“My dear Sarah,” he said now, looking at the plate of sandwiches and conveying the right amount of amazement and amusement. “And coffee too. How delicious! We’ll stay awake all night and tell each other stories. A Western Decameron.” He looked appraisingly at Sally’s checked shirt and tight Levis as he lifted a sandwich. Then he turned unerringly on Mrs. Peel and stared at her tweed suit.
“Maggie, you disappoint me. Where’s your fancy dress? I expected a pair of pearl-handled revolvers at least. You must let me send you them.” He looked at the sandwich in his hand reflectively. “As a bread-and-butter letter.” He kept the phrases, as well as the accent, of the school in South-eastern England where he had been educated.
“I’m the spangled-skirt type, I’m afraid. Not Annie Oakley,” Mrs. Peel said, trying to smile. But a pink spot of annoyance spread over each cheek as she turned to Mimi Bassinbrook.
“I adore the West, don’t you, Mrs. Peel?” Mimi said. “Wasn’t it clever of Prender to have thought this up? He has the most original ideas. I know we are going to have the most wonderful time.” She smiled up at Prender Atherton Jones, and patted the chair next to hers.
Prender was half gratified by Mimi’s renewed allegiance (it had been a hideous journey, with Dewey winning most of the laughs and almost all the attention), half embarrassed at the look in Sally Bly’s eye. As Mimi went on chattering gaily to Mrs. Peel he spoke quietly to Sally. “Mimi has a genius for getting things slightly mixed. That’s one of her attractions frankly.”
“I think she has many,” Sally said, and was very efficient with the coffee-cups. “Two lumps, cream; here you are, Prender. Dewey? Black and strictly unsweetened? Tea for Miss Bassinbrook? Why, of course. Shan’t be a minute.”
When she returned from the kitchen with the teapot the group had settled cosily round the fire.
“To think,” Mimi was saying, as she watched the blazing logs, “that it was over ninety degrees in New York on the day we left. And the humidity! My fingers slipped all over the typewriter keys, and the sheets came out all permanently curved as if they had lockjaw or something.”
Mrs. Peel, interested, said, “And what are you writing, Miss Bassinbrook?”
“Oh...just a few odd things at the moment. New York is so distracting, you know. I hope to really get down to work here, of course.”
Better start by giving up split infinitives, Sally thought. But then she was slightly soured at the moment by the lemon she had forgotten to bring from the kitchen, and which Miss Bassinbrook now requested most charmingly and naturally. Sally left them talking about humidity, New York, Singapore, the Amazon jungles, and returned with the sliced lemon to hear them arguing about politics. At least, Prender was making gloomy predictions and passing dire judgments.
“We are, in fact,” he was saying, “approaching the police state.”
Sally looked at him sharply. “If you had lived in Nazi-occupied France,” she suggested, “you wouldn’t throw around that charge so lightly.”
“Intellectual freedom is dying,” he said, ignoring the interruption.
“How?” Sally asked. Prender was always so evasive with direct questions: he preferred to make broad general replies, decked out with noble phrases, which proved that anyone disagreeing with him must be narrow-minded and mentally limited.
He descended to Sally’s practical level with obvious distaste. He said coldly, “I am talking of political investigations. Witchhunts. Opinions are being persecuted. Is that clear enough, Sarah?”
“You’d tolerate all opinions? Even destructive ones?”
“The air in Wyoming must be full of fire and brimstone,” Dewey said. “And are you going to run for Congress, Sarah?” The prospect amused him highly.
Mrs. Peel said, “It isn’t a laughing matter, Dewey. I’ve seen how Communists can use tolerance to get into power. And once they are in power they aren’t tolerant. Last year, in Paris—”
“Freedom cannot be qualified,” Prender said.
Mrs. Peel sighed. If only he’d let her finish her story. A practical example, too. She tried once more. “You know, Prender, last year—”
“I may disagree with a Communist,” Prender went on, “but I shall fight for his right to disagree with me.”
“Naturally,” Mimi said, looking thoughtful and sympathetic.
“And for his right, eventually, to send you to a concentration camp just because you continue to disagree with him?” Sally asked.
Prender shook his head over Sally’s rabble-rousing. “If we ever were to reach that stage of—of concentration camps, we’d resist. We’d fight violence with violence. Then our conscience would be clear. That’s my whole argument: we must keep our conscience clear.”
“Even at the expense of our country’s future?” Sarah asked. “Wouldn’t our consciences be clearer if we were to fight ideas with ideas now?”
“Let me lend you my little edition of Demosthenes to reread, Prender,” Mrs. Peel said.
He looked at them in turn. “I never knew you were both so politically minded,” he said, and dismissed them with a smile. “It’s hardly your line, is it?”
“Last year, in Paris,” Mrs. Peel said indignantly, “we—”
“Wyoming must do something to women,” Dewey said. “That’s why they got the vote here in 1869. In London and New York they were still chaining themselves to policemen as late as 1919, but all they had to do in Wyoming was to argue. My dear Sarah, your flights of fancy have given me a hell of a thirst. Or did the women in Wyoming use their vote to make it a dry state too?”
Sally rose to find the Scotch and open it. Mrs. Peel added two logs to the fire, and went to find soda and ice. Mimi removed the fruit-plate from the rug at her feet, and handed it to Prender to set down on the mantelpiece. Dewey stretched his legs comfortably, watched them all, and found much to amuse him.
When Mrs. Peel returned with the news that Sally had used all the available ice for her Spanish fruit bowl the conversation had definitely lost its social significance. She calmed her feelings, which had gone on ruffling themselves in the kitchen, but she still felt despondent. Political subtleties were painful enough in Europe, but to find them rearing their ugly heads in New York and coming to invade the peace of Wyoming was unbearable. (If the Atlantic were of any use at all it was to give people here a breathing-space to learn. Some nations in Europe had never been given the chance of that breathing-space: they were plunged into disaster before they even started arguing.) She had found Wyoming an escape into a place of reason, where politics meant discussions on the merits and failings of either Republicans or Democrats, where such hideous things as concentration camps for political opponents weren’t even imagined.
Prender was now launching into his experiences on the journey westward. He seemed to have forgotten the bitterness that had been stirred up. So Mrs. Peel sat down with relief beside Mimi Bassinbrook, listened, and tried to stop being despondent.
“Thank you, Sarah,” Dewey said, and took the tall glass which she brought over to him. “Or is it F. Nightingale mixed with Joan of Arc? You do surprise your friends, Sarah.”
“Not Sarah Sally,” she said gently.
“In heaven’s name, why?” He noted she kept a special kind of smile for him.
“Because I like it.”
“And if I call you Sarah?”
“I won’t hear what you say.”
“Efficient,” he admitted. Yes, there was always California and Liz Beaton, who was the nice awed type that Sally used to be. Still, a day or two here might be rewarding. Mimi, for one thing. And, for another, the arrival of the Great Unpublished. And Prender, for a third. For instance, poor Maggie had been trying to tell them, too, about some of her experiences on her journey here; but at the moment she was only able to add less than half a sentence at a time while Prender’s saga unfolded. Prender was swinging into full stride now, with all the makings of a most successful addition to his lecture season. In spite of his protests about calories,
he had eaten enormously of the sandwiches, and as he stood in front of the fireplace, looking down at the half-circle of faces turned towards him, his eloquence was as limitless as the country over which he had travelled. An impressive if somewhat boring performance, Dewey thought; like St Paul’s Cathedral, fog-capped.
“I am delighted,” Sally said at last, when Prender paused for a drink. “Because it proves we were right, and that happens so rarely.”
“Proves?” Prender asked, a trifle shaken...”
“Yes. Remember Margaret and I suggested last winter—I think it was at one of your parties actually—that it was odd how so many of us knew New York and Connecticut, but how few ever travelled west of Chicago or Cincinnati? Apart from reaching California in an air-conditioned train, of course. Well, if we hadn’t decided to travel leisurely across the continent we wouldn’t have found Rest and be Thankful. And if we hadn’t found Rest and be Thankful you wouldn’t have travelled across the continent either. So I am delighted, for you are obviously impressed by your own country for the first time in your life. Perhaps the rest of our guests will share your enthusiasm. That was what we hoped for. It makes all the trouble we’ve had well worth-while.”
“Trouble?” Prender was more perplexed.
“My dear, you don’t imagine that you can set up housekeeping for nine people”—she glanced at Dewey—“for ten people, twenty-five miles from the nearest store, thirty-five from the railway and a decent road, without a lot of planning? Things just don’t create themselves, you know. Everything is made so easy for us in the cities that we forget how much energy and time it takes to arrange the minimum necessities in life.”
Prender nodded, memorising that idea. He had to admit he was amazed that he had travelled as far as from Paris to Istanbul to reach Sweetwater from New York.
Dewey said, “Do we trap or shoot our meat? Or do we use a nice old-fashioned hatchet?”
Sally smiled. “And what did Dewey think of the journey? How many neon-lighted hamburger stands lie between here and the Atlantic? I’m sure you counted them all. And how many fat women wearing shorts? How many Miss Tomato-of-the-year contests? How many funeral parlours designed as Corinthian temples? Dewey, you must have treasured them...”
Dewey rose to pour himself another drink.
Mimi Bassinbrook laughed. “Miss Bly, how did you guess? He just loved all of them.”
“There are so many different things to see, so many ways of life in America,” Mrs. Peel said, in her most understanding manner. She shot a warning look at Sally, who ignored it with a still brighter smile.
“Yes,” Sally said innocently, “and what you see depends on what you are determined to see.”
“Dewey insisted we spend last night at one of these drive-in places where you rent cabins,” Mimi went on.
“Was it called a Motel, Dewey?” Sally asked.
Prender Atherton Jones, now in excellent humour, said indeed it had been. Dewey had insisted on driving for an extra thirty minutes to reach a motel advertised as the Pop Inn.
Dewey, watching Sally with a new wariness, joined in the laughter, if only to turn it away from himself. “We slept,” he said, in the quiet, precise voice which he had carefully cultivated in England, “on beds that were described in Basic American as Kumfy Kots; and the lamps had the trade name of Brite Lite. It was a very pleasant evening.”
“I’m so glad, Dewey,” Sally said. “How horrible for you if you had had to sleep at an ordinary hotel with ordinary beds. Absolutely uninspiring. Which reminds me—where are we going to put you? In a tent?” She spoke lightly, gaily, as if it were a pleasant problem.
Mrs. Peel shook her head and restrained a smile.
Prender said quickly, “Dewey is only staying here for a night on his way to California. He’s going to visit Elizabeth Beaton.”
“How nice for Elizabeth,” Sally said. “Does she still keep her tame seal in the swimming-pool? Dewey, you can teach it tricks—tray-balancing, so that it will serve cocktails while you are floating peacefully among the wax water-lilies.”
Dewey smiled, poured himself a third drink, and tried to think of something to say. Usually he held the floor whenever Prender yielded it. But tonight Sally had kept him silent merely by talking about the kind of things he had been about to mention. She even was adopting his kind of phrases. He hadn’t been so angered or bored for many a month. Tomorrow, he thought, adding another jigger of Scotch to his glass, it will be California. But, as he drank to that, Mimi—who for the last hour had been giving Prender extra attention to calm his disturbed memories of today’s journey—rose and went over to the radio-phonograph.
“Music!” she said, so enchantingly that only a monster among men would have thought about her sure grasp of the obvious. She gave Dewey a small signal as she pulled out the record albums, and sat down on the floor to arrange them round her. Sally admired the entire arrangement as she wandered over to Mimi, too.
Sally was being damned annoying tonight, Dewey thought. In a way, he had to admit, she was also being useful; for Prender, after a quick frown towards the corner of the room where the phonograph stood, seemed reassured, and he sat down beside Mrs. Peel to start talking about Aubrey Brimstone’s new magazine which Prender might possibly edit, if he had time.
“Bach, Haydn, Beethoven,” Mimi said delightedly.
“Long hair,” said Dewey, although he fought for tickets to the Boston Symphony Orchestra just as determinedly as Mrs. Peel. He looked at Sally challengingly.
She accepted. “Sweet corn too for those who like to hum a tune. And here’s bebop for the initiated.” She picked up a record and studied the printed centre. “Tiberius Tantivy and his Fourtet. Now, Dewey, that’s another for your collection.”
Dewey seemed shocked by such sacrilege, for Basic American in advanced art must be taken seriously, unlike Basic American in advertising. He rejected Sally’s offering to pick a record of his own. “Stravinsky,” he said.
“The Bebop’s Bible,” Sally murmured. “What a pity we all read the New Yorker, isn’t it?”
Dewey stared at her, a man whose words have been stolen most blatantly right out of his mouth. Unforgivable.
* * *
“What is wrong with Sarah?” Dewey asked, as he and Prender went upstairs to bed. Mimi, from her bedroom door at the far end of the corridor, waved a plaintive good night.
Prender shrugged his shoulders. All that worried him was that Dewey, as soon as the writers arrived and if he stayed, would be moved into his room. That was completely unsatisfactory, not only from the point of view of sleep, but of pleasure. Sarah had been quite obdurate: the writers must each have a room to themselves, and neither pointed suggestion nor gentle sarcasm had been able to shift her from that most decided stand. There were two things on which he had determined: Dewey must leave for the ample charms of Liz Beaton and her psychopathic circle; and Sarah would be sorry next winter in New York.
“Pity about Aubrey Brimstone and Merrick Maclehose,” Dewey Schmetterling said, suddenly more cheerful.
“Yes.”
“Too late to write them. When did you expect them to arrive?”
“On Monday.”
“Ah, well, there’s always Western Union. Good night.”
Dewey may have sounded almost gay, but he had his own particular problems. What did an author do when one of the ineffective, funny characters in his new satire had suddenly become chained with electricity? It wasn’t fair. He would have to kill her off somehow, and that could always be made clever-cruel and amusing. But a pity, nevertheless, for she had been good for several more laughs before the end of the book was reached. Thank God, Maggie had stayed in character. Almost. She talked less, but perhaps that was only a mood tonight.
It was a dispirited satirist who fell asleep. His room was cold. His bed had not been turned down. His suitcase had not been unpacked. And they had known how he hated sandwiches.
* * *
As they waited for the fire to bu
rn low enough before they would leave it Mrs. Peel was much amused and a little shocked.
“Sally, I’ve never known you to be so inhospitable.”
“After making all these sandwiches? And dashing around with slices of lemon? And our precious bottle of Scotch all gone, and not another one to be found this side of Three Springs? Besides, do you want Dewey to stay?”
“I wouldn’t expire with grief if he left. But Prender—”
“Well, he should have remembered he didn’t own this place. I wrote him, you know, about lack of bedrooms for lecturers.”
“He suggested the writers could share rooms.” Mrs. Peel was almost half persuaded. It was hard to refuse Prender.
“They mustn’t! Not here. Prender imagines everyone who lives in New York is as comfortable as he is in his borrowed penthouse.”