Paths of Glory

“May I ask where the fire escape is?” asked George, before they’d reached the elevator.

“Over there, sir,” said the manager, pointing to the other side of the lobby, a puzzled look appearing on his face.

“The seventeenth floor, you say?”

“Yes,” confirmed the manager, looking even more puzzled.

“I’ll see you up there,” said George.

“Don’t they have elevators in English hotels?” the manager asked Keedick as George strode across the lobby and through a door marked Fire Escape. “Or is he mad?”

“No,” replied Kee

dick. “He’s English.”

The elevator whisked both men up to the seventeenth floor. The manager was even more surprised when George appeared in the corridor only a few minutes later, and didn’t seem to be out of breath.

The manager unlocked the door to the Presidential Suite, and stood aside to allow his guest to enter the room. George’s immediate reaction was that there must have been some mistake. The suite was larger than the tennis court at The Holt.

“Did you think I was bringing my wife and children with me?” he asked.

“No,” said Keedick, laughing, “it’s all yours. Don’t forget, the press may want to interview you, and it’s important that they think this is how they treat you back in England.”

“But can we afford it?”

“Don’t even think about it,” said Keedick. “It all comes out of expenses.”

“How nice to hear from you, Geoffrey,” said Ruth when she recognized the familiar voice on the other end of the line. “It’s been far too long.”

“And I’m the one to blame,” said Geoffrey Young. “It’s just that since I took up my new post at Imperial College, I don’t get out of town much during term-time.”

“Well, I’m afraid George isn’t at home at the moment. He’s in America on a lecture tour.”

“Yes, I know,” said Young. “He dropped me a line last week to say he was looking for a job, and that if anything came up I should let him know. Well, a position has arisen in Cambridge that just might be ideal for him, but I thought I’d run it past you first.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Geoffrey. Shall we try and meet up when I’m next in London?”

“No, no,” said Young, “I can always pop down to Godalming.”

“When did you have in mind?”

“Would next Thursday suit you?”

“Of course. Will you be able to stay for the night?”

“Thank you, I’d like that, if it’s not inconvenient.”

“If you were able to stay for a month, Geoffrey, it wouldn’t be inconvenient.”

George couldn’t sleep on his first night in New York, and the time difference wasn’t to blame, because the five-day Atlantic crossing had taken care of that. It was just that he’d never spent a night in a city before where the traffic never came to a halt and police and ambulance sirens screamed incessantly. It reminded him of being back on the Western Front.

He finally gave up, climbed out of bed, and sat at a large desk by the window overlooking Central Park. He went over his lecture once again, then checked all the large glass slides. He was delighted to find that none of them had been broken during the voyage from England.

George was becoming more and more apprehensive about what Keedick kept referring to as “opening night.” He tried not to think of the consequences of it being a flop, another of Keedick’s words, even though the agent kept assuring him that there were only a few seats left unsold, and all that mattered now was what the New York Times thought of the lecture. On balance, George decided he preferred mountains. They didn’t give a damn what the New York Times thought of them.

He crept back into bed a couple of hours later, and eventually fell asleep at around four o’clock.

Ruth sat in her chair by the window enjoying George’s first letter from America. She laughed when she read about the Caddie and the Presidential Suite with its central heating, aware that George would have been quite content to pitch a tent on the roof, but she doubted if that was an option at the Waldorf. When she turned the page, she frowned for the first time. It worried her that George felt that so much rested on the opening night. He ended his letter by promising to write and let her know how the lecture had been received just as soon as he returned to the hotel later that evening. How Ruth wished she could have read the review in The New York Times before George saw it.