Free Mermaids on the Golf Course by Patricia Highsmith Page A

for further grim information about Chris. The letter was in longhand and signed Carl again.
    Dec. 7, 19–
    Dear Simon,
    Chris took a turn for the worse about a week ago, and it really seems it is going to be the end. For one thing, he has summoned all his old what shall I call us—students?—to him. He wrote you to California, where he later realized you weren’t, because of the N.Y. show. (Must congratulate you on William, by the way.) There are nine of us now at High-Ho, two due tomorrow, Freddy Detweiler and Richard Cook. Plenty of room here and you mustn’t think it’s a wake. Chris looks pretty well for a few hours a day when he’s up entertaining us. The rest of the time he’s in bed, but loves us to come in and talk with him round the clock!
    So please come because for Chris there’s something strange about your not being here. Use your understudy for a couple of days, but hurry, please.
    Chris phoned me nearly a month ago and said he was sure he would die in December, end of year and a life and so on. So he said come on the first of December or as soon after as pos. and “I won’t hold you up long.” Isn’t that typical of Chris? . . .
    Yes, Simon understood, but his mind as he laid the letter aside and sank into his pillow was disturbed and undecided. He couldn’t have found a word or words to describe how he felt. Shocked, and on guard too. It was as if Chris had given him a sharp poke in the ribs to remind Simon that Chris still existed. Chris hadn’t always been kind or even fair. Or was that true? No, the kindness, the concern of Chris did outweigh the rest. Chris had been selfish, demanding of attention, but Simon couldn’t honestly tell himself that Chris had ever been heartless, or had ever let him down. And he had told Simon that he would be a fine actor, if he did this and that, if he disciplined himself, if he studied the technique of so-and-so. Chris was a director, if he could be called anything, and had three or four famous productions to his credit, but he had always had money from his family, and he dabbled, didn’t have to work all the time.
    But it was the word of praise in the ears of twenty-year-old Simon Hatton that had inspired him, coming as it had from a man over sixty, who had troubled to come backstage to meet him, when he had been acting with a summer theater group in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. When Simon recalled this, his heart seemed to tumble. It was Christopher Wells’s enthusiasm that had lighted his own fire. Could he ever have made it without Chris? Christopher Wells had been a silly, aging dandy, in a way, wearing odd clothes to attract eyes in New York or London restaurants and theaters. Chris had taken Simon on his first trip to Europe.
    For a few seconds, Simon felt a mixture of resentment, pride, and independence. Then came the memory of his happiness in those first weeks with Chris. He had felt bewildered, flattered, and as if he were walking on air, different from being in love, because the feeling was so much bound up with his work, yet like it too. Chris had cracked the whip at him, as if he were a circus dog, Simon remembered quite well.
    At this recollection, Simon got up and walked around his bedroom, deliberately relaxed his shoulders, and did not take a cigarette that he was tempted to take. He went back to his bed and lay face down and closed his eyes. In forty-five minutes he had to be ready for his taxi downstairs, and he must do his job tonight. He must entertain. The audience would be silent and sad at the end. It was a serious and sad play, William.
    And he knew he would get a ticket to fly to Zurich, maybe not tonight but tomorrow, after he had arranged for his understudy Russell Johnson to take over for him.
    Fantasy! William was fantasy, so was acting—all make-believe. After the others in the cast, Simon took one curtain bow, and not two. He was smiling, but a few women in the audience, and men too, pushed handkerchiefs against their lids.