The Hothouse by the East River (17 page)

‘She’s
having a night out,’ Paul explains. They find seats, however, in a public room
leading off the lobby.

‘I have
to tell you,’ Garven says, ‘that Annie and I are in love.’

‘I have
to tell you,’ Paul says, ‘that the St Regis Hotel is not the place to be so.’

‘Here
we have separate suites,’ says Annie. ‘We’re a professional partnership as well,’
Garven says. ‘Through Annie I am getting to know you, Paul. It’s the secondary
associative process of the oblique approach. And through you I have a tertiary
oblique approach to Elsa.’

Elsa
says to Annie, ‘I think you’re low if you’re passing on my husband’s
confidences as a patient after all these years. It’s unethical.’

‘Your
opinion doesn’t count,’ Annie replies. ‘She didn’t get any confidences,’ Paul
says. ‘She only thought she did.’

Garven
says, ‘There are no confidences involved, there’s no betrayal at all. Annie is
largely what you’ve made her, Paul, and by experiencing Annie I can experience
you. Then, you see, by the same token, I can experience Elsa.’

Annie
says, ‘When we’ve had enough experience, primary, secondary and tertiary, then.
we can really start curative treatment on your wife, Paul. I have a new
method.’

‘She
doesn’t need treatment,’ Paul says. ‘She doesn’t exist.’

‘Come
now,’ says Garven, ‘that’s no way to talk.’

‘Let’s
get out of here, Paul,’ says Elsa. ‘Mrs Hazlett,’ says Annie, ‘it’s only
understandable that you should resist treatment. They all resist treatment,
all of them. However, my new method, which is already producing first-class
results — I can tell you I have clients lining up outside my office and my
switchboard’s jammed — my new method does not involve the personality of the
subject and therefore the impetus to therapy-resistance is obliviated. My new
method is strictly bio-psychological. I locate in the various organs of the
body the psychological disorder and I treat the patient strictly on the basis
of the defective organ. Right now I’m treating a patient who suffers from
schizophrenia of the pancreas. I have a gentleman. with a hyper-introspective
bladder complicated by euphoria of the liver. I have under my care a
manic-depressive kidney, a cardiac super-ego, a case of hallucinations of the
diaphragm and a libidinal spleen.. Fixations of the reproductive organs are
common. A person can suffer from egomania of the toenails. You name it, I can
therapeutise it.’

‘That
reminds me,’ says Garven, ‘I have to see my dentist tomorrow morning.’

‘I have
to see my lawyer,’ Elsa says. ‘You left me without notice, Garven, and I have
no butler. There must be some way that I can sue for damages.’

She is
puffing her sable coat over her shoulder and Paul’s eyes move sadly to the main
lobby where some people have just come in..

Garven
says, ‘Here comes that man Kiel. And Princess Xavier with him, and the actor in
your son’s play — what was his name?’

‘Miles
Bunting,’ Paul says, getting up. ‘He didn’t use to look like that. And the
other man is Colonel Tylden. Come on, Elsa.’

The
newcomers are still looking about them and helping Poppy to rearrange her
coverings when Paul and Elsa escape them by getting into the lift. They get out
with two other people when it stops. They make their way to a noise beyond a
folding doorway.

‘I
think this is where the action is,’ Elsa says as the doors swing open.

Paul
stops her at the threshold. ‘Elsa,’ he says, ‘are we going to have these
followers of yours on our heels all night?’

‘You
started it,’ she says. ‘Your suspicions, your imagination … Poor Kiel, poor Kiel,
and he died in prison.’

“Well,
you died in a railway train.’

‘So did
you, Paul,’ she says. ‘You know you did.’ An elderly group of four is coming
away from the reception which proceeds beyond the folding doors. Decorously
they move round Elsa and Paul who are still arguing on the threshold.

‘Was it
Tylden, then?’ he says. ‘Could it have been. Tylden, after all, who was your
lover?’

‘Ask
him,’ she says. ‘Just go down and ask him to rack his brains and see if he
remembers. I expect they’re all still waiting around in. the lobby.’

‘Or
Miles Bunting? He made you cry. ‘Was it Miles?’

‘I need
a sandwich,’ she says, puffing towards the room although he holds her arm. ‘I
need a drink.’

“We’ll
go somewhere for dinner,’ he says. ‘Was it Poppy?’

‘One
will never really know,’ says Elsa with the air of discussing a distant name.
‘What does it matter since we all died?’

He lets
her proceed through the doorway, following her. A crowd of expensive people
are packed into the room where there is a large buffet set at the far end. A
waiter approaches with a tray of drinks. Elsa chooses champagne; Paul takes
whisky. They are apparently very late arriving, for nobody stands at the door
to announce or receive them. But presently a small white-haired man comes up to
them and greets them in a jovial voice.

‘Come
along in, glad you made it. Thank you for your beautiful gift,’ he says,
shaking first Elsa’s hand and then Paul’s. ‘Mary!’ he calls out, and his tall,
bright-eyed wife, her skin wrinkled with a great many years comes slowly
through the crowd towards them, making a path with her hands and walking in. a
very straight line. ‘See who’s here, Mary!’ says the old gentleman, looking to
his wife for guidance.

‘Wonderful!’
she says, kissing Elsa. ‘I haven’t seen you in years. Thank you for your
beautiful gift. It is really lovely. You know … all these people.’ She looks
at Paul, her bright eyes rather tearful.

“We’re
late, but you know how it is,’ Elsa says. ‘We had to come and congratulate you
tonight of all nights.’ And she says to Paul, looking straight at him, ‘Isn’t
it wonderful, Paul, a golden wedding.’

‘Well,
Paul,’ says the host, ‘it’s been fifty wonderful years with Mary. I can
honestly say I’ve had a wonderful married life.’

“Well,
this is great. Here’s to you both,’ says Paul. ‘Mary you look simply fine.’

‘Alexander
has been the perfect husband,’ says Mary, ‘and the perfect father.’

‘Alexander,’
says Elsa, ‘you don’t look a day older than when we first met you. And neither
does Mary.’

Alexander
beams at Mary.

‘Elsa
often talks about you. We remember when we first came to America how good you
were to us, ‘Paul says.

‘Elsa,’
says Alexander, confident in his progress towards locating the new arrivals in
his mind, ‘Here comes Conrad, our grandson. You remember Conrad?’

Conrad
is upon them. ‘Why, Conrad,’ says Elsa. ‘Of course we remember him, but he
won’t remember us, I’m sure.’

Conrad
giggles. ‘Have you had something to eat?’ he says.

Paul
and Elsa ease across the room to the buffet.

‘I’d
like some of that lobster salad,’ Elsa says.

‘I
imagine he was a business-man,’ Paul says, looking round the room.

Elsa
takes her plate and fork. ‘We’ll see their names m tomorrow’s paper,’ she says.

They
say voluble goodnights to the golden wedding party and leave in. a wash of
kisses and tears. Downstairs in. the lobby there is no sign of their pursuers.
They swing out of the doors and walk up to the Plaza Hotel where they make for
the Oak Room.

‘Here
we are,’ says Poppy from a seat near the door. The men stand up and Miles
Bunting says, ‘Paul — Elsa — we’ve kept a place for you.’

But
Paul pulls her away and they are out in Fifth Avenue waiting for an oncoming
taxi to pull up by the time Miles has followed them into the street.

‘What’s
the matter?’ says Miles. ‘What are you running away for?’

‘We’ve
been to a golden wedding and Paul has psychoneurotic arches; he feels compelled
to dance,’ Elsa explains as Paul bundles her into the back of the cab, gets in
beside her and bangs the door shut. ‘Downtown,’ says Paul. The taxi purrs on
through the late-night streets.

After a
while, inexplicably, the driver says, ‘We should drop the atom bomb on ‘em.’

‘Every
time,’ says Paul, agreeably.

They
alight at a discotheque called The Sensual Experience, the taxi with its
mumbling driver moves on. A dim figure awaits them in the doorway with a knife
in his hand.

‘You
can’t kill us,’ says Paul. ‘We’re dead already.’

‘Paul,
be careful, you’ll give him a fright,’ Elsa says.

And
indeed the two drugged dilated eyes of the stranger take visible fright as his
face comes close to theirs. He gasps and falls to the pavement in a kind of
fit. A man comes out of the doorway, looks at the figure on the pavement and
turns back in. Elsa and Paul walk away up the street to another discotheque,
and by the time they look back a patrol car has found the man on the pavement
and the police are hauling him into the back seat.

‘There
must be something about us,’ Elsa says. They climb the stairs to Roloff’s.

Here
they make a decided success. Even Roloff himself wants to sign them up for a
nightly floor show. A sharp-eyed youth with a mass of bushy hair somehow
through the clang of the music and the quick bright flicker of multi-coloured
lights, notices the fall of Elsa’s shadow that crosses with

Paul’s
while they dance. ‘Look at their dancing shadows!’ he tells the crowd. ‘What
have they got there?’

Paul
and Elsa soon have a dancing-space to themselves while the others peer closely
all round them to find the source of their trick. Those nearest crouch on the
floor trying to see what Elsa has got up her skirt to produce this effect.

‘Where
does she keep it?’ — ‘No, look at her arms, they make a shadow too.’ — ‘Is it
something to do with him? — What’s he doing, then?’ —Roloff the proprietor
switches off his flickering psychedelic apparatus, leaving the room steadily
lit by two sidelamps. Still Elsa’s shadow dances with Paul’s. He backs away,
laughing, and lets her dance by herself.

‘It’s
her shadow, it’s falling a different way from anyone else’s.’

There
is loud applause, but Paul is looking serious as he sees the eager faces of
Kiel and Tylden among the audience.

‘Elsa,
it’s time to go.’ And still in vain. Roloff tries to sign them up for a nightly
floor-show. ‘You’ve definitely got something to offer,’ he says.

Tylden
comes over. ‘Poppy’s downstairs in the Rolls. She couldn’t make the stairs,’ he
says.

‘We’d
better go along with them,’ Elsa says. ‘We can’t go on like this.’

‘We can
always go home,’ Paul says, gathering up their coats from the check-room. On
the stairway, Kiel tries to block their path. ‘She’s been dancing so hard you
couldn’t read the secret code on the soles of her shoes,’ Kiel says.

Paul
passes him by and Elsa follows, yawning. ‘My feet are sore,’ she says.

They
have to walk two blocks for a taxi, while the Rolls circles the block, passing
them twice. Princess Xavier can be seen to wave a handkerchief appealingly each
time.

‘You
would think they were alive,’ says Elsa. ‘One can’t tell the difference,’ Paul
says. They go on to Arthur’s on the East Side and back downtown to The Throb.
To put his mind at ease, at just after three-thirty in the morning, Paul
decides to call on Pierre.

‘He
won’t let us in at this hour,’ Elsa says. ‘He can’t refuse his mother and his
father.’ Pierre eventually lets them in with narrowed eyes, puffing his
dressing-gown over his thin chest. His friend Peregrine, fully dressed, is
working on some papers, and when he sees Pierre’s parents, folds them up
without a word.

‘I hope
we’re not disturbing you,’ says Elsa, sitting down.

‘I’m
just going to get cigarettes from the machine,’ says Peregrine. He stacks his
papers and leaves.

‘I was
asleep,’ says Pierre.

The
room has been. newly decorated with Chinese panels, lacquered furniture, and a
screen painted with flat white petals and pink birds. Paul’s long fingers trace
the carvings of an ivory figurine.

‘Do you
exist?’ Paul says.

‘Don’t
be vulgar,’ says Pierre.

‘Because,’
says Paul, ‘your mother and I were killed by a bomb in the spring of 1944. You
were never conceived, never born..’

‘It’s
rather a personal matter,’ Pierre says, ‘isn’t it?’

‘Really,
Paul, I think he’s right,’ Elsa says. ‘One shouldn’t intrude at this hour of
the morning.’

Pierre
smiles. ‘It’s perfectly charming of you to come like this, really. I don’t mind
a bit.’

Outside,
they find Peregrine trying to extricate himself from Poppy, who stands on the
pavement beside her Rolls, holding him in conversation. ‘I want to have a word
with Pierre’s mother,’ she is saying. ‘His mother is a very old friend of mine.
Do tell her I’m here.’ The three men and the driver sit in. the Rolls solemnly
waiting.