Marjorie Morningstar (31 page)

“Well, I can’t help that, it’s habit.”

Noel shook his head, regarding her affectionately, and leaned back slouching, his
arms crossed. “Ye gods, Marjorie, dearest Marjorie, you are such a sweet beautiful
girl…”

“But a Shirley,” Marjorie growled, glaring at him.

“A Shirley. A complete, final, Raphaelesque, golden-haloed Shirley.” A shadow of sadness
was on his face.

The bartender set the drinks on the table. “What’s the matter, Mr. Airman, losing
your taste for steak?” Noel laughed. The bartender said, “Well, I guess there’s better
things than steak in life, hey folks?” He leered at Marjorie, and went off wiping
his hands on his apron.

She said, “I guess I’ll be known far and wide by tomorrow as your new mistress.”

“No. In this one case I think your reputation for stuffiness will outrun mine for
vice. You’re still the wonder of South Wind, you know, for the way you held off Perry
Baron. Everyone thinks you’re a religious fanatic or something.”

“How do they know I held him off?”

“Darling, at South Wind they know these things. If you and I start spending time together
it’s going to arouse great interest. The battle of the Titans. Evil versus good. The
irresistible force and the immovable object. Ormuzd, spirit of light, and Ahriman,
prince of darkness. They’ll be placing bets.”

“Noel Ahriman,” Marjorie said.

He burst out laughing. “Gad, you make jokes, too.”

She was extremely pleased with herself. “I’ll tell you this much, old Prince of Darkness,
if there’s going to be such a battle you’ll lose. There’s that much of Shirley in
me and I don’t care who knows it. I’ll never have an affair with you, never. If I’m
unlucky enough to fall in love with a hound like you, you’ll still have to marry me.
If I’ll have you, that is. I don’t know if I ever could. There are some awful things
about you.”

“Well, Sweetness and Light, you frighten me too, a little bit.”

“I’m sure I do.”

He regarded her in silence for a little while, his head to one side. “What does the
name Muriel mean to you?”

“Offhand I think of a fat girl in my last Latin class. Who’s she, another Shirley?”

“Oh no. Muriel was all too real.” He took a deep drink of his brandy. “Muriel was
the only reason I stayed on at Cornell. I did just enough work to keep from getting
kicked out because she was in my class. A year or so older than I was.” He peered
speculatively at Marjorie. “She wasn’t quite as pretty as you. Nor half as bright.
She couldn’t have thought of that Noel Ahriman joke to save her life.”

“Oh, pooh, that sad pun,” said Marjorie, feeling very kindly toward Noel.

“But she had her own special charm. Tall. Very thin. Black-haired. Her name was Muriel
Weissfreid. I’m sure half of Muriel’s fascination for me lay in this blue-eyed black-haired
Irish look she had. Well, to synopsize, and without conceit I say it, she was as mad
about me as I was about her. The necking we did was historic, it was cataclysmic,
she wanted it and I was her slave, of course. For months I was a nervous wreck. I
swear, much as I loved her, I grew to hate it. But necking it was and necking it remained.
Anything was all right except natural sex. And one other thing. We necked in absolute
silence, never discussed it, and never admitted, not to the last hour, that we were
doing it or ever had done it. Those were the rules. I tried once or twice to make
a joke about it but, Gad, she got angry as a tiger, and I knew if I said three more
words I’d lose her. So I shut up. She was my queen, my star, what else could I do?”
He drank.

“She sounds horrible,” Marjorie said.

“I organized a dance band just to make money to spend on her. I wrote term papers
for her in our courses—papers that got her A’s, when my own papers got low C’s. It
seemed the most natural thing in the world to do. Writing a good paper for her was
like giving her a corsage.—Well. Came the Junior Prom. Naturally Saul and Muriel were
to go together. The other fellows at school didn’t even bother to ask her. But Saul
didn’t go with Muriel. Saul went stag. Muriel, you see, had met a young man during
Christmas vacation, and had improved the acquaintance on weekends in New York, while
our fantastic necking continued at Ithaca on week nights. It continued, so help me,
until two days before the Prom, when she informed me she had invited this fellow as
her escort. Marjorie, she wore blue velvet to the Prom, and the biggest diamond you
have ever seen or are ever likely to see outside a museum. If she’d fallen in a river
wearing that diamond she’d have been pulled down and drowned. He was a pleasant little
fellow with a round head and pink cheeks, a little shorter than Muriel. His father
owned a big woolen mill.

“Honestly, Marge, in my life I have never done a better imitation of Noel Coward than
I did that night. I wished them joy with the most astringent elegance, and begged
the favor of a last dance with her. He was really a very nice little fellow. And what
the devil, he had her. They were going to be in bed together in the bridal suite of
the
Mauretania
in two weeks, she was quitting school to marry him. He handed her over with a good-hearted,
and, so help me, apologetic grin. And Muriel and Saul danced their last dance.”

“Lord,” murmured Marjorie.

“Blue velvet,” said Noel in a light amused tone, “and Muriel’s arms so thin and white,
and the spring-flower smell of her hair the same as always—and that damned Rock of
Gibraltar winking on my right shoulder where her left hand rested, as it always had,
with a finger lightly flicking my hair.” He finished his drink and slouched back,
smiling at her. “So you see, in my epic duel with Shirley she has gotten in a solid
blow or two. I’m well ahead, however, and I mean to stay ahead.”

Marjorie said, “It’s a nasty picture. I recognize parts of it, I have to admit. Only
parts. She was a miserable girl—”

“I know. My generic girl is named Shirley, not Muriel.”

“I’m not anything like her. You can believe me or not, as you please.”

“You mean you wouldn’t marry the fat little son of the woolen mill? Maybe not. I hope
you’re never tempted.” Marjorie thought of Sandy Goldstone, and looked down at her
drink. “I daresay you don’t go in for obsessive necking, at least I hope not.”

“Certainly not! As for tonight, I—” she stammered and stopped, blushing.

“Don’t elaborate, Margie, it was perfectly obvious how astounded you were. You made
me feel ashamed of myself, for the first time in maybe ten years. Amazing. I thought
my conscience had atrophied.”

“Oh, you’re not as black as you paint yourself.”

“I’m exactly that black. Whatever you do, don’t fool yourself about that.”

She said, “You don’t scare me. Not any more.”

“Feet of clay.”

“No, that’s all right. I’m just beginning to understand you.”

“And to feel the urge to make me worthy of myself, perhaps.”

“No. I don’t give a hang what becomes of you, why should I?”

Noel lit a cigarette, and looked out at the lake. “I had a sweet revenge, by the way,
given to few in this life. When I had my first song hit, Muriel wrote me a letter
saying how proud she was of me. Then, when
Raining Kisses
got to be such a success, here came an invitation to a party at her home in Rye,
New York, an Italian Renaissance palace the woolen man had given his son for a birthday
present. I went. I’d driven past the place several times, long ago, gnashing my teeth.
I had no trouble finding it. Seven years had gone by. Well, Margie, it was a hell
of a party. You never saw so many expensive dresses. Ah, but they were so much the
young married set, so thirtyish, so fearfully hair-thinning hip-spreading loud-laughing
wide-grinning thirtyish! Here a real estate man, there a chain grocery man, here a
lawyer, there a doctor, here a woolen man, there a cotton man, all sleek and plump
and connubial. The wives, a couple of dozen aging Shirleys. Muriel’s chin had sharpened.
All the sweetness was out of the curves of her face. She was stiff and tight—tight
smile, tight clothes, tight desperate gay eyes. I came there with the most beautiful
girl in New York, an imbecile named Imogene something, eighteen, a raging redheaded
beauty. Later married an oil man. Darling lovely Marjorie, I tell you we two bohemians
walked among those thirtyish respectable people like gods. We dazzled them. Those
well-fed commuting husbands hungered for Imogene and hated me. Their wives hated Imogene
and hungered for the romantic-looking composer in tweeds. Oh, it was rare. Muriel
took me for a walk in the garden. I would not have made a pass at her, Margie, for
twenty million dollars in gold, payable in advance. I was Noel Coward again, being
distantly cordial to a sweet old aunt. She batted her eyes a bit in the old way, and
said she was very happy and only hoped I would settle down some day with some fine
girl and prove worthy of myself. She was implying that Imogene was a tramp. Which
was entirely true. And—one thing that makes me feel kindly toward her, I must say—she
apologized with clumsy sincerity for her somewhat crude parting words to me at the
Prom seven years before.—Well. That was that. I’ll tell you, I’d been getting pretty
tired of Imogene—she was a moron, truly—but the hot eyes of those husbands sort of
Simonized her for me, you might say, and we were great pals for another month or so
after that marvelous party. Never seen Muriel since, and don’t expect to.” The bartender
brought brandy. Noel drank. “Sam’s brandy is beginning to taste pleasant. Incredible.”

Marjorie was looking coldly at him. “You really are a devil in some ways—vindictive,
petty, arrogant, smug—”

He glanced toward the windows and pointed at the guests streaming across the lawn.
“Here come the Jukes and Kallikaks, full of steak and beer. Let’s get the hell out
when I finish this.”

“What did she say to you?”

“Who? When?”

“Muriel. At the Prom. Her parting words.”

“Oh, that. I forget.” He drank.

“What did she say, Noel?”

“Interests you that much, this dead yarn of a dead time?”

“Yes, it interests me.”

“Well, okay. Please understand, it was mainly my doing. I danced her into a corner,
sat her down, and in a few sparkling and rather nasty sentences described her marriage
to her as only Saul Ehrmann could. She began getting that furious cat look, but what
the hell did I care? When I was all through she said something like this: ‘You’ve
always been able to talk rings around me and to hurt me. You’ve hurt me now, all right.
I feel sick. What you say about my marriage is all true. I’ll say one thing for Marty,
though. He isn’t a cripple.’ With that, away went the blue velvet, the white arms,
and the diamond.” He finished the brandy and stood. “Let’s go.”

They walked in silence up the lawn, hand in hand. When they came to the path through
the bushes to the women’s cottages, she faced him. “I’m very stupid, I know, but—”

He brushed his hand gently on her cheek. “Enough talking for one night, darling. There’s
the whole summer.”

“I can’t tell you how strange I feel. Dizzy, unreal—it wasn’t the brandy, I didn’t
have enough—”

“Marjorie, my sweet, we’ve fallen in love with each other, that’s all. You love me.
I love you. Don’t lose any sleep over it.”

Electric stings ran through her arms and legs. She put out her hand with spread fingers
toward him, half reaching for him, half warding him off, a peculiar blind little gesture.
He took her hand. She pulled him into the shadow of the path, and kissed him.

Within the next couple of weeks it became a settled thing at South Wind that Marjorie
was Noel Airman’s girl. During rehearsals she sat at his side, when she wasn’t working
the lights or acting; she informally came to be a sort of assistant stage manager.
She spent her free time with him, canoeing, dancing, playing tennis, talking endlessly.

It was a new era for Marjorie, a sunburst of love, and fun, and glory. Noel put on
Pygmalion
and there were no open complaints when Marjorie drew the part of Eliza. The staff
people all assumed Marjorie was sleeping with the social director, and quite understood
that he would want to treat her well, at least in the first few weeks of their affair.

To everybody’s surprise, she scored a hit in the show. Really failing in a part like
Eliza would have been hard, but it was obvious that Marjorie’s success was not just
the success of Shaw’s lines. The audience liked her. Their warm response seemed to
fill her with power and sparkle, almost to add inches to her stature; after a hesitant
start she sailed through the evening bravely, and at the last curtain she received
an ovation very like the one after
The Mikado
.

It turned into a memorable night, a staff revel lasting until dawn. Greech invited
them all to his charming rustic bungalow on the lake, and was moved after a while
to send up to the kitchen for a case of domestic champagne. About two o’clock in the
morning, when everyone was quite drunk and full of eagerness for the party to go on
and on, somebody suggested that Noel play the score of his new musical comedy,
Princess Jones
. He tried to beg off, but there was a great clamor for it, and at last he sat at
the piano and began. The noise died down; for they were theatre people, and the unfolding
of a new creative work was a solemnity. They sat here and there, on the furniture
and on the floor, drinking quietly as they listened. After a while their respect changed
to enthusiasm, and then to excitement. Several times they broke into applause. When
Noel finished—playing and singing the score took him over an hour—there was a tumult
of congratulations. Marjorie thought
Princess Jones
was unmistakably brilliant; but, being Noel’s girl, she sat quietly, enjoying the
rush of praise as much as he did, saying nothing. Wally Wronken reeled up to Noel
with a highball in his hand, and actually got down on his hands and knees before him.
“Salaam. You are the master, Noel. It’ll be produced in a year. It’s a sure smash.
You’ll be rich and famous. I kneel to the master. Salaam.” He touched his forehead
to the floor, spilling his drink.