Under the Net (27 page)

I looked into the amber depths of my glass. ‘Perhaps,' I said, ‘but I don't want it now.' I wasn't sure if this was true. It remained to be seen whether it was true.

‘Anyway,' said Madge, ‘it won't be for doing nothing. You may have all kinds of things to do. There's translating the book, which you'd do anyway.'

‘You know perfectly well that that's another matter,' I told her.

‘You must be jolly glad,' said Madge, ‘that he's written a decent book at last. Everyone says it's marvellous. Particularly since it got the what-not prize.'

‘I shall translate no more books for Jean Pierre,' I said.

Madge stared at me as if I were mad. ‘What do you mean?' she said. ‘At Earls Court Road you were always complaining at having to waste your time translating such bad stuff.'

‘That's true,' I told her, ‘but the logic of the situation is odd here. It doesn't follow that I would regard it as less of a waste of time to translate better stuff.'

I got up and went to look out of the window. I could hear Madge following me across the thick carpet.

‘Jake,' she said close behind my ear, ‘stop this. You've got the chance of a lifetime. Maybe at first you wouldn't have much to do, but later it would be different. And you must drop this nonsense about Jean Pierre.'

‘You wouldn't understand,' I said. We turned to face each other.

‘Your girl friend's gone to Hollywood,' said Madge after a moment's silence.

I took hold of Madge's limp and unresponsive hand. ‘It's not that,' I said. ‘Incidentally,' I said, ‘I wish you wouldn't refer to Anna as my girl friend. We haven't met for years, except for one time last week.'

Madge said, ‘Oh!' rather sceptically.

‘Anyway,' I added, ‘she
hasn't
gone to Hollywood.' It wasn't till that moment that I felt absolutely certain of it. ‘You don't
know
that she has, do you?' I asked Madge.

‘Well, not exactly,' said Madge, ‘but I'm told she has. And everyone goes to Hollywood if they can.'

I made a gesture expressive of contempt of a world in which this was so. But I had already displayed too much emotion and I wanted to change the subject. ‘How will this company of yours relate to Bounty Belfounder?' I asked.

‘Relate to it?' said Madge. ‘It'll wipe it off the face of the earth.' She spoke with cruel satisfaction. I shrugged my shoulders.

‘And don't pretend,' said Madge, ‘that that matters tuppence to you. In fact, you'll be doing a great service to your friend Belfounder. There's nothing he wants so much as to lose all his money.'

This startled me. Madge had evidently been moving in circles where Hugo's character was discussed. ‘He can do it without my help,' I said, turning away.

I felt a sort of confused lassitude. I was being offered a great deal of money; and it was not at all clear to me why I was refusing it: if what I was doing was refusing it. What was more important, I was being offered the key to the world in which money comes easily, and where the same amount of effort can produce enormously richer results: as when one removes a weight from one element to another. As for my conscience, I could catch up with that in a few months. In time I could earn my keep in that world as well as the next man. All I had to do was to shut my eyes and walk in. Why did the way in seem so hard? I was in anguish. I seemed to be throwing away the substance for the shadow. What I was preferring was an emptiness of which I could give no intelligible account whatever.

Madge watched me with increasing distress.

‘Madge,' I said, just for something to say, ‘what will happen about the
Nightingale
?'

‘Oh, that'll be all right,' said Madge. ‘Someone from Sadie did approach Jean Pierre about it, but he put them off. And now our company has got the film rights of all his books.'

This was cool. I smiled at Madge, and saw her smiling too with relief. ‘So Sadie and Sammy have had it,' I said.

‘They've had it,' said Madge.

I began remembering how sorry I'd felt for Madge, and then it occurred to me that Madge had probably started double-crossing Sammy even before she knew that Sammy was double-crossing her. It takes time to make the Hôtel Prince de Clèves. This was so funny that I began to laugh, and the more I thought of it the more I laughed until I had to sit down on the floor. At first Madge laughed with me, but then she stopped and said sharply, ‘Jake!' I recovered.

‘So Sammy will have to make animal pictures after all,' I said.

‘As for that,' said Madge, ‘Sammy's been sold a pup there too. Or rather he hasn't been sold a pup.'

‘What do you mean?' I asked.

‘Phantasifilms cheated Sammy,' said Madge. ‘Do you know how old Mister Mars is?'

A sad finger touched my heart. ‘I don't know,' I said. ‘How old?'

‘Fourteen,' said Madge. ‘He's on his last legs. He could hardly get through the last film he made. Phantasifilms were going to retire him anyway. Then Sammy got interested in him, and they sold him without telling his age. Sammy ought to have looked in his mouth.'

‘You can't tell a dog's age by looking in his mouth,' I said.

‘So Sammy's one down there too,' said Madge.

I didn't care. I was thinking about Mars. Mars was old. He would do no more work. He would not swim flooded rivers any more, or scramble over high fences, or fight with bears in lonely places. His strength was waning and his intelligence would avail him nothing. He would soon die. This discovery completed the circle of my sadness; and with it my resolution crystallized.

‘I can't do it, Madge,' I said.

‘You're insane!' said Madge. ‘Why, Jake, why?'

‘I don't know very clearly,' I said. ‘I only know it would be the death of me.'

Madge came up to me. Her eyes were as hard as agate. ‘This is real life, Jake,' she said. ‘You'd better wake up.' And she struck me hard across the mouth. I recoiled slightly with the sudden pain of the blow. We stood so for a moment, and she sustained my gaze while the tears gathered slowly in her eyes. Then I received her into my arms.

‘Jake,' said Madge into my shoulder, ‘don't leave me.'

I half carried her to the settee. I felt calm and resolute. I knelt beside her and took her head, brushing her hair back with my hand. Her face rose towards me like a lifting flower.

‘Jake,' said Madge, ‘I must have you with me. That was what it was all for. Don't you see?'

I nodded. I drew my hand back over her smooth hair and down on to the warmth of her neck.

‘Jake, say something,' said Madge.

‘It can't be done,' I said. Madge was
lancée
; nor could I know after describmg what parabola she would finally return to earth. There was nothing I could do for her. ‘There is nothing I can do for you,' I said.

‘You could stick around,' said Madge. ‘That would be everything.'

I shook my head.

‘Look, Madge,' I said, ‘let me be simple. I might tell you that I cared for you too much to be willing to stand by while you go to bed with the men who can help you to become a star. But that wouldn't be true. If I cared for you a bit more perhaps I should want to do precisely that. The fact is that I must live my own life. And it simply doesn't lie in this direction.'

Madge looked at me through real tears. She played her last card. ‘If it's Anna,' she said, ‘you know that I wouldn't mind. I mean, perhaps I'd mind, but that wouldn't matter. I just want you near me.'

‘It's no use, Madge,' I said, and I stood up. At that moment I loved her deeply. A few minutes later I was going down the stairs.

I CROSSED the road and walked automatically towards the river. I collided with people on the pavements and was nearly run over several times. My legs were trembling under me. When I reached the Seine I sat down on a seat. I took off my coat, and found that my shirt was drenched with sweat. I unbuttoned my shirt and ran my hand about my chest and under my arms. I wasn't at all sure what it was that I had done, but I knew that it was something important. Just then it felt like committing a murder when drunk. As I looked about me, Paris recomposed itself like a reflection which ceases to waver as the water becomes still. At last it was as still as glass. What
had
I done?

Refused a net sum which, on the assumption that it would have taken me at least six months to get the sack, could be reckoned at twelve hundred pounds. Refused an easy step out of the world of continual penury into the world of perpetual money. And what for? For nothing. At that moment my action seemed to me completely pointless. In Madge's room I had seemed to see some reason why it was necessary. Now I couldn't for the life of me think what that reason could have been. I got up and walked across the iron bridge. The clock at the Institut said ten past twelve. And as I walked a great truth became apparent to me. Nothing in the world was more important than money. Why had I not understood this before? Madge had been right when she had said that it was real life. It was the one thing needful; and I had rejected it. I felt like Judas.

I stopped to look at Paris. Its gentle colours awoke for me, clear but not violent under the July sun. The fishermen were fishing, and the
flâneurs
were flaning, and the dogs were barking down at the steps where people try to persuade them to swim in the Seine. How strangely it excites people to see their dogs swimming! Beyond the green trees the towers of Notre-Dame rose tenderly like lovers rising from the grass. ‘Paris,' I said aloud. Once more something had slipped through my fingers. Only this time I knew very well what it was. Money. The heart of reality. The rejection of reality the only crime. I was a dreamer, a criminal. I wrung my hands.

As I reached the left bank I began madly to want to drink; and at the same instant I realized that I had hardly any cash. I had thrust into my pocket as I was leaving the few notes which I had left over from my last trip. I had intended to borrow something from Madge. But no one with any aesthetic sensibility would have tried to borrow five thousand francs off somebody from whom he had just refused to accept twelve hundred pounds. And anyway I didn't think of it. I cursed. I walked as far as the Boulevard Saint-Germain wondering what to do. Then a second need, equally expensive, began to make itself felt: the need to communicate my sorrow to some other person. I balanced the two needs against my assets and against each other. The need for communication was the more profound. I made for the post office in the Rue du Four and addressed a wire to Messrs Gellman and O‘Finney which ran as follows.
Just definitely refused minimum sum of twelve hundred pounds. Jake
. Then I went to the Reine Blanche and ordered a pernod, which although it is not the cheapest of
apéritifs
is the one with the highest alcohol content. I felt very slightly better.

I sat there for a long time. At first I kept thinking about the money. I brooded on every aspect of it. I turned it into francs. I turned it into dollars. I shifted it around from one European capital to another. I invested it avariciously at high rates of interest. I spent it riotously on
château
wines and
château
women. I bought the very latest make of Aston Martin. I rented a flat overlooking Hyde Park and filled it with works of the lesser-known Dutch masters. I lay on a striped divan beside a pale-green telephone while the princes of the film world poured fawning, supplication, and praise along the wire. The exquisite star, the idol of three continents, who lay like a panther at my feet, poured me out another glass of champagne. ‘It's H. K.,' I murmured to her, putting my hand over the mouthpiece ; ‘what a perfect bore!' I tossed her an orchid which lay on the table; and clasping my body with her sinuous hands she began to pull herself up to lie beside me, as I told H. K. that I was in conference and that if he would contact my secretary in a day or two no doubt a meeting might be arranged.

When I was tired of this I began to think about Madge, and to wonder who it was who had installed her in the Hotel Prince de Clèves and whose unseen presence had hovered in the background of our interview. Was it the man who had owned ships or something in Indo-China? I pictured him, white-haired and heavy, battered by winds and stained by the oriental sun, with power and intelligence breaking through the lines of his face of an old Frenchman who had seen, in his tune, many things. I liked him. He was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. The years which had passed since he had pursued money with passion could now be counted by the score. He had had his fill of money: he had loved it, struggled with it, suffered for it and made others suffer; he had bathed in it until it had filled his head and eyes with gold; finally he had tired of it, and cast it from him fortune by fortune. But money will never leave a man who has endured enough for its sake. He had become weary, he had consented. He lived with it now as with an aged wife. He was come back to France, tired and detached, with the detachment of one who has gratified every wish and found every gratification equally transitory. He would watch with a gentle indifference the launching of his film company, in a scene where every actor except himself was driven mad by the smell of money.

Or perhaps Madge's protector was some shrewd Englishman: a middle-aged man, I pictured him, with long experience of the film business. Perhaps a failed director who had turned his artistic talents into the business side of the industry, consoling himself by making money for the loss of a vision of beauty which would nevertheless haunt him all his life, and make him short-tempered whenever he came near the set and saw other men struggling with the problems which had given him ecstasy at twenty-five, and sleepless nights at thirty, and finally brought him to despair. Where had Madge met him? Possibly at one of those parties of ‘film people' which Sammy had said that Madge frequented on the occasion when he had warned me that not letting them out of your sight was the only way.