The Old Man and Me (26 page)

And when they tried to get through to him they couldn’t. For I was stuck in the way, rooted hysterically to the spot.

Then someone lifted me up and passed me over the heads of the crowd up the stairs and out into the street.

Clanging up Piccadilly towards the Emergency Ward of the St. George’s Hospital, C. D. unconscious on a stretcher, me by his side relentlessly retelling the attendant “He’s had a stroke, he’s had a stroke. Because of
me
. It was my fault, it wasn’t a mistake, it was my fault.” Praying dear God, please punish me, don’t punish him. Thinking if only I make a clean breast of it C. D. can be saved.

“Get a grip on yourself, Miss.” The attendant was cold, businesslike, indifferent. Why? Weren’t they supposed to be angels of mercy or something? “It only makes matters worse carrying on like this. If he’s had a stroke you shouldn’t have moved him. You don’t want to move anyone with a stroke. Didn’t you know that?” I stared at him blankly. No of course I didn’t. Why should I? Wait. My father’s first stroke in the Locker Room at the Club. Pauly had written to me about it; they’d moved him upstairs and that had been bad for him. So I did know. I put my head in my hands, sickening scared, hearing my voice over and over again insisting move him, move him, MOVE HIM, frightened beyond fear, staring finally at the rock bottom of the truth. Some reflex in me had kept right on trying to kill C. D. long after the joke had gone too far.

I had killed them all in one way or another. My father. Pauly. With hatred. With neglect. My mother to begin with—just
by being born. And now C. D. I would have to have myself committed. But I knew I wouldn’t. I would have to go on living
and hiding it from myself and trying to keep it hidden from everyone.

C. D. stirred.

“Easy now, Miss, we don’t want to tire the patient out,” reproached the attendant mechanically.

I had fallen on my knees beside my victim, my hands cupping his, rubbing my cheek against it, kissing it, saying “Listen to me, darling, listen but don’t move. You’ve had a stroke, you mustn’t be moved. We’re moving you to the hospital so you’ll be all right. And I’ll go away. I promise I’ll never see you again so you’ll be all right.”

“Stay with me,” he whispered.

My heart was bursting inside me. “I’ve killed you,” I said slowly. “I couldn’t help it. It was for the money.”

“I know—”

“No you don’t. Now listen to me, listen carefully. I mean for my money. I’m your heir—your heiress I mean—don’t talk, don’t try, it’s bad for you. I’ve got to explain. I tried to kill you. I never thought I really would when it got right down to actually doing it and most of the time it didn’t feel like that at all, darling, my darling, listen to me—most of the time it felt like the only way I could keep you was to keep your money so you couldn’t get away. That was what Pauly did to me, don’t you see?” I paused. I’d spoken her name to him for the first time and my heart was racing so I couldn’t go on. I waited for a reaction. None came. I wasn’t making any sense. I tried again. “She married my father and stole my money and then she married you and then she stole my money again and I couldn’t help it but I couldn’t let it happen again, could I?” I was trying to explain things too difficult to explain. It wasn’t any use going on like that. I had to clear it up instantly. “Listen to what I’m telling you. Pauly Saegessor was my stepmother, do you hear? Pauly...”

“And you’re Betsy Lou Saegessor,” he murmured weakly.

“Well now you know.” I subsided.

“Oh, I knew.” So faint I could scarcely hear.

“You knew?”

“Almost from the beginning. Because of Pauly. I could hear it.” He shifted slightly on to one side. “Faint echoes of your voice,” he said to my astonishment.

“My voice! Me and that cheap little tart? My voice like that colourless little nobody’s? You out of your mind? That affected priss, that little private secretary—”

“She tried to copy it from you,” he said. “Didn’t you know that? She admired you so, poor thing. In spite of what we did to her she admired us both very much.” I stared at him, feeling at last all the distress and failure that had made up Pauly’s life, knowing here was something else I would never get over.

I got up off my knees and sat down and said, “I am ashamed of everything I have ever done.”

“I know, my dear. And so am I.”

We were passing by the Ritz. “You couldn’t have gotten it just by my voice,” I began again.

“No I didn’t,” he was eyeing me drily. “But that was my first clue. There were lots of others. There was plain common sense. Why should a young girl like you make such a dead set for me? Money? Perhaps. But you were passing yourself off as very rich in the beginning if you remember. And something else—you knew too much about me already. Proud as I am I will not flatter myself with an international reputation. Also, it was completely out of character. You are not in the slightest curious about other people, you know. In fact it’s one of your most striking characteristics to take people at their face value. Now why, I asked myself, should anyone as old and ugly—don’t interrupt—as old and ugly as
myself attract you so much? In short, what were you, at the
peak of your power and glory, doing over here wasting your time on me?”

“I loved you. I adored being with you.”

He looked away. His spirit seemed to sag. He seemed to have a pain. He had lost interest.

“The way I made sure,” he said finally, “was by asking for you under both your names on the BEA Paris flight.”

“That was your nasty, suspicious, evil mind,” I said.

“That was my nasty, suspicious, evil mind,” he agreed.

Immediately I was contrite. It was not the way a death scene should go.

“But if you knew who I was all along—” I started in again.

“And more. I even suspected you of trying to kill me as well. And I decided to let you. I decided to go along with the idea.”

Shock upon shock. “But why, C. D., my precious Seedy,
why?”

“The nights were drawing in,” he sighed, “another sad winter coming on. Those womb places, it was all new to me. I liked the new womb places you took me to, their darkness and smallness as much as the youth and the excitement and the clutter. I reached for the truth in those places and it seemed I could see a little in the dark sitting in those places and thinking, at last I can see a little in the dark. And then, stronger—but I can see it in the dark! At last I can see it in the dark.” His voice died away.

“What? See what?”

“My end,” he said gently, suffering no longer. “In a dark night-club with sad music and enough to drink. Watching my girl, so beautiful, so graceful, so contemporary—dancing—knowing she’ll come back with me at the end of the evening. One gets tired of the coldness of life, of the darkness of winter, of the jagged edges of everything. That’s an old man’s tale, tired and baffled. What was it I once wanted? I forget. It’s an awful thing to reach the age of fifty-six and still not know who you are.” He lifted himself up and began coughing, turning red. After a while he subsided. “And there you were trying to do me in,” he went on almost cheerfully, “and I just went along with it. You don’t know how it touched me seeing you want that money, need the money that I had once needed and never would again. It is divine justice,” he said more gravely, “fair payment for Pauly’s poor death. My life for poor Pauly’s. Odd, the guilt only began with having you around; feeling your hungry desperate claim. I didn’t want to live. I wanted you to destroy me.”

We had arrived at the hospital and sat waiting. The ambulance was being prepared for the doctor who would come in and look over C. D. Finally he arrived. He had carroty red hair, greenish skin, and was six foot five inches tall. In the bright ambulance light he looked like the undertaker. He poked and prodded at C. D. He made him cough and breathe and stick out his tongue. Then he rose and put his stethoscope away. I was crying.

“Move him out of here,” he said matter-of-factly to the driver and the attendant.

“No!” I cried, leaping forward to prevent them. “No, you can’t move him, he’s had a stroke.”

“I’ve had a stroke,” echoed C. D. faintly. “I’m going to die, am I not?”

“We’ll see about that,” said the doctor and looked at him frowning. “You’re pretty run down, you know. What’ve you been doing?”

“No, me. Let me tell it, C. D. You rest.” Here it was: my chance for public confession, quick before I changed my mind. Spill it out, spew it on the pavement, blow it to the winds. The night by night blow by blow smoke by smoke drink by drink account. It’s called racing the rat round the town till he drops. Oh-oh. Careful now. That doctor’s looking at you very queerly. Watch it. Stick to the facts. No editorializing. Play it sly. Sure, we want to save C. D. Got to save him from me for ever, no question. But save your own skin too, gal, save your skin. Remember, when it’s all over, the authorities can make it hot for you. Preserve yourself. Protect yourself. Come in gently to the Zazou. Sit down quietly and then—God! The sudden shock. The horror. The unexpectedness. Play the heroine. Organize the escape. Save a life. There. What more could they expect? His own mother couldn’t have done it better. Why is that damn doctor still looking at me so oddly?

“No you haven’t had a stroke,” he said abruptly to C. D., cutting me off. “Come on. We’ll take you inside.”

“But what happened to me back there in that night-club?” asked C. D. “I don’t understand.”

“One of two things might have happened,” said the young red-headed doctor (just this side of impertinence). “You might have fainted—but from this young lady’s description of your recent activities” (just the other side of fed-up-ness) “I’d be more inclined to believe you simply passed out.”

C. D. and I confronted each other appalled. “You’re sure?” asked one of us—whoever had found his voice.

“I’m sure.”

So he wasn’t going to die after all.

Now what?

C. D. asked that we be left alone for a moment and the doctor stepped out of the ambulance.

My devilish syndrome was starting up again. “Only I didn’t destroy you after all,” I began babbling. “I couldn’t. And you didn’t have a stroke, you only passed out.” I began to laugh bitterly and brightly, shock reaction of course, I was stark raving mad, out of my head. “I can’t be very anything
,
can I?” I said. “Very mad, or very sad, or even very bad. Can’t even kill an old man waiting to die.” And I began to laugh hysterically, right straight out of my mind. We two poor crazy nuts—what gothic nightmares had we not dreamed up?

And he giggled too, the ghost of that famous giggle. “Never mind,” he said. “At least you made me very ill.”

Then the doctor came back and they put me out into the night like a cat.

For three days I rang the hospital all the time, leaving messages and waiting for C. D. to call me back, never daring to go over there—an aura of such hopelessness hanging over my fear and cowardice—sensing rebuff, not only from C. D. but the doctors, the staff, the whole hospital conspiring to keep me from him. Everyone against me. Me too, in my way, of course. But such had been my life that year that without C. D. there was nothing.

They were polite on the telephone, even reassuring. He was fine, they told me. He was resting though. That was all. Resting resting, that was the key word. And firm too. No, he positively couldn’t be disturbed, wasn’t seeing any visitors. If you’ll leave your name he’ll get in touch with you when he can.

And so I waited. And that’s all I did: waited. I almost disintegrated waiting, keeping myself in a shabby threadbare cocoon, aloof and waiting for him. Every day I put on the same clothes, and ate the same food. I watched the polish fade and streak and chip off my fingernails and toenails. I didn’t wash my hair. Sometimes not my stockings. Sometimes I didn’t even put them on. Some days I didn’t go out at all.

One day, giving way to an impulse, I put in a call to Honey Flood in New York.

“Why, Betsy Lou,” her mother exclaimed. “Why, Betsy Lou, where on earth are you? We’ve been looking for you high and low and nobody knew. It’s as if you just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“I’m in England.”

“Yes of course, that’s what the operator said. I can’t believe it. Honey’s not here now, she’s at work—”

“How is she?” That was what I had to know.

“Oh she’s fine, Betsy Lou. She’s just fine. That little bad patch, you know, when we had to take her out of college—well, that’s all a thing of the past now, thank God. And, Betsy Lou—can you hear me? Betsy Lou, it’s all due to you. We owe it all to you, we’re so grateful.”

“Me?” I said startled. “Why me?”

“Why she rang you at your office at the magazine one day—you know she wouldn’t speak or go out with anyone for a whole year, I was so worried, nothing seemed to help—and oh really, I shouldn’t—”

“Go on.”

“This must be costing the earth.”

“No please—what happened? Tell me.”

“Well, one day she said I’d like to see Betsy Lou again. Just like that. And that was the beginning, honestly and truly. We found out your telephone number at the magazine and she phoned and they said you’d suddenly upped and left, they didn’t know where, and how the place was in an uproar without you, and do you know, she put down that phone and said ‘Mummy, I’ve made up my mind what I want to do. I want to get a job.’ And that very afternoon she went over to your magazine and they took her on as one of those coffee and errand girls at first and, Betsy Lou—this will thrill you I know—guess what her job is now. Just guess.”

“What?”

“And oh, she loves it so! And they’re so pleased with her. They thought after you left they’d never find anyone as good. It’s given her such confidence. It’s made all the difference. Betsy Lou? You there?”

Not altogether. But I sent Honey my best love and my best wishes and promised to write all my news and hung up. And I thought about Mother Nature some more.

The telephone that rang one day at last had the voice of C. D. I answered it languorously, savouring all the good things in the world: hope, happiness, renaissance, and, most of all, the possibility of a second chance. He wanted me to come right over.