Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (39 page)

She didn’t answer at first. At last she said, “Did you come here to—to make me still more unhappy?”

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?” he countered.

“I’m trying to find out why you came to see me.”

He stared back at her. “God knows,” he said wearily. “Isn’t it enough if I’m still in love with you?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “That would have been enough.”

“You don’t believe I am?”

“I don’t know, any more. I don’t know.”

I don’t know... Words repeated less than two hours ago, repeated honestly, repeated damningly. But how could I guess, Ettley was thinking, how could I guess they were so damning? People said, “I don’t know,” and that was the end of questioning. But no one could say, “I don’t know,” to Comrade Peter. Only the positive could live. The negative mind was the enemy, the potential traitor.

“You don’t know,” he repeated softly. “But you go on living.”

She turned her head and looked out of the window, if only to avoid watching his face. He needs me, she was thinking, or he wouldn’t have come here.

“Still admiring the view?” he asked. He went forward to the window. He stood for a moment looking out on the city. “Every time I’ve come here, you’ve looked at that pyramid of cement as if it were made of diamonds. That’s what it is, a pyramid of diamonds, a cenotaph built on men’s blood and men’s hopes.” He turned away and came back to the couch. “Yes,” he was saying, “it is easy to be well balanced if you look at the pretty things and ignore the cruelty beside them. All you allow yourself to see is the stars in the sky, Rona. That’s the way. Keep your eyes fixed on the stars and you can escape.” He pointed suddenly to the lighted windows outside. “But do you think of what they hide? Beyond those lights are filthy slums, ugliness, and squalor. Below them, are garbage cans and sewers. Do you remember that, too?” He shook his head, “You don’t, Rona. You don’t.”

She looked at him curiously. “What’s wrong with you, Scott?”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s all you can say... I tell you about injustice and all you can say is ‘What’s wrong with you?’ That’s what’s wrong with all of you, Rona.”

“All of me?” She was trying to smile, trying to make a small joke.

But he didn’t smile. He was looking at her almost accusingly.

“What am I supposed to symbolise? All the evils of civilisation?” she asked, still trying to keep her voice light. “Oh, Scott—this is fantastic. You look out of a window and see a prosperous city and you are plunged in gloom. Then you talk as if people like me had no imagination, no sympathy at all. As if we didn’t realise that those roofs covered a lot of differences—people who are miserable, people who are carefree, people who are hungry as well as people who are overfed, people who are planning holidays and parties, people who are planning theft and murder.”

He stared at her. His face was expressionless. He sat motionless. Suddenly, he buried his head in his hands.

“Scott!” She rose and came over to him. She knelt beside him, taking his hands, trying to pull them gently down from his face. “Scott, what’s wrong? Tell me. Perhaps that is all you need—to tell someone. You didn’t come up here to argue with me, did you? Or read me a lesson?”

“No,” he said, raising his head at last. He looked round the peaceful room, the secure little room, and then his eyes rested on Rona. “I came here to—to argue with myself. I trust you, Rona. You are the only person I can trust.” He touched her shoulder, and slowly his grip tightened until his fingers sank to the bone and she flinched with pain. Then, suddenly, he let go. He rose, pushing her away from him. He walked over to the window. He pulled the curtains roughly together.

“Scott,” she asked imploringly, “what is wrong?”

“Don’t ask questions, don’t ask any questions,” he said sharply. “You must trust me, Rona, as I trust you.”

She said nothing.

He was watching the expression on her face. “I’ve only done what is right,” he said slowly.

“Then...” She looked at him helplessly.

“Then I have nothing to worry about?” He was angry again, angry with his own weakness. “Where’s that glass?” he asked, and found it, and poured himself another drink.

“It’s all right,” he said bitterly, “I am not drunk.” He walked over to the fireplace. His stride was steady enough, but his hand shook a little and he placed the glass on the mantelpiece almost too carefully.

He had stood there so often, Rona was thinking, even as he was standing now. Unconsciously, he had fallen into the same old attitude, his head bowed, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece, one hand smoothing his hair. But his face held an expression she had never seen before. He had the look of a man trying to escape, of a man seeing no escape. Oh, Scott, she said to herself, what is happening to you? But she kept silent. Her lips trembled. For the second time that night, her eyes were stung by hot tears. Scott Ettley looked up at that moment, looked at her face. She turned her head quickly away, but not quickly enough.

“Rona!” he said impulsively, and he took a step forward. For a moment his face softened, his eyes were filled with compassion and anguish. Then he checked himself. “No,” he said. “No!” He stood there, quite still, as if the effort to master himself had left him lifeless.

I should never have come here, he was thinking. It was madness to come. And why did I? To get strength, to find reassurance. But I’ve only weakened myself. All I want to say is, “Rona, leave everything, come away with me, tonight, tomorrow we’ll go. To Mexico, Canada. There’s Brazil, there’s the whole of America. We’ll begin again. We’ll escape.” But there’s no escape. Escape is weakness, escape is a delusion haunted by fears.

He said, “Do you still love me, Rona?” He waited for the answer, hoping for it, steeling himself against it. The moment of delusion and weakness was over. He could thrust his hand into the flame and watch it burn.

But the answer did not come. Instead, she said unhappily, “It isn’t easy to break old loyalties.”

“Loyalties...” he said slowly. “Is that all you feel for me?” Then his voice quickened and grew bitter. “And when would you break them? Tonight? Tomorrow? But you would call that treachery, wouldn’t you?”

“Treachery?” She was startled.

“Wouldn’t you?” he insisted.

“Treachery is a pretty strong word, Scott. It depends on—well, on what inspires your loyalties.”

“My loyalties?”

“I was using the word ‘your’ in a general way,” she said patiently. “
Anyone’s
loyalties, Scott.” I can’t bear this, she thought. I can’t sit here and watch Scott kill our love, adding pain on pain. Yet I have to wait, I have to let him talk in this savage bitter way. He needs help. I can’t turn him away.

She glanced at the clock and his eyes followed hers. It was almost half-past ten. He looked down at his wrist watch.

“No,” she said gently, “the clock isn’t slow. It’s always on time.”

“On time,” he repeated. He wasn’t speaking to her. Then he said quickly, urgently, “Go on, Rona.”

“Go on?”

“When is treachery? When isn’t it?”

“But Scott—”

“Go on!”

She hesitated, trying to remember what she had been saying. “Well,” she began, “I suppose you can shift from some loyalties without betraying them. I mean, if you—if someone finds that he has been loyal to a delusion, then I wouldn’t call it treachery when he sees his mistake and admits it. If he stayed loyal to something that was false, knowing it was false, then he would only start betraying himself.”

Scott Ettley shook his head, as if that wasn’t the answer he had wanted. He walked slowly across the room and poured himself another drink. Rona watched him anxiously.

“Scott,” she began, but again he drank quickly and then stared down at the empty glass in his hand.

“Scott, let’s have a walk. It’s cooler outside. This room gets so—”

“But what if this man betrays something that is good?” Scott demanded. He turned to face her, and he brushed against a small table almost upsetting it. His voice had thickened. He spoke harshly. “What if—what if he betrays something good?” He laid the empty glass down on the desk, as if he had decided to drink no more. He walked away from it. “Rona, you aren’t answering me.”

“But I don’t know what this man has betrayed,” she said. “What is it? Friendship or—or love? Or his country?”

“Is that all you see in life, is that all?” He spoke contemptuously. He began to laugh.

She said angrily, “The only answers I can give are very simple. I know that. But does that make them false?”

He didn’t seem to hear her words. He was saying, “Tonight—tonight a man was condemned. As a traitor. He is a traitor. I know him. He has been my friend. Yet he is a traitor.”

She was suddenly afraid. She couldn’t explain why. She said, “Condemned? But, Scott, we don’t execute traitors. Certainly not in peacetime. We don’t even send them to the salt mines.”

He stared at her for a moment. Then he looked at the clock again. Twenty-five minutes to eleven. Too little time to think, too much time to wait. But why had they chosen him? So that there would be no turning back, ever? Didn’t they trust him? He was loyal, he had given them every proof. But this one last proof was too much to ask, too much. Didn’t they see that? Yes, they did. That was why they had demanded it. That was why he must give it. The impossible proof was the final proof. By this, he would be measured. By this, he could measure himself.

He said, “To betray a traitor is not treachery. Is it, Rona? And if he dies, then no one is to blame.”

She was watching him uneasily. She was trying to control her rising fears. “Has this man been tried and found guilty?”

“Yes. He is guilty.” That, at least, was clear and becoming clearer.

“Is he already dead?” she asked suddenly. “And you are tormenting yourself by thinking you might have helped him as a friend? Is it Charles, Scott? But Charles wasn’t a traitor. Please believe me, Scott... Charles wasn’t a traitor.”

“Charles?” he asked, coming slowly back from his long journey. “Charles?”

“I sometimes wonder if they killed him. In a sense, they did.”

“Who are ‘they’?” He took a step forward, watching her face.

“I don’t know,” she said in sudden panic.

“No,” he said slowly, “it isn’t Charles I’m talking about.”

He turned and walked toward the door. “I can’t think straight. I was a fool to come here. I’ve only upset you.” Then he halted, still as uncertain in his movements as in his thoughts. “That walk you mentioned,” he said. “Are you coming?” Our last walk together, he thought, my last piece of sentimental nonsense.

She watched the pain and hopelessness in his face. He can’t go alone, she thought, not like this. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll come if you want me to. But have you time? It’s nearly a quarter of eleven.” She rose and went into the bedroom.

“Time? Why shouldn’t I have time?” He had followed her. He was standing at the door, looking around the green and white bedroom as if he were remembering. Kill the memories, he told himself. Memories are bad for you, Ettley; kill them and be free. He looked at the girl combing her dark soft hair before the mirror. Her arms were slender and white. Was she remembering, too?

She was saying, “I thought you must have an appointment tonight.” Then she saw his face in the mirror. “You kept looking so anxiously at the clock,” she explained, sensing that she had made some mistake. As she watched him, her fear grew. Fear for him. Not fear for herself.

“I haven’t got any appointment,” he said, his voice rising abruptly. Then just as abruptly he turned away and walked towards the front door.

She listened to his footsteps in the hall. Something is so far wrong, she thought, that I can’t even begin to understand it.

In the hall, the door opened and closed.

She picked up her coat and her purse. She ran after him. As she shut the door, the telephone rang. She paid no attention. “Scott,” she called, “wait!”

* * *

Outside the house, he braced himself. “This is better,” he said, looking at the dark silent street, feeling the cool night air on his brow. He paused for a few moments and gripped the railing. He breathed deeply. “That’s better,” he said. He began walking, not too steadily. Behind him he heard running footsteps.

He halted as she caught up with him.

“You aren’t running away from me tonight,” he said. “Where’s your temper, Rona? Where’s your pride?” Then he walked on, without waiting for an answer, plunging along the dark street as if he saw nothing ahead of him. She followed him.

“Why did you come?” he asked truculently, his pace quickening.

“I thought you needed help,” she said simply.

“Oh, so this is your night for pity.”

“Please, Scott!”

“You thought you would walk me round a couple of blocks and sober me up. And that would solve everything?” he asked mockingly.

“I don’t think that would solve anything.”

The quiet answer seemed to pacify him. He said something which she couldn’t hear, perhaps wasn’t intended to hear. His pace increased so that she had to hurry to keep up with him. She hadn’t had time yet to put on her coat.

They crossed Lexington and then Park. At Madison, the lights were against them, and he turned impatiently to walk up the avenue. He stared straight ahead of him, his eyes fixed on nothing. He paid no attention to the bright shop windows, or to the people who passed by. Yet he was walking purposefully, as if he knew where he was going. They crossed Fifty-ninth Street, still following. Madison Avenue, still hurrying blindly northward along blocks that were now quieter, darker.

“This is better,” he said again, as they neared Sixty-fifth Street. His head had cleared; he was in control of himself once more. “You’ll catch cold,” he told her, stopping abruptly, helping her to put on her coat. Then they were walking on, once more. But the furious pace had slackened. The direction seemed less decided, too. At Sixty-seventh Street, he hesitated and then crossed the avenue. There, he hesitated again. Rona glanced at him, and he was quick to notice. “You can stop worrying,” he said, “I’m all right now.” A smile flickered over his grim, unhappy face. He began walking westward.