Outside the windows the cars swept past continuously, out of town, into town, lights ablaze, radios at full throttle.
“I wither slowly in thine arms,” he read. “Here at the quiet limit of the world,” and repeated to himself: “Here at the quiet limit of the world. Here at the quiet limit of the world”… as a monk will repeat a single pregnant text, over and over again in prayer.
Presently the telephone rang.
“The Happier Hunting Ground,” he said.
A woman’s voice came to him, hoarse, it seemed, with emotion; in other circumstances he might have thought her drunk. “This is Theodora Heinkel. Mrs. Walter Heinkel, of 207 Via Dolorosa, Bel Air. You must come at once. I can’t tell you over the phone. My little Arthur—they’ve just brought him in. He went out first thing and never came back. I didn’t worry because he’s sometimes been away like that before. I said to Mr. Heinkel, ‘But, Walter, I can’t go out to dine when I don’t know where Arthur is’ and Mr. Heinkel said, ‘What the heck? You can’t walk out on Mrs. Leicester Scrunch at the last minute,’ so I went and there I was at the table on Mr. Leicester Scrunch’s right hand when they brought me the news… Hullo, hullo, are you there?”
Dennis picked up the instrument which he had laid on the blotting-pad. “I will come at once, Mrs. Heinkel. 207 Via Dolorosa I think you said.”
“I said I was sitting at Mr. Leicester Scrunch’s right hand when they brought me the news. He and Mr. Heinkel had to help me to the automobile.”
“I am coming at once.”
“I shall never forgive myself as long as I live. To think of his being brought home alone. The maid was out and the city wagon-driver had to telephone from the drugstore… Hullo, hullo, are you there? I said the city scavenger had to telephone from the drugstore.”
“I am on my way, Mrs. Heinkel.”
Dennis locked the office and backed the car from the garage; not his own, but the plain black van which was used for official business. Half an hour later he was at the house of mourning. A corpulent man came down the garden path to greet him. He was formally dressed for the evening in the high fashion of the place—Donegal tweeds, sandals, a grass-green silk shirt, open at the neck with an embroidered monogram covering half his torso. “Am I pleased to see you,” he said.
“Mr. W. H., all happiness,” said Dennis involuntarily.
“Pardon me?”
“I am the Happier Hunting Ground,” said Dennis.
“Yes, come along in.”
Dennis opened the back of the wagon and took out an aluminum container. “Will this be large enough?”
“Plenty.”
They entered the house. A lady, also dressed for the evening in a long, low gown and a diamond tiara, sat in the hall with a glass in her hand.
“This has been a terrible experience for Mrs. Heinkel.”
“I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to speak of it,” said the lady.
“The Happier Hunting Ground assumes all responsibility,” said Dennis.
“This way,” said Mr. Heinkel. “In the pantry.”
The Sealyham lay on the draining-board beside the sink. Dennis lifted it into the container.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking a hand?”
Together he and Mr. Heinkel carried their load to the wagon.
“Shall we discuss arrangements now, or would you prefer to call in the morning?”
“I’m a pretty busy man mornings,” said Mr. Heinkel. “Come into the study.”
There was a tray on the desk. They helped themselves to whisky.
“I have our brochure here setting out our service. Were you thinking of interment or incineration?”
“Pardon me?”
“Buried or burned?”
“Burned, I guess.”
“I have some photographs here of various styles of urn.”
“The best will be good enough.”
“Would you require a niche in our columbarium or do you prefer to keep the remains at home?”
“What you said first.”
“And the religious rites? We have a pastor who is always pleased to assist.”
“Well, Mr.—?”
“Barlow.”
“Mr. Barlow, we’re neither of us what you might call very church-going people, but I think on an occasion like this Mrs. Heinkel would want all the comfort you can offer.”
“Our Grade A service includes several unique features. At the moment of committal, a white dove, symbolizing the deceased’s soul, is liberated over the crematorium.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Heinkel, “I reckon Mrs. Heinkel would appreciate the dove.”
“And every anniversary a card of remembrance is mailed without further charge. It reads: Your little Arthur is thinking of you in heaven today and wagging his tail.”
“That’s a very beautiful thought, Mr. Barlow.”
“Then if you will just sign the order…”
Mrs. Heinkel bowed gravely to him as he passed through the hall. Mr. Heinkel accompanied him to the door of his car. “It has been a great pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Barlow. You have certainly relieved me of a great responsibility.”
“That is what the Happier Hunting Ground aims to do,” said Dennis, and drove away.
At the administrative building, he carried the dog to the refrigerator. It was a capacious chamber, already occupied by two or three other small cadavers. Next to a Siamese cat stood a tin of fruit juice and a plate of sandwiches. Dennis took this supper into the reception room and, as he ate it, resumed his interrupted reading.
Two
Weeks passed, the rain came, invitations dwindled and ceased. Dennis Barlow was happy in his work. Artists are by nature versatile and precise; they only repine when involved with the monotonous and the makeshift. Dennis had observed this during the recent war; a poetic friend of his in the Grenadiers was an enthusiast to the end, while he himself fretted almost to death as a wingless officer in Transport Command.
He had been dealing with Air Priorities at an Italian port when his first, his only book came out. England was no nest of singing-birds in that decade; lamas scanned the snows in vain for a reincarnation of Rupert Brooke. Dennis’s poems, appearing among the buzz-bombs and the jaunty, deeply depressing publications of His Majesty’s Stationery Office, achieved undesignedly something of the effect of the resistance Press of occupied Europe. They were extravagantly praised and but for the paper restrictions would have sold like a novel. On the day The Sunday Times reached Caserta with a two-column review, Dennis was offered the post of personal assistant to an air marshal. He sulkily declined, remained in “Priorities” and was presented in his absence with half a dozen literary prizes. On his discharge he came to Hollywood to help write the life of Shelley for the films.
There in the Megalopolitan studios he found reproduced, and enhanced by the nervous agitation endemic to the place, all the gross futility of service life. He repined, despaired, fled.
And now he was content; adept in a worthy trade, giving satisfaction to Mr. Schultz, keeping Miss Poski guessing. For the first time he knew what it was to “explore an avenue”; his way was narrow but it was dignified and umbrageous and it led to limitless distances.
Not all his customers were as open-handed and tractable as the Heinkels. Some boggled at a ten-dollar burial, others had their pets embalmed and then went East and forgot them; one after filling half the ice-box for over a week with a dead she-bear changed her mind and called in the taxidermist. These were the dark days, to be set against the ritualistic, almost orgiastic cremation of a non-sectarian chimpanzee and the burial of a canary over whose tiny grave a squad of Marine buglers had sounded Taps. It is forbidden by Californian law to scatter human remains from an aeroplane, but the sky is free to the animal world and on one occasion it fell to Dennis to commit the ashes of a tabby-cat to the slip-stream over Sunset Boulevard. That day he was photographed for the local paper and his social ruin consummated. But he was complacent. His po
em led a snakes-and-ladders existence of composition and excision but it continued just perceptibly to grow. Mr. Schultz raised his wages. The scars of adolescence healed. There at the quiet limit of the world he experienced a tranquil joy such as he had known only once before, one glorious early Eastertide when, honorably lamed in a house-match, he had lain in bed and heard below the sanatorium windows the school marching out for a field-day.
But while Dennis prospered, things were not well with Sir Francis. The old man was losing his equanimity. He fidgeted with his food and shuffled sleeplessly about the verandah in the silent hour of dawn. Juanita del Pablo was taking unkindly to her translation and, powerless to strike the great, was rending her old friend. Sir Francis confided his growing troubles to Dennis.
Juanita’s agent was pressing the metaphysical point; did his client exist? Could you legally bind her to annihilate herself? Could you come to any agreement with her before she had acquired the ordinary marks of identity? Sir Francis was charged with the metamorphosis. How lightly, ten years before, he had brought her into existence—the dynamite-bearing Maenad of the Bilbao water-front! With what leaden effort did he now search the nomenclature of Celtic mythology and write the new life-story—a romance of the Mountains of Mourne, of the barefoot child whom the peasants spoke of as a fairies’ changeling, the confidante of leprechauns, the rough-and-tumble tomboy who pushed the moke out of the cabin and dodged the English tourists among rocks and waterfalls! He read it aloud to Dennis and knew it was no good.
He read it aloud in conference, before the now nameless actress, her agent and solicitor; there were also present the Megalopolitan Directors of Law, Publicity, Personality and International Relations. In all his career in Hollywood Sir Francis had never been in a single assembly with so many luminaries of the Grand Sanhedrin of the Corporation. They turned down his story without debate.
“Take a week at home, Frank,” said the Director of Personality. “Try to work out a new slant. Or maybe you feel kind of allergic to the assignment?”
“No,” said Sir Francis feebly. “No, not at all. This conference has been most helpful. I know now what you gentlemen require. I’m sure I shall have no further difficulty.”
“Always very pleased to look over anything you cook up,” said the Director of International Relations. But when the door closed behind him, the great men looked at one another and shook their heads.
“Just another has-been,” said the Director of Personality.
“There’s a cousin of my wife’s just arrived,” said the Director of Publicity. “Maybe I’d better give him a try-out on the job.”
“Yes, Sam,” they all said, “have your wife’s cousin look it over.”
After that Sir Francis remained at home and for several days his secretary came out daily to take dictation. He footled with a new name for Juanita and a new life-story: Kathleen FitzBourke the toast of the Galway Blazers; the falling light among the banks and walls of that stiff country and Kathleen FitzBourke alone with hounds, far from the crumbling towers of FitzBourke Castle… Then there came a day when his secretary failed to arrive. He telephoned to the studio. The call was switched from one administrative office to another until eventually a voice said: “Yes, Sir Francis, that is quite in order. Miss Mavrocordato has been transferred to the Catering Department.”
“Well, I must have somebody.”
“I’m not sure we have anyone available right now, Sir Francis.”
“I see. Well, it is very inconvenient but I’ll have to come down and finish the work I am doing in the studio. Will you have a car sent for me?”
“I’ll put you through to Mr. Van Gluck.”
Again the call went to and fro like a shuttlecock until finally a voice said: “Transportation Captain. No, Sir Francis, I’m sorry, we don’t have a studio automobile right here right now.”
Already feeling the mantle of Lear about his shoulders Sir Francis took a taxi to the studio. He nodded to the girl at the desk with something less than his usual urbanity.
“Good morning, Sir Francis,” she said. “Can I help you?”
“No, thank you.”
“There isn’t anyone particular you were looking for?”
“No one.”
The elevator-girl looked inquiringly at him. “Going up?”
“Third floor, of course.”
He walked down the familiar featureless corridor, opened the familiar door and stopped abruptly. A stranger sat at the desk.
“I’m so sorry,” said Sir Francis. “Stupid of me. Never done that before.” He backed out and shut the door. Then he studied it. It was his number. He had made no mistake. But in the slot which had borne his name for twelve years—ever since he came to this department from the scriptwriters’—there was now a card typewritten with the name “Lorenzo Medici.” He opened the door again. “I say,” he said. “There must be some mistake.”
“Maybe there is too,” said Mr. Medici, cheerfully. “Everything seems kinda screwy around here. I’ve spent half the morning clearing junk out of this room. Piles of stuff, just like someone had been living here—bottles of medicine, books, photographs, kids’ games. Seems it belonged to some old Britisher who’s just kicked off.”
“I am that Britisher and I have not kicked off.”
“Mighty glad to hear it. Hope there wasn’t anything you valued in the junk. Maybe it’s still around somewhere.”
“I must go and see Otto Baumbein.”
“He’s screwy too but I don’t figure he’ll know anything about the junk. I just pushed it out in the passage. Maybe some janitor…”
Sir Francis went down the passage to the office of the assistant director. “Mr. Baumbein is in conference right now. Shall I have him call you?”
“I’ll wait.”
He sat in the outer office where two typists enjoyed long, intimately amorous telephone conversations. At last Mr. Baumbein came out. “Why, Frank,” he said. “Mighty nice of you to look us up. I appreciate that. I do really. Come again. Come often, Frank.”
“I wanted to talk to you, Otto.”
“Well, I’m rather busy right now, Frank. How say I give you a ring next week sometime?”
“I’ve just found a Mr. Medici in my office.”
“Why, yes, Frank. Only he says it ‘Medissy,’ like that; how you said it kinda sounds like a wop and Mr. Medici is a very fine young man with a very, very fine and wonderful record, Frank, who I’d be proud to have you meet.”
“Then where do I work?”
“Well, now see here, Frank, that’s a thing I want very much to talk to you about but I haven’t the time right now. I haven’t the time, have I, dear?”
“No, Mr. Baumbein,” said one of the secretaries. “You certainly haven’t the time.”
“You see. I just haven’t the time. I know what, dear, try fix it for Sir Francis to see Mr. Erikson. I know Mr. Erikson would greatly appreciate it.”
So Sir Francis saw Mr. Erikson, Mr. Baumbein’s immediate superior, and from him learned in blunt Nordic terms what he had already in the last hour darkly surmised: that his long service with Megalopolitan Pictures Inc. had come to an end.
“It would have been civil to tell me,” said Sir Francis.
“The letter is on its way. Things get hung up sometimes, as you know; so many different departments have to give their O.K.—the Legal Branch, Finance, Labor Disputes Section. But I don’t anticipate any trouble in your case. Luckily you aren’t a Union man. Now and then the Big Three make objections about waste of manpower—when we bring someone from Europe or China or somewhere and then fire him in a week. But that doesn’t arise in your case. You’ve had a record run. Just on twenty-five years, isn’t it? There’s not even any provision in your contract for repatriation. Your Termination ought to whip right through.”
Sir Francis left Mr. Erikson and made his way out of the great hive. It was called the Wilbur K. Lutit Memorial Block and had not been built when Sir Francis first came to Hollywood.
Wilbur K. Lutit had been alive then; had, indeed, once pudgily shaken his hand. Sir Francis had watched the edifice rise and had had an honorable if not illustrious place at its dedication. He had seen the rooms filled and refilled, the name-plates change on the doors. He had seen arrivals and departures, Mr. Erikson and Mr. Baumbein coming, others, whose names now escaped him, going. He remembered poor Leo who had fallen from great heights to die with his bill unpaid in the Garden of Allah Hotel.
“Did you find who you were looking for?” asked the girl at the desk as he made his way out into the sunshine.
*
Turf does not prosper in southern California and the Hollywood ground did not permit the larger refinements of cricket. The game indeed was fitfully played by some of the junior members, but for the majority it formed as small a part in their interests as do fishmongering or cordwaining to the Livery Companies of the City of London. For these the club was the symbol of their Englishry. There they collected subscriptions for the Red Cross and talked at their ease, maliciously, out of the hearing of their alien employers and protectors. There on the day following Sir Francis Hinsley’s unexpected death the expatriates repaired as though summoned by tocsin.
“Young Barlow found him.”
“Barlow of Megalo?”
“He used to be at Megalo’s. His contract wasn’t renewed. Since then…”
“Yes, I heard. That was a shocking business.”
“I never knew Sir Francis. He was rather before my time. Does anyone know why he did it?”
“His contract wasn’t renewed.”
They were words of ill-omen to all that assembled company, words never spoken without the furtive touching of wood or crossing of fingers; unholy words best left unsaid. To each of them was given a span of life between the signature of the contract and its expiration; beyond that lay the vast unknowable.