Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (24 page)

There was a rumbling of voices, and a group of people of about his own age came in from the dining-room and took over the corner nearest him. But they were the last people in the world to satisfy his hopes; they were obviously college students, and dressed like budding thinkers; they at once made him feel that he was a small boy masquerading as an adult. They came from different countries, but they all talked English, loudly and volubly. Remembering what Divver had said to him about college compeers, he listened curiously and rather fearfully to their conversation. It was crude and fairly shocking. The students appeared not to know that Mell was a place where people came to avoid horrors, and they thrashed over the whole international situation, speaking with coarse contempt about all the principal characters. Then they went on to something that Morgan couldn’t understand at all: each began to speak about his own country in the most savage manner, insisting that its instincts were the most fiendish, its liberties the least real, its institutions the most socially backward, its prostitution the most venereally advanced. Each managed so well to undercut his neighbour in self-belittlement, that soon
all were joined in the cosy unity of mutual degradation, like a parliament of midgets. After that, a sort of loving-cup was passed around, in the form of an equally degrading comparison of shabby pages from national histories: prominent foul acts such as Nelson’s bombardment of Copenhagen, the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein, the amputation of the South Tyrol, the occupation of the Ruhr, the exploitation of Latin America were denounced bitterly by the envoys of the countries responsible—and promptly capped by the gratified victims, who insisted that no fate could have been too bad for their filthy motherlands. Only one boy had nothing to contribute to this matching of bad pennies; he was sulking, and felt persecuted by the stronger nations, because he came from Lichtenstein and could think of no comparably hideous crime to pin on his minikin birthplace. He was thinking: Some people have all the luck. Whatever will they think of me? Oh, shame, shame! Oh, why was I not born an Englishman!

The first signs of romance now appeared from the elevator in evening-dress—a young and lovely blonde escorted by two heavy-weight contenders with crew-cuts. The girl moved straight to the radio, which stood in a big cabinet beside the table of magazines. “The short-waves come from Boston, don’t they?” she asked. “Let’s try for some news before we eat.”

“It’s never any good,” said the first escort.

“Atmospheric conditions just don’t permit,” said the second.

They began to twist the knobs. Screams and grunts came from the cabinet.

“I tell you, it’s no use,” said the first escort.

“No, go on …
there
… a little more …
there
,” cried the girl.

Sure enough, faintly from behind the barrage of the Atlantic waves and the furious elements, a faraway little voice was mumbling to itself. The girl clasped her hands and opened her eyes. “Do you think maybe it’s the President?” she said.
“I’m
sure
it is. I’m
sure
I recognize his voice. Or is it Boake Carter?”

“Too early for him,” said the first escort, looking at his watch.

“They all sound just the same from here,” said the second: “I think I can hear Gilbert and Sullivan … Oh, let’s eat.”

“I don’t think either of you cares the least bit what happens in the world,” said the girl.

Oh, to hell with you and your games! Morgan said to himself, suddenly feeling disgusted and depressed. More people were beginning to come into the lobby from all sides, but he only got up nervously and crossed to a chair in the opposite corner.

As he sat down, he saw a little gold cage appear suddenly in an alcove; out stepped a woman in evening-dress. She went quickly to the nearest chair, and was smoothing out her long skirt before she discovered that she was not alone.

“
Perfectly
all right,” he said in a profound voice.

“American? How nice.”

He whisked his cigarette case in front of her.

“Why, thank you. I don’t think I know these,” she said, touching them curiously.

“They’re not bad,” he said.

They exchanged names.

“I knew a Mr. John Streeter, a friend of my mother’s, in Connecticut.”

“John—let me see now—tall, very dark, brown eyes?”

“No, shortish, light-haired.”

“My husband’s family is very widespread.”

“Was that an elevator you came down in?”

“That’s our special one.”

“Oh, I know; I’ve seen the top part of it.”

“Oh, are you near there?”

“Just through the baize door next to it.”

“We’re neighbours then. We are in what’s called the Special Annex.”

“I’m with a friend on just a short trip. He’s a political authority.”

“How nice. That must be very interesting.”

“Yes, it is; foreign politics is his field.”

“Then I suppose you know a lot about it too.”

“Not really. I’m not so interested.”

“How nice to be able to say that, these days! My husband’s
very
interested.”

“So’s my mother.”

“My husband’s in charge of the mines here.”

“So’s my … that must be interesting too.”

“Yes, it is; but so much dashing around! He always has to be in Tutin, or somewhere.”

“This morning I saw someone go down in the same elevator as you came down in.”

“Was he wearing old workclothes?”

“Yes.”

“Then, that’s my husband.”

“Well, well!” He felt very pleased; it made it more intimate, to have seen her husband. “Would you like to have something to drink?” he asked.

“What I’d really like is something to eat. I suppose you’ve had dinner?”

“No, I was just going to.”

She’s sort of a matron, I suppose, he thought, as they went into the dining-room.

Over dinner he saw that she looked rather like a Jap—a small woman, very dark, with smiling brown eyes. She wasn’t the girl he had been thinking of meeting, but he wasn’t too disappointed; she wasn’t so old that he was ashamed of her, and he was immensely thankful not to be alone any more. Perhaps, he thought, she’ll have friends she’ll introduce me to
later—a blonde sister, say, unmarried and really young. Nonetheless, he remembered to break his breadroll open in the ruthless way he had seen Divver do it; he wished he had thick black hair on the back of his hands too.

“Only an omelette?” she asked.

“I’m not such a heavy eater,” he said. “I get by with very little, on the whole.”

“Does that mean you drink a lot? Men drink so much these days.”

“Yes, don’t we; too much. No, I’m pretty temperate, on the whole.”

“It’s only just struck me—this is actually your first day in Europe?”

“Well, yes, you might say that. Of course, I’ve travelled a good deal at home—I know Colorado, for example, extremely well.”

“What do you feel about being here?”

“Frankly, I like it. More than my friend Max does.”

“What does he say?”

Morgan found he was unable to remember a single one of Divver’s objections to Europe, so he simply said: “I think he just feels more at home in America.”

“Do you two work together?”

“Oh no. My mother—she lives in New York State—she has a magazine, and invites people up to talk about articles for it: at one of her conferences I happened to be up there when Max was, and we decided to come over together.”

“Your mother lives with you then?”

“Off and on; her husband’s dead.”

“So your friend Max is sort of a brain-trust.”

“He’s not
entirely
that type. He’s a very fine man; he works very hard; he has a very wide field of knowledge—or
experi
ence,
I should call it perhaps: you see, he’s travelled so much.”

“But he’s not a highbrow type, you mean.”

“Not that, no. I don’t mean he’s not intelligent …”

“But more of a plodder.”

“That’s right, a very
good
plodder, though not an imaginative sort. I respect him greatly.”

How quickly she senses what Max is, he thought, looking at her admiringly.

“He’s also the type who gets very weighed down and depressed,” he said.

“About what?”

“Oh, his domestic life chiefly. Marriage, etcetera.”

“Oh, well, that’s nothing unusual, is it?” she said, laughing.

“I guess not,” he said, laughing back heartily.

“I don’t know if you’re married, but …”

“No, I’m still single. I have a notion I’m not the marrying type.”

“Why?”

“I need a great deal of freedom. I need to be able to come and go a lot.”

He was suddenly frightened to think that she might ask him what his job was, but she only smiled understandingly. “Will you come out with me afterwards and see the fireworks?” he said, and added quickly: “It’ll probably all be pretty childish, but if it is we can just go to bed.”

She started slightly, and then said: “I’d love to see them with you. We can see them from my balcony if you like. Everything’s so clear from there.”

“That’s a swell idea!”

“Of course, it’s only a
tiny
balcony.”

“No, it sounds wonderful.”

She’s not old; just intelligent, he decided.

Now that the rest of the evening was solidly arranged, he breathed freely, and felt more self-confident. Once or twice, to his surprise, it struck him that some of his assurance was due to their having secretly agreed that Divver, that good man,
was not a very interesting person—something that Morgan was now sure he had suspected all the time. But I must never forget that
he
is
good,
Morgan thought, even though I’m getting rather tired of remembering how much I owe him. His thoughts about Mrs. Streeter, too, were full of stabilizing vigour. This is the kind of woman a man enjoys being with. She is a fine type. She is a serious woman. She is a real woman. She is a woman in the best sense of the word.

He was glad of these assurances, because certain troublesome doubts kept edging into his mind. Am I taking the initiative? What
is
the initiative; people just tell you to take it with women; why don’t they tell you what it is? Does it mean you suddenly grab them? What do you do with it when you’ve taken it? Do I want to take it? Do I plan to…? How can I, when I hardly know her? What on earth would she think if I asked her? How would I ask her? Say I did, in one way or another, and she called the manager and had me thrown out … I would like that, I think. “Dear Mother, I am very sorry to have to inform you that I have been ejected by the police from the Hotel Poland, on account of my uncontrollable rapacity.” On the other hand, I may turn out to be quite impotent: well, it takes all sorts to make a world; I shall never let my impotence scar my life and personality: on the contrary: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” … But of course this is all nonsense. How could I imagine …? And those who
do
know, only write whole books telling you how to fill out your income tax and understand
Hamlet
… Lucky she can’t read my thoughts, poor woman. How comfortable I feel with her! Perhaps that means she’s not really very intelligent. Why don’t they make women take the initiative too? They want to be emancipated, don’t they? And it’s not just men who like it. Though I don’t see why women should.

He had these thoughts while she was telling him about her
husband’s career, and how it had meant moving repeatedly from one country to another. It seemed to him that she talked about absent Mr. Streeter rather too much, as if the thought of his sturdy, adamant character was as helpful to her poise as Divver’s inadequacies were to his own. But she managed at the same time to convey to Morgan that so much strength of character in a man could make a woman feel rather sad and regretful sometimes. “We lived in one hotel in Prague,” she said, “for three whole years, and that time I almost let myself forget that it
wasn’t
a steady home, and I
mustn’t
try to fix it up like one—but that’s just what I
did
do; and when Larry came in one day and said that his job was done and we were going to move on to Cairo, I made a terrible scene that made me terribly ashamed of myself afterwards.”

“I think you had every reason to make a scene,” said Morgan stoutly.

“No, I didn’t; I’d known all along; I knew what being married to an old rover like Larry meant, from the very beginning.”

“I think you’re being much too hard on yourself.”

He thought of how beautiful it would be to sacrifice his career to a woman’s happiness, to mop up her floods of tears with blotting-paper pulped from his potential greatness.

He noticed that she knew the name of their waiter and spoke to him familiarly with many warm smiles, and that the waiter knew who she was and treated her with great respect. He also noticed that she was nervous and rather scatterbrained, and kept breaking off to look at the other tables and keep an eye on who came in and who went out. He thought this meant that she was a woman who had many acquaintances and admirers, and each time she turned her head toward the other diners and he saw her profile and the nervous twitch of a preparatory smile, he lost some of his confidence. When the headwaiter came to their table, Mrs. Streeter introduced
Morgan to him, saying: “Ambrose, this is Mr. James Morgan, a young man from my country
who has never been to Europe before
”—and the two of them instantly raised their eyebrows and smiled with such astonished good humour that Morgan felt like a small Mohican peering at the brothers Goncourt out of the cleft in a wigwam. And so, when she went on to name the innumerable capitals, streets, and hotels which were known to her—and, like most Americans, she had an almost
guide-book
memory in such matters—he forgot the sympathy he had felt for her as a restless, homeless, wife and began to think of her as too dashing and glamorous for a boy of his age. He might have guessed, from her indiscreet use of dates, that her husband was much older than she was; instead he became more conscious of how much older than himself she was. Nothing’s going to happen, he told himself despondently. I’m a child and she’s an old woman.