The Honeyed Peace (12 page)

At night, in his room, feeling his legs heavy and his body pleasantly worn out from the day's travels, he tried talking to Raumwitz. There was a great deal to talk about until he put it into words, whereupon it sounded poor and ill considered. He had always thought he had a good brain, but talking to the absent Raumwitz in the empty room, he saw that his mind was a filing-case for babble.

'Are you interested in history, Doctor?' he had inquired, with some idea of beguiling the doctor back. 'I'm not. You know why?' He could imagine the doctor's eyes, saying in silence: Who cares why? Obstinately, Hendricks went on, 'Because people make the history they like and want and need. I used to think the human race was a large victim, fooled and terrorized by leaders; but I don't anymore. I've met a lot of the leaders; they are nothing but the human race too, masquerading. Perhaps leaders lie to themselves even more than we do, about motives and their own virtue. But you know, they are something we invent, so we deserve them. No one leads us out of the desert for the simple reason that we are crazy about the desert, that's where we want to stay. I beg your pardon?' For by then Hendricks felt he saw Raumwitz although the room was totally given over to furniture and rugs and curtains. Raumwitz, Hendricks was certain, had snorted in mockery. 'All right,' he said, 'you say something; put me straight if you're so sure I don't know what I'm talking about.' He was confused in his feelings about the doctor, outraged by this betrayal but also anxious to please. Why had Raumwitz appeared if only to make himself at once necessary and unavailable?

He tried many subjects, as if he were putting crumbs on the; window-sill to lure a bird. He explained to the doctor that love had obviously been invented by writers, it was far too unnatural not to be a work of art; conceivably women might love their children, when the children were small and helpless, beyond that the emotion was fake, it came from reading books. The doctor could not have been concerned with love, for he stayed resolutely away. Nor was he attracted by literature although Hendricks pleadingly assured the room that he knew a lot about writing and had valuable ideas. Hendricks' dreams, remembered with effort and recounted with clarity, did not appeal to the doctor; he was gone; his voice asked no morning question, his fish eyes behind the polished glasses were observing elsewhere. Bored with me, Hendricks thought, and found this rejection unbearable. Dr Raumwitz had proved to him that he was a man of no interest whatever. He came home later and waked earlier; he was eager for morning when he could again enter his slow walking dream.

June was so worried that she talked to her friends; this was against her code. Without ever having thought of it, she knew she had no friends but only accomplices, everyone would be embarrassed or revolted by a problem.

She talked to Angela Boyd, who was perhaps the kindest of the many people she knew. 'Matthew is seeing a doctor; I gather a psychiatrist. He won't tell me anything about him. I never heard the man's name before; you know, Angela, a person like Matthew could fall into the hands of some crook and be simply ruined. You know the hold psychiatrists get over people. This man of Matthew's is a German; I never trust Germans. Matthew is getting stranger every day; he only comes home to sleep; I have no idea where he spends his time or whom he sees.'

Angela Boyd, studying her Martini and frowning reliably, because she enjoyed other people's troubles, said, 'The thing to do, darling, is to get him to see someone reputable. I've heard of a wonderful man, Renée de Chastaigne was telling me about him. It seems that Jean Louis Gratz, you remember him, had a complete nervous breakdown and this man got him out of it. He has a sort of clinic; I'll get all the gen about it for you. I've always thought Matty was almost too calm; it's people like that who keep everything inside who break up. It's certainly nothing serious but you're quite right, he oughtn't to be consulting some quack.'

Johnny Fitch thought Matthew needed a change of scene; they could all trundle off somewhere, be gay; the only catch was weather; unless they turned right round and went to Mexico, they would find every place chilly or windy or damp. Nothing was such hell for instance as the Middle East or North Africa in November.

Alain Clermont thought Matthew was engaged in an enviable sinister love affair; had involved himself with a whore, preferably Chinese or Russian, and was having an orgy. Alain Clermont inquired, with tact, whether Matthew was spending a great deal of money and was amused that June hadn't thought of this before. They had a common cheque account; Matthew used almost no money at all.

Hendricks finally came home with a teeth-chattering, trembling chill; he looked sunken in, white-faced with a reddish tip to his nose and reddish eyes; he had been walking in the rain for several days, he had not eaten enough for weeks. June telephoned Dr Dupré, delighted to have a verifiable sickness on her hands, a known doctor, and Matthew safely stuck in bed. The cold got worse rapidly; Dr Dupré said Matthew's general condition was poor. Upon questioning June, Dr Dupré made clucking sounds about the excessive use of sedatives, Matthew was very thin, had no appetite now of course with fever, did not respond to the modern cure-all drugs. He seemed well on the way to pneumonia; Dr Dupré sent a nurse. It was the nurse who reported delirium.

'Mr Hendricks talks to a man, a doctor called Raumwitz,' she said. 'He jokes with him; then he tries to shock him.' She smiled at Dr Dupré with the tolerance born of her business and his: the sick, one way or another, were lamentable children. 'Women,' she said. 'And then Mr Hendricks becomes very excited and angry and shouts at this Dr Raumwitz and asks him why he hasn't been to see him.'

June, hearing this from Dr Dupré, said, 'I knew it. It's all the fault of that ghastly German, I think Matthew has been going to see him every day. A psychiatrist.'

Dr Dupré looked up Dr Raumwitz in the medical directory and could find no such name; June was enraged. 'A cheat, a fraud, not even a doctor. What
can
have gotten into Matthew?'

'We must presume your husband is in a temporarily unstable nervous condition, Mrs Hendricks. The first thing is to cure this respiratory infection; after that, he should have competent psychiatric advice.'

June telephoned Angela Boyd and asked her please, at once, to get all the information about the doctor who had helped Jean Louis Gratz. Dr Dupré vouched for this man, yes indeed, he knew his work, excellent man, a modified, adaptable, elastic Freudian; he'd had occasion to consult with him on a patient suffering from psychosomatic asthma, Mrs Hendricks could feel confidence in Dr Mersling. His clinic, in Neuilly, was charming, modern, and comfortable; a rest cure there would be highly desirable, as soon as Mr Hendricks threw off this present infection.

Hendricks woke one morning feeling cool and weak; he knew he had been ill, but did not know for how long nor care, since time no longer mattered, it was at once limitless, stationary, and insignificant. He was surprised to see the nurse and disliked her hygienic face and the sprouting mole on her chin. He would stay in bed, he assured June, as long as necessary but not if that homely woman was rustling around. The nurse was changed. Hendricks seemed passive and good-natured; when June suggested that he go to a nursing home for his convalescence, since the period after pneumonia, or whatever he'd had, was known to be tricky, he said, 'Fine,' as if she had suggested going to the theatre. She arranged to take him, in four days, to Dr Mersling's clinic. In advance, she called on Dr Mersling,whom she found so attractive that she wished she needed a little mental care herself.

Dr Mersling was tall, dark, always bending slightly to hear or perhaps to comfort, immensely quiet, with a gentle smile and caressing brown eyes. June explained about the unknown dishonourable Dr Raumwitz, who had caught her husband in a weak moment and done him serious harm; he wasn't himself at all anymore.

'But I do feel that he trusts this man, 'June said. 'It will be difficult for you, Doctor; my husband seems to depend on this horrible Dr Raumwitz. I haven't told him you were a psychiatrist.'

Dr Mersling understood. Dr Mersling was much more helpful than one's father had ever been. Wildly good-looking, June thought in the cab going home, an absolute charmer; I wonder if .one can invite him to dinner when this mess is over.

Hendricks, well bundled up in a polo coat and muffler, with a rug around his knees, stared without interest through the taxi window, seeing this city he had so blindly and carefully walked over. The clinic was a large cream-coloured square stucco house in a garden. Once he was inside, it became immediately a clinic by virtue of its imposing cleanliness; it did not smell but looked disinfected. Dr Mersling, in a white medical blouse with a stand-up collar, came to the door to greet them. Hendricks eyed him with understanding and amusement. He realized at once that this handsome sympathetic fellow was a psychiatrist; he wanted to laugh. If they imagined he would talk to the chap, they couldn't be more wrong. He had had the only psychiatrist he was ever going to consult. Hendricks listened with patient boredom while June and Dr Mersling made stage conversation about his health. Dr Mersling was full of feather-soft assurance; Mr Hendricks would be on his feet, good as new, in no time at all; ready to work again on those books they all admired; Mr Hendricks had nothing to worry about. They had reserved a corner room, Dr Mersling hoped the Hendricks would think it as pleasant as he did, perhaps they would like to come up now, it might be best for Mr Hendricks to get settled in bed. Hendricks was too tired to laugh alone; he would have liked someone to share this joke. He thought with longing and affection of Dr Raumwitz who had the grace to say nothing, being such a smart operator that he knew all talk was useless, people did not reach each other through words; maybe Dr Raumwitz was sure they did not reach each other in any way.

Hendricks shifted his feet, glanced idly around the restful entrance hall, and saw, on a chintz easy-chair in a nest of rubber plants, Dr Raumwitz, comfortable, motionless, and silent as usual. Hendricks was careful to make no sign of recognition or show his delight. Dr Raumwitz was not looking at Hendricks but at Dr Mersling. His eyes were glaucous and despising as always, but there was more in them; Dr Raumwitz was entranced; Dr Raumwitz was laughing at his colleague too.

ABOUT SHORTY

I do not remember her name. She had a pug-dog face and she was twenty-five years old. A pug-dog face is not necessarily unattractive. She was sunburned and had small square teeth; when she smiled her gums showed. She smiled, she laughed, she giggled. And her gums showed and her snub nose wrinkled and her round blue eyes, with the light eyelashes, looked confidingly upon the world. Her hair was very blonde and cut short; the job seemed to have been done with nail-scissors. The hair was not thick, ragged, but fluffy. She was of what they call medium height and she had a good body. Men would notice this but women, deceived by the unpainted face, would not consider it.

What can her name have been? Trudi perhaps, only it wasn't Trudi. It was a German nickname, ending in i, the kind of nickname that made you think of 'Shorty '. I have to call her something. She now becomes Shorty.

They brought her to my hotel room, in Madrid, one late afternoon in the winter of 1937. I was feeling sorry for myself as I had flu and had been abandoned while everyone went out to look at the war. The men were far too merry for my taste; they had found Shorty somewhere and were enjoying themselves. She giggled at their jokes; she listened in awe to their knowledgeable war prophecies; they had observed her shape with satisfaction. There was little amusement in Madrid that winter, less food, and all we ever had for entertainment was each other and anyone else we could dig up. Women were scarce too, foreign women who understood English especially. I thought I was prettier than Shorty but not as successful. I would not have been able to giggle so enthusiastically at such mediocre jokes. The men were showing off. I disliked Shorty, for a lot of instant virtuous reasons, because I was jealous.

After a while they went away, looking for a room that had liquor in it and a more welcoming host. Later that night Jim Russell came back and told me about Shorty. She was, it seemed, a good girl. She was a German, as Aryan as can be, married to another German who was a Jew. Her husband was a doctor in one of the International Brigades. We all knew him. We thought he was the finest man in Spain. We could not have said why, except that he was not dramatic; he was funny; he never talked about the Cause; he did not spare himself, slaving with less than the minimum of equipment to help the wounded, who were numerous enough. His name was Otto, I remember that. Shorty had been working near Valencia in a home for the newly created orphans of Madrid. They were an admirable couple, unlike the rest of us, who had passports and salaries and were attending this war in the rare modern capacity of Press tourists. In Spain, in those days, you felt like a profiteer and a monster if you had cigarettes, let alone a passport and any other place to go when you got sick of this.

Someone gave or bought Shorty a dress. She had been more alluring really, in a sort of Elizabeth Bergner way, when she arrived in blue dungarees and the ragged boy's haircut. Her hair grew and she curled it; she used lipstick and presently mascara. She turned very womanly. She should have stayed in Valencia, where she knew what she was about. Otto was nearly always at the front. And Shorty liked to have a good time, was obliging, grateful, humble, and not weighed down with intelligence.

When we first heard or saw or guessed that Shorty had become the mistress of a Russian journalist, my gentlemen war-correspondent friends were surprisingly angry. It appeared they had all been honourable and undemanding because of Otto, because they loved Otto, and now this lousy little tart was cheating on him and he would certainly find out and it would break his heart. The men did not blame the Russian, of course; he was only doing what anyone would do, if you didn't happen to know Otto.