The Hothouse by the East River (11 page)

Paul
fishes out his note-case and extracts a note, his fingers like pincers.

‘Goodbye
now, thanks, lady, you’re welcome,’ says the porter as he leaves.

‘Garven
only wants to help you,’ Paul says. ‘What a lame, lame, statement. I feel I
want to help it over a stile,’ Elsa says.

Paul
says to Garven, ‘She’s in that sort of a mood.’

‘We
thought you might be catching a late plane, Elsa,’ says Garven, feeling his
unshaved chin.

‘I
waited for your call, Elsa,’ Paul says.

She
goes into the drawing-room flanked by her walking shadow and followed by Paul
and Garven. ‘Pretend I’m poor,’ she says. ‘Poor and crazy; just of no account.’

‘Would
you like some coffee, Elsa?’ Garven says.

‘Yes,
please,’ she says.

Garven
flaps off in. his gown and slippers while Paul sits down, watching her.

He
says, ‘Pierre’s play opens tonight. He kept seats for us in case we could make
it. I said I’d let him know if you arrived in time.’

‘We
could let him think I haven’t arrived yet.’

‘We
should go and see our son’s play. It should be a success.’

‘Whose
play? I thought
Peter Pan
was written by J. M. Barrie.’

‘Yes,
but the production is Pierre’s idea. All old people. Very original, you must
hand him that.’

‘I’ll
think about it,’ she says. ‘I’ll see how I feel when I get back from my
shopping.’

‘You
look well.’

‘Thanks.
I’m on a new diet. Over-ripe tomatoes. Very rejuvenating.’ She presses the
service bell, leans back her head and closes her eyes. After a while Garven
comes in with a coffee-tray. ‘Did you ring?’ he says.

Elsa
opens her eyes. ‘I want some over-ripe tomatoes for my new diet.’

‘Over-ripe?
— Not merely ripe?’

‘Mushy.
The bacteria have a rejuvenating effect.’

‘Those
Swiss cures,’ says Garven, ‘are … um, well…’

‘She
looks all right,’ says Paul. ‘My wife looks good.’

‘Where
would I buy rotten tomatoes?’ Garven says, looking straight at her shadow.

‘Get me
the Princess Xavier on the phone,’ Elsa says. ‘She has plenty of everything.’

Elsa
comes into the drawing-room. Paul gasps. She is wearing a flame-coloured crepe
evening dress. with dark beads gleaming at the hem and wrists. She wears a
necklace and earrings made of diamonds and rubies. Her fingers are a complex of
the same sparkling stones. She is wearing a diamond bracelet. She is saying
‘good evening’ to Paul while he gasps, and to Garven while he stares. Paul is
wearing casual black trousers, a green. velvet coat and a black turtle-neck
sweater. Garven wears a brown tweed coat, light fawn trousers and a shirt of
blue and fawn check, open at the neck, where, inside the collar, a small dark
blue silk scarf is knotted.

Paul
speaks. ‘You can’t go like that, Elsa,’ he says. ‘You’ll be lynched. You’ll be
robbed. Do you realise where the theatre is? It’s somewhere off Houston Street
away downtown.’

‘It’s
the opening night,’ Elsa says. ‘My son’s play by J. M. Barrie.’

‘Elsa,’
says Garven, ‘this job is too much for me.’

‘You
make more as my butler than you ever did as a doctor,’ she says. ‘However, if
you want a raise I can give you a raise.’

‘I
don’t want even. to be your analyst any more, ‘Garven says. ‘It isn’t a
question of money, it’s a question that you’re eating away my life in nibbles. A
nibble here and a nibble there. Sometimes I wake in the morning and wonder if
I’m still alive.’

‘Now
you know what it’s like,’ Paul says. ‘I’ve had a lifetime of it.’

She
looks at herself in the gold-framed oval glass, touches the jewels on each ear
and says, ‘You leave this house without a stain on. your character. Don’t you
like my dress? I borrowed the jewels from Van Cleef. They’re not fake, though.
It’s just that it was too much trouble going to the bank, and there wasn’t
really time to arrange for the detective-escort. I’d like a vodka tonic.’ She
sits down. ‘Van. Cleef usually oblige.’

‘You
look like something from the Garment District. What do you want to carry that
big crocodile bag for?’

‘It’s
Poppy’s bag. I promised to return it. I borrowed it months ago to carry some
shoes in that I wanted copied at my shoemaker.’

The
front door rings.

‘There’s
Poppy, it must be her. Garven, open the door for the Princess, and I would like
a drink.’

The
bell rings again, louder, and Garven, shaking himself out of his state of
near-hypnosis, jerks his gaze away from Elsa, turns and goes to open the door.

‘Elsa,’
says Paul. ‘This is a very small theatre in a very back street. It’s not only
off-Broadway, it’s very off-off-Broadway. Experimental. Don’t you understand?’

In
sails the Princess Xavier, shedding her sable wraps, to reveal herself in. many
folds of fair lace and flesh. She, too, is bearing a selection. of jewels about
her person, and although they are less new and floodlit than Elsa’s, some of
the diamonds being of the old cut which blacken through time, still, the total
effect evidently does not strike Paul and Garven as being suitable. Paul stands
perfectly still. Garven disappears with a frightened glance and can be heard
treading softly towards the kitchen. as if he cannot believe the sound of his
footsteps in his own ears. He can then be heard emptying ice from the tray into
the ice-bucket.

Meanwhile,
the embraces between. the Princess and Elsa, fraught with wafts of lace and
spangles like a little Dance of the Seven Veils, are taking place. ‘It must be
a proud evening for you, Elsa,’ says the Princess as she gathers her robes
about her, finally, on the sofa.

‘I came
back by jet, I chartered a jet, specially to make it,’ Elsa says, sitting
beside her on the sofa, erect with her body turned towards the reclining
Princess and half of her behind overlapping the sofa’s edge. Elsa at the same
time droops her eyelids, inclines her head romantically, and sighs. Then she
turns round and makes herself comfortable, pounding the cushions into place
behind her.

‘You
know, Poppy,’ she says, ‘I’ve been thinking. My psyche is like a skyscraper,
stretching up and up, practically all glass and steel so that one can look out
over everything, and one never bends.’

Paul
sits down opposite them. ‘Garven would be sorry to miss that bit,’ he says.
Garven can be heard returning. He comes in with a tray and a bucket of
ice-cubes.

‘Are
you feeling better?’ says the Princess to Garven.. Paul jumps up and busies
himself with the drinks, while Garven, putting down the tray, hesitates what
to reply.

‘You
look all right, really,’ says the Princess.

‘I
haven’t been sick,’ Garven says.

‘That’s
the attitude I like to hear,’ the Princess says. ‘One should always conceal
one’s problems.’

‘What
problems?’ Garven says.

‘Poppy,
what will you drink?’ says Paul, while Elsa laughs a little, then. stops.
‘Poppy,’ Elsa says, ‘you are skating on thin. ice.’

‘For
you, also, vodka?’ Paul says to the Princess. His heart’s panic begins to rotate;
I’m on the wrong train., he silently screams, an. express train going miles in
the opposite direction. from where I want to go, and I can’t get off.

‘You’re
all mad,’ says Garven, looking defiantly at Paul as if lacking the courage to
direct himself at Elsa.

‘A rye
on the rocks for me,’., says the Princess. ‘I left your rotten tomatoes on the
hall table. How do you eat them? Do they go through the blender?’

‘There’s
a special process,’ Elsa says.

‘Well,
I’m quitting,’ Garven says. ‘So you needn’t explain your special process to
me.’

‘The
last time I came here,’ says the Princess, ‘Garven gave in his notice. I
clearly remember.’

‘No,
that was the maid. She never came back,’ says Elsa.

‘Oh,
Garven or the maid, one of them,’ says the Princess. ‘You can’t count on anyone
these days, can you?’ She has taken her drink from Paul who now gives Elsa her
vodka and tonic. He looks at his watch.

‘We’ve
got time,’ says Elsa.

‘It
starts at seven-thirty,’ Paul says. ‘Hadn’t you better go and change?’

‘Certainly
not,’ Elsa says. ‘Imagine,’ she says to the Princess, ‘it’s my son’s opening
night and he wants me to go dressed like a hippy. He should be wearing a dark
suit, at least.’

‘I
always dress,’ says the Princess. ‘Always have done and always will.’

Suddenly
Garven moves towards them, then stops. He opens his mouth wide, then says in a
high-pitched top note, ‘Sick!’ He then shuts his mouth tight and turns to pour
himself out a trembling drink.

‘Garven,’
says the Princess as they stand waiting for Elsa to get her coat, ‘I can. get
you a remarkable job with a very delightful couple who have a triplex at
Sixty-eighth and Park. Everything they have is an
objet d’art
including
the teaspoons.’

‘Thanks,
I’m going back to my practice,’ Garven says, and sighs.

‘He’s a
professional man,’ says Paul.

‘I’ve
wasted time,’ says Garven. ‘If she wants my services in future, she’ll have to
come to my office.’

Paul
takes out his handkerchief and pats his forehead here and there. ‘This
apartment kills me,’ he says. ‘It’s antiquated. The heat’s terrible. You can’t
control it. Poppy, can’t you talk to Elsa about moving to a new apartment? I’ve
tried for years. She won’t listen to me.’

‘One
gets attached to one’s home,’ Poppy says. ‘Can’t you have it fixed? Open the
window.’

‘It’s
open,’ says Paul. ‘But the heat wins.’

Garven
says, ‘I’d have all the air-conditioners turned on full if I had my way.’

‘She
likes the heat in winter,’ says Paul. ‘It’s good for the palm tree,’ says the
Princess, looking at the flourishing plants in the corner.

‘I tell
you what, Poppy,’ says Paul. ‘She has too much money. Some women can’t take it.
In the old days when she didn’t have so much she was more amenable to reason.’

‘Ha,
ha, so was I,’ says the Princess. ‘But I’m healthier and happier now, and so is
Elsa.’

‘I
agree with Paul,’ says Garven. ‘Not on every point, but on this one.’

Elsa
calls out from the hall. ‘Come on, I’m ready.’ Princess Xavier is carefully
handled out of her hollow on the sofa by Paul and Garven and is escorted to the
hall where Elsa is waiting.

‘You
can’t go like that,’ Paul says. Elsa is wearing a long coat of white fox fur.
‘I bought it in Paris,’ she says, ‘for this occasion.’

‘I
believe in. style,’ says Princess Xavier, who, with the help of Garven is being
enfolded in her voluminous sable coverings which give off little wafts of
something that smells like a strange incense, but is in reality a mixture of
camphor and a scent named
Diane du Bois.
How long, cries Paul in his
heart, will these people, this city, haunt me? ‘Elsa,’ he says, ‘be yourself.
Just be yourself, I ask you.’

They
are driving through the streets in Princess Xavier’s Rolls. A long journey
through the traffic, with the Princess’s chauffeur muttering quietly all the
way down Second Avenue. He stops to let them off at a convenient corner,
conspicuously. And nervously Paul and Garven propel the women in haste along
the narrow pavements. A girl tries to block Elsa’s path, saying in a slow
solemn voice, ‘That is too much,’ but Paul pushes his wife ahead causing the
girl to stumble and bump into Garven who follows with the Princess. ‘Wait a
minute,’ says the girl to Garven, but he waits not at all, barging past the
other pedestrians with his charge, the breathless Princess. Paul is watching
the street numbers with shifty eyes. He stops at a doorway between a delicatessen
shop and a Mexican. art gallery. A woman comes to the door of the delicatessen,
followed by a young boy. ‘They robbed their grandmother’s tomb,’ says the
woman.

‘This
must be it,’ says Paul, pushing Elsa through a doorway between the two shops
where a sign-board announces:

Very
Much Club

Advanced
Theatre.

Followed
by Garven and the Princess they file along a bright-lit passage to a curtained
doorway. Here, tickets are being collected and sold by two lean. young men who
are accompanied by a group of supporters. One of them is Pierre who has now
grown a small beard and is wearing a white turtle-necked sweater and red velvet
trousers. His friend, beefy Peregrine, with Katerina leaning on him in a stupefied
way, stands by. Peregrine says to Pierre, ‘Here comes your tribe.’

A girl
holding a bundle of programmes comes forward to greet them. ‘Good evening,’ she
says. ‘I’m Alice.’ A young man standing beside her says, ‘I’m Ken.’

‘Really?’
says Elsa. ‘You don’t look it.’