Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Going over it again brought Helen nearer, and in the white, soft light that steals upon half sleep near morning he found himself talking to her again. She said that he was perfectly right about Honoria and that she wanted Honoria to be with him. She said she was glad he was being good and doing better. She said a lot of other things--very friendly things--but she was in a swing in a white dress, and swinging faster and faster all the time, so that at the end he could not hear clearly all that she said.

  IV

  He woke up feeling happy. The door of the world was open again. He made plans, vistas, futures for Honoria and himself, but suddenly he grew sad, remembering all the plans he and Helen had made. She had not planned to die. The present was the thing--work to do and someone to love. But not to love too much, for he knew the injury that a father can do to a daughter or a mother to a son by attaching them too closely: afterward, out in the world, the child would seek in the marriage partner the same blind tenderness and, failing probably to find it, turn against love and life.

  It was another bright, crisp day. He called Lincoln Peters at the bank where he worked and asked if he could count on taking Honoria when he left for Prague. Lincoln agreed that there was no reason for delay. One thing--the legal guardianship. Marion wanted to retain that a while longer. She was upset by the whole matter, and it would oil things if she felt that the situation was still in her control for another year. Charlie agreed, wanting only the tangible, visible child.

  Then the question of a governess. Charlie sat in a gloomy agency and talked to a cross Béarnaise and to a buxom Breton peasant, neither of whom he could have endured. There were others whom he would see tomorrow.

  He lunched with Lincoln Peters at Griffons, trying to keep down his exultation.

  “There’s nothing quite like your own child,” Lincoln said. “But you understand how Marion feels too.”

  “She’s forgotten how hard I worked for seven years there,” Charlie said. “She just remembers one night.”

  “There’s another thing.” Lincoln hesitated. “While you and Helen were tearing around Europe throwing money away, we were just getting along. I didn’t touch any of the prosperity because I never got ahead enough to carry anything but my insurance. I think Marion felt there was some kind of injustice in it--you not even working toward the end, and getting richer and richer.”

  “It went just as quick as it came,” said Charlie.

  “Yes, a lot of it stayed in the hands of chasseurs and saxophone players and maîtres d’hôtel--well, the big party’s over now. I just said that to explain Marion’s feeling about those crazy years. If you drop in about six o’clock tonight before Marion’s too tired, we’ll settle the details on the spot.”

  Back at his hotel, Charlie found a pneumatique that had been redirected from the Ritz bar where Charlie had left his address for the purpose of finding a certain man.

  DEAR CHARLIE: You were so strange when we saw you the other day that I wondered if I did something to offend you. If so, I’m not conscious of it. In fact, I have thought about you too much for the last year, and it’s always been in the back of my mind that I might see you if I came over here. We did have such good times that crazy spring, like the night you and I stole the butcher’s tricycle, and the time we tried to call on the president and you had the old derby rim and the wire cane. Everybody seems so old lately, but I don’t feel old a bit. Couldn’t we get together some time today for old time’s sake? I’ve got a vile hang-over for the moment, but will be feeling better this afternoon and will look for you about five in the sweat-shop at the Ritz.

  Always devotedly,

  LORRAINE.

  His first feeling was one of awe that he had actually, in his mature years, stolen a tricycle and pedalled Lorraine all over the Étoile between the small hours and dawn. In retrospect it was a nightmare. Locking out Helen didn’t fit in with any other act of his life, but the tricycle incident did--it was one of many. How many weeks or months of dissipation to arrive at that condition of utter irresponsibility?

  He tried to picture how Lorraine had appeared to him then--very attractive; Helen was unhappy about it, though she said nothing. Yesterday, in the restaurant, Lorraine had seemed trite, blurred, worn away. He emphatically did not want to see her, and he was glad Alix had not given away his hotel address. It was a relief to think, instead, of Honoria, to think of Sundays spent with her and of saying good morning to her and of knowing she was there in his house at night, drawing her breath in the darkness.

  At five he took a taxi and bought presents for all the Peters--a piquant cloth doll, a box of Roman soldiers, flowers for Marion, big linen handkerchiefs for Lincoln.

  He saw, when he arrived in the apartment, that Marion had accepted the inevitable. She greeted him now as though he were a recalcitrant member of the family, rather than a menacing outsider. Honoria had been told she was going; Charlie was glad to see that her tact made her conceal her excessive happiness. Only on his lap did she whisper her delight and the question “When?” before she slipped away with the other children.

  He and Marion were alone for a minute in the room, and on an impulse he spoke out boldly:

  “Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material. I wish you and I could be on better terms.”

  “Some things are hard to forget,” she answered. “It’s a question of confidence.” There was no answer to this and presently she asked, “When do you propose to take her?”

  “As soon as I can get a governess. I hoped the day after tomorrow.”

  “That’s impossible. I’ve got to get her things in shape. Not before Saturday.”

  He yielded. Coming back into the room, Lincoln offered him a drink.

  “I’ll take my daily whisky,” he said.

  It was warm here, it was a home, people together by a fire. The children felt very safe and important; the mother and father were serious, watchful. They had things to do for the children more important than his visit here. A spoonful of medicine was, after all, more important than the strained relations between Marion and himself. They were not dull people, but they were very much in the grip of life and circumstances. He wondered if he couldn’t do something to get Lincoln out of his rut at the bank.

  A long peal at the door-bell; the bonne à tout faire passed through and went down the corridor. The door opened upon another long ring, and then voices, and the three in the salon looked up expectantly; Lincoln moved to bring the corridor within his range of vision, and Marion rose. Then the maid came back along the corridor, closely followed by the voices, which developed under the light into Duncan Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles.

  They were gay, they were hilarious, they were roaring with laughter. For a moment Charlie was astounded; unable to understand how they ferreted out the Peters’ address.

  “Ah-h-h!” Duncan wagged his finger roguishly at Charlie. “Ah-h-h!”

  They both slid down another cascade of laughter. Anxious and at a loss, Charlie shook hands with them quickly and presented them to Lincoln and Marion. Marion nodded, scarcely speaking. She had drawn back a step toward the fire; her little girl stood beside her, and Marion put an arm about her shoulder.

  With growing annoyance at the intrusion, Charlie waited for them to explain themselves. After some concentration Duncan said:

  “We came to invite you out to dinner. Lorraine and I insist that all this shishi, cagy business ‘bout your address got to stop.”

  Charlie came closer to them, as if to force them backward down the corridor.

  “Sorry, but I can’t. Tell me where you’ll be and I’ll phone you in half an hour.”

  This made no impression. Lorraine sat down suddenly on the side of a chair, and focussing her eyes on Richard, cried, “Oh, what a nice little boy! Come here, little boy.” Richard glanced at his mother, but did not move. With a percept
ible shrug of her shoulders, Lorraine turned back to Charlie:

  “Come and dine. Sure your cousins won’ mine. See you so sel’om. Or solemn.”

  “I can’t,” said Charlie sharply. “You two have dinner and I’ll phone you.”

  Her voice became suddenly unpleasant. “All right, we’ll go. But I remember once when you hammered on my door at four A.M. I was enough of a good sport to give you a drink. Come on, Dunc.”

  Still in slow motion, with blurred, angry faces, with uncertain feet, they retired along the corridor.

  “Good night,” Charlie said.

  “Good night!” responded Lorraine emphatically.

  When he went back into the salon Marion had not moved, only now her son was standing in the circle of her other arm. Lincoln was still swinging Honoria back and forth like a pendulum from side to side.

  “What an outrage!” Charlie broke out. “What an absolute outrage!” Neither of them answered. Charlie dropped into an armchair, picked up his drink, set it down again and said:

  “People I haven’t seen for two years having the colossal nerve--”

  He broke off. Marion had made the sound “Oh!” in one swift, furious breath, turned her body from him with a jerk and left the room.

  Lincoln set down Honoria carefully.

  “You children go in and start your soup,” he said, and when they obeyed, he said to Charlie:

  “Marion’s not well and she can’t stand shocks. That kind of people make her really physically sick.”

  “I didn’t tell them to come here. They wormed your name out of somebody. They deliberately--”

  “Well, it’s too bad. It doesn’t help matters. Excuse me a minute.”

  Left alone, Charlie sat tense in his chair. In the next room he could hear the children eating, talking in monosyllables, already oblivious to the scene between their elders. He heard a murmur of conversation from a farther room and then the ticking bell of a telephone receiver picked up, and in a panic he moved to the other side of the room and out of earshot.

  In a minute Lincoln came back. “Look here, Charlie. I think we’d better call off dinner for tonight. Marion’s in bad shape.”

  “Is she angry with me?”

  “Sort of,” he said, almost roughly. “She’s not strong and--”

  “You mean she’s changed her mind about Honoria?”

  “She’s pretty bitter right now. I don’t know. You phone me at the bank tomorrow.”

  “I wish you’d explain to her I never dreamed these people would come here. I’m just as sore as you are.”

  “I couldn’t explain anything to her now.”

  Charlie got up. He took his coat and hat and started down the corridor. Then he opened the door of the dining room and said in a strange voice, “Good night, children.”

  Honoria rose and ran around the table to hug him.

  “Good night, sweetheart,” he said vaguely, and then trying to make his voice more tender, trying to conciliate something, “Good night, dear children.”

  V

  Charlie went directly to the Ritz bar with the furious idea of finding Lorraine and Duncan, but they were not there, and he realized that in any case there was nothing he could do. He had not touched his drink at the Peters’, and now he ordered a whisky-and-soda. Paul came over to say hello.

  “It’s a great change,” he said sadly. “We do about half the business we did. So many fellows I hear about back in the States lost everything, maybe not in the first crash, but then in the second. Your friend George Hardt lost every cent, I hear. Are you back in the States?”

  “No, I’m in business in Prague.”

  “I heard that you lost a lot in the crash.”

  “I did,” and he added grimly, “but I lost everything I wanted in the boom.”

  “Selling short.”

  “Something like that.”

  Again the memory of those days swept over him like a nightmare--the people they had met travelling; then people who couldn’t add a row of figures or speak a coherent sentence. The little man Helen had consented to dance with at the ship’s party, who had insulted her ten feet from the table; the women and girls carried screaming with drink or drugs out of public places--

  --The men who locked their wives out in the snow, because the snow of twenty-nine wasn’t real snow. If you didn’t want it to be snow, you just paid some money.

  He went to the phone and called the Peters’ apartment; Lincoln answered.

  “I called up because this thing is on my mind. Has Marion said anything definite?”

  “Marion’s sick,” Lincoln answered shortly. “I know this thing isn’t altogether your fault, but I can’t have her go to pieces about it. I’m afraid we’ll have to let it slide for six months; I can’t take the chance of working her up to this state again.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry, Charlie.”

  He went back to his table. His whisky glass was empty, but he shook his head when Alix looked at it questioningly. There wasn’t much he could do now except send Honoria some things; he would send her a lot of things tomorrow. He thought rather angrily that this was just money--he had given so many people money. . . .

  “No, no more,” he said to another waiter. “What do I owe you?”

  He would come back some day; they couldn’t make him pay forever. But he wanted his child, and nothing was much good now, beside that fact. He wasn’t young any more, with a lot of nice thoughts and dreams to have by himself. He was absolutely sure Helen wouldn’t have wanted him to be so alone.

  THE PAT HOBBY STORIES

  The 17 short stories in this collection were first published by Arnold Gingrich of Esquire magazine between January 1940 and May 1941, and later collected in a volume in 1962. The last installments in Esquire were published posthumously, as Fitzgerald passed away in 1940.

  The tales concern Pat Hobby, a down-and-out screenwriter in Hollywood, who was once successful in the silent age of cinema, but now reduced to an alcoholic hack plaguing the studio lot. Many of the stories are based on Fitzgerald’s own experiences in Hollywood as a screenwriter.

  Scott and his wife Zelda, mid 1920s

  CONTENTS

  PAT HOBBY’S CHRISTMAS WISH

  A MAN IN THE WAY

  “BOIL SOME WATER--LOTS OF IT”

  TEAMED WITH GENIUS

  PAT HOBBY AND ORSON WELLES

  PAT HOBBY’S SECRET

  PAT HOBBY, PUTATIVE FATHER

  THE HOMES OF THE STARS

  PAT HOBBY DOES HIS BIT

  PAT HOBBY’S PREVIEW

  NO HARM TRYING

  A PATRIOTIC SHORT

  ON THE TRAIL OF PAT HOBBY

  FUN IN AN ARTIST’S STUDIO

  TWO OLD-TIMERS

  MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD

  PAT HOBBY’S COLLEGE DAYS

  PAT HOBBY’S CHRISTMAS WISH

  Esquire (January 1940)

  I

  It was Christmas Eve in the studio. By eleven o’clock in the morning, Santa Claus had called on most of the huge population according to each one’s deserts.

  Sumptuous gifts from producers to stars, and from agents to producers arrived at offices and studio bungalows: on every stage one heard of the roguish gifts of casts to directors or directors to casts; champagne had gone out from publicity office to the press. And tips of fifties, tens and fives from producers, directors and writers fell like manna upon the white collar class.

  In this sort of transaction there were exceptions. Pat Hobby, for example, who knew the game from twenty years’ experience, had had the idea of getting rid of his secretary the day before. They were sending over a new one any minute--but she would scarcely expect a present the first day.

  Waiting for her, he walked the corridor, glancing into open offices for signs of life. He stopped to chat with Joe Hopper from the scenario department.

  ‘Not like the old days,’ he mourned, ‘Then there was a bottle on every desk.’

  ‘There’re a fe
w around.’

  ‘Not many.’ Pat sighed. ‘And afterwards we’d run a picture--made up out of cutting-room scraps.’

  ‘I’ve heard. All the suppressed stuff,’ said Hopper.

  Pat nodded, his eyes glistening.

  ‘Oh, it was juicy. You darned near ripped your guts laughing--’

  He broke off as the sight of a woman, pad in hand, entering his office down the hall recalled him to the sorry present.

  ‘Gooddorf has me working over the holiday,’ he complained bitterly.

  ‘I wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t either except my four weeks are up next Friday, and if I bucked him he wouldn’t extend me.’

  As he turned away Hopper knew that Pat was not being extended anyhow. He had been hired to script an old-fashioned horse-opera and the boys who were ‘writing behind him’--that is working over his stuff--said that all of it was old and some didn’t make sense.

  ‘I’m Miss Kagle,’ said Pat’s new secretary.

  She was about thirty-six, handsome, faded, tired, efficient. She went to the typewriter, examined it, sat down and burst into sobs.