The Golden Age by Gore Vidal Read Free Book Online

longer young and in competition with this new generation? But Tim had now joined them and her instant of self-pity passed. Douglas moved on to join his wife, whose lips had never ceased to move since she had stationed herself beside the President.
    Tim was little changed. “I’d like to work with him.” He indicated Douglas. “He shouldn’t let himself get trapped in all those drawing-room comedies, particularly as a second lead.”
    “He does get Garbo at the end of
Ninotchka
.”
    “Yes,” said Tim, “and she’s getting the boot from Metro soon.”
    Caroline was slipping more and more into her previous existence. Soon they would be discussing the grosses of films and the latest studio preview, in Bakersfield. Meanwhile, she was interested to learn that Garbo’s principal audience was European, not American, and once the war became hot the studios would no longer be able to distribute their“product” abroad and so the expensive Garbo would no longer be asked to make movies for MGM. “Anyway, she
says
she wants to retire. Where’s the President?”
    “He’s over there.” But the President was not over there at the desk. In fact, he was nowhere in the room. An usher approached Caroline and Tim. “He is in the West Hall with Mrs. Roosevelt. They’ll be going down to dinner presently.”
    Caroline explained Eleanor’s young people to Tim, who said, “I wish I could film them.”
    “Tonight’s out of bounds.” As they started to the door, Tim stepped in front of a strange metal piano. “What’s that?”
    “A mechanical pipe organ. A gift to the President. He told me that for his entire first term, he tried to learn to play it, but so far the thing has defeated him. I suspect he’s tone-deaf.”
    “Can we talk?”
    “After dinner. He goes to bed early.”
    The West Hall was simply the west end of the long corridor, closed off by two ill-matching Chinese screens. The sounds of the young were clearly audible as well as the high-fluting tones of Eleanor herself.
    “I think we can start down now. Let’s walk. The lift tends to get stuck.”
    “It’s just like home.
My
home, that is. In South Boston.”
    “It is,” said Caroline, “democracy.”
    The dinner was reasonably chaotic. Eleanor presided at one end of the family dining table, her six young Americans to her left, Melvyn Douglas and the bureaucrats to her right. Tim had been placed next to Caroline.
    The President made his entrance after everyone was seated. As an aide pushed his chair into place at the head of the table, everyone rose. He waved for them to be seated. “Lovely to have you here,” he said with a most genuine-looking smile in the direction of Eleanor’s brood.
    Next to the President, Mrs. Douglas continued her conversation into his right ear while he addressed, down table, the Youth of the Nation, radical division.
    “I gather you young people distinguished yourselves this morning before Mr. Dies’s Committee …”
    “Only he wasn’t there,” said Eleanor.
    “He knew he had met his match when he heard you were coming.”
    “Hardly. Actually, I was ever so mild.”
    “I’m sure the rest of you were not so mild.” The President looked at the youthful witnesses—to what? wondered Caroline. Some were, no doubt, actual communists, or had thought they were, until communist Russia and Nazi Germany had made their alliance in August and the American left had behaved like an anthill struck by lightning. Before this astonishing event, the Youth Congress had, more or less, followed the communist line, supporting the New Deal at home while supporting France and England against Hitler abroad. Now, if Blaise was to be believed, directions from Moscow were instructing the faithful to join the isolationists. Mrs. Roosevelt, as one of the guiding spirits of the Youth Congress before the infamous pact, was in a delicate position. She had already been bitterly denounced by political conservatives as well as by pro-Nazi groups