Neither Five Nor Three Read online

  The alarm sounded its warning. Enough, enough, she told herself again, and slipping a dressing-gown around her she ran to the kitchenette to start the coffee. Her quick shower made her still more practical. I’ll get to the office early this morning, she thought as she dressed, and I’ll clear that desk of mine so completely that Burnett will give me permission to leave early and I can be back here by five o’clock. The guests were arriving at six. Scott would come before then, of course. He was the host, tonight. She gave a last look at the photograph, at the rather solemn face which didn’t do Scott justice—he wasn’t so cold and intent as the camera pretended he was. His face was much more gentle than that. In fact, the usual adjective that women used for him was “sweet”; that was the gruesome effect that his charm and his smile combined with his height, fair hair, and blue eyes had on them. But what I like most of all, Rona decided as she pulled the blanket and sheets off the narrow bed, is the way he pays no attention to any of them. In the beginning, when she had first met Scott, he hadn’t wanted to pay much attention to her either. But he did, all the same. She was smiling as she hurried to the kitchenette to stop the kettle whistling itself hoarse.

  After breakfast, there was the usual tidying of the two small rooms which Rona called “my apartment” so proudly. (Mrs. Kasprowicz was coming in later, to clean and polish for three hours. At a dollar an hour, Rona could only afford her twice a week.) It was a simple apartment—the top floor of a brownstone house that had been converted into small flats—but everything it contained was Rona’s: Rona’s work, Rona’s ideas. This is something I’ve produced, she thought as she stood looking at the living-room. And then she wondered, as she did at least once each day, where Scott and she would live, and when. Perhaps by this summer, he would feel he had saved enough money. Last night, she thought wryly, had been no help to his budget, but what could she have done? Remonstrate gently? And risk making him angry, risk spoiling the evening? He didn’t like nagging women or interference. He liked to enjoy his impulses, even if they cost forty dollars.

  She had started worrying again. So she picked up a pencil and found a shopping pad and gave herself some practical worries to think about. She must order crackers, cheese. Flowers. Smoked salmon, olives, lemons, nuts. Liver pâté from the delicatessen on Third Avenue. Soda water. Scotch for Scott’s father, certainly. Perhaps some of the other men preferred that too. Martinis for the others. Cigarettes, she had nearly forgotten cigarettes. What else?

  She must take her party shoes to the cobbler to get the ankle strap fixed. And remind the cleaner to deliver her silk suit by five-thirty. What else, what else? A note for Mrs. Kasprowicz, printed carefully so that there would be no mistakes, about the glasses to be washed and polished. Oh, and ice...she must order extra ice.

  Then, with a last quick look around her, she went into the small hall. On the telephone table, near the door, she left the instructions for Mrs. Kasprowicz. She glanced in the mirror that hung over the table, readjusted the angle of her neat white sailor hat and tucked away a stray end of the heavy-meshed veil fitting closely over her face. She pulled on her freshly washed white gloves which matched the piqué waistcoat she wore with her grey wool suit, checked the seams of her stockings, and opened the door. The morning paper was lying at the threshold, in time for an eight o’clock breakfast. She lifted it, decided not to take it with her, and glanced at the headlines. The navy plane was still missing in the Baltic: ten young men who would never come back to their families... New York reservoirs were still low... Further investigations in Washington... The case of Dr. Fuchs was still going on, even if it was over... A Communist demonstration in New York against the President of Chile... Nazi trouble rising once more in Hamburg: desecration of graves.

  As she laid the paper with a frown on the hall table, the ’phone rang. I’ll be late, she warned herself, but she lifted the telephone. She was hoping it wouldn’t be Peggy, her sister, calling to say that she and Jon couldn’t come to the party because the baby was sick or they couldn’t get a sitter. But it was Scott’s voice that answered her. “Hello, darling,” he began. And she forgot all her worries, public and private.

  * * *

  Scott Ettley had been wakened at five o’clock, too. His apartment, only a few blocks away from Rona’s, lay almost underneath the incoming plane. He listened for engine trouble, and then—reassured that he wasn’t going to be killed in his bed with the biggest hangover he had had in weeks—he cursed the pilot as heartily as his splitting head would let him. He made out the time with some difficulty on his watch. Oh, God!... He stared angrily at the darkened room, at the litter of living—the scattered clothes, the misplaced books, the tailored cover of the divan which he had ripped off last night, no, it was this morning, and left lying beside his shirt on the floor. He pushed an overflowing ashtray farther away from his nose, and then pulled the sheet over his head as if to blot out all the joys of a bachelor apartment.

  Waking is always hell, he thought. Or I’m getting old. Twenty-nine. I can’t take night club air and the great indoor spaces any more. Twenty-nine, and already giving up the simple pleasures of the poor. Forty bucks, that was what simple pleasures cost nowadays. Forty little bucks. But Rona had enjoyed it. Made up to her for the quarrel last week. My fault, of course. She never says it, but she might as well. I know it was all my damned fault. And why am I admitting it now, anyway? Just to add the final touch of joy on a lousy morning at five o’clock and sleep all gone and this head spinning like an empty boat in a whirlpool? He groaned in pity, and lay with his eyes closed. Because he was so sure that sleep had gone, it came drifting back.

  When the alarm went off, it was ten minutes to eight. He felt slightly better. But waking, he told himself again, was always hell. Slowly, he sat up. He stayed sitting on the edge of his bed, looking down at his crumpled pyjama legs. Then he groped for his slippers, couldn’t find them, and padded into the bathroom on his bare feet. His reflection in the mirror made him feel worse, but a cold shower pulled him half-back into life. He remembered then that he must call Rona.

  “Hello, darling,” he began, and listening to her voice he began thinking of her as she had been last night. “Hello, beautiful... did you enjoy it?... Did I? It was the best evening we’ve had in a long time. Let’s have some more. To hell with the cost, Rona. Are we living, or are we living?” He listened to her laugh, and wished he could manage one like that at this hour. “Honey,” he said, “by the way—I can’t meet you for lunch today. Sorry, got to go out of town... No, I’ll be back in time for the party. Don’t worry. Sorry about lunch, though... I meant to tell you last night, but I was enjoying myself too much, I guess. Forgive me, darling?”

  He replaced the receiver. He was smiling now. Rona was pretty wonderful. In spite of Orpen’s sneers about mantraps, Rona was wonderful. But the smile left Scott Ettley’s face as he thought of Nicholas Orpen, of Rona, of his father, of all the complications in his life. All that was enough to drive him back into gloom, away from the moment of pleasure when he had listened to Rona’s laugh over the telephone. Orpen was wrong about Rona. Rona was understanding, Rona was pliable. It was the only way to be happily married—to take the girl you wanted when she was still impressionable and mould her into someone who would be yours forever. Orpen was right about most things, but he was wrong about Rona.

  Ettley shaved and dressed with care, choosing a dark grey flannel suit, a fresh white shirt, a navy silk tie. Conservative, he told himself with a grin. He left the apartment before nine, complimenting himself on his speed and efficiency. (He would have time, after all, for a cup of coffee. He might even walk to the office.) He closed the door and double-locked it, leaving behind him the disordered room with yesterday’s shirt and stray socks and the bed-covers still lying abjectly on the floor. Marija, who came in to pick up and clean each day, would have everything in order for his return. She was a quiet Esthonian who had never learned enough English to be able to take out her citizenship papers. She was a reliable
woman. Orpen had recommended her: he knew her husband.

  I must see Orpen tonight, Scott Ettley was thinking as he reached the street. It was a cool, fresh morning. The small trees spaced along the sidewalk were in bud, their black thin branches dusted with green. He skirted an empty ash can, a couple of milk bottles, a dog straining at the end of a leash. I must see Orpen. This waiting and wondering is getting me down. Tonight, I’ll see him.

  Then he remembered Rona’s party. After it, no doubt, his father would insist on taking Rona and him to dinner. Her sister and brother-in-law would be drawn in, too. One of those family evenings with Duty raising her ugly head. And every time his father made a tactful allusion to weddings, Rona would try not to look embarrassed, yet her cheeks would colour and her eyes would find something interesting to watch on the other side of the room. But getting married wasn’t so easy, not at the moment. Perhaps by Thanksgiving, perhaps by then. Rona would wait another six months: she was his, she trusted him. Some day he could explain to her, and that would make everything clear to her. She would understand. They could be happy together, in spite of what Orpen said.

  He stopped for a moment at the corner newsstand and read the morning’s headlines. He didn’t even bother to buy a paper. Just the same old stuff, ground out day after day. And then he went into Schrafft’s, sat at the counter, and drank a cup of strong black coffee. He caught sight of himself in the mirror behind the bubbling coffee-pots—a fair-haired man, well-fed, well-dressed, with a look of prosperity about him. He turned sharply away from the mirror, paid the clerk, and left.

  2

  Rona Metford left the office just after half-past four.

  “Where’s she going?” the new typist asked, catching a glimpse of Rona as she passed the open door of the large room where fifteen tables and fifteen typewriters stood in neat rows.

  Mrs. Hershey, In Charge, looked up with a frown. She did most of the important typing for the Architecture Department, and so she felt she had to defend Rona. Besides, she liked Rona Metford and she didn’t like new girls who thought they were running the magazine after three weeks on its staff. “When you’ve been working here nine years and become assistant editor of the Architecture Department and learned to finish your job by half-past four, no doubt Mr. Burnett will let you leave early whenever you are giving a cocktail party.”

  “Nine years. Good grief!” the new typist said in disgust. “And she isn’t even married yet.”

  Miss Guttman looked up from the filing cabinet. “We don’t all rush to grab the first man that asks us.” She exchanged a small smile with Mrs. Hershey—just a couple of old-timers putting Miss Pert in her place—and came back to her desk. Talking of Rona Metford though... “Guess who I saw in the street today?” she asked in a lowered voice.

  Mrs. Hershey couldn’t.

  “Paul Haydn! He didn’t see me...too busy looking at a windowful of ties.”

  Mrs. Hershey was impressed enough to stop her work, even if it kept her late. “Paul Haydn in New York? Well!”

  “I heard rumours that the magazine wants him back here.”

  “There have been plenty of rumours. But will he come?”

  Miss Guttman shrugged her thin shoulders. “He was in uniform, a general or something, perhaps he’s staying in the army.”

  “It might be difficult for him here,” Mrs. Hershey said. “I mean, with Rona Metford and all that.”

  “He’s forgotten long ago. He wasn’t the kind of man to let a broken engagement worry him. Wasn’t that why she broke it, anyway—all those women in Europe?”

  “Oh, you can’t believe all you hear,” Mrs. Hershey said good-naturedly. “He couldn’t help it if the girls liked him.” She shook her head, pushed a grey curl back into place, and her plump white face looked regretful. She had been sorry when Rona Metford and Paul Haydn had broken off, for she had seen the beginning of their love affair right here in this office; there was nothing like a touch of romance to brighten up life and they had looked so well together, just right, as if they’d never be the ones to disappoint Mrs. Hershey.

  “He’s like all men,” Miss Guttman said gloomily. She looked down at her neat figure in its excellent black suit, and then admired her carefully kept hands. They looked nicer ringless, anyway, she decided. “I think I’ll get a waistcoat, white piqué,” she announced suddenly. “Wonder where she bought that one she wore today? Touches of white, that’s what’s new this spring.”

  “Too much laundering,” Mrs. Hershey said. Then she suddenly remembered that she was to take care of her grandson tonight, so she couldn’t waste any more time at all. Her expert fingers raced over the electric typewriter. “My son and daughter-in-law are going to see South Pacific,” she explained, her eyes on the clock.

  “And I’ve got seats for The Cocktail Party tonight,” Miss Guttman said, also suddenly remembering the time. “They say it’s good.” She began typing too.

  Couple of old cows, the new typist thought politely. But she was feeling depressed because three weeks of typing and shorthand had turned out to be more work and less glamour than she had imagined when she had told her friends she was going to become a secretary. She stared defiantly at Mrs. Hershey for inflicting all these letters on her—the dullest, silliest letters of no importance at all—and was startled to see that Mrs. Hershey was watching her table.

  But Mrs. Hershey was remembering the morning, nine years ago, when she had pointed out that desk to a dark-haired girl with large brown eyes. “Rona Metford,” the girl had said nervously, “I’m Rona Metford.” She had been seventeen then, straight from high school. And more willing to learn than some of those college graduates who wanted to work on a magazine nowadays. Mrs. Hershey looked severely at the new girl. (She’ll have to go. Lazy, inefficient, blaming all her troubles on other people. As if we didn’t earn most of our own troubles: pity they hadn’t taught her that in college.) Then she pulled back her attention to the last letter she had to type. She slipped a sheet of paper, carbon and second sheet neatly in place and typed the date expertly to balance the elegantly embossed heading—trend: a magazine for living. In all her fifteen years with Trend, Mrs. Hershey had never quite decided what that really meant. Perhaps that was why so many people bought it, just trying to find out.

  “I don’t care,” Miss Guttman said suddenly, her blonde palomino-rinsed head turned towards Mrs. Hershey. “I’m going to get a white piqué waistcoat.”

  Mrs. Hershey nodded placatingly, frowned at a word, and typed on.

  * * *

  The white piqué waistcoat which had aroused Miss Guttman’s envy was now getting out of the elevator and arousing passions of a slightly different nature in the men hurrying through the lobby.

  Joe, the elevator operator, was finishing the story which he had begun on the twenty-third floor about Monday at Jamaica. “Fifty-to-one shot. Breezed in.”

  “It paid the rent, then?” Rona asked with a smile.

  “Sure did. Paid the rent all right.” He grinned and added, “This week.”

  “Good night, Joe.” Rona hurried past the row of elevators toward the entrance of the building, before he could add the inevitable phrase that his life was just a series of ups and downs.

  “Good night, Miss Metford.” Joe’s voice sounded cheated of a laugh, but in another half hour or so he would have plenty of customers coming down from the upper floors. He knew them all, had seen them come and go. Not many of them could say they had been working here in this building for twenty-one years. Miss Metford was leaving soon—so they said. Engaged to that nice-looking young fellow with the fair hair and blue eyes. But he wasn’t waiting for her, down here in the lobby, tonight. She wasn’t expecting him, either, for she was walking past the Coffee Shop where they usually met, out into Fifth Avenue through the big swing doors.

  Rona turned east towards Madison, walking quickly, keeping to the right of the sidewalk to prove she was now an old New Yorker. Tonight, she didn’t even glance at the hats and dresses and ti
es and shirts and books and glassware which were so invitingly displayed in the small shops all along the street. At Madison Avenue, busy, less formal than Fifth but with its own elegance and high-priced look, she had to wait for a traffic light. And looking up and down the avenue, looking at the buildings with their varied lights and shadows, looking at the spring evening sky so high and blue, looking at the white clouds so admirably placed to balance the skyscrapers, she fell in love with her town all over again. Each evening, waiting at Madison and East Fifty-fourth Street, she’d look at the sky, and then at the buildings, and then at the buses and taxis and people, and—no matter how tired or annoyed or worried she had been that afternoon—her spirits would lift. Today, she had been happy and excited so that now she felt like singing. The vision of herself gaily skipping across the avenue, hitting a high note, made her smile. The woman beside her, draped in a silver-blue mink stole, her enamelled face expressionless under a riot of roses, looked at Rona curiously for a moment. A man watching both of them, kept his thoughts to himself. And then the traffic lights changed to green, the buses and taxis lined up, and the three of them crossed Madison quickly, adeptly, now only intent on their own private business.

  Rona cut up Madison for a couple of blocks to see how the new building was coming along. Like everyone who had lived in the city for some years, she took a proprietary interest in all the tearing down of old buildings, the piling up of new ones. Only a few months ago, the bulldozers had been biting into the debris of this block. Then the piles had been driven deep for the foundations, the steel girders had started mounting, the concrete had been moulded. Now the building was reaching up into the sky, a fretwork of steel and concrete, and the large open space where the bulldozers had worked was a vast ground floor, black and cavernous behind its protective boarding. There, under bare electric bulbs, mounds of supplies lay in a confusion that the workmen seemed to find orderly. In another month or two, all this would be gone, to the last speck of dust. And the ground floor would have its displays of delicate dresses, or porcelain and crystal, of fragile hats and precious jewels, against a background of soft pale colours and polished mirrors and thick carpets. Modern magic, Rona thought; and standing at the rough gateway cut into the wooden boarding she watched an electrician at work on the long reels of lead piping exposed in an unfinished pillar, with the awe that Cinderella must have felt for the old lady with her wand.