She was, she wrote, still in South Africa, in Johannesburg, where her father had now gone into hospital. He was very frail – ‘hanging on’ was the term she used – and terribly depressed about politics, and she was not too hopeful for his recovery. He just didn’t seem to believe that he had much to live for, any more. She would of course stay for as long as was necessary. She sent her love, and (here came a neatly loaded phrase) so did a lot of other people whom I used to know.
She ended with the cryptic message: ‘
There are some disgusting things going on here. More when I see you
.’
I read the last paragraph with wry recognition. Kate had no monopoly. There were some pretty disgusting things going on here, too.
Suddenly it was time for me to leave. The signal, which I had been hoping never to hear, was relayed by the booming voice of Erwin Orwin, telephoning from a city, New York, which seemed as nebulous and as far away as China or Peru. But I could not really pretend that his world of hard fact did not exist. Not any longer.
‘Mr Steele, I need you!’ was his opening chord, thundering above the minor squeaks and whines of Barbados’ overseas hook-up. ‘And I hope you have some good news for me. How’s my book coming along?’
‘It’s finished,’ I answered, caught off-guard. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and I had been summoned to the hotel lobby, with the utmost discretion, straight from a bed which was a sad one to leave at any time. I back-tracked a little, using the social courtesies as a screen. ‘Hallo, Mr Orwin,’ I said, with great heartiness. ‘Nice to hear your voice again! How’s New York getting on?’
‘New York’s all right,’ he said, ‘if you like rain, and a big row with Equity. How are things down there? How are all those babes in bikinis?’
‘Barely visible,’ I said, straight from the joke book.
The onslaught of his laughter could almost have been heard without the aid of science. I held the phone away from my ear till the paroxysm died away.
‘That’s good!’ he shouted. ‘Keep that one in … Did you say it was finished?’
‘Pretty well.’ I could not really tell him otherwise; I had been gone for six weeks, and writers with contracts and professional commitments did not throw away six weeks, nor any other span of time. ‘I’ve just been polishing it up a bit.’
‘I’d like to see what you’ve done,’ he said, rather more formidably. ‘I want to get things moving. And so do Teller and Wallace. They don’t like hanging about doing nothing, even on my payroll. When can you get back? Tomorrow?’
‘No,’ I answered, conscious of a slightly chill breeze in the warm morning air. I remembered Jack Taggart telling me: ‘Your rules aren’t breakable.’ This must be the translation. ‘That’s too soon,’ I went on. ‘I doubt if I could get a reservation.’
‘I’ll fix the reservation,’ he said, ‘if that’s all it is. What airline are you using?’
‘Don’t you bother,’ I told him. ‘I know the people myself. I’ll organise it.’
‘When?’
The wires and the air-waves hummed and throbbed between us. I had to make up my mind, to this and a lot of other things. ‘In a couple of days,’ I answered. ‘But I left my car down in Miami, and I’ll have to drive it up again. How would it be if I sent you the manuscript? Then I can be back home in about a week, to go over it with you.’
‘I guess that’s OK,’ he said grudgingly. ‘But don’t forget, I need you as well as the book. And Teller and Wallace will be needing you too.’
Everybody needed me.
‘All right,’ I told him, ‘I’ll mail the manuscript tonight, and start back on Wednesday.’
‘We’ll be looking for it. And for you.’ But once he had his promise, he seemed prepared to relax. ‘You know, I envy you creative writers, Mr Steele. A few hours in the sun, and the work’s all done. I’ll bet you didn’t even have to get yourself a desk.’
‘I can’t afford a desk,’ I said. ‘And I’ve been working like a – like an African field-marshal.’
‘Now then,’ he said, starting to wheeze. ‘No editorial comment.’
His laughter roared and crackled over two thousand miles of defenceless air, as the call faded, and I hung up. But it was not infectious; I wasn’t feeling much like laughter myself. I had given Orwin a promise which I did not in the least want to keep, which vaguely I had hoped to stall for another two weeks at the minimum. Yet now Icould not do so. One of my dies was cast.
There were several others already lining up, and as I went down the coral-stone steps into the hotel garden they began to crowd in on me. Under the towering palm trees, the pool was still deserted, and I sat down at the water’s edge to try to sort the thing out. I had known for many days that I would soon have to wake up, and that when I did so, I would be waking to a simple, central problem. The problem had arrived. I must make up my mind about Susan Crompton.
It was not going to be easy, whatever I did. Though she was not yet on my conscience, which was elastic, she certainly would be, as soon as I picked up and left her. It was going to be almost impossible to walk out, and still face the mirror in the morning – or, if that was too much of a cliché from the Boys’ Book of Priggery, it was safe to say that I would feel all sorts of a fool if I quit so early.
Much of that feeling could only be selfish; I simply did not want to bid her goodbye; she had become an endearing as well as a desirable member of our cast, and I wanted lots more of the same. Why should we part now? Why should I leave this feast, when the feasting had hardly begun?
There were other reasons, more admirable – or more arguable, by a man looking for arguments to justify what he was going to do next. There were all kinds of ways in which I could help Susan; there was so much that could be made out of a girl like this, if she were given a new compass and a fresh start; all it needed was a rescue operation, and a little non-opportunist love.
I felt splendidly capable of this, particularly at nine o’clock in the morning after a night of wakeful endeavour, in bed with the object of charity. But if this romantic relief work had Cinderella cast in a dual and somewhat dubious role (one wave of my wand, and we turned into a motel), yet the results might still be just as good as if the Fairy Godmother herself had mapped them out.
Susan had been snared, by her startling good looks, her generous heart, and by the most potent man-trap of all – man. If she ‘went on like this’, it could only be downhill, and she would end up as an old woman in a back alley, performing standing services for sailors. It did not have to happen, and it would not, if she were helped now, at a time when she had so many assets, so much promise, so fine a life to live.
There was an ancient, skinny Negro circling the pathway round the pool, dressed in a tattered white under-shirt and a pair of blue jeans faded to the colour of a rain-washed sky. He bore a rustic implement resembling a wire-mesh spoon on the end of a pole, and with it he was cleaning the surface of the water. Leaves, weed, patches of scum, palm fronds, dead insects – all were lifted out, piece by piece, one by one, with delicate, dedicated care.
Each time he passed me, he grinned, and raised his straw hat, and bowed. But while the grinning was automatic, the other thing was not; it was, on this bright morning, his life’s work. He was giving his whole soul to his act of purification.
There was a far-fetched lesson here, and I prepared to take it, nodding my head sagely like a man seeing the light – the light he chose to see. It was suddenly tied with something else, something more remarkable, which had only just occurred to me.
Years ago, when it had been desperately important that I marry Kate (and I would never have denied, nor reversed, that urgency), I had made up a story about a girl in Johannesburg, a traditional harlot with a heart of gold, who lived for love, and died of it. It had been a good story, designed to catch Kate’s attention at a crucial moment, and it had worked; along with some other things, it had injected just enough jealousy to propel her into marriage.
One of the points of my story had been that, with a mixture of motives, I had tried to set this girl up as something better than a corporate bed-fellow.
My heroine had started life as fiction, and now she was not. Suddenly she had arrived on my own doorstep, as Susan Crompton, with something like the same problems and all of the same appeal. The fairy-tale girl herself had taken flesh – and no one could deny that she had made a delicious job of the transformation.
All at once, duty seemed clear, and pleasurable at the same time – the way that all duty should present itself. I had to take this thing on. I could not do less for the fact than I had done for the fancy.
I jumped up from my chair, on swift impulse, endangering the balance of the old man, who was nearby. But he recovered, and raised his hat, and bowed again. He was not to be turned from his endeavours … There were obvious dangers and complications ahead, if I did take Susan to New York, which was a small town in certain ways, and a most resonant sounding board for the faintest whisper of gossip, particularly at the café-society level.
But the reasons for taking her back with me had suddenly grown bigger than the reasons for leaving her in Barbados, or saying goodbye in Miami, and I was walking down the garden path to tell her so.
Armed with a stiff drink which the occasion demanded, I crossed to her cabin, and peered inside. She was still asleep, curled up under the covers of our workshop; but the shapely mound was still recognisable as a girl. I patted the mound where it was most appealing, and she raised her head, and opened one sleepy eye.
‘Hi,’ she said. She blinked, and frowned, and pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘Aren’t you the man who was here? What happened to you?’
‘A phone call.’
‘Tell her you’re all tied up.’ She was still fathoms deep, and not too keen to come to the surface. ‘Don’t call us,’ she mumbled. ‘We’ll call you.’
‘It was from New York,’ I said. ‘Erwin Orwin.’
‘What he want?’
I took a drink before I answered: ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to go back.’
‘Oh … When?’
‘Wednesday.’
She yawned cavernously, but the news had already broken through; both eyes were open now, and she was peering doubtfully up at me, as if the warmth of our bed were no longer sheltering her from the much colder world outside. ‘I’ve lost count,’ she said, though I did not think this was quite true. ‘What day is today?’
‘Monday.’
At that she really woke up, and sat up too. The view was charming, and if I had had any thoughts of changing my mind, I lost them then and there, in a stalwart determination to rescue everything in sight.
‘Why so soon, Johnny?’ she asked.
‘They need the play, and it’s ready for them. I can’t really stay on here any longer.’ I drew a long breath, the breath of determination. ‘But when I go, I want you to come back with me.’
Her face grew suddenly wary, and guarded. ‘You mean all the way to New York?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head, flicking the small bright curtain of her hair across her shoulders. ‘Give me my robe. I can’t think when I’m naked.’
‘I’m not surprised. And while I remember, thank you for last night.’ But something in her face told me that she was not in the market for this kind of reminiscence, and I picked up her silk robe, and put it round her, with a kiss on the top of her head for luck. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed, and waited.
‘I don’t know,’ she said again. ‘Maybe we just ought to–’ she was back to her old habit of not finishing sentences, and this time I could understand it. Her expression had grown more careful still. ‘I mean, we’ve had a lot of fun already.’
‘There’s more to come.’
‘Maybe. But I didn’t want this to grow into a problem … Look, I’m going back to Miami anyway. Why don’t we just leave it like that?’
‘What happens to you in Miami?’
‘I’ll get by.’
‘I don’t want you to
get by
. It’s not good enough. I want us to go back together. Then when we get to New York, we’ll do something about you.’
‘What about me?’
I tried not to make it sound too noble. ‘I want to help you somehow. I really do. It shouldn’t be too difficult. It just means a fresh start.’
‘I don’t need a fresh start.’
‘That’s all you do need.’
It was almost pathetic to watch her face as she considered what I was saying. I was reminded once again of an earlier thought – of how vulnerable was a girl like Susan, once she had stepped into this sleazy arena. Sitting on the bed, remembering last night and many other nights, I realised that I was not in the best shape for cold calculation. It was the sort of moment, the sort of potent situation, when one could be betrayed into all kinds of stupid decisions; decisions which, though grounded in pity, could flower into monsters of complication and deceit.
But I had, at the same time, a picture of her, standing outside the airport at Miami, waiting for the bus and the next pick-up, and I could not bear it.
As she said nothing, I spoke again. ‘It
is
all you need, Susan. Give it a chance. Come back to New York with me, and we’ll work out a plan.’
‘What sort of plan?’
‘I don’t know. You could take a course at one of the acting schools, something like that. Or have another try in television. They’re not all bastards, and I do know a few people who could help.’
‘They
are
all bastards … But you’re being very sweet. Wouldn’t it mean trouble for you? I don’t want to involve you in anything. I mean, being married, and tied up. That sort of thing never works out.’
‘It’s worked out all right so far.’
She shook her head, like a child refusing a treat for reasons it cannot really explain. ‘That’s down here. It could be different in New York.’ Suddenly she faced the test question, the thing we were both thinking about, and not mentioning. ‘What happens when your wife comes back?’
I didn’t know the answer to that, and I didn’t try to find it. ‘One thing at a time. Let’s get to New York first, and see how it works out.’
‘I’ll think about it … I’ll think about it all morning … I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but it
is
difficult.’ She stretched her arms high above her head, and the robe fell away from her shoulders, and she was a big girl again. ‘It’s nice to have a choice, anyway.’ She was eyeing me, and I was doing the same, without disguise. ‘Didn’t they ever tell you? – it’s rude to stare.’