The Young Lions (25 page)

Too bad he didn't have the money now, though. It would have been so satisfactory to go to the nearest Army post after hearing the news on the radio and enlist. It would have been a solid, unequivocal gesture which you could look back at with pride all your life. But there were only six hundred dollars in the bank, and the income-tax people were bothering him about his return in 1939, and Laura had been unpredictably greedy about the divorce settlement. He had to give her eighty dollars a week for her whole life, unless she got married, and she had taken all the cash he had in his account in New York. He wondered what happened to alimony when you joined the Army.

As Michael dressed he tried to think about other things. There was something inglorious about sitting, a little hung-over from last night's nervous drinking, in this over-fancy, pink-chiffon, rented bedroom, uneasily going over your finances on this morning of decision, like a book-keeper who has lifted fifty dollars from the till and is worrying about how to get it back before the auditors arrive. The men at the guns in Honolulu were probably in even worse financial straits, but he was sure they weren't worrying about it this morning. Still, it was impracticable to go down and enlist immediately. It was ridiculous, but patriotism, like almost every other generous activity, was easier for the rich, too.

Outside, across the street, on a vacant lot that rose quite steeply above the rest of the ground around it, there were two Army trucks and an anti-aircraft gun and soldiers in helmets were digging in. The gun, poking its long, covered muzzle up at the sky, and the busy soldiers scraping out an emplacement as though they were already under fire, struck Michael as incongruous and comic. This, too, must be a local phenomenon. It was impossible to believe that any place elsewhere in the country the Army was going to these melodramatic lengths. And, somehow, soldiers and guns had always seemed to Michael, as they did to most Americans, like instruments for a kind of boring, grown-up game, not like anything real. And this particular gun was stuck between a woman's Monday wash-line, brassieres and silk stockings and pantie girdles, and on the back door of a Spanish bungalow, with the morning's milk still on the steps.

Michael walked towards Wilshire Boulevard, towards the drugstore where he usually had his breakfast. There was a bank building on the corner, with a line of people outside the door, waiting for the bank to open. A young policeman was keeping them in order, saying over and over again, "Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Keep your places. Don't worry. You'll all get your money."

Michael went up to the policeman, curiously. "What's going on here?" he asked.

The policeman looked sourly at him. "The end of the line, Mister," he said, pointing.

"I don't want to get inside," said Michael. "I haven't any money in this bank. Or," and he grinned, "in any other bank."

The policeman smiled back at him, as though this expression of poverty had made sudden friends of them. "They're gettin' it out," he gestured with his head to the line of people, "before the bombs fall on the vaults."

Michael stared at the people in the line. They stared back with hostility, as though they suspected anyone who talked to the policeman of being in conspiracy to defraud them of their money. They were well dressed, and there were many women among them.

"Back east," the policeman said in a loud, contemptuous stage whisper. "They're all heading back east as soon as they get it out. I understand," he said very loudly, so that everyone in the line could hear him, "that ten Japanese divisions have landed at Santa Barbara. The Bank of America is going to be used as headquarters for the Japanese General Staff, starting tomorrow."

"I'm going to report you," a severe middle-aged woman in a pink dress and a wide blue straw hat said to the policeman. "See if I don't."

"The name, Lady, is McCarty," said the policeman.

Michael smiled as he moved on towards his breakfast, but he walked reflectively past the plate-glass windows of the shops, some of which already had strips of plaster across them as a protection from blast. The rich, he thought, are more sensitive to disaster than others. They have more to lose and they are quicker to run. It would never occur to a poor man to leave the West Coast because there was a war on somewhere in the Pacific. Not out of patriotism, perhaps, or fortitude, but merely because he couldn't afford it.

He went into the drug-store and ordered orange juice, toast and coffee.

He met Cahoon at one o'clock at the famous restaurant in Beverly Hills. It was a large, dark room, done in the curving, startling style affected by movie-set designers. It looks, Michael thought, standing at the bar, surveying the crowded civilian room, in which one uniform, on a tall infantry sergeant, stood out strangely, it looks like a bathroom decorated by a Woolworth salesgirl for a Balkan queen. The image pleased him and he gazed with more favour on the tanned fat men in the tweed jackets and the smooth, powdered, beautiful women with startling hats who sat about the room, their eyes pecking at each new arrival.

There were rumours and anecdotes about the war already. A famous director walked through the room with a set face, whispering here and there that of course he didn't want it spread around, but we hadn't a ship in the Pacific, and a fleet had been spotted 300 miles off the Oregon coast. And a writer had heard a producer in the MGM barber-shop sputter, through the lather on his face, "I'm so mad at those little yellow bastards, I feel like throwing up my job here and going – going…" The producer had hesitated, groping for the most violent symbol of his feeling of outrage and duty. Finally he had found it," – going right to Washington." The writer was having a great success with the story. He was going to table after table with it, cleverly leaving on the burst of laughter it provoked, to move on to new listeners.

Cahoon was quiet and abstracted and Michael could tell that he was in pain from his ulcer, although he insisted upon drinking an old-fashioned at the bar before going to their table. Michael had never seen Cahoon have a drink before.

They sat down at one of the booths to wait for Milton Sleeper, the author of the play Cahoon was working on, and for Kirby Hoyt, a movie actor whom Cahoon hoped to induce to play in it.

Cahoon stared gloomily at two comedians who were making their way along the bar, laughing loudly and shaking hands with all the drinkers. "This town," he said. "I'd give the Japanese High Command five hundred dollars and two seats to the opening nights of all my plays if they'd bomb it tomorrow. Mike," he said, without looking at Michael, "I'm going to say something very selfish."

"Go ahead," Michael said.

"Don't go in till we get this play on. I'm too tired to get a show on by myself. And you've been in on it since the beginning. Sleeper's a horrible jerk, but he's got a good play there, and it ought to be done…"

"Don't worry," Michael said softly, half afraid already that he was leaping at this honourable excuse in friendship's name to remain aloof from the war for another season. "I'll hang around."

"They'll get along without you," Cahoon said, "for a couple of months. We'll win the war anyway."

He stopped talking. Sleeper was threading his way through the crowd towards their booth. Sleeper dressed like a forceful young writer, dark blue work shirt and a tie that was off to one side. He was a handsome, heavy-set, arrogant man, who had written two inflammatory plays about the working class several years before. He sat down without shaking hands.

"Double Scotch," Sleeper said to the waiter. "Well," he said loudly, "Uncle Sam has finally backed his tail into the service of humanity."

"Did you rewrite Scene Two yet?" Cahoon asked.

"For Christ's sake, Cahoon!" Sleeper said. "Do you think a man can work at a time like this?"

"Just thought I'd ask," said Cahoon.

"Blood," said Sleeper, sounding, Michael thought, like a character in one of his plays. "Blood on the palm trees, blood on the radio, blood on the decks, and he asks about the second scene! Wake up, Cahoon. A cosmic moment. Thunder in the bowels of the earth. The human race is twisting, tortured and bleeding in its uneasy sleep."

"Save it," said Cahoon, "for the trial scene."

"Cut it." Sleeper glowered heavily under his heavy, handsome eyebrows. "Cut those brittle, Broadway jokes. That time's past, Cahoon, passed for ever. The first bomb yesterday dropped right in the middle of the last wisecrack. Where's the Ham?" He looked around him restlessly, tapping the table in front of him.

"Hoyt said he'd be a little late," Michael said. "He'll be here."

"I've got to get back to the studio," said Sleeper. "Freddie asked me to come in this afternoon. The studio's thinking of making a picture about Honolulu to awaken the American people."

"What're you going to do?" Cahoon asked. "Are you going to have time to finish the play?"

"Of course I am," said Sleeper. "I told you I would, didn't I?"

"Yes," said Cahoon. "That was before the war started. I thought you might go in…"

Sleeper snorted. "To do what? Guard a viaduct in Kansas City?" He took a long sip of the Scotch the waiter placed before him. "The artist doesn't belong in uniform. The function of the artist is to keep alive the flame of culture, to explain what the war is about, to lift the spirits of the men who are grappling with death. Anything else," he said, "is sentimentality. In Russia they don't take the artist. Write, they say, play, paint, compose. A country in its right mind doesn't put its national treasurers in the front line. What would you think if the French had put the Mona Lisa and Cezanne's self-portrait in the Maginot Line? You'd think they were crazy, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," Michael said, because Sleeper was glaring at him.

"Well," Sleeper shouted, "why the hell should they put a new Cezanne, a living Da Vinci there? Christ, even the Germans keep their artists at home! God, I get so weary of this argument!" He finished his Scotch and looked furiously around him. "I can't stand a tardy Ham," Sleeper said. "I'm going to order my lunch."

Hoyt came in while Sleeper was ordering and made his way quickly to their table, shaking hands with only five people in his passage.

"Sorry, old man," Hoyt said as he slipped on to the green leather bench behind the table. "Sorry I'm late."

"Why the hell," Sleeper asked pugnaciously, "can't you get any place on time? Wouldn't your public like it?"

"Confusing day at the studio, old man," Hoyt said. "Couldn't break away." He had a clipped British accent which had never varied in the seven years he had been in the United States. He had taken out American citizenship papers when the war began in 1939, but otherwise he seemed exactly the same handsome, talented young toff, via Pall Mall out of the Bristol slums, who had got off the boat in 1934. He looked distracted and nervous and ordered a very light lunch. He did not order a drink because he had a tiring afternoon ahead of him. He was playing an RAF Squadron Leader and there was a complicated scene in a burning plane over the Channel, with process shots and difficult close-ups.

Lunch was a tense affair. Hoyt had promised to re-read the play over the week-end and give Cahoon his final decision about whether he would appear in it. He was a good actor and just right for the part, and if he didn't play it, it would be a difficult job to find another man. Sleeper kept drinking double Scotches gloomily and Cahoon poked drably at his food.

Michael saw Laura at a table across the room with two other women, and nodded coolly at her. It was the first time he'd seen her since the divorce. That eighty bucks a week, he thought, won't go far if she pays for her own lunch in this place. He was angry with her for being improvident and then was annoyed at himself for worrying about it. She looked very pretty and it was hard to remember that he was angry with her and also hard to remember that he had ever loved her. Another face, he thought, that will pull vaguely and sadly at the heart when glimpsed by accident at one end of the country or another.

"I've re-read the play, Cahoon," Hoyt said, a little hurriedly, "and I must say I think it's just beautiful."

"Good." Cahoon started to smile broadly.

"… But," Hoyt broke in a little breathlessly, "I'm afraid I can't do it."

Cahoon stopped smiling and Sleeper said, "Oh, Christ."

"What's the matter?" Cahoon asked.

"At the moment…" Hoyt smiled apologetically. "With the war and all. Change of plans, old man. Truth is, if I went into a play, I'm afraid the bloody draft board'd clap its paws on me. Out here…" He took a mouthful of salad. "Out here it's a somewhat different case. Studio says they'll get me deferred. The word is from Washington that movies'll be considered in the national interest. Necessary personnel, y' know… Don't know about the stage. Wouldn't like to take a chance. You understand my position…"

"Sure," said Cahoon flatly. "Sure."

"Christ," said Sleeper. He stood up. "Got to go back to Burbank," he said. "In the national interest." He walked out heavily and a bit unsteadily.

Hoyt looked after him nervously. "Never liked that chap," he said. "Not a gentleman." He chewed tensely on his salad.

Rollie Vaughn appeared at the table, red-faced and beaming, with a glass of brandy in his hand. He was English, too, older than Hoyt, and was playing a Wing Commander in Hoyt's picture. But he was not on call for the afternoon and could safely drink.

"Greatest day in England's history," he said happily, beaming at Hoyt. "The days of defeat are over. Days of victory ahead. To Franklin Delano Roosevelt." He lifted his glass and the others politely lifted theirs, and Michael was afraid that Rollie was going to heave the glass into the fireplace, now that he was in the RAF at Paramount. "To America!" Rollie said, lifting his glass again. What he's really drinking to, Michael thought unpleasantly, is the Japanese Navy, for getting us in. Still, you couldn't blame an Englishman…