A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  He became trivial, relating some of Barb’s advantages, “I don’t have to work out my sentence with Barb, but that girl is all sweetness, dripping with honey, no one ever knew me like Barb; but that’s all over. I can’t be a slave of weakness, can I?”

  He confided in everyone. One day when he was repeating this, Flack was silent for a moment, and then broke out, “Don’t you ever think of anyone but yourself, Robert? I’ve got troubles, now, and so has Edda. She’s in despair. She wants to get married and she thinks you’re wasting my time.”

  “She’s got a boy friend?”

  “She had, but something happened.”

  “Is that so, you don’t say,” cried Grant. “You mean she—well, well, that’s bad. Sorry to hear that. Sorry, very sorry. She’ll get over it, my boy. I should know. Love is my business, my part-time business. Look at this blondine affair. I thought last year she had me by the neck. She certainly had me by the heartstrings. And look at me now. A complete cure. I’m just paying her forty dollars—last week I got it down to twenty-five dollars—she’s looking very blue this week—just paying it for old acquaintance. Easing her out of it. I got over it. Very sorry. Poor girl. Well, hope she didn’t get into any trouble—eh? I mean emotional, of course. H’m. Love, you know, no knowing where it’s going to lead you. Got to pay for it. It’s a human relation. We forget that. It’s a human relation, my boy. Even with that blondine. Somehow I feel she didn’t get out of it so well. She certainly seems to love me now. Too late, eh? Bolt the gate after the horse has bolted. Well, she learned her lesson. Too late for her, though. As for me, I’m free, out of it—a free heart; and now I’m looking to lock it up again. But this time, a different sort. A working girl, some idea of values. You give this other one something constructive, she doesn’t understand, only wants to sting you. What is the meaning of vision?—nothing to pay, it’s mine, it’s yours, we enjoy it together, it’s democracy. She doesn’t understand, only wants to know, ‘What’s my percentage?’ I want to meet a non-profit-taking woman, understand me. Has some vision, some character, isn’t a one-way woman.”

  He liked this, repeated it to everyone again, even when he went out with Alexis and the curiously self-announced “Brauner, Arthur,” man of mixed breeds, and business without a business address, and friend of Barbara, a low-bred, cruel-looking man. Grant at times reproached her with the low company she now kept, said it would justify certain slanders he had heard about her, but she would only explain about any queer-looking individual, that, “He is Jim Alexis’ friend, I can’t offend Jim Alexis’ friend”; but she seemed to find pleasure in the company of “Brauner, Arthur.” When he fretted, “Who are these people? They have no money!” she would exclaim, “You are more snobbish than I am and I was brought up knowing nothing! You taught me to be a progressive, though I don’t think friendship has anything to do with politics, but I try to see things your way and now you say, ‘They are poor.’ They speak my language, I can explain myself to them. You never listen to me.”

  She would say they were all “socialists” too, although in all the torment and fever of their lives, in all their hours of drunkenness, depression, and the love-fit, no one ever heard them talk about socialism, no one ever heard them mention anything but connections and money. There were not even the “Marxists” he had known in café society, they were something seedier, a swarm of parasites. He never believed that they were radicals, but it soothed his conscience to hear them flatter him, and the wicked Alexis, by saying so.

  Sometimes he felt it intolerably shabby. The woman was strong and young, her ways were too much for him. But he said to himself, chuckling, “It is my vice,” and he went on drinking deeply and greedily of this vice. If he did not have her, he felt he was getting old and that love was turning its back on him forever. In a fit of terror, he would cry to any one of the low company, “If that happened, I’d cut my throat, I’d have nothing to live for. I swear it.”

  He had to spend longer hours every day and much more money covering the ravages of his nights upon his great, healthy body. Meanwhile, Barb only got a little worse in complexion. She stayed in bed and only had her parties when she felt fit. She had other lovers and was able to keep everything from Grant. Grant worked in the mornings as hard as his age permitted him to and felt in the afternoon that he had done his work for the world, now he could enjoy himself, “And I don’t even want to ask any questions: a man who’s wandering in the desert and sees an oasis doesn’t run to a chemist for an analysis of the water. He’ll drink brackish water.”

  Grant had to go to Boston on business and found the house intolerable. He would never take an interest in Andrew: the woman had only conceived in order to tie him down. After having spoken scarcely a word to either of them, he hurried off to New York again, counting those hours all lost.

  Barb found the air of town depressing and went away, with her mother, from time to time, for short holidays for which Grant paid. He was not sorry to see her go, but sought moral regeneration at these times. He spent his serious moments with Miss Livy Wright and other women not so bad as Barb, and his declarations of love and their responses gave him the illusion of freshness, innocence and even early youth at times. He had, in fact, retained vivid memories of his fresh adolescence and when he was not tired, in moments of real gaiety, with a woman who still believed in him somewhat, he was able to forget the foulness of his years. At these moments, during Barb’s absences, he thought that one day he might reform. These dreams enabled him to pay Barb’s bills without too much murmuring. He said, “It’s worth it, it’s worth it: it’s a tonic not to see that ’ooman.”

  In February, 1943, Barb went to Florida with her mother and put up at a very chic hotel. She had taken with her a rather more expensive outfit than usual. When she had been away two weeks, her mother telegraphed Grant as follows:

  BARBARA DOWNS MARRIED THIS MORNING TO CHURCHILL DOWNS

  THIRD, SURPRISE TO US, ALL VERY HAPPY. MARY JONES.

  25

  In the course of the day, Grant was able to discover that Downs had means, was forty-two years old, and had lived with his mother and a maiden sister in Riverdale until the day of his marriage with Barbara. He was an aircraft engineer and had recently moved from New York to Washington. Barbara had met him for the first time during this Florida trip. He was the man who figured in her photographs, a blond, tall, thin-featured man, smiling agreeably. Grant ran around to the Goodwins’ and told them the news—they had it before him. He then gathered all his friends in the White Bar and told them the news. He ran to the Flacks’ apartment and told how he had been deceived. She had once more, said he, married for alimony. One of these days she would tread on a scorpion, that was certain. He loved her, and she had deceived him. He had been going to marry her, divorce that so-and-so in Boston, and marry her, but she had not given him time—and how many times was this she had let him down? Why did he bother his head about her? He had other consolations. He had found a fine woman, the right one, and this time he gave a description of Livy Wright. He called up Miss Wright and begged her to come to town from Albany, where she was visiting—he had something special to say to her, having had a great shock and needing her understanding and help.

  The voice came close to his ear, “Is it that yellow woman again, that blondine? I bet it is. Don’t bother lying to me, bully-boy. What did she do?”

  “She got married and all the time that blond Capone has been living on my money. She went to Florida to get married on my money.”

  The woman at the other end laughed good-naturedly, “You don’t know what a weight that is off my mind, if you want to call it that. I’ll come to New York, bully-boy, and then you can tell me your sad story.”

  But he had to wait two days for her. In the meantime, the idea that the blonde had laughed at him, used him and despised him, bit into him like poison. He had no rest. He sought refuge with others. He felt poor and cheated. He told each one that his life was a wilderness with not one live plant in
it but the woman before him. He spoke of marriage and love; he wept. Through talking of love and misfortune, he came to think of Mrs. Coppelius, whom he had not seen for months. He telephoned her, taxied to her hotel, and sat for a long time with her in the lobby, dined with her, tried to induce her to come upstairs with him, “While I put in a long-distance call to the mother, an old witch whom I’m perhaps wronging; I have had, at times, very sad letters from her, complaining of her daughter’s ways.”

  Mrs. Coppelius told him that in his absence she had once more returned to her husband, but could not endure his gay infidelity. Said the husband, “You must take me as I am or live alone.”

  Mrs. Coppelius said to Grant, “You have been so kind to me, Robbie, that if it had not been for the few hours we spent together, I don’t know what I should have been thinking of. I know you’re not a marrying man: you are afraid women will hurt you. It’s too late now. I can’t even see into next week, there are clouds as thick as fog, it seems to me. I want to see through but I am choked with those clouds. I can’t understand it. I don’t think about it, but I think of you and I let it pour over me like a white sea, rushing at me and swallowing me up. But you are there, and save me. When I do that, I don’t see the white wave and I don’t think of despairing. I keep my mind fixed on you, stupidly, because at other times I look at buses and think, if I ran under suddenly, the driver wouldn’t stop. Then I think of what he would feel and how he would have to go to court.”

  He grabbed her arm, plump, white beneath the short black sleeve, “Believe me, believe me, I know. Listen to me. I thought my heart was broken. I said to myself, ‘Myra understands me.’ I’ve had a great shock. That ’ooman’s a Capone. I want a shoulder I can cry on. I said to myself, ‘Myra has had trouble. That is where I will find refuge. She’s my oasis. Perhaps I’ve done wrong to her. I’ve neglected her.’ I’m no good to myself or anyone. Who wants me? I said to myself, ‘I’ll make it up to Myra. When the war’s over and Europe’s at peace again, Myra and I will go there, we’ll go to Rome or to my French farm—we’ll go just where we please. Why do I bother myself with the other cattle? Myra has always been the woman for me. I don’t know myself. I cheat myself. I put my hand in my own pocket. Myra’s been hurt by her husband, I’ve been hurt by the cattle…Now I want a mother, sister, and sweetheart. I’ll give up business—business is closing down, the Liverpool Cotton Exchange is closing down, cotton is going to be harvested by machines, Russia’s going to best us—new methods are coming—Government is going to control everything, no free market, no business—why worry? I’ll go to Europe with Myra and build up something—we’ll lead a constructive life.’”

  She listened to his babble, kissed him, and gave him the consolation he looked for, the first time in many months. Before he went, once more flurried, anxious to get her gone, she kissed him on both cheeks, touched his hair and said, “I would have loved you, but I knew you had no patience with such a thing.”

  He protested, said he would telephone her, rushed her off, before the eleven o’clock newscast. As soon as she had gone, he turned on the radio and sat down with the New Republic while a sonorous male voice spoke in his ear. That done, he telephoned two young women to make appointments for the following afternoon, and wrote a letter to his wife to say that, as he had had a considerable shock in business, he would be unable to make the promised trip to Boston; but to see that the boy was warmly dressed as the weather was getting very cold; and to ask his teacher whether he was not lazy at school, or whether he needed a tutor. He asked after the boy’s drawing lessons and requested the mother not to coddle the child, as he did not care for neurotics in the family.

  He passed several days quite busily, telling his troubles over and over to all kinds of hangers-on and business friends, drank, ate, and made love more than usual, gluttonously “forgetting,” as he put it. He had a surge of energy. He had a true story to tell, something to live for. As he now passed his life in a wilderness of lies, he enjoyed having something authentic to tell and to weep over. He burst in on their small lives with a great story. He thought it would make a good play. But he had no one to write it. The poet Burgess and David Flack had, at present, no money, and were too busy earning their bread. Flack, for example, was trying to sell a set of articles; Burgess did not even answer Grant’s letters.

  Grant said, “They live only for themselves.”

  The little dark-haired Myra Coppelius at once intrigued and bored him with the trouble she gave. She loved her husband and cried over him; she loved Grant and would not visit him. Grant told Betty Goodwin all about the affair, saying, “I ought to keep out of trouble, eh? But trouble attracts me. But she’s a neurotic. Keeps me at arm’s length. First visits me, then keeps me at arm’s length; no logic to it. Now with you, there are not problems, it’s a yes or no. You’re a friend to a man, Goodwin doesn’t know the bargain he’s got. You understand me.”

  “Yes, I understand you. You don’t understand me, perhaps.”

  “Look, do me a favor, let me confide in you, my dear good woman. Let’s talk about me, I need consolation.”

  “Well, go on, tell me about Myra Coppelius, then.”

  “H’m, trouble ahead: change my course, eh? Steer for Livy, what’s your recommendation?”

  “To go to hell, for once, Robbie.”

  He burst out in a joyous laugh, throwing back his head, his sweet clear eyes gleaming, “Oh, ho, ho, for you I’d go to hell and never complain; and for the other ’ooman—too!”

  He saw Myra Coppelius the day after this conversation. She bored him, spoke of her husband who once more invited her back, but laughing up his sleeve at her. She said, “What am I to do? I missed my way in life somehow.”

  Grant spoke hastily, “Cheer up, let me be your guide, you won’t go wrong with me. Now you’re a beautiful woman and you don’t dress right. You want a nice apartment, a fur coat, some diamond bracelets, a new dress, you want a little car, then you’ll find the right man, maybe it will be me. Eh? You get yourself a little car now and I’ll pay for it, just to show I’m in earnest. I spent eighty thousand dollars on that cow, I can spend two or three thousand on you. Now you go shopping for a neat little secondhand car, you can go out in the country for the week end, take me, we’ll see how we get on together: it’ll be my earnest to you, I’m serious, I’m not like that husband of yours, get a beautiful woman and let her live in a one-room flat in a cheap hotel. I’ll show you I’m different.” He talked fast and almost involuntarily, sitting by her side and embracing her.

  “I don’t want a car, Robbie. What good is a car to me?”

  “Look, my darling, I had a woman once, Laura, she twisted me round her little finger, but there was a reason and I’m looking for another Laura. You’re the only one I ever saw made me think Fate had put her finger on me again, I saw you and I thought, That’s the one, but you always had me baffled with this husband of yours, I love my husband you kept saying. Now what am I to do? Break up a marriage? Now, as an earnest, you get this little car, bring me along to approve it and I’ll pay for it, we’ll take little trips. I’ll see how well you can drive first, though, got a wife and children depending on me—even if I get rid of them, can’t leave them like that, go up in a puff of smoke on a Sunday on the Parkway!”

  When he stopped, abstractedly running his hand along her arm, and looked broodingly into space, she said, “I can drive, very well, I have been driving since I was ten; if you mean it. But I don’t know if you mean it.”

  “My darling, would I lie to you? What would I ask you to do a thing like that for? I give you my word, you buy a little secondhand car, I’ll come over, approve it, and then we’ll go out for week ends together and we’ll find romance; I’ll forget all those—’oomen—you’ll forget that husband. When the war is over, we’ll go to Europe and try to build a new life, do something for someone who needs it. We’ll take the car along. We can travel all over Europe, see some place and say, That’s where we’ll settle.”

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nbsp; Myra Coppelius was startled by his proposition, at first doubtful, but taken by it, because it was so unusual. She said at last, “Oh, Robbie, if you mean it—”