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Chapter 1
Yous see them every morning at a quarter to nine, rushing out of the maw of the subway tunnel, fihng out of Thou Key Station, crossing Lexington and Park and Madison and Fifth avenues, the hundreds and hundreds of girls. Some of them look eager and some expect resentful, and some of them wait as if they haven't left their beds however. Some of them have been up since six-thirty in the morning time, the ones who commute from Brooklyn and Yonkers and New Jersey and Staten Island and Connecticut. They carry the morning newspapers and overstuffed handbags. Some of them are wearing pink or chartreuse fuzzy overcoats and five-year-old ankle-strap shoes and accept their pilus up in pin curls underneath kerchiefs. Some of them are wearing chic black suits (maybe last year's only who tin tell?) and kid gloves and are carrying their lunches in violet-sprigged Bon-wit Teller paper bags. None of them has enough money.
At eight-forty-v Wednesday morning, January 2nd, 1952, a xx-year-old girl named Caroline Bough came out of Chiliad Key Station and headed west and uptown toward Radio City. She was a more than than pretty girl with dark hair and low-cal optics and a face with a practiced deal of softness and intelHgence in it. She was wearing a gray tweed suit, which had been her wearing apparel-up suit in college, and was carrying a minor attache case, which contained a wallet with 5 dollars in it, a book of commuter tickets, some brand-up, and iii magazines entitled respectively The Cross, My Secret Life, and Americas Woman.
It was 1 of those cold, foggy midwinter mornings in New York, the kind that makes you think of lung ailments. Caroline hurried along with the rest of the oversupply, hardly noticing anybody, nervous and frightened and slightly elated. It was her starting time twenty-four hour period at the offset task she had ever had in her hf e, and she did not consider herself basically a career girl. Concluding year, looking ahead to this clammy day in Jan, she had idea she would be married. Since she'd had a fiance information technology
seemed logical. Now she had no fiance and no i she was interested in, and the new job was more than an economic convenience, it was an emotional necessity. She wasn't sure that being a secretary in a typing puddle could possibly exist engrossing, simply she was going to accept to make information technology so. Otherwise she would take time to think, and would think too much. . . .
Fabian Publications occupied five air-conditioned floors in one of the modern buildings in Radio City. On this beginning calendar week of the new yr the annual hiring had merely been completed. Three secretaries had left the typing pool, one to get married, the other 2 for meliorate jobs. Three new secretaries had been hired to first on Midweek, the second of January. One of these was Caroline Bender.
It was five minutes before ix when Caroline reached the floor where the typing puddle was located, and she was surprised to find the big room nighttime and all the typewriters still neatly covered. She had been afraid she would be belatedly, and now she was the fij*st one. She found the switch that turned on the ceihng lights and prowled effectually waiting for someone to appear. There was a big center room with rows of desks for the secretaries, and on the edges of this room were the closed doors of the oflBces for editors. Tinsel Christmas bells and carmine bows were nonetheless taped to some of the doors, looking bedraggled and sad now that the flavour was over.
She looked into several of the oflBces and saw that they seemed to progress in order of the occupant's importance from small tile-floored cubicles with two desks, to larger ones with one desk, and finally to ii large oflfices with carpet on the floor, leather lounging chairs, and wood-paneled walls. From the books and magazines lying around in them she could run into that one of these belonged to the editor of Derby Books and the other to the editor of The Cross. She heard voices so in the main room, and the sound of laughter and greetings. Stricken with a sudden attack of shyness, she came slowly out of the editor's oflfice.
It was nine o'clock and the room was suddenly filling up with girls, none of whom noticed her presence at all. The teletype operator was combing her hair out of its pivot curls, i of the typists was going from desk-bound to desk collecting empty glass jars and taking java orders. Covers were being pulled off typewriters, coats hung upwardly, newspapers spread out on desks to be read, and as each new inflow came in she was greeted with delighted cries. Information technology sounded every bit though
they had all been separated from one another for iv weeks, non four days. Caroline didn't know which desk was hers and she was afraid to sit down at someone else'south, and then she kept standing, watching, and feeling for the first time that morn that she was an outsider at a private order.
A lone man came in then, briskly, with an amused, rather self-conscious expect, every bit if he were intruding on a ladies' tea. At the sight of him some of the girls sat up and tried to look more than businesslike. He was in his late forties, of medium summit only wiry then that he looked smaller, with a stake, dissipated face that looked even more ravaged considering there were signs that information technology had once been very handsome. He stopped at the water fountain and drank for a long time, then he straightened up and went on into one of the editors' offices. He was wearing a camel's-pilus coat with a large cigarette bum on the lapel.
"Who's that?" Caroline asked the daughter nearest her.
"Mr. Rice, editor of The Cantankerous. You're new, aren't you lot?" the girl said. "My name is Mary Agnes."
Tm Caroline."
"I promise you like it here," Mary Agnes said. She was a thin, plain-looking girl with wavy dark hair, and she wore a black wool brim and a transparent white nylon blouse. She was extremely flat-chested.
"I hope so too," Caroline said.
"Well, you lot can have either of those two desks over there if you want to put anything away. You'll exist working for Miss Farrow this week, because her secretary quit on her. She usually comes in around 10 o'clock. She'll accept y'all around and innovate you to everybody. Would you similar some java?"
"I'd love some," Caroline said. She put her adhere^ case and gloves into the drawer of 1 of the empty desks and hung her jacket over the back of the chair.
Mary Agnes waved over the girl who was taking coffee orders. "Brenda, this is Caroline."
"Hi," Brenda said. She was a plump, quite pretty blonde, but when she smiled there was a molar clearly absent-minded on either side, giving her the wait of a werewolf. "How practise y'all want your coffee? You'd better take it in a jar instead of a newspaper container."
"Thanks," Caroline said.
Brenda walked back to her desk with a twitch of her hips. "Spotter out for her," Mary Agnes said conspiratorially when she was out of earshot. "She makes yous pay for the java and the jar, and so she gives back tlie jars and keeps all the deposit coin. Don't permit her get abroad with it."
"I'll try non to," Caroline said.
"Do you take a primal to the ladies' room?"
"No."
"Well, you tin utilize mine until you get 1. Just ask. Did you discover her teeth?"
"Whose?"
"Brenda'due south. She'south engaged to be married and she'south having all her bad teeth pulled so her husband will have to pay for the new ones. Did yous ever hear of such a thing?" Mary Agnes giggled and began putting sheets of carbon paper and letter paper into the roller of her typewriter.
"What'south Mr. Rice—is that his name? What's he similar?" asked Caroline. She liked camel's-hair coats on men, they reminded her of The Forepart Page.
A genuinely stricken expect of piety came over Mary Agnes' plain face. "It'southward very lamentable," she said. "I always feel deplorable for a person like him. I wish somebody could help him."
"What'south the thing with him?"
"Wait till you read that magazine he puts out. Information technology will sicken y'all."
"Y
ou mean he writes that stuff because he believes it, is that it?"
"Worse," said Mary Agnes. "He writes information technology considering he doesn't believe in anything. Those articles he writes audio very pious but they're just a lot of words. I feel pitiful for the poor souls who believe them, only I experience sorrier for Mr. Rice. I oft think he must be very solitary." She smiled ruefully. "Well, don't get me started on Mr. Rice'due south lack of organized religion, it's a subject I feel very strongly about and right at present I've got to get tliese letters typed."
"Perhaps y'all and I can have lunch together," Caroline suggested.
"Oh, that would accept been fun . . . but I tin't. I always have lunch witli my boy friend. That is, some days he brings his lunch up here and eats it with me, and some days I bring my sandwiches downtown and eat them with him. He works downtown in a furniture manufacturing plant. We're saving up to get married. Nosotros're getting married a year from this coming June."
"That's a long time from at present," Caroline said.
1 know," Mary Agnes said matter-of-factly. "But it could have been even longer,"
"I certainly wish y'all luck," Caroline said. She went over to her desk-bound and sat downwardly. She'd come hither to get abroad from thoughts of marriage, and the first two girls she had met were engaged. Well, she would clean out the drawers of this desk, and then Miss What's-her-proper noun would go far and give her more work probably than she could handle, nervous as she was on her offset solar day, and soon her mind would be so filled with office issues that there would be no room for remembering things she shouldn't.
She had a mental list at present of things she had to keep out of her mind, but it was hard because they were everyday things for anyone else and they kept cropping up. Boys named Eddie. Paris. Almost whatever Noel Coward vocal. Three or four particular restaurants. Any book or story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Chianti. W. B. Yeats. Steamships going to Europe. Steamships coming back from Europe.
She didn't really want to forget all of it, because it had all meant happiness at the time information technology happened. She simply wanted to exist able someday to remember without finding information technology painful. That was the trick, to continue all the good things from tlie past and cast away the ones that injure.
She had been a junior at RadclifFe when she met Eddie Harris. He was a senior at Harvard. He was a marvelous, funny, appealing-looking boy, he played jazz piano, he read books none of the others had even heard of, he had a sense of sense of humor that could keep her laughing for hours. He had moody spells besides, when he walked effectually his room in a turtleneck sweater and khaki pants and bare anxiety and played Noel Coward songs on the phonograph and wouldn't talk to anyone but her for days. He got all A'south in school with a minimum of study, it seemed, and his family had money. She couldn't really believe it was happening to her, a girl of eighteen who had never met a male child she cared nigh at all, and now Eddie Harris was in love with her and she adored him.
She was quite certain that she loved him more he loved her, but he was a man, after all, and men had other things to worry about.
They planned to become married the autumn subsequently he was graduated from Harvard. Meanwhile she was to go to summertime school and get her diploma. It was something her parents insisted upon, she was
only nineteen then and they told her she would regret information technology someday if she had gone this far toward a degree and then given it up. Girls of nineteen didn't have to rush into union, they told her, although they were equally pleased about her engagement to Eddie equally she was. Eddie encouraged her, and of course she would do anything he wanted, although she couldn't really see how some other few months of classes could make any deviation when simply being near Eddie made her then much more enlightened of everything she read and heard and saw that she felt like a dissimilar person. College was supposed to make y'all remember, wasn't it? Well, Eddie made her call up, and what she really wanted out of life was to be a good and interesting wife for him and make him happy, not cram downwards some other hundred lines of Shakespeare.
Anyhow, she went to summer school. And Eddie's parents sent him to Europe for a graduation present. She thought information technology would take been nicer if they had waited and so permit Eddie and her go there on their honeymoon, but the thought struck her as then selfish that she didn't even mention it to him. There had been a big boom in earth travel at Harvard and Radcliffe in those years; everyone went. Travel was a new experience for their generation those early years afterward the war, and Caroline had already grown tired of the constant cocktail-party chat which consisted mainly of place-dropping. She kept her mouth close and everyone said to her, "You lot've been to Europe, of grade, oasis't you lot?" She idea the college boys who ran to Paris and then sabbatum around in cafes looking for American girls whom they had known at dwelling were very funny. She knew Eddie would get a lot more out of his trip than that.
When she saw him off on the ship she gave him a bottle of champagne and a brave smile, although all the fourth dimension they were kissing goodbye she wanted to cry out, "Take me with y'all, don't go lone." He told her information technology would be simply half-dozen weeks, that the time would go rapidly, that he would retrieve of her all the fourth dimension. He told her, "Miss me a little" (smile), when they both knew he meant she should miss him a great deal, and that she would whether he told her to or not. On the deck he discovered the parents of a daughter he had known years ago when he was in prep school, Helen Lowe, and he latched onto the father. See, his smile said comfortingly to Caroline as the transport pulled away from the harbor, hither I am with this overnice middle-aged man, see how well I'yard keeping out of trouble.
Helen had been on the transport too, she had been down in her stateroom with four of her classmates from Sarah Lawrence getting drunk together. She was a alpine, slim, bosomy daughter with the kind of ash-blond hair that looks almost gray and was not a really popular color until several years afterward. She had a white French poodle and she had taken French lessons before she left on the transport.
When the six weeks were finally over, a letter arrived for Caroline on the mean solar day Eddie's ship came in to New York without him.
"I don't know how to tell you this," the letter began. "This is the 4th time I've tried to write you nearly information technology, the other three ejfforts I've torn upwardly." He sounded rather sorry for himself because he had to tell her. He probably thought. What a mess, what a mess. How much easier to declare love than to withdraw information technology, especially from someone you withal like very much. He sounded even sorrier for himself and his unpleasant predicament than he was for her, who simply had to read what he had written and see her future and her happiness shatter quietly effectually her.
Eddie had always hated anything unpleasant. Perhaps he thought marriage to Helen Lowe would solve everything, she was sophisticated and poised and intelhgent and pretty, and her father owned oil wells. You couldn't say much against oil wells. Or perchance he had been merely similar those other lonely college boys in Paris sitting in the cafes (or in his case on shipboard) looking for a familiar face. Maybe Caroline had overestimated him. So Helen and her parents accompanied him back on the ship to America, and a month later there was a monstrously expensive wedding in Dallas.
Having finished summertime school, Caroline did not have another term of higher to assistance her occupy herself, so she took a business organisation and shorthand course and the day subsequently she was graduated she took the starting time task she was oflFered. It didn't make much difference to her, actually, equally long as it was something from 9 to five, which meant eight hours less to think about herself. She was rather glad, however, when it turned out to be a chore in pubUshing. She bought three of the Fabian magazines and read them from cover to cover the night before her start twenty-four hour period at Fabian, and she couldn't brand up her mind who seemed more startling—the people who read such trash or the people who pubhshed information technology. The strange thing was, though, that lately whenever she read a story with a happy ending she found herself crying.
Tou're the new secretary? I'thousand Amanda Farrow."
Caroline jumped to her feet, shaking off her daydream. The woman in forepart of her desk was in her late thirties, tall and slim with brilliant copper hair pulled back into a chignon. She was cool and polished and fashionably dressed. She fifty-fifty wore a petty hat, 2 fluffy feathers really, with a tiny black veil. "My proper noun's Caroline Ben
der."
"You tin can come into my office in a moment. Number nine."
She watched Amanda Farrow disappear into Office Ix and then found a autograph pad and some pencils in the drawer of her new desk. From her investigation in the early morning Caroline knew that Amanda Farrow's function was one of the executive ones, i rank lower than the offices with carpets. She saw the overhead lights become on in Number Ix and waited a moment more, then opened the door and went in.
Amanda Farrow was seated behind her big desk. She was withal wearing her hat, and she was busy applying nail poUsh to her fingernails. At that place was a large filing cabinet against one wall, and two armchairs in front of the desk-bound.
"Beginning y'all tin can lodge me some coffee, black with sugar," Amanda Farrow said. "All the filing to be done is in this box here. My secretary left last week and the place is a mess. The mail comes four times a day, y'all open up it, and anything that requires a personal answer goes in this box. Some of the letters you lot can respond yourself, if they're from cranks, for instance. But prove me everything you lot write before yous send it out. Practice you lot have a Social Security card?"
"Non withal."
"Well, you'll have to get information technology on your luncheon hour. Mr. Fabian is very strict nearly employees working without their Social Security cards. You get one hour for tiffin and I want yous back here on time then you tin answer my telephone. Oh, and if you lot have time you tin can pick upwardly a box of dusting powder for me at Saks."
Caroline was showtime to dislike this woman, she talked so fast information technology was difficult to follow her. She sat down in one of the armchairs abreast Amanda Farrow's desk and picked upwardly the telephone receiver to dial the coffee shop.
"Not herel" Miss Farrow said in annoyance, capping her canteen of nail smoothen. "Y'all use your telephone outside. You always reply my telephone at your desk and say 'Miss Farrow's office.' After you've
ordered my co£Fee you can come dorsum in here and take some dictation."
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