Neither Five Nor Three Read online

  “Yes.”

  “Scott, he had to be back in Staunton tonight. Your father would have stayed if he could.”

  “I suppose so.” Scott picked up a withered canapé from a plate on the writing-desk, examined it critically, threw it back. All day, he had been preparing himself for this family dinner tonight, for the hidden tensions, for the seemingly harmless remarks that disguised petty criticisms. Instead, his father had gone back to Staunton. He shoved the desk chair angrily into place.

  “Scott!” Rona’s voice was near breaking point.

  He turned to face her, suddenly noticing her exhaustion. “Darling!” His face softened. “I’m sorry. I had a bad evening, that’s all.” He took her in his arms.

  “Didn’t you enjoy the party at all?” She was almost in tears.

  He kissed her eyes and mouth. “Yes, it was a good party.”

  “I’m so sorry, Scott, that I ever asked Paul Haydn.”

  “He seemed to be enjoying himself.”

  She smiled, shaking her head. “The same old Paul! He left with the prettiest girl—as usual.” Then she glanced round the room. “What a mess all this is!”

  Scott kissed her again. His smile had returned, the frown had cleared from his brow. “Forget it. We’ll go out and have a quiet dinner together. Then I’ll bring you home fairly early tonight.”

  “Do I look so tired?”

  “No, you look wonderful. You were wrong about Haydn. I’m the man who’s leaving this party with the prettiest girl. Now what about putting on your hat? The one that’s only a couple of roses?”

  “All right!” Her eyes were smiling now. “But I’m a bit scared of original hats after seeing Thelma’s tonight.”

  “You aren’t Thelma.”

  Rona said pityingly, “She’s so unhappy. What’s wrong with people like Thelma?”

  He didn’t answer that. He looked around the room. “Get Mrs. Kasprowicz to come up here, tomorrow. Just leave everything tonight, Rona. Promise?”

  She was tired enough to agree, to try to forget that her budget was already overstrained this week. Parties cost a lot these days. She said, “I don’t know how Peggy and Jon manage. Yet they do. And look at them tonight—as smartly dressed as anyone! You know, I always feel so guilty when I remember Jon makes less money than I do. Can you imagine it? He’s got brilliant degrees, he’s had years of training and study when he earned nothing, and what does he make? Four thousand dollars a year as an assistant professor.”

  Scott let her go. “Yes,” he said, beginning to walk restlessly around the room. “It’s bitterly unfair. But what do you expect in a country where a movie star makes more than the President?”

  “Scott, I didn’t mean it that way. All I was doing was to admire Peggy and Jon. It doesn’t make them bitter. Worried, yes. But not bitter. They couldn’t be so happy if they let themselves go bitter.”

  “They don’t even know where their interests lie,” he said. Why admire fools, even if they were good-natured fools? He halted suddenly, and he turned to look at Rona. “Why did you mention them, anyway?” Marriage...was it so important to a woman as all that? Rona and he—they had each other, they were faithfully in love. Wasn’t that enough? Provided they could wait together, did waiting matter? Yet, thinking of Jon and Peggy Tyson, remembering the way he envied them even if he pitied them, he could give no true answer to his own questions. Rationally, he could find an argument. But with Rona, he couldn’t argue rationally. That was what Orpen said, and what he kept denying to Orpen. I’m going to see Orpen, tonight, he decided. Once I bring Rona back here. I’ll see him. Then he remembered Orpen was at a meeting tonight. But he would see Orpen on Friday definitely. He’d tell Orpen then.

  Rona was saying, “Why did I mention them?” She gestured helplessly. “I don’t really know,” she answered slowly. “Or perhaps it was just because Peggy and Jon seem to be living a fuller life than most of us in this room tonight. Fuller and richer. And isn’t that better, too? Yet, from the point of view of earning power, most of us could have bought and sold them. That was all.”

  Scott said, “I’ve been deciding one thing, tonight. We are getting married. We’ll set a definite date for this summer. We’ve waited long enough.” He smiled, and the strain and worry left his face. “Will you take a chance on my earning power?”

  “Oh, Scott!” She threw her arms around him. She was no longer tired and unhappy. Her smile was no longer uncertain. He caught her, holding her close to him, kissing her soft dark hair.

  “We’ll manage,” he said. “Well be all right, Rona. Just trust me.” His grip tightened round her, almost desperately.

  * * *

  It was another evening to remember happily—a long, deliberate dinner with gay talk and good humour. Scott’s depression had vanished completely. Now, sitting over their coffee cups in the almost deserted restaurant (it was a small French place where the proprietor was glad to see Americans being leisurely over his excellent food), Scott was reminding her of their visit last summer to Mexico. This summer, he was saying, they’d try Canada in August for some fishing. Or they might go in September and make it a honeymoon trip.

  “And spend it hunting?” Rona asked, not quite sure about that. A hunting camp wasn’t exactly the best place to wear charming negligees. It would be a flannel honeymoon—not lace and chiffon. “Isn’t September too early for the hunting season?” Yet, she remembered, Scott had gone on hunting trips to Canada in previous summers, so her ideas about seasons must be all wrong.

  “Perhaps we’d better leave that for another time,” Scott said. “This year, we may have to economise a little.” He smiled. “You won’t mind?”

  She shook her head. Why would he always assume that she judged everything on its money value? Then she thought that it was wonderful to have a man who was so modest about his own value, and she was ashamed of her irritation. “We’ll have a busy summer,” she said. “So much to plan for... Oh, Scott, your father and Peggy and Jon are going to be so pleased.”

  He laughed. “We aren’t setting the date for their benefit, are we?”

  “No. But they all wish us well.” She added happily, “I’m glad your father likes me. It makes everything—easier.”

  “Now, don’t start planning to get me on to the staff of the Clarion,” he teased her.

  “I wasn’t,” she protested. “I know you’ve made up your mind about that.”

  “I have.” Then, leaning forward on his elbows, watching her large dark eyes, he asked, “What do you really think about my decision to work in New York?”

  “I admire it,” she said truthfully. “Yet, I’m sorry in some ways.”

  “For Dad’s sake?”

  “No, darling.” She smiled. “I think of you most of the time.”

  “What’s wrong with the Morning Star? Don’t you like my working there?”

  “I just thought that you didn’t particularly like the Star.”

  “I’ve got to make money, somehow, you know.”

  She hesitated. Then she put into words, at last, the thought that had troubled her for some months. “If you don’t like newspaper work, honey, why don’t you give it up?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “When I came out of the army, I thought I’d try it,” he said awkwardly. He watched her face. “Besides, you are wrong. I don’t dislike newspaper work. There are worse jobs. It’s just so damned tedious to begin with. Nothing but police courts and fires. Routine stuff.”

  “Perhaps they’ll give you a break soon and let you handle bigger things.” Foreign news, that was what Scott really would enjoy. That was what he wanted, she knew.

  “Perhaps,” he said moodily. “Oh, well. I’d rather have things as they are. If I had joined the Clarion, everyone would have said it was my father who gave me the breaks. He’s had an easy life. Plenty of money. Inherited his father’s newspaper. It is about time that one man in our family stood on his own feet.”

  “But your father has! Why, he’d ne
ver be standing where he is today, if he hadn’t climbed there. By himself. And that’s what he wanted you to do. He wanted you to begin at the bottom and work up, as he did. And if you were good enough, you’d have been given a chance to show what you could do. It’s absurd to say that you shouldn’t be given a chance, just because you are his son. You ought to have the same chance as any other reporter on his paper.”

  “You say he began at the bottom, like any other reporter. I say he was still the editor’s son.”

  “All right, darling,” Rona smiled appeasingly. “He was still the editor’s son.” And a better editor than his father, she thought. He had pulled the Clarion out of the strictly local class into a paper whose foreign news was well reported, well edited, and well read. But she couldn’t say that—not with Scott’s worried frown and tight lips to warn her. And again she wondered why Scott had ever become a reporter at all. He had been a brilliant student in economics. Why hadn’t he gone into business? It would have been easier on him if he had broken away completely into another field. Easier on him, easier on his father. That was what Jon Tyson said. Jon had a way of seeing things clearly.

  “We’ll tell Jon and Peggy on Friday,” Rona said.

  Scott looked up.

  “About the wedding,” she explained.

  “Friday,” he said. “This Friday?”

  “They are expecting us then.” She looked at him in dismay. “Don’t tell me you can’t come.” But the expression on his face answered her. She said, “Surely if you are working late so much this week, you won’t have to give up Friday too?”

  “You go and see Peggy and Jon. I’ll collect you there, later in the evening, and bring you home.”

  “All right,” she said slowly. She tried to smile. “You really are the most overworked reporter in New York. Five late nights, last week. Four, the week before. They might as well put you on the night desk.”

  “It isn’t work on Friday evening,” he said. “I forgot when Peggy asked me that I had already promised Nicholas Orpen to go to a party at his place. Don’t worry, I’ll slip away early. I’d take you with me, but—”

  “It’s men only. As usual,” she said crisply. She began to prepare to leave. She was intent on finding her gloves, on studying her face in the small mirror from her handbag, on adjusting the two roses caught in a heavy mesh of green veiling to their proper angle on her dark hair.

  “Jealous?” He was making a joke of it.

  “Perhaps.” She tried to smile, too. “But why does Nicholas Orpen always avoid women so much?” And why not let himself be called Nick? she thought.

  “Perhaps he’s afraid of women,” Scott said teasingly.

  “When I met him, he didn’t give me the feeling of being afraid of anything.”

  Scott was amused. “He’s just a very shy, quiet little man. And you only met him once, Rona, for a matter of ten minutes. Perhaps less.”

  That was quite enough, she thought. “You like him a lot, don’t you?”

  “He’s a kind-hearted sort of guy. With a good taste in music.”

  Rona said slowly, looking down at the gloves she was drawing on, “He seems to surround himself with young men.”

  “Who like music, and beer, and a lot of pipe smoke. Just trying to recapture our college days, that’s all.” Scott was laughing at himself now. Then his voice became more serious. “Orpen actually was a professor at one time, you know.”

  “I thought he was an instructor,” Rona said, trying to remember. “Why did he leave Monroe College?”

  “As far as I know—I was only a junior at the time—he didn’t get on with the president. And you know the self-appointed dictator he was.”

  “But why didn’t Orpen go on teaching elsewhere?”

  “He hadn’t a chance once the president got his claws into him. Orpen makes a living by his writing. He doesn’t ask too much of life, you know.”

  “He isn’t bitter?”

  Scott laughed. “Heavens, no. He never talks about it, anyway. He lives quietly, sees his friends occasionally.”

  All of them men, Rona was thinking. She wished she didn’t feel this sense of fear. She looked at Scott’s face—at the blue eyes, the excellent features, the finely shaped head with its fair hair waving naturally over the high brow. She closed her pocket book angrily: she was furious with herself. Jealous, she thought, jealous of a shy quiet little man she had once met when she had been walking with Scott down Third Avenue. Orpen had fallen into step with them for a block, had taken Scott’s arm in a friendly way, had dropped Scott’s arm when he saw her watching him, had smiled when she spoke and then looked vaguely away as if she weren’t there at all. Yet in spite of this, it was odd how she had been left with the feeling that he knew a great deal about her. He had treated her as if she were an old acquaintance whom he disliked. Odd. And ridiculous. She rose from the table.

  Scott seemed to have read her thoughts. “Rona, if you want me to stop going to Orpen’s occasional parties—”

  “You know I’d never ask you to do that,” she said sharply. She was irritated as we all become irritated when we hear a man loudly offer to pay the cheque he knows someone else will pay. Safe offers always annoyed her. She quickened her pace between the little rows of empty tables.

  “Good night, good night,” said the proprietor, beaming on his two late guests. “Au revoir, mademoiselle. Au revoir, monsieur.”

  “Good night,” echoed the waiter, a little less enthusiastically. After all, it was now half-past eleven. The tips in his pocket were heavy but so were his feet.

  “Rona, stop worrying about Orpen,” Scott said as he caught up with her at the restaurant door. “Or would you rather have me go to parties where there were only women?”

  She shook her head, and slipped her arm through his. I am lucky, she was telling herself as they walked along the darkened side streets towards Lexington Avenue, I am lucky. Scott pays no attention to any other women; of that, I am sure. And if I’ve been worried or unhappy at times, it was only because we’ve been in love for three years and engaged for almost one and sometimes that seemed so long. Sometimes, too, there seemed no real reason for being so vague about their wedding as Scott had been, but that was again only her impatience. I’m too impulsive: if I were a man and in love, I’d not even have bothered about an engagement ring; I’d have married the girl and lived in a one-room apartment if necessary. But that probably wasn’t wise, however romantic. Scott was wise. He knew very well where he was going. And yet, he could be romantic too. She smiled.

  “What was that smile for?” he asked.

  “For you,” she said. “For the days we had together in Mexico.”

  He gripped her arm, and they fell into step as they turned into Lexington. The neon signs above the cafés and bars were as bright as the colours on a Christmas tree. The sidewalks were still alive. People were walking home from a movie, from late business, from a visit to friends. A subway train rumbled underground. Taxis were coming back from the theatres, travelling to the little night clubs on the side streets. Far down the avenue, the General Electric Building was crowned with changing lights. The tall graceful spire of the Chrysler tower pointed into the dark reddened sky.

  “What about a visit to the Blue Angel?” Scott asked suddenly, as they neared Fifty-fifth Street. “Charles Trenet is singing there.” Rona liked Trenet’s songs: they might cheer her up, take her mind off Orpen. Why the hell did I mention his name tonight? “Or are you too tired?”

  “Perhaps,” she admitted. “I’m just beginning to have that old collapsed feeling.”

  “We’ll go tomorrow night,” he said. “No—not tomorrow.”

  Scott was working late tomorrow, she remembered. He was busy all of this week. In a way, it was lucky she was taking night classes at Columbia University—she always had plenty to do to keep her occupied too.

  “We’ll go sometime next week,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Now, stop worrying about Orpen
’s party on Friday night. I’ll get away early and come up to join you at Peggy’s. I’ll get away by eleven, I’m sure.”

  She nodded again.

  “You are tired,” he said gently.

  Yes, she was thinking, I suddenly feel quite tired, quite depressed. I’ll go to bed at once. I’ll have to leave all that appalling mess in the living-room. I’ll get up early and clear it away in the morning. That would be a grim way to start a new day. The joys of being a career girl, she thought dejectedly.

  He put his arm around her waist as they reached her house. “You’re home, darling. Wake up, Rona. You can’t go to sleep until you are in bed. Shall I come up and search for any burglar?”

  She found herself smiling, too. That was Scott’s oldest joke. “Not tonight, darling,” she said. “See you soon.” She kissed him, and hurried upstairs.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he was saying.

  5

  On Friday, just before eleven o’clock in the morning, Paul Haydn walked into the building on Fifth Avenue where Trend had its offices.

  “Hello, Joe,” he said, as he entered the express elevator, “and how’s Jamaica this season?”

  Joe stared. “Mr. Haydn!” He grinned. “I heard you was back in town. But my eyes ain’t what they used to be. Took me a minute to recognise you.”

  “To tell you the truth, Joe, I barely recognised myself.” He looked into the mirror above the elevator door. The grey flannel suit, the white shirt, still looked as odd as they felt. And he had lost his taste in ties: the blue polka dot that he had bought so enthusiastically seemed a bit intense to him now.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Joe said sympathetically. “Just like me. Been married thirty-five years. Today’s our anniversary. I woke up and looked at the wife, and I said ‘Guess I’m married all right.’ Well, it’s good to see you, Mr. Haydn. Hope we’ll be seeing more of you around here.” He brought the elevator to a smooth halt and opened its door.