“I know that.”
“I know I’ve talked glibly about getting a job here. But I have to have a reason to stay, Diane. I’m not sure if you’re not just trying to postpone things, procrastinate. I don’t think you want to have to make up your mind. I don’t think you’ll ever let yourself fall in love with anyone while your grandmother is still alive.”
“Hey,” she said. “I’m the one that majored in psychology, remember. Listen, honey, I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am. Maybe I do want to postpone things, maybe I don’t like having to make choices. But I’ve made one now, haven’t I? And there’s one thing. I’m being straight with you. I’m not trying to keep you on the hook. Would you rather I did?”
“No,” said Harold.
“Well, let’s go on as we’ve been. The next choice is yours.”
“It looks like it.”
“Well, take your time.”
“I can’t. My job is over. My money will stop coming in. I shall start having to worry about the laundry.” He trod on the accelerator with a sudden pang of hatred and despair, hatred for laundry and the thought of Craxton Street which it brought, despair that he would inevitably be back in the world of the kitchen sink again, whatever happened. “I think I hate laundry more than anything in the world,” he said.
“More than Grandma?” said Diane, lightly.
“Oh, yes, much more. Eddie was right about one thing. Things are worse than people. You can hate people and get some satisfaction from it. But hating things—you end up hating yourself.”
“O.K.,” she said. “Now can we try and pretend that nothing’s happened? I want you to like Mom, Harold.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “It’s getting harder every minute to forgive her for leaving you to the mercies of that old woman, though. But I’ll try.”
“I forgave her long ago,” said Diane. She gazed at the mountains. “She did what you said, Harold. She knows what it’s like to have committed suicide. She was married to my father. I can forgive her almost anything.”
They drove on through the calm dry country, past dry lakes, burnt-up grass, towns called Elsinore and Wildomar, then on to the main road, to Escondido. They talked little, but they sat close together, and Harold found himself content simply to be near, to be touching. Dangerfield had talked about living for the present. Well, he was doing that, he was certainly doing that.
San Diego was swelteringly hot. The Campanellas had been delighted to see them, and Tony, Diane’s stepfather, insisted on taking Harold out to Fort Rosecrans to see the view of the harbour with the naval dockyards, over to Coronado, with its magnificent and enormous old frame hotel. They stood on top of a cliff, and Harold wished he was at the bottom, swimming in the water, hiding from the sun beneath the swells. Diane had stayed with her mother to help with the kids and have a comfortable chat.
Tony was a swarthy laughing man, who looked as though he liked to eat and drink well and often. Two large hairy hands waved in the air, then settled on his paunch. They patted the paunch affectionately when they weren’t making gestures. He put an arm round Harold’s shoulders and said, “Hey, but it’s good up here. That stinking city, you can’t breathe there. But here,” and the free hand made a wide sweep of the harbour and ocean, “you can breathe.” He breathed in and out exaggeratedly two or three times, while Harold wondered at the expansion of his chest.
“You’re one lucky boy, Harold,” he said. He spoke with an absolutely American accent, but his grammar was somehow still immigrant. “Diane’s a swell girl. You’re a really lucky boy.”
“I’m just a good friend of Diane’s,” said Harold. “I may be going home to England soon.”
“You should stay,” said Tony. “This is a great country. What do you want to go home for?”
It was too complicated to say. Harold didn’t really know himself. It just seemed that there was no point in staying, that he had tried and failed to bend America to his wishes, that America was too strong for him, and made him feel inadequate, that he wasn’t up to it.
“I have my family,” he said, as though his family had anything to do with it.
“Ah, your family,” said Tony. “Well, it is a hard thing to leave your family. My father, when he came to the United States, he wished only to make some dough, then go home. But he died before he had made enough dough, and by that time I was an American kid. But I write still to my aunts and uncles and cousins in Regina, though I have never seen them. And I send them a little money when I can afford it. They send me photographs of all my relations that I have never seen.”
“I think that’s wonderful,” said Harold.
“It’s all right,” said Tony. “But will my children do the same? They cannot even speak Italian. When we go to an Italian restaurant, I have to translate the menu for them. They are Americans. My wife is an American. I am an American. It is only because of my father that I write still to Italy.”
“Well, it has to happen some time,” said Harold.
“That’s right,” said Tony, clapping him on the shoulder. “It does not take long to become an American. You could become one very soon. There is no difficulty with the quota for the English. For the Italians, it is hard. You wait, wait, wait. And then you are allowed to enter the country. It was different when my father came here.”
There didn’t seem anything to say to that. Harold watched some gulls wheeling over the cliff, and a submarine making its way out to sea.
“You’re sure you’re going home?” said Tony. “Diane has never brought any of her friends here before. Her mother is very fond of her, but we don’t see her much. It is too far, Los Angeles, and besides, she has a new family now. I would have liked for Diane to live with us, but her grandmother——Mrs Washburn is a woman who does not argue. She acts. So Diane did not come to live with us. And Diane’s father, he is no good, a wastrel.”
“I’ve never met him,” said Harold.
“You’ve missed nothing. He would probably not wish to see you. If Diane has a father now, it is myself.”
“Yes,” said Harold. “I think that’s probably true.”
“So,” said Tony, “I ask you these questions. I feel I must know what you and Diane are to each other. Do you love her?”
“I suppose so. It doesn’t really make any difference. Diane won’t marry me till her grandmother dies.”
“If you love her, you must wait. Mrs Washburn cannot live for ever. She is an old woman.”
“Diane says that she will never die. She certainly doesn’t look as though she’ll ever die. And I think Diane is very fond of her. She has been mother and father to her, really, in spite of everything. Diane looks after her, and I think perhaps she looks after Diane, too. Don’t you think?”
“I don’t understand,” said Tony.
“Well, Diane is a very beautiful girl. If she had wanted to marry, she could easily have done so before now. I don’t think she minded very much when her grandmother frightened the boys away when they got serious.”
“So she has frightened you away, too, Harold?”
“Not yet. Not quite. But if I delivered an ultimatum to Diane, if I said she must marry me now and forget her grandmother, she would say no. She’s said it already. I don’t think she wants to get married. I think she’s happy in a sad sort of way, living up there at the end of the canyon. Some people prefer not to be in the main stream of things.”
“You may be right,” said Tony. “She should have lived with us. Living with an old woman is not good for a young girl.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“But you are not prepared to deliver this ultimatum, Harold? You are not prepared to ask her to leave with you?”
“I’ve delivered it, Mr Campanella. She says I must wait. And I’m not prepared to spend a lot of time hanging around, waiting for Mrs Washburn to die.”
“If you are really in love,” said Tony, “then time means nothing. You can go away and live your life and wait for the old woman to die, th
en you can come back.”
“I suppose so. I hadn’t thought of it, actually. I’m not sure if I’m that sort of person.”
“It is what my father did,” said Tony. “He waited in the United States five years. He was a poor man in Italy, very poor. And in America he was still a poor man, but not so poor. And after five years he had saved enough money to send my mother the ticket to New York. She had waited for him. He had waited till he was able to bring her over.”
“It’s not a question of money,” said Harold.
“Money, an old woman, what is the difference?”
“If Diane loved me, she would marry me. But she doesn’t. I don’t think she can love anyone. Subconsciously she wants to stay with her grandmother.”
“Subconsciously?” said Tony. “Bah to subconsciously. You love or you do not love.”
“Then she doesn’t love,” said Harold.
“I am sorry,” said Tony gently. “I think you are probably a nice kid, Harold. And she is a nice girl, too. I think you are probably wrong about her. But if that is the way you feel, then you had better go back to England, go back home. There are other girls in the world.”
“It’s nice of you to take it like that,” said Harold.
“I have seen something of life,” said Tony, rather pompously. “I know what I’m talking about.”
They watched the ships for a few minutes more, then they went back to the Campanellas’ house, Tony driving with a mixture of dangerous dash and still more dangerous dawdle, his hands frequently off the wheel as he talked about San Diego and what a good town it was to live in.
There were eight Campanella children, and they ran round the large house in a minimum of clothing, shouting and screaming and generally making life difficult for serious conversation. Diane’s mother seemed not to notice the confusion, and Tony clearly enjoyed and encouraged it. Mrs Campanella sat in the kitchen preparing vegetables for dinner, occasionally making a half-hearted swipe at a child that got in her way or tried to eat what it wasn’t supposed to eat. Her pregnancy was just beginning to show, and she made no effort to hide it, wiping her hands on her overall where it was loose above her belly. There was the unmistakable smell of young children in the house, of excretion and washing-powder and drying diapers. Harold didn’t like the smell much, but he recognized it as necessary and inevitable. Diane seemed to enjoy it, rather, and played with her half-brothers and -sisters with a happy absorption that brought a slight flush to her cheeks. It was sad to watch her being so happy with someone else’s children, thought Harold, and all the sadder that they were her mother’s and that she was playing the aunt, the spinster aunt. She was much too young for the role. It didn’t make sense. She had made Harold stop at a supermarket on the outskirts of San Diego to buy a small present for each child, and the way she had chosen the presents made her seem the disappointed younger sister of her mother, not the beautiful oldest daughter. She had fussed like an old maid over the toys, dithering and dickering, and for a moment she had been quite alien from the fresh direct girl of the Beach Club or the sharp-witted girl of the drive-in diner.
But perhaps these thoughts were misleading, perhaps he was imagining all this, because he had talked to Tony on the cliff-top and had felt about her in a particular way at that particular time. Feelings came and went, and no one feeling was more valid than any other when you were in love. If he was in love. Even that now seemed doubtful.
While they waited for the early dinner, after which Harold and Diane were to drive home to Los Angeles, he watched her with her mother. Diane could be so many things, but here she was simple enough, trying to help, trying to manage the children, trying in every way to show her mother that she loved her and wanted to be loved in return. But Mrs Campanella seemed not to notice. She accepted the things Diane handed her without thanks, paid no attention to Diane’s success in reducing the volume of childish noise, and seemed quite unaware that her daughter was going out of her way to be nice.
“You’re not overdoing it, are you, Mom?” said Diane on one occasion.
Mrs Campanella looked surprised. “Why, no, honey, you know me. I never overdo things. The doctor says I’m one of the strongest women he’s ever seen.”
One of the miracles of modern science, Harold thought to himself wryly.
“Here, let me do that,” said Diane, taking a pan from her mother and stretching up to put it on its shelf.
“I can manage,” said Mrs Campanella.
The more Diane tried, the less she seemed to achieve. After a while her mother said, “Why don’t you and Harold go and sit on the porch, Diane? I can get on in here better when I’m alone. It makes me nervous, having all you people watching.”
They went out on the porch. Tony was on the lawn fiddling with a sprinkler and joking with his two eldest boys, squirting them playfully to make them squeal with delight. At any moment Harold expected the whole family to come out and take a shower on the lawn; it was the sort of thing a large rowdy family like the Campanellas could do without any selfconsciousness, and without a thought for the neighbours.
“You have a nice trip?” said Diane.
“Yes,” said Harold. “We looked at the harbour, and then we looked through glasses at the hotel where Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe were all so funny.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of wonderful, isn’t it? I guess it’s the last old frame hotel on the west coast.”
“Did you have a nice talk with your mother?”
“Oh, yes, it was fine. She wanted to know if we were engaged or anything.”
“So did your stepfather.”
“I said I guessed we weren’t.”
“I said something like that, too. It seems a pity, in a way, but there it is.”
She looked sharply at him and said, “What’s the matter with you now, Harold?”
“Nothing’s the matter. Tony seemed to think I ought to go away and make my fortune and come back and collect you when Grandma dies.” He paused and watched the scene on the lawn. A large dog, also part of the Campanella household, was barking furiously at the sprinkler. What Harold and Diane were saying couldn’t have been heard by anyone. “I told him I didn’t think I was that kind of person.”
“I told Mom you were just a friend.”
“Just friends, just good friends?” said Harold. “Not quite, not quite so pat, Diane. I love you, if I’ve ever loved anyone. I just don’t happen to be the sort of person who can sit around and wait while you waste the best years of both our lives looking after your grandmother.”
“It’s not a waste,” she said angrily. “Just because she’s old doesn’t mean she hasn’t as much right to live as you or I.”
“I didn’t say that. I just think she doesn’t have the right to live at your and my expense, which is the way you want it.’’
“That’s selfish, Harold.”
“I think it’s you who’s being selfish, actually, if anyone is. I don’t think you want to get away from her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter, darling.”
“It does matter. I said I have obligations to her, and they mean more than anything I owe myself. How does that make me selfish?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Listen, Harold, you can’t just say a thing like that and then leave it. Let’s get it cleared up, right now.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. All right. If you feel you owe her more than you owe yourself, all right. But what about me? What about any of the people who may want to marry you? It’s not selfish to want to marry the girl you love. I don’t think you really ever want your grandmother to die. Because if she died you would be free, and then you wouldn’t know what to do. You don’t want to be free. You don’t want to live a normal married life, like your mother’s. You’re probably frightened of having children or something.”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “Of course I want to have kids. I love Mom’s family.”
; “Quite. Because they are here, and the youngest ones could well be your own, you feel you don’t have to have any of your own. Wait a minute, I got that muddled.”
“I understood,” she said. “After we get back tonight, Harold, you needn’t hang around any more. If that’s what you think about me, and you say you’re in love with me, then the hell with you and the hell with love, and I don’t want any part in it.”
“I think that will suit both of us,” said Harold. He hadn’t meant to say all that, but it was too late now.
“You’re nuts,” said Diane. “Where on earth did you get all that stuff, anyway? From your friend Eddie?”
“Eddie’s dead. He was killed yesterday in that big smash on the San Diego Freeway.”
“Gee, I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to think about it, to be honest.”
“That’s terrible, really terrible. It’s awful.”
“He was speeding in the wrong lane in a stolen car. I don’t see what else he deserved.”
“You mustn’t say that, Harold. He was a screwball, but he had some kind of interesting ideas. He was alive, too, you could feel it. Kookie, but alive.”
For a moment he thought he might tell her about Chuck and his grief the previous evening. Then he decided against it. Eddie and Diane should never have met, to start with. And he wasn’t going to let Eddie get between him and Diane, befuddling the truth with a wash of sentimental thoughts about early death.
He was too late, though, to stop it.
“You should have told me, honey,” said Diane. “No wonder you’re saying all those things. I knew something must be wrong.”
“I was telling the truth, that was all.”
“No, you’re real upset, I can see that. I’m sorry, Harold, really I am. Let’s forget what we said just now, O.K.?”
“All right,” said Harold wearily. They seemed to move from one false position to another. But it would make the drive home a lot easier, there was that to be said for it.
Tony mixed some Martinis, which he called “knock-out drops”, and they drank them standing on the porch. Harold and Diane were manœuvred together, so that Tony and Eleanor, as Mrs Campanella was called, could watch them. Harold felt embarrassed and false, but it was too late to try and get at the truth, or to try and explain it to anyone. To leave L.A. wouldn’t be flight, it wouldn’t be surrender, or not only flight and surrender; it would also be the most graceful way out of an impossible situation.
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