So Little Time (7 page)

“And now,” Walter said, “that's about all. I'm not saying these ideas are mine, but I should love to know what you think of them. I don't need to say that a lot of you know more than I do, or that I should love to answer any questions.” There was a moment's silence as he stood there and then there was applause. Chairs were being pushed back. The April 7th luncheon of the Bulldog Club was ending. A man in the back of the room had risen.

“I've got a question,” he called. “I want to know if Mr. Newcombe believes any of this.” The President rapped upon the table with his hammer, and Walter, smiling, spoke across the room.

“It's just a report from London,” Walter said, “I didn't say I believed it. I was only repeating what I heard.”

“Well,” someone called, “how can you win a war without fighting?” Walter smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“I'm only repeating a point of view,” he said, and then he added the truest remark that he had made that afternoon. “With things the way they are over there, it's dangerous to make predictions. I only try to give a picture. That's all, a picture.”

The President pounded his hammer again upon the table.

“And I'm sure that Mr. Newcombe has given us a very definite picture,” he said. “One which we will carry away with us until the next meeting. Thank you, Walter Newcombe. Thank you for being with us.”

“Thank
you
, sir,” Walter said. “Thank you for listening to me.”

They were pushing out of the room, and voices were rising. If you shut your eyes it brought you back to the end of a High School assembly. Everyone was going back to what he had been doing before, not any wiser, for in the end the talk had been like other talks. Walter Newcombe had said nothing which you could not have read in the morning
Times
, but then, perhaps no one had expected him to say anything. The only question may have been whether he knew anything that he did not say. It all made Walter Newcombe an enigma to Jeffrey Wilson. What right had he to be in that position? There were other injustices in the world beside the injustices caused by the accident of birth. There were the injustices caused by luck which no New Deal could rectify. Yet Walter must have had ability and experience must have changed him. He could not have been as simple as he had seemed, or as provincial—and yet there had been that story about the cockney and the blackout, and the quality of Walter Newcombe's voice. “
Cordon sanitaire
,” he had said, and somehow his voice as he mouthed the phrase had left a sour note.

“Well,” Waldo said, “so what?”

A little knot of people had penned Walter Newcombe into a corner of the room. The waiters were clearing off the dishes.

“I don't know what,” Jeffrey said, “but it was funny.”

“Funny?” Waldo answered. “It was nuts.”

Jeffrey stood gazing at the corner of the room.

“Let's go and speak to him,” he said.

“Baby,” Waldo answered, “no pleated-pants is going to high-hat me. All those boys are pansies.”

“Well, I'm going to speak to him,” Jeffrey said.

“What the hell for?” Waldo asked.

Walter knew Jeffrey right away. There was no fumbling in his memory. Walter knew him right away, but Jeffrey could not tell whether Walter was expressing pleasure or relief when he saw him. Whatever it was, the recognition pleased Jeffrey secretly.

“Why, Jeff,” Walter called. “Hello there, Jeff. Wait, I'm going out with you.” And he turned to the crowd around him. “I've got to be going,” he said. “Jeff, don't go away.”

The elevator was filled with a sickly perfume from the beauty parlor on the second floor. Walter stole a glance at himself in the elevator mirror. His hat was an olive-green featherweight felt.

“Old man,” Walter said, “how about a drink in a quiet corner somewhere?”

There were a lot of other things Jeffrey should have done, but he put them from his mind.

“Let's get a taxi,” Walter said, “and go up to my place.”

“Where's your place?” Jeffrey asked.

“Just a couple of rooms,” Walter said, “in the Waldorf Tower.” He glanced at Jeffrey sideways. “I had to have some place to stay after the book came out. It's funny, isn't it?”

They were getting into a yellow taxicab by then with a skyview top.

“You can press the button, and the top goes right back, doesn't it?” Walter said. “It's funny, isn't it? All buttons. Everything over here is that way.” And he glanced at Jeffrey again.

“What do you mean?” Jeffrey asked. “I don't quite follow you, Walter.”

“I mean, I don't know where I am,” Walter said. “Did you ever get that way, so you didn't know where you were? I mean that's why when I saw you it gave me sort of a kick. It pulled me all together.”

There was no basis for friendship between them, absolutely none, but Walter was still speaking.

“Now, don't ask me questions,” Walter said. “Don't ask me what I know.”

Jeffrey felt better, and he began to laugh.

“Relax, Walter,” Jeffrey said. “I know you don't know anything. You never did.”

Instead of being annoyed, Walter laughed.

“Good old Jeff,” he said, “that's what I wanted. Good old Jeff.” And still Walter went on talking. “I don't want you to think this Waldorf Tower was my idea,” he said. “I don't care for it myself, Jeff. You know I don't want to show off, don't you? I'm just the same as I ever was.”

“Relax, Walter,” Jeffrey said.

“When I got home,” Walter said, “I didn't know anything about the book's going so big—I don't want you to think for a minute it's made any difference with me, Jeff. That's why I mean it's nice to see someone—like you.”

“All right, Walter,” Jeffrey said.

“I'm not showing off,” Walter said. “That's what I know you're thinking, and it isn't so.”

“That's great, Walter,” Jeffrey said.

“Well, I've just been thinking out loud,” Walter answered. “Just out loud without fanfare. Here's the Waldorf.” Walter paused and snapped his fingers. “Mildred won't be there. You know Mildred, don't you, Jeff?”

“No, Walter,” Jeffrey said, “I don't know Mildred.”

“I thought everyone knew Mildred,” Walter said, and he snapped his fingers again, and shot back his cuff and looked at a gold wrist watch. “She won't be there, not for quite a while. Perhaps it's just as well.” He glanced hastily at Jeffrey. “Not that I don't want you to meet her, but I'd like you to meet her without any fanfare.”

“What do you mean by ‘fanfare'?” Jeffrey asked.

“Let's skip it,” Walter said. “It's just a working phrase. Everything is ‘fanfare.' Too God-damn' much fanfare, Jeff. Let's skip it, here we are.”

The suite in the Waldorf Tower had the same impermanence as Walter Newcombe. There were no possessions of Walter's in the sitting room except six copies of
World Assignment
piled upon a secretary desk, and a portable typewriter on a table near the window, and these did nothing to alter the room's impersonal perfection. It had been done in colonial reproduction mahogany by some wholesale decorator. The two overstuffed armchairs, the pearl-gray carpet, and the sofa upholstered in old rose—all were devoid of character. It made you feel that within five minutes Walter Newcombe could pack up and go. It made you think of Walter Newcombe always packing up, and going, and never leaving behind him the slightest trace of himself.

“Well,” Walter said again, “this is it.” And then a little girl opened a door.

She must have been twelve or thirteen, the most unattractive age for little girls. She had on a brown woolen dress. Her tow hair was done in two tight braids. Her feet and hands were too large. Her features were irregular and sprinkled with freckles and she had gold bands on her teeth. It seemed to Jeffrey that Walter had looked startled when she appeared, as though something in his past had been revealed. She was like a bill collector, or like a letter that he had not burned.

“Sweetie-pie,” Walter said, “why, sweetie-pie!”

Jeffrey looked away, because it seemed indecent for him to watch. It was the way he often felt when he saw the children of friends, for they revealed all sorts of intimacies and maladjustments which a casual observer should not see. Walter hesitated, and then he put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her.

“Umm, umm,
umm
, sweetie-pie,” Walter said. “I thought you were out with Belle Mère.”

“No,” the little girl answered. She was looking hard at Jeffrey.

“Well,” Walter said, “have you got anything to do? This is Mr. Wilson, dear.”

The little girl held out her hand. It was cold and moist and completely limp. She bobbed in a quick curtsy with her eyes fixed on the floor.

“Hello,” Jeffrey said, “well, well. I've got a little girl myself. She's about three years older than you. Well, well.”

There was one of those shy silences.

“Well, well,” Walter said, “think of that.” And he snapped his fingers. “Would you ask Room Service to send up a bowl of ice and some White Rock, dear? And then how about working on your picture puzzle? What is this one about?”

The little girl swallowed as though her mouth were dry.

“It's the one called ‘Two Pals,'” she said. “It has a horse and a hen in it, I think.”

“Well, well,” Walter said, “you'd better go and finish it now, dear, but give Daddy another kiss before you go.”

Jeffrey wanted to look away, but he could not.

“Sweetie-pie,” Walter said, “umm, umm,
umm
.”

5

Don't Get Me Started on That

Then the door closed, and Walter opened a lower drawer of the secretary desk and pulled out a bottle of whisky and held it to the light.

“That was Edwina,” Walter said. “We brought her over with us, I don't know where her mother is.”

“Oh,” Jeffrey said, “Edwina.”

“She was a trained nurse,” Walter said. “You know how women get in Paris. They can't handle it.”

“Who was a trained nurse?” Jeffrey asked.

“Edwina's mother,” Walter said. “You remember Nancy, don't you?”

“Oh,” Jeffrey said, “oh yes.”

Walter cleared his throat.

“When Nancy got to Paris, she took a stray,” he said. “He was a Greek.” Walter set the bottle carefully on the table.

There was another awkward silence as the scroll of Walter Newcombe's life lay open. There was something disconcerting in his complete belief that anyone would understand, that everyone must have faced a similar marital problem in his own life.

“Well,” Walter said, “let's skip it. It's great to see you, Jeff. You pull me all together.”

Walter sat down in one of the armchairs, but almost immediately he got up and pulled a tortoise-shell cigarette case from his pocket.

“Excuse me for not thinking,” he said. “I wonder where the devil that Room Service is.” And he snapped the case open. “Naples,” he said. “They can do anything in Naples with tortoise-shell.” He paused and reconsidered his statement. “That is, almost anything.”

“Are the Italians going to get into the war?” Jeffrey asked.

Walter sat down and tapped the cigarette case.

“Yes,” he said, “and no, perhaps, but don't get me started on that.”

“Have you met Gamelin?” Jeffrey asked.

“Gamelin?” Walter's forehead puckered. “Oh, Gamelin. Everyone meets Gamelin, but don't get me started on that.”

Walter Newcombe sat there. Whatever it was that Walter knew, it was safely shrouded in silence.

“Not that I want to be snotty,” Walter said. “It's just—oh, hell.”

A buzzer sounded, and Walter jumped up. It was the Room Service waiter with the ice and White Rock. Walter signed the check with a streamlined fountain pen, and began fumbling through his pockets until he produced a quarter.

“Here,” Walter said to the waiter, “keep this for yourself.” And he poured out the whisky and reached for the bottle opener. “Hell's fire,” he said. The charged mineral water from the White Rock bottle had cascaded over his vest. “Never mind it, that's just life, isn't it? Well, cheerio.”

“Cheerio,” Jeffrey said.

“Jeff,” Walter said, “I just want you to understand none of this—this fanfare makes any difference. I'm just the same as I always was.”

“Don't say that again,” Jeffrey said. “No one's the same as he always was.”

Walter Newcombe was grasping for something, and Jeffrey sat there waiting.

“Never mind about me,” Walter said. “Tell me about yourself.”

Jeffrey felt uncomfortable.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked. He picked up his glass and stared at it. He had nothing to conceal and nothing to be ashamed of. “There isn't very much to tell.”

Walter Newcombe sat watching him, and Jeffrey wondered whether Walter looked like that when he talked to usually well-informed sources. It was professional, but it was kindly.

“There isn't much to tell,” Jeffrey said again. “I've got a wife and three kids, two boys and a girl. They're pretty well grown-up now.”

“Jesus,” Walter said. His profanity indicated that he had never associated himself with family groups. There was an incredulous sort of interrogation in it, as though he were asking whether Jeffrey had done it on purpose or otherwise.

“Edwina was a mistake,” Walter said, and he looked uncomfortable. His face grew redder. “Well, what else have you been doing?”

“Oh, this and that,” Jeffrey said.

“Someone over in London—” Walter said—“I've forgotten who—told me you had written a play.”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “I've done a little bit of everything. It ran for two weeks.”