My American

by Stella Gibbons

  “What kind of a job is it, Lou?” asked Helen.

  “Myron doesn’t know. He said he was down at the station yesterday meeting his cousin who had come out for the day—he’s staying in Alva, the cousin is—and he saw Davy Sawyer. (He’s one of the porters.) And Davy said Francey had taken a ticket to Morgan and she told Franklin Meyer (he’s the man in the ticket office) that Dan had got her a job there. But she wouldn’t say what kind of a job. Franklin and Davy both kidded her along, Myron said, and tried to make her tell, but she wouldn’t.”

  “You’re as good as The Citizen and The Inquirer and The Independent all rolled into one, isn’t she?” Bob indulgently kicked Lou’s slim knee and grinned at the other two. “I wish I could remember my biology half as well as you do, all that blah about Myron’s cousin. I didn’t even know Myron had a cousin. What colour’s his hair?”

  “He’s bald,” she said instantly. “His name’s Peter Pawley and he lives in Westwater, Maine, and he’s down in Alva on a business trip selling a sort of little comb and brush in one—very handy, Myron says it is, only he wouldn’t let his cousin come up here because he might try to sell it to all of us. …”

  By this time the laughter was so loud, less at what Lou was saying than at her expression, that the bridge-players had to call out for silence once more. When they had comparatively got it, Bob asked:

  “Is Dan in Chicago, do you know?”

  “Francey wouldn’t tell. They did try to make her, but she wouldn’t.”

  “He must be quite a big shot by now,” said Bob thoughtfully, taking a cigarette. “I haven’t seen him since we had an evening together at his joint in Detroit, when I was down there the fall before last.”

  “The Ecstasy Club,” murmured Lou.

  “That was it. But it’s not there now; it was raided and closed, and I haven’t seen Francey in months, so I’ve no idea where he is. I’d like to see him again, he was an original sort of guy. Do you know” (to Helen) “I remember one evening I was down at Carrs when he was there, and he was reading a life of Napoleon, just sitting there reading, in a room full of the boys shooting craps!”

  “Vanity,” she said calmly. “Liking to be different. One of the most marked characteristics of the criminal type.”

  “Philo Vance

  Wants a kick in the pants”

  he quoted. “Dan isn’t a criminal type. He’s in the racketeering game because he gets a kick out of it. He isn’t a killer.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know Dan. He wouldn’t kill. He’s kind of cool and thinks it’s all a bit funny.”

  “That’s just the sort that does kill,” she said.

  “Oh, you know all about it, Sister Lombroso, don’t you? Dan’s all right. He sends a packet home to his mother and father every now and then, Francey says.”

  “To keep them from talking,” said Helen.

  “You win, then,” Bob said amiably, getting up. “Dance?”

  As she came towards him, the sight of her lovely faintly-smiling face made him think of another girl’s face, the one he sometimes dreamed about. Last night he had seen it again, floating beside him in blue water; surrounded by waving fine black hair. They were swimming together naked, and the sun was very hot, and he was delightfully, completely happy. Crazy dream. The craziest part of it was that girl’s face. It was real; he would know it again. Sometimes he did not dream about it for months, and forgot it, but it always came back again and he was always pleased to see it—a dear little face, not exactly pretty, yet cute.

  The radio was playing a languid and despairing tune that made one long to slide away slowly, slowly across the shining floor. Bob put his arm round Helen and they moved away together, but before they had got a couple of steps the door opened abruptly and Myron put his head round, saying:

  “Here’s Boone.”

  Everyone looked up with exclamations as Boone came in quickly, brushing snow off himself, and looking round with eyes that glittered in his dissipated young face.

  “Why Boone! It’s lovely to see you.”

  “However did you make it? We only just did, and that was three hours ago!”

  “Boone, where’s Jeanette?”

  The last question, his mother’s, cut quietly across the laughing babel, and he turned to answer it.

  “Gone. She’s left me.”

  “Gone?” echoed everybody, and Lou got up noiselessly from beside the fire and joined the group, staring up at her brother’s wild miserable face.

  “What—gone for good, do you mean?” stammered Irene. Now there would be a scandal just before her spring wedding, the expense of a divorce, trouble and family conferences, her mother in tears, and everybody shooting off their mouths about nothing but Jeanette—Jeanette! The hell with her—I always did hate her, thought Irene.

  “Gone with Dietz,” he said shortly. “Give me a drink, will you?” (Bob went over to the cocktail cabinet and got some brandy. Jeanette! The little——! Walking out on Boone, after all these years!)

  “The usual note,” went on Boone, swallowing the brandy. “Left on the radio. It just said——”

  His face puckered, and he bit his trembling lips savagely, then controlled his voice.

  “… just said he’d got more of what she wanted in every way than I had, so she’s gone with him.”

  “Sit down, son.” Mr. Vorst’s kind handsome face was very red. He gently pushed Boone towards a chair, but Boone shook his head impatiently and turned to his mother.

  “You see I couldn’t make enough, mother, that was the trouble. She wanted such a hell of a lot.”

  “I know, son. Sit down and try to relax a little.” She put her arm around his shaking shoulders, and glancing up met Lou’s interested stare.

  “Lou dear, go right up to bed this minute,” she said quietly. “Helen, take her up, will you, and Bob, will you go along to the kitchen and get Myron to fix something for Boone to eat.”

  Helen put her arm round Lou and the three young people went quickly out of the room.

  “There wasn’t anything to eat at home, except something that had turned sour in the ice-box—she’d left the door open—and the bed wasn’t made—the girl hadn’t turned up, so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I stayed here,” said Boone. “Irene, please go away, will you? I want to talk to Mother and Dad, and I know you always hated her and I don’t want you to hear,” and he hid his face in his hands.

  Irene opened her mouth indignantly, but on receiving four determined jerks of the head from the elders, went meekly to the door, murmuring, “I guess I’ll call up Elenor,” and shut it quietly behind her.

  When Helen had seen Lou into her room and lingered there for five minutes, wisely indulging her with a grown-up discussion of the disaster, she went downstairs into the kitchen. She felt so unhappy about poor Boone’s wretched bloated face and his tears that she longed to work off her feelings by helping in some way—even by toasting sandwiches. But at the back of her mind was a feeling of amazement: how could anyone hurt another human being like that? A human being who loved you, who was working hard to give you everything you wanted! Jeanette’s the cheap skate, not poor Francey, she thought, as she opened the kitchen door.

  Bob was fussing in a drawer, looking grim, and said nothing for a minute. She sat down in Myron’s old chair and kept quiet.

  “Where in hell’s the can-opener?” he burst out at last. “That fool Myron is out—can you beat it—on a night like this?”

  “He always goes to the movies on Monday,” she reminded him, getting up. “He had his hat on when he looked round the door. Let me look.”

  When she had found the can opener she silently handed it to him.

  “Oh … thanks. He’d better have soup, hadn’t he, Helen?”

  “Yes … and bacon sandwiches. Let me make them—I’d love to. You do the soup.”

  They were busy for a little while in silence, then he said:

  “Dietz is a New Yorker.”

 
“Yes. He produced the Morgan Little Theatre Club show this fall.”

  “Of course she only took Boone because all the men in her crowd were sick of her. He was the only one who’d stuck by her.”

  “I know. Switch on the griller, will you? Thanks.”

  “Helen, isn’t it horrible?” he burst out again, standing looking helplessly at her with the can-opener in one hand and the soup in the other. “He was so happy—remember? And everything was going to be swell, once they were married.”

  “None of us thought so.”

  “Well, everybody knows she’s a so-and-so. It’s her crowd that’s done this—parties every night and always half canned. Nobody can do that sort of thing and hold down a job. Poor old Boone. He ought to have socked her one on the wedding night. I would.”

  Helen laughed, but she felt frighteningly desolate. How fragile and fairylike was her happiness! It was borne almost entirely on the wide shoulders of the young man at the other side of the kitchen table. If only she and Bob had been engaged to be married, and could have comforted each other in this miserable business by holding each other close and swearing that their love should be different, should last until they died!

  It’s got much worse this vac, she thought unhappily, putting the bacon under the griller. I guess if he doesn’t say something definite before we go back to college I’d better try and stop feeling like this, because it can’t do me any good, I’m sure. I’ve been silly and let it get a hold on me, and now if he doesn’t say anything, what’ll I do? But how was I to know? I’ve felt like this for so long I suppose I kind of didn’t notice it. But I notice it now, all right, all right.

  “You know,” said Bob, putting the saucepan on the stove. “If ever I married anyone——”

  Her heart suddenly beat fast.

  “… I’d never let that sort of thing happen to me. Would you?”

  “I’d certainly try not to,” she answered faintly.

  “You see” (he was stirring the soup), “I’d make so darned sure I’d got the right one and that she was the right one for me that it couldn’t happen.”

  “Yes.”

  “If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t marry anyone.”

  She said nothing but attended steadily to the bacon.

  “Helen?” Surprised by her silence, he same round and peered into her face. “Is anything—what’s the matter?”

  “It’s all right,” she said at once, lifting her eyes, dark and blue as the sea in his dream, and smiling. They gleamed with tears. “I’m all upset about poor Boone, that’s all. He looked … so lost. It’s all right, Bob. I’m not really crying. Give me my bag, will you, it’s over there.”

  He got the bag, then came and stood beside her and gently patted her shoulder while she wiped her eyes with a fresh little handkerchief. Presently she found herself being given a gentle kiss or two, which she returned with an exquisite feeling of happiness and peace—but without hope.

  “If anyone ever hurt you,” said Bob softly but intensely, tightening his arm round her waist, “I’d lam him!”

  She had to laugh. She tucked her handkerchief away and stood upright, still in the circle of his arm, put her hands on his shoulders, and looked up calmly into the beloved face gazing down concernedly at her own.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “Sure? Do you feel better now?”

  “Quite better. It wasn’t anything much. Look, shall we take these in? They’re ready.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  LIKE A MURDERER who cannot keep away from the spot where he did it, Old Porty always drove past Number 5 Highbury Walk whenever he happened to be in the neighbourhood, tooting on his horn and looking up at the windows of the bakery to see if Amy or Mona happened to be looking out of the window. Mrs. Beeding always reported these transits of the comet to the girls, as a soothing reminder to Amy that even after four years have passed there is no peace for a guilty conscience, and as a warning to Mona that he was on the prowl and might ask her to go out with him (not that Mona took it as a warning, for she would have gone out with Nero had he been alive and willing).

  Amy always fearfully hoped that she would never have to talk to Old Porty again. He was so mixed up with memories of her father’s death that the very thought of him frightened her, and whenever Mrs. Beeding announced that he had been tooting and peering past, she hurried home along the Walk looking down at the pavement and praying that she would not be hailed by his rich port-type voice.

  One warm evening towards the end of the summer when she was nearly nineteen, the worst happened. Porty had been in transit only yesterday, and she was hurrying home as fast as she could without looking up, thinking that the coolest place this evening would be the pictures and that she might slip off there after supper, when a loud tooting and bawling broke out just at her elbow and she became aware that a car had drawn in to the pavement and was moving along at her side.

  Horrified, she looked up, and there was Porty.

  “Hullo, Amy!” roared Porty; then, observing her alarmed expression, he softened the port-type tones to a kind of damson-wine effect and put his head on one side as though he were addressing a six weeks’ old puppy, “How are you getting along after all this long time, eh? Still in the same office? Haven’t grown much, have you? Going to be a pocket-Venus, eh? How’s Ma—how’s Mrs. Beeding and Mona and Dora? All right, are they? Haven’t seen any of you fer ages.”

  She reluctantly moved over to the car and stood beside it, staring at him with the polite expression that gave nothing away and that used to annoy him when she was a child. He had aged a good deal in the last few years and the purplish hands linked on the steering wheel were veined like an old man’s.

  “We’re all quite all right, thank you, Mr. Porteous,” she said politely.

  “Oh, come off it, Amy! Yer very stiff all of a sudden, aren’t yer? ‘Mister Porteous’! It always used to be Porty in the old days.”

  Liar, thought Amy, staring at the toes of her shoes and saying nothing.

  “I haven’t seen you for months, little girl,” went on Porty, lowering his voice confidentially and bending towards her, “not to talk to alone, I mean. Are you in a hurry? How about a cuppa tea? I can run you round to the A.B.C. in a minute. Come on, be matey.”

  Amy hesitated, looking doubtfully at him.

  Among the simple statements with which Mrs. Beeding enlightened her foster-daughter she had included a truly vehement tocsin about Old Porty. “As soon as look at you, and Dora says the same,” had concluded Mrs. Beeding. Amy had put most of this out of her mind, partly because she had not found it interesting and partly because she had a vague impression, acquired from Mona, that It’s Disgustin’, and one did not think about Disgustin’ subjects. But now, as she stood looking at Old Porty, Mrs. Beeding’s tocsin sounded faintly in her mind.

  Yet there seemed, somehow, to be the widest and most fantastic gap possible between Mrs. Beeding’s warnings and the actual, purple Old Porty, sitting there. Why, he used to talk to Mother! thought Amy. He’s a person who knew darling, darling Mother. It was—no, it was not possible to foresee such goings-on as Mrs. Beeding had prophesied. Her imagination yawned, and turned peaceably away from the fence. And as it happened, it was quite right.

  And then suddenly she found she was no longer afraid of Old Porty, and imagined herself saying, “Thank you. I should like to.” Her eyes seemed to grow larger and brighter.

  “Come on!” he coaxed, encouraged by her expression, hospitably opening the car’s door.

  “Thank you. I should like to,” said Amy, and got in beside him.

  “That’s the style!” he exclaimed gaily, turning on the port-type voice again and sending the car rattling down the Walk towards the High Street. It was a horrid little car, smelling of hot petrol and stale tobacco and Porty’s beery breath, and the back seats were piled with boxes containing samples of the ladies’ underwear in which Porty travelled. There were pink silk knicks with a blue lovebird on either leg, and pale
green nighties with the bosom made of beige lace. The collective noun for these garments was Undies (a word which ought, were proper control exercised in such matters, to be publicly banned by the B.B.C., the Bishops and the senior Universities and the use of it forbidden on pain of the instant liquidation of the user). But Amy had thought them very pretty when Porty used to bring them up to show them to her mother and try to sell them to her, and now bought similar ones whenever her small stock needed replenishing at Jones Bros. in Holloway or (supporting home industry, so to speak) at Fletcher and Sons where Mona was still employed. I’m really growing up, she thought, pleased, as the car turned into the High Street. That’s (meaning Old Porty) one more thing I’m not afraid of.

  They stopped outside the A.B.C., and Amy waited while Porty parked the car just round the corner. Then he put a moist warm hand under her bare elbow and they went into the teashop, which smelled pleasantly of hot tea and toast.

  “There’s an empty one!” cried Porty excitedly, and they steered their way to it and sat down opposite one another.