Contango (Ill Wind) (17 page)

She got into bed and soon found physical languors too comforting to
resist; she was nearly asleep when suddenly the door opened and Nicky
entered. He wore one of his brightly futurist dressing-gowns over green silk
pyjamas, and smoked a cigarette that drooped obliquely from the corner of his
mouth. There was nothing of his usual elegance about him; his face, on the
contrary, was flushed and unquiet, and his hair tumbled over his forehead in
picturesque confusion. After switching on the light he closed the door
noisily and, without looking towards the bed, strode over to the
dressing-table and began to use one of her hair-brushes. He did not speak,
though of course that might be because he thought she was asleep; in which
case, she considered, it had been rather bad-mannered of him to switch on
lights and make such a racket. “Well, Nicky,” she said quietly,
“where have you been?”

He swung round and answered in a clipped and rather peevish voice:
“I couldn’t stand that infernal crowd, so I went out, got drunk
on my own, and then had a bathe in the pool.”

“Rather silly of you, really. Just the way to take a chill and die
of pneumonia.”

She was surprised, but able to keep quite unperturbed. She had been
prepared for his meeting her with bland forgetfulness, or even with some sort
of an apology; that he might continue the flare-up had hardly suggested
itself. But then he always did what one least expected, she thought, calmly
watching him.

He went on, rather loudly; “Look here, Sylvia, all this—the
sort of thing that happened to-night—has got to stop. Don’t say
you don’t know what I mean. You DO know. You were patronising me. You
had me on a bit of string and kept trailing me round to be shown off to all
your confounded friends. I won’t have it. I belong to myself, and I
won’t be made a tame monkey of. I tell you I won’t have it. And
don’t imagine I shall be restrained by any feelings of—of
gratitude—or chivalry—or—”

“My dear Nicky, those are the last motives I should ever suspect in
you. I’m afraid you’re still rather drunk or you wouldn’t
be talking such nonsense.”

“It isn’t nonsense. You know perfectly well that all this
evening you’ve been doing nothing but parade me!”

“And that’s all you can give as a reason for making a scene in
public? Just because I said something quite harmless and not very important
that didn’t happen to take your fancy? Do you ever care a damn whether
I always like the things you say?”

“That’s different. You went round acting the proud mamma with
the infant prodigy!”

“Oh, Nicky, you’re too funny! Even if I was acting, which I
don’t feel inclined to admit, haven’t I as much right to an
occasional pose as you have? Don’t you ever act? Aren’t you
acting just a little bit now? Why, you’re just lashing yourself into a
temper to enjoy the result, that’s all. I’ll allow you’re
managing it rather well, but I’m doing my share too,
remember—your smart dialogue wouldn’t come out so pat if I
didn’t hand you the right cues. And, by the way, I don’t think
the hairbrush gestures are quite in keeping—put it down and try
something else.”

He suddenly collapsed on to the bed and began to shout and shake with
laughter. “Oh, Sylvia, whatever makes you so adorably acute?”
Every cadence in his voice was changed, and as he went on laughing he stooped
and buried his lips and nose in the gentle hollow of her throat. “Do I
smell of champagne, darling, or doesn’t it matter? Oh, what a lovely
and clever woman you are! Lovely, yet you’ve got a mind like a surgical
knife…. I like the mixture, I must say.” His lips roamed to her
mouth, and he added, in between deep kisses: “Yes, I do… DO…
like… it….”

She flung her arm round his neck and stroked his face, instantly
forgetting the ridiculous little tiff, and submitting to his fondling with
rich contentment. Her sensuality was of a kind of which she felt no shame and
which she saw no need to suppress. “Nicky, I’m—I’m
glad you like me.” That sounded silly. She had only said it to hear
herself say it; her real answer was with her body. And her body felt, if it
were possible, amused. It occurred to her all at once that here they were,
the two of them, engaged in these rather abrupt and intimate diversions,
without ever having exchanged a word of love. That was modern, surely. In the
old days, to judge from novels, love was largely a matter of protestation,
and an author had to work his characters up to a fantastic pitch of verbose
sentimentality before he could close the final chapter with a chaste embrace.
Rather unhealthy, she thought; she remembered going through the phase in her
teens— perhaps most girls did at that age. Anyhow, the mere idea of
talking love with Nicky made her feel quite comically gigglish. It was all
right for the films, but they would be too well aware of each other’s
technique to take themselves seriously in private. In the midst of her cool,
roving thoughts she passed from mere amusement to sharp, quicksilver delight.
Marvellous boy! And how wonderful those days had been at Sabinal—long,
brick-red days in the sun, Nicky hallooing the Indians, sausages frying over
picnic-fires, the rusty-rose of the sky when they all returned to camp in the
evenings. And the scarlet ocotillo that was like a spurt of flame, and the
big blots of lilac and lemon on the hillsides. … She was never quite
certain whether colours made her happy, or whether she always noticed them
most when she was happy. For she liked Nicky tremendously—as much as
she had ever liked any man, if you could call him a man…. But to LOVE
him… well, anyway, he didn’t ask you to. If he wanted to kiss, he
did, and if you felt in a similar mood, all right; he didn’t insist on
adding a huge significance to it. And what WAS love, for that matter? Only a
word to mean anything you liked; drinking too much champagne, sleeping with
somebody, dying on the battle-field, going to church— you did it all
for what could be called by the name. An unprecise term, therefore, to use in
an argument…. But she was at Sabinal again, its colours before her eyes and
its warmth lapping her like a tide; and she knew at last that whether she
loved Nicky or not (an absurd problem), his coming had made a difference
beyond her power to calculate, and that without him now she would be
struggling amongst the elbows of the world. She had had her day, there was no
real doubt of it; but his profound and lovely foolery could give her the
illusion of a second chance.

“I don’t want to stay here long,” said
Nicky, driving his two-seater on Fifth Avenue; and Sylvia, sitting next to
him, purred comfortably: “Sure, Nicky—after the next picture
we’ll go to Europe for a season, or Japan, or just anywhere you
like.”

He pulled up sharply and the surrounding items of the traffic-block seemed
to stoop over him in menace. It was an extravagantly low-built car, the last
word in silver-gadgeted opulence, and a recent gift from Sylvia; there had
been photographs of it and of them throughout the Press, and the makers, for
publicity, had let it go at half-price. But Nicky already felt that he had
given away several thousand dollars’ worth of advertisement in return
for nothing but the sensation of being a large baby who must not only travel
in a bassinette but propel himself in one. Just now, for instance, the
occupants of adjacent cars immediately noticed him, and there was a concerted
craning of necks and muttering of comments until, with a jerk, the traffic
moved on.

Nicky had come to New York with Sylvia after the successful premičre of
‘Red Desert.’ The fact was, at the trade-show the film’s
obvious merits had caused several distributing companies to bid for it, and
Sylvia, after much haggling and consultation with Statler, had disposed of
half her rights for a hundred thousand dollars. As this was nearly as much as
the whole film had cost to produce, and as the services of nation- wide
distributors were bound to result in larger profits, she felt she had driven
a good bargain. True, the distributors insisted on making a few slight
alterations in the film as it stood. Besides the change of title, it was also
decided to add a few supplementary studio scenes revealing the fact that the
Indian was not really an Indian after all, but a bank-president’s son
whom his parents believed to have been drowned as a baby, but who had
actually been rescued by Indians and brought up as one of themselves. The
timely discovery of his true ancestry made possible a new and happier ending
for the picture, and the final scene showed Nicky and Sylvia bringing
paternal tears to the eyes of an old man in a bath-chair. Apart, however,
from these additions, and the shortening of a kiss by two seconds in the
interests of public morality, ‘Red Desert’ was substantially the
same work as the projected ‘Amerind.’

The revised version represented, it might be said, a victory for
reasonableness and common sense on all sides. Sylvia had been at first
reluctant to consent to any changes at all, but the unmistakable enthusiasm
of the film-magnates for the production as a whole convinced her that it
would be merely quixotic to stand out, particularly as Statler favoured
agreement and Nicky offered no objections. Only the Russian producer proved
thoroughly intransigeant, but since he had no direct financial interest in
the film’s success it was easy to discount his attitude. Nor could it
be denied that the cautious editing imposed by the distributors seemed amply
justified in the reception given to “Red Desert” by the cinema-
going public. The dish had been well salted by preliminary publicity, and the
story of how Raphael Rassova, the new Roumanian film-star, had originally
masqueraded in Hollywood as a Roumanian prince, and how Sylvia Seydel had
found him out but had refused to give him away, evoked delighted comments
from the gossip-paragraphists. “A wonder film,” quoted the blurb
compiled from assorted newspaper criticisms. “Something new in
cinematography…. Raphael Rassova is marvellous, and Sylvia Seydel is
lovelier than ever…. At one bound the Roumanian Romeo steps into the front
rank of heart-throbbers…. Miss Seydel has surpassed herself…. To take a
single glance at Rassova is to know instantly why girls leave home….
Rassova is a revelation. Not since Valentino has there risen such a star in
the firmament…” The film’s triumph was definitely clinched when
a Baptist minister in Athens (Arkansas) described it in a sermon as “a
shameless aphrodisiac, fit only for a nation of birth-controllers and
evolutionists.”

On Sylvia, at least, the effect of such rather stupendous success was
completely tonic. She had always (until the Wall Street slump) considered
herself a good business-woman, and she was in her element now with the shoals
of offers that began to pour in on her, not only for film-work, but for such
remunerative side-issues as newspaper-articles, recommendations of
face-cream, magazine-interviews,
etc
. All her depressions had lifted
at last; she had “rung the bell”; her “come-back” had
been practically all that she had ever hoped—practically,
yes—and the impractical residue had been fairly easy to forget. She
was still a queen in her own right and on a safe throne; besides which, she
had had the genius to marry Nicky. That, in the opinion of Hollywood’s
coolest critics, was a prudent fortification of the dynasty.

“You see, Nicky,” she was saying, that afternoon on Fifth
Avenue, when the next traffic-block gave her the chance, “we’ve
made such a wonderful hit that it’s terribly important to follow up
quickly with another. Terribly important for you too. So many people
won’t take you seriously till you’ve done a thing
twice—they’re always afraid the first time may be only a
fluke.”

“Well, so it may be. And, anyhow, who wants to be taken
seriously?”

“Yes, I know, but when people begin handing you dollars by the
hundred thousand you can’t treat the matter entirely as a joke. That
offer of Vox’s this morning was pretty good, and I think he’ll
give more if we hold out. I cabled him that we’d accept two-fifty, but
I expect it’ll end by splitting the difference.”

Nicky assented rather vaguely. He took little interest in the complicated
financial problems that had arisen since his ascent into fame; beyond the
knowledge that he was now rich enough to buy anything he wanted in shops, he
was glad to leave all that side of the business in Sylvia’s hands. It
was not that he couldn’t bargain shrewdly himself; he could, when he
wanted to—which was to say, when he felt that the issue could possibly
matter to him. He had, for instance, enjoyed the haggling with those
Englishmen about the aeroplane invention, and with Sylvia about his original
salary as secretary, because in those days he had needed money and could
bother about it. But now he found it difficult to raise any keen excitement
about the exact digits that were to precede the row of noughts in his new
contract.

When they reached their suite at the Plaza a cabled reply from Vox awaited
them. Sylvia’s eyes, as she tore it open, conveyed the news.
“Nicky!” she cried. “He’s accepted! He’s not
even arguing about it! We’re signing for two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars!”

He smiled, and tried to think, as a mere essay in the whimsical, what the
sum of a quarter of a million dollars might do. It might buy a scrap of
frontage on Broadway, the whole Ziegfeld chorus for an experiment in
companionate marriage in Honolulu, a large-sized howitzer, or a seat on the
New York Stock Exchange; it could endow a professorship of ventriloquism at
Harvard, equip a scientific expedition to Mongolia, or pay the interest on
the world’s debts for about ten minutes. What was quite certain,
however, was that the quarter-million handed over by Vox would be employed in
none of these thought-provoking pursuits. He said, after his reverie:
“Yes, it’s not too bad, is it? But it’s got to be earned
yet, remember. How many pictures are we promising?”