The Old Man and Me (6 page)

“Bounce!” C. D. commanded me imperiously.

I was feeling myself in a situation that left me far from confident. What was I doing so far from the ground in a strange stationary automobile staring blankly through its windshield into a roomful of similar ones? All I wanted was to get down and out.

Nevertheless I bounced. With, one hoped, a certain detachment, a certain dignity, a certain nonchalance. But I bounced.

Then, to my surprise, C. D. began bouncing too. Positively flinging himself into it.

After a while C. D. subsided seemingly pleased, made a few desultory passes at the wheel, encouraged our friend into a learned and lively discourse on mileage, tonnage, and bootage, with side excursions into dashboard facia gadgetry, gear shift values, the turn of the wheel, the spin of the wheel, and the lock of the wheel. He was tuning up to sing full-throated praise of that road-worthy miracle the Rolls-Royce engine when C. D. broke him off with the announcement that we were now ready for a go at the back seat.

Swift, silent and heavy swung wide the doors again as we slipped over the smoothest leather, even through clothing, that skin ever touched, out of the front and into the rear of the car.

What made me so sure all of a sudden that C
.
D. didn’t know how to drive?
Was it his abrupt dismissal of engine-talk, or something unprofessional in his stance (if I may put it that way) behind the wheel: something odd in the relationship of feet to floor pedals? Or was it simply the way he stretched with an audible sigh as he sank into the back seat? I don’t know. It was one of the mysteries about him I never solved. I never could bring myself to ask him outright and he never told me. Isn’t it funny? I found out about everything else about him. What pockets of resistance we keep hidden about our persons, what inexplicable shynesses, what reserves of reserves! Though what was worrying me at the time was hardly of so philosophical a bent: more specifically it was his hand which had suddenly sprung out to clasp mine. Had it sprung as the result of an uncontrollable passion, or was it merely the natural extension of his sense of well-being? I let my own hand lie in his in a sort of non-committal way—asleep you might say—while my heart raced and I pondered my feelings.

What a long way we had travelled today—were travelling still. The voice of the car salesman meandered on, babbling of foot-rests and arm-rests and ash-trays with their super-buttons. I looked idly out the window at the unknown scenery of France or maybe Italy flying past and the man’s voice seemed to recede further and further into the back of my mind so that my brain was only dimly recording it as it discreetly blew the foam off the Income Tax dodge: “...and therefore buying it in your company’s name naturally establishes its use for business purposes hence, etc., etc...” before it disappeared entirely, got left behind as C. D. and I went rolling across our countryside faster and faster, hand in hand, in perfect contentment.

I glanced at the old man lounging by my side taking his ease, the afternoon sun tipping his hair and features with a rare old gold so that he looked more holy, more Rembrandty than ever. Dear old man, my dear sainted unknowing benefactor-to-be. I almost squeezed his hand and stopped myself in time, my goodness me brazen hussy what was I thinking, that would never do. Time to land, I told myself. Don’t go too fast. Time to check back on Earth.

“Say wouldn’t this be the greatest for watching drive-in movies?” I said with a determined heartiness. “We’d have no trouble seeing over the tops of other people’s cars in this crate would we?”

C. D. looked blank. “What are you talking about?”

“Drive-in movies. Oh, come on, don’t make out you’ve never heard of ’em.”

Abruptly he let go of my hand, leaned forward, press—click and was on his way out. Well, I’d wanted to break the spell. Looked like I’d succeeded. Obviously he was not amused by my frivolous attitude towards that sacred machine. But his heel must have caught in something on the way down for the next thing I knew he was hurtling forward head first saved only in the nick of time by the quick reflexes of our friend who righted him with a steadying arm to the elbow.

And it was during that split second when disaster seemed imminent that I had my vision of him as Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall, crack open—! and gold coins splattering on to the floor with a sound of a thousand golden bells. But more unsettling was the fierce, triumphant exultation that accompanied this absurd vision and sent my blood thumping through my veins even as my appalled mind wrestled with its significance.

I jumped out of the car after him. “Are you all right. Gosh you frightened me. You almost had a great fa—a nasty fall,” I corrected myself quickly but he was even quicker.

“Humpty Dumpty is quite all right and still in one piece,” the canny old bird assured me with cold dignity.

“No, I only meant it was such a great distance from the wa— from the ground. I only meant it’s such a fantastically high car—” I continued doggedly but he had turned aside to the salesman and, in elaborately humble tones which somehow had the effect of underlining his displeasure at me, was wondering aloud if he might possibly dare impose further upon the man’s good nature to the extent of arranging for a demonstration.

He was not kept long in the dark. “But of course, sir. My pleasure. Perhaps you’d care to take her for a spin this afternoon?”

C. D. took his time consulting his watch, the car, the day, the shape of my face and—if I was right about his driving—possibly the need for saving his own before rendering the verdict. “It’s too lovely out,” he decided. “We are going to sit in the park awhile.”

“Very sensible if I may say so, sir,” the man concurred. “Such delightful weather.” He radiated a three-way beam that managed to include even himself in its approval. “And when would you like the demonstration, sir? I’ll be glad to arrange an appointment for you now.”

“I shall have to look in my book first.”

“Certainly, sir. My card, sir. If you’ll telephone me the morning of whatever day is convenient.”

The card-giving ceremony, I noticed, was performed with breath-taking speed and perfunctoriness, the card landing in C. D.’s pocket without being stopped even for a second’s token look.

“Goodbye, then,” cried C. D., his part of the comedy over, as with a conclusive gesture he propelled me towards the door.

“And good-day to you, sir, madam.” The man genuflected and showed us out. I studied his face carefully. Was this the tenth or ten-hundredth visit C. D. had made to that showroom? It was impossible to tell from the man’s face for I saw reflected in it
neither impatience nor relief but actually a kind of wistfulness, as at the departure of a good friend at the end of a pleasant evening. Come back soon, it seemed to be saying, half an hour of good clean fun, what better way to pass the day? And when I looked back it was to see him standing in front of Silver Cloud lost in admiration.

We strolled down Dover Street in the sunshine.

“I think you make him very happy,” I said at last.

C. D. eyed me quizzically. “You wouldn’t be pulling my leg, now would you?”

“How do I do that?”

“Making fun of me, I meant.”

“You wouldn’t be pulling his?” I countered. “Or mine?”

“And what makes you think I should?”

“Because you’re not really thinking of buying it at all, are you?” I blurted out.

C. D. considered the question. “Cynicism can become an ugly mannerism in the young,” he finally replied. “I suggest you curb it before it develops into a habit. As it happens I really do need a motorcar—”

“Or choo-choo train?”

“What is the meaning of that?”

“Well you English are always sneering at us for saying ‘horseback riding’ instead of just ‘riding,’ so why ‘motorcar’? Why won’t just ‘car’ do?”

“I doubt that we shall pursue this battle of language with any profit,” said C. D. languidly. “May we not declare an Anglo-American Usage truce for the day?”

“How can we,” I groaned, “when we both
use
the same words all the time?”

“Think of something else,” he suggested. “Think how lovely the day is. Think of all the attention you’re attracting. There. Doesn’t that make you happy?”

And do you know it was the strangest thing, but it was true. I, who had wandered this town for weeks desolate, friendless, almost invisible, suddenly found all sorts of people staring at me—no—staring at us, for wasn’t I the same girl wearing the same clothes as before? It was decidedly the “us” that turned the trick; we loaned each other a mystery and glamour, together we stimulated a curiosity we couldn’t hope to stimulate on our own. It was truly remarkable: one would have had to be as beautiful as a movie star, as famous as a politician, to arouse the same interest that we two nobodies with only our discrepancy in forms and ages were managing to do. I couldn’t resist playing up to the situation, over-playing it in fact, roguishing looks and tossing curls at him, so determined was I to let no one pass us under the mistaken impression that what they were passing was a mere Dad and Daughter team. And pausing to examine the contents in the window of a jewellery store I saw doubly illustrated the importance of the setting to the jewel; for there beside the emeralds, rubies, and pearls glowing in their nests of diamonds was our corporate image reflected in the glass. How well we went together. How we matched, balanced, set each other off: his rotundity emphasizing my slenderness; his air of portly affluence my fragility; his ruddiness my pallor. Even his very hat, a bowler, emphasized my hatlessness, seemed to make my hair shine as it never shone before, while the rough, blunt cut of his English features somehow rendered my ordinary American ones exotic.

Another thing: it would be absurd to say he brought beauty into my life, it would be carrying romantic statement to ridiculous extremes, but it was the damnedest thing the way the clearing of the weather happened to coincide with our meeting almost, as it were, at his bidding revealing all manner of pretty streets and buildings and squares. Or was it just that he was so clever about steering me through some of the best bits of London? Oxford Street splattered and soggy with rain is quite a different proposition from St. James’s Park in the cool dappled sunshine, where we now took our ease reclining upon the soft grass that sloped gently down to the pond.

“Animals!” I exclaimed in surprise, looking at the pond, “Why the place is full of animals. Look at ’em—ducks, pelicans, geese, and gosh, even a black swan. How divine.”

“Surely they’re called birds.”

“In a city anything that isn’t a sparrow or a pigeon is an
animal
. As a matter of fact pigeons and sparrows aren’t really birds
to me either; they’re people. Like the poor who are always with us,” I said, looking around for the poor as I spoke but there weren’t any.

“Parks are for the poor. Alas, that they haven’t a chance to enjoy them. Only the very young and the time-wasters like us can.”

“That’s because you hide them so well. This beauty, for instance. How d’you expect them to find it? I wouldn’t if you hadn’t led me to it.”

“It is pretty, isn’t it?”

“Ravishing. You really do grow the most sensational trees. The ones in Central Park are spindly by comparison. Look at the huge thing we’re sitting under—whatever it is.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Should I?”

“Slum child.”

“Not at all,” I said haughtily. “My father has a huge estate on Long Island, if you must know. I don’t go around asking the name of every tree I come across for heaven’s sake.”

“But really, not to know the simple elm—”

“No, nor probably the simple oak.”

“Nor the simple sycamore—maple, I believe you call it? Nor the simple lime?” he asked pointing them out to me.

“Lime? No kidding, is that really a lime tree? With
limes
on it?”

“You call it linden.”

“Oh.” I sat up suddenly. “Hey, as a matter of fact I did know all the names once. There was this batty old Botany teacher we had at college who used to race her class around the campus every spring making us tear the leaves off the trees for an identification exam. I did very well, I remember, fifty out of a possible sixty. Something like that. Couldn’t remember a single one by the end of a week, of course.”

“What were you doing studying Botany? Surely Science wasn’t your subject?”

“God, no. It was a required course.”

“For what?”

“For anything. I happened to major in the Dance. I mean I planned to,” I corrected myself, suddenly remembering I was Honey. “Actually I was an English major and graduated with honours.”

“The
Dance
. What an extraordinarily whimsical thing your university education is. Botany and Dance on the same curriculum.”

“Oh there were a lot of subjects you could work into your course if you wanted to. Taxonomy and Ecology, Hymnology, Public Finance.”

“To what purpose?”

“The well-rounded person, of course,” I said beginning to feel irritated.

“Well-rounded, my foot,” he snorted. “Eclecticism run mad, that’s what it is!”

“Quit picking on us.” I rose from the grass and walked slowly away towards the pond pretending to be hurt; and under the pretence I really was hurt and damned annoyed at myself for being so. What was eating me? I certainly didn’t consider myself a patriot, had never considered myself an American with a capital A for that matter, and yet half our conversation that day seemed to consist in sniping at the other’s country. Was I going to allow the rest of our time to be wasted in transatlantic squabbles? It was dangerous to say the least.

A little girl feeding the ducks noticed me standing there and casually offered me some bread so that I could join in. What did she care what country I came from? The act of unthinking generosity did much to restore my sense of balance.

Presently C. D. was beside me. “I’m thinking of going along to the Antique Fair. I understand they’ve got some quite extraordinary pieces this time. Will you join me?”

“That would be really asking for it,” I sighed. “If there’s anything I know less about than trees it’s antiques.”