“No thanks, Chris darling. I just don’t want to eat anything at all. I feel all marvellous and ethereal, as if I was a kind of most wonderful saint, or something. You’ve no idea how glorious it feels… . Have a chocolate, darling? Klaus gave me three boxes. If I eat any more, I shall be sick.”
“Thank you.”
“I don’t suppose I shall ever marry him. It would ruin our careers. You see, Christopher, he adores me so terribly that it wouldn’t be good for him to always have me hanging about.”
“You might marry after you’re both famous.”
Sally considered this:
“No… . That would spoil everything. We should be trying all the time to live up to our old selves, if you know what I mean. And we should both be different. … He was so marvellously primitive: just like a faun. He made me feel like a most marvellous nymph, or something, miles away from anywhere, in the middle of the forest.”
The first letter from Klaus duly arrived. We had all been anxiously awaiting it; and Frl. Schroeder woke me up specially early to tell me that it had come. Perhaps she was afraid that she would never get a chance of reading it herself and relied on me to tell her the contents. If so, her fears were groundless. Sally not only showed the letter to Frl. Schroeder, Frl. Mayr, Bobby and myself, she even read selections from it aloud in the presence of the porter’s wife, who had come up to collect the rent.
From the first, the letter left a nasty taste in my mouth. Its whole tone was egotistical and a bit patronizing. Klaus didn’t like London, he said. He felt lonely there. The food disagreed with him. And the people at the studio treated him with lack of consideration. He wished Sally were with him:
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she could have helped him in many ways. However, now that he was in England, he would try to make the best of it. He would work hard and earn money; and Sally was to work hard too. Work would cheer her up and keep her from getting depressed. At the end of the letter came various endearments, rather too slickly applied. Reading them, one felt: he’s written this kind of thing several times before.
Sally was delighted, however. Klaus’ exhortation made such an impression upon her that she at once rang up several film companies, a theatrical agency and half a dozen of her “business” acquaintances. Nothing definite came of all this, it is true; but she remained very optimistic throughout the next twenty-four hourseven her dreams, she told me, had been full of contracts and four-figure cheques: “It’s the most marvellous feeling, Chris. I know I’m going right ahead now and going to become the most wonderful actress in the world.”
One morning, about a week after this, I went into Sally’s room and found her holding a letter in her hand. I recognized Klaus’ handwriting at once.
“Good morning, Chris darling.”
“Good morning, Sally.”
“How did you sleep?” Her tone was unnaturally bright and chatty.
“All right, thanks. How did you?”
“Fairly all right… . Filthy weather, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” I walked over to the window to look. It -was.
Sally smiled conversationally: “Do you know what this swine’s gone and done?”
“What swine?” I wasn’t going to be caught out.
“Oh Chris! For God’s sake, don’t be so dense!”
“I’m very sorry. I’m afraid I’m a bit slow in the uptake this morning.”
“I can’t be bothered to explain, darling.” Sally held out the letter. “Here, read this, will you? Of all the blasted im—
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pudence! Read it aloud. I want to hear how it sounds.”
“Mein liebes, armes Kind,” the letter began. Klaus called Sally his poor dear child because, as he explained, he was afraid that what he had to tell her would make her terribly unhappy. Nevertheless, he must say it: he must tell her that he had come to a decision. She mustn’t imagine that this had been easy for him: it had been very difficult and painful. All the same, he knew he was right. In a word, they must part.
“I see now,” wrote Klaus, “that I behaved very selfishly. I thought only of my own pleasure. But now I realize that I must have had a bad influence on you. My dear little girl, you have adored me too much. If we should continue to be together, you would soon have no will and no mind of your own.” Klaus went on to advise Sally to live for her work. “Work is the only thing which matters, as I myself have found.” He was very much concerned that Sally shouldn’t upset herself unduly: “You must be brave, Sally, my poor darling child.”
Right at the end of the letter, it all came out:
“I was invited a few nights ago to a party at the house of Lady Klein, a leader of the English aristocracy. I met there a very beautiful and intelligent young English girl named Miss Gore-Eckersley. She is related to an English lord whose name I couldn’t quite hearyou will probably know which one I mean. We have met twice since then and had wonderful conversations about many things. I do not think I have ever met a girl who could understand my mind so well as she does-T-“
“That’s a new one on me,” broke in Sally bitterly, with a short laugh: “I never suspected the boy of having a mind at all.”
At this moment we were interrupted by Frl. Schroeder who had come, sniffing secrets, to ask if Sally would like a bath. I left them together to make the most of the occasion.
“I can’t be angry with the fool,” said Sally, later in the day, pacing up and down the room and furiously smoking:
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“I just feel sorry for him in a motherly sort of way. But what on earth’ll happen to his work, if he chucks himself at these women’s heads, I can’t imagine.”
She made another turn of the room:
“I think if he’d been having a proper affair with another woman, and had only told me about it after it’d been going on for a long time, I’d have minded more. But this girl! Why, I don’t suppose she’s even his mistress.”
“Obviously not,” I agreed. “I say, shall we have a Prairie Oyster?”
“How marvellous you are, Chris! You always think of just the right thing. I wish I could fall in love with you. Klaus isn’t worth your little finger.”
“I know he isn’t.”
“The blasted cheek,” exclaimed Sally, gulping the Worcester sauce and licking her upper lip, “of his saying I adored him! … The worst of it is, I did!”
That evening I went into her room and found her with pen and paper before her:
“I’ve written about a million letters to him and torn them all up.”
“It’s no good, Sally. Let’s go to the cinema.”
“Right you are, Chris darling.” Sally wiped her eyes with the corner of her tiny handkerchief: “It’s no use bothering, is it?”
“Not a bit of use.”
“And now I jolly well will be a great actressjust to show him!”
“That’s the spirit!”
We went to a little cinema in the Bülowstrasse, where they were showing a film about a girl who sacrificed her stage career for the sake of a Great Love, Home and Children. We laughed so much that we had to’ leave before the end.
“I feel ever so much better now,” said Sally, as we were coming away.
“I’m glad.”
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“Perhaps, after all, I can’t have been properly in love with him… . What do you think?”
“It’s rather difficult for me to say.”
“I’ve often thought I was in love with a man, and then I found I wasn’t. But this time,” Sally’s voice was regretful, “I really did feel sure of it. … And now, somehow, everything seems to have got a bit confused… .”
“Perhaps you’re suffering from shock,” I suggested.
Sally was very pleased with this idea: “Do you know, I expect I am! … You know, Chris, you do understand women most marvellously: better than any man I’ve ever met… . I’m sure that some day you’ll write the most marvellous novel which’ll sell simply millions of copies.”
“Thank you for believing in me, Sally!”