I'm Dying Laughing (74 page)

The porter hesitated. She became angry, tugged at their sleeves, separated them, and drew Frederic towards the sitting-room.

‘Take your cap and gloves off, make yourself at home. I’ll get drinks,’ she said. ‘What are you hanging about for François? I shall look after the guest. This is an old friend of my husband. This is my good friend Monsieur Damiens.’

‘Yes, Madam,’ said the porter and went off shrugging, looking back dubiously, hesitating in the lobby. A little while later she heard voices in the kitchen and closed the doors. Early in the morning someone crossed the courtyard and closed the gate.

The children came down to breakfast, went to school in taxis and Emily was not to be seen. When Suzanne called, she was still asleep. Suzanne went up to her room; she was not there; then down to the basement, where she found her, lying across the bed, uncovered. She covered her and went upstairs to the porter.

In the evening she came again and brought Emily a telegram she had received from Stephen’s mother, reading,
Please keep Olivia with you during Emily’s illness. Stephen returning immediately.

There was a quarrel, but Olivia said she wanted to go with Suzanne and Suzanne left with the child and some clothes in a bag, saying that she would engage a nurse for Emily. But words flew so furiously at this, that Suzanne went off” with the child, after saying in a cold, reticent tone, ‘You are very ill and you do not know it. I shall take measures.’

Emily, mad with anger, rushed to the kitchen to scold them and then again to the cellar room where she shut herself in and could be heard typing hour after hour with only a few moments to rest. In the middle of the afternoon, Marie-Jo knocked to ask if Emily did not want to eat, and was told merely to bring black coffee. All day she worked and went on working part of the evening. Suddenly, she came out, said in a tired cheerful manner, ‘I did thirty thousand words! A big chunk. It was worth it! I am too tired to eat. Bring me a sandwich though and I’ll see if I can take it with a drink.’

Still in her dressing-gown of the morning, she crouched in a corner of the sofa with her drink, and when the maid came in with her chicken sandwich, she said pleasantly, ‘Put it there,
ma chére.
I feel wonderful now, Marie-Jo. Yesterday, I was ill: today I am better. I worked all day. Isn’t that wonderful! Have a drink with me, Marie-Jo, come be my friend!’

Giles came to her saying he was lonely; and asking when his sister would return. But Emily said, ‘Mamma is working, blessed work! Let Mamma work and presently we will get your sister back.’

T
HREE PEOPLE WROTE TO
Stephen in New York: Suzanne, Violet Trefougar and the porter who, on a sheet of paper bought especially at the
tabac,
expressed it that ‘there was disorder in the house’.

Stephen cabled that he would return immediately. A letter following said that he had to renew his passport and for that had first to make a trip to Washington, DC. Emily, full of joy, fluttered about the house setting things right, telephoned Suzanne to bring back Olivia and, at times, worked fast on her book also.

‘Stephen will be so happy. We are going to make a fortune this time; and this book is a monster, it has everything, not only fortune but fame!’ So she told Suzanne.

Violet Trefougar took her to the airport to meet Stephen. He came off, assisted by an officer and leaning on a stick. Emily threw herself on his neck and when she stood back, tears running out of her eyes, she saw the startled, the hard look on his face.

‘Oh, I have been ill too, Stephen. But it is all over now. Now that we are two again, oh joy, I’m breathless with joy, now everything is right again.’

But when he got home, Stephen, after greeting the three children who stood waiting for him, and the cheerful and relieved servants, went straight to bed. He had left the convalescent home too soon, made a very fatiguing trip to Washington, though a cousin had gone with him, and had boarded the plane against doctor’s orders.

‘But I am glad to be home. Whatever I have had to do, it is worth it to be here.’

Emily had planned a celebration dinner; but she had to eat it with Suzanne and the children. Stephen, lying in bed and taking only soup, did not see the richly but strangely decorated table, with rosettes and scrolls of paper, all the long preserved wedding anniversary and valentine cards they had given each other since the day of their marriage, all the jewellery he had given her, and carelessly-tied ribbon bows from many Christmas days.

Emily wore her black and white suit—Stephen did not like her in dressing-gowns—and had tied a pink ribbon in her straggling hair; but she was no longer the merry oaf she had been, she looked leering and wild, her eyes swam and one half of her face, grey and fallen, seemed many years older than the other. Of this she was not conscious, but continued eating and drinking with gusto, hurrahing and talking greedily between bites, her suspicious, greedy eyes watching them all, calling to attention anyone who did not look at her.

Afterwards, Stephen called her to him and said, ‘My passport ran out. Did you get yours renewed?’

‘Passport! Oh, lawdy, Ah forgit dat passport!’

‘We must get it renewed at once.’

‘Any trouble?’

‘No trouble. I was told to go to Washington. I went with my cousin. They got me into the room there and asked me about a thousand questions, you, me, Christy, Florence; but they gave it to me. I had to give assurances, which I gave with pleasure.’

‘What assurances?’

‘That I would not talk against my country abroad, that I would assist them if I saw traitors and things like that that it was easy for me to agree to. Though I said to them, Where would I meet traitors?’

‘Then it was very easy. That’s good. I thought—many times I thought, oh, Stephen—that you would never get back; and I would have to pack up and take the family back to the States. I really saw Dear Anna coming for us. I fretted and mourned; if you knew the soreness and suffering—but you, poor Stephen, have been so ill, so sick, you have been crucified. Oh, lord, I should never have let you go back to the USA. We were separated and I here, so woebegone, saw you for weeks at death’s door.’

‘You and I are always at death’s door. I wonder why.’

‘That is exactly what Douglas Dolittle said: “The Howards are always at death’s door.” And I wonder why? Oh, Stephen, we haven’t been very happy. Yes, at times, rapturously happy, happy beyond hope.’

‘Perhaps only when there were the wrong reasons.’

‘You’ve changed, Stephen. You’ve been so ill, had such harrowings, you’ve suffered too much.’

‘That was bad. They gave me the wrong drugs and I nearly died from the drugs which were supposed to ease my pain. But that’s me, isn’t it? Nothing goes right with me. I was the one in a thousand they didn’t suit. It had nothing to do with the doctors.’

‘And I was not there. Only your family.’

‘Yes, I didn’t enjoy that. But Emily, what brought me back before I am well, is that I had bad news of you. They said, Suzanne, that is, said, you were seriously ill.’

‘Oh, I have been so well. I worked so hard on my book, The Monster, I call it; The Monster is half-way finished. It will make us a million, Stephen. Our troubles at last will be over and I have planned it so that it will also be my great book; the great novel of our times. It will serialize, sell to Hollywood as a block-buster; it will pyramid forever, you’ll see. It will be the success of our lives and all our troubles will vanish. I suffered from overwork, I used to stay down in my workroom day and night, days and nights together, and of course, the staff, who want orderly, bourgeois lives, for it is the working-class who are bourgeois—’ she laughed immoderately, ‘the staff didn’t like that. Madame should be upstairs ordering the household, seeing to the laundry and counting the coals; or if she is the grande-dame type, she should be out at
les cocktails
and
les diners intimes
.’

He smiled, ‘I don’t think they want you out at
diners intimes
: but I don’t care what they want. I want to know how you’ve been living. You don’t look yourself Emily.’

‘I am not myself. I am someone else, someone better. I have begun to live my way, not yours; and I mean nothing bad by that, Stephen. I have filled in the outlines, lived as I should, working when I want to and not according to a programme. I have servants; let them look after the house. I have begun to live my life, which I never did since I was married.’

‘Did you live it before?’

‘Ho-hum! Does one ever, I wonder? I guess not.’

‘And so that is what François meant when he said there were disorders in the house?’

‘What! He wrote to you? And you dare to say you take notice of what a worm writes, a nauseating, dull, household spy? He wrote to you? I’ll call him at once. Let him say here what he said to you. How dared he? All the while I thought he was my friend. I told him everything. I let him look after me, because he said he wanted to. Oh, the flunkies! An army of servants is an army of spies and enemies. I suffer so much from this terrible affliction of spying and hate and distrust. No one to look to. How bitter! And I was fighting sickness, bravely, for I know I was brave, and I worked like a madwoman. Stephen, I will go mad, if this terrible world of cruelty, pinpricks and griefs continues. Why did you leave me? Everything has got worse. I have passed the signpost. I cannot go back. I passed it while you were away. I am going downwards now. Oh, grief and despair. I am despairing. And to think you believed a porter, less than a servant, a doorkeeper! I am stung. That means that I can’t think of you any more as a consolation! There never was a time in my life when I didn’t think, in all my troubles, But Stephen is there, I can rest my head on his chest, on his heart, and hear it beating for me. When we were first married, every night I rested my head on your heart and knew it was beating for me. It doesn’t now, does it?’

‘Yes, it does. I have nothing but you. More so now than before.’

‘Why, now?’

‘Because of what happened in Washington.’

‘That was nothing. The very least.’

During the next few days, however, Stephen interviewed those who had written to him and it was Suzanne who told him the whole truth.

‘Because you must look after her, Stephen; no one but you can influence her. She can’t help it. She promises, in a transport of friendship, she’s happy, she’s going to reform, her eyes sparkle, then she goes upstairs, has her drinks, goes downstairs, has the pills that give her this unnatural energy, works, falls to the floor, sleeps unnaturally—and this is one of the strongest, most gifted natures I have ever met. It is because of the excessive energy, the gaiety, the genius, yes, the genius, that I cannot control her. You can control her because she loves you.’

Suzanne said nothing about the jockey, the cafe on the quays.

Emily was so insulted when she heard of this that she went down to her cellar-room, stayed there three days and nights, refusing to answer Stephen’s messages. Stephen was still chiefly bedridden. She sent answer that she was working. She was very angry that he had not asked to see The Monster.

The third day, aided by Marie-Jo, Stephen crawled down the two storeys to her room in the basement. The door, as always, was on the latch. They called, pushed the door and saw the dark, small room, a servant’s poor room, smelling dusty and unclean; Emily nowhere. But when they walked in, Stephen saw a bundle at the other side of the bed, and going round, he found her on the floor, deeply asleep, with sunken face. They were unable to wake her. He sent for the doctor and with the porter got her on to the bed. ‘Oh, my God, she’s dying!’ The porter said, No, he did not think so.

‘This has happened before. She has such a strong heart and physique that she can recover entirely. She will recover; but Monsieur should take her for a holiday. This house and this loneliness has been unfavourable: you might call it bad luck.’

They put her to bed upstairs and, just as François said, she soon recovered, but she seemed overtired, somewhat pale, she looked older, almost an old woman.

Stephen was unable to take her away then. As soon as he was able, he had to go to his work in the Gaudeamus Press. He took taxis there and back. He wanted the thing to be sailing along by spring, when Anna came to claim Olivia and to bring Fairfield. Anna intended an early marriage for Christy and Fairfield, if they liked each other; Stephen was despondent.

‘Will he have the guts to say no? It’s exactly the same as when I was his age. The parade of possibilities with Mother in charge. I saw so many that I could look at them no more. That cured me. But Mother has learned. It is one at a time now.’

‘Christy will never marry Fairfield: he is too refined and intelligent,’ said Emily. Even Suzanne remarked that Christy had many rude things to say about rich girls.

They struggled along in this way until spring.

Anna came, bringing with her Fairfield, and at the same time there arrived in Paris from London, Stephen’s cousin, Dale, a young middle-aged man, fair and gay, a bachelor. Anna hired two cars to drive Fairfield around Paris and then out to Versailles, where they were going to lunch.

Emily, in her best mood and looking well enough, sat beside Dale and kept exclaiming, hugging his arm and kissing his cheek. Christy sat beside Dale, and in front were Stephen and the driver.

Emily cried, ‘Oh, superb, oh, poetic, oh, colossal, oh, joy, oh, my darling Dale. To be cousins. You don’t realize how unusual, how impossible, this drive would be in the USA. We would all be biting each other’s ear and kicking the neighbour’s shin, yelling and insulting. But here, happy and free, innocent and really people of the world,
mondains,
innocent—Americans are not innocent. I don’t know what’s the matter with them. Europeans are not innocent but they know how to be calm. All Americans are hugging some ugly secret: they mope, they droop, they drink, they grouse. But here! I understood a lot of things since I came to Europe. At home you’re backward and suppressed if, to get over the dreariness, you don’t neck and drink at every turn of the road. In Europe people live full lives, and like each other for anything, as art, woods, motor drives, poetry, family dinners and just cousinhood! Oh, oh, joy! I’m free at last. With a great big sigh I push back to the Atlantic I hope, the last of my American bugbears. Because to feel you have to make love all the time to the opposite sex is to be afraid of it. There was one place this didn’t happen: the newspaper business. They’re good guys there—I wish I were back there sometimes—there guys are guys and girls are guys too. But outside any such profession, why, it’s hell … Anyhow,’ (she kissed him), ‘I love and adore you, Dale; for you’re not that sort. And oh, look at those heavy green sprays, those fronds, those sprays, those sprigs—in America, bah!—we don’t even think of using those words, it’s just plain woodlot to us. Why I wonder? We’re afraid, ashamed, again.’