So Little Time (64 page)

“Oh, nuts,” Mrs. Newcombe said. “Nuts.”

“You know,” Walter said, “it's later than I thought,” and he laughed. “The car ought to be here any minute now. Don't go out to the field with me, sweet. Let me see.” Walter snapped his fingers. “Where's my overcoat?”

“Where you dropped it,” Mrs. Newcombe said, “over in the corner. Have you got your aspirin? You know what you are without aspirin.”

“Oh, yes,” Walter said, “aspirin.” He snapped his fingers again. “Don't go out to the airport. You never like the sun, sweet. We'll say good-by here and you stay with Jeffrey. You don't mind, Jeff, do you? Mildred likes you.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Newcombe said. “I'm funny that way. Honey, have you got your colored glasses?”

Walter put on a Palm Beach coat which was belted at the back.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, sweet, here they are. Maybe Jeffrey wouldn't mind helping you get on the train.”

“Of course not,” Jeffrey said.

Walter folded his overcoat and put it on the bed. Then he stood and snapped his fingers again.

“The bill's all paid,” he said. “Leave something for the maid, won't you, sweet.”

Then Jeffrey remembered the Newcombes' suite in the Waldorf Tower and remembered thinking that within five minutes Walter could leave it without leaving a trace, and here that sort of impermanence was just the same. They would be leaving that room and no one would know they had ever been in it. Those words of Walter's were brittle, and yet they had a mocking helpless sort of insistence, and they joined all that other torrent of distracted words—America First … the age-old quarrels of Europe … pulling their chestnuts out … Thumbs up … V for Victory … There'll always be an England … I tell you again and again and again, and I repeat … hemisphere defense … frontier on the Rhine … the hose for your neighbor when his house is burning … way of life … social gains … democracy … we don't have to discomboomerate ourselves … on hand and on order … later than you think … blood, sweat and tears … fighting our fight … later than you think.

“I'll cable you from Hong Kong,” Walter said. “I don't know about Chungking, but you'll hear from me from Calcutta, sweet.”

“W
ELL AND HAPPY
,” Mrs. Newcombe said. “L
OVE TO
E
DWINA
. Nuts.”

Walter snapped his fingers again.

“Don't forget Edwina's teeth,” he said. “The band needs tightening, sweet.”

“Keep your mind on your stomach,” Mrs. Newcombe said.

“Sweet,” Walter said. “I'll tell you something. When I get back I've got an idea. We'll buy a little farm in Connecticut, where we can be quiet, sweet.”

“That's a swell idea,” Mrs. Newcombe said, “lovely, lovely, lovely.”

There was a knock on the door. It was the same bellboy who had led Jeffrey through the cloisters.

“The car's here, Mr. Newcombe,” the boy said.

“Yes,” Walter answered, “coming right up. Just those three pieces on the bed. Thank you, sonny.”

To Jeffrey the word “sonny” had a jarring note.

“You bet,” the boy said.

When the suitcase and the brief case and the typewriter were gone, there seemed to be nothing left Walter tossed his overcoat over his left arm and took his felt hat off the bureau.

“Well, Jeff,” he said. “Good-by now.” That was what you said in Bragg. “Good-by now, keep an eye on Mildred, will you?” and he lowered his voice. “She's a little bit upset. Well, I haven't got much time.”

He looked at his watch as he said it, and then Walter put his arm around Mrs. Newcombe and slapped her twice on the back. Jeffrey felt he should not have been there, but there he was. Some sort of restraint, some sort of awkwardness and a clumsy effort at casualness gave the parting a peculiar pathos. It was like the partings at the hostess house at Camp Dix more than twenty years before. Something made Jeffrey's eyes smart, but he could not look away from them.

“No need of going to the airport, sweet,” Walter said again. “Have a drink with Jeffrey. So long, sweet.”

Mrs. Newcombe did not answer. To Jeffrey it had the awkward unfinished quality of an amateur theatrical. Walter would not know how to walk off, because amateurs never did. Walter stepped backwards and when he reached the door, he must have felt that something more was demanded because he raised his hand exactly like one of a group of shipwrecked sailors posing for a picture for the Associated Press.

“Well,” Walter said, “toodle-oo.” Mrs. Newcombe did not answer. He was gone, leaving a silence that shut out the sounds outside. Jeffrey knew that he should think of something suitable to say, but he could think of absolutely nothing. He could only think of the Pacific and the islands and a vast stretch of nothing where Walter would be. Mrs. Newcombe was standing looking at the door. All the lines in her face had deepened. She looked old and tired, and yet, strangely enough, he could see traces of childhood and girlhood on her face which he had never seen before.

“You know,” Mrs. Newcombe said, and she stopped, still staring at the door. “You know, he's a brave little guy.”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, and he stopped too. “Yes, he's brave.”

And then Mrs. Newcombe began to cry.

39

By the Numbers

All that time in Hollywood had a quality which was more like wish-fulfillment than an actual succession of events. Jeffrey was living it, and he was very much alive, and yet so separated from past experience that he could not make it fit in anywhere. Marianna asked him why he should and there was no reason why he should. Still, he liked to tell her what it was like; he liked to tell her everything, because she always listened. Marianna was not like Madge, who had so many things to do that she could very seldom put her mind on what he said. Marianna had been working at the studio, but she was resting now. When she was not being massaged, or taking exercise, she always had time to listen.

He told her once that it was like being on an island somewhere, and that the boat had left him there and sailed away, and there would be no other boat for quite a while. He had no sense of time on that imaginary island with Marianna, and it was only on rare occasions, such as when he saw Walter Newcombe, that Jeffrey was aware of any urgency. He seemed to have left everything he knew behind him for a while and it surprised him sometimes that he had no conscious sense of guilt about it. He did not even have that feeling of wondering how he had got there—he was simply there.

“Darling,” Marianna asked him, “are you happy?”

He wondered why it was that all the women he had ever known well asked him whether he was happy.

“Yes,” he said, “I've never been so happy.”

He only wished that happiness were more definite. He was sitting in Marianna's living room, which opened right out on the beach. It was like a curtain rising on the set of a play he had worked on once, a play somewhat like a Maugham piece or Noel Coward's “Point Valaine.” He could almost see himself and Marianna being written into stage directions. He was seated to the left by a card table before a portable typewriter. He was dressed in slacks and beach shoes and one of those striped Norman sailor shirts that looked a little like the top of a bathing suit in the Nineties, but not entirely. On the Chinese-red carpet beside him were sheets of the last act of his play script. To the right, by the long windows that opened on the beach, Marianna was reclining on a Chinese wicker chaise longue. All the folds of her long blue silk beach coat looked prearranged, just as though the curtain were going up, and her gold hair, with those natural little waves in it, was all brushed and fluffy, just as Jessica, her maid, had left it, catching the light to its best advantage, and in back of her was the white sand of the beach and the horizon of the Pacific. The ocean was very still and blue, exactly like a backdrop. Outside on the terrace was the little round table where they had breakfasted in the sun with the chairs pushed back and the napkins and cups and glasses exactly as they had left them. The room itself had the precise quality of a stage set. The table with the magazines and the latest books, still in their dust wrappers, the chairs near the fireplace and the glass-top dining table in its little alcove near the pantry, all seemed to have been put there for effect. He could think of them as showing very clearly, as the curtain rose, that the room was Marianna's, not his own; and all that setting showed at once, if anyone should see it, that he and Marianna were not married, that their gay relationship was something else, and you could tell exactly what—not that it bothered him. It did not bother him at all. It must have been that he was so busy writing that play of his that he saw everything lately in terms of the theater.

“Darling,” Marianna said, “kiss me.”

He pushed back his chair and walked toward her. He felt her arms around him. He felt the pressure of her lips and he wished that it were all more credible.

“Don't look around, darling,” she said, and she laughed. “Jessica's in the kitchen and Jessica doesn't count, and Wong's out doing the marketing.”

He was not sure whether Jessica counted or not, but Marianna always said she did not, and Wong was the Chinese cook who always went home at night after he had done the dinner dishes.

“Now, try it again,” Marianna said, “and throw yourself into it, like this.”

“Was that better?” Jeffrey asked, and he began to laugh.

“Yes,” she said, “much better. Darling, you look so young.”

He did not feel old, but again he wished that everyone had not kept saying lately that he looked so young.

“I'll tell you something, dear,” he said, and he felt conscious of himself again, a little like Walter Newcombe. “This is the first time I've ever done everything I've wanted to do, with no compulsion, nothing. It's what makes it seem a little—” He stopped, still bending over her.

“A little what?” she asked him.

“I don't know,” he said, “not exactly real.”

She raised her hand and touched his head and her sleeve fell back from her arm. He had always thought that no one had arms and hands like hers.

“Dear,” she said, “it's real.”

He stared into her face without exactly seeing it, but he could have seen it with his eyes shut: the greenish-gray eyes, the high cheekbones, the sweep of the hair as it was brushed back from the temples, the tilt of the chin that was not too pointed but pronounced, and the curve of her lips that almost broke into a smile, but not quite. That picture of her would be with him until he died.

“I know,” he said, “it's one of the realest things I've ever known. I didn't mean that exactly. I'll tell you what I mean.”

It was amazing how free he felt to tell her everything he thought.

“I mean, it's a question of time,” he said.

“Time?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said, “I know it sounds a little corny, dear,” and he wished there were something else to call her besides “sweet” or “dear” or “darling.” There was nothing more sadly limited, more infantile, than the vocabulary of love, and judging from the letters read in court everyone else had found it so. “It's just as though I'd taken a whole piece of time out from back somewhere, as though I were doing over what I should have done a long time ago. It's time out. That's what I mean.”

“Time?” Marianna said softly. “Borrowed time?”

“No, no,” he answered. “It isn't that I'm going to die—it isn't that. It's just time.” Her eyes had a faraway look which told him that she was thinking of what he said, but that she did not exactly understand him, which was not surprising since he did not wholly understand himself.

“What I'm getting at,” he said, “is, it's a little like being given a second chance, when you think that every chance for a second chance is over. But it isn't exactly that, either. It's more like being allowed to do something that you should have done quite a while ago. It's more like having a piece of time on your hands that you can't relate to any other time. I don't believe you've ever felt it.”

“Don't say I'm too young,” she said. “Women are much older than men. They always are.”

“I wasn't saying that,” he answered. “You've lived more consistently. You haven't so many ties—that may be one way to put it. I'm not like anything I ever was before. I don't mean that it isn't swell. I only mean it doesn't seem exactly real.”

She was silent for a moment. He wondered whether he was seeking some sort of human justification for unfaithfulness to the marriage vow. He supposed that everyone in his position sought for some alleviation.

“Don't say that,” she said. “It's real to me. Jeff, you're not saying you're sorry, are you?”

Jeffrey laughed. “Don't be silly, dear,” he said. “It's the nicest thing I've ever known.” He walked back to the table and looked at the typewriter and picked up a sheet of paper and put it down.

“You're good for me, you know,” he said. “I'd never be finishing this, I'd never have touched it, if it weren't for you.”

“Darling,” she said, “is it going better now?”

“Yes,” he said.

In the last few days the play had been going much better and he felt more familiar with the medium than he had ever been before. He felt very much like a commercial artist trying to paint a non-commercial picture. All sorts of tricks kept creeping in, artificialities of motivation, easy ways of drawing character derived from other media he knew, though he tried not to use the smart, shallow ruses with which he was most familiar. But lately, his work had been improving, particularly toward the end of the last act.

“Is the girl better?” Marianna asked.

“Yes,” he said. “At least I think so. The third act's beginning to fit now—at least I think it is.”