So Little Time (47 page)

What they wanted, they told Jeffrey, was to have an invitation to their cocktail parties mean that you were someone interesting and worth while and to guarantee in return that you would meet interesting and worth-while people there. And that was the sort of cocktail party that they were giving for Priscilla Jenks. They wanted Jeffrey, not for what he did, but for what he was, and they hoped that Jeff could have a few minutes with Priss, because Sinclair had a perfectly crazy idea that this new novel of Priss's—the finest thing she had ever done—had the makings of a play somewhere inside it, and if it did, Sinclair—and so did Ella—knew that Jeff Wilson was the man to nose it out.

Madge had on her mink coat and her cheeks were pink from the cold air outside. The elevator was overcrowded and Jeffrey took off his hat and held it carefully against his chest. Everyone in the elevator was obviously going up to the Merriwells', except a fat lady with a small Cairn terrier, who got off at the fourth floor by ploughing a path through the interesting people. None of the occupants of the elevator spoke. They simply examined each other guardedly. Jeffrey felt Madge nudge him gently in the ribs. He was afraid she was going to whisper about some important figure in the elevator, but instead of whispering, she looked at Jeffrey meaningly and then at a tall man in the far corner. Jeffrey followed her glance. Madge looked at him more meaningly and her lips moved noiselessly. When the elevator door finally opened, the first impact was a wave of sound combined with an aroma of spilled alcohol and cigarette smoke, like every other cocktail party. From the living room down the hall, voices rose like the clamor in the Paris Bourse, but the arrangements went like clockwork because Ella and Sinclair understood cocktail parties. Almost the instant they were out of the elevator, a hatchet-faced woman took Jeffrey's coat and hat and another took Madge's mink coat and Madge told her please to be careful when she put it in the bedroom and not get it mixed up with somebody else's because that had happened once and Madge had never got her coat back, never.

“Jeffrey,” Madge said, “that was Henry Bernstein.”

“Who?” Jeffrey asked. Even in the hall he had to raise his voice.

“The man in the elevator,” Madge said, “wasn't it Henry Bernstein?”

“No,” Jeffrey said, “it wasn't, Madge.”

“The other man,” Madge asked, “who was he?”

“Which other man?” Jeffrey asked.

“The man with that faded blond woman in the silver fox,” Madge said, “the one with gray hair and bushy eyebrows. I must have seen his picture somewhere.”

“Oh, that man,” Jeffrey said. “That was John L. Lewis, and the lady with the dog who got off on the fourth floor was a house detective.”

“That isn't funny,” Madge said. “I know I've seen him somewhere.”

They began pushing their way into the living room. Jeffrey knew that when he had a drink he might feel a little better. Everyone was talking, everyone was having a wonderful time, and Jeffrey began to feel the way Madge must have about the faces. They all did look as though he had seen them somewhere, and as though they expected to be recognized and to be photographed suddenly—but yet, Jeffrey could not place any of them. He was right however, about the photograph. As he and Madge entered, a blinding flash of light made him jump. A sallow young man with a candid camera was weaving his way between two Filipinos in white coats who were passing trays covered with olives and elastic-looking red caviar on crackers. It reminded Jeffrey that Sinclair always liked to have candid photographs of those parties. He and Ella mounted them in books with the date and a little description of the occasion—And how could you tell?
Town and Country
or someone might like to use them—it was a way of helping
Town and Country
. And if they didn't, it was a lot of fun to look over them in the scrapbooks at Happy Rocks.

“Excuse me, sir,” the young man with the camera said, “could I have your name, please, sir?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey told him, “Secretary of the Navy Stimson.”

The young man looked hurt, and Madge pulled at Jeffrey's arm.

“Jeff,” she began, “that isn't funny.” Then Madge began to laugh, and he liked everything better. “Suppose we come out in
Town and Country
,” Madge said, “as Secretary and Mrs. Stimson of the Navy. Jeff, don't you know anybody? Don't you know anybody at all?”

“No,” Jeffrey said, “the only thing to do is to get into the spirit of it.”

Jeffrey had a feeling that everyone else at the party was like him, nobody in particular, waiting for the appearance of someone who counted.

“Oh,” Madge said, “there's Ella.”

Ella was standing in the center of the room with a stocky, dark man who wore a thin ribbon in his coat lapel. The man was looking filmily from right to left, and Ella was shouting at him above the voices. She was just what Sinclair had called her, “a perfectly swell gal,” and Ella was a big gal, too, five feet ten and a half, and more than that with high heels—a big gal with yellow hair, in a blue dress, known technically as a cocktail dress, with a heavy necklace and a bracelet, known as costume jewelry.

“Oh, Madge,” she said. “Oh, Jeff, you must see Priss. Priss is just dying to see you.”

“Priss?” Jeffrey repeated.

Ella slapped his shoulder playfully.

“Don't be so vague, dear,” Ella said. “Stop looking at everything through a lorgnette. Priscilla Jenks, or you can call her Miss Red Sky if you want to.”

“Oh,” Jeffrey said, “that's the name of the novel, is it?”

“Madge, don't let him be so vague,” Ella said. “Captain Bouchet, this is one of the cleverest men in New York. This is Captain Bouchet of the French Army.”

Jeffrey and the stocky foreigner looked each other over with polite disinterest. Jeffrey wondered whether Captain Bouchet also would write a volume about how he saw France fall.

“Captain Bouchet was saying this is just like France,” Ella said—“France before it happened. He says that we just don't know—”

Just now everyone was saying that we were like France, that if we did not wake up, we would end just like France. It made no sense, because America was not like France any more than Jeffrey was like Captain Bouchet.

“Here comes Sam,” Ella said, “Sam knows what we want.”

It was Sam from the Paxton Club with a wine steward's chain around his neck.

“Ella,” Jeffrey heard Madge say, “isn't Henry Bernstein here? I thought I saw him in the elevator.”

Jeffrey swallowed his cocktail quickly and took another. He wished he were like Madge, able to keep his mind on a single idea.

“What's that?” Ella cried. “Did you say Henry Bernstein's here?”

“Over there,” Madge said, “eating something.”

“Oh,” Ella said, “no, that isn't Henry. That's Swinnerton Brown. You know, who runs the shop called ‘Books and Books.'”

“Oh,” Madge said. “I thought he looked—”

“But Henry's coming if he possibly can,” Ella said, “and so are Kip Fadiman and Lew Gannett, if they possibly can. It's a little businessy now, but it won't be in a few minutes.”

Now that Jeffrey had finished one drink and was starting on another, he discovered that there were all sorts of people in the room whom he did know, whom he had seen year after year at cocktail parties. He saw George Stanhope, the literary agent, who handled Walter Newcombe whenever Sinclair Merriwell was not handling him, and Leander Brickett, of Brickett's Lectures, Inc., and some solitary dyspeptics who looked like unknown authors, and in the distance he saw Walter Newcombe and Mrs. Newcombe. One drink seemed to have made everyone there an old acquaintance. After a second he began moving confidently through the crowd. As soon as he had spoken to Sinclair Merriwell, it would be all right to leave, if he and Madge could find their coats. They could do it without saying good-by and Madge could call up Ella later and say there'd been such a crowd that they'd not been able to find her.

He did not know what had become of Madge. Jeffrey was first in one group and then another, without knowing how he got there. He was shaking hands with Sinclair Merriwell, who was full of fun, as a host should be on such an occasion, but at the same time, just a little serious, too, exactly as a host should be—in a blue double-breasted coat with white stripes and a handkerchief jutting out of his pocket just so, and a gardenia in his lapel—Ella always gave Sinclair a gardenia before a cocktail party.

“Jeff!” Sinclair called. “Come here to Papa. Here's Priss. I don't think you've ever met Priss, have you? Priscilla, this is Jeffrey Wilson who knows everything about plays.”

Jeffrey felt a little sorry for Priscilla Jenks, since it wasn't her fault that she was there and probably she didn't want to be looked at. At any rate he hoped she did not want to be looked at, because it would have been better if she had not been. He never could understand why everyone wanted to see people who wrote books. In Jeffrey's experience, writers, particularly novelists and more particularly women novelists, were, as a rule, not physically attractive. For one thing, novelists, particularly women novelists, were not as young as they used to be; and usually they had a look that made him think that even when they were young they would not have been much to look at; and the trouble with most novelists, particularly women novelists, was that they never seemed to know that they were not as young as they used to be. He was afraid that was the trouble with Priscilla Jenks. Something about writing a novel always went to the heads of novelists, particularly women novelists. Yet, it was not altogether their fault, when publishers' advertisements said that they were the greatest artists of their time, filled with charm and humor and a subtle magnetic power. Naturally they thought they must be beautiful. That was why they so often dressed like High School girls at a graduation and wore orchids and strange fixed smiles, and Priscilla Jenks was doing just that right now.

“Sometime when there isn't so much noise,” Sinclair said, “we must all get together about The Book. It's just a funny idea of mine that there's a play in it.”

“I don't think a novel is ever basically a play,” Priscilla Jenks said. “The conception of a novel and a play are so entirely different.”

“Now that you mention it,” Jeffrey said, “that's perfectly true, but I never thought of it in quite that way.”

“Jeff,” Sinclair said hastily, “we can't be serious about it now, Jeff.”

“The novel,” Miss Jenks said, “that is, the novel as I see it, is more of an eventless stream of time than drama. A novelist's problem is the creation of character through the medium of words, without having any thought for the purely visual. At least, that's the way I see it; so I'm sure I don't know whether The Book can make a play or not. Is that the way you see it, Mr. Wilson?”

“I suppose,” Jeffrey said, “that's the way I've always seen it, but no one has ever posed that problem quite so clearly.”

“Jeff,” Sinclair said, “let's not talk about it now. Priscilla was in Greece in 1939. Have you ever been to Greece?”

“It isn't,” Miss Jenks said, “that I haven't a great respect for the problem of the dramatist—the net result of either medium is the same, of course—a picture of life and of our time as I tried to show it in The Book, but the tools used by the dramatist have a different cutting edge and a different bevel.”

“That's perfectly true,” Jeffrey said. “Sinclair, I never thought of that, did you?”

“Jeff,” Sinclair said, “let's not talk about it now. When Priscilla was in Greece she got to Thrace.”

“There was one part of The Book,” Miss Jenks said, “that I did think of in terms of a play—I shut my eyes before I wrote that part and thought of the page on the typewriter as a curtain. I made the characters as static as the characters on a stage at the rising of the curtain. I wonder if you can guess what part of The Book that was.”

“Jeff,” Sinclair said, “let's not talk about it now. Priscilla, here's someone who's talked about you until he's talked my right ear off. This is Swinnerton Brown who runs the shop called ‘Books and Books.'”

Sinclair drew Jeff very gently to one side.

“God damn you,” he said, “don't pull her leg.”

Jeffrey laughed.

“Sinclair,” he said, “no one here is going to do that,” and then Sinclair began to laugh.

Jeffrey moved away to a little semicircle and talked with two men he knew whose names he could not remember and to a redheaded girl who kept singing some sort of a song about money and babies.

“They can't come over here,” one man said. “It's a matter of logistics. How many ships could bring a hundred thousand men over here?”

“What about Brazil?” the other man said. “What's to keep them from the big bulge of Brazil?”

“You can't have babies,” the girl said, “unless you have a definite cash reserve.”

“Just how in hell, George,” the first man said, “can they get to any bulge in this hemisphere across the Atlantic Ocean? You tell me how they can do it. I'm listening.”

“God damn it,” the other man said, “I am telling you.”

“Well, God damn it, George,” the first man said, “you tell me.”

“What about Dakar?” the second man said. “Don't shut your eyes to facts. What about Dakar?”

“All right,” the first man said, “you tell me. What about Dakar?”

“God damn it,” the second man said, “I am telling you.”

“What are you telling me?” the first man said.

“God damn it,” the second man said, “if you close your ears to reason, George, I can't tell you. I'm telling you about Dakar.”

“All right,” the first man said. “You don't tell me anything I don't know already. You're hysterical, and you don't tell anything.”