Neither Five Nor Three

by Helen Macinnes

  “Why?”

  “Oh, something that happened, I guess.” I’ll let Jon tell her, if he ever will, that Ettley lied last night about working late. “Anyway,” Haydn went on, “Jon sent you his love. And congratulations.”

  Rona looked up quickly. “Now, Paul!” she said angrily. She was hurt. “Jon wouldn’t say a thing like that!”

  Paul cursed his stupidity. “I’m sorry.” Actually Jon’s language about Ettley had been highly colourful, completely unacademic, and totally unrepeatable. Women, Paul thought, are the damnedest creatures. Then he wondered what she would have said if he had told her he had slugged Scott Ettley on the jaw, only a couple of hours ago. Perhaps that might have chased her back into Ettley’s arms, with her woman’s ministering-angel complex fully aroused.

  “What did Jon actually say?” she asked.

  “Well, seemingly Ettley has been telephoning this evening. Last heard from at half-past seven. Peggy answered, to begin with. She was trying to keep Jon away from the ’phone. But at half-past seven, Jon took the call.”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s all.”

  “You told Peggy and Jon I was all right?” she asked anxiously.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I am all right.”

  “Sure,” he said. You’re just about as happy as I am, he thought.

  Rona began to put on her hat. He remembered to look for her gloves under the table. They were there, all right. She took them from him, a smile in her eyes. “You’ve a long memory,” she said.

  “Occasionally,” he said.

  “Paul—I can’t thank you for—for the way you’ve helped me tonight.”

  “I did nothing. Just persuaded you to keep me company over a steak.”

  “You would have had company without me, I think.” She smiled openly now. “She’s very pretty,” she added, looking at the blonde girl who was eating supper with some friends.

  “That’s one of your lonely people,” Paul said. “Her husband was killed in the Pacific. She had a baby. And then it died two years later. She saved up and came to New York to try some modelling. She isn’t quite good enough. So she works in a hat shop. She lives near, and she likes the way Benny kids her. She’s his most favoured customer, although she can only buy one beer a night. She makes his wife’s hats, and she gets her dinners free. When I saw her at first, I thought what a ninny, what a complete little daffy-down-dilly who thinks life is just a parted smile on the cover of a fashion magazine.”

  “That,” Rona said, “is what is known as a bolt and a jolt, isn’t it? I really asked for it.” She walked out beside him, looking at the blonde girl in the black sweater with a new eye for the deceptively calm and carefree face.

  They said good night to Benny, who called, “Hurry back!” His best friend in the army had been a Westerner, and whatever Benny liked about a place or about people he adopted as his own. That parting call, echoing Colorado, followed them out into Lexington Avenue.

  Rona was smiling. “Yes, Paul,” she said, “you’ve done an awful lot for me tonight. Thank you.”

  Behind them, some thirty paces away, a youngish man in an unobtrusive blue suit and a grey felt hat seemed to be taking the same direction as they were.

  III. SYNTHESIS

  18

  Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—days of lowered skies, of clouds wrapped round the peaks of the tallest buildings, days of a spring that seemed turned back to winter. Depressing, everyone said.

  Depressing, Rona agreed. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—all alike this week, all of the same pattern with no word from Scott. Days of sleeping and rising and eating and working, of being polite, neat, orderly, of smiling and listening and hiding all worry.

  For the word had somehow got round Trend’s office that Rona Metford had broken her engagement. Like all mysterious pieces of news, no one knew who had started it. But it seemed credible: Rona wasn’t wearing Ettley’s ring; she was working with frenzied concentration; and Paul Haydn had stopped avoiding her.

  Mrs. Hershey, genial and kind-hearted, didn’t know what to make of it. Rona’s getting on now, she thought worriedly: twenty-six, going on twenty-seven now. And women of twenty-seven, although they looked as young nowadays as girls of twenty, were still women of twenty-seven who couldn’t afford to go around breaking a second engagement.

  “And such a long engagement, too,” Miss Guttman said. To cheer Rona up, she resumed her visits with the problems that troubled her. Her present predicament was a breakfast nook. “How would you have it?” she asked Rona. And Rona, whose first impulse had been to say, “I wouldn’t,” resisted giving the truth and said instead that at the moment all she could think of was mosaic floors and Roman fountains.

  “She’s taking it badly, poor dear,” Miss Guttman reported to Mrs. Hershey. “Imagine giving up three years of your life to a man and then having him turn you down!” Which led, in the typists’ office and the washroom, to a long discussion on the demerits of men. But everyone who agreed was congratulating herself privately that her man wasn’t like that, of course.

  Harry Jimson, over in the Architecture Department, said, “Well, Phil, it looks as if Rona isn’t leaving us. So there goes your chance of promotion.” Phil Arnim, who had thought that out for himself—who wouldn’t, with a family to bring up?—only answered “Tough on her,” and went on with his work.

  Jimson was thinking of his wife and his blonde and his debts. “Guess there isn’t much future around here,” he said. These damned women—either taking jobs from men or taking all the money they earned. Takers, one and all. “Guess I’ll clear out some day and try San Francisco,” he added gloomily. A new start, that was all he needed. He liked that idea the more he thought of it; he liked it so well that he concentrated on it and went no further in his argument. He never even reached the next stage in reasoning: a new man was as necessary as a new start if defeat wasn’t to be repeated. “San Francisco,” he said again, “that’s the place. Civilised. We’re nothing but machines in New York.” He looked angrily in the direction of Rona’s room where she was hard at work. Her worries didn’t seem to bother her. Just another machine. Women had no real emotions.

  Arnim said, “Better get on with your job, Harry, or old Burnett will be down on top of you.”

  Harry Jimson nodded, lit another cigarette, and frowned out at the cold wet world. Even the weather in New York had gone to hell. How could anyone work at all if he was as worried as this? Women were all on the surface, all natural pretenders. He glanced at Rona’s room again. They put on a good act of working. Or loving. He discarded his cigarette, lit another, picked up his pencil, and thought of his mistress. Did she really mean to go to his wife? Did she? Or was that part of the act, too?

  * * *

  But Rona’s work was not pretence. It was a necessity, a necessity to keep her from thinking about herself.

  Scott had taken that last glimpse of her on Tuesday night, when she got into a taxi with Roger Brownlee, as her definite answer. That is what I wanted, she told herself as Wednesday passed and Thursday passed and Friday was almost over. But it was difficult to end the habit of thinking about Scott, of waiting for Scott, of listening to each telephone ring with the rising hope that it would be his voice that would answer hers. So she tried to lose herself in work.

  It wasn’t easy. Her mind had at least two subcurrents flowing through it, fighting each other to rise to the surface. Her anger had passed. So had her wounded pride. But she was left with pity, regret, longing, aversion, momentary dislike that would twist back to love again. She was left with memories strangely mixed, a sense that this was all stupid and needless and negligible, a feeling that this was all inevitable.

  I’m to blame, she would tell herself... No, I’m not, she would think. But who was? Was Scott to blame, either? Then who was?

  And she would set to work again, to force herself into thinking of something that had nothing to do with Scott and herself, something practical and urgent en
ough to deaden the pain in her mind. But it wasn’t easy.

  If Scott had come to see her, if Scott had called her—what then? Yes, she might have forgotten everything else except that she was still in love with him. For she couldn’t forget that. And like most women, after having told herself that her decision was made and well made, she now had moments of wondering if she had been right. But this wasn’t a matter of going back to a shop and telling a resigned salesgirl that the colour wasn’t suitable after all. This was a pattern of life. Once made, it couldn’t be unmade so easily.

  I was too quick, too angry, I was too cruel, she’d think.

  Or was I too slow? Ought I to have seen the shape of our lives a year ago? It would have been easier, last summer, if I had never gone to Mexico with Scott; easier if I hadn’t accepted his ring and started planning our marriage. I was worried at Christmas when the wedding was postponed; I was afraid at Easter when we avoided even talking about it; I was too happy when it was so suddenly settled, only a few weeks ago. I persuaded myself, too much, that everything was bound to come out all right. But—but why couldn’t everything have come out all right?

  And there she was, the circle completed, back at the question she could not answer. She could find no real explanation, she couldn’t rationalise her actions because they had sprung from something deeper than reason.

  That’s a frightening excuse, she thought. And then she’d leave her bewilderment, leave it and concentrate on work. Here, at least, was an understandable world. Here, at least, you could see cause and effect.

  * * *

  Scott Ettley had his own emotional battle, but it was less complex because he could focus his bitterness on Rona and Paul Haydn. Some of the anger he felt was kept for Nicholas Orpen, only he had to repress it, silence it, and turn it aside. Orpen’s decisions were right. They had to be right; is was no use questioning them. Yet, it was Orpen’s fault that he had lost Rona. For months now, Orpen had interfered, and for what purpose? None, as far as the wishes of the Committee had turned out. They had reversed Orpen’s judgment. But, by that time, Rona’s suspicions had been roused. She had sensed that their marriage was threatened. Or had she? Wasn’t Rona using all their difficulties in those last months as an excuse to suit herself? And Haydn?

  And so Ettley turned most of the blame on to Haydn. And Rona. Rona had betrayed him. When he needed her, she had left him. And in that scene on Fifth Avenue on Tuesday evening, when he waited outside her office only to see her leave with a stranger while Haydn stopped him from following her—well, she had made a fool of him.

  That would be the last time that Rona would ever make a fool of him. That would be the last time that any woman would make a fool of him. He had his work. From now on, that was all he would think about. Orpen would be pleased, he thought bitterly.

  Orpen...how had everything come about, just as Orpen would have planned it? He hadn’t planned it—that was impossible, a stupid idea. Yet it had come about. Orpen had always been jealous of Rona. That was the whole truth. That was the reason for Orpen’s opposition and interference. All his other explanations were only excuses. But if Rona was loyal, if Rona had planned no betrayal, then no outside interference would have had any effect. No, the weakness lay with Rona. So why blame Orpen?

  Who would have thought, he wondered in pain and anger, that Rona could have done this to me?

  I’ll cut her out of my life, he thought, I’ve strength enough for that. This moment, now, is where the past is forgotten. All that is over—all the mistakes, the bitterness, the self-torture, the delusions. This moment is where the future begins.

  And the future will be what I help to make it. That’s what I think about, now.

  19

  On Friday morning Orpen telephoned Scott Ettley. “I couldn’t get seats for the theatre tonight,” he said.

  Ettley said, “Too bad.” So the meeting, which had been arranged for Thelma’s apartment that evening, would not take place. It was hardly surprising. Charles’ suicide was being given a lot of adverse publicity in the newspapers in the last two days. “Well, I’ll drop by for a chat,” he suggested. The meeting was bound to be somewhere, Ettley thought. It must. His news about his father was too important to let drift.

  “Do that,” Orpen said. But his voice had none of the enthusiasm that Ettley had expected. He sounded tired, uninterested. And then Orpen, without waiting for any further talk, hung up. Ettley was left with the receiver at his ear, his next sentence spoken into blankness.

  What’s wrong? he wondered. Orpen might be depressed, but even when he was depressed you could always depend on him to rally for a few bright, seemingly meaningless phrases. Orpen enjoyed playing conspirator even to the point of deluding any curious telephone operator.

  Ettley replaced the receiver thoughtfully. Orpen was not only depressed. He was worried. “What’s wrong?” Ettley asked aloud, frowning.

  And that was the first question he put to Orpen when he arrived at his apartment just after five o’clock that evening.

  The grey mists had lifted suddenly. The skies were showing blue, the high New York blue skies that promised a clear sunset and no rain tomorrow. Orpen’s street was busy at this hour. The warehouses were loading the last delivery trucks, the garages were open for business, the parked cars along the curb had children playing beside them with roller skates and skipping ropes. Some boys were throwing a ball around, missing the cars expertly and confidently. A woman in a bright cotton dress rested her elbows on a window sill, folded arms folding in fat, faded hair bristling in curlers, and talked to a man returning from work.

  Outside Orpen’s house, there stood a battered baby carriage. Two young girls with lipstick and long wide skirts, hemlines drooping above snow-white ankle socks, rocked its bundle of pink wool and chattered about their boy-friends. They fell silent for a moment, giving Scott Ettley a side glance, a hidden smile, and then they ignored him, but their voices were louder and their laughter was more intense. Until he rang the bell, waited briefly, and was admitted by the complaining door, he was the gallery to which they played. When he had entered the house, they went back to their own conversation. They felt pleased and excited. He hadn’t looked at them, but that didn’t matter. He had inspired a good performance, and Betty Grable and Lana Turner could now become Mae O’Neally and Francis Roth again and wait for their evening dates to show up.

  Inside the house, there was a workman kneeling in the dark hall, shining an electric torch on an opened outlet. The house superintendent or handyman or perhaps a combination of the two, Scott Ettley thought, noticing the open tool box beside the man; an electrician would have stopped work by four-thirty. Then Ettley, turning his face quickly aside as if the telephone box on the wall were more interesting, mounted the stairs rapidly. He had never seen any superintendent in this house before. But then, he usually came late in the evening, when the man would be in bed or down in his basement room.

  As he reached Orpen’s floor, Ettley looked over the rickety handrail and waited. All he could see was the faint glow from the torch far below in the hall. No footsteps following him. He felt better for having been careful. He gave his accustomed knock on Orpen’s door, and tried to enter. But, today, the door hadn’t been unlocked in preparation for him. He heard Orpen’s voice, low, asking, “Who is it?”

  “Scott,” he said, keeping his voice just as low. The door was unlocked, then. He entered, puzzled and wondering.

  He might have been more puzzled if he could have seen the superintendent, motionless, sitting back on his heels, the torch playing over the loose wires in the wall, his head cocked to the side as he listened to the mounting footsteps, a smile on his lips as he counted the flights of stairs and each landing passed. The door upstairs closed. It was Orpen’s, all right. Orpen was the only tenant on the top floor.

  The man rose, leaving the torch still trained on the opened wall socket. He opened the front door quietly and stood there, propping it ajar with his foot, while he lighted a c
igarette in full view of the garage opposite. Then, with a nod for the two girls at the baby carriage—one of whom said, “Hi, Joe!” and then started explaining to her friend that Joe was the new super the landlord had sent round to fix up this dump and about time too—he turned back into the hall and let the door close quietly. He began screwing the protecting plate back into place over the wires. Tomorrow, he thought, I’ll have to work on that cracked plaster. Or perhaps the tenant who lived below Orpen could be persuaded that the plumbing overhead was faulty.

  * * *

  Scott Ettley closed the door behind him. Orpen’s room was in disorder, as if it hadn’t been cleaned out for days. It needed airing, too. In the searching light from its high window, without shaded reading lamps to soften its sagging ceiling and cracked plaster and stains on the rug, it looked both frowsy and decrepit.

  “What’s wrong?” Ettley asked, watching Orpen standing gloomily by the littered fireplace.

  Orpen didn’t answer that. “You’re early,” he said. “You’re taking chances.” There was a fleeting smile round his colourless lips.

  “What chances?” Ettley smiled. Orpen loved to play the conspirator, he told himself once more.

  Orpen roused himself and walked slowly over to the window. The briskness in his movements had gone. They were tired, like his voice. He stood behind the curtains, looking down into the street.

  “I thought I might as well find out,” Scott explained smoothly, “where and when the meeting is to be held tonight.”

  “You sound eager not to miss it,” Orpen said. “Admirable, most admirable.” He gave a short laugh.

  Scott Ettley stared at his back. “What’s wrong?”

  Again Orpen didn’t answer. But he turned and came back to the centre of the room, to the table with its pile of newspapers. He stood there, hesitating, looking down. Then Ettley saw that Orpen’s face was paler than he had ever seen it, and that the lines under the eyes had deepened.