A Choice of Enemies (23 page)

“Please, darling, you don’t have to tell
me
a story. I’ll pop upstairs and have tea with Roger and Polly. We can chat after he’s gone.”

As Kate started up the stairs Norman came out of the toilet in his shorts. “Oh,” Kate said, “you gave me a fright. I’m Vivian’s cousin.” She hurried past him to the Nashes’ flat.

Roger and Polly Nash were eating breakfast. The kitchen smelled of bacon and drying nappies.

“Kate,” Roger said, “I thought I recognized your hard shrewish voice.” He cleared a chair of towels and poured her a cup of tea. “I say, has Horse-Face actually got a man down there?”

Polly saw that Kate was annoyed. “Roger,” she said. “Stop that.”

Polly had been a little frightened of Kate ever since Kate had caught her out mistaking a
bidet
for a foot-bath when she had been telling John and Edith Laughton about her trip to the Midi.

Kate told them the story Vivian had told her.

“If she’s going to have a thing with this chap,” Roger said, “maybe you’ll be able to have the flat for yourself again.”

Being on her own again, she thought, would be nice. “I just happen to like sharing the flat with Vivian,” she said.

“Certainly,” Polly said. “I’m frightfully fond of her myself.”

“Balls,” Roger said. “You’re afraid of losing a baby-sitter.” He smiled thinly at Kate. “I think it’s been jolly good of you to put up with Vivian for so long, but –”

“I
like
sharing the flat with Vivian.”

Roger grinned. “What’s the chap like?” he asked. “No. Don’t tell me. He’s a graduate of the London School of Economics, he works for the coal board. He’s from Manchester, he is. Calls poor Vivian ducks and once came first in a weekend competition in the Staggers & Naggers.”

Polly giggled.

“He’s an American,”
Kate said.

“I say, she
is
a fallen woman now, isn’t she?”

“He’s not an airman.”

Vivian served Norman another cup of coffee.

“I must get to Waterloo,” Norman said.

“Wait till I get dressed and I’ll go with you.”

Norman looked dismayed.

“Is there anything wrong with that?” she asked.

“Why do you want to come with me?”

“I’d like to help you.”

“I don’t know who I am,” he said shyly. “I’ve lost my memory.”

“I know,” she said. “You told me last night.”

“Why are you so anxious to help me?” he asked.

“You’re in trouble. Somebody’s got to help you. Wait,” she said, getting up hastily. “I’m going to make more coffee. I’ll only be a minute.”

But Vivian had not been in the kitchen very long before she heard the front door click.

Roger and Polly and Kate rushed to the window just in time to see Norman turn the corner hastily. Only a few seconds later Vivian appeared on the pavement in her dressing gown. Kate pulled Roger and Polly back from the window.

“I’m warning you,” Kate said. “You’re not to say a word to her. You’re not to say a word to anyone about this.”

Kate found Vivian in the bedroom. Her cousin was dressing hastily.

“Where are you going?”

“Waterloo Air Terminal,” Vivian said.

“But, darling, you mustn’t chase him. This will never do.”

“He’s sick,” Vivian shouted impatiently. “He doesn’t know who he is.”

“You can’t go out like this. You haven’t any make-up on. Oh, look at your hair, Vivian.”

Vivian laughed hysterically. “Get out of my way,” she said.

“Wait. I’ll go with you.”

“You certainly will not.”

“What’s this,” Ernst asked, as he entered the room. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ve packed all our bags.”

“Where are we going?”

“Anywhere,” Sally said acidly. “I don’t care.”

Ernst sat down on the bed. He was exhausted. “There was nobody home at the Lawsons’,” he said, “but I’ve been almost everywhere else. Nobody has seen Norman.”

“Ernst. Look at me, Ernst.”

He lifted his head heavily. Sally was thinner, there were circles under her eyes, and a kind of fright, something altogether new, in her manner. She no longer curled up sleepily satisfied in the easy chair; she sat stiffly on the edge.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you love me?”

She noticed yet again how bony he was, how much like a fox. She would have liked to hit him.

“What’s wrong, Sally?”

“I asked you a question.”

“Of course I love you.”

“I’ve had enough, Ernst. Every time that door opens I think they’ve come to take you away from me. Now you listen to me. I’ve taken all my money out of the bank. I’ve got enough to last us for a while. I want you to come away with me this afternoon.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Why?”

“That’s just what Karp is waiting for me to do,” he shouted.

“Karp? Don’t tell me you’re worried about him.”

“I said no.”

“You
said. You said.”

“And Norman. There’s Norman too. He was a big help to us.”

“Aren’t you the moral one suddenly?”

“Yes,” he said,
“suddenly.”

“Would you rather hang?”

“I’m not going to run away,” he said.

Sally sat down, suppressing nausea. “Tell me why?” she said.

“I already told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“Oh, leave me alone. How do I know why? I can’t, that’s all. Norman is the first friend I ever had. He – stop trying to make a fool out of me!”

“You owe it to me to run away.”

“No.”

“I hate you,” she cried passionately. “Oh, I hate you. I hate you and Europe and I hate Karp. I think you’re sordid. I wish I’d never met you.” Sally began to weep. He went to her and she hugged him very tight and said, “Let’s run away. Please, please, darling, let’s run away. I don’t want to see you killed. I love you.”

“I can’t,” he said. “They – all of them think I’m rotten. I’m after your passport, I’m a Nazi or – If I was Norman or Landis I could run away,” he said. “People would be understanding. But I’m Ernst Haupt, so I can’t.” He laughed bitterly. “It’s like.… It’s almost like I was a Jew myself and had to take care. I – I can’t run away. I’m trapped.”

At Waterloo Air Terminal Norman spotted the balloon at once. It had moved a little to the right, but outside of that there was no change.

Norman sat down beside a square, chubby American, who was reading
Look
, and told him the story of the balloon.

“A damn shame,” the man said, studying the trapped balloon.

“How do you think they’ll get it down?”

“A ladder would do the trick.”

“Maybe,” Norman said. “They’ll just leave it there.”

The square, chubby man returned to Norman Vincent Peale’s column.

“Aren’t you interested?” Norman asked.

“Sure thing.”

“Did you notice the balloon before I sat down to tell you about it?”

“Nope.”

“What do you think they ought to do about it?”

“I don’t want to sound unneighbourly, but frankly speaking, son, I’ve got bigger worries.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Look,” the man said, “why not be a good fellow and let me read my magazine in peace?”

Norman rose and walked out of the air terminal.

After all these years of waiting and broken half-promises, tomorrows, maybes, nearly sold scripts and knowing the people who knew the right people, Charlie felt the doors beginning to creak open.

Charlie was going to get work.

Charlie knew, he was sure, that the phone was going to ring. There had been nothing in the morning mail, no bills and no rejection slips, and that was a sign. Sure it was. Somebody, Charlie felt sure, was going to ring this morning: and he would make a sale.

The phone was poised blackly inscrutable on the little table under the window in the living room. Outside, the buses passed one after another. The clock over the electrician’s shop across the street
read 3.12. Charlie, standing by the window, bet himself a double whisky that the phone would ring before three more 31s passed.

I never once said that Norman was an informer, he thought. I didn’t say that he was mentally unstable either. That was Karp. I was quoting him, that’s all.

Charlie usually took the phone off the hook when he went to the toilet, but the Chairlady of the Bitcher’s Club would soon be back and if she found the receiver off the hook with him in the toilet again she would be furious. The fifth 31 bus passed. Maybe, he thought, I’ll fake a chance and go. No. Better wait.

When Charlie had finished college and told the old man that he didn’t want to go into the business the old man had been hurt, but, all the same, he had said, “
O.K.
, it’s your life. Live it any way you want.” So Charlie had told him that he wanted to be a writer and the old man, who read Dickens and Balzac for his own amusement, had asked to see what his son had written. Afterwards he had said, “You’re not good enough, Charlie. I think you ought to try something easier.”

He had sat in the first row when Charlie’s play,
Factory
, had opened off Broadway in ‘48. When he came round to see him the next morning he had said, “You’re never going to be famous, Charlie.”

“I’m a progressive. That’s why the critics panned me.”

“You’re no longer a boy, Charlie. You haven’t got it in you. Don’t kill yourself.”

“Did you identify yourself with the capitalist in
Factory?”

“A man as stupid as the one in your play could never have run a business. I do. Does that answer your question?”

“The director made me change certain scenes, I –”

“I’m an old man, Charlie. I’d like to have a grandchild.”

“Every time you come to see me I’m not famous and you want a grandchild. She can’t have children.”

Charlie cracked his knuckles. The phone, black on the table, was silent. He wanted to call Landis, maybe Jeremy, Plotnick perhaps,
he wanted somebody, anybody, to talk to – he wanted to say that Norman was
O.K.
but he was afraid to keep the line engaged.

Factory
had run for two weeks. For two weeks, every night, Charlie had sat in the balcony of the cold and all but empty theatre and watched the spiritless actors misquote his lines. One night thirty-five people and the next twenty-two. Eighteen, forty-three, thirty-seven. Every night for two weeks Charlie had come to watch his play. And little by little whatever it was in him that had been sensitive, hopeful, resilient, and generous had hardened and cracked like clay in a too quickly heated kiln.

As soon as the clock across the street read 4.05 Charlie lifted the receiver off the hook and rushed down three flights of stairs to see if there was any mail. The postman hadn’t passed yet. Charlie climbed the stairs back to the flat two at a time and replaced the receiver on the hook before he collapsed, breathlessly, in his armchair. I could have been to the toilet four times, he thought. But Charlie knew, he was sure, that the phone was going to ring: and he would make a sale.

The door opened. It was Joey. “Have you heard about Norman?” she asked.

“One minute,” he said, “I’ve got to go to the – I’ll be right back.”

Joey was waiting for him when he returned. “Norman has disappeared,” she said. “I think he’s suffering from amnesia.”

“Oh, no,” Charlie said. “That would be dreadful.”

“It’s happened before, you know. He –”

“Oh, no. To think that I –”

“I don’t think you have any reason to feel guilty, Charlie.”

“But I’m his friend. He seemed so sick when he left here. I should have made him stay.”

“You had no way of knowing.”

“He could be lying dead in a ditch now or –”

“Stop it, Charlie. I thought
you
had decided that Norman had proven himself to be something other than a friend.”

“Sure, sure. But all those years together. I’m worried about him. I – What have you got there?”

She had two letters. The first one was from home.

“How much do they need this time?” Charlie asked.

“Dr. Schwartz says Dad must go to Arizona again this winter or he will not hold himself responsible for the consequences.”

“Me,” Charlie said, “I am not holding Dr. Schwartz responsible.”

“Selma is doing fine. She sends her love.”

“For that I’m mighty grateful, Mrs. Browning. You can quote me.”

“What’s got into you?”

“I’m worried about Norman.”

“Norman will be
O.K.
This has happened before.”

“What else have you got there? A bill?”

“It’s an invitation to dinner at Winkleman’s,” Joey said.

“Jeepers-creepers, where’d you get those peepers?”

“Are you ill?”

“I want to adopt a child,” Charlie said.

“Can we afford it?”

“If we can afford Arizona we can afford a child.”

“It seems to me we can afford neither. What’s ailing you?”

“Age,” Charlie said. “I want a son.”

“Even an adopted one?”

“Yup.”

“Charlie – Charlie, I –”

“Charlie, Charlie, somebody callin’ Charlie?
HEY CHARLIE!”

“Oh, God.”

“Here it comes; the Joey Wallace haymaker.…”

“Charlie, what is it?”

“Remember the first night we spent together in this flat? You burnt a letter. What was in it?”

“I told you.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but today I want the truth.”

“Do you?” Joey’s voice shrivelled like burnt paper. “Really?”

“That’s what the man said. The man said that.”

“I wanted to run away with Norman in New York.
I
wrote
him
love letters.”

Charlie made a fist and bit it. His eyes filled. He coughed.

“You wanted the truth,” Joey said. “That’s what you said.”

A long time later he said, “I know what I said.”

“I was infatuated with Norman,” Joey said in a constricted voice. “It was silly, I know, but it was a long time ago.”

“Long ago,”
he sang,
“and far away –
He wouldn’t have you?”

“He wouldn’t have me,” she said.

Charlie got up and began to walk up and down the room. “What a life.” He read and re-read Winkleman’s invitation. “Charlie,” he mumbled, “Charles Lawson, you’re a success. People want your company.” He tore up the invitation. “The world is such a filthy place,” he whispered, “such a dirty, filthy place.”