by Nigel Dennis
He fell on to his bed and went sound asleep.
*
It was nearly midnight when Divver knocked on the door. They smiled with the nervous embarrassment of reunion.
“I was a bit hasty,” said Divver, “I must apologize….”
“Nothing of the sort. I behaved like a damned little idiot.”
“No; it was me….”
“I assure you it was not.”
“Yes, yes….”
“Anyway, it’s good to see you again, Max.”
“So do I, I assure you.”
He was greatly surprised to see that Divver looked haggard and old. “Harriet ran into me earlier,” Morgan said, looking away, “and she said …”
“Yes, I hope you’ll excuse that,” said Divver. “I was at my wit’s end; I talked freely. I had no idea she would repeat anything: I was astonished when she said she had run into you and that everything was straightened out: she’s not usually an active type.”
“I’m going to cable mother first thing tomorrow.”
“Yes, do that,” said Divver eagerly; “don’t postpone it longer.” He looked here and there, as though his words were being listened to by conspirators.
“I gathered from Harriet that things weren’t going too well.”
Divver at once looked rather vague. “The old man’s having a rough time,” he said, “but at his age, in his position, in these times …” His eyes hardened, he looked straight at Morgan and said: “I am going to be divorced.”
“Oh no! By your wife, Max?”
“Who else would be likely to divorce me?”
“But why?”
“Believe me,” said Divver, narrowing one eye, “she’s being pretty smart. It’s not for desertion—that is to say for following my career—it’s for mental cruelty. Ah, well, what the hell: what do the grounds matter? And why should you be interested…? Well, if I’m going to be up at cockcrow I had better get to bed.”
Morgan followed him to his door, saying: “I’m really truly sorry; I really am, Max….”
“That’s very kind of you and I appreciate it…. Well, I’ll be seeing you.”
“Harriet asked me to drop by for Larry’s birthday, so I’ll certainly see you then.”
“Oh,” said Divver, stopping, and showing with a frown that he was displeased. “You don’t have to come, you know. She wasn’t just being friendly, was she?”
“I’m sure she wasn’t: it was a definite invitation.”
“Sure, sure; I don’t know why I questioned it. I suppose I just thought that what with packing and saying good-bye to all the people you’ve come to know, you’d be in too much of a rush for parties…. Sure, you come, and let me know if you need a hand packing, making arrangements, you know.”
“My God; two weeks is time enough for that.”
“Two weeks! You don’t plan to go for two weeks?”
“What’s wrong?”
Divver struggled so hard to hide his anger and disappointment that he began to pant. At last, he said in a suppressed voice: “Come with me,” and taking Morgan by the arm he led him to the passage door and opened it. “Look…. do you see anybody? Not a soul. Why? Only two or three of the rooms are still occupied, that’s why. Now come here,” and he led Morgan to Morgan’s own window and said: “You remember what it was like in the square at midnight, the day we arrived? Look now”—and looking, Morgan saw that though the lights of the cafés were shining, each group of tables had only a handful of occupants, and barely a dozen people were in the square itself. “What the hell have you been doing with yourself—” asked Divver. “Where have you kept your eyes the past weeks? Haven’t you read a newspaper? Haven’t you listened to the B.B.C.?”
His agitation was so great that Morgan, though ashamed of his own egotism, found himself suspecting that Divver was disguising some fear that lay far deeper than that of war.
“Two weeks,” Divver said again. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Well, let’s say ten days.”
“Ten days nothing. A week is the absolute deadline; and if you take my advice you’ll cut it to just a few days; the first damn boat you can get, Goddam it!”
*
When he ordered breakfast next morning he was uneasy at the prospect of having to explain to the waiter why he had shut him out for so long. But his breakfast was brought by a waiter whom he had never seen before; a clumsy boy of his own age, who spoke no English and kept his eyes on the floor.
At the lobby desk, the clerk told him: “There are no more tourist-class places for that date, sir. You must wait longer, or else pay an addition of one hundred and fifty dollars to obtain cabin-class.” He looked rather pleased.
“Certainly,” said Morgan.
“Cabin?” said the clerk. “Hm, hm.” His pleasure changed to surprise, but he only shrugged and went to the telephone, hugging the receiver between ear and shoulder while he talked and spread out a chart. “You are very fortunate,” he said coldly when he returned: “here is your place”; and he spread out the chart of the ship’s interior, marking a large rectangle that stood far from the point where twin propellors lay motionless in a wavy line of water, high above hundreds of tight little squares subdivided into the oblongs of beds and the circles of washbasins and ports. “I hope it will content you,” said the clerk.
He sent the cable to his mother and walked out of the hotel. His days of terror and his sudden amputation from them had left him in a state of shock; he looked vaguely at the square as though he were already thousands of miles away. He walked on into the fringe of the countryside, and was quickly stopped by a sensation that he attributed at first to the emptiness of his surroundings. Then, because he was a country boy, he realized that this odd sensation was due to his having re-entered the world on that dateless but unmistakable day in late summer when the impulse of plants to grow flamboyantly has ceased. The sun was as warm and strong as ever, but in the imperturbable weight of the trees’ leaves, the lack of springiness underfoot in the weeds and soil, the drooping fall of the grass and the hot thickness of the air, were information that nature had subsided into the dozing monotony of being made ripe. On this day, each year, thousands of touring Americans stop short and realize with a start that their last moment of gambolling is approaching, that hundreds of inexorable boat-trains are summoning them out of bars and ruins, to siphon them punctually out of the interior into businesslike harbours from Stockholm to Genoa, where the big liners lie ready to rush them home in the nick of time—time to greet Labour Day, the day of all serious men, with composed faces, playfulness fading like tan before the earnest desire to justify such fun with months of solemn industry. Behind them, having bent their worn spines in a final bow and tortured their tired mouths into a last grin, the keepers of pensions ascend to the empty, littered rooms, to assess the wear and tear and balance the damage against an income that never seems to have been quite adequate. Down from under the eaves and up from the cellars appear the tourist-town’s domestic population, sighing simultaneously with relief and sadness, monotonously pocketing the cracked Leicas and sunglasses, trying on the frayed, abandoned corsets, drearily swabbing away the vomit of the farewell-parties, sweeping out from under the beds the season’s last hairpins and butts of lipstick. In the very square of Mell, old women with string bags walked in the place of prostitutes with little dogs, and crossed between home and market by this short cut instead of circling the town as they had done last week; and in Bread Street, where the big shops remained open to catch the last eccentrics, the splendid clerks loosened their ties, sat on empty boxes in the sunshine, and even responded to the passing hails of their dowdy mothers. In the Hotel Poland, the Baron’s Hall and the ballroom were closed, and there was a stool at the bar for every refugee. Morgan walked to the station and looked up and down the shining rails: on his way back he passed a man in business suit and derby hat, walking briskly to the train with an enormous suitcase. This stiff traveller gave Morgan a curt nod; but it
was not until he had disappeared into the station that Morgan identified him as the querulous old waiter whose father had gone so long without coffee.
*
“So you didn’t let me down, Jimmy,” said Harriet. “Come and see the cake. I think it’s the loveliest one I ever did see; but I do think, Max, that it deserves more candles.”
“Let’s see,” said Divver, bending over: “two, three, four … ten candles: how many do you want? Not one for each year, I presume?” He gave Morgan a cold and awkward smile.
“Of course not. That would be like suggesting Larry’s technical age, when really he’s younger and more chipper than any of us. Simon,” she said, turning with a smile of baby-love, “could you get us just a few more, a tiny more, and perhaps also one very big one to stand erect in the very middle?”
She was dressed in her cutest dirndl and most expensive peasant-shoes. On the exposed part of her bosom, which was suntanned to a warm cafe-au-lait, lay a necklace of bright green wooden beads. Clasping her hands, she stood back and gazed at the great birthday cake, which stood framed in one of the tall windows, the last of the one-hundred-and-forty that the confectioner had baked before scouring his pans for the last time and returning to Warsaw. Little dwarfs, representing workmen, rimmed its frosted edge; and within a pink loop of roses was the chocolate inscription: TO OUR DEAR LARRY WITH LOVE AND CONGRATULATIONS FROM RIOT AND MAX. “Larry calls me Riot when he’s being cute, Jimmy; and I don’t have to tell you that your name would be here too if I had known in time. But you’ll sing, won’t you, when Larry comes in?”
“Are we going to sing too?” said Divver, halting in the middle of the carpet.
“Why, I should hope so,” she said: “what’s a birthday without ‘Happy Birthday?’ What an old crusty bear you are!”
“I only hope he’s in the right mood,” said Divver, kicking the carpet.
“Why, Max, what’s come over you?” cried Harriet, looking first at him, then at Morgan. “You were in a real birthday spirit. You won’t let me down now, Max?”
“I won’t let anyone down,” Divver said sulkily: “I just suggested that if he’s feeling disappointed … if they’ve pulled another fast one on him …”
“So what, silly? We want to cheer him up, don’t we?” She made testy noises with her tongue, looked around until she found a rural fan that she had laid down, and gave Divver a few little blows with it. “I hope that you are in better humour,” she said to Morgan.
“Believe me, I am,” he said heartily, looking warmly around the dear old place.
“Well, that’s something.” She again approached Divver with her fan: “And where is your present?”
“I’ve got it; I’ve got it,” he said, backing away.
“Well, give it to me, so I can put it next the cake with mine.”
Divver took a small parcel out of his pocket and gave it to her. “Brown paper!” she exclaimed. “You have no more delicate taste than Larry; not a scrap of finer feeling.”
“He’s a plain man,” said Divver, “and that’s a plain wrapping.”
“And I suppose you didn’t bring anything,” she said to Morgan. “Well, I excuse you. You live in a world of your own.” She was walking to the cake with Divver’s brown present when she turned and asked: “How about your reservation? Did you get a vacancy?”
“Everything fine,” said Morgan.
“Let me see it,” she said, dropping the parcel on a chair.
He took out the form and handed it to her. Divver looked over her shoulder and the two of them peered curiously. “Was that the earliest you could get?” said Divver.
“Pretty well.”
“Now tell me about the rest,” Harriet said to Morgan. “You go to Tutin by train and catch the boat …”
“That’s all.”
“No; but when you arrive; what happens then?”
“My mother might have a car to meet me at the North River. If not, I just go to Grand Central and take the train.”
“Where do you get off the train?”
“At our station; at Magister.”
“And then?”
“It’s only two miles to the house from there.”
“What’s the name of the house?”
“Nothing fancy, just Elmwood.”
“And so that’s where you’ll be. It sounds wonderful. While Max and Larry and I … don’t the names of the places make you homesick, Max?”
He shrugged and walked away again, gritting his teeth impatiently. Obviously, he wanted no tender reminders of the life he was so eager to renounce; particularly if the reminders came just at the nerve-racking moment when his whole future depended on whether his new patron was to hold or lose the power to protect him.
The old man came in with a handful of little candles on a big salver. “Oh, good Simon!” Harriet cried; “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” She held up the candles. “Look, Max!”
He managed to smile in a bleak way.
“Now, go down again, Simon,” she said, taking the old man’s arm, “and let us know just as soon as the Director steps out of the car.”
He went off, and she arranged the new candles, her fingers trembling. “Do you have matches, Max? Let’s have them ready.”
“For Pete’s sake,” said Divver. “This isn’t a coronation.”
“What’s come over you? Don’t you feel well?”
“I feel fine. Just leave me alone.”
“That’s just what I’ll do.”
“I just don’t like children’s parties for adults.”
They faced each other angrily. A few hard knocks came on the door, and Harriet, puzzled, ran to open it.
The Representative entered. He looked around the room in a worried way, and said: “Pardon me, madam, is the Director not back yet?”
“What is it?” she asked impatiently.
“It is very important, Madam.” He noticed the cake and looked surprised.
“Come back in two hours, Mr. Hovich,” she said, “and you’ll be sure to find him.”
“No sooner?”
“Well, one hour.”
“Pardon me,” he said again, and walked out.
She sighed. “My nerves are beginning to go,” she said, and looked around hungrily for some occupation. Picking up Divver’s parcel she said: “You can say what you like, but I’m going to make this look decent.”
“Indecent, you mean,” he replied, slouching up and down.
“And Jimmy,” she said, ignoring Divver, “when the ’phone rings, you answer it, while Max and I stand ready with the matches.”
They stayed silent for a few minutes, Morgan sitting, Divver pacing, Harriet turning the plain brown package into a bauble of silver paper and golden twine. Then the ’phone rang, and Morgan took the receiver.
“It’s him,” he said.
They all frantically struck matches until all the candles were alight. They heard steps in the passage. Harriet took Morgan and Divver by the arm and stood between them. “Oh, lay off!” snapped Divver, pulling away. The door opened. “Now, all together: sing!” she cried.
They went to it in loud and wobbly voices:
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday, dear La-ree!
Happy birthday to you!
Harriet ran forward, put her arms around her husband’s neck and kissed him. Over her shoulder he looked at Divver and Morgan, his hair becoming whiter as his face became redder.
“I am sure this is all very well meant,” he said.
“It’s your birthday, Larry,” said his wife, simultaneously trying to skip and to hide her face on his shoulder, the only refuge from his expression.
“Congratulations, Boss,” said Divver.
“And mine too,” said Morgan.
“I am sure you are all very kind,” he said; and added irritably: “Yes, dear, thank you, thank you,” and dislodged his shoulder.
The look of indomitable martyrdom that
had been on him when he entered and had been swept away by surprise, now worked back into his features, surmounting even his exasperation; as though he were determined that a mood which he had been rehearsing during the drive from the city was not going to perish in demonstrations of love and friendship. Even his wife sensed this, and lowered her voice when she referred him to the cake and the presents. “A little later, thank you,” he said, and took a chair. “It was very kind of you to come too,” he said to Morgan humbly, and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Perhaps we should blow out the candles, if you don’t mind,” he added; and the dirty smell of smoking wicks drifted through the room.
His receptionists were now in the position in which he normally placed those around him: they had been clearly informed as to his mood and had made haste to fall in with it. Now they could only wait in silence for him to develop it or explain it away. As usual, the engineer was in no hurry to do either, knowing that he could proceed most happily after someone else, in nervousness, had said something tactless. His wife turned out to be that person: she said: “Larry, Mr. Hovich was looking for you: he said it was important.”
At once, he sat up straight in his chair, switching his temperament from suffering to valour. His eyes flashed; he asked: “What was his business?”
“Oh, Larry; I didn’t ask. I wanted you to have the cake first. But he’ll be back in a half-hour.”
At this, the engineer rose to his feet, clenched his fists and exclaimed—in the rage that had been present all the time below his disguise—“I can guess! They’ll see! They’re going to fire me like yellow dogs, through Hovich; refuse to see me in person, and kick me out through him. By God, I’ll make them pay! The dirty politicians: I’ll show them that they can’t butter me up with smiles and compliments and then sneer at me behind my back: I’m no Irishman with a vote!”
“Suspect double-cross, huh?” said Divver, gruffly indicating his desire to stand by his friend rather than be trampled underfoot by him.
“Yes, Mr. Divver,” said the engineer, glaring at him; “any fool could see that much.”