A Lovesong for India (17 page)
Read A Lovesong for India Online
Authors: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
‘I appreciate it.’ Hannah remained sitting on the edge of the bed, examining the polish the girl at the nail spa had put on her.
Lottie, having let herself in with her own key, found Ellie still standing patiently with her suitcase. When Lottie told her to come with her where Magda was waiting, Ellie squeezed her legs together, in case anyone should try to take the suitcase out from between them. And when Lottie did try, she began to protest so loudly that it brought Robert from his study and Hannah from her bedroom.
‘I’m not going with her,’ Ellie told Robert.
‘It’ll be such a nice surprise for Magda,’ Lottie urged. ‘You look quite nice too, you’ve done something different with your hair. And what’s that?’ She looked closer at the heart with the diamond sparkling on Ellie’s chest.
‘It’s my present from Robert,’ Ellie said.
At that, Hannah also came to see, with burning eyes, which she then lifted to her son.
‘I’m taking her to a hotel,’ Robert said. He even picked up Ellie’s suitcase, though when they were outside, she took it back again, not wanting to burden him.
Hannah explained to Lottie, ‘He’s taking her to a hotel and then he’ll come home to eat.’
‘I told Magda I was going to Chez Cheese to buy something for her and she said, “It’s past nine, they’re shut long ago,” so I made up some other lie. Just to keep it a surprise who I was bringing . . . Well, I’m glad I didn’t tell her.’
‘What’s it all about, Lot, do you suppose?’
‘God knows, I don’t; and I don’t want to know and neither should you.’
Robert didn’t take Ellie to a hotel but to his studio. He opened the front door with his key and they both crept up the stairs very quietly. Nevertheless, Fred heard them and appeared in the door of the little room where he slept just under the studio. ‘It’s all right, Fred,’ Robert said, as to a dog who has barked in angry alarm. Ellie, coming behind with her suitcase, smiled at him; Fred didn’t smile back but silently watched them go up, and then he shut his door.
She was relieved to put down her suitcase again in a corner of the studio. They both looked at the piano. ‘Shall we?’ said Robert, opening it with an almost guilty little smile. Ellie watched his hands run over the keys, taking charge of them in the way she loved. He played the composition he had been working on for the last few weeks, and it sounded completely lovely to her. But he wasn’t satisfied and changed it here and changed it there and still wasn’t satisfied. Ellie, squatting near him on the floor, dropped off to sleep now and again. It was dawn when he asked her to sing a passage for him, so that her voice, rising as usual in perfect purity, might have been the first bird to wake up for the day.
Critic
Theodore Fabrik was a highly respected and well-paid film critic, but it was not the profession he might have chosen for himself. There was a bitter twist to his lips, which were sensuous, rosy and full, as though meant for something romantic rather than cerebral. It may also have been due to his distaste for the kinds of films he had to review. But his comments ranged far beyond them – sometimes they were scarcely mentioned – into thoughts on the current state of society and culture and meditations on the human predicament. His editors allowed him many pages, for he was avidly read as much for his weighty ideas as for the devastating wit with which he expressed them.
Besides being brilliant, Theo was attractive to women. Above his sensuous lips, his features were finely modelled, his brow very high and very white. The women he chose were always of the same type. He hated scruffy girls and what he considered their scruffy ideas; even at college, he had only liked students who were well groomed and well mannered. While this usually meant a moneyed background, it was not the money he valued but the breeding it had bought. Eileen, who became his wife, had all the virtues he esteemed. Shortly after the marriage, he and his mother, Madame Sybille, moved into the large Upper East Side apartment Eileen had inherited from her family. Here he had a leather-furnished, mahogany-panelled study that admitted practically no sounds and gave him everything he needed for his creative work.
At that time, still in his twenties, a married man living in luxury with his wife and mother, he mostly wrote plays. This was due to the influence of his mother. Madame Sybille had been an actress in her native Hungary, but on moving to New York, she had to earn her living as a sales lady in an upscale department store. Her talents were not wasted here – tall and gracious, she exuded distinction and ruled her floor like a queen of the stage. Her head remained held high – literally and otherwise: she was confident that the disappointment in her own career would be more than made up for by her son’s success and fame. But when finally recognition came to him, it was not through his plays, nor the novel he was trying to write, but through the critical articles he was publishing. In the end, he became the undisputed reigning critic of a prominent cultural magazine, and there he remained for more than a decade, forming the taste, and distaste, of an entire generation of readers.
In those years he put on quite a bit of weight. His life was sedentary, moving from screening rooms to his study where he sat for hour after conscientious hour polishing up the steel of his fine prose. Some nights he worked late to meet his deadline, and then stayed to sleep in his study so as not to disturb his wife. Other nights he was out – if he gave an explanation, it was always of some professional gathering he had to attend; whatever he said, Eileen accepted it, though not as the truth.
While he grew plump, Eileen, who had always been thin, became gaunt. She couldn’t have children; Theo didn’t miss them, and she had many nieces, nephews and godchildren. She also kept up with her friends, most of them women dating from her school and college days, with whom she recalled amusing incidents of their past. She joined a fitness club, and the hours Theo spent on his articles and other pursuits, she spent on the treadmill, her ears plugged into a tape, which drowned out her thoughts with music.
Theo and Eileen were never heard to shout at each other – their differences of opinion were conducted with polite words uttered through pinched-in lips and nostrils. Eileen’s eyes and the tip of her nose were often red, usually on account of some affair Theo was having. The worst for her was not when this was at its height, but later, when it was winding down and he needed her help to extricate him. Then he would ask her to deal with telephone calls that he didn’t want to take, and while she refused at first, in the end she gave in and could be seen trying to be patient with the hysterical caller at the other end. Afterwards she retreated to her bedroom and no sound could be heard from behind her closed door.
They had persuaded Madame Sybille to give up her job as sales lady, so she was idle most of her days and unable to sleep at night. With Eileen’s great-grandfather’s grandfather clock striking out the midnight hours, she wandered around the huge apartment, back and forth between two closed doors, her son’s study at one end and Eileen’s bedroom at the other. Sometimes she stepped close to listen at the latter, not out of curiosity but compassion. Only once did she hear what sounded like muffled sobs, and after receiving no reply to her knock, she opened the door. Eileen was lying face down on the bed, but she sat up at once and groped for a tissue. She said she had a cold.
‘Oh, my dear,’ Madame said and tried to press her close.
Eileen held herself aloof. ‘Be careful. I don’t want you to catch my cold.’ And she smiled. ‘Two sick women in the house would be more than Theo could bear.’ Next moment, still smiling, she defended him. ‘For his work,’ she said, wiping her reddened nose. ‘He needs to save himself for his work; all of himself.’
Madame thought, what work? For unspoken, secretly, she was disappointed – that he was a critic and not the great artist she had expected. But to Eileen she joked, ‘It’s my fault. I should have encouraged him to become a doctor, a lawyer – some respectable work.’
Eileen half joked back: ‘Oh but then I couldn’t have fallen in love with him. Not with an ordinary person.’
Madame knew about and blamed her son for his infidelities. But sometimes, within her heart of hearts, she made excuses for him. She reflected that, if she was disappointed in his work, how could he himself not be? He was her son, his nature as full of storm and stress as her own. With that whole side of him kept unsatisfied, it was no wonder that he should try to find fulfilment in women as romantic and passionate as himself – that is, women who were totally different from Eileen.
If she imagined that he was having affairs with fabulous stars, she was mistaken. His integrity depended on remaining aloof from their world and accepting no favours from it. Some of these favours were crudely offered by production companies, money men, and it was not difficult to reject them. Others came mostly from aspiring actresses, who took him to be a more powerful insider than he was. Sometimes he did take advantage of their misconception, but the truth was he never liked them much: for him their neediness put them in the category of the scruffy college girls he had rejected in his younger days. His preferences had remained for women who had inherited or married the money that gave them the style he admired. And so he took up with rich women at whose dinner parties he could shine. He enjoyed that for a while but never for long, and since there was a choice of ambitious hostesses married to elderly businessmen, he went easily from one to the other. But as the years passed, the twist of his mouth became more bitter, and his prose took on a more virulent edge.
He had invitations to every premiere, film festival and awards ceremony on the calendar, but he didn’t often take them up. The popular attraction at these glittering venues was always the stars, the tall and gorgeous men and women who made everyone else appear small, including Theo, though he had spent the week cutting them down to size. Eileen rarely accompanied him, and when she did, she felt herself to be dowdy and out of place. But her presence made him feel better. He knew she was not dowdy but understated with a breeding these people were not qualified to appreciate. Like himself, she was different, more highly evolved. The two of them often skipped the last course of a banquet, relieved to get out of the perfumed precincts, past the limousines and lounging chauffeurs, turning the corner to hail a yellow cab.
It was different when he took his mother. For Madame Sybille it was like reclaiming a past she had not had. Her clothes were old, her jewellery undistinguished, but she herself had the bearing of one who belonged. When Theo wanted to leave early, she begged to stay till the end. It was what had happened at the premiere of a film he had just demolished in his column. He had especially targeted the leading actress – who of course was present at the party as its centrepiece.
Theodore was used to two kinds of reaction from his victims. Actresses usually showed him how little they cared – they turned their backs on him, tossed their beautiful heads while loudly enjoying the company of their circle of admirers. The second reaction was more common with actors, but on this occasion it was the leading actress who came up to him, caressing him with her smiles as though she had not read his review, or cared nothing about it, or even agreed with him. Her name was Patty Pope, she was twenty-eight years old, at the height of her beauty and ready to ascend to the height of her career.
Theo and his mother were seated at a less than distinguished table. Their host was an independent producer, and although he had bought a table for ten at $2,000 a head, he was not important enough for all his guests to show up. So it was easy for Patty to join them – ‘May I?’ she breathed, slipping into a chair left empty between Theo and Madame Sybille.
She concentrated most of her charm on the mother, hovering over her with her perfumed half-bare breasts. She only occasionally smiled at the son over her shoulder, amusing him by her effort to show herself above all feelings of resentment. ‘I knew it!’ she suddenly exclaimed, and from the way his mother preened herself a bit, Theo guessed that she had just confessed to being an actress herself. ‘Of course,’ Patty said to Theo, ‘how could she not be.’ She was referring to Madame’s air as of some great diva, unbowed after the curtain had fallen.
The speeches had begun – producers, actors and financiers stood to thank one another, some with humour, others with sentimental tears. By this time Theo would have long since left, but Patty and his mother could not be parted. They had moved even closer together, and from time to time Patty whispered something that made Madame smile and lay her hand on Patty’s. Theo had to let them sit there and he with them right through the speeches, which set his teeth on edge. He heard them exchange addresses and telephone numbers – on the way home he asked his mother, ‘What do you want with her?’ and was further irritated by Madame’s silent, knowing smile.
Patty called two days later. She announced herself for the same afternoon, just giving Madame time to bake some of her flaky confectionery. Then she stood in the doorway to welcome her visitor: she threw her arms wide and Patty entered into them. Patty made herself at home at once, slipping out of her leopard-skin jacket, unwinding her scarves, looking around the apartment: ‘It’s just the classy sort of place I’d expect him to live in.’ His mother apologised for his absence; as usual in the afternoon he was at a screening. ‘But I’ve come to see
you
,’ Patty said. ‘And what a heavenly smell – are we going to have something lovely to eat?’
you
,’ Patty said. ‘And what a heavenly smell – are we going to have something lovely to eat?’
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