So Little Time (20 page)

“And now,” he heard Walter say, “I'll be awfully glad to answer any questions.”

Then there was the usual silence and the usual question about what England could do next and about the bombing of the British Isles. Walter was saying something which he must also have read—that a military defeat could not conquer the spirit of a people; and then everyone was talking, and Fred was asking him if he would like a Scotch-and-soda.

“That was a great talk, wasn't it?” Fred said. “It's better than all the newspapers put together to hear someone who's been there.”

“Yes,” Jeffrey answered.

“It makes me feel as if I'd been there myself,” Fred said.

Jeffrey wondered whether Fred meant it, or whether he only wanted to feel that way because it was the proper thing to say. He was thinking of the other war and of British officers with their belts and French officers in their horizon blue who had talked in the town hall at home. All the guests' voices now were raised in a futile sort of clamor; everyone was trying to express some idea of his own, although not a single idea had any value. Then there was a slight drop in the voices. There was a thumping, grating sound in the corner of the room where Fred had turned on the radio. He was saying that here was the eleven o'clock news, if anyone wanted it, and then Jeffrey heard a phrase which had already grown familiar.

“
To get the news direct, we now take you to London
.”

“That will be Ed,” he heard Walter say. “I wonder how Ed's doing.”

It was a casual remark enough, and yet it seemed to Jeffrey that it was the first remark of Walter's that was not repeating what someone else had told him. The voice came across clearly, with a slight dramatic pause.

“
This—is London
.”

Walter Newcombe nodded.

“Yes,” he said, “that's Ed,” and he stood there listening.

“
It is two o'clock in the morning. The bombers are overhead again. They have been coming in fives and tens ever since midnight. It seems that they are flying higher, due, we hope, to more accurate antiaircraft fire. Just as I entered the studio, demolition bombs and incendiaries had fallen on a section of the city known to every American tourist. During the day, the air battle has continued
…”

Jeffrey did not want to hear any more of it; he wanted to be out of that room and out of the house and by himself. He was acutely conscious of everyone sitting there, of the dinner coats and the evening dresses, of the fireplace with its crane and of the cobbler's bench, holding bottles and glasses, and of the overheated air, full of cigarette smoke and the faint, sticky fragrance of talcum. Nothing fitted with that simple statement that this was London. He walked slowly to the door which led to the little paneled hall filled with antique colored prints and walking sticks and canes that opened into seats, and golf bags.

“
I return you now
…”

He could still hear the voice. “I return you now …” It was as simple as “Now I lay me down to sleep.” You could turn the speaker off the way you turned a water tap. He did not want to have any part in that scene any longer. He did not feel that he was any better than those other people, or more intelligent or more sensitive. It was simply that he did not belong with them at the moment. He did not seem to belong to anything. In leaving the room, he knew that he was trying to leave himself and a large part of his experience behind him, but it was not possible to turn the clock back, or possible to be younger. He could not even tell what he wanted to get away from unless it were a sort of insincerity, an insulation there which shut off all genuine expression. If you wanted to you could call it the way of life that everyone was leading—a way of life which had no more depth than a painting on a screen, but that was because you tried to get away from depth. You tried to live graciously and easily. You tried to get as far away as possible from fear or want or death.

12

I'll Wait for You by Moonlight

Jeffrey felt better when he had closed the front door behind him, but even then he could hear the measured words. “This—is London.” They were artificial in themselves; the man who had spoken them must have consciously timed that pause for dramatic effect, just as an actor timed his lines. “This—is heaven. This—is war. This—is murder.” It was an old trick which you could use in all sorts of ways. “This—is London.” It had been London for just a moment. Jeffrey had been conscious of the planes and the antiaircraft, although there had not been a sound. He could feel his own utter insignificance and the imminence of danger all around him, although the night was clear October moonlight, beautiful, and very still. He could see the house behind him in that cold light. In spite of the warm glow from its windows, the mocking clarity of the moonlight made it look deserted as it certainly would be some time. It made it look as lonely as the houses along the Post Road which he had seen that afternoon. There was no kindliness or tolerance in that moonlight or in the shadows which the landscaped trees cast on the lawn. He knew why the goddess of the moon had been a frigid beauty in all the amorous mythology of Greece. There was something hostile in that moonlight, which raised a question in his mind.

“How in hell did I ever get here?”

The barn in the moonlight was black and white and it was much more motionless than it had been in the sunset. For some reason, it made him think of ghost stories that his brother Alf used to tell him when they were children. When he faced the blackness of the gaping open door, he remembered his grandfather's barn at night with its welcome restless stirrings of animals inside, but in here there was nothing. A sort of curiosity about its silence made him walk into the shadows, and then he heard footsteps on the gravel of the driveway, and someone called his name.

“Oh, Jeff.” It was Marianna Miller. “Jeff. Where are you? I can't see.”

But he could see her white dress plainly enough in the moonlight.

“Didn't you hear me calling?” she asked, and he was certain that he had not. He had not heard a sound, but now that she was there the unbearable quality of his loneliness was broken.

“Why,” he said, “Marianna,” and then he added one of those obvious questions which had always annoyed him in play dialogue, “What brought you out here?”

He was smiling at her through the dark exactly as though she could see him, although she was only a white shape walking toward him through the shadows of the barn.

“Oh, Jeff,” she said, and she gave a quick little laugh and rested her hand on his arm. That laugh of hers that came at exactly the right moment reminded him for a second of the theater, until she was closer to him, and then he put his arm around her and she clung to him in the dark.

“Marianna,” he began, and then he forgot what he was going to say.

It was never possible to explain impulses in the light of any sort of wisdom or experience. It must have been that voice from London more than her nearness. He had always been very careful in all the time he had known her to keep their relationship impersonal, and now she was in his arms and that other sort of friendship was entirely over.

“Oh, Jeff,” she whispered, “darling, why didn't you ever do that before?”

“Why,” he told her, “I don't exactly know.” But, of course, he did know. He had never been as defenseless or unstable in all the times they had been together, and now she represented security and release. When he kissed her he forgot the voice saying “This is London.”

“I'm a little sorry,” he said, “but I hope you're not.”

“Darling,” she said, “don't be such a fool.”

Still there was an element of regret because it was the end of a rational friendship which had always made him happy and the beginning of something else which he could see would lead to endless complications.

“Don't—” she said—“don't say you're sorry.”

“Well,” he began, “that's not exactly what I meant.”

“Darling,” she said, “we should have done this long ago.”

He did not answer. It was too dark to see her face, but he could tell from her voice that her eyes would be half-closed and she would be smiling very faintly.

“It mixes everything up,” he said, “that's all I mean.”

“Darling,” she said, “it had to happen to us tonight.”

“Why tonight?” he asked.

“You and I,” she answered. “We're the only ones alive here.”

“What?” he said. It surprised him very much that her thoughts should have been so much like his.

“All those dreadful people,” Marianna said, “in that room. You and I may not amount to much, but we're alive.”

“Yes,” he said. “Maybe you're right.”

“I know I'm right,” she said. “Oh God, Jeff, this—is London.”

But he was still disturbed by the realization that they would never meet in quite the same way again, because he was more aware of consequences than she.

“Marianna,” he said, “there isn't anything we can do about it.”

“Oh, Jeff,” she answered, “don't you know I've always loved you?”

“You shouldn't have,” he said. “I'm not what you really want, dear. You've wasted a lot of time.”

“Oh, Jeff,” she said, “I wish—” and then she stopped, and he was very glad she had.

“So do I,” he answered, “at the moment, but you know—”

There was no need to say any more, and it was better to leave it there in silence.

“Jeff,” she said, “she—” And she stopped a second. “She's never been right for you, has she?”

“Madge?” he said. “Why, no one is exactly right for anyone else, not ever.”

“I would be,” she answered, “I'd make you—”

“Make me what?” he asked.

“I'd make you know how good you are. I'd make you write a play.”

“Marianna,” he said, “it's a little late for that.” It hurt him when he said it, and he was glad that it was dark.

“Jeff,” she said, “don't laugh.”

“I'm not,” he said; “it's kind of you, but just the same—”

“Don't,” she said, “don't say it's kind.”

“Not kind, exactly,” he answered, “but this idea you have about me, it's a little corny, dear. You see, I'm only good for what I am. It's late to go on with something else.”

It was no good blaming other people for anything that happened to you. You could only blame yourself.

“Jeff,” she said, “you'll be going out to the Coast this spring, won't you?” And they seemed to have reached some sort of understanding without his knowing it or even being sure he wanted it.

“Yes,” he said, “sometime around April.”

“Well,” she said, “I'll be there too.”

She said it as though it settled everything and it made him more unsure of himself than he had been for a long while. He stood without speaking, and she sighed.

“I suppose we'd better go back now,” she said.

He could hear the voice again: “This—is London.” If it hadn't been for that, none of it would have happened.

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose we'd better.”

13

You Can't Blame Those Little People

The cool night air striking on the lower ground was causing a mist to rise, a mist that was solid and white and palpable in the moonlight, stretching like a high tide across the road, already partially concealing the walls and fences. Higgins Farm appeared even more unsubstantial than it had before. It gave Jeffrey the same sort of feeling that he sometimes experienced when he awoke at night in a strange room—that he might have been carried there without knowing it.

When they closed the front door behind them, he could see the naked exposure of the dark hand-hewn beams in the living room and the floral decoration on the oval hooked rug and the embers in the fire shining through the glasses on the cobbler's bench. Everyone was sitting silent in a circle around the fireplace, and at the sound of the front door everyone whispered “Hush.”

He thought it was some sort of parlor game, until Beckie hurried toward them.

“Hush,” Beckie whispered, “Buchanan is just in the middle of a poem.”

“Oh,” Jeffrey whispered back, “sorry.”

Buchanan had evidently paused, disturbed by the interruption, and now he was looking at them with courteous reproach. He had no paper in his hand. He had been reciting from memory, because he was a poet. Jeffrey saw Madge frowning at him. Her eyes were asking him where on earth he had been, and why he had slammed the door. It reminded him of a Sunday, long ago, at home, when he had come running into the dining room because he was late for Sunday dinner only to find that the minister was there and was in the midst of saying grace.

“Sorry, Buchanan,” Jeffrey whispered, “don't mind me,” and everyone said “Hush,” again.

“It's quite all right,” Buchanan said. “It's my poem called ‘The Cry of the Little People.'” And Buchanan laughed good-naturedly. “Don't listen to me pontificate, if you don't want to. Go romp on the lawn with Marianna.”

“Go on,” Jeffrey said. “I'm sorry, Buchanan.” And he sat down on the floor. He felt his knees creak, but somehow you always sat on the floor when a poet was delivering a poem.

“Let me see,” Buchanan said, “where was I?”

“We swink for you, naïvely, behind your grimy factory windows,” Beckie said.

There was a pause. A cramp was seizing Jeffrey's right foot around the instep, but he did not venture to move. Buchanan had half-closed his eyes, and his voice was firm and clear, and actually his words were smooth and able, almost moving. The poem was about the little people whose small voices rose to reproach the privileged few who were living wrongly in the present. They were reproachful because they, the little people, and not their drivers, made this, our country. Through the lines of Buchanan Greene, the voices of fishermen and dirt farmers and lumberjacks and fallen women from the mining camps and a great many other people from other categories, including refugees, were rising in a reproaching, unanswerable chorus, principally in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Everyone else appeared to be listening to those bitter voices, but Jeffrey's mind strayed from the subject. He was thinking that everyone now wrote and talked about the Little People, and that the Little People were a new discovery in creative literature, and no doubt a wholesome one, but he wished that their discoverers would not invariably refer to them as Little People. It seemed to him that the Little People themselves would have every right to resent it, for the phrase, if you stopped to think of it, implied an intolerable sort of patronage. It was the way Beckie referred to the little grocer and the little cabinetmaker and the little village. It tacitly implied that you yourself were not quite as little, and actually no one, if you got to know him, was a little person. The phrase was snobbish and undemocratic, and yet it was used most frequently by mouthpieces of democracy.