Two Weeks in Another Town Read online

  Two Weeks in Another Town

  Irwin Shaw

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  A Biography of Irwin Shaw

  The great elephant has by nature qualities which are rarely found in man, namely honesty, prudence, a sense of justice, and of religious observance. Consequently, when the moon is new they go down to the rivers and there solemnly cleansing themselves bathe, and after having thus saluted the planet they return to the woods.

  They fear shame and only pair at night and secretly, nor do they then rejoin the herd but first bathe in the river.

  Leonardo da Vinci, after Pliny.

  1

  IT WAS A GRAY, COLD day, without wind. By nightfall, it would rain. Above the airport, in the wintry cover of cloud, there was the spasmodic engine-whine of unseen planes. Although it was early afternoon all the lights in the restaurant were on. The plane from New York had been delayed and the echoing voice had announced in French and English over the public-address system that the flight for Rome had been put back by a half-hour.

  The usual gloom of airports, that mixture of haste and apprehension which has become the atmosphere of travel, because nobody waits comfortably for the take-off of an airplane, was intensified by the weather. The neon light made everyone look poor and unwell and suffering from lack of sleep. There was a feeling in the room that if each traveler there had the choice to make over again he would cancel his passage and go by boat or train or automobile.

  In a corner of the restaurant, whose tables were decked with the sad little banners of the companies that flew out of Orly, a man and woman waited, drinking coffee, watching the two small children, a boy and a girl, who were plastered against the big window that overlooked the field. The man was big, with a long bony face. He had rough dark hair neatly brushed back, in a style that was somewhat longer than crew-cut, and there was a little sprinkle of gray that could be seen only from close up. His eyes were deep-set and blue under heavy eyebrows, and his eyelids were heavy and guarded, making him seem reserved and observant and giving him an air of cool, emotionless judgment as he looked out at the world. He moved slowly and carefully, like a man who would be more comfortable out of doors, in old clothes, and who had been constrained for many years to live in enclosed places that were just a little too narrow for him. His skin was incongruously pale, the result of winter living in a gray city. The air of patience and good humor that his face wore seemed to have been applied that day under considerable pressure. From a little distance, these small modifications were not evident, and he looked bold, healthy, and easy-going. The woman was in her early thirties, with a pretty figure pleasantly displayed by a modest gray suit. She had short black hair swept back in the latest fashion, and her large gray eyes in the white triangle of her face were accented cleverly by make-up. There was a secret elegance in her manner, a way of sitting very erect, of moving definitely and cleanly, without flourishes, a sense of crispness about her clothes, the tone of crispness in her voice. She was French and looked it, Parisienne and looked it, with a composed, reasonable sensuality constantly at play in her face, mixed with decision and a conscious ability to handle the people surrounding her with skill and tact. The two children were mannerly and neat, and if the family were not examined too closely, they made the sort of group that advertising men like to use, all subjects smiling widely, in color, on a sunny field, to demonstrate the safety and pleasure of travel by air. But the sun hadn’t shone on Paris in six days, the neon restaurant light debased every surface it touched, and, at the moment, no one was smiling.

  The children tried to clear away a part of the window, which was streaked and steamy. Through it the planes looked blurred and aquatic on the apron and runways.

  “That’s a Vee-count,” the boy said to his sister. “It’s a turbo-prop.”

  “Viscount,” the man said. “That’s the way it’s pronounced in English, Charlie.” He had a voice, low and reverberating, that went with his size.

  “Viscount,” the boy said obediently. He was five years old. He was grave and dressed with formality for the departure of his father.

  The woman smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said. “By the time he’s twenty-one, he’ll learn to stick to one language at a time.” She spoke English swiftly, with a trace of a French accent.

  The man smiled absently at her. He had tried to come to the airport alone. He didn’t like the prolonged ceremonies of leave-taking. But his wife had insisted upon driving him out and bringing the children. “They love to see the planes,” she had said, supporting her action. But the man suspected that she had come with the hope that at the last moment, in the presence of them all, he would change his mind and call the trip off. Or, at the worst, with the sentimental view of the three of them, the pretty mother and the two handsome small children at her side to tug at his memory, he would hurry his trip and cut it as short as possible.

  He drank his bitter coffee and looked impatiently at his watch. “I hate airports,” he said.

  “I do, too,” the woman said, “Half the time. I love arrivals.” She reached out and touched his hand. Feeling obscurely blackmailed, he took her hand in his and squeezed it. God, he thought, I’m in a filthy mood.

  “It’s only for a little while,” he said. “I’ll be back soon enough.”

  “Not soon enough,” she said. “Never soon enough.”

  “When I grow up,” Charlie was saying, “I am only going to travel in avions à réaction.”

  “Jets, Charlie,” the man said automatically.

  “Jets,” the boy said, without turning away from the window.

  I must be careful, the man thought. He’ll grow up with the idea that I nag him continually. It’s not his fault he speaks half in French all the time.

  “I can’t blame you,” his wife said, “for being so eager to leave Paris in this weather.”

  “I’m not so eager,” said the man. “It’s just that I have to go.”

  “Of course,” said his wife. He had been married to her long enough to know that when she said Of course like that, she did not mean of course.

  “It’s a lot of money, Hélène,” he said.

  “Yes, Jack,” she said.

  “I don’t like airplanes,” the little girl said. “They take people away.”

  “Of course,” said the little boy. “That’s what they’re for. Silly.”

  “I don’t like airplanes,” the little girl said.

  “It’s more than four months’ salary,” Jack said. “We’ll be able to get a new car, finally. And go to a decent place for once this summer.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  He drank some of his coffee and looked once more at his watch.

  “It’s just unfortunate,” she said, “that it had to come just at this time.”

  “This is the time he needs me,” Jack said.

  “Well, you’re a better judge of that than I am.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I don’t mean anything. All I meant was that you know better than I do. I don’t even know the man. I’ve heard you talk about him from time to time, but that’s all. Only…”

  “Only what?”

  “Only if you’re as close as you say
you are…”

  “Were.”

  “Were. It’s funny that all these years, he’s never bothered to see you.”

  “This is the first time he’s ever been in Europe. I told you…”

  “I know you told me,” she said. “But he’s been in Europe more than six months. And he didn’t even bother to write you till last week…”

  “It goes too far back for me to try to explain,” Jack said.

  “Daddy”—the boy turned away from the window toward his father—“were you ever in a plane that caught fire?”

  “Yes,” Jack said.

  “What happened?”

  “They put the fire out.”

  “That was lucky,” the boy said.

  “Yes.”

  The boy turned back to his sister. “Daddy was in a plane that caught fire,” he said, “but he didn’t die.”

  “Anne called just this morning,” Hélène said, “and said Joe was in an ugly mood about your taking off just now.”

  Joe Morrison was Jack’s boss and Anne was his wife. Anne Morrison and Hélène were close friends.

  “I told Joe last week I wanted some time off. I have a lot coming to me. He said it was okay with him.”

  “But then this conference came up, and he said he needed you,” Hélène said, “and Anne said you were very stiff with Joe about it.”

  “I’d promised I’d go to Rome. They’re depending on me.”

  “Joe depends on you, too,” Hélène said.

  “He’ll have to get on without me for a couple of weeks.”

  “You know how Joe is about loyalty,” Hélène said.

  Jack sighed. “I know how Joe is about loyalty,” he said.

  “He’s had men transferred for less than this,” Hélène said. “We’re liable to find ourselves in Ankara or Iraq or Washington next September.”

  “Washington,” Jack said, in mock horror. “Heavens.”

  “Would you want to live in Washington?”

  “No,” Jack said.

  “When I am eighteen,” the boy said, “I am going to traverse la barrière de son.”

  “I’m going to tell you something,” Hélène said. “You’re not sorry to be going. I’ve watched you the last three days. You’re eager to go.”

  “I’m eager to make the money,” Jack said.

  “It’s more than that.”

  “I’m also eager to help Delaney,” Jack said, “if I can help him.”

  “It’s more than that, too,” she said. Her face was sad. Resigned, beautiful and sad, he thought. “You’re eager to leave me, too. Us.” With a gloved hand, she indicated the children.

  “Now, Hélène…”

  “Not for good. I don’t mean that,” she said. “But now. For a while. Even at the risk of getting Joe Morrison angry with you.”

  “I won’t comment on that,” he said wearily.

  “You know,” she smiled, “you haven’t made love to me for more than two weeks.”

  “This is why I don’t like people to come to see me off at airports. Conversations like this.”

  “People,” she said.

  “You.”

  “In the old days,” she went on, her voice sweet and sober and without criticism, “before you went off on a trip, you’d make love to me the last half-hour before you left. After the bags were packed and all. Do you remember that?”

  “I remember that.”

  “I like Air France better,” the boy said. “Blue is a faster color.”

  “Do you still love me?” Hélène asked in a low voice, leaning over the table toward him and looking searchingly into his face.

  He stared at her. Objectively, without emotion, he realized that she was very beautiful, with her wide gray eyes and the high bones of her cheeks and the rich dark hair cut short and girlishly on her neat head. But at the moment, he didn’t love her. At the moment, he thought, I don’t love anybody. Except for the two children. And that was almost automatic. Although not completely automatic. He had three children and of those he loved only these two. Two out of three. A respectable average.

  “Of course I love you,” he said.

  She smiled a little. She had a charming, young girl’s smile, trusting and expectant. “Come back in better shape,” she said.

  Then the voice in French and English announced that the passengers were begged to pass through Customs, the plane for Rome, flight number 804, was ready and was loading. Gratefully, Jack paid the bill, kissed the children, kissed his wife, and started off.

  “Enjoy yourself, chéri,” Hélène said, standing there, flanked by the little boy and the blond, slender girl in her red coat. At the last moment, he thought, she has managed to make it sound as though I am going on a holiday.

  Jack hurried past the customs, and out on the wet tarmac toward the waiting plane. The other passengers were already climbing the ramp in a flurry of boarding cards, magazines, coats, and canvas hand baggage marked with the name of the air line.

  As the plane taxied off toward the starting point on the runway, he saw his wife and children, outside the restaurant now, waving, their coats bright swabs of color in the gray afternoon.

  He waved through the window, then settled back in his seat, relieved. It could have been worse, he thought, as the plane gathered speed for the take-off.

  “It’s time for tea,” the stewardess said, her voice decorated with air-line charm.

  “What kind of cake do you have, my dear?” asked the little old lady on her way to Damascus.

  “Cherry tart,” said the stewardess.

  “We are now passing over Mont Blanc,” the public-address system announced in the tones of Texas. “If you look through the windows on the raght you will see the ee-ternal snows.”

  “I’ll have a cherry tart and a bourbon on the rocks,” said the little old lady. She was on the left side of the plane and she didn’t get up to see Mont Blanc. “That makes a nice little tea.” She giggled, on her way to Damascus from Portland, Oregon, daring to do things at an altitude of twenty-five thousand feet that she would never do in Portland, Oregon.

  “Would you like something, Mr. Andrus?” The stewardess tilted her smile in the direction of Mont Blanc.

  “No, thank you,” Jack said. He had wanted a whisky, but when he heard the little old lady ask for bourbon he had had a small ascetic flicker of revulsion against the continual senseless ingestion of air travel.

  He looked down at the white slab of Mont Blanc, couched on cloud, surrounded by the stone teeth of the lesser peaks. He put on his dark glasses and peered at the sunlit snow, looking for the broken helicopter in which the two climbers had been left to die when the storm had risen and the guides and the crashed airman who had come to their rescue had had to make their way to the refuge hut to save themselves. He couldn’t see the helicopter. The Alps moved slowly below him, peaks shifting behind peaks, deep blue shadows and a huge round, thin sun, like an afternoon in the Ice Age, with no dead visible.

  He pulled the curtains and sat back and reflected on the events that had so surprisingly put him on this plane. He had known that Maurice Delaney was in Rome, from reading the papers, but he hadn’t heard from him for five or six years and it was with a sense of disbelief that he had heard the voice of Delaney’s wife, Clara, on the crackling connection a week before, from Rome.

  “Maurice can’t get to the phone just now,” Clara had said, after the preliminary explanations were over, “but he’s writing you a letter telling just what the situation is. He wants you to come down here right away, Jack. You’re the only man who can help him, he says. He’s desperate. These people down here are driving him crazy. He’s got them to agree to give you five thousand dollars for two weeks—Is that enough?”

  Jack laughed.

  “Why’re you laughing?”

  “Private joke, Clara.”

  “He’s depending upon you, Jack. What’ll I tell him?”

  “Tell him I’ll do everything I can to come. I’ll send a wire
tomorrow.”

  The next day Morrison had said he could spare Jack for two weeks and Jack had sent the wire.

  The letter that had come from Delaney had outlined what Delaney wanted Jack to do for him. It was so little, and in Jack’s eyes so comparatively unimportant, that it was inconceivable to him that anyone would pay him five thousand dollars just for that. Delaney, he was sure, had other reasons for asking Jack to come to Rome, reasons that Delaney would divulge in his own time.

  Meanwhile, Jack leaned back luxuriously in the first-class seat that was being paid for by the company, and thought with satisfaction of being away from the routine of his job and the routine of his marriage for two weeks.

  He looked forward to seeing Delaney, who, long ago, had been his best friend, and whom he had loved. Whom I still love, he corrected himself. Aside from everything else, Jack thought, trouble or not, anything involved with Maurice Delaney won’t be routine.

  He loosened his collar, to make himself more comfortable. In doing so his hand touched the bulk of the letter in his inside pocket. He made a grimace of distaste. I’d better do it now, he thought. In Rome I probably won’t have the time.

  He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out the letter that he had read three times in the last two days. Before rereading it again, he stared gloomily at the envelope, addressed to him in the artificially elegant finishing-school orthography of his first wife. Three wives, he thought, and two of them are giving me trouble. Two out of three. Today’s recurring ratio. He sighed and took the letter out of the envelope and began to read it.

  “Dear Jack,” he read, “I imagine you are surprised to hear from me after all this time, but it’s a question that involves you or should involve you as much as it does me, since Steve is your son as well as mine, even though you haven’t taken much interest in him all these years, and what he does with his life should be of some concern to you.” Jack sighed again when he came to the ironic underlining. The years had not improved his first wife’s prose style. “I have done everything humanly possible to influence Steve and have nearly brought myself to the edge of a nervous breakdown in the process, and William, who at all times has been most loving and correct and tolerant with Steve, more so than most real fathers I have seen, has also done his best to make him change his mind. But Steve, since the earliest days, has exhibited only the utmost, iciest scorn for William’s opinions, and no amount of reasoning on my part has been able to improve his behavior.” Jack grinned malevolently as he read this passage, then went on. “When Steve came back after visiting you in Europe last summer, he spoke of you more favorably, or, anyway, less unfavorably than of most people he knows…” Jack smiled again, wryly this time. “…and it occurred to me that at this moment of crisis, maybe you are the one to write to him and try to put him straight.