So Little Time Page 5

  The president of the Bulldog Club, a florid-faced man with gray temples, was pounding the table with a small black mallet and adjusting a microphone in front of him. First the microphone stuck; then it collapsed and his neighbors to right and left snatched for it and someone tipped over a glass of water. Then the speaker’s voice sounded simultaneously through horns fixed at each corner of the banquet hall. The volume of sound, and the supernatural illusion that his voice came from everywhere at once, demanded a solemn and world-shaking pronouncement.

  “Will the waiters kindly refrain from clearing off plates from the tables during the speaking period?”

  That was all he said, and then he paused as though he expected some reaction. Then he picked up a card and adjusted his glasses.

  Before the speaking, he continued, he would like to call attention to some distinguished guests who were with us this afternoon. When he read their names, would they please stand up and take a bow so that everyone could see them? First there was a lovely lady known to all of us, Goya Ayres, just in from Hollywood, and we’re certainly glad to have you with us, Goya. After Miss Ayres, the celebrities began to fade. They were Leo Fish, editor of that well-known trade paper, the Something World, and Hal Ryan, ace Washington correspondent, and last but not least, an ace commentator, Will Sykes (everyone knows Will). And now, our fellow member, Mr. H. J. Jacoby, would say a few words about the speaker.

  A chair fell over as Mr. Jacoby stepped to the microphone. Mr. Jacoby was lantern-jawed, and had plainly taken his assignment seriously, for he held a typewritten sheet before him, which quivered in his hand. First Mr. Jacoby cleared his throat. It sounded like tearing cloth over the public address system.

  “Walter Duranty,” Mr. Jacoby said, “has defined a successful foreign correspondent as one who is under the bed when the assignation takes place. That, I believe, is where Walter Newcombe has been always. Born in the best newspaper tradition, indefatigable in his search for fact …”

  Mr. Jacoby’s face grew frozen. It was clear that he had not intended to be amusing and the President banged the table with his hammer, and the rest of Mr. Jacoby’s address, neither in content nor in delivery, was amusing. It rolled out in awkward sentences: “An inveterate traveler, he … An artist in word pictures, he …” The words droned on, and no one listened until the conclusion came.

  “But it is superfluous for me to continue, when Mr. Walter Newcombe can speak for himself better than I can for him.”

  It was the first time in years that Jeffrey Wilson had seen him. Walter Newcombe stood in front of the microphone waiting while the applause died down. The pointed lapels of his coat and the pleated, high-waisted trousers showed that his clothes had come from across the ocean. Jeffrey respected Walter as he stood without fidgeting, not afraid to wait. Walter had developed a personality that now was gathering the room’s attention. His hair, which had once been corn-colored, had grown darker and was more closely cut, but his nose was still thin and shiny, and his eyes had their same nearsighted intensity, and his voice, when he finally spoke, was nasal. All attributes which Jeffrey had remembered as awkward were now a part of character and stamped Walter with authenticity.

  It was needless, Walter said, to tell the members of the Bulldog Club how glad he was to be there. It was like getting home to be with people who were all doing the same sort of work, and he hoped to see a lot of old friends afterwards, and he did not want to make a set speech. The Bulldog Club was no place for that. He just wanted to give a report of what he had seen and of what he had heard in London before he sailed. If any other members had been there in that early spring of 1940, they could give the report better than he could, and they would have to put up with his mistakes, because everyone made mistakes. Afterwards, he hoped that they would ask him questions because he needed their ideas, and their reactions. He wanted to feel that he was home again.

  First, Walter said, he wanted to tell a story, and he told it. It was about a cockney cab driver in the blackout off Piccadilly. Even in the spring of 1940 the reporters from overseas were using the cockney as the mouthpiece for the British Empire. The cockney cab driver had talked to Walter about the “old woman.” The old woman had been grousing (indeed she ’ad, sir) about the shortage of various commodities, and that little ill-nourished cockney cab driver had told her off. (I gave the old woman wot-for, sir.) He had told her that she might be pinched a bit, but it was nothing to how old Chamberlain with his umbrella was pinching that monkey Hitler and his ’Uns. That, Walter said, was his report from England in a nutshell.

  He wished that he might have a map to bring home his points more accurately. He wished to make it clear that these ideas were not his own. They were the result of conversations with persons who naturally could not be named or quoted. He could say in brief that Germany was surrounded by a ring of steel, which was ever being tightened by the dominance of sea power. It was what the General Staff of France called the cordon sanitaire, and Walter used the phrase carelessly, with a conscious accent. He pictured a harassed Germany, surrounded by the crushing economic forces of the French and British Empires, which were slowly being mobilized. The mills of the gods grind slowly, Walter said, but they grind exceeding small, and over in London you had the exciting, thrilling sense of grinding mills. As a man high in the British Government had told him: “To use one of your jolly American expressions, we have old Hitler in the bag.” Bag, Walter pointed out, was not quite the word for it. The grand strategy of England and France might better be compared to a tube of toothpaste or shaving cream. Walter paused, and the room was watchfully silent.

  If they would permit him, Walter went on, he might take the liberty of mixing metaphors since no one on the desk was blue-penciling his copy. Walter paused and waited for the laugh, and sure enough, it came, but not too loud, because everyone was listening. If he might mix his metaphors, when France and Great Britain piped, Herr Hitler now must dance their tune. They could squeeze the German Reich as you might squeeze the shaving cream. As that cockney in the Piccadilly blackout had said in his simple way, they were squeezing Hitler. They only had to continue this process to make Hitler burst out where they wanted against that ring of steel. And why was this? It was because, for some unfathomable reason, during an entire winter Herr Hitler had not struck. Now he had thrown away his one chance. Now it was too late. There had been gaps in the line, but those gaps had been repaired during those dull months of the “sitzkrieg,” the months that the cynics had called the phony war. The noose was drawing tighter. It was significant, he thought, that the British were mining the Norwegian coast. It was all part of the plan. That was Walter’s report from England. But before he finished, he would like to tell one more story, which in some way rounded it off, because it showed the spirit of democracy. It was about the simple old charlady who used to do his hotel room in London. He fell to talking with her one morning.…

  Jeffrey Wilson never heard the story of the charlady for he was thinking that if things had been a little different, if the chains of circumstances had changed, he too might have been like Walter Newcombe, picking up ideas.

  “And now,” Walter said, “that’s about all. I’m not saying these ideas are mine, but I should love to know what you think of them. I don’t need to say that a lot of you know more than I do, or that I should love to answer any questions.” There was a moment’s silence as he stood there and then there was applause. Chairs were being pushed back. The April 7th luncheon of the Bulldog Club was ending. A man in the back of the room had risen.

  “I’ve got a question,” he called. “I want to know if Mr. Newcombe believes any of this.” The President rapped upon the table with his hammer, and Walter, smiling, spoke across the room.

  “It’s just a report from London,” Walter said, “I didn’t say I believed it. I was only repeating what I heard.”

  “Well,” someone called, “how can you win a war without fighting?” Walter smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’m
only repeating a point of view,” he said, and then he added the truest remark that he had made that afternoon. “With things the way they are over there, it’s dangerous to make predictions. I only try to give a picture. That’s all, a picture.”

  The President pounded his hammer again upon the table.

  “And I’m sure that Mr. Newcombe has given us a very definite picture,” he said. “One which we will carry away with us until the next meeting. Thank you, Walter Newcombe. Thank you for being with us.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Walter said. “Thank you for listening to me.”

  They were pushing out of the room, and voices were rising. If you shut your eyes it brought you back to the end of a High School assembly. Everyone was going back to what he had been doing before, not any wiser, for in the end the talk had been like other talks. Walter Newcombe had said nothing which you could not have read in the morning Times, but then, perhaps no one had expected him to say anything. The only question may have been whether he knew anything that he did not say. It all made Walter Newcombe an enigma to Jeffrey Wilson. What right had he to be in that position? There were other injustices in the world beside the injustices caused by the accident of birth. There were the injustices caused by luck which no New Deal could rectify. Yet Walter must have had ability and experience must have changed him. He could not have been as simple as he had seemed, or as provincial—and yet there had been that story about the cockney and the blackout, and the quality of Walter Newcombe’s voice. “Cordon sanitaire,” he had said, and somehow his voice as he mouthed the phrase had left a sour note.

  “Well,” Waldo said, “so what?”

  A little knot of people had penned Walter Newcombe into a corner of the room. The waiters were clearing off the dishes.

  “I don’t know what,” Jeffrey said, “but it was funny.”

  “Funny?” Waldo answered. “It was nuts.”

  Jeffrey stood gazing at the corner of the room.

  “Let’s go and speak to him,” he said.

  “Baby,” Waldo answered, “no pleated-pants is going to high-hat me. All those boys are pansies.”

  “Well, I’m going to speak to him,” Jeffrey said.

  “What the hell for?” Waldo asked.

  Walter knew Jeffrey right away. There was no fumbling in his memory. Walter knew him right away, but Jeffrey could not tell whether Walter was expressing pleasure or relief when he saw him. Whatever it was, the recognition pleased Jeffrey secretly.

  “Why, Jeff,” Walter called. “Hello there, Jeff. Wait, I’m going out with you.” And he turned to the crowd around him. “I’ve got to be going,” he said. “Jeff, don’t go away.”

  The elevator was filled with a sickly perfume from the beauty parlor on the second floor. Walter stole a glance at himself in the elevator mirror. His hat was an olive-green featherweight felt.

  “Old man,” Walter said, “how about a drink in a quiet corner somewhere?”

  There were a lot of other things Jeffrey should have done, but he put them from his mind.

  “Let’s get a taxi,” Walter said, “and go up to my place.”

  “Where’s your place?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Just a couple of rooms,” Walter said, “in the Waldorf Tower.” He glanced at Jeffrey sideways. “I had to have some place to stay after the book came out. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

  They were getting into a yellow taxicab by then with a skyview top.

  “You can press the button, and the top goes right back, doesn’t it?” Walter said. “It’s funny, isn’t it? All buttons. Everything over here is that way.” And he glanced at Jeffrey again.

  “What do you mean?” Jeffrey asked. “I don’t quite follow you, Walter.”

  “I mean, I don’t know where I am,” Walter said. “Did you ever get that way, so you didn’t know where you were? I mean that’s why when I saw you it gave me sort of a kick. It pulled me all together.”

  There was no basis for friendship between them, absolutely none, but Walter was still speaking.

  “Now, don’t ask me questions,” Walter said. “Don’t ask me what I know.”

  Jeffrey felt better, and he began to laugh.

  “Relax, Walter,” Jeffrey said. “I know you don’t know anything. You never did.”

  Instead of being annoyed, Walter laughed.

  “Good old Jeff,” he said, “that’s what I wanted. Good old Jeff.” And still Walter went on talking. “I don’t want you to think this Waldorf Tower was my idea,” he said. “I don’t care for it myself, Jeff. You know I don’t want to show off, don’t you? I’m just the same as I ever was.”

  “Relax, Walter,” Jeffrey said.

  “When I got home,” Walter said, “I didn’t know anything about the book’s going so big—I don’t want you to think for a minute it’s made any difference with me, Jeff. That’s why I mean it’s nice to see someone—like you.”

  “All right, Walter,” Jeffrey said.

  “I’m not showing off,” Walter said. “That’s what I know you’re thinking, and it isn’t so.”

  “That’s great, Walter,” Jeffrey said.

  “Well, I’ve just been thinking out loud,” Walter answered. “Just out loud without fanfare. Here’s the Waldorf.” Walter paused and snapped his fingers. “Mildred won’t be there. You know Mildred, don’t you, Jeff?”

  “No, Walter,” Jeffrey said, “I don’t know Mildred.”

  “I thought everyone knew Mildred,” Walter said, and he snapped his fingers again, and shot back his cuff and looked at a gold wrist watch. “She won’t be there, not for quite a while. Perhaps it’s just as well.” He glanced hastily at Jeffrey. “Not that I don’t want you to meet her, but I’d like you to meet her without any fanfare.”

  “What do you mean by ‘fanfare’?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Let’s skip it,” Walter said. “It’s just a working phrase. Everything is ‘fanfare.’ Too God-damn’ much fanfare, Jeff. Let’s skip it, here we are.”

  The suite in the Waldorf Tower had the same impermanence as Walter Newcombe. There were no possessions of Walter’s in the sitting room except six copies of World Assignment piled upon a secretary desk, and a portable typewriter on a table near the window, and these did nothing to alter the room’s impersonal perfection. It had been done in colonial reproduction mahogany by some wholesale decorator. The two overstuffed armchairs, the pearl-gray carpet, and the sofa upholstered in old rose—all were devoid of character. It made you feel that within five minutes Walter Newcombe could pack up and go. It made you think of Walter Newcombe always packing up, and going, and never leaving behind him the slightest trace of himself.

  “Well,” Walter said again, “this is it.” And then a little girl opened a door.

  She must have been twelve or thirteen, the most unattractive age for little girls. She had on a brown woolen dress. Her tow hair was done in two tight braids. Her feet and hands were too large. Her features were irregular and sprinkled with freckles and she had gold bands on her teeth. It seemed to Jeffrey that Walter had looked startled when she appeared, as though something in his past had been revealed. She was like a bill collector, or like a letter that he had not burned.

  “Sweetie-pie,” Walter said, “why, sweetie-pie!”

  Jeffrey looked away, because it seemed indecent for him to watch. It was the way he often felt when he saw the children of friends, for they revealed all sorts of intimacies and maladjustments which a casual observer should not see. Walter hesitated, and then he put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her.

  “Umm, umm, umm, sweetie-pie,” Walter said. “I thought you were out with Belle Mère.”

  “No,” the little girl answered. She was looking hard at Jeffrey.

  “Well,” Walter said, “have you got anything to do? This is Mr. Wilson, dear.”

  The little girl held out her hand. It was cold and moist and completely limp. She bobbed in a quick curtsy with her eyes fixed on the floor.

  “Hello,” Jeffrey
said, “well, well. I’ve got a little girl myself. She’s about three years older than you. Well, well.”

  There was one of those shy silences.

  “Well, well,” Walter said, “think of that.” And he snapped his fingers. “Would you ask Room Service to send up a bowl of ice and some White Rock, dear? And then how about working on your picture puzzle? What is this one about?”

  The little girl swallowed as though her mouth were dry.

  “It’s the one called ‘Two Pals,’” she said. “It has a horse and a hen in it, I think.”

  “Well, well,” Walter said, “you’d better go and finish it now, dear, but give Daddy another kiss before you go.”

  Jeffrey wanted to look away, but he could not.

  “Sweetie-pie,” Walter said, “umm, umm, umm.”

  5

  Don’t Get Me Started on That

  Then the door closed, and Walter opened a lower drawer of the secretary desk and pulled out a bottle of whisky and held it to the light.

  “That was Edwina,” Walter said. “We brought her over with us, I don’t know where her mother is.”

  “Oh,” Jeffrey said, “Edwina.”

  “She was a trained nurse,” Walter said. “You know how women get in Paris. They can’t handle it.”

  “Who was a trained nurse?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Edwina’s mother,” Walter said. “You remember Nancy, don’t you?”

  “Oh,” Jeffrey said, “oh yes.”

  Walter cleared his throat.

  “When Nancy got to Paris, she took a stray,” he said. “He was a Greek.” Walter set the bottle carefully on the table.

  There was another awkward silence as the scroll of Walter Newcombe’s life lay open. There was something disconcerting in his complete belief that anyone would understand, that everyone must have faced a similar marital problem in his own life.

  “Well,” Walter said, “let’s skip it. It’s great to see you, Jeff. You pull me all together.”

  Walter sat down in one of the armchairs, but almost immediately he got up and pulled a tortoise-shell cigarette case from his pocket.