The Young Lions (31 page)

The sun filled the back gardens with an early summer wealth, soft and buttery on the faded brick of the old buildings, on the dusty ivy, on the bleached, striped awnings of the small terraces filled with rattan furniture and potted plants. A little round woman, in a wide orange hat and old wide slacks that clung cheerfully to her round behind, was standing over a potted geranium on the terrace directly opposite Michael. She reached thoughtfully down and snipped off a blossom. Her hat shook sorrowfully as she looked at the mortal flower in her hand. Then she turned, middle-aged and healthy, in her city garden and walked through curtained french windows into her house, her cheerful behind shaking.

Michael grinned, pleased that it was sunny, and that the redheaded woman had finally kissed him, and that there was a fat little woman with an absurd sweet behind mourning over faded geraniums on the other side of the sunny back gardens.

He washed, dousing himself with cold water, then walked barefoot, in his pyjamas, across the carpeted floor through the living-room, to the front door. He opened it and picked up the Times.

In the polite print of the Times, which always reminded Michael of the speeches of elderly and successful corporation lawyers, the Russians were dying but holding on the front page, there were new fires along the French coast from English bombs, Egypt was reeling, somebody had discovered a new way to make rubber in seven minutes, three ships had sunk quietly into the Atlantic Ocean, the Mayor had come out against meat, married men could be expected to be called up into the Army, the Japanese were in a slight lull.

Michael closed the door. He sank on to the couch and turned away from the blood on the Volga, the drowned men of the Atlantic, the sand-blinded troops of Egypt, from the rumours of rubber and the flames in France and the restrictions on roast beef, to the sporting page. The Dodgers, steadfast – though weary and full of error – had passed through another day of war and thousandedged death, and despite some nervousness down the middle of the diamond and an attack of wildness in the eighth, had won in Pittsburgh.

The phone rang and he went into the bedroom and picked it up.

"There's a glass of orange juice in the icebox." Peggy's voice came over the wire. "I thought you'd like to know."

"Thanks," Michael said. "I noticed some dust on the books on the right-hand shelves, though, Miss Freemantle…"

"Nuts," Peggy said.

"There's a lot in what you say," Michael said, delighted with Peggy's voice, familiar and full of pleasure over the phone.

"Are they working you hard?"

"The flesh off the bones. You were taking it mighty easy when I left. Flat on your back, with all the clothes thrown off. I kissed you goodbye."

"What a nice girl you are. What did I do?"

There was a little pause and then, for a moment, Peggy's voice was sober and a little troubled. "You put your hands over your face and you mumbled, 'I won't, I won't.'…"

The little half-smile that had been playing about Michael's face died. He rubbed his ear thoughtfully. "The sleeping man betrays us unashamed morning after morning."

"You sounded frightened," Peggy said. "It frightened me."

"'I won't, I won't,'" Michael said reflectively. "I don't know what it was I wouldn't… Anyway, I'm not frightened now. The morning's bright, the Dodgers won, my girl prepared orange juice'for me…"

"What're you going to do today?" Peggy asked.

"Nothing much. Wander around. Look at the sky. Look at the girls. Drink a little. Make my will…"

"Oh, shut up!" Peggy's voice was serious.

"Sorry," Michael said.

"Are you glad I called you?" Peggy's voice was consciously a little coquettish now.

"Well, I suppose there was no way of avoiding it," Michael said languidly.

"You know what you can do."

"Peggy!"

She laughed. "Do I get dinner tonight?"

"What do you think?"

"I think I get dinner. Wear your grey suit."

"It's practically worn through at the elbows."

"Wear your grey suit. I like it."

"O.K."

"What'll I wear?" For the first moment in the conversation Peggy's voice became uncertain, little-girlish, worried. Michael laughed softly.

"What're you laughing at?" Peggy asked harshly.

"Say it again. Say 'What'll I wear?' again for me."

"Why?"

"Because it makes me laugh and remember you and makes me sorry and tender for you and all women living to hear you say, 'What'll I wear?'"

"My," said Peggy, very pleased, "you got out of the right side of the bed this morning, didn't you?"

"I certainly did."

"What'll I wear? The blue print or the beige suit with the cream blouse or the…"

"The blue print."

"It's so old."

"The blue print."

"All right. Hair up or down?"

"Down."

"But…"

"Down!"

"God," Peggy said. "I'll look like something you dragged out of the Harlem River. Aren't you afraid some of your friends'll see us?"

"I'll take my chances," Michael said.

"And don't drink too much…"

"Now, Peggy…"

"You'll be going around saying goodbye to all your good friends…"

"Peggy, on my life…"

"They'll pour you into the Army from a bucket. Be careful."

"I'll be careful."

"Glad I called?" Peggy sounded again like a flirtatious girl languishing behind a fan at the high-school prom.

"I'm glad you called," Michael said.

"That's all I wanted to know. Drink your orange juice." And she hung up.

Michael put the receiver down slowly, smiling, remembering Peggy. He sat for a moment, thinking of her.

Then he got up and went out through the living-room to the kitchen. He put some water on to boil and measured out three heaped spoonsful of coffee, his nose grateful for the ever-beautiful smell of the coffee imprisoned in the tin. He drank his orange-juice in long cold gulps, between getting out the bacon and the eggs and cutting the bread for toast. He hummed wordlessly as he prepared his breakfast. He liked getting his own breakfasts, private in his single house, with his pyjamas flapping about him and the floor cool under his bare feet. He put five strips of bacon in a large pan and set a small flame going under it.

The telephone rang in the bedroom.

"Oh, hell," Michael said. He moved the bacon pan off the flame and walked through the living-room, noticing, almost unconsciously, as he did again and again, what a pleasant room it was, with its high ceilings and broad windows facing each other, and the books piled into the bookcases all over the room, with the faded spectrum of the publishers' linen covers making a subtle and lovely pattern, wavering along the walls. Michael picked up the phone and said, "Hello."

"Hollywood, California, calling Mr Whitacre."

"This is Mr Whitacre."

Then Laura's voice, across the continent, still deep and artful.

"Michael? Michael, darling…"

Michael sighed a little. "Hello, Laura."

"It's seven o'clock in the morning in California," Laura said, a little accusingly. "I got up at seven in the morning to speak to you."

"Thanks," Michael said.

"I heard about it," Laura said vehemently. "I think it's awful. Making you a private."

Michael grinned. "It's not so awful. There're a lot of people in the same boat."

"Almost everybody out here," Laura said, "is at least a major."

"I know," Michael said. "Maybe that's a good reason for being a private."

"Stop being so damned special!" Laura snapped. "You'll never be able to make it. I know what your stomach's like."

"My stomach," Michael said gravely, "will just have to join the Army with the rest of me."

"You'll be sorry the day after tomorrow."

"Probably." Michael nodded.

"You'll be in the guardhouse in two days," Laura said loudly.

"A sergeant'll say something you don't like and you'll hit him. I know you."

"Listen," Michael said patiently. "Nobody hits sergeants. Not me or anybody else."

"You haven't taken an order from anybody in your whole life, Michael. I know you. That was one of the reasons it was impossible to live with you. After all, I lived with you for three years and I know you better than any…"

"Yes, Laura, darling," Michael said patiently.

"We may be divorced and all that," Laura went on rapidly, "but there's no one in the whole world I'm fonder of. You know that."

"I know that," Michael said, believing her.

"And I don't want to see you killed." She began to cry.

"I won't be killed," Michael said gently.

"And I hate to think of you being ordered about. It's wrong…"

Michael shook his head, wondering once again at the gap between the real world and a woman's version of the world.

"Don't you worry about me, Laura, darling," he said. "And it was very sweet of you to call me."

"I've decided something," Laura said firmly. "I'm not going to take any more of your money."

Michael sighed. "Have you got a job?"

"No. But I'm seeing MacDonald at MGM this afternoon, and…"

"O.K. When you work, you don't take any money. That's fine." Michael rushed past the point, not letting Laura speak. "I read in the paper you're going to get married. That true?"

"No. Maybe after the war. He's going into the Navy. He's going to work in Washington."

"Good luck," Michael murmured.

"There was an assistant director from Republic they took right into the Air Corps. First Lieutenant. He won't leave Santa Anita for the duration. Public relations. And you're going to be a private…"

"Please, Laura darling," Michael said. "This call will cost you five hundred dollars."

"You're a queer, stupid man and you always were."

"Yes, darling."

"Will you write me where they station you?"

"Yes."

"I'll come and visit you."

"That will be wonderful." Michael had a vision of his beautiful ex-wife in her mink coat and her almost famous face and figure, waiting outside Fort Sill, Oklahoma, with the soldiers whistling at her as they went past.

"I feel all mixed up about you." Laura was crying softly and honestly. "I always did and I always will."

"I know what you mean." Michael remembered the way Laura looked fixing her hair in front of a mirror and how she looked when dancing and during the holidays they'd had. For a moment he was moved by the distant tears, and regretted the lost years behind him, the years without war, the years without separations…

"What the hell," he said softly. "They'll probably put me in an office somewhere."

"You won't let them," she sobbed. "I know you. You won't let them."

"You don't let the Army do anything. It does what it wants and you do what it wants. The Army isn't Warner Brothers, darling."

"Promise me… promise me…" The voice rose and fell and then there was a click and the connection was cut off. Michael looked at the phone and put it down.

Finally he got up and went into the kitchen and finished cooking his breakfast. He carried the bacon and eggs and toast and coffee, black and thick, into the living-room and put it down on the wide table set in front of the great sunny window.

He turned the radio on. Brahms was being played, a piano concerto. The music poured out of the machine, round, disputatious and melancholy. He ate slowly, smearing marmalade thickly on the toast, enjoying the buttery taste of the eggs and the strong taste of the coffee, proud of his cooking, listening with pleasure to the mournful, sweet thunder of the radio.

He opened the Times at the theatrical page. It was full of rumours of endless plays and endless actors. Each morning he read the theatrical page of the Times with growing depression. Each morning the recital of baffled hope and money lost and sorrowful critical reproach of his profession made him feel a little silly and restless.

He pushed the paper aside and lit the day's first cigarette and took the last sip of coffee. He turned the radio off. It was playing Respighi by now, anyway, and Respighi left the morning air with a dying fall and left the sunlit house in fragrant silence as Michael sat at the breakfast table, smoking, staring dreamily out at the gardens and the diagonal glimpse of street and working people below. After a while, he got up and shaved and bathed.

Then he put on a pair of old flannel trousers and a soft old blue shirt, gently and beautifully faded from many launderings. Most of his clothes were already packed away, but there were still two jackets hanging in the closet. He stood there thoughtfully, trying to make up his mind for a moment, then picked the grey jacket, and put it on. It was a worn old jacket, soft and light on his shoulders.

Downstairs his car was waiting at the kerb, its paint and chromium glistening from the garage's industry. He started the motor and pushed the button for the top. The top came down slowly and majestically. Michael felt the usual touch of amusement at the grave collapsing movement.

He drove up Fifth Avenue slowly. Every time he rode up through the city on a working day, he felt once again some of the same slightly malicious pleasure he had experienced the first day he had driven in his first, brand-new car, top down, up the Avenue, at midday, looking at the working men and women thronging to their lunches, and feeling wealthy and noble and free.

Michael drove up the broad street, between the rich windows, frivolous and wealthy and elegantly suggestive in the sun.

Michael left his car at the door of Cahoon's apartment house, giving the keys to the doorman. Cahoon was going to use the car and take care of it until Michael returned. It would have been more sensible to sell the car, but Michael had a superstitious feeling that the bright little machine was a token of his gayest civilian days, long rides in the country in the springtime and careless holidays, and that he must somehow preserve it as a charm against his return.