The Hothouse by the East River (16 page)

‘Come
away,’ Paul says to his wife. ‘Come away, love, they’re all dead.’ He squeezes
past the next table to reach for Elsa’s sable coat. He presses it round her
shoulders and pulls her arm, lifting her to her feet. ‘Being dead’s a drug,’ he
says, ‘you’ll get hooked on it.’

‘You
always said you were coming to America after the war,’ Colonel Tylden says.
‘And so you did. I never thought you would.’

Elsa
wriggles into her coat, laughing lightly.

‘Are
you going, Elsa?’ the Princess says. ‘Can I give you a lift? My car will be
here at ten-thirty. Where are you going? The streets are dangerous.’

Elsa’s
hand is in Paul’s and he is drawing her towards the door, where he stops to
collect his coat. While he puts it on she stands patiently waiting, smiling in
a very amused way towards the table she has left. Paul takes her arm and they
go out into ‘West Fifty-fifth Street.

‘If we
walk over to Fifth we’ll get a cab,’ Paul says.

At the
corner of Sixth Avenue they stop at the traffic lights. ‘Do you know I think
those characters are following,’ Elsa says without looking round.

Paul
glances behind. The group are standing at the kerb outside the bar. Princess
Xavier’s Rolls passes at this moment, and as Paul watches, the driver pulls up
outside the bar and gets out. The

Princess
is helped and eased into the back seat with her wraps. The three men pile in
without looking in Paul’s direction; the driver returns to his seat and drives
west with the one-way traffic towards Seventh Avenue.

Paul
turns again to Elsa and takes her arm. ‘I doubt if they’re following us. They
didn’t look. They’ve gone,’ he says. But he stops again to see if, at Seventh
Avenue, the car turns the corner, which it does.

He
takes Elsa’s arm. ‘It could be that they’ll turn. the block to meet us,’ Paul
says. The lights at Sixth Avenue have changed and they cross quickly, his hand
on Elsa’s arm and her feet skipping light-heartedly. When they reach the
opposite pavement she says, ‘Oh, they’ll follow us, all right,’ but she doesn’t
look back.

Still
holding her arm Paul stops at a bright-lit doorway. ‘We can go in here for a
while. It looks like some kind of a nightspot,’ he says.

The
nightspot goes by the name of The Personality Cult, announced in. mauve and
green lights. Through the door a blue-carpeted staircase descends below
street-level to a man in evening clothes who takes the money.

Mirrored
walls reflect them in a dim rosy light. They are passed to the coat-check
counter and then to an usher who opens a pink-lit shiny door. Paul propels Elsa
through the doorway after the man. They come upon. a sunburst of colour, sound
and movement. Paul stops to blink for a moment while Elsa, ahead, turns back to
beckon him on. When he catches up with her she says, ‘This deadly body of mine
can dance, too.’

‘All
right, all right,’ Paul says. “We’ll dance.’

VIII

‘After the war,’ Paul is
saying, ‘Elsa and I are going to settle in America.’

It is
late in the spring of 1944. Paul, in London with Elsa, has just returned from
one of those missions to the United States which only key-people of the British
services are sent on.. Paul’s official place on these trips is a minor one but he
is known as an expert on Serbo-Croat affairs and is always called in as an.
aide when. the Balkan situation. is to be discussed. Besides, he once, as a
journalist, interviewed Tito, and this has given him a unique place in his
branch of Intelligence; moreover, his interpretation of Tito’s politics and
predictions of his moves have proved surprisingly accurate. Thus, Paul has been
on his third much-envied trip to New York and has come back to England on a
Sunder-land aircraft, in the wartime late spring of 1944.

Paul
sits half-reclining on. the bed in the London hotel, leaning back on the
pillows and drinking whisky that he has brought back from Bermuda where the
plane stopped. Elsa unpacks a parcel of wonders that Paul has brought over for
her. She takes out the presents, all unobtainable in England, or rationed — a
box of Dupont stockings, a box of Lanvin soap, a bottle of Chanel No. 5 scent,
a white frilly blouse, a purple-brown. transparent scarf, a large tin of
Ceylon. tea, two packets of Californian raisins and a little antique box to
hold saccharine pills. One by one they are looked at and smiled over and gasped
about.

Elsa
puts them into Paul’s suitcase. They are leaving for the country in two hours’
time, on the evening train.

She
packs her treasures away. Two raps on the door. ‘Come in,’ says Elsa without
looking up. The door opens a little way, and Colonel Tylden’s head, with a
jovial off-duty grin, peers round it. Elsa looks up.

‘You’re
back,’ he says to Paul, looking at the whisky bottle.

‘If you
bring along your tooth-glass,’ Paul says, ‘you can have some.’

Tylden
goes to collect his glass and reappears m the room. Elsa has finished packing,
but her bag is still open.. The new presents lie on the top. Tylden pours
whisky in. his glass then pours in some water from the tap of the wash-basin.
He, like others from the Compound, generally stays at this hotel when up in
London. on official business. Today there are some more Compound people in the
hotel, getting ready to go back to the country. There has been a conference
with other intelligence units. Always, when this happens, the Compound people
for a brief time form a friendly sort of affiance which disappears when they
are back in the country, hemmed in with their German collaborators.

‘How
was it?’ says Tylden.

‘After
the war,’ Paul is saying, ‘Elsa and I are going to settle in America.’

‘Good
idea,’ says Tylden, sitting down in a squeaky cane armchair. “Wish I were
younger.’

Two
raps on the door. ‘They’ve smelt the booze,’ Tylden says. Elsa opens the door
and in flounces Poppy Xavier in her bulging tweed coat and trousers. A voice in
the corridor and then another, laughing.

‘There
are no glasses,’ Elsa says. ‘You have to bring your own.’

Poppy
Xavier now occupies the cane chair, which seems to feel the strain. Colonel
Tylden stands leaning against the wall, his drink in his hand. In the
corridor, the sound of retreating footsteps, laughing voices, and the
footsteps again., first outside the door and now, all coming in to the room.
Lanky Miles Bunting, holding two glasses, is followed by a man and a woman in
British naval officer’s uniform. Cheerfully, Paul shares out his bottle. From
nearly a mile away comes the muffled thud of a bomb. This is one of the V-2s,
for which there can be no warning siren, silently approaching and suddenly
landing to demolish.

‘Another
one of those,’ says the naval officer.

Poppy
says, ‘In a way I prefer no warning. You don’t have to scuttle to the cellar.’

‘If
it’s a direct hit,’ says Tylden, ‘nothing can save you.’ As he speaks a second
explosion gives out from a distant part of London.

‘Tilbury
end, I think,’ says Miles Bunting. They are settled in their compartment and
the train is about to leave St Pancras station. Poppy Xavier smiles in the
window seat. Elsa lolls next to her. Paul is giving a final push to his
suitcase which stands outside in the corridor. Miles Bunting is reading an art
book. Colonel Tylden in the seat looking out on the corridor says to Paul,
‘You’ve got a good job waiting for you in America, have you?’

‘Quite
good. Columbia University.’

‘Good
for you.’

‘And I
think we’ve got somewhere to stay. A rather nice flat belonging to some friends
of my family. They’ll keep it for us. It looks out on the East River. Do you
know New York?’

‘I know
it well,’ says Colonel Tylden.

A V-2
bomb hits them direct just as the train starts pulling out. The back section of
the train, where they are sitting, and all its occupants, are completely
demolished.

‘You
died, too,’ says Elsa. ‘That’s one of the things you don’t realise, Paul.’

‘Don’t
be silly,’ he says. ‘I remember standing by the side of the track when they
pulled your body out of the wreck. I remember too many things to be dead.’

The
coloured lights of the nightspot go off and on, at each flicker becoming more
subdued until only a dim rose-bathed glow falls on the circular dancing space
beside their table. The music has stopped. A waiter brings champagne in a
bucket which he pours into two glasses, very skilfully, as if he had eyes that
could see in the dark.

‘No,
Paul,’ says Elsa. ‘That was your imagination running away with itself.’

Most of
the tables are still empty. When the music starts Paul and Elsa dance in the
circle of rose-coloured light which presently changes to orange, then to yellow
and green, blue and violet, then back to rose-colour again.

They
are alone on the dance floor. They dance together, then apart. A silver-haired
man and a much younger woman join them, both incredibly neat like two manicured
ladies’ fingers. The man’s hair and thin. well-kept face glint green then
yellow as do his silver-blonde and smooth partner’s. Their shadows follow them
across the floor, never touching, bending with the will of the two substances
that shed them. But Elsa’s shadow crosses Paul’s. She dances apart from him,
lightly swinging, moving her hips and her feet only a little, but her shadow
touches his. The neat shining couple return to their table after a while but
Elsa and Paul dance till the music stops.

‘Funny
I’m not a bit tired, and I haven’t danced for ages,’ Elsa says.

‘It was
over six years ago,’ says Paul, ‘that we last danced together. It was at
Katerina’s party. How could it all have been a dream?’

‘Katerina
is a vagary of your mind,’ Elsa says, ‘that’s all.’

‘She
may have been at one point but she isn’t now — Look who’s arrived!’ says Paul.
‘Quick, Elsa, pick up your bag.’ He is draping her coat over her shoulders and
tugging her arm. ‘They’ve come,’ he says, peering over to the entrance where
four people are being greeted by the head waiter.

Paul
hurries-the waiter for his check and gives over the money with his eyes still
on the new arrivals. Miles Bunting, Poppy Xavier, Colonel Tylden, Helmut Kiel.
They do not look as if they are pursuing anybody. Poppy recognises Elsa and
with a wave of sleeves starts making her massive way among the dim-lit tables.

Paul is
propelling Elsa by a more devious route towards the door. Miles Bunting sees
them pass and moves nearer. ‘Paul!’ he says. ‘Not going, are you?’

Paul
does not reply. Elsa says, ‘Not enough people. The place is dead.’

Colonel
Tylden, who comes along next, says, ‘There isn’t much night-life anywhere. The
slump. Have you seen the Dow Jones industrial average?’

Paul
presses his wife towards the door, collects his coat and precipitates her
before him out into the street.

‘I
don’t see what there is to laugh at,’ Paul tells her, and beckons a taxi to the
kerb.

‘When a
man’s angrily in love with you, it has its funny side,’ she says.

His
heart knocks on the sides of the coffin. ‘Let me out!’

‘Stop!’
says Paul to the taxi-driver. ‘We’ll get out here,’ he says.

Elsa
says, ‘There’s nothing doing at the St Regis at this hour. It’s past eleven.’

‘The
bar’s open, the restaurant’s open,’ he says. He is helping her from the taxi,
and he takes his change. ‘We won’t find anyone we know here,’ he says.

‘I’m
not dressed for this,’ Elsa says, when they come to the hotel’s late-night
restaurant.

Paul is
talking to the head waiter. He turns to Elsa. ‘We have to book,’ he says. ‘We
didn’t book.’

The
room is full of elegant diners, very much rooted in life, chattering above the
music or sedately dancing.

‘Shall
we wait in the bar?’ Paul says.

‘I
don’t know. It looks boring.’

‘We’ll
wait in the bar,’ says Paul to the head man, who does not seem to give any
active encouragement to this plan.

Crossing
the hotel lobby they see, emerging from the lift, dressed in evening clothes,
Garven and Miss Armitage.

‘Why
this hotel?’ Paul says, as if reasoning with himself. ‘Why are they staying
here, of all places? They must be mad.’

Garven
has seen them, and now so has Miss Armitage. They approach Paul and Elsa with
the delighted air of old friends who have not met for a long time.

‘How
good you look!’ says Paul to Annie Armitage.

She
looks shyly at Garven.

‘Elsa,’
says Garven, ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

‘Come
to the bar,’ says Paul.

But the
bar is full, and the mural on the wall not to Elsa’s taste.

‘Let’s
go downtown,’ says Elsa. ‘I want to dance.’