The Pillow Fight

by Nicholas Monsarrat

  If, suddenly, I was not what she had expected, it was her own fault, her own bad guess. I had become what I thought she wanted, I had copied all that I once admired in her. She had been tough, I was now tougher … I had grown tired of saying: ‘But you used to do things like that yourself. Don’t you remember?’ and of hearing her answer, in appeal or despair: ‘I didn’t want you to change.’

  Thus now, when she asked: ‘What’s happened to you?’ I did not turn baby-blue and shake all over, struck speechless with guilt. I knew what had happened to me. She had.

  Yet I loved her, and so had obligations, for many precious reasons; obligations to do something, however reluctant or bad-tempered, when this sort of thing happened. Part of the chronic blackmail of love dictated that I must not leave her out on a willow-limb, weeping. But I did not have to be wildly enthusiastic about the rescue operation.

  ‘Nothing’s happened to me,’ I answered, cueing in an old and sometimes scratchy record. ‘We’re making a musical out of Ex Afrika, that’s all. It’s got to have a name. If you can put Pygmalion to music, and call it My Fair Lady, why not Ex Afrika?’

  ‘There are hundreds of reasons.’ Her voice had dropped so low that I could hardly hear it, but there was no doubt of the tone and feeling; we were playing a tragedy, and I was the foul fellow brandishing the mortgage. ‘And I’m not talking about the title, specially, though that may be the most awful part of it, in the end, because it’s a sign of what you’re prepared to do to the book. The Pink Safari!’ She made it sound pretty terrible, I had to admit; a great little actress, my wife; scornful, imperious type. Why not Africa on Ice?’

  ‘Chocolate ice,’ I said, beginning to be nettled. ‘Let’s be really cute, while we’re at it.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll be cute enough … It was a special book, Johnny.’ She was not going to give up on this, nor be turned aside; she had only just started. ‘It’s still special. And so are you, whenever you choose to be. That’s why you shouldn’t do a thing like this to Ex Afrika. It’s not that sort of book, and this isn’t your sort of work. How can you write a musical, anyway?’

  ‘Easily.’

  ‘But you’re a novelist!’

  ‘I wrote the screenplay of Wrap-Around,’ I said, without too much humility. ‘Take a look at the Oscar. It’s downstairs.’

  ‘So?’

  My humour wasn’t getting any sweeter. ‘It made a damned sight more money than the film of Ex Afrika. I can do that sort of thing, that’s all. I can put Ex Afrika on the stage, in a different version, and I want to do it.’

  ‘It doesn’t need a different version. It doesn’t deserve to be treated like that. It’s a work of art.’

  ‘I’m sure we can lick it.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a clown.’

  ‘Well, don’t be such a Kate.’ The reference, long established, not often used, was Shakespearian; there was a family tradition that I would never wish to tame this shrew. I did not feel so sure of that now. My drink was finished, and I wanted another one; but I could not quit this field, at such a moment. Now she was actually stopping me drinking … ‘Why the sudden tenderness about Ex Afrika, anyway? That book had nothing to do with you. I wrote it against you.’ These were old wounds, hopefully covered, often forgotten; they came to ugly life at moments like this, when anger reddened the scars, and the naked eye could trace them again, and the raw flesh could feel. ‘You left me flat, just when I needed you most. Remember? You very nearly destroyed that book. I had to write it alone. And drunk. And sad. You did your best to wreck it. Well, you’re not going to wreck it now! Not any part of it. Not this new part, especially.’

  I had spoken more bitterly, more destructively, than I might have chosen on a clear day under friendly skies, and Kate’s face showed it; she was always surprised when my temper proved short, and she was surprised now. Well, she had started it … Her eyes had become huge, like the children’s eyes one sometimes saw in pictures of famine, or flood-disaster, or gross cruelty; they were all I was aware of, across the room, under the circle of lamplight which divided us one from the other, two people sundered by an unforgiven past.

  For a moment I felt ashamed of the crude stroke I had dealt. The man who swung the sword must always feel this pang, at the moment of impact; even if it were a pang of triumph and release, it still involved an instant of true communion with the victim. So I was sorry for Kate. But I still could not forget the time, the murderous gap in our joint lives, when she had not been sorry for me. Not cured of anger, nor purged of bitter feeling, I listened unrepentant as she asked: ‘Is that why you’re doing this? Some kind of revenge?’

  ‘There’s no question of revenge.’ I was not absolutely confident of the truth of this, and I moved on, to ground I was more sure of. ‘All I know is that I can’t afford to pass this thing up. It’s too good an idea, and I need the money too much.’ I wasn’t feeling apologetic about that, either. ‘Do you realise how much we’ve spent, in the last six years? – nearly six hundred thousand dollars, and all the rest has gone in taxes, and we still haven’t a cent, and I’m overdrawn from here to London and back again, and I owe Hobart Mackay forty thousand dollars on a book that’s stuck at page fifty-four.’ I paused, for the needed breath. ‘It’s just a matter of plain arithmetic. Unless I make some money soon, this whole thing will collapse, they’ll move in on me, and I’ll finish up with an apple in my mouth.’

  She shook her head from side to side. ‘You’ll be no worse off than the day I met you. And you don’t need to rip through money like that. It’s childish. It doesn’t prove a thing.’

  ‘It’s fun. And you’ve had your share of it.’

  ‘I don’t want that sort of share. Johnny, why don’t we simplify this whole thing? Why don’t we–’

  ‘I don’t want to simplify!’ Now it was my turn to shake my head, and I found that I could do it just as well as Kate. ‘I haven’t climbed up this mountain, just to slither down the other side. I haven’t worked up to the hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year mark, in order to creep around like a mouse that’s had an illegitimate baby. The Pink Safari is going to make lots more money, spread over lots of years, and this time I’m going to hang onto it.’

  ‘But you ought to be writing.’

  ‘My delight is in the well-turned cheque … This is writing, Kate. Different format, that’s all. Ex Afrika is still a valuable property–’

  ‘It’s not a property, damn you! It’s a book, and it’s time you stopped being a – a sort of literary gangster, and wrote another one.’

  ‘I can’t afford to write books …’ I tipped my chair, and leant back against the dressing table; the lamp crashed down again, like the theme of the very music she was now doomed to hear, the opening chord of a weepy Wagnerian twilight. ‘Don’t you understand that I don’t want to reform the world, free the slaves, carve a niche in the hall of fame, contribute to permanent literature, or be a man of letters, with a beard instead of a tie and a book every fifteen years. All I want to do is write whatever I take a fancy to next, make a steady hundred thousand a year, and enjoy everything to do with the process.’

  ‘But you’ve shown that you can do all that. Why not write your very best, like the man said.’

  ‘Who cares what the man said?’ This had been Hobart Mackay again, gently preaching the virtues of a literary conscience. ‘Honestly, if I have to listen to another higher-thought expert talking about the duty of the artist towards his environment, I’ll stuff the whole thing up his jersey! I have to make money! And I can do it, too.’

  ‘I know that.’ She also had her theme, and was equally doomed to repeat it. ‘But we don’t need money. Not on that scale. We don’t have to live like this.’

  ‘I want to live like this! You taught me, and I love it!’ Once more, I felt I had to batter out all the old arguments, to which she never listened – to which I scarcely listened mys
elf, since I knew them by heart and was convinced of them. ‘Look, you think I’m mercenary, or prostituted, or whatever the word is nowadays; more of a publicist than a writer, more of an institution than a man. That’s all very well for you – you’ve never been poor. Well, I have. Kate, I’ve had a tough life. I’ve been damned hungry. I put up for years with the most lonely, dreary kind of poverty, before I got it off my back … You don’t know what it’s like, to have that whole load lifted off you.’

  ‘You didn’t find it a load, in those days.’

  ‘Well, I would now. And I’m damned if I’m going to take it all on again. Because I’ve conquered it, and it’s going to stay conquered! Once and for all, I’m not going to turn back. It gives me enormous satisfaction, self-conceit, whatever you like to call it, to run one of the biggest one-man businesses in the world; to have the Mercedes and the boat and this apartment, as public symbols of success; to stay at Claridge’s or the Plaza Athenée, go round the world when I want to, waste money, show off … I know all my faults, and I don’t give a damn about any of them. I’ve worked a long time for this, and I’m going to keep it.’

  ‘And you haven’t changed.’

  ‘Maybe I’ve just grown up.’

  While I finished speaking, she had been drawing the coverlet up to her chin, as if to keep the sordid world at bay, to preserve herself spotless from this poisonous fall-out. I stood up, and came to the foot of the bed. I was used to being unpopular, and it was time for that missing drink. Watching me, she said: ‘Now you’re leaving.’

  ‘I’m going downstairs.’

  She nodded solemnly, recognising a symptom. It wasn’t too difficult: I could have given her a hundred like it, without cracking a book. ‘You’re always going downstairs, Steele. Or walking out of rooms. Or holing up in your study. Wrapping yourself in a cocoon. Insulating yourself.’ It was a sad recital, not an accusing one; she was listing the forlorn facts of our life, from her own end of the microscope. ‘All you want to hear is someone agreeing with you, and writing out a cheque … What’s happening, Johnny? Why can’t people reach you any more? Why can’t I?’

  ‘I’ve just been telling you,’ I said, ‘in richly-coloured and expensive prose. A dollar a word, at least. None of it was new, I know, because the message is the same. There are things I want to do. I’m going to do them.’

  ‘Without compromise? Without even talking about it? I turned my life upside down for you.’

  ‘I think you were very wise … My God!’ I said, near to irritation again, ‘all this three-act drama, just because I want to write something, and you don’t happen to like it.’

  ‘It’s more than that. Otherwise we wouldn’t be like this. In love in vain.’ The strange phrase caught my attention, and I sat down on the end of the bed, ready to be my sweet and reasonable self once more, in spite of all the opposition. But it was not very likely to work. ‘You’ve gone away from me. You’ve gone away from almost everything. The Pink Safari.’ This time she said it, not like an insult, but like a repeated note of mourning; like ‘I was desolate and sick of an old passion,’ like ‘O Absalom, my son, my son.’ She really was low … ‘The Pink Safari. You used to care about places like South Africa. You used to feel and suffer with them. Now you use them for jokes, like a Jewish comedian making vicious fun of the Jews. Yet your own son died, because there was dirt and poverty in a place we were using for a playground. Have you forgotten that?’

  Arguing with a woman … The man who compared it to trying to fold an airmail copy of the Times in a high wind had been dead right. I realised now that there had been two ways of resolving this current division, at least for the moment, and that I had picked the wrong one. I had tried talking. The tongue had been my unruly member, and it had proved very much the second-best weapon.

  With vague idea of correcting this, even at so late a stage, I wormed over and stretched out on the bed beside her. She did not move then, nor when I pulled aside the coverlet and sank down into her dear and disapproving arms. Presently it became evident that this was not the cure for either of us; and I realised it before committing myself too shamingly, and began to fall asleep instead.

  Just before I faded out, I heard Kate say, from a long way away: ‘I don’t think I can bear to watch you doing this.’

  ‘This’ was not this, and I knew that also, and there wasn’t a thing in the world, either waking or sleeping, that I was going to do about it.

  By one of those rare chances which come to the aid of the maritally afflicted, it turned out that she would not have to watch me doing it, after all. A couple of days later, when I had barely progressed beyond sharpening a few pencils, and Dorothy Kilgallen’s column had reported: ‘Jonathan (“Ex Afrika”) Steele readying a musical of his best-selling tome for Broadway biggie Erwin Orwin … Don’t get lost in that jungle, Johnny,’ – a couple of days later, Kate came into my study. Her face was serious, which was nothing new, and devoid of make-up, which was. I made ready for another crisis, and I was not disappointed.

  ‘That was Gerald Thyssen on the telephone,’ she said, without any other lead-in. I had heard the phone ringing, and, as usual, had left it to more willing, female hands. ‘You remember him.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, not too enthusiastically. I had enough enemies already, without importing them from the southern tip of Africa. ‘Is he in New York?’

  ‘No. He was calling from Johannesburg.’ She came round the corner of the desk and, to my surprise, put her arm tight round my neck. ‘My father’s ill, Johnny.’

  ‘Oh.’ I never had the right words ready for other people’s woes, but I tried my best. ‘I’m so sorry, Kate. Is it serious?’

  ‘It sounded like it.’ Her hands, restless and strong, were now pulling and kneading my neck, communicating a desperate anxiety. ‘I’ll have to go. I’ll have to go immediately.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can you fix it all up for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lucky Kate, I thought, as I reached for the telephone and the receptive ear of American Express. Lucky Kate, to have a rich husband, and be able to fly off to South Africa with a single snap of the fingers, for a mere $1,600. Lucky Steele, to be able to spread this jewelled cloak for his beloved … Of course I could not help being sad about her father, if she was sad herself; it was not possible to be neutral – no man could become so detached an island, however hard he tried. But her father’s illness was not exactly a sword-thrust through the bleeding heart of the world-famous author.

  We have never liked each other, the old man and I; and the kind of relationship which she maintained with him – close, loving, dependent, interested – had occasionally irked me. No girl should need such a father, with such an all-capable husband on hand … But who would argue the finer points of family loyalty, at such a moment? Faced with a crisis which would take her from me, and towards him, I was still terribly good with American Express, and they with me.

  ‘Tell them, two tickets,’ said Kate suddenly, while I was busy on the phone. And as I turned to take proper stock of this: ‘I want Julia to come with me,’ she said. ‘It’ll be so much easier.’

  I nodded, while the man on the other end of the telephone reeled off alternative connecting flights from London, Lisbon and Lagos. I had not really thought that there was any question of my going with her, but I was glad to be sure.

  ‘Don’t let Julia get caught down there,’ I warned her. ‘As a Coloured fugitive from the glorious republic, or something. Hang on to her passport. You know the trouble you had, getting her out.’

  ‘I can fix it again. Or Gerald will.’

  ‘Two bookings,’ I said, back on the phone again, making a swift choice, like any hotshot executive with a sales-graph spearing his vitals. ‘Pan-Am to Lisbon, BOAC from there. It’ll save five hours.’

  Later, when Kate was choosing what should be packed f
or her journey that night, and I was sitting on the window seat in helpful indolence, she asked: ‘What about you? Will you be all right?’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ I answered. ‘I want to work, anyway. I’ll get somebody to come in. Or I can go to the Pierre.’ A patter of raindrops beat against the window behind my head, and when I turned, I did not like the look of New York at all. It was damp, it was grey; no guaranteed sun shone here, nor would do so for many a long week. ‘Actually,’ I said, on an impulse, ‘I think I might take off into the blue myself. I can work anywhere, at this stage.’

  ‘Why not?’ She was preoccupied, sorting shoes, underwear, jewellery, furs – all the secure armour of womanhood. ‘It’ll do you good to get away. Where will you go? Florida?’

  ‘I think Barbados.’

  She came to, at that, and raised her head and stared at me, across an armful of clothes which would no doubt have kept the traditional family of five moribund Koreans alive for a year. ‘Oh Johnny – what a fantastic idea. Do you really want to go back there?’

  ‘I liked it,’ I answered. And then, since this was for many reasons a particularly crude thing to say, I added: ‘I could do with some sun, too. And I want to look at Negro faces.’

  She had turned away again. Woman’s basic dilemma, I thought. She had to pack, and plan, and worry about her father, and the housekeeping, and what to wear at a possible funeral; there was scarcely time for the big-scale, raw emotions; scarcely time for battle.

  All she said was: ‘Don’t you remember what the faces were like?’

  ‘They alter,’ I said. ‘Like people.’

  It was clear that I needed a complete change. We both did.

  Chapter Four

  I drove down from New York, taking four days on the trip and then leaving the car at Miami; it was only 1,300 miles, and the slow approach, the gradual melting of the winterised spirit, the warming trend from bleak New York to a Florida which really was doing its damnedest as the Sunshine State, was much more fun than any quick flip by jet. The soft sell was the one which best suited escapist authors. So I loitered by the way, though the way – mostly US Highway No. 1 – was not invariably enchanting.