Nothing So Strange (19 page)

My trip to California was mainly because I had recently published a book
called
Great Circle
, in which I gave an account of my world wanderings
to date. It had sold quite well, and a Hollywood studio bought the movie
rights. Presently someone discovered, as should have been apparent from the
outset, that there was no “story” in it, but so far from discouraging them,
this merely whetted their desire for the authoress herself to construct one.
I told them I had no talent for that sort of thing, but I suppose such
frankness convinced them far more than if I had jumped at the idea; anyhow,
in the end we compromised on my spending a few weeks in Hollywood for
“consultation.” Everything about the arrangement sounded reasonable except
the fee, which was absurd.

I had been to California before, several times, and had liked it fairly
well, and the fact that my father was now living there would give me a chance
to pay him the visit which I felt was due, after a somewhat longer interval
than usual.

There was a full moon and a clear sky at Palmdale, but no sign of a bus.
The disembarked passengers converged towards a make-shift army hut in that
peculiar mood of strandedness inflicted nowadays only on those who travel the
modern way. The bus, we were told, was “coming”—had been delayed by a
flat tire. I was just about to doze off again in a chair when a loudspeaker
yelled my name and the information that a car was waiting for me outside.
Everybody stared, waiting for a person called Waring to move, and something
of my chronic phobia surged up and almost made me decide to remain anonymous,
but I knew I should be found out after succeeding yells; so I pushed rather
ill- humoredly through the small crowd and was doubtless the object of
comment and envy.

A large black Cadillac stood at the curb, attended by a uniformed
chauffeur who saluted in style. As he fixed me inside with a rug he remarked
how fortunate it was that he’d been able to arrive before I got on the bus. I
thought so too. Warmth and comfort began to pacify me even before we left the
airport precincts, and soon I was musing on the hospitality of Hollywood
studios, and whether it would change when they found out I hadn’t fooled
them. Or would, they think I had?

I must have slept, because the next thing I remember was the crunch of
gravel as the car slewed through big gates into an upward curving driveway. I
thought this could hardly be where a hotel room had been booked for me, and I
was rousing myself to lean forward and question the chauffeur when we pulled
up in front of a rather immense Spanish-type portico.

“But where
is
this?” I asked, when he held open the door.

“Vista Grande, miss.”

“
What
?”

“Mr. Waring’s house, miss. Vista Grande….”

“Mr. Waring’s?… My … but … but I’m supposed to go to a hotel in
Beverly Hills…. I thought this was a studio car….”

“Mr. Waring’s car, miss. He telephoned the airline and found you were
coming down at Palmdale.”

“There must be some mistake, though. Mr. Waring didn’t expect me here …
or maybe he didn’t know about the hotel. Better keep my bags in the
car—I’ll be going on there later…. Is Mr. Waring in?”

By this time several servants from the house had joined in the
proceedings, and it was all adding up to the kind of fuss I dislike.

“Mr. Waring is in the library,” somebody said.

As I climbed the steps the chauffeur called after me, in a friendly way:
“I shouldn’t think you’d want to go to Beverly Hills tonight, miss. It’s
about a hundred and fifty miles from here….”

Entering Vista Grande through the large vaulted hall, with
a servant
leading the way like a stage servant, I couldn’t help thinking how my
father’s life must have changed since losing my mother, first by divorce,
then by her death. She would never have been happy in a place like this. I
could almost hear her voice protesting: “But Harvey, this is
impossible
….” She had always liked a gay, cheerful, offhand sort of
house, and though she had a flair for furnishing, she mixed styles and
periods “for Pete’s sake,” as I used to think as a child. For when my father
came back to our house, wherever it was, to find some new carpet or curtains
or a reorganization of the furniture, he would say: “Christine, for Pete’s
sake, what’s been happening?” But now it had stopped happening for some
years, and the result was all opulence, impeccability, and loneliness. The
place looked like a cathedral that wasn’t sure there was a god. Even the name
was typical—the second word, anyhow. It lacked the touch of humanly
bastard Spanish that enlivens so many of the homes of Southern California; it
was the real thing, for those who sought their realities in wood and stone. I
admit that after I had got used to Vista Grande I liked it better, but I
never quite overcame that first chilling impression.

The library was a long room, walled with books in alcoves between heavily
curtained windows; the lamps were dim, but a log fire sent spears of light to
show the carved ceiling and the leather bindings on the shelves. This was not
so alarming as the hall; indeed, in a somber way it was rather fine, though
personally I would have expected to write with more comfort in a motel.

As I entered, my father rose slowly from an easy chair by the fire, and he
looked so much older that I was immediately touched. We had drifted apart
after the divorce; it wasn’t that I had sided with my mother so much as the
plain fact that I liked her better, and since it was she who had taken over
the New York house (and John), I saw her oftener during the scattered
intervals when I wasn’t traveling. After she died I acquired the house
myself, though it was far too big and unnecessarily expensive; I wasn’t,
however, in a mood to find somewhere else. I saw my father occasionally and
in various places till he began to change in slight but noticeable ways that
set him further from me. As this had to do with politics, and largely
out-of-date politics now, there is no point in going into detail. We
corresponded from time to time; he told me his health wasn’t so good, and I
learned (long after he had mostly recovered from it) that he had had a slight
stroke. The next I heard was that he was compelled to rest a good deal and
had bought a place in California which was quite isolated and fabulous.

And now he was welcoming me to it. “Jane…. How
are
you?… Good
to see you after all this time….”

He kissed me, and the servant (a young Italian-looking boy with a
beautiful face) helped him back into his chair.

My father went on: “It’s just lucky your plane came down at
Palmdale— much nearer here than Burbank. You’ve saved at least an
hour.”

After that I could see I should have to spend the night there, but already
I didn’t mind so much. The Italian-looking boy, still hovering around, seemed
to read my acceptance of the situation, for when I went to bed later my bags
had been taken up and unpacked without further instructions.

“So you’re quite a famous person now, Jane!
Hollywood
…. I saw it
in the papers. Well, you can make this your headquarters as long as you
want— it’s only a couple of hours’ drive.”

More than that, I reflected, if it were a hundred and fifty miles; but in
any case, I was certain that Vista Grande would not suit me at all. There was
no point, however, in arguing the matter then. I said: “I’m glad to find you
settled down like this, Father. It all looks rather stupendous, but of course
I haven’t seen it yet in daylight.”

“You’ll like it when you do. There’s a fine view over the mountains.”

I hadn’t realized it was in mountain country, which I prefer to any other
kind. My father went on: “Now tell me about yourself. Not married yet, I
know. But not even engaged—or interested in anybody?”

“Interested in a great many people, but not engaged.”

“Twenty-six, my dear. Getting time. Or is it twenty-seven?”

You put up with that sort of thing all the more easily when you have
received and rejected quite a number of proposals. Also it occurred to me
that he was matching his behavior, as he matched his furniture, to an
approved style- -perhaps Lewis Stone or Lionel Barrymore or some other
popular father-myth.

“Twenty-seven,” I answered, “and I know it makes me very old, but I
started everything early—you remember I began dining out at
sixteen….”

I said that lightly, not expecting it to echo along the corridors of his
memory and finally wake something.

“Yes … yes … I remember…. That painter fellow at Hampstead let me
down over the house. I told him if he ever wanted to sell I’d buy.”

“Oh well, never mind. You wouldn’t be living there now, anyway.”

“Not now, of course … but when the war’s finally over
everywhere—”

“England won’t be the same, though. Europe won’t be the same. Only America
will pretend to be the same.”

“That’s what you said in your book…. But how are they going to put that
sort of thing on the screen?”

“They aren’t. I can’t think why they bought it unless they just want to
use the title.”

“H’m…. I didn’t think it was such a wonderful title.”

“Neither did I.”

We talked on, as inconsequently as that, and presently I telephoned the
hotel that I wouldn’t be arriving that night. Then we climbed the stairs and
he showed me to my room. I took his arm with more meaning because I knew he
needed it. The bedroom and adjacent bathroom and dressing rooms were so
sumptuous that I couldn’t restrain a whistle, whereupon he remarked, as if
making a confession: “I know—it wasn’t cheap.”

I said jokingly: “Even income tax doesn’t get you down?”

“I have so much in tax-exempts,” he answered seriously.

He led me to the open window and pulled a curtain. Very dimly, in the
clear moonlit sky, could be seen the horizon of a mountain range. “There’s a
little snow on some of them—it stays all the year sometimes. You’ll
like the look of things in the morning, Jane.”

“I’m sure I shall. And such utter silence—that’s strange after New
York. How far are you from your nearest neighbor?”

“About four miles. It doesn’t bother me.”

“Why should it? Only a few minutes’ drive.”

“But I don’t even
know
them. I care for company less and less.” He
added, with frail gallantry: “Except
present
company.”

“Thanks,” I said, a little touched.

“Good night, then….” But he paused on his way to the door. “You know,
Jane … this is what I ought to have done after the Marazon inquiry. I
should have settled down in a place like this instead of spending so much
time abroad….”

God, I reflected—how my mother would have hated it. But I was also
surprised because this was the first time I had ever heard him refer to that
unhappy incident directly. Of course I had been too young when it happened to
know much about it, but I had read of it since, and the fact that it
doubtless still cropped up in many people’s minds when his name was mentioned
(or mine either, for that matter) had become a quite unspeakable thing
between us. For this reason his broaching of it now and so casually seemed to
me a pathetic sign of age and weakening.

“Oh, why bring that up?” I said. “Good night, Father.”

He fumbled his way out and I was surprised to find myself sorrier for him
than I had felt even at my mother’s graveside. He
had
been rather
unlucky in that Marazon business. Maintaining a representative to watch your
business interests at an international peace conference must always require a
good deal of tact. My father’s representative on that occasion was not
tactful, and as he was also the son of a Senator the whole thing became a
political football. That was the time when my father was publicly attacked as
a merchant of death, and I think he would have done better to ignore the
attacks than to argue, as he did, that cement was not a war material and that
he had no idea that the sale of it in huge quantities to a European
government could have had anything to do with the construction of
fortifications. But cement was not the worst of the things my father had
interests in, nor was it revealed that he had been selling to one side only;
indeed, the thorough investigation that ensued was the last thing he should
ever have courted.

The next morning I woke early, drew the curtains, and saw
the breath-
taking view across the Santa Modena Valley. The range that had been palely
visible in the moonlight was now a deep green meeting the blue of the sky,
and beyond it, at some far distance, were higher ranges tipped with snow. I
came to know and love that view during the weeks that followed; it was the
kind that had a different enchantment for every time of day and variation of
weather.

My father did not get up till noon, the Italian-looking boy told me (and
also that his own name was Dan). He added that all arrangements had been made
to drive me into Hollywood whenever I wished. I took a solitary breakfast on
an outdoor terrace overlooking the view, then said I would leave at ten
o’clock. That gave me time to wander about the house and grounds. It was a
large property and, considering the wartime labor shortage, excellently kept
up. In strong sunlight the house itself did not look so somberly impressive,
which was all to the good; and I could admit the value of dark interiors as a
contrast to the vividness outside. The air was already so warm that I
suspected the place might get uncomfortably hot at times, and I commented on
this, but Dan said it was too high up—about four thousand feet—to
be ever unbearable, and that in any case the house itself was
air-conditioned.

I drove into Hollywood with no clear decision in my mind about returning.
I felt I ought to have explained that the distance was much too great for
driving often, and that a hotel room on the spot would really suit me better.
But my father hadn’t come down to breakfast and I didn’t want to hurt his
feelings; perhaps another night would do no harm, and I could tell him after
dinner.