A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  He was given many secrets, because he would only make use of these confidences, if the time ever came, in an honest way, that is, if he thought the time had come to put his friend into relations with another man who would buy this secret, or become a partner of this secret, or cure this secret, or find a lawyer for this secret. Thus he was the most private friend of men who live entirely in a world of private relations, unrevealed partnerships, profitable acquaintance. Peter Hoag looked frail and was supposed to have stomach ulcers, tuberculosis, heart disease, and social diseases, at various times and according to his own fancy, but he outlived many of these rich men, and it had become the ritual of this society to leave something to Peter Hoag in any will. From one he got $1,000, from another $10,000. One would say, “Hugo told me he put in The Rabbit for three grand—I wonder what the goddamn Rabbit has got now.” The answer, “I’d like to see the lining of his goddamn safe-deposit.” “Which one?—he showed me three separate keys.” The Rabbit pretended to be poor. This amused them. Whenever they needed money, he was able to get it for them from someone: they said it was his own. They would calculate the interest themselves, and whatever favors he had done them, then make a discount, and halve it, and this would determine the amount they put in their wills for him.

  This trade of running messages and being helpmeet cost Peter Hoag his whole life. If he lay awake in bed, he invented combinations, and soon fell asleep. In the morning he felt spry, got up as soon as his alarm rang, made his coffee, an easygoing expression on his face as he reflected on his work for the day. Saturdays and Sundays were also workdays for him. He saw the same bunch of boys in the week ends, and while they played golf or drank Scotch, they meddled with the same lives, tinkered with the plots of the preceding week, and laughed over new tricks to play on some newcomer or old crony. They not only were birds of prey, but loved to think of themselves as eagles in their flights and vultures in their hovering.

  2

  On a Monday morning in April, 1941, Peter Hoag washed himself carefully, put on a plain blue suit of English wool, and chose a small-patterned blue silk tie. He had three errands before he got down to Elias Brown & Co., in Beaver Street. First, he must make an unannounced call upon a widow, Mrs. Anne Warder, who had put in a fire claim on an insured apartment she had near Madison Square. Next, he must visit Sam Banks, a lawyer in a side street near Grand Central, to receive a legacy of $3,000 from the estate of one of his Wall Street friends lately deceased. Third, he must lay the foundations for a plan the boys had matured during the week end; as follows: to give a banquet in an uptown hotel, in honor of the forthcoming marriage of a Washington woman with a corporation president with whom she had lived for five years.

  The plan was Saul Udall’s. He and others of the boys had been friends of the woman and had thought of a wedding present for her. They would first obtain bond flotations for the corporation, which was in a bad way. Then the woman would marry, in honor bound, this man who was in love with her, but would obtain first of all an agreement for community of property. Then, she would divorce the fool when she had mulcted him and would marry Saul Udall, who was preparing to leave his wife. In the previous months Saul Udall and the woman had met every other afternoon in a room engaged by him. Saul Udall was one of the heroes of this crowd of friends and conspirators. His pranks made them rock with laughter. Udall wanted to divorce his wife and marry this Washington woman, after she had plucked the fool, and so told his wife that he must live alone because he had some spinal weakness and must have diathermy. At home, he stayed in bed; in town he was up all night with the girls. As to the corporation president, this plan was sure to run smoothly, for Udall had already practiced it on the person and life of another dull corporation president, who had been jerked into his place by influence and college friends. His picture had appeared in the Wall Street pages as new President of Corporation X, but everyone had known the truth and laughed loud. Udall had floated a bond issue on false figures; money was stolen by Udall, but in such a way that the President appeared to have stolen it. The President committed suicide in an unusual way, by falling off a stone balcony in his nightshirt in winter. Udall’s entire circle wallowed in laughter and handshaking for weeks: they regarded it as one of Udall’s great pranks. Now they had no doubt that through the Washington woman the control of the corporation would soon be in their hands.

  Udall did things in a grand manner, too. For example, he had just sent to all his friends—Hugo March, Peter Hoag, Pantalona, about forty Senators, and members of the stock exchange—a book bound in morocco with gilt edges and vellum pages, handwritten and illuminated, which reproduced a long, tearful poem from some acquaintance upon the death of his wife, an answer to Udall’s condolences. “An example of true love,” said the first page, and the circumstances, with Saul Udall’s letter of condolence and the names of man and wife, were inscribed. Hugo March admired this so much that for Christmas he had ordered from the same illuminator a little book containing the remarks of a judge in Oklahoma about the duties of citizens to the State, the remarks having been addressed to an out-of-work handyman who had cut loose and stolen an automobile. It was Peter Hoag who arranged all these things with the illuminator; they relied on him in all matters of taste.

  Mrs. Anne Warder was thirty-one years old, a plump blonde, confident and confidential, a businesslike sort of woman. Hoag’s mission was to look through her things before she could set the stage for the insurance investigator. He found her in her dressing gown, the place upside down, as it should be at that hour, but on looking through her closets and chest of drawers, he found that she had already burned holes in things, especially in some out-of-date inventory, such as a couple of suits in wool and silk, a torn fur coat, and even in some new underwear of too bright a pink. The taper was lying on the vanity table when he came into the small dark bedroom. He made an appointment with her for cocktails that afternoon, and he had liked the whole way she carried it off. He wetted his lips and thought he might get married; at any rate, he knew the woman was his type.

  Sam Banks, the lawyer, was a boyhood friend of Hugo March, and was well known for his talent, the saying that he “never lost a case,” and his ability for work. He shared a suite of offices on the fourteenth floor of a Fifth Avenue building—it was the thirteenth floor but called the fourteenth. Sam sat with his back to the windows, in shirt sleeves, reading a brief. He said, “Hello, Peter,” and went on reading. His secretary brought Hoag a check, which he countersigned, and sent out for the cash. Hoag sat there, while Sam went on reading his brief. Presently, Sam said, “Excuse me, I’ll be here all day, I don’t eat today,” and returned to the paper in his hand.

  Hoag looked out the window at the roofs below him and thought about his lunch. Each day at lunch, which was always either in the fish restaurant or the tavern, downtown, the boys matched billfolds to see who was carrying the most cash on him. Hoag often won the bet, and probably would today: this was why he took the legacy in cash. No pickpockets are allowed in the Wall Street area below Fulton Street; they can take the subway through these preserves but not get out and not operate even underground till the region is past.—Hoag was perfectly safe. Every day he helped out some man or other with a few hundred dollars; he got it back the following day…Hoag thought he would get a fashionable photographer to take a picture of the banquet they were giving to the Washington woman and her new husband; they would send the photograph to all the known men she had slept with. All the men in their set admired her for her ability and the way men ran after her. Now she had two more men who would marry her. Sending this photograph would suit her very well and would be a tribute from them…The money came, Hoag nodded and left Banks’s office, got into his car and started downtown. The car was lent to him by Hugo March, a handsome dull-green roadster used at other times by March’s son, Claud, who was now at a smart private school.

  He stopped, however, to get a new tie, and it was after eleven when he reached Twenty-third Street. He decided to go to L
uchow’s for a sandwich. Passing through Irving Place, he was held up at Eighteenth Street by the lights. A woman waiting on the curb and going in the same direction attracted his notice. She was bareheaded, with fair hair roughly brought back into a knot on the nape of her neck; she held her head up and was crying, and she carried in her hand a very small broken paper valise, sewed up and tied up with string. She went on walking beside Hoag, who had slowed down to look at her. She was remarkably strong-looking, clear-skinned, apparently about twenty-five, dressed in a jersey dress with a shapeless beige wool jacket over it. At the next light, Hoag parked his car: they were in front of the old opera building on Irving Place, now a cinema for foreign pictures. When he opened the door, she looked into his eyes and stopped.

  “Won’t you come and eat some lunch with me over there?”

  She put the paper valise on the back seat of his car and nodded, at once turning toward the restaurant.

  They sat next to a large mirror. The light fell on her head. The restaurant was beginning to fill with well-fed, hungry, energetic, successful men. All looked at her. She was a woman used to men. Her cheeks were full, the chin noticeable, the facial bones large and high, smooth. Her eyes were narrow, oval, violet, with a darker outer rim. The eyes were set level with the face and a little close together, and her front face appeared flattish. She had a full mouth with a protruding lower lip. Only a slight heaviness round the jawbones and a disappointed expression, a light fold from nose to mouth, showed that she was past her youth. Her eyes and hair were the extraordinary features of her head. The eyes were calculating but resplendent. Her smooth hair left the forehead bare but grew into lanugo round the temples and neck; and the empty temples were also animal.

  Hoag was gallant with her, eating a piece of bread if she selected it but put it back, choosing something from the plate of hors d’oeuvres if she had touched it first, listening softly without offense, smiling just below her eyes, watching with a clever intentness. She smiled. It was a little smile, with close teeth, but her eyes at once smiled too; she had a friendly expression when she spoke to the waiter. She was carelessly frank with him. All that he saw about her excited his business instinct.

  She was Mrs. Barbara Kent, born in England of immigrant parents, one White Russian and one without a country. She could skate, dance, ride, speak several languages. She found herself alone, without a profession, at nineteen. She tried modeling in Paris and some American brought her to New York.

  She had not the local figure, could not model, and lost men, could scarcely be bothered with them. She was thirty-two, but if well fed, rested, and well dressed, could pass for twenty-three or so. But her “mind was old: men had given her too much trouble; she wanted to settle down.” She never listened to a word men said: “at three o’clock in the morning it was only one thing.” And they were stupid, all were stupid, the newspapers were stupid. “You are stupid, too,” she said, looking up from her plate, “there is one thing only with men.” Kent had been a New York drunkard in his fifties. He had beaten her, and when she had run away had divorced her; result—no alimony. Since then, in New York, she had drifted about. She had been living last month in a furnished room in Twenty-first Street with a store clerk who worked late hours. She had invited a man up to her rooms and the store clerk had come home to find them together. He had only been able to say, “Get dressed, get dressed quickly, get dressed and get out—both of you get out.”

  That man had no money. Since then, she had gone back to haunting some little bars on the East Side, between Twelfth and Third Streets, where she washed in the back room. Her change of clothes she left in a laundry. They washed her clothes and gave them to her when she paid. They were tired of her in the bar, told her to take a walk. She did not like to drink, only wanted to find a man to rent a room for her. She knew there were call houses in this district for business men and she had been going to an address when Hoag met her.

  “There are some things I can’t do. I’ve never worked in an office. I can’t take orders from a man. I’m not naïve. Now that only leaves a few things open to me. I’m too well educated to do a lot of things. I’m used to holding my own with men. I can manage. I just need some introductions.”

  In the evening of that day, he met Mrs. Anne Warder for a short time after the close of business, then went to Madison Square where he had arranged to meet the blonde Mrs. Kent. She was sitting on a seat near the statue of Farragut. When he came up, she said nervously, “I’m not used to sitting in parks; I don’t like the attention; it’s very disagreeable to me. You should not have made this kind of appointment. I hate parks.”

  They walked over to a place he had in mind, below Twenty-third Street, and went up the wooden stairs of a small loft building, just off Sixth Avenue and near a church. Two out-of-town women passed them on the stairs, talking about the price of furs and the wolf jackets they had seen. Hoag said, “The sexton from the church sends them here. They come to town with a bit of money to spend on New York clothes and he sells them a fur jacket—they are trying to put over wolf now; they like the sound.”

  He knocked at a door with an old, painted notice-board, saying “Goodwin Furs.” Inside, in the bare entrance to a small, dusty loft, Hoag introduced Mrs. Kent to three men: Alfred Goodwin, tall, bent, with black hair; a noisy, athletic young man, also dark, called Delafield; and Robert Grant, or Robbie. This man, husky, tall, fair, with fine blue eyes, a square-set fleshy nose of extraordinary size, and a powerful chin, gave her one sharp glance and turned away. The other two looked her over.

  She went and sat down on a cane chair near the dirty window. She was very tired; she had been sitting all the afternoon in parks. She wore what she had worn in the morning, her one-piece dress without ornament, the beige jacket, and her run-down shoes. Some hairs straggled from the loop on the back of her neck. She sat quite still. She had been introduced also to two women who hovered behind the men: Mrs. Coppelius, a small brunette dressed in black, and Miss Celia Grimm, a Gotham business type, with expensively dyed, dressed and lacquered hair, afternoon clothes, a blonde-brunette.

  After a few moments, Mrs. Kent noticed that there was another woman present, a young blonde with regular features, who was at the far end of the loft putting on her hat to go home. She now came toward the group and waited in it, addressing the men and women familiarly; they called her Marty. Suddenly Robert Grant turned to Mrs. Kent and said brusquely, “This is Martha Ammamam.” What name? Grant looked at her in surprise and repeated sharply, “Martha Anderson”; but he gave the woman several side glances after he had heard her voice. She noticed the thin, fine hair all over his large dome, still a salty blond. He was at least fifty, though his eyes and skin were very clear.

  The men began to speak in low tones and the women to feign indifferences. Mrs. Kent knew the men were discussing her chances with them. The windows were shut. The revolting odor of furs and their preservatives filled the place. Grant turned twice and looked her over. “Like a pound of tripe,” she thought to herself, “like a dirty rag.” He turned back to Hoag with a head-shake.

  “Now this girl,” said Grant, taking Myra Coppelius by the arm and shaking it, “you remind me of Laura, you’re like her, like the woman who nearly ruined me—I nearly broke up my home for her.” He stood back and screwed up one eye like a watchmaker. “Not very—but, good grief—better-looking—but, the wiry type, too: all springs, coiled—and—you’re very bonnie, bonnie, wee. But perhaps I should beware of you! That woman nearly did for me! I nearly gave up one hundred thousand dollars for her! I nearly handed over an apartment house to her. Dangerous ’ooman. But you’re sweet,” he said, turning a sweet flashing smile on Mrs. Coppelius. He turned to the men, “That cow in the corner—she won’t do! Don’t see what you see in her! Looks like a scrubwoman.”

  Grant turned to Mrs. Coppelius, “Rain in the desert: thirsty man dying of thirst—can you believe it?” He went on with a laugh like a thunderclap, “I was walking down Fifth Avenue thinking, just th
inking, believe me, my very thoughts at that moment were, My life is a blasted heath. I hadn’t seen her for months—forgot she existed. I make appointments with women—a little tea, a little chat, mind you, nothing wrong—nothing doing. I don’t like them: I’m a parched, thirsty man. I want an oasis. They don’t know the word! Now, in front of me, a rose—a passionflower! And Myra has been in New York for two months all alone in a hotel room. What a waste of life! Let’s go,” and he started for the door.

  “There’s Mrs. Kent,” said one of the men.

  Grant was on the landing, the door ajar against his broad back. He rumbled, “I don’t want that cow. I don’t see it.”

  Goodwin came back into the room smiling and beckoned Mrs. Kent to her feet; and when she reached the door, said, “Look, Robbie, please do me a favor and drop these girls wherever they want to go. I’ve got to catch the six twenty-seven, we’ve got guests; or you, Hoag.” Hoag put out his arm to the unfortunate blonde woman, whereupon Grant mumbled, “No, I’ll take them, come on,” and hustled them down the stairs, himself at the back, talking audibly to someone, “But the blonde looks like a laundress, her dress is spotted; why should I spend taxi fare on a cow like that when I don’t see she’ll be any use to me at all!” and “Hang her shoes!” and “I got no time to dress up a dish for myself. I got no need for fancy looks. I’m no pervert. I got no time.”

  He hailed a taxi downstairs. Mrs. Coppelius said she would walk; and they spent a few minutes by the door while Grant took her address and telephone number and sketched some hasty gallantries. The men left. The blonde Mrs. Kent, holding her broken valise, stood by in the same cold, womanly way, said good night in rather a gentle voice, and turned toward the taxi with a beautiful droop of the head. Her columnar neck and fine shoulders were turned advantageously away from Grant. He gave her a startled glance. He now recalled her. In the presence of the men and the other women, she had had only three moods: a dejected indifference, a contemptuous indifference, and an abstracted nervous pose, as if thinking thoughts persistent and habitual.