Evening in Byzantium (27 page)

I
N every group, however small, there is one person who is its center of gravity, its reason for existence as an entity and not merely a collection of unconnected egos. For this night, Craig thought, it was Gail McKinnon. Anne was clearly fascinated by her, reacting openly to every word she spoke, addressing herself more often to Gail than to any of the others, and even when talking to Craig or Wadleigh, looking for approval or criticism in Gail’s direction. On the way over from the hotel to the restaurant Craig had been half-amused, half-irritated when he noticed that Anne was subtly imitating, consciously or unconsciously, Gail’s striding, brusque manner of walking. Still, it was an improvement on Anne’s habitual, over-modest, childish slouch.

For Wadleigh, Gail represented an audience. In recent years he had had no surfeit of audiences, and he was making the most of it.

As for Craig, he would not have been there tonight had it not been for Gail. It was as simple as that. Watching her across the table, he knew that the movies were not the only thing he was hooked on. I am here, he thought, to unhook.

He let the others talk most of the time. When Gail spoke, he listened secretly for a hint, a signal from her, a guarded promise for the night, a tacit refusal. He found neither.

I will forget her tomorrow, he told himself, in Constance’s arms.

Wadleigh insisted on acting the host, ordering the wine and suggesting what dishes the girls should choose. They were in the restaurant on the old port in which Craig had seen Picasso at dinner. If Wadleigh was going to pay the bill tonight, Craig thought, he’d be lucky to get as far as Toulon, let alone Madrid.

Wadleigh was drinking too much but up to now wasn’t showing it. For once he was dressed well, in a gray suit and oxford shirt with a collar that was buttoned neatly below the heavy throat and a new striped tie.

Gail was wearing rose-colored, tight-fitting shantung slacks and a soft silk blouse. She had swept her hair up for the evening, and it made her head seem charmingly and incongruously mature over the slender youthful column of her neck.

Anne, poor girl, was wearing a disastrous billowing yellow organdy dress, too short for her long legs, making her look gawky, like a high school junior dressed for her first prom.

The restaurant was not yet full, but Craig could see by the little signs on the vacant tables that the room would be crowded before long. He hoped, for Anne’s sake, that one of the tables was being kept for Picasso.

Two young men, one with a lion cub, the other with a Polaroid camera, whom Craig recognized as one of the teams that worked the Croisette and the cafés, came into the restaurant. As they approached the table, Craig tried to wave them away. “At these prices,” he said, “we ought to be protected from lions.”

But Wadleigh took the cub from the man who was holding him and put him on the table between Gail and Anne. “I want a picture of them with the king of the beasts,” he said. “I’ve always had a weakness for lady lion-tamers. One of my fantasies is making love to a woman in tights and spangles, with a chair, inside a cage.”

Depend on Wadleigh, Craig thought, to make you uncomfortable with your daughter.

The photographer, using a flash, which made the cub snarl, snapped one picture after another. Gail laughed at the show of infant ferocity, stroked the animal. “Come around when you’ve grown up, Sonny,” she said.

“I heard someplace,” Craig said, “that most of them die in a month or so. They can’t stand the handling.”

“Who can?” Wadleigh asked.

“Oh, Daddy,” Anne said, “don’t spoil the fun.”

“I’m devoted to ecology,” Craig said. “I want to keep the population of lions in France in balance. So many lions eating so many Frenchmen a season.”

The cameraman developed the photographs swiftly. They were in color. Anne’s bright hair and Gail’s dark pile made an effective composition with the tawny cub snarling among the wineglasses. On the shiny print, except for the blonde hair, Anne looked disturbingly like her mother.

The cameraman’s helper picked up the lion, and Wadleigh paid, extravagantly. He gave one of the photographs to Gail, the other to Anne. “When I am old and gray and full of sleep,” he said, “and having a bad day, I will summon one or the other of you to my rocking chair and order you to produce this picture. To remind me of a happy night when I was young. Did you ask for the wine, Father?”

Wadleigh was pouring when Craig saw Natalie Sorel come through the door of the restaurant with a tall, beautifully dressed man with silvery hair. Fifty-five, sixty, Craig thought, with everything that a barber and a masseur and the best tailors could do to make it seem like less. Natalie, in a dress that was designed to show off her slender waist, her graceful hips, looked fragile and dependent beside him.

The woman who owned the restaurant was leading the couple toward the rear, and they would have to pass Craig’s table. Craig saw Natalie glance at him quickly, look away, hesitate for a moment as though she meant to go by without stopping, then decide differently.

“Jesse,” she said, halting at the table and putting her hand on her escort’s arm. “How nice to see you.”

Craig stood up, and Wadleigh followed. “This is my fiancé, Philip Robinson,” Natalie said. Only Craig, he hoped, heard the warning clarity of the “fiancé.” “Mr. Jesse Craig.”

Craig shook hands with the man and introduced the others. Anne stood up. Gail remained seated. Craig wished Anne were wearing another dress. The man’s hand was dry and smooth. He had a slow, warm, Texas smile, an outdoor complexion. He didn’t look like a man who manufactured things, as Natalie had described him.

“It seems as though Natalie knows everybody in this town,” Robinson said, touching Natalie’s arm affectionately. “I’m having trouble keeping all the names straight. I’ve seen your pictures, haven’t I, Mr. Craig?”

“I hope you have,” Craig said.

“
Two Steps to Home
,” Natalie said quickly. “That was his last one.” She was protecting everybody.

“Of course,” Robinson said. He had a deep, self-assured voice. “I liked it very much.”

“Thank you,” Craig said.

“And did I hear correctly?” Robinson said to Wadleigh. “You’re the writer?”

“Once upon a time,” Wadleigh said.

“I really admired your book, sir,” Robinson said. “Immensely.”

“Which one?” Wadleigh asked.

Robinson looked a little flustered. “Well,” he said, “the one about the boy growing up in the Midwest and …”

“My first one.” Wadleigh sat down. “I wrote it in 1953.”

“Please sit down,” Natalie said hurriedly. “Everyone.”

Anne sat down, but Craig remained standing. “Are you having a good time in Cannes, Mr. Robinson?” he asked, steering the conversation away from the dangers of literature to the safer banalities of tourism.

“Well, I’ve been here before, of course,” the man said. “But this is the first time I’ve seen it from the inside, so to speak. Thanks to Natalie. It’s a whole new experience.” He patted her arm, a fatherly pat.

You don’t know how much on the inside you are, Brother, Craig thought, smiling socially.

“We’d better sit down, dear,” Natalie said. “The lady’s waiting for us.”

“I hope I see you fine folks again real soon,” Robinson said. “You and your pretty daughter, Mr. Craig, and you, Mr. Wadleigh, and your …”

“I’m not anybody’s daughter,” Gail said, chewing on a piece of celery.

“She defies description,” Wadleigh said. His tone was hostile. Robinson obviously was no fool, and his face hardened. “Enjoy your meal,” he said, and allowed Natalie to lead him to the table that the owner was pulling out for them.

Craig watched Natalie as she passed, in the light-footed, slightly swaying dancer’s walk he would always remember, between the rows of tables. Frail and elegant and carefully prepared to please men’s eyes, rouse men’s desires, courageous, and full of guile.

In a place like this you had to expect bits and pieces of your past to float by, to exert the power of nostalgia, to become again, for a little while at least, part of the present. Staring at Natalie Sorel, lovely and memorable, walking away from him on another man’s arm to the rear of the restaurant, he wondered what perversity of chance had ruled that the part of his past embodied in Ian Wadleigh was claiming him tonight instead of Natalie Sorel.

As he sat down, he was conscious of Gail’s looking at him quizzically, knowingly.

“Did I hear correctly?” Wadleigh was saying, mimicking Robinson’s slight Texas drawl. “Are you the writer?”

“Keep it low,” Craig said. “This is a small restaurant.”

“I really admired your book, sir,” Wadleigh said. Then, bitterly, “I’ve been writing for twenty years, and I’ve got eight books to show for it, and he liked my book.”

“Calm down, Ian,” Craig said.

But the wine was beginning to work. “And it’s always the first one. The one I did when I hardly knew how to spell my own name. I’m getting so tired of that book I think I’m going to burn it in the public square on my next birthday.” He poured himself a full glass of wine, spilling some on the tablecloth.

“If it’ll make you feel any better,” Anne said, “my English professor said he thought your second book was the best one you’ve written.”

“Screw your English professor,” Wadleigh said. “What the hell does he know?”

“A lot,” Anne said defiantly. Craig was glad to see that his daughter had that most difficult of virtues, courage among the teacups. “I’ll tell you another thing he said …”

“Do, do!” Wadleigh said. “I can’t wait to hear.”

“He said that the books you’ve written since you’ve moved abroad are comparative failures,” Anne said. Craig recognized the way she lifted her chin, a habit she had developed as a child when she decided to be stubborn and willful. “That you’re not really exploring your talents to their utmost, that you ought to come back to America …”

“Did he say that?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And you agree with him?” Wadleigh asked, icy and calm.

“I do,” Anne said.

“Screw you and your English teacher both,” Wadleigh said.

“If you’re going to talk like that,” Craig said, “Anne and I will be going home.” He knew that the drink had made Wadleigh reckless, that he was ripe for torture, and that he had been touched on his sorest point, but he didn’t want to expose Anne to Wadleigh’s agonized thrashing about.

“Cut it, Ian,” Gail said crisply. “We can’t all be loved by the whole world every minute of our lives. Be a big grown man, for God’s sake. Be a writer, a
professional
writer, or go do something else for a living.”

If Craig had said that, he knew there would have been an explosion. But Wadleigh blinked, shook his head as though emerging from a wave, grinned at Gail. “Out of the mouths of babes,” he said. “Forgive me, folks, I hope you’re having a good time in Cannes. I want some more fish. Waiter …” He waved, but politely, to the waiter who was hurrying past him with a tureen of steaming soup. “Should we order a soufflé for dessert?” Wadleigh said, the perfect host. “I understand they do them very well here. Grand Marnier or chocolate?”

Craig saw Murphy come rolling through the door, looking, as usual when he entered a room, like a bouncer hurrying to break up a fight. Behind him was Sonia Murphy and Lucienne Dullin and Walter Klein. The tribes are on the move, Craig thought, the princes are meeting at the summit. He had lived in Hollywood too long to be surprised at seeing men who at other times denounced each other in the bitterest terms dining cordially together. In that tight, competitive world the lines of communication had to be left open at all times. He was sure that Murphy would not tell Klein that he had read
The Three Horizons
and that Klein would not tell Murphy that the script was on his desk. The princes were discreet and made their dispositions under cover of night.

Even so, he was relieved to see that the owner was seating the group near the entrance, well away from their own table. A long time ago, when Wadleigh was in fashion, Murphy had been his agent. When Wadleigh’s bad years began, Murphy had dropped him, and Wadleigh, as might be expected, bore him no great love as a consequence. If the two men were to be seated near each other, with Wadleigh as far gone in drink as he was, the atmosphere would be less than friendly.

But Murphy, who scanned each room he entered like a ship’s radar, spotted Craig, and while the others settled themselves at the table near the door, came rolling down the central aisle of the restaurant to greet him. “Good evening, everybody,” he said, smiling at the girls and somehow excluding Wadleigh from the greeting. “I called you five times today, Jess. I wanted to invite you to dinner tonight.”

Translated, that meant that Murphy had called once, had heard the phone ring twice, had nothing of importance to say to him, and had hung up, too impatient to get the operator back to leave a message. Or it might even mean that Murphy hadn’t called at all.

“I had to go to Nice,” Craig said, “to pick up Anne.”

“God,” Murphy said, “this is Anne! I wondered where you’d found the beauty. Turn your back for a minute on a scrawny little freckled kid and look what happens.”