On Green Dolphin Street

by Sebastian Faulks

  Eventually, they reached Chatham Square, a confluence of nine streets, whose buildings still looked unused to the sunlight admitted by the slum clearance of the neighboring green and the removal of its elevated train tracks. One street led south to the financial district, another north into the belly of Chinatown.

  “Imagine the view you’d get on the train,” said Frank. “You could look into people’s front rooms in Harlem or Brooklyn. You could see them working, women in sweatshops, men in factories, the guy alone in the office at night, fiddling the books. Then you’d see the East River or maybe the sun setting on the Chrysler Building. And right here underneath, almost in the dark, there’d be movie theaters and newspaper sellers, florists, bums. And up on the platforms there were little frame houses, you know a hundred years old with gables, kind of like England, I guess.”

  Mary had begun to laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Maybe you had to be here.”

  “I think maybe I did.” She touched his arm lest he should take offense. “But it does sound charming.”

  Frank looked at his watch. “Listen. I’ll take you to lunch. Do you like fish? Ever had shad roe? Or a kippered herring?”

  “Kippers? We used to have them every Friday breakfast when I was a child.”

  “Come on, then.”

  “But I didn’t really like them.”

  “Me neither. Too many bones.”

  “Do we ever take a taxi in this tour?”

  “No, it’s just down on South Street, by the market. Maybe after lunch.”

  Frank took her beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to a building near the waterfront. While he organized a table and went to make a telephone call, she walked through to the women’s room at the back, which was down an unplastered brick corridor. The door handle was missing, though the tiled surfaces inside seemed clean enough, and she took some minutes to comb her hair and fix her makeup.

  When she returned, she found that Frank had ordered her a glass of water and a dry martini. Across the street, they could see the huge open sheds of Fulton Market which disappeared off the edge of the island, their outer parts supported by piles deep in the East River. It was almost one o’clock, and activity was beginning to dwindle; the porters were pushing empty trolleys and men in rubber aprons were starting to hose down the floor.

  “You like clams?” said Frank, looking at a board on the wall where the menu was chalked.

  “What’s good here?” said Mary, avoiding the clam question.

  “Anything’s fine, so long as it’s fish. Why don’t we get some crab?”

  “Good idea.”

  Mary was relieved to be sitting down at last, and surreptitiously eased off her shoes beneath the table: the giant square paving slabs of Manhattan had drained the life from her calves and heels. She lit a cigarette and offered the pack to Frank, who was stirring his drink with the end of his fork, since the restaurant had not run to swizzle sticks; he managed to make the same rapid sequence of sounds she had noticed in Georgetown.

  There was a change in the atmosphere as the table required them, for the first time that day, to look one another in the eye. Mary was worried that, without the life of the streets to comment on, Frank might become bored by her company.

  “So,” she said, “tell me about your work. Why aren’t you traveling somewhere if you’re on holiday?”

  “I don’t care much for vacations. I travel a good deal for work, so if I get the chance I like to stay in New York.” He drained the glass and put it back on the table. “Also, I don’t want to miss anything. I think I told you I’m trying to get onto the election. Time’s running out and I don’t want to miss a break if it comes along.”

  “I see. And were you reporting on politics before you did whatever it was you did wrong?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. I did the Eisenhower-Stevenson election in ’52. I guess that was the beginning of the problem. Eisenhower did this terrible thing in Milwaukee right at the end of the campaign. He rewrote his speech to please McCarthy. The local governor, a guy named Kohler, was frightened that if Eisenhower said good things about General Marshall, who McCarthy was trying to make out as some sort of Red, then McCarthy would make trouble for him. So Kohler got Ike to cut all the Marshall stuff out and Ike embraced McCarthy on the platform. But Marshall was not only a fine man, he had virtually created Ike as a politician, and here was Eisenhower crawling to this toad McCarthy who was trying to ruin Marshall. It was a terrible moment.”

  “But why on earth would Eisenhower be so frightened of McCarthy?”

  “He was trying to please Kohler, the local Republican. But everyone was frightened of McCarthy, all the politicians. He showed he could get them beaten at the polls if he backed the other candidate. In the end it was as simple as that. They were scared of losing their seats. No one really believed all those Communist accusations. Not even Nixon.”

  “Did you meet McCarthy?”

  “Sure, he was a very friendly guy. He loved journalists. The press made him, by reporting his fantasies, so he was always buying drinks. I mean, really a lot of drinks. You know he died of cirrhosis? But it wasn’t just trying to buy our friendship, he liked being one of the guys. He liked getting drunk with other men. I remember he ran a tab at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee. Unbelievable.”

  “So he was an alcoholic?”

  “I guess so. He was kind of amusing to be with, to pass an hour with. I think he didn’t like women. He preferred men, if you see what I mean.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “That’s where we parted company. That and the question of these Communists.”

  “So what happened? You said that was where the problem began.”

  While Frank was explaining, the waiter brought the crabs with a bowl of mayonnaise and some ketchup in small paper cups. Frank told her that the FBI had helped to create the fog of distrust in which McCarthy had worked; knowing people were ready to spy on their neighbors, the Bureau had been able to accumulate files on individuals who had only the most circumstantial connection with any left-wing activity—a foreign name, the purchase of a magazine, a wrong friend. Hardly any were believing Communists, but all were afraid of being reported, denounced and barred from work, knowing that they would not be offered a chance to defend themselves.

  “They mounted a big attack on the press,” said Frank. “Agents would just turn up at an office and tell the editor who to fire. I wrote a story about Eisenhower’s speech. I’d been told by one of his aides how he’d cut out the pro-Marshall stuff. Even his own staff was appalled. My editor got a call a week or so later from the FBI. I was one of half a dozen reporters he was told to keep an eye on. He just told them to get lost, so I was okay for the time being.”

  “The FBI came to your paper just because you’d been rude about McCarthy?”

  “Pretty much. They could turn up at a newspaper or even a women’s magazine and tell the editor to fire someone and that was it. McCarthy and the FBI worked hand in glove. Hoover fed McCarthy a lot of material. McCarthy had this famous sidekick, Roy Cohn, a revolting man, and Hoover was right up his ass. Pardon me.”

  Frank looked momentarily embarrassed, and Mary found herself smiling at his attack of decorum.

  “I remember Cohn,” she said. “But if your editor stood up for you, what finally went wrong?”

  “I’ll tell you about it another time.”

  “But you weren’t a sympathizer in any way?”

  “Christ, no, Mary. I’m a reporter, I’m not a political guy. I mean, sometimes I don’t vote, or maybe I’ll have met one of the candidates and vote for him. The first time I ever went to the polls I voted Republican. I was sixteen years old and they came to my part of Chicago and handed out voting cards. All the kids on my block voted for Landon, not Roosevelt. They’d enfranchised us. So why not?”

  As Frank continued to talk, waving a crab leg, then cracking it at the joint, Mary watched his face in an absent sort of way. She had never, she thought, met an
yone with eyes of quite his color: they were pale blue, but round the edges of the irises were splinters of brown, like shards of cracked cobnut. Beneath the eyes, where the skin was discolored with fatigue, she could just make out a handful of faded freckles of the same pale brown. She wondered what he had looked like as a boy, whether the freckles had bloomed then in soft skin, like Richard’s.

  The other thing she kept noticing was that, however much he disavowed any political belief, there seemed to be a sinewy sense in his conversation of right and wrong; he appeared indignant about certain things, committed to others. She wondered if he had inherited a Catholic morality from his family, but it didn’t seem to be a spiritual quality; she had the feeling that, however droll and dismissive his way of concealing it, there were a number of things he wanted to see done, by himself or others.

  After lunch they took a taxi uptown to the Met, and at about four o’clock Mary was overcome by a desire to sleep. Frank took her back to the hotel.

  “Well, thank you,” said Mary, as he went round the cab and opened her door. “I enjoyed the tour.”

  There was a moment of unease.

  “Good,” said Frank.

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, we could do the second part of the tour tomorrow.”

  “It has two parts?”

  “It has a number of parts.”

  “I’d better see what Charlie’s doing.”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you certain it wouldn’t be a nuisance for you?”

  Frank’s answer was lost beneath the driver’s shouted question: “You coming, pal?”

  “I’ll call you,” said Frank, walking round the back of the car.

  Mary went through the swing doors. It was pleasant to have some company when sightseeing, she thought; you could go into bars and cafés without being stared at as a lone woman; it was good to have this fallback for the next day if nothing else was required of her.

  Up in the room, she took off her shoes and skirt and curled up on the bed. She began to read her book, then found herself drifting off: the traffic noise from the street became part of an almost-dream, a pleasing sound track to the static images of no particular significance that were for her always the gateway to sleep: a tree, a gate, the corner of a house. The half-slip she was wearing could not prevent a draft reaching her legs and she pulled a cover over her, as, with her dark hair loose over the hotel pillow, she fell asleep.

  She awoke when Charlie came back into the room. He leaned over to kiss her and lost his footing, so that he collapsed beside her on the bed, leaking fumes of alcohol. Mary sat up and stroked the hair back from his forehead.

  “Are you all right, darling?”

  “Boring bloody day. Christ, it’s so bloody boring.”

  It was an art, knowing whether Charlie should be indulged, rebuked or put to bed, but it was one in which Mary was practiced. It was a failure to her if he could not be made to have dinner, but would only curl up with a bottle, rebuffing her attempts at friendliness. She decided to leave him where he was while she took a bath; sometimes a short sleep could pull him back onto the main line of the day, especially if followed by a shower and a large scotch on the rocks.

  Mary sat in the deep tub, moving the hot water up between her legs and round her sides. She felt reinvigorated by her rest and wanted to go out to Chinatown, or Little Italy, or the Village: she didn’t mind what they ate provided she could experience some more of the city. After twenty minutes she climbed out and wrapped herself in a towel. Charlie was where she had left him, snoring softly; Mary put on a robe she found in the bathroom and took him by the shoulder.

  “Get off, leave me alone.”

  “No, darling, you’re coming out. Come on.”

  She gauged that if she could withstand some abuse, Charlie was not so drunk that he could not be persuaded to cooperate.

  “You have a shower and I’ll ring for some ice. When you’ve finished I’ll have clean clothes and a nice drink ready for you.”

  Half an hour later, they were ready to go out, Charlie with hair still damp, but his mood somewhat restored by two large drinks and a cigarette. On Lexington Avenue he hailed a taxi.

  “Where to, bud?” The driver craned round in his seat.

  “Ask the lady.”

  “I don’t know. Greenwich Village. Anywhere down there.”

  They pulled out into the middle lane, where they hit a run of green lights as the cab went loudly downtown, bouncing on the potholes, sounding its horn as it swung from lane to lane to avoid the dithering schmucks, jerks and assholes identified by the driver.

  “This good enough for you?” he said, as they pulled up in Washington Square.

  “Just let me out,” said Charlie.

  “Thank you,” said Mary. “This is fine.”

  As they walked through the square, they noticed a group of young men lined up with their arms entwined through the double-barred iron railing, smoking, watching the people pass by. Although the night had turned cool, they wore only T-shirts, some of them rolled up over biceps; they hung forward from the rail as though captive, yet with a hungry impatience.

  “What are those men doing?” said Mary.

  “Not something that concerns a woman. Where are we going?”

  Mary led him down Sullivan Street for a couple of blocks, then turned left, where the sidewalks glowed under the light of neon signs. There were bakeries and greengrocers still open, bookstores and a low brick building with a circular sign announcing it as the Circle in the Square Theatre. Colored awnings led into various restaurants and bars, and they eventually settled on a corner building with scrubbed wooden floorboards and tables set in candlelit booths.

  As Mary ate her appetizer and looked across the table at his glazed but no longer hostile expression, she found her eyes sting with sorrow. She seldom allowed herself to remember Charlie as he had been when they first met: ebullient, clear-eyed, certain that he could reinvent the world or at least convert it to the invigorating plan he had for it. Nothing in her sorrow affected the love she felt for him or her devotion to their joint cause, the children, their domestic life together on their Washington street—the things he referred to as “1064 and All That.” She felt only an anguished sympathy for what he seemed to suffer and, periodically, a fear that it might have some awful outcome. When she had once confided her anxiety to Katy Renshaw, however, Katy had told her that there was nothing to worry about. Charlie drank only a little more than most men they knew. So what if he went to see a psychoanalyst? Everyone did, particularly in New York. Katy made it sound as though the sky over midtown was a jam of uninterpreted dreams, the drains below the fuming manhole covers a network of suppressed desires. Anyway, Katy said, men like Charlie and Edward were creative, unusually clever guys who needed to be allowed their foibles and their games, like when they tried to catch each other out with lines of poetry they pretended to have read but might instead have made up. Had Mary seen the pleasure in Charlie’s eyes when he had passed off a line of his to Edward as one of Wallace Stevens’s? It was a game; it was all just a game.

  Such was Mary’s temperament that she was inclined to believe her. All would be well, because all usually was well, more or less; and anyway, they were locked together in a common endeavor: dealing with Charlie was part of her life and she would have it no other way.

  “I have to go to Chicago,” said Charlie, pushing a piece of chicken round his plate. “Tomorrow. I have to take a plane from La Guardia at ten o’clock.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t ask. It’s this bloody election. Trouble is, I don’t think I can manage it. The flying.”

  “You’ll be all right, darling. You’ll be fine. Have you got some of your pills with you?”

  “Yes, I have. But I have to take so many that then I can’t perform at the other end.”

  Mary put her hand on his. “Would you like me to come with you?”

  “No, I’d hate that. You stay here.”

&nbs
p; “All right. How long will you be gone?”

  “Two nights. I’ll be back on Thursday. Will you be all right? You can go back to Washington if you like.”

  “I’ll be fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  Charlie lit a cigarette and pushed his plate away. He held his head in his hands. For a moment Mary thought he was crying. Then he wrenched his hands away and pushed back the chair noisily, losing his balance for a moment as he stood up.

  The next morning, in the taxi on the way to La Guardia, Charlie looked pale, and there was a tremor in his hand; but he was also quiet and resigned. Mary suspected that he owed his mood to one of the pills Weissman had prescribed, but knew he would be irritated if she asked. She stood with him on the ramp outside the departure building, checking that he had everything he needed. As she kissed him, she did up the middle button of his jacket, and patted his ribs, as though he were a child. She felt the little death of departure.

  He licked his dry lips, turned, bag in hand, and made off through the revolving door.

  Mary climbed back into the waiting taxi and told the driver to return to the hotel. She wondered how Charlie would manage the flight; she hoped he would not be so doped by the time they landed that he would be incapable of getting off the plane.

  Back inside the hotel, she went to the front desk to collect the key.

  “Mrs. van der Linden?”

  “Yes.”

  “Message for you. A Mr. Renzo called.”

  “Oh. I see. Did he leave a number?”

  “Sure did, ma’am.” The desk clerk held out a piece of paper along with the key.