The Sea Change (20 page)

‘We didn’t,’ I said. ‘The girl we wanted went sick, and we had to make out with somebody who’s upset the whole balance of the play. That’s why he’s so
anxious to have the right girl here. He knows what he wants, and he’s quite right.’

‘Yeah – with one detail hardly worth mentioning – she just don’t happen to
exist
!’

‘Snap out of it; you’ve only been on it a week.’

‘A week!’ He looked as though he was going to burst. ‘He thinks I’ve been on it just a
week
! I tell you something else. It’ll end up by his picking some
little girl with no sex appeal, no box office, no record, no nothing. And I’ll have to try to sell her to MCA – she’s spiritual – Mister Joyce is in love with her – we
all
love her – little Miss Wide Open Spaces 1958 – do you think they’ll buy it? I can tell you now what they’ll tell me to tell you to tell Mister Joyce to do with
her and that won’t make a news story, and while he’s living happily ever after for five minutes, they’ll withdraw and he’ll be landed with the play
and
the girl . .
.’

‘Mick, you’re making me tired.’ He really was: I could feel the pricking at the back of my neck which is the beginning of getting angry. ‘He can always find backing for a
new play and you know it. Don’t get too big for other people’s boots. Be your age and keep your job.’

They called through to say that Miss Harper had arrived. I slapped him as hard as I could on the back and as he fell against the filing cabinet I grinned at him. ‘Maybe this is
it.’

Of course it wasn’t. She was a nice girl, but dumb as they come – she didn’t know what she was doing – she just looked good.

We had a weary lunch with Mick and George. It was agreed that everybody perfectly understood everybody else, and was hopping with confidence over everyone else’s ability. George gave Mick
the job of lining up a whole lot of screen tests to be run through for us; Mick cheered up quite horribly and started loving us all again, and I watched Emmanuel staring at things and not eating
his lunch and going blue under the eyes and I thought goddammit do they
really
think he’s in it for his power complex? He was just trying to finish a good job, that’s all. When
we got to coffee, there was a call through for him: I went to take it, and it was Alberta with a message from Lillian to say that she’d fixed the evening for all of us with the Westinghouses
– so would we be back not later than seven? I asked if Lillian was there, but she wasn’t – she was out lunching with some Russian princess who knew a lot about herbs – and
that meant we’d have to go to the Westinghouses’. Then Alberta said she was sorry if she’d distressed me and rang off. She has a sweet voice, but she says some funny things with
it. I told Emmanuel about the Westinghouses and he screwed up his eyes and then said unexpectedly: ‘She has a pretty voice – that girl,’ and George and Mick became galvanized and
said which one, and when he said it was his secretary they lost interest.

After lunch, Emmanuel said: ‘I have an overpowering desire to sleep, Where can I go?’

He said it to me and very quietly, so I knew he wanted to get away from George. Then he got up from the table, nodded amiably to Mick and George and walked out. I didn’t take time to care
for the check, I got up to follow him: ‘He’ll jay walk himself into hospital,’ I said. Mick smiled slyly; George said: ‘Or revwire.’ I grabbed our coats and caught up
with him a few yards down on the sidewalk. ‘Lillian’s out.’

He looked at me expressionlessly: ‘Let’s go home.’

In the cab, he said: ‘Do you know that girl found what was wrong with Clemency?’

‘What girl?’

‘My secretary.’ He still looked like nothing.

A bit later he said: ‘I’ve a damn good mind to chuck the whole business.’

‘Not put the play on at all?’

‘Not put any play on.’

‘What for?’

He looked at me then, and suddenly smiled. ‘That’s just it, Jimmy. There has to be a reason one way or another. I haven’t found it.’ He yawned. ‘On with the
play.’

I didn’t answer. He always started a depression this way: wanting to sleep all the time, and making elliptical damaging little stabs at any project in hand, and if you took him up
withdrawing to somewhere you couldn’t reach him. But I knew then that something would have to be decided somehow, and thought that I would put a call through to Katie and see if there was no
way of hooking her.

When we got to the apartment, he waited while I found a key, and opened the door, and at once Alberta came out of the living room. Emmanuel walked firmly up to her and took her by the arm.
‘I want you to do something for me. Would you take the calls, Jimmy? Now – where can we go?’ He pushed her gently into the kitchen, and turned back to me. ‘I want to try
something. Stop Lillian from stopping me, will you?’

I nodded, and went into the living room. A minute later, Alberta came in, picked something off a table and went. I shut the door, and put the call through to Katie in California. The time was
half past three. While I was waiting for the first call to come through, I made a list of all the others that could be any use, and wondered how that kid had managed to upset him about Clemency. Of
course, she wouldn’t have meant to – the people who did, moved him not at all. But this kind of thing had happened before: somebody, something, had shifted his view of a completed work,
and then there was the devil to pay until he got it back to his satisfaction. Once or twice he hadn’t, and they were the worst times of all. That was when I earned my salary: when he lost
money, made enemies, and really got down to influencing people. Then it had to be a case of my country right or wrong, and I had the curious sensation of what it cost to believe in anybody. Then I
not only had to stand people calling him a fool – a swollen-headed bum perfectionist – a capitalist who didn’t care about the security of the workers in the theatre – a
sadist who liked to use his power to revenge himself upon some producer or star he’d fallen out with – I had to stand him agreeing with them. ‘Why not?’ he once said:
‘There is no doubt that I have been a fool: that’s a useful word; it will cover almost anything. They are quite rightly worrying about the consequences, as I, too late, concern myself
with the cause. A fool is somebody who will not keep still, but cannot possibly be responsible for his actions. I am a fool.’

Oh well – it hadn’t come to that.

The call to Katie came through at last. At the end of two minutes she had really convinced me that she was tied up, and after that she was free-wheeling on her reasons. Her studio had suspended
her a few weeks back: she was scheduled to make two big pictures: she was suing her third husband for failure to pay alimony, and anyway she couldn’t leave her hypnotist who was trying to
stop her taking sleeping pills. This took another eighteen minutes of her beautiful voice. She couldn’t, she said, even work Las Vegas for a week on account of her studio, when God knew she
needed the money, and life was twice as expensive as it had been what with lawyers and the hypnotist who hadn’t managed to stop her taking sleeping pills yet so any minute she might be
suspended again – for good. We exchanged a lot of abstract emotions and hung up. She was an actress, though: she had the lot: and I knew it, even while I caught myself wondering how on earth
we ever thought she could play Clemency. I was just starting to call a couple of people I just liked, and thought I’d call, when I heard Lillian, and put the receiver back just as she came
into the room. She was not alone.

‘Hi, Jimmy. This is Princess Murmansk – you’ve met, haven’t you, Delia?’

‘Why yes – we certainly have. How are you?’

The Princess – I didn’t remember her – had an accent straight from New Orleans where she must have been some landmark – she was well over six feet tall.

‘The Princess has been explaining to me how you can do absolutely everything with herbs.’

The Princess smiled, exposing a large quantity of well-kept teeth. Only Cinerama, I thought, would do justice to her. They exchanged herbal cigarettes, and we all sat down.

‘You look at a loose end, Jimmy: where’s Em?’

‘In the kitchen.’

‘What on earth is he doing?’

‘He’s working with Alberta.’

‘Why in the kitchen? Why not here?’

‘Because he doesn’t want to be interrupted.’

‘What’s he
doing
?’

‘Search me. Working.’

Lillian gave an angry little laugh. ‘How extraordinary. Well, Delia’s dying to meet him, and anyway we came back to make some of her marvellous tea.’

‘He specially asked me to take all calls and see that he wasn’t interrupted,’ I said, and noticed that we had both instinctively got to our feet. I tried to smile.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

She went. The Princess stretched out a yard or two of leg and said: ‘Does it get to be part of your reflexes protecting the great man?’

‘It gets to be.’

Lillian came back followed by Emmanuel: I took one look at him and wished I was somewhere else. Lillian said: ‘I’ve got our secretary to boil water and get a tray together, but the
actual
skill
will have to be you, Delia. My husband – Princess Murmansk.’

‘I’m so happy to meet you.’ She extended a hand and Emmanuel shook it.

‘I do hope I haven’t disturbed your inspiration.’

‘I have never been fortunate enough to have any. If I had, neither you nor anyone else would be able to disturb it.’

Lillian said: ‘Really Em, that’s rude of you.’

‘Not rude – just hypothetical.’

I couldn’t take it. I went to see how Alberta was making out with the tea. She looked flushed, and when I came in she gave me a quick little smile as though if she didn’t smile
she’d cry.

‘Can I help any?’ I said: she was putting cups on a tray.

‘I just have to wait until the kettle boils: thank you, Jimmy.’

‘I’ll stay and watch it with you.’ I felt suddenly that she was getting the rough end of something she knew nothing about. She looked at the two chairs where they must have
been sitting, and pushed her hair back from her forehead.

‘Has he been working you hard?’

She looked bewildered. ‘Not working
me
, exactly. He’s been making me read to him. He said he wanted to hear something.’

‘Yeah – he does that. Has he found it?’

‘Some of it, I think – but of course, I haven’t asked.’ She waited a moment, and then said: ‘Mrs Joyce was angry when she came in and then he was very angry.’
Her voice was very low. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘He didn’t say anything, did he?’

‘No – but that made it worse. Jimmy – do you mind me asking you something?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Who am I working for?’

‘You’re working for him, and sometimes that means working for her. Sometimes it doesn’t.’

‘It isn’t that I mind doing
anything
. But if they tell me to do something, and it makes the other angry that I do it . . .’

‘Like this?’ I indicated the tea tray, and she nodded. ‘Forget it. Listen: they’re not beautiful simple people, so they make difficulties from time to time: just
don’t get involved – it irons out – but whatever they do, you keep it small. OK?’

‘OK,’ she said carefully. ‘Thank you, Jimmy. I expect it sounds stupid to you, but my experience of married people is unfortunately superficial.’

‘What about your parents?’

‘My mother died when I was nine. The kettle’s boiling. Do we take it in, do you think?’

‘I’ll find out where her highness wants it.’

I strode into an atmosphere you could cut with a knife and said: ‘Alberta wants to know where you want the boiling water?’

‘Tell her to bring it in here with the tray.’

Well, we had tea – if you can call the sickly bitter stuff that woman made, tea. Lillian chattered – the princess answered questions about her herbal rest home; and Emmanuel sat
almost silent, and fidgeting, until he suddenly smiled at her with great charm and said he had to go.

‘Darling – you can’t go out now. The Westinghouses!’

‘Tell them I’ll be late.’ He’d gone.

Lillian looked desperately at me. ‘Jimmy – do explain to him, the party’s being given for him. He
can’t
be late.’ As I left the room, I heard her saying:
‘He’s always like this when he’s working on a new play; I do hope you’ll forgive him, and understand.’

I caught Emmanuel waiting for the elevator: without looking at me, he said: ‘One shouldn’t meet that woman indoors: she’s too big.’

We both got into the elevator. I said: ‘I couldn’t have stopped that.’

He gave me a bleak smile. ‘I could.’ He shrugged. ‘Well – it’s done now. And the only thing that would put it right again, I can’t do.’

I was silent.

‘I did it last night. It takes a kind of energy I don’t seem to keep for long. Or can’t afford. Or won’t. I have something else to do.’

Then he said angrily: ‘It’s like marking
sand
. The tide comes in, and you might never have done it.’

‘Are you going to show up at this party?’ I asked desperately. I didn’t want to ask, but I had to.

‘You take her to it. If I’m not coming, I’ll call them. I promise.’

I put their number on a piece of paper and put it in his pocket.

‘I’ve lost my temper. It’s like getting drunk: you know it’s going to poison you, and you don’t stop. Freedom! We all talk about it, and don’t know the
meaning of the word!’

The elevator, which had reached the ground floor some time back, suddenly started up again. He laughed.

‘You see, Jimmy? It’s just like this. We go up and down, up and down, without the slightest control. Where’s the break? What the hell can we
do
about anything at
all?’

He spread out his hands – they were shaking – small, nervous, blotched on their backs with large freckles. ‘See? I haven’t the control of a
cat
!’

‘They have a lot,’ I said.

The elevator stopped, and a wooden-faced couple got in. Their collective gaze shifted over us and the floor and the walls. They only knew how not to look at each other. I pressed the button for
our apartment floor, and said: ‘Well, I’ll take them both to the party, and hope to see you there. And I’ll fix somewhere good to work tomorrow.’