Wheels within Wheels Page 7

“Then we’ll go to El Paso to-night and celebrate it.”

  “I’ll like that.”

  “Make yourself pretty and I’ll call for you at seven.”

  “O.K.”

  Bauer shook his head appreciatively as he replaced the receiver.

  “That’s a girl. Yes, sir, that’s a girl. Accepts a diamond wrist-watch as though it was a box of candy.”

  Gee, but she was a girl to be proud of. You couldn’t impress her easily.

  • • • • •

  If the refusal to be impressed by presents was Roy Bauer’s criterion of excellence in woman, he would have been most favourably impressed by the spectacle of Caroline as she lolled back on the sofa at the end of her talk with him.

  She was bored, and the fact that she was going to be given a diamond wrist-watch did not apparently relieve the boredom. Into the china bowl beside her she pressed, half-smoked, the twenty-seventh cigarette since breakfast. On the table by her hand was a cigarette box and a box of candy. She would have preferred to take a piece of candy. But she had taken four pieces that day already. She did not dare grow fat. Better a Lucky. She reached for one. She pressed the bone button at the top of an inlaid walnut cabinet. There was a whine, then the side of the cabinet swung slowly open, playing as it did, the opening bars of Me and my Shadow. The toy had amused her when it had been given her. But now it seemed a long way of getting to a smoke.

  The cigarette between her lips, she lay with her hands crossed behind her head watching the smoke drift towards the ceiling. There was a litter of magazines about her feet. But she had looked at the fashion plates. The funny papers were the only ones that she enjoyed reading, and she had given up reading those. It made conversation with Roy easier.

  He would say: “There certainly is a fast one in this week’s New Yorker. I wonder if you’ve seen it.”

  “You tell it me,” she’d say.

  The joke was usually too funny to be completely ruined by Roy’s version of it. Her abandonment of the New Yorker had made at least an hour of Roy’s company entertaining. But it certainly made the daytime flat.

  Lying back, inert and motionless, she let her gaze rest tranquilly on the immediate prospect; on the half-open doorway of the sitting-room, through which she could see reflected in the mirror above the washing-basin the mauve curtains by the shower-bath, and beyond the mauve coverlet of her bed.

  It was a pleasant prospect; and it was a pleasant apartment, with its fresh-washed walls, its fresh green paint, its gay-patterned curtains, its modernistic chairs of steel and canvas, its table of steel and glass with cocktail shaker and cocktail glasses set out on an enamel tray; its menagerie of blown glass emus. There were arm-chair divans, fitted against the wall, there were fitted bookshelves arranged like pyramids which stored a collection of china negresses. On a second and smaller table was a photograph of herself in sepia. It was the kind of apartment that she had promised herself years back in Swansville.

  She had never had any doubt that she was going to New York. As long as she could remember she had dreamed of its tall buildings, its lights, the roar of the elevators, its shop windows, theatres, crowds, its colour. She had seen it on the screen; in the photogravure section of the Sunday newspapers. She had read of it and talked of it. Though her body walked down the one main street of her home town, her spirit trod the glittering sidewalks of Fifth Avenue. She studied the geography of Manhattan as the other girls of her class studied the geography of France and Italy. She knew how the great crown of the Grand Central Station shone down the length of Park; how the traffic congested at the junction of Seventh Avenue and Forty-second; how Tudor City towered over the broad sweep of the East River. She knew the names of the hotels, the big stores, the theatres. She would be able to walk its streets blindfold, she assured herself.

  And indeed, when she did arrive in New York, having availed herself of the first offer of romance that included on its programme a railroad ticket to New York, she felt none of the surprise that the provincial is supposed to feel on her arrival in a metropolis. She felt, on the contrary, that she was at last in the place where she belonged. When the influence of the travelling salesman who was responsible for her presence there had found her employment in the newspaper stand of an apartment building in the West Sixties, she had the feeling of having begun to live for the first time in her life.

  They were Jews for the most part to whom she sold newspapers, post-cards, cigarettes; and they were Jews for the most part who took her to the Italian speakeasies of the West Fifties, the German beer houses of Hobocken, the chopsueys of Greenwich village, the cabarets of Harlem, the road houses of Long Island. They were smart, noisy, self-assertive, generous; out for a good time, anxious to see that the girls they were fêting had a good time too; happier in crowds than by themselves; always planning and arranging parties; ringing each other up; running in and out of each other’s apartments; collecting two or three evenings a week at Josef Bergheim’s pent house on the West Eighties, where there was good liquor, a good radio, and poker for those who preferred cards; where you could do what you liked, within reason, as long as you enjoyed yourself.

  She hadn’t worried about their being Jews, since it was the places she went to, far more than the people who took her there, that counted; since they were fun, and gave her fun; since all this was preparatory; just as Swansville had been preparatory, to the apartment, the coloured maid, the rich dresses, the smart men calling on her at cocktail time. She had set no great store by the men nor by their parties, since they had set no store by her; just saying “Let’s enjoy ourselves.”

  When a heavy, prosperous-looking man who was not a Jew but who had come up there to see the Jews and do business with them, having fallen into conversation over the sale of a ten cent cigar, had said “I’m going to Bermuda next week, would you care to come with me?” she had answered “I’ll like that,” as casually as she would have said “Why, yes,” to the man who had asked her on a vacant date to go to Connie’s.

  When, a week later, he had said “It’s grand here, why don’t we stay a month?” she had replied “I’ll get fired. They’ve only given me ten days’ vacation.” He had answered “I’ll fix that all right.” To which she had said “O.K.”

  On their return instead of finding her a post in another news-stand he had said: “Why waste your time on that?”

  He had taken a two-roomed apartment for her in the same building in which he and his mother lived, only on a separate floor, so that there’d be no need for her ever to see his mother. He had said, “How’d you like it fixed?”

  She’d said: “Modernistic.”

  “I’ll ring up Macy’s, then.”

  He had. Within forty-eight hours it had been just as she had dreamed.

  “You’ll be wanting some clothes,” he had said. “Get what you want at Lord and Taylor. I’ve opened you a charge account.”

  Which also had been as she had dreamed.

  Within a week her closets were glistening with chiffon, marocain, velvet and crêpe de Chine. A coloured maid came down each morning to serve her coffee and scour the apartment. Every evening there were the dinners at Italian speakeasies, orchestra seats on Broadway, the throb of jazz music at the St. Regis roof. Just as she had dreamed.

  But there, somehow, it had seemed to stop. There hadn’t been the breakfast tray laden high with letters, the telephone buzzing all the morning, the cartons of flowers with the pencilled notes, the invitations to this party and to that.

  There were no letters; only an occasional telegram from Roy. No flowers; only orchids on the evenings when Roy was taking her out expensively. No telephone calls except an occasional reminder from Roy that he would be arriving later or earlier than they had planned. There were no smart gentlemen at five o’clock; only Roy coming round in his tuxedo when they were going out, or in a lounge suit when he had been dining in the city or with his mother first.

  Night after night it was the same. They would go to a speakeasy and a
theatre; or they would sit at home, drink highballs and listen to the radio. He would tell her how much money he had made that day; what the president of this company had said; what merger was pending in Industrial Cocoa. He would repeat a story he had heard across the counter of a down-town drug store, and recite the contents of the current issue of the New Yorker. Then he would remember that he was not speaking to an audience, but to his girl. He would put his arm round her, call her honey, make violent and brief love to her, take a shower, mix himself a highball, continue to tell her about Wall street prices.

  She never saw anyone but Roy. She never had a chance of seeing anyone but Roy. He always took her out alone. They were never asked to any parties. Roy did not seem to know anybody apart from his mother; and the people he did business with. He couldn’t take her to see his mother very well. They had tried once to arrange a foursome with another couple, but it had not been a success. Roy had grown silly and jealous. Instead of keeping the other girl amused, he had kept trying to cut into her conversation with the other man. There had been a big row when they had gone home. It was just not worth while. Better to go out with Roy alone than that. So she had. Night after night. There wasn’t anybody else to go with. She never met anybody new. She didn’t know how she was to meet anybody new. And if she did, she didn’t see how she was going to explain it away to Roy. He expected her to be there every evening just like a wife. It was all very well to say that she had the whole of the day to do what she liked with: but all the men she was ever likely to know were just as busy all day as Roy himself. There were men of leisure: artists, dilettantes, tourists, actors; who woke up like the villains of Hollywood with nothing to do with their day but spend it. There were men like that, but how on earth was a girl like her to meet them?

  From the moment that Mary went back to Harlem at eleven, there was not a soul for her to talk to till Roy arrived. Such conversation as she had apart from brief “Hollos” to the elevator man, the bootlegger, the iceman, was with dressmakers, manicurists, waitresses. There was not a thing for her to do but smoke at home, or go to the pictures. Nothing, not a thing; not one damn thing.

  That was her life, and it was lousy.

  • • • • •

  There was a ring upon the door outside. She rose languidly to open it. It was the iceman, probably, or the Chinaman from the laundry, or the bootlegger. Possibly the exterminator. She never had visitors. She was surprised to see, therefore, a smartly-dressed young man, tall, with an open face, an open smile, and a dark, military moustache brushed backwards from a long, full upper lip. He was very like the young man whom as a girl in Swansville she had pictured calling upon her. As, however, he carried a brown leather suit-case, she suspected that he had come to sell her something. She was right. He had. He was from Renter’s, and he had brought a selection of diamond wrist-watches for her to choose from.

  “Now let’s get the table cleared. I’ll set them out for you.”

  He began moving the magazines, the cocktail tray, the cocktail shaker.

  “Now, this one here; that one there. Now we’ve finished.”

  He was bright and alert and friendly. His liveliness dissipated Caroline’s indolence. She became animated as he unpacked one by one the little cases in which nestled on their plush beds the narrow ribbons of diamonds and platinum. Caroline had shown very little excitement over the prospect of a gift when Roy had rung her up. It would be just another thing to be careful not to lose. Roy was always asking her why she did not wear this and that: what she had done with this and that. He had never forgotten the gold cigarette lighter she had lost. She would have considered the arrival of a large impersonal parcel more of a nuisance than anything.

  The arrival of a smart young man with a dark moustache who smiled and bustled about one’s furniture was a very different matter. It was the nearest approach to an event since she had left Bermuda. It was practically a party. She watched him setting out the cases with the same fascination that a child watches a group of workmen demolishing a street. There were twenty cases. Set out on the glass of her table they looked like the interior of a shop. She was sad when the last case was opened and the game was at an end. She would now have to make a decision; one of the boxes would be left, the other nineteen snapped up and put away, very much faster than they had been unpacked. The young man would be hurrying towards the elevator; the apartment would be empty again. She did not want that to happen; not all at once.

  “It’s hard to decide. Are you in a great hurry?”

  “I’m in no hurry at all.”

  “Won’t you have a highball while I’m deciding?”

  “I certainly will.”

  “What’ll you have with it; white rock or ginger ale?”

  “It’s all one to me. This’ll be my first drink this week.”

  “What!”

  “I only drink at parties; and I don’t get invitations to many.”

  “Don’t you carry a flask?”

  “Not on my salary.”

  She looked at him in surprise. He was the first man she had met who didn’t put his hand on his hip the moment the elevator door had closed.

  “Then let’s get busy,” she said.

  He followed her into the kitchenette; seating himself at the table while she opened the ice chest.

  “What, no frigidaire? Let me help you with the ice pick.”

  He chipped off the pieces of ice.

  “For you too?”

  She shook her head. She never drank before the evening; then only because Roy drank and one didn’t notice the smell of whisky if one had been drinking it oneself.

  The young man looked inquisitively in the ice-chest.

  “From this Sherlock Holmes would deduce that you take most of your meals out.”

  She laughed at that. There was practically nothing in her ice-chest. Only a stack of white rock, Canada dry and Coco-cola. None of the groceries and vegetables, the slice of pie, the leg of chicken, that you would expect to find in a bachelor girl’s ice-chest. Caroline never cooked herself a meal. Her coloured girl fixed her breakfast for her, squeezed the orange juice, strained the coffee. When she felt hungry she rang down to the nearest Liggett’s and ordered a toasted sandwich. From the sight of that ice-chest the young man had placed her, she supposed. Well, she didn’t care. He was a nice young man. It would make conversation easier.

  It did. He assumed that she, if she had so few meals in, knew as much about speakeasies as was worth the knowing. Yes, she said, she could teach most New Yorkers something. Had she, he asked, been to Belometti’s? Sure: she’d been there all right. To Bell Livingstone’s? Yes, there too. To Tex Guinan’s? Why, of course; and Connie’s. Had she really now? He asked her questions. He listened attentively. No, he hadn’t been there himself. You had to have a lot of dough to be able to make those joints. Yes, she supposed one had; or someone else had. And that was true, too, he said. But he wasn’t that kind of chap. He wasn’t taking money from any woman. He did the paying; yes, sir. When he took a dame out, he spent all he could afford on her. If that wasn’t good enough for her, then she could find someone else who’d do her better. He wasn’t having any Jane slipping twenty-dollar bills into his hand beneath the table.

  Caroline agreed with him. He was quite right. No woman worth anything thought anything of the man who let her spend her money on him. All the same, it would have been rather nice, she thought, to spend some of the money she didn’t want on a boy like this. She could give him a whole lot of fun. Could sell her pearls, or the emerald pendant. There must be a good many dollars’ worth locked away in that tortoiseshell and enamel jewel case. She would give him ties and socks; handkerchiefs. She’d take him all the places he had never been to; the places she had got bored with, but would become fun again for her because they would be fun for him.

  But she couldn’t; because he wasn’t that kind. He was independent; and if he wasn’t, she’d have no use for him. Probably she’d never see him again. And it was a shame. But th
ere it was, and there were those cases waiting to be chosen from. She’d better get it over quickly before she found herself regretting over much that between this young man and her there was the barrier of money.

  “Come along. I’ve got to make up my mind about those bracelets.”

  She walked away from the kitchenette, and over to the table. There they lay, the whole twenty of them; one as like any other to her. They’d be only a nuisance. Just something to have Roy saying: “Gee, but it’s worth while putting good things on you.” Something she’d have to be grateful for in the only way Roy could understand gratitude. It didn’t matter which she chose.

  “I’ll have that,” she said.

  She took it from its bed of velvet, clasped it round her wrist, shook out her wrist and held it to the light. After all it did give her a kick; a little. Because as a girl she had so often made that gesture of shaking out a wrist, picturing its white skin studded with a diamond’s deeper whiteness. It was fulfilment, in its way. If only Lucia were here to see it. But there wasn’t anyone to see it. And this nice young man was finishing off his highball: packing away the boxes: saying the kind of thing that salesmen did say when they’d put a deal through. Another minute and he’d be gone. Gee, but it was lousy.

  • • • • •

  She shrugged her shoulders as the door closed behind him. So that was that. Walking over to the radio, she turned the switch. The subdued rhythm of a waltz throbbed into the room.

  The child of a machine-made age she had been accustomed since childhood to having things done for her by the pressing of buttons, the pulling of levers, the turning of a switch. Electric light, gas cookers, frigidaires, automobiles, victrolas, telephones, cinemas; now radio. A machine was set in motion, a particular service was completed. To capture the sound waves of the air by the turning of a knob seemed no more remarkable to her now than had, when she was a child, the transmission of the human voice through a funnel by the fitting of a needle to a revolving disc.

  In this linking by wireless of one city with another she saw no symbol of the change which science had effected in her life. She did not feel that human lives had become so interknit that actions in London had their repercussions in New Orleans, Paris, New York, in the same way that an orchestra playing in a Viennese restaurant was linked by radio with the houses of five continents with audiences it could never see, in London, Sydney, New York, Waikiki.