So Little Time

by John P. Marquand

  “He puts on side,” Madge said, “he calls himself your custodian.”

  “All right,” Jeffrey said, “I’m going to talk to him. I’m going to handle this, Madge. Gorman’s been pretty loyal. I don’t believe he ever said he was my custodian.”

  “When he comes in,” Madge said, “just be definite with him.”

  “Never mind,” Jeffrey said. “Never mind. I can handle this. I can talk to Mr. Gorman.”

  Jeffrey had been out looking for Mr. Gorman. He had walked out to the rose garden. He had been to the building where Mr. Gorman kept the cow. He had been to the woodshed which they had repaired when they had bought the place, and he had been to the garage with the living quarters for the couple over it. He had also been to the tennis court which needed rolling badly, and he knew that he must speak to Mr. Gorman about it because Jim always liked to have friends around for tennis. He had seen Charley in the garage doing something with the Ford truck. He had never been able to understand why a child of his should like machinery. Charley was fourteen and he kept taking the truck to pieces. Charley was always engaged in activities which Jeffrey could not understand.

  “What’s the matter with it?” Jeffrey asked.

  Charley looked up very brightly. Charley had on white flannels, and his school tie and his hands were covered with grease.

  “I was just looking at the points,” Charley said.

  “Well, put on something else,” Jeffrey said. “If you’re going to mess around with the car. Put on overalls.”

  “It isn’t messing around, looking at the points,” Charley said. “I can be all washed up in just a minute.”

  Jeffrey did not want to argue with Charley because somehow all that summer Charley had always been right. Charley knew all about points and timing, and if Charley said he would not get dirty, he would not. There was no use arguing with Charley.

  “Have you seen Mr. Gorman anywhere around?” Jeffrey asked him.

  “No,” Charley said, “I guess he’s faded out.”

  “Where?” Jeffrey asked. “Where has he faded to?”

  “I don’t know,” Charley said. “He always fades at three in the afternoon. Say, Dad, you ought to see what he’s done to this distributor.”

  “What’s he done to it?” Jeffrey asked.

  Charley pointed to a piece of mechanism.

  “You can see for yourself,” Charley said. “He’s completely bitched it, Dad.”

  Jeffrey felt a faint qualm of uneasiness. He had never been able to understand Charley and that summer he could understand him even less, now that Charley had begun talking to him as man to man, using Anglo-Saxon words which no boy of fourteen should have employed.

  “Suppose you try to say that some nicer way,” Jeffrey said.

  Charley shrugged his shoulders. The boy was only fourteen, but he shrugged his shoulders.

  “Frankly,” Charley said, “there’s no plainer way to say it. He’s bitched it, Dad, but I can fix it. The instruction book’s right here. Any moron can follow this instruction book.”

  “Why aren’t you out at the Haskells’ or somewhere?” Jeffrey asked.

  As soon as he asked it, he realized that he was always asking Charley why he was not somewhere else. Charley shrugged his shoulders.

  “Frankly,” Charley said, “I’ve taken the afternoon off. This is going to pay me better.”

  “Oh,” Jeffrey said, “you’re going to be a little Tommy Edison, are you?”

  “I mean,” Charley said, “they’ll need mechanics in the war.”

  “What war?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Frankly,” Charley said, “I’ve been thinking it over, Dad. It’ll be a twelve years’ war.”

  Ever since Charley was five he had been completely self-sufficient. There was nothing new about Charley, except that there was more of him every year. Charley’s room was filled with leather-bound books which he brought home from school every Prize Day—the Current Events Prize, the History Prize, the Pinkham Essay Prize, the Best Personal Project Prize, the Sawyer Prize for the Year’s Best Personal Adjustment, the Rogers Memorial Prize for Oral Latin Translations. Charley was not fresh; he was simply very bright and adjusted to his environment. Charley was holding that part of the Ford truck. Jeffrey was the world of yesterday; Charley was the world of tomorrow. It was Shuffle Shoon and Amber Locks, sitting together building blocks, except that Jeffrey had never wanted to build blocks with Charley, intellectual or otherwise.

  “Just get this into your head,” Jeffrey said, “we’re not in the war yet.”

  Charley’s even features, which resembled rather more closely his mother’s than his father’s, assumed the patient look of a well-informed adolescent conversing with a poorly trained elder, who could not help his limited background.

  “We’re in the war now, Dad,” Charley said, “and we don’t know it. President Roosevelt has said what I mean—convoys mean shooting and shooting means war. They’ve already torpedoed the Greer.” Charley shrugged his shoulders again. “That’s war.”

  “And why do you think it’s going to last for twelve years?” Jeffrey asked.

  “I’ll be glad to tell you,” Charley said, “if you’re interested and not just making conversation.”

  “Remember,” Jeffrey said, “what I’ve told you. Manners, Charley, manners.”

  “Sorry,” Charley said, and he made a helpless gesture with both hands.

  “Careful,” Jeffrey said, “don’t get too big for your pants, Charley.”

  It gave Jeffrey a cruel sort of pleasure which was not paternal, but he knew, even when he was speaking, that he was not being fair. In all their encounters he always ended up by not being fair to Charley.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Charley said. “I can’t say anything more, can I? I said I was sorry.”

  “All right,” Jeffrey said, “why do you think it’s going to last for twelve years?”

  “Well,” Charley said, “I’ve been working on it quite a little lately. I don’t suppose you were much in touch with the war in Hollywood.”

  “No,” Jeffrey said, “I imagine not.”

  But his sarcasm was lost on Charley. Charley’s glance was focused somewhere beyond Jeffrey and Charley was marshaling his facts, thinking on his feet, just as he had been taught to do when he had won the Judkins Prize for Extemporaneous Speaking.

  “I’ve been making quite a study of the commentators, lately,” Charley said.

  “Oh,” Jeffrey said, “you’ve been sampling opinion, have you?”

  “I’ve been listening to Swing and Kaltenborn and Newcombe,” Charley said, “and then of course there’s Time and Life and Newsweek and Berlin Diary. That’s not a bad book of Shirer’s. Have you read it, Dad?”

  “Yes,” Jeffrey said, “I’ve read it, Charley.”

  “I’d like to have a talk with you about it sometime,” Charley said. “But—I’ve got most of my ideas from Hanson Baldwin.”

  “What about Major George Fielding Eliot,” Jeffrey asked, “and Fletcher Pratt, and the General in PM? Have you followed those, too, Charley?”

  “Yes,” Charley answered. “We follow them all year in Current Events, but it doesn’t seem to me that those men have quite the weight of Baldwin. Did you see his article in Life called ‘Blueprint for Victory,’ Dad?”

  “Yes,” Jeffrey said, “I came across it, Charley. Of course, I haven’t put my mind on it as much as you have, but I thought Baldwin rather discounted the Russians.”

  “Yes,” Charley said, and he nodded brightly. “Yes, a little. Perhaps his timetable may be a little off.”

  Jeffrey drew a deep breath.

  “You’ll have a lot of fun telling this to Jim,” he said.

  Then the picture changed. Charley was what he should have been, a little boy again, playing with the car, and his face had all the helplessness of a little boy when he faces grownups after studying hard and knowing all the answers. His eyes reflected all the injustices meted out to childhood.
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  “Jim,” Charley said, “oh, nuts.”

  Then Jeffrey felt almost sorry for him. He knew again that he had not been fair to Charley.

  “Listen, kid,” Jeffrey said, and he wanted to pat Charley on the shoulder, but he knew that Charley would not have liked it.

  “You go out and find Mr. Gorman, will you? Tell him I want to see him in the house.”

  “You mean right now?” Charley asked.

  “Yes,” Jeffrey said, “I mean right now.”

  “Are you going to fire him?” Charley asked, and his eyes had grown larger as he visualized the human drama.

  “Who said I was going to fire him?” Jeffrey answered. And he knew he would lose what dignity he had left if he took it up with Charley. “You go and find Mr. Gorman and tell him I’m waiting in the house.”

  Then he remembered something that Jim had said about Charley a year ago. Jim had said that Charley was a wise little apple, an expression which was new to Jeffrey, but that was just what Charley was, a wise little apple.

  The room where Jeffrey sat to wait for Mr. Gorman had been called his “office,” largely because no one had ever thought of a proper name for it. When Madge had bought the house in Connecticut, he had told her that he had to have a room where he could be by himself, away from the children, where he could keep his desk and a few papers and books, and he had not wanted anything done with it in the way of decoration. That was why the walls were bare and why Madge had never put up any curtains. He had bought the furniture over the past few years himself—a tall green filing cabinet, a bookcase filled with plays and works on the theater, a flat desk with a swivel chair and two leather armchairs, which he had purchased at a country auction, and a tavern table, which he had bought in Maine. The broad pine floor boards had been waxed and he made a point of allowing the ashes to remain in the fireplace just as they always had in his father’s fireplace on Lime Street. He knew that the room was ugly and Madge had often said she did not see why he wanted a room like it, because he had good taste, but its bareness and ugliness had always consoled him. That room was the only place which was entirely his own and it represented no effort and no compromise. He could sit in it as long as he liked and no one disturbed him. Madge had been very thoughtful about not disturbing him, particularly that summer.

  You entered the room from the back hall and there was also a door that opened out on the back lawn. It had been muggy and sultry all day, as days so often were in early September. He could hear the notes of the crickets on the lawn outside, but this was the only sign that another autumn was coming. Jeffrey looked at his wrist watch and saw that it was half-past three. It occurred to him that he had not been by himself that day or for a good many days before.

  He and Madge had been going out a good deal lately to parties at Westport and Greenwich and Stamford and Long Island. They both must have had the same desire to see other people. He could not get it out of his head that they might not see their friends in quite that way again and that there might not be the same food and wine on the table, and he believed that everyone else must have had the same idea. A suspense had been in the air all summer and it was here now with the humming of the crickets. It aroused a desire for human companionship and familiar faces. There was a curious consolation in other people’s confusion because the truth was that no one knew anything, although everyone tried to know. There was always someone who had been to Washington, who would say it was a madhouse and that all the new bureaus were clogged with red tape, and the army was using trucks instead of tanks, and the morale of the draft troops was very low; and they were chalking up a mystic sign on the barracks, O.H.I.O., which meant, in case you did not know it, “Over the Hill in October.”

  There was always someone who knew someone in the State Department or who knew someone who had seen the President or who had a friend who was back from England or the Orient. The news had ceased to be reliable so that everyone listened avidly for such bits of gossip, all of which added up to nothing. The only tangible fact seemed to be that, although it was September, the Russian armies were still fighting. There was still an unreality about the war. It seemed to Jeffrey that very few people that summer understood that war was a matter of killing. Everyone seemed to think that you could win a war by a few quick moves. He and everyone else were pathetically grasping for fact, and the only fact was death.

  There was always someone who had been on a tour to Japan, or someone who knew someone in the navy. The Japanese would make no trouble unless it came to a matter of face. The Japanese were bogged down in China. They were a third-rate military power and now that we had cut off shipments of gasoline and oil, they knew that we meant business. We were drawing a ring around them, now that the Philippines and the East Indies were being reinforced, and there was always the British base at Singapore. Japanese air power was nonexistent and when it came to the Japanese Navy, someone always knew someone who had been talking with one of our Admirals. And the Admiral had said that the American fleet could meet the Japanese fleet any morning and it would all be over in time for lunch. Then there was the other story, the one about those blueprints of a battleship. The Japanese had negotiated with a British company for the building of a battleship and had stolen all the plans, but the British understood their Japanese, and you know what happened. When the battleship was launched in Yokohama, or wherever they did launch battleships, it was top-heavy and turned right over. That was Japan for you. They were funny little people.

  Then the conversation would shift back to home. There would be no new automobiles next year, and no new washing machines or electric refrigerators or radios. If you were short of any of these things, you had better buy them quickly. The French vermouth was going.

  There was only one thing that was obvious, and everyone must have seen it. They were living in a sort of peace which was no longer peace. There was no longer neutrality. There might not be a war, but it was time to be ready for war, the way the world was going, and nothing would ever be the same again. He could feel it in the house that afternoon. Outside there was a stillness in the air, as though it were about to rain. Through the open windows he could hear the birds and he could hear the couple quarreling in the kitchen. You could not run away. It was necessary, instead, to cultivate the illusion that there would be the same amount of money, the same cars in the garage, the same oil burner in the cellar and the same electric water system, and the same schools for the children, and there was still Mr. Gorman. Jeffrey had almost forgotten Mr. Gorman until he heard him knocking at the door.

  Instead of wearing work pants and a khaki shirt or overalls, Mr. Gorman was wearing seersucker trousers and a blue shirt with the sleeves cut off like a tennis player’s. Mr. Gorman’s mustache was freshly trimmed, his face was very smooth, and his hair was newly cut and shaved in a fresh arc in the back so that there was a white space between the hair and the heavy tan on his neck. Mr. Gorman was holding a small bottle, and Mr. Gorman was smiling.

  “It’s a mean kind of day, isn’t it?” Mr. Gorman said. “It makes you sweat like a horse.”

  “Where have you been?” Jeffrey asked. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  “Oh-oh,” Mr. Gorman said, and he looked concerned. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be looking for me, Mr. Wilson? I’d have been right here.”

  In a way it seemed as though Mr. Gorman were right. It would have been easier if Jeffrey had told him that morning that he would be looking for him that afternoon.

  “Well, where were you?” Jeffrey asked.

  Mr. Gorman shook his head and Jeffrey was aware of a heavy odor of hair tonic pervading the room.

  “I told ’em in the kitchen,” Mr. Gorman said, “or else, did I tell ’em? I don’t remember. I’ve been working like a one-armed paperhanger, and maybe I forgot. I had to get downtown. It was the hose.”

  “What’s the matter with the hose?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Well, I thought we ought to lay in some,” Mr. Gorman said.
“So I just hopped in the station wagon and got us two hundred feet at Maxon’s Store. It was lucky I did, too, Mr. Wilson. Hose is going to be as scarce as hen’s teeth and that’s something else I want to take up with you.”

  “What?” Jeffrey asked.

  “It don’t seem worth while bothering you about it,” Mr. Gorman said, “and you know me. I always want to run this place without making any bother for Mr. Wilson because I know that you don’t want to be bothered, but it just seems to me we ought to stock up a little. I was saying it to Maxon downtown and Maxon says it, too. Tom Maxon’s quite a card, but he knows his business.”

  Mr. Gorman rubbed the back of his head.

  “You got a haircut down there, didn’t you?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Oh-oh,” Mr. Gorman said. “Yes, sir, I just snatched off a quick one at Tony’s while they were getting out the hose. My God, Mr. Wilson, there’s never time these days to get a haircut or anything. But what I say is, when you have a moment, you and I ought to go out to the barn and get together. We’ve got to make a project of it, and look at all the tools.”

  “What’s the matter with the tools?” Jeffrey asked.

  “I’ll tell you,” Mr. Gorman said. “Frankly, tools don’t last the way they used to when we were kids, Mr. Wilson, and I give ’em wear. I’m not hard on them, you understand. I get more out of tools than anybody, but I give ’em wear and they don’t stand up like they used to. Now the lawn mower, she’s on the blink again, and that hand cultivator and the pruning shears. We just ought to stock up while there’s anything to stock.”

  “Didn’t we buy a lot of tools this spring?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Sure,” Mr. Gorman said. “Don’t think I’m coming in here and begging you for tools. I’m only saying we ought to get some while there’s anything to get. You can’t keep this place the way you want it unless you get some tools. Now take the lawn. I’ll tell you something. Mrs. Wilson was out this morning complaining about the lawn again. You know what women are, you can’t do with them, and you can’t do without them. Now I didn’t want to say anything. You know me. Do your work and shut up, is what I say. I didn’t talk back, but it’s the lawn mower. It isn’t me, but the mower and the bearings are acting up again.”