A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  Grant had not expected this. He puzzled, turning it over in his mind. He and Flack had swept out every corner of their memories.

  “But March didn’t know anything at first—just little bits of lists—well, go on, anyhow—I’m thunderstruck—It never occurred to me—Does she know?”

  “Then I thought I’d protect Barb by giving false information to March.”

  “Protect Barb from what?”

  “Why should you ferret and worry into her private life? Isn’t her life her own, because you once or twice gave her a check to pay the hotel? You think you buy a woman like you buy a pair of shoes!”

  He said roughly, “The information—what is it, true or false?”

  “I only gave one bit of true information—Barb told it to me—about James Alexis—the man she knew in Canada. I gave Barb the money I got for that.”

  “March split with you? With Barb?”

  She was embarrassed, “Just this once, because it was your fault and we both hated you then; so did Mrs. Jones. You told everyone about Barb. I’m surprised no one else ran to pluck you—you were so downy!”

  “Downy! H’mm—downy—and Barb knew?”

  “She thought it was only fair she should get some of the money you were paying for information about herself. She gave it, so she should get the money.”

  He burst out laughing, went on for a few minutes, then, “I can’t credit it—from you either. It wasn’t clean. Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “We both hated you then. All fair promise, no cash.”

  He looked down. The dark, pit-eyed woman went on in a hard contralto, constantly breaking into bitter resonance and sounds like minted coin.

  “If you had ever been threatened with a dispossess by a landlord, through unemployment or inability to work, or had dependents who knew nothing of the world you live in, or the way you live, or are trying to stand forward, yourself, without money, from a disagreeable background, you know it’s very difficult to keep your poise and hold on to your sense of fair play. Any expedient that will keep you off the street is good management. You knew Barb when she was on the street. At a time like that a crook, a cheat, someone who would cheat your best friend to get you twenty dollars, is himself your best friend. That’s the way March looked. Barb appreciated his friendship and help. Help comes from any hand. Beggars don’t ask the pedigree of the people who give them nickels.”

  He waved his hand, “Look, my girl, I am very much surprised. Don’t make heartbreaking speeches to me. I’ve been in the street. I was a poor boy, an orphan. That’s why I’m a socialist.”

  “That’s why Barb and I are on the people’s side, only Barb hasn’t my brains and she doesn’t know what it’s all about. If you suffer you want something better.”

  “Never mind that! Barb had only to ask me and she would have had the money if she had behaved properly to me.”

  He paused and reflected, “But where did he get all the other information? Flack says I told him myself. I know I didn’t.”

  “You went on with it?”

  “I spent eleven thousand dollars and more on a wild goose chase.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  He flicked his eyes, “A lot of trash, no doubt. But I don’t know—I don’t know, my girl!”

  They parted in ill humor. Miss Russell had gossiped scurrilously about Mrs. Kent. If Grant wanted her back he must share her with James Alexis. She advised him not to rent an apartment for her: it would only be for the benefit of James Alexis.

  23

  Grant was now resolute to get the money back from March.

  “I’ll get it back before Christmas. I’ll bleed him—make it a white Christmas for the Marches.”

  He laughed considerably at this, repeated it many times to Flack.

  “A white Christmas—all except the five hundred dollars Barb got. Let her keep it, but it’s the last she’ll get. She won’t take me over again with her white cat and her white rug.”

  He was very angry with her and filled in the larger part of several days and nights raving to Flack. At home he sat by himself thinking of the kind of life he led, spending money, time, energy on sordid fantasies and scurrilous people: “They live in the sink of the earth and I’m sinking down with them.” He had letters from his wife, who was indignant at his long neglect, but who put it so plaintively and modestly that he became tyrannical, and showed her letter to everyone, to his mistresses, and their hangers-on, “Just when I need a comforter, she thinks only of her own headaches. Always was like that.”

  Christmas was not far off and he was obliged to go to Boston then because of a long-established custom, but the idea of seeing the woman and the nervous, devoted little boy revolted him. He could not face people who lived so far out of his world. With them he must sit silent and chew his lip, gnaw his heart out.

  When next he saw Barbara at Manetti’s, he knew that her crony had told her everything. She looked pale and, a curious trick of hers, when she most needed make-up, she kept it off. She was ill-dressed. This characteristic puzzled and irritated him, “Just when she ought to try to win me over, she dresses like a village dressmaker!”

  But Barbara was for the moment defeated and in his power. He became serene, spent his afternoons and evenings with Mrs. Kent, and devoted himself to recovering the money from March. He bought Barbara a teapot, some clothes, a bracelet she said she needed; he was sorry for her in her defeat. She was not like the many girls he had had, sulky, insolent gougers who were always calling for taxis. Barbara liked to walk round her own district, that is in the district between Fifty-eighth Street and Forty-fourth. She would go as far as Sixth Avenue sometimes on one side but never beyond Madison Avenue on the other side, and then only on certain blocks. That was the walk Grant liked best himself. She had one weakness, she liked to linger at shop windows, “window-shopping,” she called it. Grant liked to walk briskly, with his eyes ahead, or talk urgently into her ear. But Barbara stopped at every window in this favored district of hers, and would glance upwards to first and second stories, at famous names. He had long ago become acquainted with the businesses and relative standings of numerous silversmiths, art dealers, and dressmakers. She would observe new names even on the fourth story. Her competent, thoughtful mind was a directory and a catalogue. She would never ask for anything as she trailed along from window to window, or made her observations about Spode, Wedgwood and Sèvres, Chippendale, Hepplewhite, but would become absorbed in some delicate thing, a lace collar, a pair of earrings, and would stand there pondering it, marking its workmanship, estimating its value (the things she liked rarely had price tags on them), saying, “That would look well on me, I suppose, but perhaps that would be better.” After five or six stops, Grant, fretting and fermenting at her side, unable to tolerate the lingering any longer, would enter some store gallantly, buy her something she had pointed out. She would seem quite satisfied then, and would only glance sideways at the other shops they passed. If she began again, unable to resist the temptation, he would bundle her into a taxi and take her to some bar.

  He told himself that now the chase was ended, his thirst for her had gone. He was just bringing her along, trading on her inert nature. He was well out of it. The trinkets he was giving were “come-ons.” He would begin talking some of his goods out of her as soon as she thought him hers. He called upon the mother too, hinted at the “skeletons in Barbara’s cupboard.” He had received an anonymous letter, perhaps written by some jealous woman friend. This all put him in good humor. Each day, since his reunion with Barbara, he had been calling March, saying in a quiet, troubled manner that he was convinced there was something wrong about one of March’s link-men. He was sure Carter himself was an honest man. The money for the wrong information must have slipped out in between.

  “If I were you, I’d prod them one after the other and get a bit of it back. After all, you can expose them to their chiefs,” he said.

  He kept this sort of melancholy grumbling up fo
r a week or so, saying that he was going to Washington to call upon O’Sullivan, he thought, and to have it out with him, for he understood March was in an embarrassing position, but O’Sullivan was a man of the world and could make up his own mind about which of the link-men had taken the money without doing any work. “The detectives are honest, do you think?” And he harped upon O’Sullivan, “He could probably put his hand on the man right away.” March made one of his periodical trips to Washington, and at the end of two or three days was back with a check for $500. He said, “I shook him down. Once my suspicions were up, I had my eye on this man from the beginning. They only called on him once. There’s a bad egg in every crate.”

  “Five hundred dollars in only two weeks. I’ll get the tea service, too, you’ll see, and everything else—what do you bet?” said Grant to Flack.

  He had a consultation with Flack every day about the best way to frighten, tantalize, and unsettle March. The money came back very slowly. They began to think that March himself had money difficulties; but how? Grant thought of putting a detective on March’s trail, but was dissuaded by Flack. In the end he sent him to snoop around Wall Street himself, and Flack brought back news.

  March’s wife had run up large debts and March had had to insert advertisements warning suppliers. Claud had stolen $600 from his father’s pocketbook. The Fairy was in the country, address unknown—put away, said some; others hinted at a runaway match with Davis. Hoag would not deny; “in itself a bad sign.”

  “That girl’s no good. Take my word,” said Grant, rubbing his hands.

  “Poor March,” said Flack.

  “His chickens have come home to roost, eh? Looks as though he plucked me for himself!”

  “He has an enormous salary still, he can’t be as broke as that.”

  “Let’s get what we can on him and gouge him anyway.”

  “Obviously there aren’t any documents—”

  “No, but mental torture, moral suasion, eh? Will he pay up everything, what’s your bet? Will I get it back, eh?”

  Grant, profoundly interested and exhilarated, walked back and forth, going over their chances. He sent Flack out into the town again to pick up what he could about March. He kept muttering, “The fellow’s a gangster, you can start with that. He plucked me, he plucked others, you can start with that. What did he tell us he met that gangster in a place in Brooklyn—what was that fella doing in a place in Brooklyn like that? Them fellas don’t let outsiders in.”

  Flack protested, “One day I dropped into a Yorkville café and saw there a couple of gangsters. I had been to school with them. I started to talk to them and Butch Mahone came up and put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘No one touches the perfesser, here, see?’”

  Grant had heard this before; he frowned.

  “Butch died years ago. Hardly any gangsters live beyond twenty-four.”

  “Shoot each other? Don’t eat well?”

  “Jail fever; short-circuit.”

  “We’ll short-circuit March. Find how to do it; we’ll leave him in the dark and empty his pockets. Mental torture. Can we send in something on him—income tax? Do me a favor and spare me this morning, just finding out,” he said at the end, seeing Flack getting touchy again.

  For a few days, it looked as if, as Grant said, Fate had got March before they could get him. Some family scandal had blown the boy out of house and home, the boy was living high, gambling and drinking. March had had to pay up large debts for his son.

  “It’s good, it’s good, but it’s not enough. I’ll get my money; and this’ll be my bonus; looks as if God’s giving me a bonus, eh?” Grant rejoiced.

  “Don’t talk that way.”

  “I should worry, my boy; he didn’t have a heart for me. I’d feel the same if he did it to you. I’d feel the same. I’ll rub it in. What can you expect? Give a boy a father like that, give a girl a father like that—what can you expect? It’s asking for it. If my boy is honest and a gentleman, it’s because I didn’t spoil him, I made him an honest man. I respected his mother, I didn’t waste money on him, I said, ‘Choose what you want, make your own way, remember, always be honest and make your mother proud of you.’”

  But Grant, while talking and walking, kept “Our March Operation” in the front of his mind. His face lighted up whenever Flack told him a new bit of scandal; at deductions he frowned, “I want facts.”

  He rapaciously enjoyed every detail of March’s depravity. As soon as they had got in a full report on the boy’s doings, he seized the telephone and asked Hugo March to lunch at the Bankers’ Club, “good décor,” he muttered aside to Flack. He said, on the phone, with a funereal sigh, “Very worried about this blonde; she’s got me in her pocket. I think she’s double-crossing me. I’ve got to have your advice. There’s a name I want you to ask about,” and he mumbled something, then put down the phone with a clap of laughter.

  “He swallowed the bait. Now watch me land him. I’ll torture him and he’ll think he’s being tickled.”

  They went to the Bankers’ Club. There, Grant, without making any reference to March’s family troubles, began: “Your brother Peter’s boy Johnny is doing very well, I hear, in school. Saw him the other day—he seems like a fine, honest boy: has a future. Eh? What do you think? Has he a future? My boy, Andrew, I don’t see much in him, but his mother says he’s gifted. I don’t know. He don’t see much of me. It’s better. Let her send him to private school and he’ll learn to get along with others. I say coddling a child spoils him. Especially bad for boys. Girls—I don’t know: you got to look out for them, never know how they’ll turn out. Question is with girls, what son-in-law you pick. That’s the only thing a father has to do. Otherwise, some crook gets them—especially men like you and me, marked down for their money. No sharpshooters, eh? Now, I’m not downy—they shan’t pluck me, them sharpshooters…”

  Said March slowly, “I don’t know much about education: I sent Claud to St. Paul’s and I’ve done the best I can. The rest is on the lap of the gods.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t have more education, but had to get along without it. In another country, different civilization, set of values, more education, I’d have been a better man perhaps. Now in Russia I could have been a commissar, wouldn’t have taken any bribes, they don’t allow it; first, it corrupts their buyers, their contact men: it gives them a bad reputation. If there was a law keeping me from putting my hand in my pocket, and in other people’s too—ho-ho—why, I couldn’t do it, I’d be a better man. As it is, others take, why should I abstain?…But if I could look back on my life, say as a People’s Commissar for Fruit and Vegetables, and think I never touched a ruble not my own—I never even had a ruble my own—I just thought about fruit and vegetables, food for the people—or the American people, if we had American Soviets—see, there ought to be some law to save us from ourselves. You and me, men like us, we see others putting their hands in downy pockets, we think we will too. Other guy’s a sucker, I won’t be. He’s offering himself on the chopping block, make mincemeat out of him. That’s what we think of. Eh? And there’s not a damn thing means anything. You and me—the world’s running the other way, should we swim upstream, against the tide? Wasting our bloody breath if we do. And yet what do we look back on, men like us? No family life, everything despicable, contemptible, no sense of honor. We picked our friend’s pockets, our son picked our pockets—maybe, though God forbid—that’s why I say education is important for a child, and the parents ought to keep their fingers off him; and then, once he’s had the best, horsewhip him if he’s turned out bad. I’ll disinherit that boy if he does anything I’m ashamed of. I did bad things; my money’s to see he won’t.”

  March wore a Chinese expression: “Human nature’s one thing you can’t bet on. You don’t know how anyone will turn out; so don’t open your big puss too wide till you know what’s going to happen to you.”

  Grant frowned. Then he went on quietly, “Yes, you’re right. Take that chap O’Sullivan,
looks like a nice person. He has a boy, hasn’t he?”

  “He has.”

  “Yes. Now, if that fella, that boy, young O’Sullivan, was to find out anything about his father, that his father wasn’t straight, for argument’s sake, it might smash him, break him. A big disappointment can ruin a young man’s life…Just an example. I took to O’Sullivan myself. Thought he seemed honest, straight-looking fella. You know about that money, those checks I gave you—It’s just possible that O’Sullivan was sung a song and dance by the informants he got in touch with and that none of that money reached its target. For argument’s sake, why couldn’t some man along the line take the money and make up some tale and send it on to me—I don’t know! How do I know the whole damn story is true? It don’t check up with a lot of things I myself know. It’s been bothering me. Here’s a girl, I got her out of the gutter, I’ve taken her about, I built her up, in a way she’s my creation; and now I drop her flat and because of some dirty story some fella made up. I feel I ought to recheck, through another source. I feel like facing down those informants, going to O’Sullivan and saying, ‘Give me the name of just one of them, just to satisfy me. Do me a favor, just to save my face to myself, satisfy my pride, prove to myself I haven’t been taken up to see the etchings—just satisfy me once, I’ll say that I haven’t been given the runaround—a woman’s in this, her happiness is at stake—for suppose she’s innocent, a young woman like that, and it came out that I was circulating this story about her, or that someone else was—why it might ruin her, she might sue for damages: it wouldn’t look nice.’…Now I’ve got a funny feeling, mere instinct, mere intuition, that I’ve been sold down the river by some one man. Just to satisfy my pride, save my face to myself, I’m going to O’Sullivan and say, ‘Tell me the name of one fella, I trust you all right, and I’ll go to him and see what he has to say for himself.’ How do you think that would be? You know him, how do you think I should put it?”