So Vicky could ease the weight of my reserve merely by sharing so much of my background, and when I thought more about that
background I saw yet another of Vicky’s advantages: she had no interest in how much money I made and what kind of life I could
afford. Since she herself was rich she could see me so clearly because my own wealth didn’t stand in her way. That fact alone
was enough to make her very different from most of the women I met in the course of my travels.
I found I wanted very much to see her again.
I was on my feet in a second. I was wide awake yet obviously I was still living in a dream. I had apparently become entangled
in a fantasy which bore no relation to the reality of my New York life, but I was appalled to discover that now it was my
New York life which seemed a fantasy while Vicky was the one reality in a confused disordered world. I sat down again, forced
myself to be calm. I was, of course, very disturbed. That was why I was having so much trouble distinguishing between fantasy
and reality, and that was why my instinct for self-preservation was beating me back to New York where Scott could re-establish
his control over my life.
Or was Scott a fantasy?
No. Scott might be a myth but he was still part of my reality, for
unlike fantasy, myths were only different dimensions of the truth. That was why myths could be just as important as reality,
and that was why in the most successful lives they were not in conflict with reality but complementing it, so that both myth
and reality streamed side by side in time.
I looked down at the magazine and saw the photo of Jack Kennedy. He had gone to Florida to make assurances that he was not
‘against business’ and he was now on his way to Texas on a similar mission. That was the reality, but the myth was there too,
streaming side by side through his life, the legend of J.F.K., the man who had followed his father’s ambition on and on and
on to the very end of his dreams. One day too my myth and my reality would merge for ever and I could begin to live as I really
wanted to live, but first I had to complete my game of chess with Death; I had to outflank him and survive.
Tonight I would be in New York. Tomorrow President Kennedy would be in Dallas, Texas. That was reality. But at the end of
ambition’s road was light and life, and as I looked down once more at Jack Kennedy’s smiling face I thought that Death had
never seemed so far away.
‘Eastern Airlines announce the departure of their flight to New York …’
I forced myself to board the plane.
‘Can I get you a drink, sir?’ said the pretty stewardess at my elbow.
I wanted to reply but was too afraid I might order the wrong drink. I felt very tense. The man next to me had ordered a scotch.
‘Some coffee maybe?’
As I nodded it occurred to me that I was in an even worse state than I’d imagined, and that the sooner I reached New York
the better. Scott would hold out the straitjacket, I would slip thankfully inside and then there would be an end to all my
dangerous delusions and a welcome return to sanity.
The plane flew steadily on to New York.
[10]
As soon as I reached New York I started looking for him. I went to the men’s room and checked the mirror as I washed my hands,
but I saw only my own face, shadowed with fatigue, and my own eyes, underlining my confusion to me. Later when the cab driver
waited for instructions I expected to hear Scott’s confident voice giving him the familiar address, but all I heard was my
own worried voice saying:
‘Manhattan. Eighty-Fifth and York,’ as if I were a stranger and my one friend in town had failed to meet my flight.
I saw the Manhattan skyline, looking oddly distorted by the new Pan Am Building, and the alteration of the familiar landscape
dislocated the vertical structure of time and bent it into a curve in my mind. I saw the skyscrapers as giant dolmens arranged
in patterns as sinister as any megalithic stone circle on the edge of Europe, and I knew I was moving into some macabre sacred
grove where human lives were daily sacrificed to appease insatiable gods. For a second it seemed to me that the dolmens glittered
with blood, but of course that was an illusion, the reflection of the setting sun on the glass windows.
‘Home sweet home!’ cried the driver cheerily as the car sped over the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge.
But this was no home of mine. I could no longer accept that my home lay among those bloodstained dolmens where my life was
drained from me daily within the prison of Scott’s personality.
‘Okay, pal?’ said the driver as he drew up outside Scott’s apartment building.
I was so disturbed that I couldn’t answer him. Thrusting a twenty-dollar bill into his hand I ran into the building without
waiting for change and rode the elevator to the twelfth floor. By this time I was panic-stricken, and as soon as the elevator
doors opened I ran all the way down the corridor to the door of my apartment. The key slipped as I rammed it into the lock.
I dropped it, picked it up, tried again. The door opened. Flinging it wide I burst across the threshold.
There was a musty smell in the apartment as if someone had died and been efficiently embalmed. I closed the door. The sound
seemed to echo and re-echo through the dim funereal rooms, but I didn’t stop to listen to it. I was on my way to the bathroom
to check the mirror.
He wasn’t there. Blundering into the kitchen I fixed him his favourite drink, a tall Coke on ice with a dash of concentrated
lemon juice, but I was the one who drank the drink and I was the one who abandoned the empty glass in the kitchen. In the
bedroom I dressed in his clothes, the dark suit, white shirt and sober tie; I even took one of his favourite books from the
living-room shelves, but it was I who sat down in the recliner, and it was I who waited and waited for the man who never came.
The truth crept in my mind then, as I sat there dumbly with
Piers Plowman
in my hands. Scott wasn’t there and he wasn’t going to come back.
Scott was dead.
I was on my own.
[1]
I was in the bathroom again but this time the mirror was blank. The shock of not seeing any reflection, even my own, was so
violent that I found myself fighting for breath, but when I realized the hallucination had been triggered not by mental confusion
but by physical exhaustion, this essentially sane diagnosis produced the required chemical reaction in my brain and I saw
my own reflection in the mirror as soon as I stopped rubbing my eyes. I looked not only ill but scared out of my wits, so
I laughed to give myself courage and said aloud to my reflection: ‘What you need is a drink.’
That made me feel more frightened than ever so I shut myself in the bedroom where there was no telephone directory to give
me the number of the nearest liquor store and picked up the pad and pen I kept by the phone on the nightstand. I thought if
I behaved as much like Scott as possible and made a list of the chores that had to be done I might achieve some semblance
of normality.
I wrote: ‘1. Unpack. 2. Get food. 3. Sort out laundry. 4. Eat.’ Then I tore up the list, wrote SLEEP in giant letters on the
page beneath, and pulled loose my tie.
So acute was my exhaustion that I blacked out a second after my head touched the pillow. One moment I was thinking: I’ll survive
without him somehow, and the next moment the lights were flashing before my eyes as I fell from the top of the Pan Am Building
into the river of blood countless floors below.
[2]
When I awoke I felt better. I had slept for fourteen hours, a fact which made me realize how exhausted I had been, for I seldom
needed more than six hours’ sleep a night. In the bathroom I looked at myself carefully in the mirror but shaved with a steady
hand. Then I put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and padded hungrily to the kitchen only to be reminded I had no fresh food,
so I called the nearest delicatessen and placed an order. Half an hour later when I had fixed myself eggs, bacon, toast and
coffee, I was feeling not only more organized but more optimistic. Scott might be dead but was he such a great loss? I was
already figuring out how
I could adapt to my new situation without putting my ambition in jeopardy.
Scott would have told me to forget about Vicky, but Scott had been a priggish intellectual bore who never took a single risk
which would have made his life worth living. The hell with Scott! Naturally I couldn’t give up my ambition; that was out of
the question, but I wasn’t going to give up Vicky either. That was out of the question too.
Of course Cornelius would start to wonder about me again, but so long as I made my intentions clear I saw no reason why he
should conclude I intended to deprive him of his family by marrying his daughter. I had no intention of marrying Vicky – or
of depriving him of all those detestable grandchildren of his.
I didn’t believe in marriage. The best marriages never lasted, the rest just limped unattractively along towards the cemetery
gates. Marriage caused suffering and grief; I could remember that all too well.
Nor did I believe in cohabitation. I needed a certain amount of solitude in order to recuperate from the strain of my Wall
Street life and this inevitably made me ill-suited for any kind of domestic life either inside or outside marriage. I could
not afford to introduce still more strain into my private life by attempting to live in a way that was alien to me. I already
lived under pressures which often seemed more than I could bear.
But of course I wanted to see Vicky regularly and of course I wanted to sleep with her, and fortunately I saw no reason why
I shouldn’t get exactly what I wanted. I thought Vicky would be more than willing to settle for what I had to offer since
she needed a further strain on her double-life no more than I did, and was probably by this time as reluctant as I was to
risk outright cohabitation.
My thoughts turned back to Cornelius. Why should he object if Vicky and I confined ourselves to a discreet affair which wouldn’t
impinge either on her life with her children or my life at the bank? Vicky was obviously going to sleep with someone, and
after the gigolos and the jet-setters of the past three years Cornelius would probably gasp with relief that I had decided
to keep Vicky happy for a while. Cornelius would trust me to do nothing stupid, and I would soon prove I had no intention
of disappointing him.
Closing my mind abruptly against all thought of Cornelius, I put on a sweater and my leather jacket and left the apartment
to buy a paper, but I didn’t buy the paper immediately. Deciding a short walk would do me good I drifted crosstown on Eighty-Sixth
Street, and then just as I reached the traffic lights on Lexington a stranger,
white-faced and clearly in a state of shock, accosted me with the words: ‘Have you heard the news?’
‘What news?’
‘He’s been shot.’
‘Who’s been shot?’
‘Kennedy.’
‘Who?’
‘The President. John F. Kennedy has been shot in Dallas, Texas.’
‘That can’t be true.’
‘He’s dying.’
A car drew up beside us at the lights and the driver leaned out. ‘Is it true?’
People were getting out of their cars. I looked around the sidewalk and saw people had stopped walking.
‘Is he dead? Is it true? Is he dying? Is it true? Is it true, is it true, is it true …’
The terrible questions were repeated like a Bach fugue, and far back in my memory I remembered Emily playing part of the
St Matthew Passion
on her phonograph at Easter, remembered listening to the moment when the twelve apostles learn from Christ that one of them
will betray him and sing in a beautiful unearthly counterpoint: ‘Is it I? Is it I? Is it I?’
Terrible questions. Terrible answers. A terrible hideous truth.
I was in a bar saying: ‘Kennedy’s been shot,’ but they already knew. The television was showing an appalling reality in black
and white and someone was talking brokenly into a microphone and the barman just looked at me and said: ‘He’s dead.’
‘Give the man a drink, Paddy,’ said the Irishman at my side, and I realized I was in an Irish bar. There were painted shamrocks
decorating the mirrors and posters of Ireland on the walls, and when I saw those pictures of the Cliffs of Moher and the Ring
of Kerry and the Twelve Bens of Connemara, I saw in my mind’s eye the beautiful landscape of legend where Jack Kennedy’s myth
had drowned in blood and drained away into the dark.
The glass of Irish whiskey was standing in front of me on the bar but the vomit was in my throat. I turned, ran outside and
threw up into the gutter.
‘Have you heard … is it true … He’s dead … dead … dead …’
I was walking. I walked and walked and walked. I didn’t stop in case I went into another bar, but I passed liquor store after
liquor store, and I saw all the bottles, row upon row, display upon display – I saw Beefeater gin and Cinzano French and Tanqueray
and J & B and
Hennessy Cognac and Grand Marnier and Ronrico rum and Drambuie and Rémy Martin and Cutty Sark and Harvey’s Bristol Cream and
Lancers Vin Rosé and Kahlua and Pernod and John Jameson and Dubonnet and vodka – and crème de menthe had never looked so green
and chartreuse had never looked so yellow and Johnny Walker’s labels had never looked so red, so black, and all the time I
walked on and on and on.
Gradually I was aware of the voices changing around me. I heard people saying: ‘Where was his protection?’ and ‘What kind
of a madman would do a thing like that?’ and ‘Those damned Texans, no better than wild animals,’ and finally, in full recognition
of the horror: ‘That he should have travelled all over the world only to be killed in his own country – killed here by one
of us …’ And I saw at last the dark underside of the myth which everyone had overlooked. Arthur had not lived happily ever
after at Camelot. He had been killed by one of his own men and everything Camelot represented had streamed away with him into
the dark.
I was on Fifth Avenue, and in the window of Best’s stood an American flag with black crepe on its staff. At Saks a photograph
of Kennedy was flanked by urns of red roses. And all the while as I walked, the office workers were swarming out of the buildings,
all talking in soft shattered voices, and as their whispers filled the air the great bell of St Patrick’s began to toll for
America and the great doors swung wide as the crowds streamed up the steps into the nave.
‘How could this have happened to us? What did we do?’ I heard the people saying, and I went with them up the cathedral steps
as if I too believed there was some answer within to the unanswerable questions, and I stood for a long time in the shadows
of that great church built by the Irish to give their dreaming myths the reality of stone and glass, and I waited and waited
without knowing what I was waiting for until suddenly there was a hiatus in the spontaneous service, a magical silence followed
by the huge dramatic sound of thousands of voices raised in unison. The bishop had called on the congregation to sing the
national anthem.
Later I was walking again, walking westward crosstown as the darkness fell, and in Times Square people were weeping and the
famous bar of the Astor was silent and still.
‘Yes, sir? said the barman.
‘Give me a Coke.’
‘A
Coke
?’
I turned and walked out, but when I emerged from the hotel I stopped dead. The lights were going out in Times Square. I watched
transfixed, and in my memory I heard the famous words of Sir Edward Grey: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall
not see them lit again in our lifetime.’ And I saw with my inner eye America turning some huge corner, pausing for a moment
to grieve for the passing of an innocent uncomplicated past and then moving on into the uncharted infinitely more complex
world which lay ahead.
The last light went out. I began to walk home but with me as always walked Death, my familiar companion, and in my mind I
said to him over and over again: not yet. I must have more time.
But time had run out for John Kennedy at Dallas. And time had proved that at the end of ambition’s road lay nothing but the
bullet and the grave.
Nothing else.
Nothing, nothing, nothing …
[3]
The next day I bought a television and spent the day watching it. All the usual programming had been cancelled and in the
uninterrupted coverage Kennedy’s death became not a remote world event but a very personal bereavement. Occasionally I got
up, resolved to watch no more, but I could never bring myself to turn off the set. I found myself torn between the urge not
to hear any more and an uncontrollable hunger to obtain the latest information. I drank steadily – Coco-Cola, root beer, ginger
ale, even grape soda. I spent a long time mixing each drink and dressing it with slices of lemon or maraschino cherries, and
I avoided drinking quickly by never taking more than three sips at a time from my glass. For long periods I forgot to eat
but occasionally I made myself a slice of toast. Later I went out, but Times Square was still in darkness and the city was
like a morgue.
The day ended, the new day began and the curtain went up on more violence. Ruby assassinated Oswald. I watched the murder
live on television, but the events on the screen seemed so like the fantasy of some profoundly sick mind that I began to wonder
if I had imagined the entire episode. It was a relief to go out and discover people were talking about this new assassination;
amidst all the horror it was still a relief to know that I wasn’t hallucinating, that this was America on 24 November 1963,
that the President had been assassinated and now someone had killed the killer. I walked in Central Park past the people who
were listening to their radios, and then unable to stay away any longer I returned home once more to the television.
The day passed. Monday dawned. New York was like a vast church, and like a church it was hushed and sombre. Everyone was watching
television; everyone was at the funeral.
I began to watch too but then unable to endure my apartment any longer I went out. But still I could not escape from the television.
Thousands of people stood silently watching a huge screen in Grand Central Terminal, and although I again tried to watch it
was impossible; I couldn’t endure the sight of that riderless horse, so I left the terminal and walked west on Forty-Second
Street.
At noon the police halted all traffic in Times Square, and as everyone on the sidewalks bowed their heads we heard the military
bugle sounding from the top of the Astor’s marquee.
The sun was brilliant in a cloudless sky. It was a beautiful day. I stood in that sunlight and wished I could believe that
death was a mere pause between this world and that other world where everyone was eternally young and beautiful and the sun
always shone, but the twentieth century must have worked a mutation into the blueprint of my heredity for I could not believe
in an after-life. I did believe in that other world, but I believed too that it existed only in the mind’s eye.
I went home and drank my way through a six-pack of Coke, dressing each measure up differently and using an original assortment
of glasses. The television droned on but at last I was able to switch it off. Kennedy was dead. Oswald was dead, even Scott
was dead, but I could no longer endure to look Death straight in the eye. Death was still there, facing me across the chessboard,
but now I could turn my back on him for a while and think only of life for today was the day Vicky had planned to return from
the Caribbean. Glancing at my watch I uncapped a bottle of 7-Up and then dialled the airport to inquire about flight arrivals
from Puerto Rico.
[4]
‘Mrs Foxworth, please,’ I said to the doorman.
It was half-past seven on Monday evening, and I had calculated that Vicky would have been home for three hours, long enough
to have surmounted the family reunion and be longing for a quiet secluded dinner. I had half-thought she might call me but
I had been disappointed. The phone had only rung once; Cornelius, knowing I had been due to return from my vacation late on
Sunday night, had called early Monday morning to gossip about the assassination. Normally I
would have seen him that day at the bank but Kennedy’s funeral had closed all offices nationwide.