The Hothouse by the East River Read online

  ‘You died, too,’ says Elsa. ‘That’s one of the things you don’t realise, Paul.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he says. ‘I remember standing by the side of the track when they pulled your body out of the wreck. I remember too many things to be dead.’

  The coloured lights of the nightspot go off and on, at each flicker becoming more subdued until only a dim rose-bathed glow falls on the circular dancing space beside their table. The music has stopped. A waiter brings champagne in a bucket which he pours into two glasses, very skilfully, as if he had eyes that could see in the dark.

  ‘No, Paul,’ says Elsa. ‘That was your imagination running away with itself.’

  Most of the tables are still empty. When the music starts Paul and Elsa dance in the circle of rose-coloured light which presently changes to orange, then to yellow and green, blue and violet, then back to rose-colour again.

  They are alone on the dance floor. They dance together, then apart. A silver-haired man and a much younger woman join them, both incredibly neat like two manicured ladies’ fingers. The man’s hair and thin. well-kept face glint green then yellow as do his silver-blonde and smooth partner’s. Their shadows follow them across the floor, never touching, bending with the will of the two substances that shed them. But Elsa’s shadow crosses Paul’s. She dances apart from him, lightly swinging, moving her hips and her feet only a little, but her shadow touches his. The neat shining couple return to their table after a while but Elsa and Paul dance till the music stops.

  ‘Funny I’m not a bit tired, and I haven’t danced for ages,’ Elsa says.

  ‘It was over six years ago,’ says Paul, ‘that we last danced together. It was at Katerina’s party. How could it all have been a dream?’

  ‘Katerina is a vagary of your mind,’ Elsa says, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘She may have been at one point but she isn’t now — Look who’s arrived!’ says Paul. ‘Quick, Elsa, pick up your bag.’ He is draping her coat over her shoulders and tugging her arm. ‘They’ve come,’ he says, peering over to the entrance where four people are being greeted by the head waiter.

  Paul hurries-the waiter for his check and gives over the money with his eyes still on the new arrivals. Miles Bunting, Poppy Xavier, Colonel Tylden, Helmut Kiel. They do not look as if they are pursuing anybody. Poppy recognises Elsa and with a wave of sleeves starts making her massive way among the dim-lit tables.

  Paul is propelling Elsa by a more devious route towards the door. Miles Bunting sees them pass and moves nearer. ‘Paul!’ he says. ‘Not going, are you?’

  Paul does not reply. Elsa says, ‘Not enough people. The place is dead.’

  Colonel Tylden, who comes along next, says, ‘There isn’t much night-life anywhere. The slump. Have you seen the Dow Jones industrial average?’

  Paul presses his wife towards the door, collects his coat and precipitates her before him out into the street.

  ‘I don’t see what there is to laugh at,’ Paul tells her, and beckons a taxi to the kerb.

  ‘When a man’s angrily in love with you, it has its funny side,’ she says.

  His heart knocks on the sides of the coffin. ‘Let me out!’

  ‘Stop!’ says Paul to the taxi-driver. ‘We’ll get out here,’ he says.

  Elsa says, ‘There’s nothing doing at the St Regis at this hour. It’s past eleven.’

  ‘The bar’s open, the restaurant’s open,’ he says. He is helping her from the taxi, and he takes his change. ‘We won’t find anyone we know here,’ he says.

  ‘I’m not dressed for this,’ Elsa says, when they come to the hotel’s late-night restaurant.

  Paul is talking to the head waiter. He turns to Elsa. ‘We have to book,’ he says. ‘We didn’t book.’

  The room is full of elegant diners, very much rooted in life, chattering above the music or sedately dancing.

  ‘Shall we wait in the bar?’ Paul says.

  ‘I don’t know. It looks boring.’

  ‘We’ll wait in the bar,’ says Paul to the head man, who does not seem to give any active encouragement to this plan.

  Crossing the hotel lobby they see, emerging from the lift, dressed in evening clothes, Garven and Miss Armitage.

  ‘Why this hotel?’ Paul says, as if reasoning with himself. ‘Why are they staying here, of all places? They must be mad.’

  Garven has seen them, and now so has Miss Armitage. They approach Paul and Elsa with the delighted air of old friends who have not met for a long time.

  ‘How good you look!’ says Paul to Annie Armitage.

  She looks shyly at Garven.

  ‘Elsa,’ says Garven, ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

  ‘Come to the bar,’ says Paul.

  But the bar is full, and the mural on the wall not to Elsa’s taste.

  ‘Let’s go downtown,’ says Elsa. ‘I want to dance.’

  ‘She’s having a night out,’ Paul explains. They find seats, however, in a public room leading off the lobby.

  ‘I have to tell you,’ Garven says, ‘that Annie and I are in love.’

  ‘I have to tell you,’ Paul says, ‘that the St Regis Hotel is not the place to be so.’

  ‘Here we have separate suites,’ says Annie. ‘We’re a professional partnership as well,’ Garven says. ‘Through Annie I am getting to know you, Paul. It’s the secondary associative process of the oblique approach. And through you I have a tertiary oblique approach to Elsa.’

  Elsa says to Annie, ‘I think you’re low if you’re passing on my husband’s confidences as a patient after all these years. It’s unethical.’

  ‘Your opinion doesn’t count,’ Annie replies. ‘She didn’t get any confidences,’ Paul says. ‘She only thought she did.’

  Garven says, ‘There are no confidences involved, there’s no betrayal at all. Annie is largely what you’ve made her, Paul, and by experiencing Annie I can experience you. Then, you see, by the same token, I can experience Elsa.’

  Annie says, ‘When we’ve had enough experience, primary, secondary and tertiary, then. we can really start curative treatment on your wife, Paul. I have a new method.’

  ‘She doesn’t need treatment,’ Paul says. ‘She doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Come now,’ says Garven, ‘that’s no way to talk.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here, Paul,’ says Elsa. ‘Mrs Hazlett,’ says Annie, ‘it’s only understandable that you should resist treatment. They all resist treatment, all of them. However, my new method, which is already producing first-class results — I can tell you I have clients lining up outside my office and my switchboard’s jammed — my new method does not involve the personality of the subject and therefore the impetus to therapy-resistance is obliviated. My new method is strictly bio-psychological. I locate in the various organs of the body the psychological disorder and I treat the patient strictly on the basis of the defective organ. Right now I’m treating a patient who suffers from schizophrenia of the pancreas. I have a gentleman. with a hyper-introspective bladder complicated by euphoria of the liver. I have under my care a manic-depressive kidney, a cardiac super-ego, a case of hallucinations of the diaphragm and a libidinal spleen.. Fixations of the reproductive organs are common. A person can suffer from egomania of the toenails. You name it, I can therapeutise it.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ says Garven, ‘I have to see my dentist tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I have to see my lawyer,’ Elsa says. ‘You left me without notice, Garven, and I have no butler. There must be some way that I can sue for damages.’

  She is puffing her sable coat over her shoulder and Paul’s eyes move sadly to the main lobby where some people have just come in..

  Garven says, ‘Here comes that man Kiel. And Princess Xavier with him, and the actor in your son’s play — what was his name?’

  ‘Miles Bunting,’ Paul says, getting up. ‘He didn’t use to look like that. And the other man is Colonel Tylden. Come on, Elsa.’

  The newcomers are still looking
about them and helping Poppy to rearrange her coverings when Paul and Elsa escape them by getting into the lift. They get out with two other people when it stops. They make their way to a noise beyond a folding doorway.

  ‘I think this is where the action is,’ Elsa says as the doors swing open.

  Paul stops her at the threshold. ‘Elsa,’ he says, ‘are we going to have these followers of yours on our heels all night?’

  ‘You started it,’ she says. ‘Your suspicions, your imagination … Poor Kiel, poor Kiel, and he died in prison.’

  “Well, you died in a railway train.’

  ‘So did you, Paul,’ she says. ‘You know you did.’ An elderly group of four is coming away from the reception which proceeds beyond the folding doors. Decorously they move round Elsa and Paul who are still arguing on the threshold.

  ‘Was it Tylden, then?’ he says. ‘Could it have been. Tylden, after all, who was your lover?’

  ‘Ask him,’ she says. ‘Just go down and ask him to rack his brains and see if he remembers. I expect they’re all still waiting around in. the lobby.’

  ‘Or Miles Bunting? He made you cry. ‘Was it Miles?’

  ‘I need a sandwich,’ she says, puffing towards the room although he holds her arm. ‘I need a drink.’

  “We’ll go somewhere for dinner,’ he says. ‘Was it Poppy?’

  ‘One will never really know,’ says Elsa with the air of discussing a distant name. ‘What does it matter since we all died?’

  He lets her proceed through the doorway, following her. A crowd of expensive people are packed into the room where there is a large buffet set at the far end. A waiter approaches with a tray of drinks. Elsa chooses champagne; Paul takes whisky. They are apparently very late arriving, for nobody stands at the door to announce or receive them. But presently a small white-haired man comes up to them and greets them in a jovial voice.

  ‘Come along in, glad you made it. Thank you for your beautiful gift,’ he says, shaking first Elsa’s hand and then Paul’s. ‘Mary!’ he calls out, and his tall, bright-eyed wife, her skin wrinkled with a great many years comes slowly through the crowd towards them, making a path with her hands and walking in. a very straight line. ‘See who’s here, Mary!’ says the old gentleman, looking to his wife for guidance.

  ‘Wonderful!’ she says, kissing Elsa. ‘I haven’t seen you in years. Thank you for your beautiful gift. It is really lovely. You know … all these people.’ She looks at Paul, her bright eyes rather tearful.

  “We’re late, but you know how it is,’ Elsa says. ‘We had to come and congratulate you tonight of all nights.’ And she says to Paul, looking straight at him, ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Paul, a golden wedding.’

  ‘Well, Paul,’ says the host, ‘it’s been fifty wonderful years with Mary. I can honestly say I’ve had a wonderful married life.’

  “Well, this is great. Here’s to you both,’ says Paul. ‘Mary you look simply fine.’

  ‘Alexander has been the perfect husband,’ says Mary, ‘and the perfect father.’

  ‘Alexander,’ says Elsa, ‘you don’t look a day older than when we first met you. And neither does Mary.’

  Alexander beams at Mary.

  ‘Elsa often talks about you. We remember when we first came to America how good you were to us, ‘Paul says.

  ‘Elsa,’ says Alexander, confident in his progress towards locating the new arrivals in his mind, ‘Here comes Conrad, our grandson. You remember Conrad?’

  Conrad is upon them. ‘Why, Conrad,’ says Elsa. ‘Of course we remember him, but he won’t remember us, I’m sure.’

  Conrad giggles. ‘Have you had something to eat?’ he says.

  Paul and Elsa ease across the room to the buffet.

  ‘I’d like some of that lobster salad,’ Elsa says.

  ‘I imagine he was a business-man,’ Paul says, looking round the room.

  Elsa takes her plate and fork. ‘We’ll see their names m tomorrow’s paper,’ she says.

  They say voluble goodnights to the golden wedding party and leave in. a wash of kisses and tears. Downstairs in. the lobby there is no sign of their pursuers. They swing out of the doors and walk up to the Plaza Hotel where they make for the Oak Room.

  ‘Here we are,’ says Poppy from a seat near the door. The men stand up and Miles Bunting says, ‘Paul — Elsa — we’ve kept a place for you.’

  But Paul pulls her away and they are out in Fifth Avenue waiting for an oncoming taxi to pull up by the time Miles has followed them into the street.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ says Miles. ‘What are you running away for?’

  ‘We’ve been to a golden wedding and Paul has psychoneurotic arches; he feels compelled to dance,’ Elsa explains as Paul bundles her into the back of the cab, gets in beside her and bangs the door shut. ‘Downtown,’ says Paul. The taxi purrs on through the late-night streets.

  After a while, inexplicably, the driver says, ‘We should drop the atom bomb on ‘em.’

  ‘Every time,’ says Paul, agreeably.

  They alight at a discotheque called The Sensual Experience, the taxi with its mumbling driver moves on. A dim figure awaits them in the doorway with a knife in his hand.

  ‘You can’t kill us,’ says Paul. ‘We’re dead already.’

  ‘Paul, be careful, you’ll give him a fright,’ Elsa says.

  And indeed the two drugged dilated eyes of the stranger take visible fright as his face comes close to theirs. He gasps and falls to the pavement in a kind of fit. A man comes out of the doorway, looks at the figure on the pavement and turns back in. Elsa and Paul walk away up the street to another discotheque, and by the time they look back a patrol car has found the man on the pavement and the police are hauling him into the back seat.

  ‘There must be something about us,’ Elsa says. They climb the stairs to Roloff’s.

  Here they make a decided success. Even Roloff himself wants to sign them up for a nightly floor show. A sharp-eyed youth with a mass of bushy hair somehow through the clang of the music and the quick bright flicker of multi-coloured lights, notices the fall of Elsa’s shadow that crosses with

  Paul’s while they dance. ‘Look at their dancing shadows!’ he tells the crowd. ‘What have they got there?’

  Paul and Elsa soon have a dancing-space to themselves while the others peer closely all round them to find the source of their trick. Those nearest crouch on the floor trying to see what Elsa has got up her skirt to produce this effect.

  ‘Where does she keep it?’ — ‘No, look at her arms, they make a shadow too.’ — ‘Is it something to do with him? — What’s he doing, then?’ —Roloff the proprietor switches off his flickering psychedelic apparatus, leaving the room steadily lit by two sidelamps. Still Elsa’s shadow dances with Paul’s. He backs away, laughing, and lets her dance by herself.

  ‘It’s her shadow, it’s falling a different way from anyone else’s.’

  There is loud applause, but Paul is looking serious as he sees the eager faces of Kiel and Tylden among the audience.

  ‘Elsa, it’s time to go.’ And still in vain. Roloff tries to sign them up for a nightly floor-show. ‘You’ve definitely got something to offer,’ he says.

  Tylden comes over. ‘Poppy’s downstairs in the Rolls. She couldn’t make the stairs,’ he says.

  ‘We’d better go along with them,’ Elsa says. ‘We can’t go on like this.’

  ‘We can always go home,’ Paul says, gathering up their coats from the check-room. On the stairway, Kiel tries to block their path. ‘She’s been dancing so hard you couldn’t read the secret code on the soles of her shoes,’ Kiel says.

  Paul passes him by and Elsa follows, yawning. ‘My feet are sore,’ she says.

  They have to walk two blocks for a taxi, while the Rolls circles the block, passing them twice. Princess Xavier can be seen to wave a handkerchief appealingly each time.

  ‘You would think they were alive,’ says Elsa. ‘One can’t tell the difference,’ Paul says. Th
ey go on to Arthur’s on the East Side and back downtown to The Throb. To put his mind at ease, at just after three-thirty in the morning, Paul decides to call on Pierre.

  ‘He won’t let us in at this hour,’ Elsa says. ‘He can’t refuse his mother and his father.’ Pierre eventually lets them in with narrowed eyes, puffing his dressing-gown over his thin chest. His friend Peregrine, fully dressed, is working on some papers, and when he sees Pierre’s parents, folds them up without a word.

  ‘I hope we’re not disturbing you,’ says Elsa, sitting down.

  ‘I’m just going to get cigarettes from the machine,’ says Peregrine. He stacks his papers and leaves.

  ‘I was asleep,’ says Pierre.

  The room has been. newly decorated with Chinese panels, lacquered furniture, and a screen painted with flat white petals and pink birds. Paul’s long fingers trace the carvings of an ivory figurine.

  ‘Do you exist?’ Paul says.

  ‘Don’t be vulgar,’ says Pierre.

  ‘Because,’ says Paul, ‘your mother and I were killed by a bomb in the spring of 1944. You were never conceived, never born..’

  ‘It’s rather a personal matter,’ Pierre says, ‘isn’t it?’

  ‘Really, Paul, I think he’s right,’ Elsa says. ‘One shouldn’t intrude at this hour of the morning.’

  Pierre smiles. ‘It’s perfectly charming of you to come like this, really. I don’t mind a bit.’

  Outside, they find Peregrine trying to extricate himself from Poppy, who stands on the pavement beside her Rolls, holding him in conversation. ‘I want to have a word with Pierre’s mother,’ she is saying. ‘His mother is a very old friend of mine. Do tell her I’m here.’ The three men and the driver sit in. the Rolls solemnly waiting.

  ‘Don’t look back or answer her,’ says Paul as he comes out into the street with Elsa. But Peregrine calls out, ‘There’s a lady here wants to see you, Mrs Hazlett.’

  ‘Walk on, Elsa,’ says Paul. ‘Our life’s our own to do what we like with.’

  At the corner of the street they wait till another taxi pulls into the kerb. They ride off, this time followed closely by the Rolls.