A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  She was brushed aside by the ungrateful Grant, who had an impulse to shout: “Where’s the boy, where’s the boy? Goodwin, you’re late, always three-quarters of an hour late. I’m rushed to death and want to have fun. I need luck. Mrs. Lawrence brought me luck. Then this one, Livy, Livy brought me luck. I had a great shock and now I want consolation.”

  Now Gilbert arrived, was introduced, the party was complete, except for Mrs. Kent.

  “You’re late, you’re late!”

  The young man ordered Scotch-and-soda, and said, smiling, “Now don’t let Dad ration me: I learned to drink in the officers’ club. Dad’s only idea of how to spend the week is to go home and take a little stretch and drink tomato juice.”

  The women flattered the young soldier. Robbie, meanwhile, began craning his neck till Livy said, “Expecting someone?”

  “A lady, she went to telephone, can’t understand it.”

  “It would be a lady.”

  Grant frowned, and glancing at Gilbert said, “My wife’s an angel, an angel, fine mother, I respect her. But she could be more active. Too languid, too inert. Could have made my life a paradise. I don’t ask much. I like the home.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Mrs. Grant is a sweet woman,” said Betty.

  The boy smiled at her. Grant got up and declared that he had to telephone, had forgotten something—his partner. Livy turned her face away from the boy and winked.

  Goodwin was now displaying a diamond and emerald chip bracelet which he wanted to sell cheap—$10,000. Gilbert looked on with surprise as the man seriously considered the bracelet and even looked round the little bar which was now packed, appraising the curious but casual glances coming in his direction. Gilbert could not believe that so much money was circulating, or that they threw money away like breadcrumbs. He, for example, even kept breadcrumbs to give to the sparrows on his window sill. It was a pleasure for him to think that they were stuffing their bellies with the crumb, living on it, that it was not wasted. The women examined the bracelet, tried it on. Goodwin let them feel it, kept looking for Grant, who was away a long time.

  Gilbert asked, “Do you think you can sell that thing just by hawking it round?”

  “You can sell a box of chocolates these days for seven dollars and the customer won’t even wait for the three dollars change, he’ll tell the girl, ‘Keep it, buy yourself a sandwich.’ Why can’t I sell a little bit of junk like that? Last week I sold a bracelet for eighty thousand dollars, as easy as nothing. I can get any amount of this stuff and get rid of it the same day. This kind of money is just nothing to what’s going around. This is just dung: you don’t think that’s any good, do you? Do you know what I’d think of any lady friend of mine who wore a thing like that? I’d say she was a —— and her boy friend was a ——. This is a real boom; but not a boom-boom boom, it’s the genuine article, prosperity. We’re always going to be like this, only better and I’ve only just got on my legs. I was crawling before like a louse; wait till you see the money I’ll make the next six months. I’ll be carrying it home in valises. I know what the score is and I know where to get the goods. And I can sell. Three qualities you can’t do without in a day and country like this.

  “Don’t make any mistake, Lieutenant Grant, you’re coming back to a different world, a better one too. You’re doing a good job; and we’re not asleep here. We’re rolling it up so that when you come back you’ll have nothing to do but walk into a job at ten thousand dollars a year, have a good time, and live on the fat of the land. What’s eighty thousand dollars? A friend of mine sold a diamond and ebony lavaliere-and-cross last week—a quarter of a million dollars. Just a fluke, I didn’t get hold of it myself. Last week, I made twenty-two thousand dollars on a deal. Do you know what this country is like? I’m asking you. You can’t tell me. You don’t know. No one knows but a couple of men in this country. This country is just bursting with inventory, all kinds, junk and good stuff; but it’s the junk that’s eventually going to make us rich. They don’t know what to do with it. They’re afraid to handle it. They’re paying storage on it, they’re burning it for insurance. Let me just dip my hands in it and they’ll come out dripping gold. I won’t burn it. I’ll sell it. You’ll sell it abroad. I’m just waiting for the war to be over and I’m the Victory Kid. You boys are doing the right thing and it’s going to be good for you here when you get back. Democracy is right because it’s American, and it’s going to give us all security forever; and the kind of security you’d dream about for your mother or your sister. You want your sister or your daughter to marry a millionaire, don’t you? Well, she’s going to marry one, if he’s only a goddamn bus conductor. When you’ve finished cleaning up over there, come back here and get in with us—we won’t even waste time cocking a snoot at the pack of cockaroaches they call people over there…Goddamn it, this country is a real country—I like it and if I like it, it’s good, because I only like the best and—”

  He looked at Betty who was kicking him under the table. “Skip it, Alf. Put on a new record. I agree with you. We all agree with you. He’s a great one for skinning a skinned rabbit.”

  Goodwin weighed the bracelet in his hand.

  Gilbert was silent.

  Livy said, “Does your dad fall asleep in telephone booths, or is he dialing all the blondes in the city of New York; or does he have fainting spells?”

  Goodwin said, “Your dad’s losing his profit-sense. He could have gone in with me last week, wouldn’t. He drew back. Wouldn’t put up the money. That’s a weakness of his lately. Money sweats sweet sweat, sweet sweat like dew, like honey—” here he stopped and laughed, without noticing his wife’s gestures—“and your father’s the original Old Honeybear; but he’s losing his grip. But you just leave it to me, Grant, I like you and I’ve got connections in Washington, in London, in Buenos Aires, everywhere you can mention that can’t turn wrong. I like you, I’ll take you along with me. Now your father lost a lot of opportunities this year. He made a big mistake with the field-canteen factory, and that warehouse full of electrical goods. But I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. All he’s got to do is leave it to me. I’m helping everyone, it’s my nature. I don’t want to see you fighting for your country, for home and democracy and not make it a better world for you to live in here at home. Your dad will be all right with me and I’m doing it just because I feel that way. I’m doing it for everyone. Because I’ve got the power, you feel some years are lucky for you, and this is for me. How would you like to go in with me, Grant, when you come back? Why don’t we buy you out of the Army now? I know your dad would do it any day, but he doesn’t know the way to do it. Now I know a couple of people in Washington—Arthur, Ben, and Charlie, you know, Betty—and a couple of grand to them, let a bit stick to the fingers of about eleven people in between, you know—that’s the way you do it—and you’ll be out and home here quicker than you can send a telegram, ‘Love and kisses, I’m discharged.’ I’ll cut you in on unloading the crap, you’ll go out and scout around for me and smell out all that inventory. When Europe’s ruined after the war and the kids are starving and the old people dropping dead like flies, everybody sick, and without any hats or shoes, you’ll see: we’ll make a fortune. They’ll pay anything for a pair of old shoes, for a rubber tubing, for a shipload of left-foot boots, they’ll go hobbling around in left-foot boots and pay ten times what you could get selling it down South or burning the warehouse—”

  The women were drinking and smoking, paying little attention to Goodwin. Only Betty tried to interrupt this eloquence.

  But Gilbert got up, seized his cap, put enough money for his two drinks on the table, and said, “We ought to have martial law and court-martial you. I shall never again walk into a place where I see you. If you think I believe your lies about whom you know in Washington or any Arthur, Bob or Charlie, you can empty it out of your filthy brain. I never met such a scoundrel! I’m going. Dad can get me at the hotel.”

  Betty Goodwin, however, after listening to par
t of the speech with a dashed, humiliated expression, picked up her things and said, “Come on, Alf, we’re going, he’s not going. You put your foot in it. I kept kicking you, you dumb egg. Gilbert’s a patriot. He’s drunk, Gilbert.”

  Gilbert started to denounce him again, “Drunk or sober—”

  The other women intervened. Livy cried, “They’ll go. You’ve got to stay with us, to cheer us up after this disgraceful scene. We need consolation.”

  16

  After the Goodwins had gone, Robert Grant returned, walking in a thundercloud.

  Livy and he said, simultaneously, “Where are the others?”— “I always believed in the resurrection of the flesh.”

  Grant sat down, the same in manner, looked round with an expression of misery, murmured, “Ben made a big mistake, without my advice; he’s young, doesn’t take advice, saw the accounts yesterday and asked him, ‘How come?’ He lost fifteen thousand dollars last week. One plunge. September cotton. I warned him. Nothing to laugh at. Nothing I can do about it. Bit of an argument. No good. I said to him, ‘Ben, I told you I had advices to sell. You bought. Why?’ He’s boyish. Not serious. Honest man but not serious. Have to get rid of him. He can buy me out. I’m retiring from that business. I’ve got enough. Received a terrible shock. Excuse me. Where’s the waiter? Some more of the same.”

  Gilbert had moved beside his father and listened attentively to everything he said, offered himself as a Galahad. Grant, with a grimace of brutal melancholy, drank deeply and looked about with heavy eyes. Suddenly, he sparked up, “All’s well that ends well!” and he grasped Livy Wright by the elbow and thrusting a look at her, exclaimed, “You’re a beauty! You appeal to me. I like you. I can see you have character—beauty, brains, and character. That’s what I’m looking for.”

  The young man looked, smiling, at Livy and the other women. His face had an honest radiance.

  Grant muttered, “My wife’s an angel. Sweet woman. Good mother. But not to me. What I’m looking for is a combination of—mother, sister, and angel. I had a shock. Bear with me. His mother’s a sweet woman. An angel. He knows I respect her. But perhaps I should have let her go a long time ago. She—find another man. Both made a mistake. All I want is the right woman. Big shock. Let’s have another drink. I need consolation.”

  He looked at his son, “Your mother’s a fine woman. But she never sewed buttons on my shirts. Never got up till eleven in the morning. A fault of character.”

  Livy said to Gilbert, “I envy you your gorgeous figure; wish I had a waist like that.”

  Gilbert said, “It’s not so good. Too much Scotch.”

  Grant looked up, “Want you to meet David Flack and his daughter, Flack especially.”

  “They’re some of your few decent friends, Dad. I like them.”

  “Smart man, daughter’s very clever, but has a lot to learn.”

  Livy leaned across to Gilbert, “Here’s a bit of paper. Jot down your exercises on this. I envy you that figure. I love tailormades. I’d better do some exercises, though.”

  She had a black dress cut in a low diamond neck, showing her white skin and the doughy spring of the breasts.

  Grant leaned over to Mrs. Lawrence and began, hotly, “You’re a real lady, you give me a complex. That’s my trouble with you.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to do that. How do I do that?”

  “I’m not polished enough for you. I’ve got corrupted somehow, bumping into trouble. If I’d had a high-class woman with character, a beauty too, who was devoted to me, who would sacrifice for me, I’d be different. Love is sacrifice. That’s the test. Sacrifice! Will a woman sacrifice for you? Then she loves you. I apply the acid test. No one comes through. Then you find your oasis was a mirage. A mirage! I know you know what sacrifice means! Look how good you were to poor James. What a wonderful wife! What a good mother!”

  He took her by the arm. The other two had stopped their conversation.

  Livy said, “What a line!” and the young man said, “Watch him put it over! I don’t know that one.”

  Mrs. Lawrence turned to Grant with bright eyes. Grant went on, kneading her arm, “She’s all right, your friend, all right—but too much a hoyden! Not my type. I like a quiet woman. I don’t want to get a complex. Been hurt too much. You frightened me, you gave me a complex. You didn’t telephone me. I don’t say I always knew the right woman. Made too many mistakes! But you show me you’re the right woman. I’m afraid. I’m neurotic, now. And the trouble is, I’m afraid of you.”

  Mrs. Lawrence listened carefully, timidly, saying she did not want to frighten him, how could she, such an ordinary woman, frighten a man like him.

  He became jovial, “You’re dangerous! I might go too far with you, do harm. I don’t want to harm a lovely woman. I’m a bad boy. Now Livy’s a hoyden. I couldn’t hurt her. She knows the score. You don’t. You’re gentle—you’re a real mother. What do you think of my boy, eh? Like him? Fine boy! Good character!”

  He turned to the others, but still wildly, still valiantly, proposed another round of drinks “and then we’ll have fun, go to a cabaret and have dinner.”

  Gilbert said, “Yes, but wait till I’ve been out dining, wining, and supping with Dad for a week. I’m used to these whirlwind visits. He stuffs me in the morning, makes me toast and orange juice, which I detest, then it’s brunch, lunch, tea, dinner and cabaret, where I have to take something and I drink all the time. I’ll be a yard round before long. And then Dad’s habit of resting. Who ever heard of resting in the afternoon and after dinner? I’ll be fat. I’ll will you my clothes when I get out of the Army. You reduce a bit and you can get into them.”

  “My legs are too short.”

  Gilbert continued, “Dad’s tour of New York City—have you seen it? Take a compass and stick it right through the Barbizon Plaza. Draw a circle with a radius of half a mile and there you are, that’s it. Dad’s world. I was at the Barbi-Plaza last night, night before at Pommes Frites, tomorrow at Monte Carlo, tonight I don’t know where, and what about the “21”? Do you know the Raleigh, beastly showy place full of war-rich like this brute who was here, and bits of chicken under bell glasses, and special ices? Never a good quiet spot among them where you can enjoy yourself. Showy places, showy women—you know, Dad, I’ve come to one conclusion and that is, that that is one of the reasons you go there though you don’t know it yourself. Oh, Dad’s a mystery to no one but himself. An oasis, he calls it: I’m looking for an oasis. The last week I’ve eaten in some damn rotten oases and paid through the nose. Dear old Dad means well, but I know, Item, he hasn’t the shadow of an idea where we ate anyhow, and Item, he doesn’t give a damn, though he has a good palate. But Dad’s view of good food is—the less the better. If you get a twentieth of a chicken on toast and three sprigs of cress and one carrot with cream, that’s a good restaurant. I’m no eater, but in between Dad’s expensive meals I have to sneak off to the Automat. I just came from one.”

  Grant, at this, laughed.

  Gilbert continued, “The truth is—I’m always finding out the truth; it seems to lie round in chunks so you can stub your toe on it—is—that taste can’t be bought. You have the same things at a fifty-cent place, a dollar twenty-five place, a two-fifty place, and a five seventy-five place, only less of it each time. See how much you can pay for being magnificently hungry. Now I don’t think Dad knows that. He’s generous and he likes to give people a good time, so he just throws money out the window by the barrel.”

  Grant cried humbly, “Well, my boy, got no time for all that. Besides, you don’t know New York. All highjacking. One restaurant makes a reputation, next restaurant opens just to steal the trade, and give the same dish for less. Soon as they get the trade, they start cutting down. Every six weeks you have to go to a new restaurant. When it gets known, you see a line all round the block. Have to take someone else’s advice, go to a new restaurant. Then it’s too late; either they have a line round the block or they raise their prices or they cut down on the
portion. Why?—started with an angel and a cook. No money, big overhead, cutthroat competition. Feeding the poor is the only business. Even then, it’s swill against swill. What can you do? Change management? Competition has bought the manager, or the cook, or the head waiter, next day, the restaurant’s no good…I want to eat when I go out. Have you got a table? What is good today? Eat, get out. Make a career of eating—haven’t the time. I don’t say it’s wrong, but I like to get out. Go somewhere else.”

  Gilbert laughed, “Come on, let’s have more drinks, before we move over to one of those places with an eighteenth of a chicken under a bell glass and a sprig of cress. Bread and butter extra, so Dad says, no bread and butter.”

  He called the waiter, in an insolent manner, and ordered the drinks, adding to the women, “Dad never thinks of those things. One of his weaknesses. I guess Dad needs me around to get on socially. He’s more like a bear. Good-natured old bear.” He put his arm on his father’s broad shoulders.

  Grant became angry, “Don’t flatter yourself, my boy. I got on all right without you.”

  Sally Lawrence said, “Your father is a simply marvelous host, Lieutenant.”

  Gilbert continued, “Oh, Dad’s a good fellow, his meaning is clearly to be generous and let everyone have a good time. But between meaning and reality, Dad will never learn, there is a gulf which well-meaning can’t jump. Especially the ready-made, leap-before-you-look type like Dad. Oh, I’ve studied Dad. As a matter of fact, between you and me, I don’t think Dad ever thought about himself, as himself—the way you and I do, as most people do. Dad, I say, never looked at himself from the outside once in his life. An extrovert, pure and simple. The first act of the thinking man, I hold: ‘What am I?’ Dad doesn’t know what he is!”