The Paper Men

  She got to her feet.

  “Well.”

  “Must you go?”

  I could have done something harmless and explanatory like taking her hand and kissing it. I could have used my rhetoric. Men without love! All this danger in less than twenty-four hours!

  But she was guessing that yes, she must go and she was thanking me for the coffee, both of us having forgotten that she had brought it with her. After I had closed the door behind her I stood in the little lobby, staring at my empty cases where they lay on the appropriate stand. It was useless and fatuous. I must get away, now, not just from him but from her as well. To be limed by five feet a few inches of child, to be limed by nothing but a young body that supported a mind about as interesting as a piece of string!

  For if that mind supported the body, the body would have been—awful.

  No. I was unfair. She did not like lying, tried not to. She tried to steer a course between what she knew Rick wanted and what she knew was right—she was a moral being and who was I to be critical of that? She did not like me. Who was I to be critical of that? She had not read the great works of Wilfred Barclay. Well. There were others, after all. Oh, she was still in the trance of marriage! She was still full of secret delight in what she knew and nobody else had ever known, the feminine delight of giving, of knowing yourself a possession, a chattel, and knowing you must keep that a secret from your man in the very moment that you delight in it, let him believe you play at what you know is the core of all human life. That dullness of mind, slowness of reaction, which I had interpreted as the measure of her intellect might be no more than her indifference to a man three times as old as she was but to whom for her husband’s sake she must remain, at all costs, polite.

  It was time I had a sleep before the rigours of eating dinner. I undressed and lay down. The old men chirred like grasshoppers on the city wall as they watched the girl go by. Small wonder that such a girl should be at the heart of so much trouble and sorrow. Small wonder young men should be willing to risk so much for her love. Nevertheless, let her go back to her own country before she is the cause of death to more young men. Old men. Old clowns, old bastards.

  Chapter VII

  I dreamed a lot which is supposed to be healthy, but I remembered my dreams which healthy or not is unusual with me. Elizabeth used to say I had no unconscious mind but that everything was accessible. In her world that meant I was like a stall with nothing but knick-knacks for sale and shoddy. Why did we ever meet? A Hindu doctor I used to know said we should continue to meet until we learnt but he never said what.

  My dreams were about femininity tout court. I also dreamed myself out of bed and through the french windows on to the balcony. I dreamed myself watching the great glacier on the other side of the valley; and under some confused memory of what Elizabeth had said, I saw that it was my own consciousness that hung there. I understood what a wearisome business it was, this dancing awareness, this glitter of the mind from which I constructed my implausible but amusing stories. But then I dreamed myself into a state of worry because the balcony was revolving outwards and would tip me off at a certain angle; so whether unconscious or conscious, my dreaming mind flipped and I knew I was one of a series of butterflies that Mr Halliday had pinned into a showcase though the pin didn’t hurt and I couldn’t read the Latin name written under me. So I woke up with an uneasy feeling that I’d done a very poor prose and old Zonkers would be mifty! There was what the psychological boys (and the theological boys) call considerable affect left over from the dreams. That is to say, I woke up in a lather of sweat and was very glad to be sixty years old and in the Weisswald. The happiest days, ha et cetera. Some “sacré monster”, as Liz would have called me.

  I showered and by that time it was too late for tea and not too early for the bar. I dressed quickly and went there. Through the window I could see a file of Austrian, German, Swiss walkers going the other way, that is, back to the rack railway; all short and wider than they were long, with sweat patches on their Lederhosen and feathers in their hats, and all giving an impression of a set of figures going to be put back in their box. I had settled at the bar while the manager was making my vile concoction for me with his deliberate absence of distaste when Professor Tucker erupted through the door.

  “Hi, Wilf, you old stick-in-the-mud!”

  “Hi yourself,” I said, with a sour feeling, “assistant professor.”

  “I’ve seen nothing like it, even where I come from!”

  “Sorry, but I do not intend to scramble.”

  “You don’t have to. There’s a handrail for miles. How was it with Mary Lou?”

  “She mentioned Halliday.”

  That stopped him. After a bit he decided to laugh. You could see the process of decision. He was like one of those bits of engineering history, a Victorian pump, constructed with immense labour, skill, dedication, all green paint, oiled steel, steam—and turning round as slowly as a planet.

  “A real character, Mr Halliday.”

  “Unreal.”

  “I was going to tell you about him.”

  “Natch, as you used to say.”

  “You’ll eat with us?”

  It was common sense not to be under the slightest obligation.

  “You must both dine with me. No, I insist. It’s my pleasure.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Does anyone?”

  Rick breezed away—a little more thoughtful perhaps but still breezing. I considered a memory of his face. A day’s mountain sunlight had turned his nose, cheeks and forehead to apples, cherries, tomatoes. I shifted my head this way and that until I could catch a glimpse of my own face between the contorted bottles in the inevitable mirror at the back of the bar. I couldn’t qualify for the description of “red-faced Englishman”. I looked more like some kind of leather that had been stowed in an attic for generations and was dusty and cracked. Dimmish eyes looked back at me and there were the tiny red worms of veins here and there in my nose. Nobody knew that face, I thought. A writer isn’t like an actor or musician. His face isn’t his fortune. It’s his misfortune and then again perhaps not. It’s his anonymity. If I wanted real fame, i.e. recognition in the street, I should wear a hat with “Author of Coldharbour” stuck in the front of it. I was happy not to want fame and thus give Elizabeth the lie.

  I was already in the little restaurant when Rick and Mary Lou came in. He and I were wearing casuals but Mary Lou, I was obscurely worried to see, had made a real effort. She had a lot of bouncing, fluffy skirt but above the skirt the dress followed her delicate lines closely and ceased to exist as low down as Swiss moeurs permitted. For tourists that is very low down. It crossed my mind that if she had been trying, she couldn’t have chosen a dress more calculatedly “with the older man in mind”. However I seated her, deftly inserting her chair under the skirt—my parlour trick—and had had my own inserted by the manager when the whole place exploded.

  “Dammit, man, who said you could take a pic?”

  “Now, Wilf, just for the record—”

  “There isn’t going to be any record.”

  “You should have asked, hon.”

  “I didn’t think Wilf would mind, hon.”

  “Rick.”

  “Yes, Wilf?”

  “Don’t do it again, hon, ever. I’ll sue.”

  The manager had disappeared—hotelier’s tact. We inspected our menus and I passed the time boring them with a description of meals that I’d had in one place or another. The open air made Rick excited and voluble, once a little drink had helped him. Mary Lou was more silent and seemed worried, I thought, as if expecting Rick to make a fool of himself. Then just when I had tried and failed to raise a smile on that exquisite young face she changed her mind about not drinking. She said she’d like a large vodka, please, which Rick acclaimed as if she’d won a prize of some sort. Then as if I were the only person to be bored by my recital I found them both animated and myself dull, moodily jealous of their youth a
nd wondering what the devil I’d got myself into. Rick talked about astronomy—apparently there was an observatory somewhere in sight—and bewailed the fact that they could see so little Swiss sky from their window. Mary Lou looked absent. Rick turned to her from me.

  “Was there any sun, hon?”

  “Sun, hon?”

  “In our room this afternoon, hon.”

  “Why none, hon, I guess not.”

  “If you want sun or stars,” I said, “there’s always my balcony. Let’s adjourn and have a look. What’s it like outside? We might even—”

  Rick stood up promptly. Mary Lou seized her hand bag and fled.

  “What does she call it, Rick? The powder room? I collected them in the States: kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, guys and dolls, chiefs and squaws—that one was interesting, don’t you think? Sociologically, I mean. It should have been braves and squaws. But then, that was all years ago. Perhaps now—but the custom’s spreading. I’ve even seen it in England. Cultural imperialism.”

  “We’ll be happy to see your stars, Wilf.”

  “What promotion. Have another drink before—it’s the butt end of the bottle.”

  Rick sniggered. I said no more and we waited, standing, while he beat his fingers restlessly on the table.

  “You know, Rick, two bottles between three is a sign of incipient alcoholism. Since Mary Lou drank nothing but that vodka—does she know anything about astronomy?”

  There was a long pause. Rick came to with a start.

  “Sorry, Wilf, I didn’t—”

  “Mary Lou. Astronomy.”

  “She’s interested.”

  “I’m not, you know. Oh yes I am. Damn the wine. Waiter!”

  It was the manager, of course. I asked him for a bottle of brandy, which he brought after a time. Rick continued to drum with his fingers.

  “For God’s sake, man—haven’t you had enough exercise?”

  “I don’t get it, Wilf.”

  He knocked back his brandy out of the balloon in a way that was positively contemptible. I played the civilized game, warming the balloon with my hands, breathing in what I supposed was the aroma, though I have practically no sense of smell at all. Time passed.

  Mary Lou came back from the powder room paler than she went. Perhaps she had thrown up again. Rick held another shot of brandy in his balloon.

  “Wilf would really like us to see his stars, hon.”

  Mary Lou gave a little gasp.

  “That would be fun, hon.”

  “The freedom of the balcony, my dears. No charge.”

  I picked up the brandy bottle. Rick stopped in his stride towards the door.

  “Got to go to the John. You two go right ahead.”

  I went on with the bottle, got the door open for Mary Lou, conducted her through the little lobby, across the sitting-room where Rick’s paper still lay on the table. I opened the french windows and she walked straight through, frou, frou, out on to the balcony.

  “Careful!”

  She was right by the railings. She put her hands on them on either side of her, leaned out and looked down.

  “For God’s sake! Sorry, my dear—I’ve got a thing about heights and oddly enough for other people more than myself. I can just about stand nearer a cliff than I can bear to see other people doing—standing—looking down, I mean. I just don’t like heights anyway. Silly old me!”

  Obediently as a little girl, she straightened up, took a pace, two paces back. I went to the switches.

  “I’ll turn the lights off.”

  A sky loaded with stars came in close enough to be touched.

  “What sparklers, eh? A girl’s best friend.”

  I stood by her shoulder, wondering why it was that I who could not detect the aroma of brandy could nevertheless detect the trace of perfume in her hair. I came even closer.

  “Mr Barclay—”

  “That’s formal all of a sudden.”

  “Rick is desperate. He really is!”

  “Why are we talking about Rick?”

  It was a corny line, worthy of Dei Caitani in The Birds of Prey. In fact they used it in the film—tongue in cheek, of course. My arm came up, seemingly of its own accord, gave her further shoulder a little pat and rested there on the naked skin. My heart lurched then beat like a drum. I could hear my blood in my ears.

  Mary Lou did nothing. Less than nothing. It was curious, impossible. (Mary Lou is not physical.) Perhaps it was on the edge of extrasensory perception. Perhaps it was on the verge of spiritual experience. After all, they must come in every shape and size according to the climate, must they not? What I felt was submission, an unnatural stillness, a kind of weight. Her—or perhaps I should say the—shoulder seemed less alive than marble. Somehow marble would have felt—would have felt—would have— This naked shoulder was less human than a doll’s, was like the shoulder of some angled and impossible model in a shop window, plastic fashion, no more. She seemed to grow heavier by the moment, wholly passive.

  Right from the soles of my feet, through the drink and the vague, libidinous fantasy of ageing, there swelled feelings that overwhelmed everything else—humiliation and sheer, unalloyed rage. To know myself accepted, endured not even as in honest whoredom, for money, but for paper!

  So we stood side by side before the stars with nothing to do, nothing to say. We were so still an onlooker might well have thought us starstruck.

  At last I took my heavy hand away from her heavy shoulder, leaving it with a little pat.

  “Too many stars make me dizzy.”

  I went quickly to the door, switched on the light, went round the lobby and all three rooms switching on lights, even the light on the balcony. We must have blazed out over the valley.

  “You can stop looking now, dammit! Final curtain.”

  She turned round then, not looking at me but at the door.

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ll tell Rick when he comes back that you went early. Headache. Altitude.”

  “Went?”

  “When he comes back from the—”

  She blushed vividly from breast to hair and it was only then, I swear, that I saw the pattern of their collusion. Her voice thinned to a little girl’s voice.

  “No—I—thank you for having me.”

  She ran towards the door, running clumsily as if she weren’t seeing straight. Suddenly I felt as I might have felt, yes, might have felt but never did, for Emily.

  “Mary Lou—”

  She delayed, half-turned, and red in the face. As if she were put back to her teens—the day before yesterday—she raised her right hand to shoulder height and wiggled the fingers at me.

  ‘“Bye for now.”

  After that, without any help, she got herself through the door of the sitting-room and through the lobby and the outside door and—the carpet on the floor of the short corridor was too thick to let me hear if she ran or walked or staggered along it.

  What did he expect? What was the, as we say in our jargon, projected scenario? Did he think we would fence archly, and she, girlishly, dodge round the table and say, no, Wilf, no, not unless you sign that paper? Or was she to crawl up me odalisquelike to plead with her lips pouted? Or was she to agree in a matter-of-fact way like a noseblow and then I, obligated, would sign, saying, take it, it’s what you want.

  Thank you for having me! The pathetic idiocy, the vulnerability of the girl, the gross, insulting imperceptivity of the man! Yet he had not been so very far out after all. Had that skin been warm and given back the faintest signal, how different it would all have been! Neither of us, critic and author, we knew nothing about people or not enough. We knew about paper, that was all. The poor girl was the human one. She didn’t know how to do it. But then—I didn’t know how to do it! He didn’t know how to offer it. Pimp, client and whore, all we three needed the assistance of a professional. I stood in the blazing room, behind me the dark oblong of the window with its quenched stars. I stared at Rick’s paper on the tabl
e, then at the card hung on the outer door, Avis aux MM les clients. I thought of Rick lying discreetly in bed, perhaps snoring gently so as to make his wife’s return something neither of them need take notice of or comment on. But she would shake him out of his snores and assure him that nothing had happened, nothing at all except that Mr Barclay had put his hand on her left shoulder, yes, shoulder, and she knew he wanted her only he hadn’t done anything but taken his hand away again and he hadn’t said much, nothing had happened, nothing at all, would he hold her, please, please, make love to her, she was so, so soiled and he must never, never ask her again—

  Then at last they would sleep, her tears hung in the thickets of his chest.

  The paper was still on the table. I hereby appoint Professor Rick L. Tucker.…

  I could make him suffer. I could sign it and give it to him tomorrow when we went walking.

  “Mary Lou forgot this, Rick. By Jove, she earned it!”

  Unspeakable! The vision of her, the glamour and the childish vulnerability caught me by the heart and the throat, nowhere else, it seemed. But there was a touch of panic too. I knew that the finger was on me, I was limed by her and would have to struggle to get myself free. Only the space of one day, morning, noon, night, to bring such change! It was there, the trap I had tried to avoid—and would avoid!—the bitter sorrow of a love that is fruitless, pointless, hopeless, agonizing and ridiculous. Once more, the clown’s trousers had fallen down.

  I cursed myself inwardly, then protested to myself that all was not lost. The brandy was still on the table, the mature man’s consolation. Then, paper man that I am, I began to think—what a story!