The Sea Change (21 page)

He looked at me, and his look went to my heart. ‘Bless you, Jimmy.’

I gave Lillian his message dead pan, and went to my room. Alberta had already gone to hers like a sensible girl. But I knew that Lillian would get rid of her lady friend and come after me. She
did.

‘What do you mean, Jimmy, he’ll call if he’s not coming?’

‘I don’t mean anything at all. It’s what he said.’ I was lying on my bed with the beginnings of a headache and closed my eyes, but she closed the door and went on:
‘Does that mean he
isn’t
coming, do you think? Because if so, I must call the Westinghouses . . .’

‘He said he’d call: I should leave it to him if I were you.’

‘If you were me, of course you wouldn’t have interrupted him in the first place when he was “working”. And if I were you I wouldn’t have interrupted him
either.’

‘That’s true,’ I agreed amiably, but that only made her dangerous.

‘Doesn’t it strike you as odd that I’m the only person who’s
capable
of interrupting him?’

‘Perhaps you’re the only one he cares for.’

She didn’t know how to take this. Then she said: ‘He wasn’t working, anyway. He was just listening to the girl reading.’

She wasn’t that stupid – surely? But I looked at her, and saw that the only bit of her that was working at the moment was. I decided to have one real try, and then give up.

‘Lillian – honey – you’re wrong there. If Emmanuel says he doesn’t want to be disturbed that’s good enough: we don’t decide whether he’s working
or not –
he
does. It made him mad today because he’s got something on his mind, but he’ll come back all right if you don’t grow the whole thing up meanwhile. Be sweet
to him – apologize.’

She looked at me, and I saw she was finding it tough. With an effort, she said: ‘I’ll think about it.’ Then she gave herself a little shake, and said: ‘I don’t
blame you for talking to me as though I was a child: the whole thing has become such a storm in a teacup. I want to leave at seven fifteen.’

‘Does Alberta know?’

‘She ought to. I told her the arrangements this morning.’

Well – that was not the end of it. I went to tell Alberta: she was sitting on her bed writing in a big book, and she just nodded, and went on writing. I wondered what – and guessed
it was a novel. Young girls write novels nowadays like they used to press flowers or make candy. At seven, Emmanuel came back. At eight, we left, in an atmosphere nobody could want to call their
own. The party was some blocks down on Park Avenue, and except for Lillian saying how dirty the cab was nobody said anything.

The Westinghouses were a nice couple – around their fifties – with a son in the business and several other grown-up children who usually showed up at parties. He was a good-looking
man – always sunburned – with an appearance of nobility that had somehow never got around to attaching itself to anything. The prototype for heroic theory, Emmanuel had once said: but
Emmanuel was fond of him – they even went once on a disastrous fishing trip together – Emmanuel was nearly drowned, and the rest of the time so bored that he got drunk and stayed that
way for nearly two weeks. Debbie Westinghouse was one of those women you only see here – half doll, half little girl – she’d never had a thought in her head, and that went for the
nasty ones too – she was crisp, and silly, and sweet and simple, and so clean you could have eaten off her. She loved her family; the room was littered with snaps of her grandchildren, and
she understood that books were for other people. She cried very easily, but not for long, and she told everybody that Emmanuel was a genius with the kind of gasping credulity of a child talking
about a magician. Van Westinghouse was always very kind to her, and she certainly made him feel a man.

They had collected about thirty people to meet Emmanuel, and they must have known why they were invited, as nearly all of them turned to look at him when we came in. I knew Van Westinghouse
would take care of Lillian – he had a lot of old-world charm for other people’s wives – and Emmanuel would be swamped, but the poor kid, Alberta, looked out of it all: she had on
a dark blue dress that wasn’t right for her or the party, and she looked as though she knew it. There was nothing I could do about it: we were plunged into large scale and paralysingly
efficient introductions. A collection of well-groomed, intelligent, successful people – for some reason they made me think of a whole lot of shiny new automobiles – powerful, well
serviced, fitted inside with all kinds of modern gadgets – like insomnia, contraceptives, equality, and fright. Emmanuel once said that no talk was too small for opinions, they were only the
suburbia of intercourse, and cocktail parties were their rush hour, and I was in a mood this evening for that kind of remark to stick in my mind. I had two drinks rather fast and listened to three
people – Debbie Westinghouse admiring Lillian’s dreamy clothes, an intense young woman who’d written a book all about emotional freedom, and an old, rather nice guy who seemed
stuck on English furniture. Usually at these parties, I do at least get myself an attractive girl, at least to drink with, but tonight there seemed two good reasons why that would not make a gay
evening. One was Alberta, for whom I felt kind of responsible, and the other was Emmanuel. Alberta was answering questions about England, and looking like a schoolgirl up for an examination, and
Emmanuel was listening to a journalist who’d just been on a three weeks trip to India, and who was telling him what an opportunity the British getting out was for the Indian people. What the
hell was a party
for
, I wondered. Van Westinghouse was bringing out a cheap edition of Emmanuel’s plays – Johnnie, his son, came over to tell me about it: three volumes to start
with, with three plays in each: they had galleys, but they were still waiting for a preface and could I turn on some heat to get it? Not tonight, I said. Who was the girl we’d brought –
was she an attachment of mine? For some reason this irritated me: I think because I knew Johnnie thought she looked odd, and because I agreed with him. I explained why she was here, and Johnnie
said OK, OK, he’d only been asking and got his sister Sally from across the room. She came over, smiling, and looking so good that I felt better just looking. She’d become a model since
last time I’d seen her, and she’d changed. I told her she looked wonderful, and she smiled her wide smile and said clothes certainly did something for a girl. Johnnie said: ‘Oh,
come on, Sal. Tell him you’re in love!’ ‘He’s a photographer – I certainly am. He’s a genius!’ She said it just like her mother. She gave her glass to
Johnnie, and smiled again at me and asked me who was the girl I’d brought. Somehow she didn’t irritate me asking – so I told her about Alberta and said she was a sweet kid, and
was just going to add how young she was, when I remembered that Alberta was at least a year older than Sally. ‘She hasn’t been around very much – lived in the country,’ I
said instead – and wondered why everything I said about Alberta seemed wrong or patronizing. That was just when Johnnie knocked against a bottle which fell over Alberta’s dress. Sally
saw it, and gave a little throaty gasp and went to the rescue. She took Alberta away at once – Johnnie made me an apologetic face – but at the far end of the room, I caught sight of
Emmanuel. A good many people had gone, and I could hear that all was not well. He was leaning against the piano, and I didn’t like the easy, angry look on his face. I went over ‘. . .
this
extraordinary
illusion you have that we all know what we are doing?’ he finished, and as an afterthought emptied his half-full glass of what looked like Scotch.

The intense dame who’d written the book about emotional freedom gave him a winning, intellectual smile, and said soothingly: ‘But surely, Mr Joyce, it is the duty of the more
knowledgeable person to inform and guide the common man.’

‘If you deal in such an inflated view of humanity, possibly it is. Personally, I have never met anyone in the least knowledgeable, and I don’t think I’d recognize the common
man if I stumbled up against him in the street where I believe he lives. I think society is made up of cranks and morons.’ He smiled pleasantly round the room, embracing us all, and somehow
managed to get Johnnie to fill his glass again without a word. There was an indiscriminate outcry – of people claiming to be common etc., out of which the man – whom I recognized as the
journalist – said: ‘You’ll be telling me next that you don’t believe in progress!’

Emmanuel smiled brightly: That’s what I’ll tell you next. But
you
think information is progress. You think a lot of cranks telling a lot of morons what they ought to think
constitutes education. There are a few little worms turning in England, but that is only because they want even their emotional lives for free – they can’t even face paying for
that
– they want it on the basis of free milk and public lavatories and they simply illustrate the rot of private irresponsibility – this is what makes most of us cowards . .
.’

The journalist was high anyway, and he lost his temper. ‘Is this a social message out of one of your plays?’

‘I don’t write plays with social messages. It is a misuse of the theatre.’

‘But surely, Mr Joyce, you consider yourself knowledgeable?’ Emmanuel didn’t reply, and the journalist said again: ‘I repeat – surely you’re under the
impression that you’re knowledgeable?’

Emmanuel said: ‘I am attached to the notion that if one is below an impression, it is a false one.’

‘You see? You’re just evading my point: you damned artists, you think you can run the world. You just think you know everything – for God’s sake. Give me the days when
the artist was a workman with a job to do and knew his place in society.’

Emmanuel said smoothly: ‘I am sure that we all wish that you had lived two hundred years ago,’ somebody laughed, and Emmanuel held out his glass to Johnnie.

At this moment – mercifully – Alberta returned to us: Emmanuel saw her first, and although his face did not seem to change, I knew there was a reason for looking, and turned my head.
I don’t think I’d ever looked at her before – at any rate, now I hardly knew her. She was wearing a black dress with a high Chinese collar, and very short, tight sleeves; her hair
was sleeked back – smooth and shining – and her skin made the other women in the room look as though they’d never been in the air on a fine morning. Even Sally, beside her, looked
as though she’d lived it up a bit. Emmanuel said: ‘Here, at last, is somebody who will answer your question.’ He held out his hand with the glass in it, she hesitated, and came
over to us.

‘Do you consider that I am a wise man?’

She looked at him with unselfconscious steadiness, and said: ‘No I do not.’ Then she added gently: ‘But I think such men are very rare: it has not been my fortune to meet
one.’

Emmanuel smiled and inclined his head to her, and there was something like a triumphant recognition about his face and the movement. The sour smell of calamity seemed to have gone: the
journalist offered Emmanuel a cigarette, and Johnnie rushed to get Alberta a drink. Sally winked at me and murmured: ‘Clothes certainly make a difference to a man about a girl, anyway’
– and then I saw Lillian, with an expression on her face like a stubbed-out cigarette. Whatever Lillian may be, she certainly
isn’t
supporting cast. Johnnie had given Emmanuel
another slug, and he was reciting something to his host and hostess: Debbie was taking it seriously, and Van looked uneasy. I caught Van’s eye, and after exacdy the right interval, he moved
casually over to me.

‘I hate to say it, Van, but do you have any further plans for this evening?’

He looked around. ‘When the numbers got to around ten, Debbie wanted us to go some place to eat.’

‘They’re around that now.’

He made a count, during which I noticed that the journalist had got hold of Lillian and was pouring his opinions over her like a bucket of sand on to a chemical fire.

‘If you could include Lillian in your care, and your literary pals, perhaps Johnnie could bring the rest of us in due course.’

‘Fine.’ He went to tell Johnnie: he knew quite a lot about Emmanuel.

Well – the first part of the arrangement worked. Lillian went quietly – she’d decided to behave well about it all, to invest her anger for private distribution I guessed. But
when it came to moving Emmanuel everything broke down. When I got back from seeing the others into the elevator, I found him sitting on the floor, making Sally and Alberta compare their childhoods:
they became like a couple of kids telling him, and Johnnie was listening and watching Emmanuel’s face respectfully – he was a kid with an eye for memories. As soon as there was a
chance, I said: how about moving?

Emmanuel said: ‘Where?’

‘Johnnie’s driving us to Patrick’s for dinner. We’re joining die others there.’

‘Well, at least we know where they
are
.’ He turned back to Alberta: ‘Have you changed your clothes recently?’

‘Yes. This dress belongs to Miss Westinghouse. Mine had an accident.’

Emmanuel looked approvingly at Sally and then at Alberta. Johnnie stood around waiting to go, but nobody seemed to take any notice of him, and then Emmanuel started to tell a story about a dress
his mother had told him she wanted, and how it had seemed to cost so much money that he imagined it had been made for Queen Alexandra. ‘Of course, she never got it,’ he finished, and
watched pity bloom on the girls’ faces like the moon coming out. But Johnnie began feeling the strap of his wrist watch and looking nervous, so I said again that we should be going.

‘Where?’

We went through it all again.

‘Call them, and say I’m terribly drunk and it’s delaying us. If you point out what an embarrassing evening they would have with me – shouting and spilling my food and
breaking things, they might not want us at all.’

When Johnnie and I went to make the call, he said: ‘I don’t know what Dad will say. He doesn’t
seem
drunk, at all.’

‘He isn’t, but if we join them he’ll arrive high without drinking another drop. Put the call through and I’ll talk to your father.’