In all the swamping praise, there was only one example of the still small voice. It seemed to be speaking to me, in direct and cautionary terms. It was important. It was, inevitably, the Times.
Those readers (said the man, after calling the show ‘an undoubted success’) who enjoyed that fine novel Ex Afrika may find themselves putting their hands over their ears – or even holding their noses – at The Pink Safari. But (as no one knows better than author-playwright Jonathan Steele) there are thousands of people in and out of New York who don’t give a finger-snap what happens to novels, good or bad, but who do like plush musicals; and these devotees should keep the SRO notices nailed up at the Orwin Theatre for many a long month – or year.
I thought: If we trim that down to ‘Should keep the SRO notices nailed up at the Orwin Theatre’, we couldn’t ask for a better quote. And from the Times …
It was the last snide thought of the evening.
Erwin was leaving, attended by a pallid, puffy-eyed, yet jubilant phalanx of his aides. ‘Good boy, Johnny,’ he said, as he shook hands, and then: ‘Give me a call tomorrow. I’ve got some ideas.’
I was still sitting down – bad manners, but a matter of necessity. ‘Did you read the Times?’ I asked him.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Wonderful review.’
‘Not so wonderful about the book.’
‘The book’s great.’
‘No, I mean the novel.’
‘Oh, that. Well, of course they had to say something. Don’t let it get you down.’
‘But it’s true.’
He was looking down at me with expert appraisal. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘Go home. Get some sleep. You’ll think differently tomorrow.’
‘It is true.’ I waved my hand round the Safari stage, brilliantly contrived for my last-act, lovable, loyal losers. ‘This is all wrong. All wrong!’
Now he had a different look, or rather a very strange progression of them: near-anger melting into a gleam of anxiety, and then to one of his widest grins. ‘Confidentially, I agree with you,’ he said, and shook my hand again. ‘But don’t you tell a soul.’
I wasn’t going to tell a soul, till I had sorted it all out. But someone, I found, was going to tell me.
The someone was my hotshot agent and non-critical friend, Jack Taggart. He took the chair vacated by Erwin Orwin, and smiled at me, and said: ‘Well, you did it.’
‘Yeah.’ But I was dispirited, and it wasn’t going to change tonight. ‘What did I do, Jack?’
‘Made The Pink Safari a riot.’ He had a glass of his usual whisky and water in his hand, and he raised it, toasting me. ‘Cheers. This thing can’t miss. Erwin was talking to me about a film deal.’
‘Am I in on that?’
He sighed gustily; the theatrical atmosphere was catching, even for him. ‘Don’t you ever read your contracts? You get a big cut anyway. And if you adapt this thing as a screenplay, you just about double everything. If you want to. Do you want to?’
‘Hell, I don’t know.’
He looked at me very soberly. ‘You really don’t, do you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, if you want my advice–’
‘I want your advice.’
‘I’ll give it you in two words.’ His corncrake voice was suddenly forceful. ‘Forget it.’
This was confusing, and though confusion was nothing new, it still deserved translation. ‘Translation,’ I said.
‘What do you really want to do next?’
‘Not another of these bloody things, anyway.’
‘That’s what I meant. You’ve done it once. Don’t do it again. Don’t even think of it. Finish the book instead, or write a new one.’
When a neutral man, suddenly and at last, took a position, it was always surprising, and I was surprised now. This was the first time that Jack had ever offered a suggestion which wasn’t strictly professional, such as the choice between two differing rates of royalty. It was like an unloaded gun firing, a man serving a writ, a talking horse … But there was much more to come.
‘And while you’re at it,’ he went on, ‘leave New York. For a while, anyway. It’s been nice having you, Johnny, but this town is not for you.’
‘How in hell do you figure that out?’
‘It’s getting in the way of your work.’
‘You’ve been talking to Kate.’
‘Sure I’ve been talking to Kate. The first time ever, about this sort of thing. It turned out that we had exactly the same ideas.’ He was looking very thoughtful, staring at the table-top, fiddling with his glass. ‘A lot of it is none of my business. But you as a writer – that is. There’s a whole range of new work for you to do, on race relations. It’s the crucial thing now, I believe, and you know a great deal about it. You mustn’t go to waste … There are plenty of experts taking care of that damned east-west axis, hardly any working on the north-south one, the really important one … North and south in this country, north and south in the world. We live on the rich top of it; down there they’re boiling with anger and frustration, they’re sick of the misery … Do something about that, Johnny. Show it, explain it, do a little bit to cure it. It’s your job. Panel shows, and this–’ he waved his hand round the stage, ‘–and novels about the sex life of the rich white trash, just – are – not!’
This was too odd, too astonishing, for me to cope with, at that moment; I filed it away under ‘Some Other Time’, and went back to something else.
‘Where is Kate, anyway?’
‘She left,’ he answered, rather shortly.
‘Didn’t like the reviews?’
‘Not that, either. She left hours ago.’
‘To go where?’
‘Home.’ He was standing up suddenly.
‘That’s all right, then.’
‘I don’t think home is 77th Street.’ I saw that he had become very angry with me, for some reasons I couldn’t work out. Ah well, he had only joined the majority … ‘I told you that already. The rest is none of my business, like I said. But I’ll say this, damn it, and then goodbye.’ He was looking at me in an extraordinary way, like a sentencing judge, like the sternest father in the world; it was a thousand miles away from all he had ever been. ‘You need a fresh start, more than anyone I’ve ever met. And you need Kate. She had guts and integrity. She’s the only one who can help you.’
‘I don’t need help.’
He said: ‘My friend, you are dead without her,’ and smiled a very bleak smile by way of goodbye, and was gone.
I called after him: ‘Thanks, Jack!’ It was meant to be sarcastic, but at that bad moment it only sounded true. Someone called out: ‘Wonderful, Johnny!’ and someone else – it was Sally Coates, who had played the lead and done such miracles with it – leant over and gave me a smacking kiss, and said: ‘That’s for being the perfect author!’
Suddenly I didn’t appreciate it at all. It was all right for other people to be ecstatic; but now something had reversed all the rules. Now I only wanted to know what Kate thought, I only wanted to please her … On that instant, caught in the crowds and the cheers and the kissing on stage, I was lonely; irrationally, hopelessly lonely.
None of this was any fun if I couldn’t show it off to Kate; and no fun either if she didn’t laugh at me for doing so. She had become, once again, the only one I had to satisfy; the only begetter, and the whetstone to keep sharp on. I had to go back – go back all the way, as she had once said. I had to have her with me again.
It could not happen soon, nor easily; but it had to happen.
I stood up, on too swift an impulse, and inevitably, typically, I knocked over my chair, with a resounding crash. As people stared or laughed, and a waiter sprang forward to straighten things up, I decided that this had better be the last time I did that, too.
> Susan was one of the people I passed on the way out. She might have been watching me for some time; her face was oddly concerned, even compassionate; she wasn’t thinking about her career – she was worrying about me, perhaps wondering if I would make it, whatever ‘it’ was. She touched my arm as I drew near, and I came to a rocking halt.
‘Going, Johnny?’
‘Yes. Home. I can’t stand this any longer.’
‘Oh.’ Her beautiful eyes – her very beautiful eyes – were looking directly into mine. ‘Goodbye, Johnny, in that case.’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ I said awkwardly, squeezing her shoulder.
She had never made me feel bad, bless her, and she did not do so now. She just smiled her lovely smile, and said: ‘You do that. But goodbye, anyway.’
Chapter Nine
After some extraordinarily bad shots with the key – which made me think of that final sign-off night with Susan, and did not seem very funny on that account – I managed to let myself into the flat, and stood in the hall, listening. The place was utterly silent, as it had a right to be, past four o’clock in the morning; but it was still not a night-time kind of silence – it was a strange and lonely void, empty and echoing, as if I had entered the shell of a house, long abandoned, not lived in by myself or anyone else.
There was something else very strange too, but I could not pinpoint what it was till I had wandered in and out of several rooms, and surprised myself in distant mirrors. Every single door in the apartment was open. After that, it took very little time to discover that the place was empty.
Kate’s bed had not been slept in, nor Julia’s. Foolishly, I checked my own. The master had not sought his couch, either … She was gone, it seemed, and without a word. But after a while I came upon the traditional note, propped up in the traditional place against the mantelpiece clock.
I am sorry, Jonathan (she had written). I stayed for your Safari, but now I have to go back. People will come in to pack the rest of my things. Julia has gone direct, I shall be wandering a little. My love as ever. Kate.
Standing there with the note in my hand, I remembered Jack Taggart saying: ‘Home is not 77th Street.’ I had missed the point, at the time he said it; but he had meant it literally. He must have known about this already.
Now there came flooding in, like the final swirl of a muddy tide, all the poisonous residue of the last five weeks, when I had wanted to talk to her and could not, when she would not talk to me in any case, when the twin pressures of overwork and loneliness had made these the worst few weeks of my life. I had learned more about marriage in that divorced time than ever before … But now the bill had arrived, and I had not a cent of spirit left to pay it with.
I poured myself a drink – a very familiar reaction, a habit impossible at this moment to change – and wondered how to climb out of this hole. Presently I made for the telephone. It was nearly 5 a.m., an unreasonable hour for research, but I had to take a chance, I had to establish some basic bearings. I did not even know where Kate was.
My useful friend at Kennedy Airport was at his post, and for a man working out the last hour of his night duty – remarkably lively.
‘Hallo, Mr Steele!’ he said. ‘How did the show go?’
‘Very well indeed,’ I told him. ‘It should run a year. Would you like tickets for it?’
‘Gee!’ he said – and there was no reason why he should not be surprised – ‘would you really fix that for me?’
‘It’s as good as done,’ I answered. ‘Just give me a call when you’ve worked out a date with your wife.’
‘Gee!’ he said again. ‘Well, thanks a million, Mr Steele.’
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘did my wife get off all right? I couldn’t make it to the airport myself.’
‘Oh sure, we looked after her,’ he said, switching to the executive stance. ‘Course, she wouldn’t have made it if the flight hadn’t been delayed. But BOAC fixed her up, and we gave her a couple of drinks in the lounge.’
‘BOAC?’ I asked, carefully.
‘Sure. That was the only available London flight. Pan-Am was gone, Trans-World only had this day-flight today, Air France–’
He rattled off a few of his ready statistics, while I thought: London. Why London? Then I remembered that she had written: I shall be wandering a little. I had my first clue, anyway.
He was still talking. ‘Her maid went Pan-Am as far as Accra,’ he said, important as ever, as if he had engineered the whole thing himself, revved up the plane, launched it into the air. ‘She’ll pick up the South African flight from there. And gee!’ he said again, ‘all that excess baggage. I thought the boys would pop their eyeballs. Two-hundred-thirty dollars – how about that?’
How about it, indeed … ‘Well, thanks,’ I said, ‘I just wanted to check.’
‘You’ll be following pretty soon, I guess.’
‘I hope so,’ I answered. ‘I’m not sure I can make it just now.’
‘Oh … She said you might be, that’s all.’ His voice had grown a small edge of professional caution; he knew all about husbands and wives, and the way they travelled at short notice, and the way they sometimes didn’t travel after all, and the virtues of absolute neutrality for airline personnel. ‘Well, any time, Mr Steele. Just give me a call.’
‘I’ll do that. And don’t forget about those tickets.’
‘You bet!’
He hung up promptly – the executive type always knew how and when to round off a phone call – and I was alone. Drink in hand, spirit in desperation, wife in mid-flight, I was alone again, with a whirl of thoughts and only a hungry despair to feed them on. But some of the thoughts were sharp and clear as icicles, and as piercing to the bared skin as any dagger.
A notably wise and perceptive writer (see under ‘Steele’ in the Yellow Pages) once laid down the axiom that there was a term to marriage, however good, however strong, and that when it was reached, only a fool would claim that it could be extended, and only a fool would try. The fellow was wrong, and he was feeling wrong now, and almost vomiting on the knowledge of it.
I had shipwrecked myself on this same cocksure shoal of self-regard. I knew now, in solitude, that the very core of marriage was this permanence, with its good days and its bad, its highs and lows; and that only a fool – this fool – would wantonly throw it away. Isolation had not been the answer, withdrawal had not been the answer, Susan had not been the answer. There wasn’t any answer, in the toadstool circle where I had been looking for it.
In the process, I had done to our marriage (everything now seemed fatally consigned to the past) what I had done to Ex Afrika – insulted it, cheapened it, diluted it into slops, turned honest laughter, bitter tears, into a giggle and a gulp. Once it had been precious; now it was merely the toughest ticket in town.
In fact, we had been building something real all the time, only I hadn’t recognised it; or perhaps I had lived with our love for so long and in such security that it had merged with nature, like an animal in the forest. The animal lived and moved and watched and brooded, but a casual glance, or a preoccupied one, discovered only the vines and the dappled leaves of an accustomed scenery.
So with Kate and myself. In our forest, our love and need had always been alive, but they had grown vague, obscured against a shoddy backdrop of my own painting. I still did not realise this fully, but I knew that I was going to.
Indeed, I had to do so; otherwise the animal, long overlooked, long neglected, would spring and devour, taking the revenge of all discounted things. The revenge of this animal would be bitter loneliness.
Once I had told Kate that we had ‘evaporated’. That wasn’t true, either; it was part of the same dreary self-delusion. What we had done – and it was my sole fault – was to lose all sight and sound of each other; while she took her gentle ease in the cool shade, I was in another part o
f the forest, climbing trees, robbing nests.
I should have stayed by her side, drowsy if need be, asleep sometimes, but never out of touching distance. The only important thing now was to find out if I could still make my way back.
Light-headed with the long night, scared to death by the harsh abrasion of the world, I went into forlorn action. First I put down my drink; then I wandered into the study, and started opening drawers, looking for airline schedules. We always had a lot of them; they had never seemed really significant until now. But, rummaging in one of the bureau drawers, I came up with something else instead; a dusty, yellowing, still current piece of paper, and on it a scrawl of my own handwriting:
I Jonathan Steele promise not to behave like a bastard this evening. Signed: Jonathan Steele. Witness: Kate Steele, née Marais. XXX
I had long forgotten what it was about. It wasn’t dated, and it didn’t have to be.
I missed her in London, and again in Rome. For some reason she was returning south, very slowly, by the way we had come on our honeymoon nearly seven years before, when she had said: ‘Let’s not just fly over Africa; it’s such a waste,’ and we had wandered and side-tracked at will, baffling several travel agents in the process. Now I hoped that it was because she wanted me to catch up, but the time for such self-assuring thoughts was long past.
Once I overshot her progress altogether, after a bad guess or a lapse of memory – who goes to Khartoum, and why, unless you do not mind where you go? In those days, we could not have minded … Finally I caught up with her grounded plane at Kano, in Nigeria, where the huge gorging vultures stood hideous sentinel at every back door, waiting for garbage, waiting for people.
The Pillow Fight Page 38