“I didn’t mean nothin’,” Max said again, trying hard to keep his eyes off the food. He had smelled it all the way up to the hut. “I tracked him down and tol’ him what you said.”
“So?”
“He, er, gave me something for you,” Max said and looked at Peter Marlowe.
“Well, hand it over for Chrissake!”
Max waited patiently while the King looked at the watch closely, wound it up and held it close to his ear.
“What do you want, Max?”
“Nothin’. Er, you like me to wash up for you?”
“Yeah. Do that, then get to hell out of here.”
“Sure.”
Max collected the dirty dishes and meekly took them outside, telling himself by Jesus one day he’d get the King. Peter Marlowe said nothing. Strange, he thought. Strange and wild. The King’s got a temper. A temper is valuable but most times dangerous. If you go on a mission it’s important to know the value of your wing-man. On a hairy mission, like the village, perhaps, it’s wise to be sure who guards your back.
The King carefully unscrewed the back of the watch. It was a waterproof, stainless steel.
“Uh-huh!” the King said. “I thought so.”
“What?”
“It’s a phony. Look.”
Peter Marlowe examined the watch carefully. “It looks all right to me.”
“Sure it is. But it’s not what it’s supposed to be. An Omega. The case is good but the insides are old. Some bastard has substituted the guts.”
The King screwed the case back on, then tossed it up in his hand speculatively. “Y’see, Peter. Just what I was telling you. You got to be careful. Now, say I sell this as an Omega and don’t know it’s a fake, then I could be in real trouble. But so long as I know in advance, then I can cover myself. You can’t be too careful.”
He smiled. “Let’s have another cup of Joe, business is looking up.”
His smile faded as Max returned with the cleaned mess cans and put them away. Max didn’t say anything, just nodded obsequiously and then went out again.
“Son of a bitch,” the King said.
Grey had not yet recovered from the day Yoshima had found the radio. As he walked up the broken path towards the supply hut he brooded about the new duties imposed on him by the Camp Commandant in front of Yoshima and later elaborated by Colonel Smedly-Taylor. Grey knew that although officially he was to carry out the new orders, actually he was to keep his eyes shut and do nothing. Mother of God, he thought, whatever I do, I’m wrong.
Grey felt a spasm building in his stomach. He stopped as it came and passed. It wasn’t dysentery, only diarrhea; and the slight fever on him wasn’t malaria, only a touch of dengue, a slighter but more insidious fever which came and went by whim. He was very hungry. He had no stocks of food, no last can and no money to buy any with. He had to subsist on rations with no extras, and the rations were not enough, not enough.
When I get out, he thought, I swear by God that I’ll never be hungry again. I’ll have a thousand eggs and a ton of meat and sugar and coffee and tea and fish. We’ll cook all day, Trina and I, and when we’re not cooking or eating we’ll be making love. Love? No, just making pain. Trina, that bitch, with her “I’m too tired” or “I’ve got a headache” or “For the love of God, what, again?” or “All right, I suppose I’ll have to” or “We can make love now, if you want to” or “Can’t you leave me in peace for once,” when it wasn’t so often and most times he had restrained himself and suffered, or the angry “Oh, all right,” and then the light would be snapped on and she would get out of bed and storm off to the bathroom to “get ready” and he would only see the glory of her body through the sheer fabric until the door had closed and then he would wait and wait and wait until the bathroom light was snapped off and she came back into their room. It always took an eternity for her to cross from the door to the bed and he saw only the pure beauty of her under the silk and felt only the cold in her eyes as she watched him and he could not meet her eyes and loathed himself. Then she would be beside him and soon it would be silently over and she would get up and go to the bathroom and clean herself as though his love was dirt, and the water would run and when she came back she would be freshly perfumed and he loathed himself afresh, unsatisfied, for taking her when she didn’t want to be taken. It had always been thus. In their six months of married life—twenty-one days of leave, being together—they had made pain nine times. And never once had he touched her.
He had asked her to marry him a week after he had met her. There had been difficulties and recriminations. Her mother hated him for wanting her only daughter just when her career was launched and she was so young. Only eighteen. His parents said wait, the war may be over soon and you’ve no money and, well, she’s not exactly from a good family, and he had looked around his home, a tired building joined to a thousand other tired buildings amid the twisted tramlines of Streatham, and he saw that the rooms were small and the minds of his parents were small and lower class and their love was twisted like the tramlines.
They were married a month later. Grey looked smart in his uniform and sword (hired by the hour). Trina’s mother didn’t come to the drab ceremony, performed in haste between air raid alerts. His parents wore disapproving masks and their kisses were perfunctory and Trina had dissolved into tears and the marriage license was wet with tears.
That night Grey discovered that Trina wasn’t a virgin. Oh, she acted as though she was, and complained for many days that, please darling, I’m so sore, be patient. But she wasn’t a virgin and that hurt Grey, for she had implied it many times. But he pretended that he didn’t know she had cheated him.
The last time he saw Trina was six days before he embarked for overseas. They were in their flat and he was lying on the bed watching her dressing.
“Do you know where you’re going?” she asked.
“No,” Grey said. The day had been bad and the quarrel of the night before bad, and the lack of her and the knowledge that his leave was up today was heavy on him.
He got up and stood behind her, slipping his hands into her bosom, molding the tautness of her, loving her.
“Don’t!”
“Trina, could we—”
“Don’t be foolish. You know the show starts at eight-thirty.”
“There’s plenty of time—”
“For the love of God, Robin, don’t! You’ll mess up my makeup!”
“To hell with your makeup,” he said. “I won’t be here tomorrow.”
“Perhaps that’s just as well. I don’t think you’re very kind or very thoughtful.”
“What do you expect me to be like? Is it wrong for a husband to want his wife?”
“Stop shouting. My God, the neighbors will hear you.”
“Let ’em, by God!” He went towards her, but she slammed the bathroom door in his face.
When she came back into the room she was cold and fragrant. She wore a bra and half slip and panties under the slip, and stockings held by a tiny belt. She picked up the cocktail dress and began to step into it.
“Trina,” he began.
“No.”
He stood over her, and his knees had no strength in them. “I’m sorry I—I shouted.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He bent to kiss her shoulders, but she moved away.
“I see you’ve been drinking again,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
Then his rage burst. “I only had one drink, damn you to hell,” he shouted and spun her around and ripped the dress off her and ripped the bra off her and threw her on the bed. And he ripped at her clothes until she was naked but for the shreds of stockings clinging to her legs. And all the time she lay still, staring up at him.
“Oh God, Trina, I love you,” he croaked helplessly, then backed away, hating himself for what he had done and what he had nearly done.
Trina picked up the shreds of the clothes. As though in a dream, he watched as she went back to the mirror and sat before it and began to r
epair her makeup and started to hum a tune, over and over.
Then he slammed the door and went back to his unit and the next day he tried to phone her. There was no answer. It was too late to go back to London, in spite of his desperate pleading. The unit moved to Greenock for embarkation and every day, every minute of every day, he phoned her, but there was no answer, and no answer to his frantic telegrams, and then the coast of Scotland was swallowed by the night, and the night was only ship and sea, and he was only tears.
Grey shuddered under the Malayan sun. Ten thousand miles away. It wasn’t Trina’s fault, he thought, weak with self-disgust. It wasn’t her, it was me. I was too anxious. Maybe I’m insane. Maybe I should see a doctor. Maybe I’m oversexed. It’s got to be me, not her. Oh Trina, my love.
Trina sipped her martini and smiled the special smile that a starlet smiles to producers, particularly one that has a juicy part in a movie ready to begin production. “You’re looking very well, Mr. Durstein. Isn’t the rain miserable?”
Max Durstein was not looking at all well and he was not feeling well, hating London, hating the downpour, hating Sunday, hating the V2s that fell on London Town. He fought out of his hat and his raincoat and put them on top of the steaming pile of soaking topcoats.
A freezing squall battered the windows of the large hotel reception room that looked out on the bleak puddles of Piccadilly. He shuddered and wished himself to Los Angeles and the sun and the warmth.
“You’re looking well, Mr. Durstein,” Trina said again.
“Yeah,” he replied sourly. He was tired and his ulcers hurt and his arches had fallen and he had been given the same smile for years—but only when he had a movie on the planning boards and not when his last film had been panned—but he remembered that this little harpy had a good film under her girdle and the trade moguls had picked her as potential box office draw, and she would fit “Dolly Saunders” to a rubber glove.
He cursed under his breath, what a dreck name—Dolly Saunders! How is it possible when I pay so much money to a lousy writer that the least he could do was to invent a name that has impact. Dolly! The name made him feel sick. But, he told himself, that’s what a producer is for—to take notalent and make it talent, to take a nothing name and give it grandeur. Gotta think of a name!
He looked at Trina, not listening to her chatter, not listening to his automatic answers, but thinking of a name. The name must be a name of names. Harlan. Possible. But not enough sex. Harlan Foy? Coy Harlan?
“What’s your name?” he asked abruptly, bursting into Trina’s patter.
“Trina John.” She was astonished. Who the fat pig in hell does this slob think he is, anyway, to ask me that when the cocktail party’s in my honor to celebrate my role, Princess Zenobia, in Spears on the Volga?
“I know that,” he said testily, letting the cigarette ash join the rest of the white stains on his blue pinstripe suit. “I mean your maiden name, darling.”
“It was Trina Johnson.” Actually it was Gertrude Drains. Trina kept a sweet smile on her face but inside she was spitting blood. Gerty! She could still hear her mother calling her. Gert, wipe your nose. Gerty do this, Gerty do that. And again, after two whole years of not thinking about her mother, Trina spat a stream of curses on the smelly harpy fishwife who bore her. Thank God I got away from her, thank God!
“You were married, weren’t you?”
“Oh yes. He was a Colonel in Intelligence. His name was Grey. My present husband’s name—”
“I know. Billy Stern, the agent.” He looked at her.
Trina was svelte and looked like a lady, but she had that so necessary quality of dirt somewhere mixed up with the lady. She dressed well. Hips okay. Legs long. Dress tight around the buttocks. Easy to bed. He was sure because Billy had indicated, round about, that she was cooperative. Christ, what a business! But no good, that’s what he’d heard.
Grey? Possible. Harlan Grey? How about Harlana Grey? No. Harlana Lunt! That’s it. Rhymes and has class to boot. Harlana Lunt! Everything, it has everything.
“Why the smile, Mr. Durstein?”
“I liked your ‘Princess,’ darling,” the producer in him was saying. “And it’s making a bundle. With luck you may be a star one day. Sell tickets, that’s the only thing that counts. You’ve got a lot of talent.”
“I’ll say,” he told himself. “But in bed you haven’t. Not according to Jules.”
“How’s Jules these days?” he asked.
“He talked a lot about you while we were shooting. A nice man, and such a talented producer. A darling.” She let her eyes mist prettily. “I think producers are so important. He helped me so much.” She let this fall, then brightened in the right way, taking care that she didn’t stand too tall in her shoes, for this Durstein was small. “I’m so happy the public is paying so much to see Spears. Jules was saying that they’ll make their costs back in the first twenty weeks.”
That’s a lie, Durstein told himself, seething. Why, that rotten little picture cost well over a hundred thousand pounds! Jules always was a liar, and a thief. And an assassin. But still, he had knifed him but good out of the Four Swords in Hell project, and the thought warmed him nicely.
“Interesting,” he heard himself saying. He was still looking at Trina. He’d take her if he could get her cheap. But Billy can be a hard trader if he knows that one of his clients has a chance. Yes, she’d fit. But how much…
“Money,” he said aloud.
“What about it, Mr. Durstein?” Trina bubbled happily as though the word was a witty remark.
“Money’s the only thing that counts in the business. Money making films.” He smiled a false-toothed smile, patted her buttocks paternally, but Trina knew that it wasn’t really paternal. And Durstein kept his hand there, just too long, just enough to let her know that he was interested. How much, depended on her. “Maybe I can do something for you in my next picture. Of course, that depends.”
His eyes were quite cold and calculating. Trina looked at them and while her face smiled, her eyes told him, it also depends on how much.
Across the smoky room, Billy was talking to Jules and his eyes were on Jules, listening to his plans for his next film, how he might be able to up Trina’s money and sweeten the part a little. But Billy’s senses were concentrating on Durstein and Trina and he was watching them closely. As to Jules, well, Jules had served his purpose and he’d be damned if he let Trina play in another of Jules’s second features. Not for five thousand. Well, for ten, maybe. But the “Dolly” role was what he wanted for Trina. Yes, he told himself, that part she’d play like a house afire. And with a little of the Billy luck, he’d get the part for her.
He saw, with cynical amusement, Durstein’s hand on her buttocks and the linger of it. Good. Don’t have to show Trina any of the tricks. That bitch learned them with her mother’s milk. When Durstein wandered away, Billy excused himself from Jules.
He walked through the crowd of neophytes and hangers-on and out-of-work actors and actresses and protégés and columnists and newspapermen, and for each he had a crack and a smile—for those of any importance. When he got to Trina, she was sipping another martini.
“Go easy on the liquor,” he warned.
In an equally low voice Trina snapped back. “Go to hell! I can drink this slop until the cows come home. If I want to drink, I’ll have a drink.”
Billy was smiling, but inside he wasn’t. “How’d you get on with the Creep?” he asked, using Durstein’s nickname. It came from way back. Durstein’s first picture. The Zombie Creeps. Made a fortune.
“Fine.” She looked across the smoke and saw that Durstein was talking to one of the columnists. “He didn’t say anything except he ‘might do something for me in his next.’” She swallowed the martini quickly and took another from the waiter as he passed. She didn’t particularly want one, but she did it to annoy Billy. One of her great pleasures in life was baiting Billy, and he hated the smell of gin so she always drank gin.
Billy looked at her, bound to her by the great mutual hatred they had for one another. “Bathe in it for all I care.”
“On your money?”
Then they began to quarrel viciously. As only a husband and wife can quarrel in a crowded place. Quarrel so that no one knows that they are quarreling or feeling the fury facaded by exterior calm.
Billy cursed himself for marrying her. But it was the only way he could make her and the only way he could get her signed. His investment had paid off. Princess had started her soaring, and there was a good chance that Durstein would give her “Dolly.”
“I don’t know what I ever saw in you.” She sipped her gin, the sweet smile on her face. Boiling inside.
“That’s easy. You saw ‘career.’ You knew I was a star maker—”
“My ass. I got the job. I worked for it. In more ways than one. I’ve got the talent. All you did was introduce me.”
“Without me—”
“Hello, darling,” Trina purred as Winter Smith, another bosomed starlet and another possible for “Dolly” breasted the crowd. “You look tired. You’re lucky not to be working.”
“Oh but I am, darling. I’m studying my next role. A big one. You’ll read all about it in a few days. I’m just ecstatic.”
When she had passed, Trina turned to Billy. “Bitch.” Then she picked up where they had left off. “Without you I might be better off.”
“Pity. I have your contract.” Billy was tired of the quarrel. They had always quarreled. And she was terrible in bed. Nothing. How could she look so good and act so sexy and yet be so cold was beyond his belief. But she was. “I’ll bet you gave Grey one hell of a time.”
“I did not. I loved the Colonel—”
“Lieutenant,” he said contemptuously. “Once you begin to believe your own publicity, you’re up the creek.”
“At least he was a man.”
Trina couldn’t even remember Grey’s face. The only time she’d ever felt herself desperate for him was the day he left. When he’d thrown her on the bed and ripped her clothes off. My God, she felt weak as she remembered. If only he had continued. And beat her too. She had really wanted him that moment and wanted him as a woman had never wanted a man. But he wasn’t a man. He had just left—weak and with tears streaming down his rotten faceless face. Men! There aren’t any.