Jensen’s face glowed with a simple and rather angelic happiness.
‘You’re going to collapse in this heat,’ Ingham whispered, ‘Shouldn’t you take a nap?’
All around them, the town seemed to be sleeping. There was not a sound beyond the windows, only thick, silent sunlight.
‘Maybe I will. Shall I bring some wine and some ice?’
‘Don’t bring anything.’ Ingham left.
He went out for the shopping, thinking he might be too early for the butcher’s to be open, but he wanted to buy a lot, and he might have to make two trips, anyway. The ten-year-old daughter of the Choudis was sitting in her open doorway, arranging round stones on the doorstep. She grinned at him with bright eyes, and said something Ingham could not understand.
Ingham replied in French, with a smile also. He thought she had said ‘Hasso’, but even this word was different when she said it. Her little face was warm and friendly. Ingham walked on. He felt suddenly different towards the family next door, felt they were friends of his and Jensen’s, instead of just a family who lived there. He realized he had vaguely suspected them of having had something to do with Hasso’s disappearance.
Tie dinner that night was the best Ingham could provide, given the town’s resources. He had gone to the Reine’s little grocery. There was salami, sliced hard-boiled eggs, lambs’ tongues, cold ham and roast beef, potato salad, cheese and fresh figs. Jensen had brought boukhab, and of course there was Scotch and cold white wine. Hasso was there, too, and ate bits of meat which they handed him from the table.
1 don’t usually do this, but tonight’s a special occasion,’ said Jensen.
‘Is he keeping everything down?’
Hasso was, said Jensen. Jensen still looked very happy, too happy even to sleep, perhaps. ‘And Ina? How is she?’
‘All right. I think she’s with OWL tonight.’
‘She might stay another week, you said.’
‘No, I think she’ll go on to Paris. Maybe day after tomorrow.’
‘And you, too?’
‘No.’ Ingham said a little awkwardly, ‘I told her I didn’t think we should marry.—It’s not the end of her life, I’m sure.’
Jensen looked puzzled, or maybe he had nothing to say. ‘Nothing to do with that dead Arab, I trust.’
‘No.’ Ingham laughed a little. He wanted to mention Lotte, to say he was still in love with her, but first he was not sure that was true. He was not at all sure Lotte had been the main reason why he had decided not to marry Ina. The Castlewood affair had shaken Ingham more than he had realized when he first heard about it. ‘Did you ever have someone in your life.’ Ingham said, ‘who’s like the one great love? The rest just can’t ever be as good.’
‘Ah, yes.’ said Jensen, leaning back in his chair, looking at the ceiling.
A boy, of course, but Ingham felt that Jensen knew exactly what he meant. ‘It’s a funny thing—the feeling that such people can’t do any wrong, no matter what they do. A feeling that you’ll never have a complaint against them.’
Jensen laughed. ‘Maybe that is easy if you don’t live with them. I never lived with mine. I never even slept with him. I just loved him for two years.—Well, for ever, but for two years I didn’t go to bed with anybody.’
But Ingham meant, even if you did live with someone, as he had with Lotte. Ingham let it go. He realized he would miss Jensen painfully when he left.
26
INGHAM saw Ina off at the airport the next day. She left on the 2.30 p.m. flight to Paris. OWL went with them in Ingham’s car. Ingham had rung her just before eleven o’clock from Melik’s, and Ina had told him her arrangements.
1 was just about to send a messenger to you—or something.’ she said, blithely enough.
Ingham wasn’t sure whether to believe her, but he knew she had his address. ‘I’ll take you in the car. We can have some lunch at the airport.’
‘Francis wants to take me.’
‘Then ask him to come along in my car.’ Ingham said, a bit irked by the ever-present OWL. ‘I’ll be there in about half an hour.’
Then he went home and changed, and started out almost at once. Ina hadn’t wanted to stay one more day. Ingham knew that 2.30 p.m. flight. It left every day.
Ina was settling her bill in the lobby. Then through the glass doors Ingham saw Adams’s black Cadillac pull up outside the hotel. Adams had a small bouquet of flowers.
‘So—you’re missing a Paris holiday in delightful company.’ OWL said with his squirrel smile, but Ingham could see that Ina had told him they were not going to marry.
Ingham insisted, over OWL’s protest, on taking his car, and they got in. There were the usual remarks on the seascape by OWL.
Ina said to Ingham, I’ll check on your apartment as soon as I get home.’ She was in the front seat beside Ingham.
‘Don’t hurry.—Anyway, I might be home in ten days myself.’
She laughed a little. ‘How long have you been saying that?’
They lunched in the slightly mad restaurant of the airport. Service was sporadic, but they had plenty of time. Again the departure and arrival announcements were inaudible beneath the radio’s claptrap. Ina made an effort (so did Ingham), but he could see a certain sadness, a disappointment in her face that pained him. He really was so fond of her! He hoped she was not going to cry on the plane, as soon as she was out of his sight.
‘Is there anyone you know in Paris now?’ OWL asked.
‘No. But one usually runs into someone.—Oh, it doesn’t matter. I like walking around the city.’
Two-ten. It was bound to be time to start boarding. Ingham paid. A kiss at the gate, OWL got a smack on the cheek, too, a second quick, passionless kiss for Ingham, then she turned and walked away.
Ingham and Adams walked in silence back to Ingham’s car. Ingham felt sad, depressed, slightly impatient, as if he had made a mistake, though he knew he had not.
‘Well, I gather things didn’t work out.’ OWL said.
Ingham set his teeth for an instant, then said, ‘We just decided not to marry. It doesn’t mean we had a quarrel.’
‘Oh, no.’
At least that shut Adams up for a while.
Finally Ingham said, ‘I know she enjoyed meeting you. You were very nice to her.’
OWL nodded, staring through the windscreen. ‘You’re a funny fellow, Howard, letting a wonderful girl like that go by.’
‘Maybe.’
‘There’s not someone else in your life, is there? I don’t mean to be prying.’
‘No, there isn’t.’
Ingham was back home by four o’clock. He wanted to work, but it was an hour before he could settle down. He was thinking of Ina.
He produced only two pages that day. One more day’s work would certainly see the book finished, Ingham thought As usual at the end of books, he felt tired and somehow depressed, and wondered if it was something akin to postnatal depression, or was it some doubt that the book wasn’t as good as he thought it was? But he had had the same depression after books he knew were quite good, like The Game of ‘If’.
The following day it took him three dragging hours to produce the four pages that ended the book. After a few minutes, he went upstairs to tell Jensen he had finished.
‘Hurray!’ Jensen said. ‘But you look gloomy I’ Jensen laughed. He was cleaning brushes with a messy rag.
‘I’m always like this. Pay no attention. Let’s go to Melik’s.’
Ingham picked up after some drinks with Jensen before dinner. Jensen had gone to a hotel that afternoon and arranged his flight to Copenhagen for next Friday, just four days off. Ingham felt absurdly forlorn at the news.
‘ You’d—better make sure your canvases are dry, shouldn’t you?’
‘Yes. I won’t paint any more. Just draw a little.’ His smiling face was in great contrast to Ingham’s gloom.
Ingham replenished Jensen’s Scotch and water.
‘Come with me, Howard!’ Jensen
said suddenly. ‘Why not? I’ll tell my family I’m bringing a friend. I already told them about you. Stay a week or so. Longer! We’ve got a big house.’ Jensen was leaning towards Ingham. ‘Why not, Howard?’
It was exactly what Ingham wanted to do, to take off when Jensen did, to see the North, to plunge into a world completely different from this one. ‘You mean it?’
But there was no doubt Jensen did.
‘I’ll show you Copenhagen! My family’s house is in Hellerup. Off the Ryvangs Alle. Hellerup’s sort of a suburb, but not really. You’ll meet my sister Ingrid—maybe even my aunt Mathilde.’ Jensen laughed. ‘But we’ll bum around the city mostly. Lots of good snack bars, friends to look up—and it’s cool, even now.’
Ingham wanted to go, desperately, but he felt that it would be a postponement of what he had to do, which was get back to New York and start his life there again. Copenhagen would be like a five-day Christmas celebration. He really did not want that.
‘What’s the matter?’ Jensen asked.
‘I’d like to very much, but I shouldn’t. I can’t. Not just now. Thank you, Anders.’
‘You’re just melancholic tonight. Give me one good reason why you can’t come.’
1 suppose I’m a little disturbed. It would be self-indulgent. It’s hard to explain. I’d better get back on my own tracks again. But can I—maybe visit you sometime, if you’re there?’
Jensen looked disappointed, but Ingham thought he understood. ‘Sure. Make it soon. I may go away again in January.’
‘I’ll make it soon.’
27
FOUR days later, Ingham drove Jensen to the airport. They stood in the terminus bar and drank boukbahs. Hasso had. already been loaded in his box on to the plane. Ingham made a fierce effort to be cheerful, even jolly. It actually worked a little, he thought. Jensen was obviously so pleased to be going home, that Ingham felt ashamed of his own depression. They embraced at the gate like Frenchmen, and Ingham stood watching Jensen’s tall, lank figure, lugging portfolios, until he reached the turning point at the end of the corridor. Jensen looked back and waved.
Ingham went straight to the ticket office of the terminus and bought a ticket for New York for Tuesday, four days off,
Jensen’s empty rooms upstairs made Ingham think, perversely, of a tomb that had been robbed. He tried to put the floor above out of his mind, pretend it wasn’t there, and he certainly had no intention of going up to look at the rooms, even to see if Jensen might have forgotten something. The only happy thought was that Jensen was very much alive, and that he would see him again somewhere, in a matter of months if he wished.
The other happy thought was of course his finished book. It would be pleasant to do some more polishing in the days he had left here, work that required no emotional effort. He was pleased with the book, and only hoped his publishers would not think it dull after The Game of’ ‘If’. Dennison had a less primitive attitude than most people about money, and he hoped he had made that point. Money to him had become impersonal, essentially unimportant, like an umbrella that can be borrowed to hold over someone’s head, an umbrella that could be returned like the umbrellas in the racks at some railway stations that Ingham had heard about, somewhere. Banks did the same thing, even extracting interest, and hoped that there wouldn’t be a run on them.
He began slowly to prepare for leaving, though there was absurdly little he had to do. He had no bills in town. He wrote to his agent. He sent off Ina’s mats, and spoke to the post office, giving them a date at which to start forwarding to his New York address, and he gave the man a tip. He called on OWL to inform him of the news, and they made a date for dinner the night before his departure. Seeing him off was unnecessary and awkward, Ingham said, because he had to return his rented car in Tunis.
‘But how’re you going to get to the airport then?’ OWL said. ‘I’ll come with you in my car to the rental place.’
There was no dissuading OWL.
Now when there was no need of routine, because he wasn’t writing, Ingham particularly stuck to one. A swim in the morning, a little work, a swim again, a short walk before lunch, work again. He was taking his last looks at the town at the Café de la Plage, all male always, even down to the three-year-old tot seated at a table of wine-drinkers. Strange things crossed Ingham’s mind, some that made him laugh, such as, how easy it would have been to hire an Arab for a few days to pose as the missing Abdullah, to satisfy Ina that Abdullah was not dead. But that would not have made any essential difference in his and Ina’s relationship, Ingham knew.
The morning before he left, he had two pieces of mail, one a postcard from Jensen. It read:
Dear Howard,
Will write later, but meanwhile have this. I will torture you by saying I sleep under a blanket here. Please visit soon.
Write me.
Love,
Anders
The picture on the card was of a greenish-roofed building surrounded by a moat or canal.
The second item was a letter, much forwarded, and Ingham caught his breath when he saw the handwriting in the centre of the envelope. It was from Lotte. The original postmark was California. Ingham opened it.
July 20, 19—
Dear Howard,
I am not sure this will reach you, as I only know our old address. How are you? I hope well and happy and working well. Maybe you are married by now (I heard something along this line via the grapevine) but if not, knowing you, I feel sure you are involved, as they say.
I am coming to New York next month and thought we might meet for a drink for old times’ sake. I’ve had a rough last year, so don’t expect me to look the picture of happiness. My husband was a charmer to quite a few others too, and we at last decided to call the whole thing off. No children, thank God, though I had every intention of having some. (You won’t believe that, but I have changed.) I hope to stay in New York for a while. Even sunshine can become boring, and I found California so full of weirdies I finally felt as square as the Smith Brothers in comparison. There was a rumor here that you had gone to the Near East to write a play or something. True? Write me c.o. Ditson, 121 Bleecker Street, N.Y.C. Won’t be staying there, but they will forward letters to wherever I am. In New York by August 12 about.
Love,
Lotte
When he had read it, Ingham breathed again. Ah, fate! It was as if she had read his thoughts. But it was more than that So much more had had to happen to her than to him to make the letter possible. So she was free now. Ingham began to smile in a dazed way. His first impulse was to write her that he would like very much to see her, then he realized he would be in New York tomorrow night. He could give her a ring from his own apartment—rather the Ditsons, and ask where she was. He didn’t know the Ditsons.
At Melik’s that night, OWL commented on his good mood. Ingham felt very merry, and talked a great deal. He realized OWL thought he was happy merely because he was leaving. Ingham could have told him about Lotte, but he did not want to. And despite his apparent good humour, he was feeling very compassionate towards Adams and a little sad about him. Adams seemed so lonely under his own cheer, and his cheer seemed as bogus as the phrases he dictated to his tape machine. How long could such pretence sustain anyone? Ingham had a terrifying feeling that one day OWL would pop like a balloon, and collapse and die, possibly of heartbreak. How many more people would turn up in the months ahead to keep OWL company? OWL had said he had met three or four people he had liked since being here, but of course they always went away after a while. OWL plainly saw himself as a lonely guardian of the American Way of Life, in a desolate outpost, keeping the lighthouse aglow.
The next morning at the airport, OWL gripped Ingham’s hand hard. ‘Write me. I don’t have to tell you my address. Ha-ha!’
‘Good-bye, Francis. You know—I think you saved my life here.’ It may have sounded a bit gushy, but Ingham meant it.
‘Nonsense, nonsense.’ OWL wasn’t thinking about what Ingham had said. He poked
a finger at Ingham. ‘The ways of Araby are strange as her perfumes. Yes! But you are a son of the West. May your conscience let you rest! Ha-ha! That rhymes. Unintentional. Bye-bye, Howard, and God bless you!’
Ingham walked down the corridor that Jensen had. He felt as if he were being borne slowly up into the air, higher and higher. Even the typewriter in his hand weighed nothing at all now. There is nothing, he thought, nothing so blissful in the world as falling back into the arms of a woman who is possibly bad for you. He laughed inside himself. Who had said that? Proust? Had anyone said it?
At the end of the corridor, he turned. OWL was still standing there, and OWL waved frantically. Querying things, Ingham couldn’t wave, but he shouted a ‘Good-bye, Francis P unheard in the shuffle of sandals, the din of transistors, the blare of the unintelligible flight announcements.
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Patricia Highsmith, The Tremor of Forgery
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