Neither Five Nor Three

by Helen Macinnes

  At first, Rona listened quite naturally. She liked ballads. She liked the girl’s voice. She liked the way people joined in the choruses. And then she noticed that she wasn’t enjoying it as she ought to have. There was an intensity on many of the faces that was unnecessary, and when they sang they would look at each other with a smile as if they shared some secret. Rona stopped looking at Anna, and began studying the faces around her. Here and there, someone felt the same way she did; and he would look uncertainly around him, a little worried or perhaps amused. But the others were caught up in a private world, intense, exciting.

  “Sing ‘Guadalajara’ again, Anna,” a man called.

  So it was sung for the third time, and sung with attack and feeling.

  “It’s a good song,” Paul said, watching Rona.

  “Yes, I’ve always liked it.” Her voice was hesitant, and low like his. In Mexico, she had heard it constantly, played gaily and charmingly. Down there, it was a ballad. Here, it was given another meaning.

  “But...?”

  “There’s no need for them to be so intense about it,” she said angrily, still speaking in almost a whisper.

  Paul Haydn said nothing. In front of them, a man sitting cross-legged on the floor looked round with a disapproving frown.

  “Paul, am I dreaming things? See how these people draw together. Emotionally. They’re sharing some secret understanding. Aren’t they?”

  “We’ll be thrown out,” he said, and then frowned back at the man who was still disapproving. “You must learn to disguise your feelings,” he added with a grin.

  “But don’t you feel this odd atmosphere?” she whispered. “Oh—I know it’s silly, it’s perfectly silly. I’m going crazy. People can’t be so childish.”

  “You’re insulting children,” he said gently. “But you aren’t going crazy.”

  She stared at him for a moment. “Paul—” she began anxiously, but the man in front of them turned around with a commanding hush. So she kept silent, but she exchanged a smile with Paul as the man began drumming with his hands on the floor accompanying the rhythm of “The Song of the Plains.” It was a song Rona had always liked for its drama, but now as she listened to the drumming hands and heels, beating out the gallop of a troop of Red cavalry through a Park Avenue apartment, she wanted to laugh. Only, inside her, there was a deep irritation, an unexplained anger, that turned the laugh bitter.

  At the doorway, she saw Scott at last. With Thelma. Thelma’s gold-braided hair had slipped a little. She was wildly excited, madly applauding. Scott was looking grave, almost worried, perhaps bored. Rona waved and attracted his attention. He nodded. He was smiling now. Then he caught sight of Paul Haydn beside her. Scott was no longer smiling as he left Thelma and started to plough his way across the crowded room. But it was a slow job, and he had to stop while the singer made a little announcement. “My voice is giving out,” she said with her charming smile. “So just once more—the last one. What shall it be?” Cries of disappointment, calls of “More later,” suggestions for songs, all crossed and meshed into each other. There was a sudden sharp lull, as the girl held her hand up for silence. Her bracelets jangled prettily. “What shall it be?” she asked again.

  “‘From the Halls of Montezuma’,” Rona called in her clear voice.

  There was a shocked moment followed by a babel of voices.

  “Well,” Rona said with a smile to the man in front who had turned to stare, “it has a good marching rhythm, too.”

  Paul Haydn bent his head to hide his wide grin. “Naughty,” he said, “that was very naughty of you, Rona.” The grin deepened and he began to struggle with a laugh. There were some others, too, who were trying to smother their amusement.

  But someone did laugh, a loud high laugh that brought complete silence once more to the room and swung every head toward the piano. Charles, his red hair disarranged, his white face excited, his hand bandaged roughly with an incongruous guest towel, had climbed on to the piano stool. He stood there, balancing himself precariously, holding up his glass. “Time for a toast,” he shouted in his high thin voice, beaming around the room.

  “Stop him, someone!” It was Thelma leaving the doorway, struggling to reach him.

  Charles turned to look at her, slipped and regained his footing. “Time for a toast,” he repeated. “I give you, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the theories of Karl Marx—the opium of the intellectuals!” He raised his glass still higher, and he lost his balance, falling with a smashing clang into the open piano. Waves of wild chords jangled through the room as Charles’s bandage got caught in the piano wires. He was climbing out now, slowly, choosing his exit by way of the piano keys. The discordant crashes overpowered the chorus of voices.

  “He’s drunk again,” the man on the floor said angrily, as Charles was at last pulled free.

  “Poor Thelma,” said his companion, “she’ll really have to put him away some place.”

  Rona turned to Paul. “Who is Charles?”

  Paul watched the red-haired, white-faced man telling everyone to give him another drink and he’d oblige with plenty more toasts, he’d been thinking them up for months. He answered grimly, “Didn’t you know? He’s Thelma’s son.”

  “Oh, no!” Rona said nothing more. Charles was trying to shake himself free from a restraining hand. He was now inviting everyone to come and start on the smoked turkey and salmon and baked ham in the dining-room. “Arise!” he called. “Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!”

  It was at that moment that Scott reached them.

  “Time to leave,” he said angrily. He looked at Paul Haydn, his eyes narrowing.

  Rona, still watching Charles being persuaded out of the room, only nodded. The spinet sounded a chord, the singer leaned on one elbow and brushed back a lock of gold hair. She smiled and began to sing. It wasn’t about the Halls of Montezuma or the Shores of Tripoli, though. It was “Guadalajara,” for the fourth time that evening.

  Rona got up, smiled to Paul and began to leave. Scott hesitated for a moment, and then followed her. The music lovers looked at them angrily, motioned to them to wait until the song had ended. But Rona, and then Scott, reached the hall. The other rooms were empty now. The dining-room waited with its large table decorated with food—Charles had been right about the smoked turkey and baked ham. But Charles, himself, was nowhere to be seen.

  “I’m sorry,” Scott said, as he waited for the stiff-faced butler to find his hat. “That was a shocking performance.” He took her arm, trying to smile. But he looked tired and worried. She noticed the drawn look at the side of his mouth, the lines at his eyes. “Let’s go and have dinner,” he said, but he couldn’t disguise his anger. “Let’s find a quiet place.” He held a tight grip of her arm all the way down to the street. They didn’t speak at all.

  He helped her with excessive politeness into the car. It was then she knew just how angry he was. As he edged the nose of the car out toward the stream of traffic, his anger suddenly exploded. “Why the hell is Paul Haydn following you around, everywhere, all the time?” Then as they waited for a line of cars to pass them, he reached a hand over and gripped hers. “Why do you do this to me, Rona?” he asked.

  So that was it. She relaxed. But still, she was thinking, we are going to talk frankly at dinner. We must. I’ve had a lot of questions boiling up for months, and I’ve always taken them off the fire and laid them aside. Tonight, they are going to be served up, and Scott will give me the answers. And then, with everything cleared off, we’ll be able to begin again. We’ll reach right back to the happiness we had last summer, and we’ll start from there.

  She felt the tears sting her eyes. She leaned over quickly and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “But why did we go to that frightful place? We ought to have known that anyone as awful as Thelma would have no taste in anything.”

  He swung the car out into the avenue. “Don’t worry, I shan’t take you there again.”

  “Let’s write off
Thelma and Murray completely,” she said eagerly.

  Scott was watching traffic. Usually, he liked to take chances. Tonight, he was being more cautious than usual. “What did you think of Charles?” he asked.

  “I became very sorry for him,” she said slowly.

  “For that little drunk? He’s a manic depressive, you know.”

  “But who made him that way?” she asked quietly, thinking of Thelma.

  “Made him?”

  “Yes. What could you do, if you had a mother who filled her house with people like that? He’s still loyal to her, which is odd. She forfeited that, long ago, I’d think.”

  “Loyal? Do you call him loyal to Thelma?”

  “Loyal enough not to go to the FBI and tell everything he knows.”

  “What on earth would the FBI have to do with him or Thelma?”

  Rona said, “I don’t know about such things, Scott. But I just supposed that Charles, knowing what he knows, must feel he’s got to tell someone. Unless he believed in Thelma’s politics. And he obviously doesn’t.”

  “You’ve been reading too many accounts of those Washington witch-hunts, Rona.” He was smiling, shaking his head over her simplicity.

  “I haven’t been studying them enough,” Rona said sharply. “I’ve been too quick to disbelieve a lot of things. But from now on—oh, Scott!” The car swerved and avoided hitting a woman who had stepped off the sidewalk before the lights changed. A taxi, behind them, screamed to a sudden halt, and the driver’s red face leaned out to yell what he thought of Scott’s brain power.

  Scott ignored the vehement descriptions, but his mouth tightened and his jaw clenched. Rona, remembering now how he hated scenes, began to wonder what he had felt this evening when the fireworks started. And she had been to blame. She knew that. Charles had laughed at her request for the Marines’ hymn, and that had given him the courage to climb on the piano stool. Poor Charles, even his little protest had been so ineffectual. Drunk, everyone had said. Drunk? His voice had been clear enough, on either of its octaves.

  “We’ll have dinner at Carlo’s,” Scott said suddenly. “His place is open on Sunday, I think. Hungry?”

  “Yes.” It had been a long time since breakfast together, a very long time since they had set out this morning with nothing to worry them except a list of apartments.

  * * *

  At dinner, they talked a great deal; and Scott explained and argued patiently. Yes, he agreed, Thelma was an idiot. And Murray was a fool. The others? Surely Rona wasn’t going to let a crackpot like Charles influence her? Or perhaps she had so disliked the apartment that everyone became equally dislikeable.

  “No,” Rona protested, “I felt I could have liked many of them, if they had stayed normal people. But they aren’t. They are laughable. Laughable and frightening, too. I didn’t imagine anything. I just happened to be feeling observant today, that’s all.”

  Scott said with a smile, “Rona, don’t, go round talking that way. People will think you are laughable. And you aren’t.”

  “But I wasn’t the only one who felt it. There was a woman who left very angrily. She wore a red hat with a white bow on it.”

  “Oh yes, I heard her go. Her boy-friend deserted her for the little girl who sang.” Scott was amused.

  “Well, Paul Haydn felt it.”

  “Haydn?”

  Rona bit her lip. “I’m sure he did. Just as I was so sure you did, too.”

  Scott said, “Well, perhaps you’re right about this thing. Perhaps they are a crowd of Communists. I guess I’m not quick enough to know.”

  “Frankly—”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t think you are.”

  He was startled. Then he began to laugh.

  “I mean it, Scott. You’re much too honest to realise when people are deceiving you.”

  “Who is deceiving me?”

  She hesitated. “Nicholas Orpen,” she said slowly.

  “Rona,” Scott’s voice was firm, “Nicholas Orpen is my friend. I’ve known him for years, ever since he taught me at college. He isn’t a crook or a cheat. He’s a man of sincere convictions. He believes in the good of mankind. He’s honest. He’s had a lot of rough treatment in his life, but because other people turn on him is no reason for his old friends to turn on him. I don’t agree with his politics, just as I don’t agree with many of my friends’ ideas on religion. But that doesn’t make me avoid them. So why avoid Orpen? He isn’t a criminal. Besides, even if he once stood up and said he was a Communist, that doesn’t mean he is a Party member now. I don’t discuss these things with him, but I did hear he’s been out of Party affairs for several years now. So why worry? Is it some scandal you’re afraid of?”

  “No. Much more than scandal,” Rona said impulsively. “I’ve been thinking about Blackworth.”

  “Who?”

  “Blackworth—the assistant editor at Trend who got fired just before Paul Haydn came home. I’ve been thinking about him. I’ve been reading all the issues of Trend in which he was acting as Feature Editor. And I don’t like what I read, Scott. Oh, it isn’t just a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with the writers that Blackworth published. It’s much more than that: they are a kind of—a kind of corruption. Thoughts can be corrupted, Scott. And then standards of behaviour get corrupted, too. That’s what frightens me—not scandal.”

  “Oh, Rona, come! We are mostly intelligent people with fairly reliable judgments. We don’t corrupt so easily.”

  “Blackworth was corrupted,” she said quietly. “Because what he did to Weidler was complete treachery. Look, Scott, an editor has got to trust all his assistants and associates. He’s got to delegate a lot of power. He’s got to be able to trust the men who take his money. And Blackworth betrayed that trust. Isn’t that corruption? If Blackworth had been honest, he would have resigned from Trend and gone to work for a Communist magazine.”

  Scott rose from the table. “Time we were getting you home,” he said, calling the waiter for the bill. “We’re beginning to talk in circles.”

  “I’m not,” Rona said. “I’m just getting things straight.”

  “Fine,” he said. “We’ll go on from this point, another night. But there’s just so much politics that I can take at one sitting.” He was frowning now, counting the tip.

  “Yes, Scott,” Rona said wearily. She rose and left the restaurant. On the sidewalk she waited for him, looking up at the lighted apartments above the shops. The windows were unshaded. She could see the rooms on the second floor quite clearly—bookcases, a vase of flowers, pictures on the walls, the colours of the ceilings. In one room, people were moving around, quite heedless of any eyes that might be curious. Let them all look, what is there to be ashamed of? No, she thought, we aren’t a secretive people. We don’t go around hiding our lives. Or our thoughts. Or our intentions. We are what we are, take us or leave us. Foreigners think we are fools. Simple, they call us; naïve; big-mouthed. But, at least, we aren’t hypocrites. Is that why, at first, we can be so easily deceived? Is that why we get so angry when we start finding out that something is being hidden from us?

  Scott came out, at last. “Still so serious?” he asked.

  “I was wondering which made Mr. Hull angrier—the bombs on Pearl Harbour, or the fact that the Japanese were waiting in his office outside to continue talking about ‘peace’?”

  “How did you ever reach Hull’s office?” He took her arm, and they started walking toward the car.

  She looked up at the unshaded windows again. “By way of the second floor.” She pointed. “And by Thelma’s party this evening.”

  He looked puzzled. “I don’t follow. But if you are still worrying about the people you seem to have met at Thelma’s, then forget them. They aren’t important.” He smiled and shook his head.

  “They think they are. If they didn’t take themselves so seriously, I’d stop worrying about them.”

  “They were more of a joke than anything.” He glanced at his watc
h. “It’s later than I thought,” he said in surprise.

  “Too late for our movie?”

  He looked up. She saw that he had forgotten his earlier invitation. He said, awkwardly, “It’s getting pretty late.”

  She put aside her disappointment. “Well, come up and have a drink at my place. That won’t take so long.”

  He hesitated.

  “Or have you any other plans for the rest of this evening?” she asked. “I seem to get in the way, these last months, don’t I?”

  “You’re talking nonsense tonight,” Scott said with a laugh. “It’s been a hard day, you know. I was only thinking of that.” He pulled her more closely to him as they walked, slipping his arm around her waist. Then his voice changed, and he said, “Rona, I blame all this on Paul Haydn. You’ve been worried and upset ever since he got back.”

  “Scott, that’s—” She stopped, drawing herself away from his arm, turning to face him.

  “Yes, you have. That’s our whole trouble recently. What’s wrong, Rona? Don’t I measure up to his standards?”

  “Scott, you’re—”

  “You’ve changed. You don’t love me the way you once did.”

  “I’ve changed? No, I haven’t.”

  “Do you mean I have?” He gripped her wrist.

  “You aren’t the same,” she admitted slowly, painfully.

  “I love you, don’t I?” he asked, almost bitterly.

  She said, again slowly, quietly, “Yes. Yes and no. Oh, Scott, what’s happening to us? Something is standing between us, something, something.”

  “Paul Haydn.”

  “He isn’t!” Her anger broke out of her control. At this moment, she hated Scott as much as she loved him. She struck his arm away from her wrist. She turned and ran.