A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  He grinned genially, “Listen to what I say. You don’t know about life yet. You could write down my life and it would sell like hot cakes. Better than that what’s-a-name fella’s. Damn fool has five thousand dollars in every bank in the country, I heard, because that’s all the guarantee the Government gives. A business brain like that can make a best-seller? I can—I mean you can. I give you the idea free, absolutely free, want nothing out of it.”

  David said, “We don’t want an idea to sell, Robbie, we’re interested in you as a friend.” He kept on laughing like a foal whinnying.

  The young girl assumed an enigmatic expression.

  Grant frowned, “It’ll sell. Why waste it? Here you have a golden opportunity. I give it to you on a clamboard. It’s a question of real experience; not like that stuff they write—”

  Said the young girl insolently, “I’ve seen you in action, five years ago, and if you ask me, you don’t know anything about women. I have a theory about it: those who have too many know nothing, like a man who sat up all night eating candy.”

  He listened, smiled eagerly and vaguely like a five-month-old infant, stretched out his plump hand, said confidingly, “You don’t know, my girl, I know women, I flatter myself I know women. Only the women don’t know me. Only for themselves. Now any woman could take me over. All I want is a woman. All I need, I don’t need nothing else…This woman I met—a few days ago, the doctor’s wife, my oasis, a little pond in my desert, I told her all I want is a woman. She could take me on. She wasted her opportunities.” He meditated; he poured some more drinks for himself and David Flack and, already beginning to stagger a little, told his life history, and his mother’s—the Lancashire mills, his father’s last days, lying on a bed, Grant out making money at seven years old: “I’ll tell you my story and give you a for-r-mula and it’ll be a best-seller, better than that fella; and I swear to you, my word of honor, I have no interest in it, only to see something true written. It’s got to be wholesome. I knew nothing wrong till I was nineteen or twenty, late development, eh? And I did nothing wrong till thirty-six, thirty-seven. Now you mustn’t think of me as—mur-murmur—or the way you drew that caricature—that pulls down, that’s a grave-digger; you must build up, then it sells. The people have the right instinct; they don’t buy what’s unwholesome. Young people make that mistake. No experience; and they like to pull down the generation before. For argument’s sake, my young friend, a story I have in my head, just came to me. A young woman comes from Europe, from Poland. I met her there, say, she told me some story, I found out it was true; honest fine mother, honest family, young woman in love with her husband, a doctor, but he sees too many ’ooman, he plays with fire, she meets a man who suits her, that she admires, and he brings her to New York City. He’s an American, wholesome, a constructive type. She has a father who has gone to Canada and made money in furs, a fortune in the New World. She stayed behind, married to a doctor. As soon as she meets this American, she realizes he is her fate; but she’s modest, she draws back. He says, the American, ‘I don’t ask anything from you, just tell me what I can do for you, I’ll teach you to forget, I’ll teach you a constructive view of life. What is your ambition?’ She says, ‘I wanted to make a career on the stage.’ Eh? She’s pretty, she always wanted to go on the stage, but her mother wouldn’t let her. Her mother said, ‘It would take you away from me.’ She remained a home girl, you see, then married a doctor, a narrow life. This American says, ‘I like to construct,’ says he’s a moral engineer; ‘I like to construct lives, too.’ Now, Edda, make it simple, don’t be clever, don’t be sardonic—I beg pardon, I don’t mean anything wrong, but no words like—mur-murmur—like you said about me, unnecessary, uncalled-for: people don’t buy spoiled goods. Give them pure goods, nice colors, you see. You wouldn’t try to sell ladies’ scarves, ankle-sox to girls all black and gray, with holes in. Well, stories must be the same. Or make it a play. But, no, more money in books.”

  “Plays!” Flack cried, laughing madly, elfishly. “They’re a gold mine, you dumb ox. Tobacco Road made millions, and it’s not constructive, it’s morally off-center, calls for the inspector of drains. I saw it, said it wouldn’t go a week—went eight years. That’s what my opinion is worth.”

  He laughed and repeated this several times.

  Edda said, “I, too, thought it wasn’t constructive enough. People don’t care about what’s constructive. They like to think the poor have a good time after all by sitting in the sun and spending the day in lechery.”

  The merchant frowned, “Don’t like it, not my style. It won’t go.”

  They shouted at him, “It went, it went all right.”

  He looked at the girl for some time and repeated more than once, “Our story will be constructive. Don’t care if that fella made a forchun. How much did you say?”

  He reflected for a minute after the figures and drank another glass of liquor. He suddenly came back to Edda and cried, “Maybe one lechery play—the fad will pass. Ours will sweep the country—my plot, take notes, for argument’s sake, it must be wholesome. And the American mer-r-chant—builds up Poland for her. He sells furs—need them there.”

  In the end the two men, merrily drunk, the girl sober, put on their hats and went out, walked several blocks to clear their heads, and parted with great expressions of friendship on both sides. Grant cried, “I’ll make your forchuns, both of ye, I’m in a winning mood, I’m beginning on luck and I’ve changed, I’m bringing a lot of people luck and no interest in it, take my word. I wouldn’t even take a ticket in a lottery: waste of money. If you could buy the tickets from the winners—I can see the point—then advertise Grant’s Bank paid out the following winners—but go into it? No, I don’t pay out a hundred to one, which is what the people do. One man wins a hundred, loses more than a hundred. Not for me. With cotton, I work; with women I’ve a forr-r-mula. No losses. Well, sometimes one or two, but at the end of the year, if my accounts don’t come out on the black side, I’m blue. Red, blue; black and I’m in the pink.”

  6

  Early on Sunday morning, that is, about nine-thirty, he telephoned. “Excuse me ringing you so early on Sunday. There’s a good reason for it, believe me, my girl, you’ll make a forchun. I could not sleep all night thinking of our plot and I got some very good ideas. Now, have you got a pencil, jot them down and it will make your book a best-seller.”

  “I’m not writing a book,” said the girl.

  Grant was speaking urgently right into the mouthpiece, “I had just now a wonderful idea for my best-seller, I got to tell you now before I forget: I know a man Kincaid, found out the Jewish racket, you know what that is? Gentile finds out that Jews like Gentiles who like them, and he always makes a business of it. This Kincaid, just to sell, pretends the British are the Tenth Tribe of Israel. He met a man, Solomon Greenstein, Jewish, whom I met in London, by the way. Kincaid, he was not allowed in business for some reason, and was doing illegal business, black market, in stopped currencies. He had his room behind Solomon Greenstein’s picture business. Greenstein sold phony pictures, and made big money, false Raphaels, Rembrandts, etc. You can see them all over Bath, Liverpool, and other places. All wooden nutmegs. One time Greenstein made ten thousand pounds. Now, these pictures were Kincaid’s and Solomon Greenstein was only his employee, junior partner, so to say. So Kincaid spent three thousand pounds on a bronze door with the ten commandments in Hebrew and Moses and all the prophets in the Old Testament, Obadiah, Isaiah, I don’t know all the names of them fellas, I did once, just like some famous door in Florence, I think, only out of the Old Testament. There was the seal of Solomon on it and some green stones, so that customers would think that Solomon Greenstein, instead of hiding his Jewishness, made a terrific parade of it and was proud of it—except, you understand, that it was Kincaid who did it. Kincaid even thought of changing his name to Cohen, but he figured that ‘Kincaid and Greenstein’ were better, faced both ways. Now this Kincaid came to New York and brought Greenstei
n, who is a bit of a Johnny-Raw, and Kincaid hires several floors in a storage warehouse uptown, all for himself. When he sees the numerous Jews in New York he is even more tempted to change his name to Rubenstein, but he soon sees that a Gentile who goes in for Jews has a very easy time, so he still sticks to Kincaid. This time the pictures are his and he says he has a Jewish grandmother; since Hitler, this made him a Jew, so he felt satisfied. Also, he read up on everything Jewish like a real Scots scholar, and learned the Jewish alphabet, he learned to read Yiddish, and thus caught on to one of the great weaknesses of the Jews, who think Yiddish is a private speech, not just a form of low German, and if anyone can read or understand it, are sure you have Jewish blood, even if you can also read Russian or Arab. Believe me,” said Grant, chuckling, “my dear girl, the Jews can say what they like, they are bair-rns compared with the Scots for a profit, and you know all the Jews in Dundee are meese-r-rably poor. In Glasgow, of course, everyone, of whatever origin, is miserably poor. However—”

  “Let me speak.” David Flack had come up to the phone and was crowding his daughter toward the wall. “What does he want? Let me speak.”

  “Father wants to speak to you!”

  “Listen, my girl, you’re the artist in the family, tossed all night, thinking of our hit. You and I can make a hit of it. You and I. I only want the glory; you get the money, you see. Listen! Are you taking it down?”

  She said impatiently, “Damn it, I can remember anything you can imagine.”

  He chuckled, “You’ve got plenty of the Scot in you, you must have had a Scots grandmother—”

  “Lead on, Macduff,” said Edda.

  He said seriously, “A man, Englishman, Scotsman, what you like, that’s for you, the writer, to decide, is in Warsaw during Hoover Food Administration, he knows some Polish, he goes to Warsaw, he sees this woman, Mrs. Lawrence; he brings her over to the U.S.A., he says to her, ‘Eat something, you’re beautiful now, you’ll be a model over there, I’ll stake you to your future,’ that’s what he says, and ‘I don’t ask nothing from you, I’m reshaping my life.’ He brings her over, sends her to Hollywood, pays for her photographs. Now make it simple, straightforward and honest. No wisecracks. That’s unnecessary. They got lost in the crowd—”

  “What—I don’t understand.”

  “Coming from the boat, they got lost in the crowd, she doesn’t speak a word of American, and she goes about saying, ‘Robert, Robert—’”

  “Robert? Is that his name?”

  “Any name you like, that’s for you to put in, you’re the writer, you got to imagine that, I’m giving you the plot. She doesn’t find him, Robert or what you want, and she falls into the arms of this Kincaid!”

  Edda listened dumbly, while her father hovered near the phone, saying, “I’ll speak to him later.”

  Grant continued, “Now make a note of all this, it’s br-rilliant, it’s new. Let me tell you about this Kincaid.”

  “But is there a real Kincaid?”

  “You change his name. This Kincaid, when he sells a picture to clients in this forty-two-room loft, he tells about his Jewish grandmother and Hitler, tears open his shirt and shows jewels, bronzes round his neck, inscriptions in Hebrew on jewels, you understand he bought somewhere. He tells them at night, he says the Lord’s Prayer in Hebrew and he wears a yellow nightshirt with a swastika on it.”

  Edda laughed loudly and said, “You mean the Star of David?”

  Grant became annoyed, “Now take this seriously, my good girl, it’s a plot, you fix it up if you see anything that’s wrong. He says they came from the Temple at Jerusalem, he is descended directly from Solomon the Great through his grandmother, and from Albertus Magnus through his grandfather, and there is strong reason to believe Albertus Magnus was a Jew. These heirlooms descended to him prove it. Well, naturally, he bought them all. He is a wonderful char-r-latan, also very romantic. Very romantic. He saw a girl in the street one time, a beautiful girl speaking some language he didn’t understand. He made inquiries until he found the girl was speaking Polish. Now say this Polish girl is the girl, that’s my idea. Then he married her. But she met this Polish doctor, who spoke Polish too, and she fell for him, a very seductive man, knows women, and she left Kincaid for him. Then she found out his true nature. And I said, ‘Let me prove to you what a man can be like. I’m looking for a woman; my life is empty. It’s up to you.’ I said to her, ‘A fair field and no favor, you prove to me you’re the woman I’m looking for. That’s all I ask. That’s what I’m looking for.’ There’s your plot…What do you think of it?”

  “You’re crazy. Here, Father wants to speak to you. I’m not a writer and I wouldn’t try to break in with an opium dream like that.”

  “It’s true, it’s true,” he kept crying out as she gave up the wire. She could tell from her father’s conversation, as he tried to get Grant to talk business, that Grant was asking for her. At last her father relinquished the phone. Grant at once cried, “Now, my dear young lady, you must take this seriously. A great opportunity. I bring luck. Make a forchun for you. I want nothing. But I got ideas. Out of real life. Not stuff, like that young fella. If he can make one million dollars we can make three million dollars, because it’s real life.”

  They parleyed a bit, and he kept on pleading, “My dear girl, just for me, do me a favor, take a note, my dear girl, this is real life.”

  He continued with his plot, “Friend of mine, Goodwin, was in fur business and ginseng business. He sold to priests and Chinese.” He was offended when she burst out laughing again. He said, “You ought to settle down, Edda; you got to look to the future. This will make you a forchun.”

  “Ginseng might. But go on.”

  He rushed forward enthusiastically, “He was in the London Hotel, I think Twenty—I don’t know—some street. He saw a lovely girl in the subway. After following her home he got to speak to her. It was a vacant lot. She stopped, she was frightened, and she started to say something. He said, ‘I’m serious, I’m in love with you, love at first sight.’ He took her out. I was there that time and I had another appointment, but I saw her and I took Goodwin aside and said to him, ‘Alf, does this girl mean anything to you? If not, I’ll serenade her.’ Alf said, ‘Not a thing, she’s too serious, go ahead with your serenade.’ I went back to her, her name was Myra Coppelius—”

  “You mean Kincaid went back to her?”

  “Eh? Well, she was looking for someone. Me too. I said, ‘Look, little girl, I like your face, I’m lonely. I’m awfully sorry. I got an appointment now. I didn’t know I was going to meet you. You appeal to me. Will you meet me tomorrow for tea and a little chat?’ She said she would. She said, ‘I’m looking for someone and I’ve got to find the right one sometime.’ Well, I didn’t like that and at the same time, it gave me an in, don’t you see? Too serious, Alf is right. But we met. She wouldn’t tell me her name, only Coppelius. She has a room uptown, all by herself, but I don’t know where. She is married to a Greek Orthodox doctor. She told me she was through with casual affairs. She wants to go on the stage. I said to her, for argument’s sake, I mean Kincaid says to her, for argument’s sake, he would like to spend money on her, just a pleasure to give her a chance, see if she would make him happy. ‘For there’s only one thing keeps me awake at nights, and that is to be happy,’ I said to her. I want to be good. If the fascists win, I’ve got to be good. If the Russians win, I want to be good. I want to end good, not bad.”

  “You or Kincaid?”

  “Eh? Both, both—it’s the same, where a man is lonely. Now that is the plot. A million dollars, eh?”

  “What’s the end of the story?” asked Edda.

  He shouted, “Edda darling, I’m not dressed yet. I’m walking up and down like that—what’s that black tiger, that black thing?—I can’t eat. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I’m thinking of my book. It will be a wonder. Just put down what I say. I lived it. It’s me. It’s real, don’t you see? Something those fellas that make one million dollars d
on’t know. It will make three million dollars. I looked in the best-seller list just now, what kind of stuff are they writing? Trash. Something about green leaves, black idols, I don’t know what gibberish. No wonder no one reads them. Wait till we get to work on it! All right, I won’t bother you now, get your bath, get dressed, and come up to my place. I’m waiting for you. And bring David too; he’s got good ideas though he doesn’t know how to market them, no salesman. Leave that to me. You’ll live in clover. I give you the ideas, I’m the salesman, you just write it down and get David to tell you how…”

  While Flack was in the bath the telephone rang. Wet and naked, he heard Grant’s hurried, pleading voice, “You come to my hotel five o’clock, is that too early? And later I’ll take you to a cabaret, anything to pass the evening, but it’s to tell you my idea I want.”

  Flack, pleased, said, “Anything to please the poor bastard, his ideas burn a hole in his head and he has nothing to do on Sundays; he’s a lonely old bastard and we ought to cheer him up.”

  At five, therefore, of this windy, gritty October afternoon, they went to his gaudy hotel. Grant opened the door instantly as he had been standing by it, kissed them roundly on both cheeks, took the girl by the arm and ran her to the lounge in front of the fireplace. He ran to his closet, got out his liquor and three glasses and brought them to them, resetting the scene of the previous afternoon.

  “To our best-seller—and I like your title, Edda, it’s a sure hit, it’s a wonder, you’ll see, we’ll plaster all the windows with our best-sellers, them fellas will turn blue with envy. All I Want Is a Woman. That’s it! We got the title, we got the plot. We got the girl, a pretty woman, sincere, attractive. Every man will want to—want her. Every woman will be jealous or else think, I’ll go to the hairdresser, get a new hairdo, and I’ll be like that woman, Myra—” He planted a fat Louis XV armchair in front of the girl and whispered loudly, “Say I shelve the blondine? Or say I’m tangled with the blondine? Doesn’t matter. I send Coppelius to that Sarah Bernhardt School in California. I tell no one. It’s a lottery. She is a great success, on the verge of a brilliant career, the most fame you can get, headlines, picture in the paper, name on Broadway, four-and-half stars at the least, but she says, ‘I’ll come home and cook your breakfast for you, Robert!’ Whatever his name is.”