Time and Time Again (33 page)

My name is Charles Anderson. I belong to a somewhat out-of-date profession called diplomacy. This is a relic of the days when even wars were polite, so I'm naturally polite myself and also a bit of a relic. I'm supposed to have certain 'immunities' under international law, which means that in a foreign country I can drive a car to the common danger without being prosecuted. If, however, that country gets into a war, then I must share the common danger, since a neutral flag painted on a roof can't be seen at night from four miles high. And if my own country gets into a war and loses, I might be hanged as a criminal if I were important enough--so thank goodness I'm not. The whole thing would have been so unforeseeable a century ago that I doubt whether my own guesses about the coming century can be much better. Anyhow, one of them (fathered by the wish, of course) is that England will survive--and not only as an inheritance like Greece and Rome. We're such a damned peculiar people, such a mixed bag of stout fellahs and decent idiots, with a smattering of high-minded hypocrites and brainy saints. We don't quite fit the theories--Spengler's or Toynbee's or Marx's or anybody's. So we can't be counted on by the theorists--or counted out either. Perhaps God isn't bored with us yet (Victor Hugo's phrase, not mine). Perhaps we shall solve the trick of all tricks for this millennium--how to step down without falling over backwards, and then how to build the new must-be on the foundations of the old has-been. I won't see it happen, but my son may.

Another guess is that what I'm writing now won't stay under a stone till 2050. (Funny how the other fellows here seem to be taking that for granted.) But there's another kind of stone my father once came across in the churchyard at Pumphrey Basset--an ancient gravestone of a female dwarf with the inscription on it--'Parva sed apta Domino'. Somehow I wouldn't mind betting that will outlast an atomic research plant, and perhaps in the long run mean more. . . .

* * * * *

In his minute script, and writing fast because he did not take the occasion too seriously, Charles was having an easier time (he surmised) than the other five, on whom posterity and the ticking clock seemed to impose a gruelling test. When the ten minutes were up and he had almost filled both sides of the paper, he passed it over without rereading and reached for the port while the others were begging an extra minute to make corrections.

Musing thus on the future had set him thinking about Gerald, whom he would send in due course to Brookfield and Cambridge if only because he could not, in England at the middle of the twentieth century, think of anything better to do with the boy. I just as he preferred a dinner to be 'black tie', not because he was a snob, but because it avoided the problem of what else.

* * * * *

It was about this time that he took up painting again with full knowledge not only that his work would never be of consequence, but that even his talent was less than it had been thirty years before. His pleasure, though, was nearly as great, and perhaps enhanced by the small amateur reputation he acquired among people who really did not know much about art at all. Once, on a wet Sunday in a Mediterranean city, he painted--from memory and in his bedroom at the Legation--a curiously attractive portrait of his father, as he remembered him during the old man's last years. Havelock was sitting by the window of the Westminster house, staring out over wet pavements and the tops of umbrellas, with Big Ben and the Abbey towers in the misty twilight. 'I made it rain for him,' Charles later explained to friends who had known Havelock and admired the portrait, 'just as I'd put a Sicilian peasant in the sun. His life was like a day that starts well, but then the clouds come up and it begins to pour and all the things you'd rather do have to be cancelled, but by the time evening comes you'll have found something else to do and you won't even look to see if the sky has stars in it. But it may have.'

* * * * *

Later that year (1950) Charles again half expected promotion. He was beguiled by a rumour that proved false, and in the dispassionate mood that followed he began to think of retirement. But then he was offered the chance of another switch to the Foreign Office, which suited him because he liked to live in London; so he put off the retirement and found the prospect of it an increasing comfort and even a mental stimulus. He felt mildly ambitious to do something, within the nearer reach, that would bring back the feeling of innocent schoolboy credit; on this, perhaps, he could make his bow at the Prizegiving of life and receive a smattering of applause from those who did not expect to see him again.

And yet the very mildness of the ambition made it hard to accomplish. The feeling of near-success, which is also near- failure, followed him to Paris, where, as member of the British delegation to a somewhat second-string international conference, he could believe that his career had reached a peak--perhaps not its highest, perhaps not even high, but still a peak of sorts, and very likely the last.

These things were in his mind during dinner at the Cheval Noir on Gerald's seventeenth birthday; they were in his mind as he followed the boy in a taxi across the city; they were in his mind as he sat in Rocher's ice-cream dispensary, facing his son and the girl his son had gone there to meet. 'He thinks it's wonderful,' she had said, 'that you should be representing England at the Conference.' How could he live up to or down to such an image in his son's eyes? It was just another thing to please and plague him, and suddenly he saw the gulf between father and son far wider than he had imagined, part of some structural rift of humanity.

It might have bothered him further had he not just then received a second shock of a far more peremptory kind. For outside, only a few inches beyond the plate-glass windows, and peering in upon their little group with riveted attention, was the face of a man whom Charles least of all wanted to think about, much less encounter in the flesh. And the apparition, having seen that he was seen, began immediately to wave the kind of greeting Charles could not possibly ignore.

So Charles waved back and was only able to explain that the intruder was one of the Conference delegates by the time that Palan, plump and clumsy, yet curiously notable as always, came threading his way amongst the tables towards them. 'This WOULD happen,' Charles muttered to himself.

It was not only that Charles did not want to see Palan; he would have been embarrassed to be discovered at a place like Rocher's by anybody. At the Cheval Noir a surprise of such a kind would have been barely tolerable, little as he wished to spread the news of that restaurant to outsiders; and at any ordinary Parisian pavement café, however proletarian, he could have summoned enough aplomb to meet even Sir Malcolm Bingay's eye. But to be spotted in an ice- cream parlour sucking a pink concoction through a straw . . . it simply did not add up to anything he could take in stride; it was like those dreams he sometimes had in which he realized, at the moment of being presented to a chef de cabinet at a garden party, that he was completely nude from the waist down.

Nor did he expect that Palan would miss the ludicrousness of the situation. Doubtless it would stand him in good stead at the Conference in the morning--would acidify his attitude, revitalize his sarcasms. He had already found so much in Charles to poke fun at; from now on there would be more. Charles braced himself for an effort of courtesy as the fellow waited; clearly there was no alternative but to introduce him. He did so. Palan then bowed and stooped to kiss Miss Raynor's hand in a way that would please her all the more (Charles reflected) if she were unaware that in correct European circles one did not kiss the hands of unmarried women. And it was like Palan, who must certainly know that himself, to take the impertinent liberty or else to have sized her up as a susceptible American who would feel such gallantry to be one of the perquisites of foreign travel. Meanwhile Palan's eyes were roving over the scene with a certain ironic detachment. 'It looks very good, what you all have got in the glasses. What do they call it?' To Charles's regret Miss Raynor smiled and told him. 'Just a Raspberry frappé.'

'So?' answered Palan, regarding it judicially. 'But I think not for me.' His loud and bad French was already drawing attention from nearby tables. 'I shall have Banane Split.' He sat down and shouted the order to the nearest waitress. Then he pulled out a handkerchief and began mopping his forehead. 'I must explain that this is just bonne chance. I am walking along and I see M'sieur Anderson through the window. He looks so happy, eating his ice cream. It is a sign of the times, is it not, that the French are acquiring so many of your American habits . . . It used to be English--the rosbif--the afternoon tea . . . but now it is all American--ice cream, soda fountain, jukebox. But you, M'sieur Anderson--somehow I did not think of you as an addict--yet why not, after all? It is doubtless a treat for you too.' He turned again to Miss Raynor. 'I am a great admirer of things American!'

The girl looked as if much of this had escaped her, but she caught its complimentary flavour and responded with a second smile that gave Charles a twinge of jealousy. It was not that he thought himself less physically attractive than Palan--on the contrary; but he could not help feeling that Palan's style of success with women should somehow be picketed as unfair to gentlemen.

'It's Gerald's seventeenth birthday,' he said in French, relieved to have found an opening for a personal alibi. 'We were just celebrating.'

'But of course.' Palan now turned his attention to Gerald. 'Seventeen! Ah, a wonderful age! And how long are you to be in Paris, Gerald?'

(He called him Gerald already--and as easily as that! To Charles this was something else to be jealous of, yet confusingly to be appreciated as well.) Charles answered: 'He's leaving for England tonight.' He added: 'And Miss Raynor has to leave for America-- also tonight.' He felt as if he were quietly closing doors in Palan's face.

Palan then transferred his attention to Charles. 'Leaving us two old fogies here in Paris,' he commented; and Charles did not like the phrase, for he was sure Palan was nearer sixty than fifty.

'But SEVENTEEN!' Palan was continuing. 'Can you guess where
I
was at seventeen? . . . In a military hospital--already I was wounded in battle. That was the Balkan War.' (Charles did the mental arithmetic--1911--it would make him fifty-eight.) 'I was what they called a hothead in those days--at sixteen I ran away from home to enlist--I lied about my age. I have told many lies since, but never one as crazy as that.' He suddenly rolled up his sleeve. 'You see? I have it still.' Along the whole length of a hairy forearm there ran a scar like a highway between forests. 'You think I was a great patriot, eh? But no, I ran away because I thought I would prefer war to being at home. But I found war was even worse. My father used to beat us when we were young. He was very rich and loved to beat people. One day at last I beat him-- and that was why I had to run away. . . . They killed him after the Revolution. So you have trains to catch tonight, both of you? If my father had caught his train he would not have been killed. But he was late at the station and the train had gone. There were no more trains. That time comes in all our lives some day--when there are no more trains. But I hated him. And now--just to make things equal--my son hates me.'

'You have a son?' Charles said, with so little reason to be astonished that he wondered why he was even interested.

'I have five--and seven daughters--but the son who hates me is the only one who has anything to do with me. Life is like that.'

'Why does he hate you?'

'Because he is a hothead too--though not the kind I was. He is a cold hothead. He is in charge of soil conservation in the province of Alma Valchinia, but already he is talked of as a coming man. And at twenty-four! What a career! Why, when I was that age I was wrecking trains with dynamite--I was ACTIVIST! You could not have made me spend my life examining dirt!'

Charles wished that Palan would not shout; it was unseemly that such a conversation should be overheard, though he supposed that Palan cared as little for that as for his other eccentricities. Charles was glad when the Banana Split arrived. He noticed that Palan attacked it with a zest that was either childlike or wolfish-- depending, Charles mused, on how far one had gone in finding excuses for the fellow.

'You like it?' Miss Raynor said, watching Palan quite tranquilly. She spoke in English, though she had no reason to suppose he understood. Then, however, he answered in English with a definite American accent: 'Do YOU?
I
think they make them far better at Schrafft's.'

Miss Raynor laughed incredulously. 'SCHRAFFT'S? That's where I often have lunch. There's one next to my office.'

'You have an office, Anne?' (And even 'Anne' already!)

'I work in one. . . . So you know New York, Mr. Palan?'

'For three years I lived there. Central Park West. I know the Stork Club and also the Automat. I have stayed at Ellis Island and also at the Waldorf-Astoria. I have eaten hot dogs and caviare.'

'But not together? Or perhaps that's no worse than cheese and apple pie.'

Palan laughed loudly and patted the girl's hand. But Charles was reddening. He could not enjoy the joke because he was thinking that after all those Conference sittings during which he had suffered Palan's bad French, it now turned out that the man could just as well have spared him such an ordeal--or at least have substituted the lesser one of his English! But it was not the memory of the French that bothered Charles most, but the possibility that on several occasions Palan might have caught a few words of English that Charles had whispered to Sir Malcolm--a few witty but tart asides, prompted by some specially irritating attitude of Palan's, but not wholly excusable, not really sanctioned by the codebook of good manners. The thought that Palan might have heard and understood made Charles feel slightly ashamed, and the conclusion that, even if so, Palan had clearly not minded a bit, made Charles feel also annoyed. Perhaps, after all, the fellow was as thick-skinned as those who opposed him needed to be.