The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [89]
Then he spoke to Bax very seriously and said that he wouldn’t ask him to do anything he didn’t want to do, but didn’t Bax understand that they had their eye on him and him alone and that if he dropped out so early, it could easily mess up our chances. “And I mean Sally Jay’s chances,” he added.
“Oh hush all this fuss! Sally Jay doesn’t care whether she’s in the stupid old film or not, do you?” Missy was getting indignant.
“Yes I do,” I said. Suddenly I knew I did. I really did, even if it meant just a small part. Suddenly I knew I couldn’t get through the summer just sitting there watching Missy and Larry together. Or lazing around not learning anything, not accomplishing anything, not seeing anything new.
I went over to the armchair where Bax was sitting and knelt at his feet and said, “Please come along tonight. For my sake.” And Larry, right behind me, said, “Just play along with them for a little while, won’t you? It can’t hurt you and it can hurt us. Even if you pass the test, who says you’ve got to take the part? And what if you do take the part? Experience is experience, and it’s everything in life, boy. What else have you got to do this summer?”
So Bax finally gave in. He said, “O.K. I’ll go, I’m sorry to be like this, it’s only …” but he didn’t finish the sentence. He smiled wistfully at me and got up and we all went down to the car.
On the way out I took his hand. “What’s the matter?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just feel I’m getting deeper and deeper in.”
So we arrived in Ascain a rather divided group.
The whole evening was like that. Everyone at cross-purposes. It never really got off the ground. There were great spaces when the whole thing seemed like an awful waste of time. Stefan was worried and distrait. The special kind of fishing vessel which the Italian Art Director had gone to such trouble to find had loosed its moorings and gone drifting out with the tide, probably lost forever. Even the sight of Missy didn’t perk him up, and his squeezings and pinchings were half-hearted to the point of absent-mindedness. The English themselves were divided in spirit. Plinn-Jones was a conscientious host but stiffly aloof and ill at ease and over-conscious of his position. Robin, the Assistant Director, young, ruddy and blue-blazered, with darting black eyes and a fixed avid grin, was drinking heavily and roaring to go in all directions. And Angela—well, Angela was just Angela, and I ain’t never seen the likes. Whoever called the English reticent must have had his ears full of golf balls. Our Girl Friday’s duties included, as we learned from her own mouth not ten minutes after we dined, being part-time mistress of Plinn-Jones. Only she doesn’t think much of him, she told Bax and me with an enormous sniff. She doesn’t think much of any men. In fact she hates them all. And after hearing the story of Angela’s love life I think I see why.
Apparently just as she had decided that her ex-husband—after such various pranks as trying to push her off a mountain slope skiing, taking potshots at her grouse shooting, and just plain holding her under water—didn’t much care for her, he went and stole the family silver, which subsequently reappeared at the next dinner party she attended, where, to further humiliate her, he had dressed up as a waiter. As she put it, the time had come to give him the push. However, getting rid of him proved another matter.
How this was accomplished we never learned, because suddenly Robin, the Assistant Director, who up till then had been assuring Larry earnestly that there was no point whatever in asking him about his job since he hadn’t the faintest idea what it was about (no gentleman ever did), decided to set us all straight about himself. First he made sure we got his name right. “It’s Halkens not Heakins. Good God, Heakins is Irish. I’m Norse. I could hardly be mistaken for an Irishman with this