humphreys, both of whom were smiling, and at Fabia, who looked at her in curious thought, but not discontented with her.

‘I’m floating, don’t wake me up! But it is not a dream!’

She briskly went away from them to tell the maid to bring round more drinks. She passed them on her way back and brought out, ‘Ah, well: I suppose—I know—I’m laughable. I know it’s nonsense. Perhaps shameful nonsense!’

Fabia said, ‘Why is it? Don’t we all want to be happy? We have the right to be happy. I know what a relief it was when my aunt died and we got into the house; and then Austin got the job. I was jolly glad, I was really happy. I understand.’

Emily had come back with another glass of brandy. ‘We—the world staggers about on the brink of war and war-in-peace, or even sudden doom, the end of the world, the sun blacked out for all, in peace. Paris may be a smoking ruin tomorrow morning. In God’s name, it’s shocking to be so happy, as if we were vegetables blooming because it’s spring. I know people are starving all over this thrice-damned city, the governments are either falling or getting into the clutches of the Marshall Plan or some other steel-jointed claw of the Anglo-Saxon conspiracy to ruin the western world—’

Fabia stared at her, Douglas pulled his moustache, but Austin seemed much interested. She challenged them, ‘Well, it is so. In my country, Congress runs nothing but red scares to stampede the cowards. Just see how often the word red occurs in the
New York Times
index. That is an index. The lamp of Liberty is on the blink, there’s terror reappearing everywhere and the Great Fascist League is springing up fresh like grass from the mouths of a million innocent, martyred, doomed stinking bodies and my heart’s singing fit to burst because my husband got a job. A queer detail.’

‘It’s our right to rejoice, if that’s the state of the world,’ said Fabia.

‘Your life opens before you,’ said Austin sympathetically.

Later, Emily, when alone with Humphreys, confessed that she was still haunted by worry from the old days. Their old friends and even Vittorio would now abandon them, say that they had shed their faith. Said she, ‘How can we bear the stinging brand? But we must live. We have not changed, we cannot change.’

He seemed surprised, ‘But why worry about them? You have us.’ He smiled.

‘They are such a small part of the world. I know you hate to abandon the old troop, it’s like leaving school or the army, but that’s just a part of life. Do you respect their opinion so much? I don’t.’

She said sharply, ‘Ah, tomorrow Austin, I must write to my old friends, to all who were in the movement with me and who still cling to me and I must tell them what I told you at dinner but in cold chilling terms. It’s an agreement between Anna and us.’

He laughed and said quietly, ‘The pound of flesh!’

‘Not to leave them in the dark, tell everything. Anna wants it. To show her we’ve turned over a new leaf. How am I to do it? It’s a brutal, cruel, wrong thing to do. I lost nearly all my friends during the scandal and now—perhaps—I’ll lose all the others. I’ve got to write a letter of provocation. I’ll write it before I go to bed. Otherwise I’ll pass the night in the flames of hell-fire! I will anyway.’

She burst out laughing and went to get herself another drink.

Stephen came over to her, ‘Emily, don’t drink so much. Anna doesn’t like it.’

‘Anna! Is she going to be my bugbear?’

She rolled away from him like a burly sailor, took the glass in both hands and took a big swallow. She went to Violet Trefougar with a glass for her in her hand and said, ‘Ha-ha!’

‘You’re happy tonight, I’m glad,’ said Violet Trefougar.

Emily repeated, ‘Yes, I’m very happy, I’m deleerious with joy. I’m floating in an ocean of lilies. But Stephen!’

He joined them.

‘Stephen, a thought just struck me! All this rudeness, callousness, cruelty, was perhaps organizational! Perhaps, Stephen, when you’re a talent-scout, the well-known Gaudeamus Press, they’ll remember you were their friend and they’ll come to you; bygones, bygones. You know the old byword: the sympathizers, the fellow-travellers get the brass bands and the big hands; the faithful get the kicks! We’re no longer faithful; it’s the bouquets and banquets for us now. Eh? Perhaps Vittorio will still be with us and all the others. Will we keep our cake and eat it too? After all, take the Resistance movement, why one of the biggest men in it, so Mernie Wauters says, went into it for the danger and the game, outwitting people he despised. No one would even talk to him nowadays with his automobile lined with white velvet, his house of Vita glass, his gold-plated bathroom and handmade flat silver and his mistress with cuffs of diamond and ebony! He’s a great heroic monster—’

She stopped, envisaged him, opened her eyes and laughed, ‘What a glorious, gorgeous monster! And helped the Resistance too. Can we too perhaps enter the annals of the red register as gorgeous monsters, human, all-too-human, a bit of Lucullus and Petronius, a bit like the Medici or even just like poor Cicero, adoring the fine life; but still faithful in our hearts, dependable, marked down to help in the next Resistance. Well, really they must think a bit like that. Look at Madame Gagneux, Suzanne. Why she is so human that she is willing to admit that her favourite writers were mostly bastards during the occupation: and that courage is an everyday virtue in need and that it passes over you, leaving you a coward. And she understands all, not exactly forgives all, but does not condemn all.’

‘Every human being is a sort of monster, if you get to know them,’ said Violet Trefougar.

Emily said, ‘Yes, yes, that is exactly how I feel. I must write sweetness and light, but I know too well what people are like. Vittorio, who seems so kind and who makes people love him at first sight, is cruel and indifferent. He doesn’t give a damn for you, you’re a pawn in his game, he plays catch-as-catch-can with you. All our dear ones in the USA at the first hint of disfavour fell off as if we were lepers. Why, if I were a leper I’d expect my friends to try to get me a doctor, or offer to go with me to a leper island, and with love and sorrow. But they didn’t. And now I’m going to be a damned soul, yes, to them, a damned soul. And not a letter will come, not a telephone call. And will the other side so much as take me to their bosom? She was a damn red, they’ll say, what was the matter with her? To hell with her! Eh? Damned! Double damned! Emily Wilkes Booth. Oh, come upstairs with me, darling. I’ve got to take one of my headache powders. Don’t let Stephen know. He’ll rage. He might tell Mamma. I’m depressed and agitated. This brings me no happiness. I talk of happiness, joy, and I am thinking, What unhappiness, oh, what terrible unhappiness. Life isn’t worth living.’

‘Go upstairs and take one of your headache powders, you’ll find some comfort in it,’ said Violet.

‘You are right. I owe you so much. I couldn’t do all I do, without them. Man as a chemical compound, eh? But that’s the me they’re going to know. Come on! Bring some drinks with us.’

The two women went away and stayed away some time talking in Emily’s room. When they came back they were both happier. The guests were going now. Anna left. She was to have lunch with them the next day at Jean Casenave; after that would come only one more family dinner, this time at Uncle Maurice’s before she went back to the States.

The Trefougars waited some time, for Violet wanted another word with Emily. They were going to Switzerland for a weekend and wanted the Howards to go with them. Emily begged Uncle Maurice to stay a bit longer and stay he did. He did not leave till two in the morning. Emily had been very excited and even noisy; soon the fatigue and excitement wore her down again. But she found out a good deal about the Humphreys couple. The high-strung, handsome finishing school wife had been a hellcat in her day, had run about the continent alone, got a job as a housekeeper with a middle-aged man, who tried to kill her with a hatchet; and so on. Now she lived only for the houses they lived in and for mild affairs with local men. Maurice did not know whether Austin was happy or not. He was a quiet man, smoked his pipe, walked his dog, said little, and did not mind changing consulates every year or two. Emily’s eyes sparkled.