A Choice of Enemies (2 page)

Walking home again in the widening light Norman wished once more that he could be a better, more intelligent man. It would be fun, he thought, to have been born one of those brilliant sensitive Englishmen who, at the age of fifteen, is seduced by an exotic lady novelist in his uncle’s villa at Florence or Dubrovnik. Brilliant, sensitive Americans, he knew, were heartier types. Their first woman came at fourteen, either in a field of corn under a symbolically bloody sun or, if the weather didn’t permit, in the barn where he and she took refuge, with the symbolic storm raging outside.

Norman turned up Church Street. There he saw a pretty girl with a furled umbrella waiting at the bus stop. She had nice legs. The sun was stronger in the sky now, it was spring, and all at once he yearned for toast and coffee. What I need is a wife, he thought. Maybe I’ll meet a nice girl at Sonny Winkleman’s on Saturday night.

He picked up his mail downstairs and took the steps to his flat two at a time. There was a copy of the
Intelligence Digest –
a magazine he needed for an article he was preparing for Hale – and a telegram from Charlie Lawson.

Tuesday, Norman thought. This
is
Tuesday.

No, Norman thought, I certainly can’t. He did not intend to leave London that summer. But pouring himself another cup of coffee he read Charlie’s telegram again. They’re two, he thought, and I’m one.
They don’t know London. No, he thought, I’m not letting them have the flat. That’s final.

He turned to the rest of his mail. His agent in New York had sent him a copy of the letter from Bill Jacobson of Star Books. They liked his latest thriller, but they wanted it expanded to a minimum of sixty thousand words. There was also a copy of the Montreal
Star
, a friend at home always sent him the Saturday edition, and a few bills. Norman returned to Charlie’s telegram. They’re two, he thought, and I’m one. Then, remembering all the good times they had shared, he decided that the least he could do was to let them have the flat until they found something more permanent at a reasonable rent. He phoned Karp.

“Karp? Norman speaking. Listen, I’d like to ask you a favour. Have you any empty rooms in your place?”

Karp’s house was in Hampstead. He said that he had two empty rooms.

“I’m going to sub-let my flat for a while. Can you rent me one?”

“Remember,” Karp said, “last week I arrived early for dinner? I had to wait an hour for you in your flat. There was nothing to amuse me, so I went through your drawers. I found some letters from a girl called Joey.” Karp paused. “Do many women crawl to you like that, Norman?”

No, Norman thought. Unfortunately no.

“Can you rent me a room or not, Karp? It won’t be for long.”

“
I
am to be your landlord. Imagine that.”

Norman had first met Karp in the hospital. Karp had been an orderly.

“You’ll be able to read my mail more often that way.”

“You mustn’t take offence,” Karp said. “After all, who read your letters to you in the hospital? Not to mention bathing and hair-cutting and –”

“Then I can count on a room?”

Karp said he could count on a room.

Norman poured himself more coffee. He had been saving his letter from Nicky for the last. Now he opened it eagerly. After their mother had died Norman’s younger brother Nicky had gone to Boston to join her family; he had even adopted their name – Singleton, and that’s how he came to be in the American Army.

Norman remembered Nicky as he had last seen him in London. Tall, boyishly awkward in his uniform, with their father’s brooding blue eyes and tender smile, and with a lot of Dr. Max Price’s brilliance too. Nicky inherited the gift, he thought, not me.

Norman had promised to take Nicky to Spain for a few months. They were going to rent a villa together. Norman could hardly wait.

He had sent Nicky a hundred dollars for his birthday. That was a lot of money, it made him feel guilty, but recalling Nicky’s stay with him again he was glad that he had done it. They had sat up into the early hours every night talking about their more eccentric relatives and only on the last day of his leave had they realized with a sudden panic that Nicky had yet to see a play or the sights.

Norman read Nicky’s letter twice more. He had time to write him a brief note before he went off to meet Charlie and Joey, but it wouldn’t do to write I love you, everything you say makes me feel good. A letter to Nicky had to be a funny letter. Norman sat down by his typewriter. He was in a very good mood.

A damp copy of
Reveille
clung to the concrete at Norman’s feet. He glanced again at the picture of the bathing beauty that had been
smudged and ripped by footprints and then looked up just as the boat train rounded the bend. A brief shock of sunlight suddenly illuminated the cracked, soot-soiled glass overhead, but then the clouds closed again and a thin rain began to fall on the black concrete platform of Waterloo Station. Two West Indians with flashing ties passed a Woodbine between them. Norman felt elated, but he was apprehensive too. He wasn’t sure whether Joey had ever told Charlie the truth.

Norman saw them first.

Charlie was bent over a little boy who appeared to be lost. One look was enough, one look at Charlie and you could tell that the child wasn’t, couldn’t be, his. He was too rigidly attentive for a father. And once you saw him stand upright and smile and then pat the boy’s head and smile even fuller you knew him for a childless man who kept pockets full of candies and never forgot to bring a toy when he visited. Charlie was a small rotund man, bald except for the thick unruly horseshoe of hair that ran from ear to ear. His face, the face of a middle-aged cherub, had a remarkably gentle quality. He returned the little boy to his parents and then looked about him, confused, as though he was expecting to be accused of a misdemeanour.

Joey was talking to a young girl. They made an odd contrast. For Joey, slim, fair-haired, and thirty-five, with a brown bony face and enormous brown eyes, was a fully-realized woman. She was smartly dressed. The young girl, who had wild streaky blond hair and a white creamy face, was dishevelled from her journey. Joey, had she been as plump as the young girl, would never have risked slacks. But it was the young girl who caught Norman’s eye. She seemed so refreshingly American.

“Norman!” Charlie rushed up to him. “Norman!”

Joey hugged Norman; she held him close.

Norman noticed that the girl who Joey had been talking to earlier was smiling at him faintly and he returned the smile. The girl looked down at her shoes.

“I couldn’t sleep all night, Norman,” Charlie began. “I was so excited. Ask Joey.” He squeezed Norman’s arm. “I’ve got so much to tell you.”

Joey, after a perfunctory backward glance at the girl, took Norman’s other arm.

Sally waved half-heartedly. Then forgotten on the platform, she watched the three of them walk off arm-in-arm. Sally had a grievance. Over the years, what with all her father’s stories about him, she had fabricated a romantic picture of Norman Price. He was to incorporate the most alluring characteristics of Hemingway and Fitzgerald heroes into one tall expatriate. In the flesh, however, he looked like just another socialist schoolmaster. Norman and Joey went into the tea room while Charlie looked after the baggage.

“It’s wonderful to see you again, Joey.”

“And Charlie?”

“And Charlie. Of course, and Charlie.”

The uplifted brown face she turned to him, the hardened brown face, hadn’t altered.

“You’re staring, Norman.”

“I was wondering what would have happened,” he blurted out, “if I had agreed to go to Mexico with you.”

Joey laughed her bony laugh.

“Do you despise me?” he asked.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Norman.”

Norman reached out impetuously and stroked her cheek. “Are you happy,” he asked, “happy with Charlie?”

“I’ve made my peace.”

“Oh. Oh, I see.”

“He’s the kindest man I’ve ever known. Underneath it all, that’s what he is.”

“You sound like you’re recommending an hotel.”

“Let’s change the subject. Are
you
happy?”

Looking at him, waiting for his reply, she remembered sadly that there had used to be things you couldn’t do or write or say because Norman, Norman Price, Asst. Prof. Norman Price, would call them dishonest. Today he wrote thrillers. And all at once she wanted to sting him, but, warming to his slow tender smile, she realized that would embarrass him for her sake rather than hurt him. Writing thrillers would be a game to Norman. He had no creative pretensions. He was still the tallest of the group.

“Do you still think I’m pretty, Norman?”

“A smasher, you are. Scout’s honour.”

As he leaned over to kiss her on the mouth he felt Charlie’s hand on his shoulder. “You can look,” Charlie said, “but you can’t touch.”

Norman grinned.

“I’ve been standing over there –” Charlie pointed towards the door “– and spying on you for the last minute. You looked so cosy, the two of you, that just for a second I hated you both. Hell, am I ever going to miss my analyst.”

In the taxi, Charlie slipped into a long denunciation of American foreign policy. He had the manner of someone who had forgotten some little task or errand but couldn’t, try as hard he would, remember exactly what it was, so while he talked to you he seemed to be thinking of, or seeking out, other issues. Charlie began to curse those who had informed.

“Not so fast,” Norman said. “The choice was a difficult one. Fifteen hundred a week is a lot to give up for honour, for people and ideas you no longer believe in.…”

“What Norman is trying to say, Charlie, is that you weren’t earning anywhere near that on the coast.”

Charlie applied his hand to his forehead like a poultice. “I’d have done it,” he said. “You did it.”

“I was only earning a hundred-odd dollars a week at the university, Charlie. Besides I was bored with my job.”

“Let’s talk about something else,” Joey said.

“Well, here we are.” Charlie squeezed Norman’s knee and smiled. “Joey and I. Still together after fifteen years; always smiling, always bright. Canada’s Sunshine Kids.”

They all laughed.

“How long since we’ve seen you, Norman? Five years.”

“Six,” Joey said quickly.

Norman told them about Nicky. He also told them that they could have his flat for a while.

“What a town,” Charlie said. “Oh, I’m going to love it. Really I am. I feel lucky.” He grinned. “Wait till you read my new play. It’s sensational. Sally loved it.”

“Sally?”

Joey told him who Sally was. She explained that they had met her on the ship. Charlie said that he had asked her to come to Sonny Winkleman’s party on Saturday night.

“That’s nice.” Norman took a letter out of his pocket. “Do you mind if I ask the driver to stop at the next mail box? I mustn’t forget this letter to Nicky.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No,” Norman said, “it can’t. My brother Nicky is the most. It’s his birthday tomorrow.”

As the sun suddenly broke through a heavy wad of clouds over the grey barracks of the McGraw Kaserne, Malcolm Greenbaum, a hefty boy with a big open face, hitched up his trousers with his elbows. Malcolm suffered from boils. His thick knotted neck was bandaged. “Remember,” he said plumply, “if we’re going into town we must conduct ourselves like matoor representatives of the
U
-nited States abroad.”

A responsive grin spread like butter over Frank Lord’s freckled face. But Nicky frowned. He didn’t appreciate it when Malcolm
remarked on his own reserve. He didn’t want the others to think him “different.”

The three boys raced across the street and leaped aboard the army bus. Inside, Milly Demarest, a pretty blonde crafts director, sat by the window. “Hello, boys,” she said, flicking her greeting at them like cigarette ashes, “going into town?”

“You guessed it.”

As the bus pulled out of the Kaserne gates Frank said: “It’s Nicky’s birthday.”

Frank Lord was six foot three, maybe more, with hair red as fire. He never cursed. They said his father was a baptist preacher. Frank could play a banjo. They said that, too. They also said that his brother had been hanged, but nobody knew for sure. Unless Nicky, maybe. For Frank didn’t talk much, except to say that he was going to study pharmacy when he got out of the army. That was for sure.

“Oh,” said Milly, “how old?”

“Sixteen.”