The Hothouse by the East River (14 page)

‘Elsa,’
he says, listening, ‘there’s the key in the door!’

‘I
know,’ she says. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Here comes
Garven,’ says Paul.

‘Well,
go and conspire with him against me in the kitchen. Get some ice. Ask him to
join us for a drink. Say you’re having trouble with me.’

‘He’s
been. following me all day.’ He goes out and his footsteps pat along the
passage to the kitchen. From that distance his voice hums monotonously and so
does Garven’s.

Elsa
gets up with her shadow falling blackly towards the west although the sun is
setting in the west window. She goes over to the telephone table, lifts the
instrument and trails its long cord back to her window seat. She is dialling a
number when Garven and Paul come in, Paul holding the ice-bucket and Garven a
tray of ice.

‘Miss
Armitage?’ she says.

‘Elsa!’
says Paul.

‘Oh,
Miss Armitage,’ says Elsa, ‘I’m speaking for Count Paul Janovic-Hazlett. This
is Countess Janovic-Hazlett. The Count wishes me to say that if you would care
to step over to our apartment for a drink we should be happy to see you … Oh,
yes, he’s here. Hold on …‘ She hands the receiver to Paul.

‘Annie,’
he says, ‘this was unforeseen. Yes, of course she means it … No, Annie, we’re
very civilised these days and there’s nothing to hide. I—’ Elsa has grabbed the
telephone and while Garven says, ‘I hope we’re not going to have a scene,’ Elsa
is saying, ‘When you come I’ll read you my daughter’s poem about you and Paul.
Our daughter, Katerina, is very talented, you know … Oh, yes, Miss Armitage,
I think we did meet in the shoe store … Oh yes, but that was a
misunderstanding. You’re my husband’s analyst, yes, I know … But we would
simply love to see you in a purely social context. It is very short notice, but
Paul … How lovely. We’ll expect you shortly, then.’ She replaces the
receiver.

‘Paul,
you look awful, you need a drink. She said she would be over momentarily, which
is ungrammatical to my mind, unless she means she only intends to stay for one
moment, in which case it’s less ungrammatical. It’s so difficult to follow
people’s meanings when they learn the words from Webster’s. What’s the matter
with you, Paul?’

‘This
is unnecessary,’ says Paul.

‘Vodka
and lemon. for me,’ says Elsa. ‘Garven, I’ll leave it to you. A nice lot of
vodka, Garven.’

Paul
starts to shout. ‘Garven,’ he shouts. ‘You’re supposed to be a professional
man. What have you been saying to Elsa about Annie Armitage?’

‘I’ve
never heard of her,’ Garven says. ‘Far less spoken of her. I shall be very
happy to meet your analyst, Paul. I thought we had come to an understanding,
Paul, but we seem to have come to a rift.’ Garven’s voice breaks excitedly.
‘There’s no need to raise your voice at me.’

‘Garven
is going to break down, he’ll weep,’ says Elsa.

‘What
does it matter,’ says Paul, ‘seeing that you’re not real, any of you.’

‘My
daughter is a little dumb, as you would put it,’ Elsa is explaining as she
pulls the piece of paper from her handbag. She turns her head from the window
towards Miss Armitage.

‘You
said she was smart,’ Miss Armitage says. ‘I took note of it.’

‘I said
she was talented. I didn’t say she employed her talent,’ says Elsa. ‘Now,’ she
reads, ‘In the crossroads of my life,

I do no longer love my wife.

I love Miss Armitage instead

And
wish to be with her in bed.

— Just a minute, Miss
Armitage, don’t—’

‘I’m not going to listen
to this,’ says Miss Armitage, clattering her glass on the side table.

‘Elsa!’
say Garven and Paul.

‘Let me
finish — just one little foolish verse. My wife has come to middle age;

Not so Miss Annie Armitage,

From which you rightly do infer

I
like to be in bed with her.

— Cute, isn’t it?’ Elsa
folds the piece of paper with a doting smile.

‘She’s
not real, Annie,’ says Paul. ‘Didn’t I tell you? Haven’t I been telling you for
years? I dreamt her up. I called her back from the grave. She’s dead, and all
that goes with her. Look at her shadow!’

‘No,
Paul,’ says Garven, stepping quickly in. line with Elsa to conceal her shadow.
‘This is unprofessional. As Elsa’s analyst, I protest.’

‘I
don’t understand what the fuss is about, Miss Armitage,’ Elsa says. Miss
Armitage is trying to leave but Paul, still proclaiming to the room a general
state of unreality, is holding her back.

Elsa
says, ‘Is she a qualified doctor? Should I address her as Doctor?’

‘What
have I been telling you, Annie, all these years?’ says Paul. ‘She’s a
development of an idea, that’s all. She’s not my original conception any more.
She took a life of her own. She’s grotesque. When she died she was a sweet
English girl, very sweet, let me tell you.’

‘Sweet
is funny,’ at last breathes Miss Armitage. ‘Sweet is very funny indeed. She
insulted me once before. I should have known better than come over here.’

‘She
gets paid for it,’ Elsa says absently. ‘Paul, don’t you pay your doctor? Should
I maybe have called her Doctor … Maybe—’

‘My
patients call me Annie,’ yells Annie. ‘Plain Annie. That’s part of the routine.
I have person-to-person relations with all my patients.’

‘Annie,
look at her shadow,’ Paul is saying. ‘Garven, step off Elsa’s shadow.’

Elsa
walks.

‘The
hell with her shadow,’ says Annie. ‘Haven’t we got enough serious problems in
this city? We already have the youth problem, the racist problem, the
distribution problem, the political problem, the economic problem, the crime
problem, the matrimonial problem, the ecological problem, the divorce problem,
the domiciliary problem, the consumer problem, the birth-rate problem, the
middle-age problem, the health problem, the sex problem, the incarceration
problem, the educational problem, the fiscal problem, the unemployment problem,
the physiopsychodynamics problem, the homosexual problem, the traffic problem,
the heterosexual problem, the obesity problem, the garbage problem, the gyno-emancipation
problem, the rent-controls problem, the identity problem, the bi-sexual
problem, the uxoricidal problem, the superannuation problem, the alcoholics
problem, the capital gains problem, the anthro-egalitarian problem, the trisexual
problem, the drug problem, the civic culture and entertainments problem which
is something else again, the—’

‘Down
there, outside the United Nations,’ Elsa says, ‘there are three policemen
demonstrating in the nude, except for their caps — that’s to show they’re
policemen. ‘What are they demonstrating for?’

Garven
looks out. ‘It looks like she’s right,’ he says. ‘See that enormous banner, it
says, “Justice for us Cops”. And there’s a crowd of police giving them active
support, and they’re cordoned off. The people can’t cross the road.’

The
noise of the demonstration wafts up to the flat. ‘It’s the police problem,’
says Elsa. ‘You forgot to mention the police problem, Doctor Armitage.’

‘I
included it by implication,’ says Annie, and returns to craning down at the
demonstration.

‘No you
did not,’ says Elsa.

‘Elsa!’
says Paul.

‘I know
what you mean by her shadow,’ Annie says savagely. She looks at everybody’s
shadow in turn, then at Elsa’s. She turns to face Garven. ‘You’re her analyst,
sir?’ she says.

‘Yes,
Annie,’ says Garven, meekly. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet a colleague, Annie.’

‘Why
don’t you take me home?’ Annie says. ‘This apartment’s overheated, and all this
infra-paranormalisation is too much. We can discuss our problems at my place.’

‘Garven
has lost his monopoly on my shadow,’ says Elsa vaguely to the window as Garven
takes Annie’s arm, edging her towards the door.

‘Where
is your coat?’ says Garven.

‘They
will have to come to an agreement,’ Elsa says. ‘Fifty-fifty on the proceeds of
my shadow. I knew this would happen when she saw it in the shoe shop.’

Paul is
staring down at the police demonstration. ‘When. the police start demonstrating
without their clothes on it’s the end of everything. Your dreams …
everything. The Forty-eighth Street Precinct.’

‘They’ll
get pneumonia,’ says Elsa.

‘Look,
they’re putting on their clothes again,’ Paul says.

‘Yes,
they’re putting on their trousers, look.’

‘We’ll
see it on the television tonight,’ says Paul. ‘A slightly censored version..’

‘Yes,
look, the cameras are packing up and going off. The men just posed for the
shots.’

The
front door clicks shut behind Garven and Annie.

‘Call
the steak shop,’ says Elsa, ‘and order dinner for eight-thirty delivered to the
apartment.’

‘We’ll
see it on the news,’ says Paul. ‘At least parts of it.’

‘She
missed out the mortality problem,’ Elsa says.

VII

‘Scotch,’ says Paul. He
sits somewhat miserably at a table in the dim back room of the bar from where,
nearly indiscernible himself, he can see the group he is watching. ‘On the
rocks?’ says the waiter. ‘On the rocks,’ says Paul. ‘New York is a fun city,’
says the waiter as he swings away with his tray held high at one shoulder,
swiping up some empty glasses from another table as he goes.

It is
nearly nine-thirty at night. There has been a pause in the music, and now it
starts up again. A large grey-haired man., his ochre-coloured face full of
planes, ridges and pouching curves, plays the piano; he is an old-timer from
New Orleans. A short man with a ginger moustache and a chequered suit plays the
trombone, while a fat young man in a white, baggy shirt and grey baggy trousers
sits beating the drums with expert boredom. This early jazz music, fast and
brazen, does not appear to do anything to Paul’s bloodstream. He pays the
waiter for his drink and lets it lie, his eyes fixed on the four people who are
sitting in the bright-lit front part of the establishment close by the bar and
the band. Elsa and Princess Xavier together with two men. One is plainly
Mueller from the shoe shop. Not

Mueller
but Kiel, thinks Paul; no matter what they say I’m almost sure of it. The ice
in his drink is melting away. He sips and ponders the second man at Elsa’s
table.

He has
a face recently familiar. Where, thinks Paul, have I seen him the last few
days? It is a crumpled, oldish face on a tall body. Maybe I saw him a long time
ago, I could have known him somewhere else, at some other time in another
country in quite different circumstances. Miles Bunting comes suddenly to mind.
He played Peter Pan for Pierre the other night at the first and only
performance — Miles Bunting from the Compound during the war, when he was a
lanky, handsome, intelligence officer.

Paul
sips his drink with its floating wafers of ice, looking over his glass at the
group. They have taken. control, he thinks. I didn’t mean it this way. This bar
could go up in flames and put an end to them all; but no, it won’t.

How
white are the midnight fields beyond the Compound, under the waxing moon! Miles
Bunting comes out of a hut. His face is white with black eyebrows marking it
like a fur trimming. Inside the half-open. door sits Elsa, crying, her hands
folded on the typewriter in front of her.

It is
early afternoon and Elsa comes along the road towards him with Poppy Xavier.
Elsa is wearing a faded blue dress; her brown arms swing and she is holding a
basket of blackberries. The Princess Xavier lumps along beside her, wearing the
same baggy trousers she has worn for the duration of the war. ‘Here’s Paul,’
says Elsa.

‘What
are you going to do with those?’ Paul says, pointing to the blackberries.

‘Make
jam,’ says Elsa.

‘What
are you going to use for sugar?’ Paul says. ‘My next month’s ration and another
packet of sugar from Poppy’s Care parcel. The only thing we need is jars. ‘We
haven’t got any jam-jars.’

He is
sitting with Elsa in the office where Colonel Tylden, the security officer,
sits behind his desk, with a filing cabinet for his bodyguard, packed as it is
with information. which would amaze the people it describes, so true and yet so
lonely and isolated are the motionless little facts.

Here in
the country the robot-bombs which are already screaming down over London cannot
be heard. The Security headquarters are a small house in the park of a large
house. The small house is surrounded by hedges, well-clipped in spite of the
shortage of gardeners. No gardener, however, is likely to be seen. The bare
wood of the floors and staircase bear the general marks of wartime neglect but
they are dusted and swept. Who dusts, who sweeps, no one could know — the
cleaning woman is never seen by the light of day. Here, every day is a Puritan
Sunday. The Security staff move about sedately, sounding their consonants like
teachers of elocution when they speak at all, measuring their treads, taking
pains with their infrequent cigarette ash.