A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  They had been lovers for several months at this time. All this caution resulted in this, that she had no documents against him. As soon as he saw Laura again, in a luxurious apartment she had taken and for which she had got money from her husband, against her estate, and had learned she would not be destitute, she had pleased him very much, and he had plunged almost wholeheartedly into that liaison which he later dinned into the heads of all his friends and leading mistresses.

  He bought the house in Rome which Laura rented out in apartments, he and she sharing the revenues. He had, of course, as a daily affair, always betrayed Laura with poor street prostitutes, girls in the office, and temporary mistresses; but he had clung to the house and her.

  The flighty, shamelessly licentious, curiously innocent and frank little woman sped from one “great love affair” to another, week after week. If she thought of suicide often, because she suffered and could not but come to the conclusion that life was futile, she would drown the feeling the next day by being “madly in love.”

  He had given her a number of bonds and some real estate, including a farm. In return Laura had signed over all claims to various family estates shortly to fall in in the childless, great Italian family. Some months later, he had gone to Rome from Boston, expressly to get control of this property again, alleging the danger of bankruptcy owing to immense commitments on the long side and the “advice of that fella David Flack.” Laura had at once made over the property, bonds, and titles to save him, asking only for her own signatures back or for an I O U for the property returned. The next day, Grant had been nervously upset, had had a heart attack and had clung to her, saying, “It was nothing but a glove, I swear, a glove. I saw it lying in the street. A strange woman. I picked it up. Don’t let anyone in the door, my sweetie. It’s the Maffia.”

  “What is it, what is it?” asked Laura.

  “They’re after me with the knife, the stiletto.”

  He rolled on the sofa with shut eyes, groaned. When the doorbell or the telephone rang, he started up, groaned and rushed into a clothes closet or the bathroom, shut the doors, locked them. He took headache powders, said, “I can’t go out into the street, I only want the shelter of your arms, don’t ask me to do any business, I beg you, sweetie,” and then would burst out by himself into the streets “only to get a little fresh air,” and return rather late, looking peculiarly unrefreshed. He would say, when she exclaimed about his looks and about his having been absent from her little party of friends of that evening, that he had had a terrible shock, had dreadful news, the person he had offended was someone high-placed, dangerous, unforgiving.

  Thus he was able to leave Rome without giving her the papers she asked for, but said he would send them from the boat. They did not come from the boat, but there came a note, saying he would post them from New York. They did not come from New York; they never came, but in their place came pitiful notes, saying he had had so much trouble, he had had heart attacks, had taken this and that, and seen the doctor, had been in a taxi accident. In between these sicknesses, Laura asked for the papers once or twice, and then desisted, lost heart.

  Some time after their breach, Grant, sensing war coming, persuaded Laura that what money she still held should be put into the U.S.A., which was in for a war boom, both before and after (and if) they entered the war. Laura knew his reputation for managing things in difficult situations and easily agreed, placing a considerable sum in American stocks and naming him a modified power of attorney. While she had the usage of the rich about property, the common sense, she managed to reason that though Grant had cheated her about the holdings before, he had a sort of argument in his favor which was that he had given her part of the property himself, and had shown so much good heart as to try to provide for her sick cousin. She meanwhile still held the house on the Pincian Hill, though jointly with Grant. She felt that Grant had perhaps merely tried to get back his equity, and knew that she had “cheated” on him, as he expressed her love vagaries.

  In return for this power of attorney he agreed to reinstate her as fifty-one per cent shareholder in a concern called the Pincian Associates. When Laura asked the reason for this redistribution of his holdings, he told her that new taxes, new currency difficulties, made it necessary. She only had a slight general feel of property, she could not calculate. At this time, nevertheless, she was a close friend of James Alexis, an international figure, and asked his advice about the whole matter. James Alexis agreed with Grant, and recommended her to follow his advice. He had then professed his great interest in the cotton business and desired to meet Grant. This was a flattering proposal for Grant, and Laura wrote to him about it, saying that she would be glad to introduce them on his next visit.

  To this letter Grant made no reply. He wished to break with Laura and looked upon her letter as a woman’s ruse. This fault in Laura made him very sulky. He marveled at her vices; he found her goodness of heart a true weakness, or a weak trickery.

  When the war came, as he had foreseen, he used Laura’s pre-dated letter, acknowledging his title to her estate in the United States, thus it had long been American property. In the meantime, he trembled for the fate of his Italian property. As someone had once said to him that Laura, with so many German friends in Roman society, was never invited to the German Embassy and so must be a German agent, Grant had an excuse for making up a rumor that Laura was a spy and that he feared for her. He never wrote to her. He calculated that if by any chance the Germans won, he could depend on the vestiges of her love. If the Germans lost, he was safe, by having put her about as a spy. In either case he was more than compensated by control of the American part of her estate.

  He had many other worries concerning his property in Europe. His managers and bailiffs had all fled, all having been liberals and even radicals. He liked to employ such people, having always found them loyal and rarely venal. He was fairly busy now, with his correspondence, as he interrogated all travelers, and sometimes had news of his properties. He had had very little misfortune. He was sagacious. Long ago he had given up hopes of a mercantile empire of his own. He felt the day was gone. He liked to battle on his own, and would never have consented to work as part of a monopoly or any private industry. Still, the notion of state control attracted him, and he was merchant enough to regret the waste he saw, and the mass-misery that competition and speculation brought into the production and distribution of clothing and other modest essentials. He loved these realities. It was not boredom alone that made him know in detail his, his son’s, his wife’s, Laura’s, Livy Wright’s possessions. It was also partly his industrious nature and the love of goods in their quality, the pleasure in six-threaded cottons, good Shetland wool, leather boots, high-yielding land, well-built houses.

  The blondine had no notion of quality. She bought what was the fashion and expensive; she bought just as cheerfully rubbish and good workmanship. She disliked, if anything, materials which lasted long and showed too much handwork, as brocades, tapestries, heavy linens, and old laces. Besides, she bought more to bring business to one or two dealers she knew than to suit her own taste. She changed her lovers but not these dealers.

  Barbara Downs naturally did not appear to herself as an adventuress, as Grant did not appear to himself as a lecher. Barbara, for example, believed that she was in the center of a kind of exchange of values: she was the broker. She knew a few laws, enough for her purpose, and for the rest she put nothing on paper, but her name to a marriage certificate. Her society was full of women like herself, who made connections, put people in the way of things, mentioned names, made love in the routine of business, and in return, received money in cash. All that she met could be paid for and was: she was therefore only a dealer. She surely believed that everything was for sale. With this tranquillity about her means of livelihood went a feeling of superiority. She had a right to live fairly well for she was intelligent. If she lived badly, she felt agony, and it was then that she sometimes lost her head and tried to make money in w
ays that she herself thought low, as blackmail. An affair like the Hugo March swindle, to keep her head high, she considered just revenge.

  Lately, she had fallen lower. At first she had wanted to marry well; then to become the mistress of several rich men in turn. This failing, she proceeded naturally to prostitution. Her meeting with Grant had, in her own eyes, raised her in the world. She believed in the schemes she tried to involve men in, petty conspiracies in which she talked big about exchanges, blocked currencies, and political chances.

  He spent the weeks until Christmas in anxiety and confusion over the Downs affair, and saw Mrs. Downs and the Goodwin cronies almost every day. Mr. Downs had cut off supplies, and Grant saw himself once more responsible for the blonde woman. At the end of the year, when Flack made up his accounts, he saw with dismay that he had three unexpected sources of loss, the new expenses for Mrs. Downs, some speculations by his partners and the cutting down of his profits on Largo Farm. Gilbert’s ruthless honesty had reduced the farm to being self-supporting but not profitable. Grant realized that he must get the boy out of the farm and wrote to Gilbert, offering to finance him in technical films for which he thought him more capable. Gilbert was dogged, and it was hard to pry him loose from his prey. He remained implacable towards his cousin Upton, whom he considered a black-hearted, low-living scoundrel who had used his father’s farm for black marketing. He reproached his father for his inexplicable tenderness towards Upton; and Grant always replied, “No family quarrels and no family feuds, my boy: that is the beginning of trouble; it invites bad luck.” Grant, in the end, promised to engage a new manager, suitable to Gilbert, if Gilbert would return to the city and the film business.

  Grant was furious with his partners and took this opportunity to refuse both junior men any further hope of the New Orleans business. The fact was he wanted to lose this business. He did not want to visit the city again, he smelled trouble with the celebrated cotton speculator with whom he had considered going into business, and with whom, in fact, he had participated in some small deals; and he believed he could, at this moment, sell his house and business there for a good profit. As to the expenses of love, he now told Mrs. Coppelius that he could not help her with the car, he thought she had acted rashly in taking an odd word of his, a sort of boyish enthusiasm, for gospel, and after all she had no written word from him. She must grow up, not believe in fairy princes, said he: she would be happier. In the meantime, she must make out as best she could; it was not his responsibility. In this way, he calculated, he saved the $2,365 the car had cost, and he could write this in to offset the blonde account. Mrs. Coppelius, who was genteel, hardly protested about the affair, she “gave two or three little squeaks” as he said to himself, when ambling round his apartment at night.

  29

  At the moment, he had only two serious affairs, that with the blonde and that with Livy. The talk of love had become a daily hunger with him, he was starving, never satisfied; and he needed the lavish affection and hopes of women; thus, he was obliged ever to talk bigger. But he was so hasty that all his women knew that he had little time for them, and Livy became very miserable, spoke of never seeing him again. She was a successful business woman, she saw through his roughly-sketched cajoleries. He went to Boston as usual for Christmas, and was dreadfully nervous there. He took no care of his person, not only from an established malice towards his wife, but because he wanted to be back in New York, in the beating heart of all his troubles. His wife showed him some drawings his young son Andrew had made. He picked them up, eyed them, threw them on the table and forgot them. The boy wept when he left the house. For a moment, going down the path towards his waiting car which was to take him back to New York, Grant hesitated: the boy had a heart, perhaps he was not a good father to him. But he hurried on, thinking if he went back he would have to listen to his wife’s voice again, and anyhow children were but hungry, clamorous animals, until they became men; nothing more.

  He had given no gifts in New York, nor sent any cards: he had given nothing in the hotel nor at the office, nor to his partners. He was determined to make up his losses. But he had sent a check of $50 to the mysterious woman in New Orleans who wrote to him every so often with personal news: to Nila.

  When he returned to New York he found cards from all his female friends, some business friends, from the Flacks and a few of his other hangers-on; a pair of gloves from Gilbert, and a note from Nila, thanking him for the money, speaking of her mother, and ending with, “Hilbertson stays at home like a bear with a sore head: but everyone says he still speaks of getting you. What did you do to that guy anyway? He must be sensitive. I need $50 next week again; sorry. Yours lovingly, Nila.”

  Grant sent off a check for $35 and said his expenses had been high and he had sustained losses at the year’s end.

  Meanwhile, he was hurt that he had not received a card or gift from Myra Coppelius. He had hinted to her, at their last conversation, that she might make the car over to him as a Christmas gift, and that he might then make her a gift of some satisfactory sum; it was to avoid income-tax said he. Livy, too, had abstained from sending a Christmas gift. Grant felt lonely in his huge apartment. Everywhere people were visiting friends. He, because of his habit of going to Boston, was invited nowhere. He telephoned the Flacks but found them just about to go out to a party. Flack teased him, saying, “Go out to one of your bars, you Honeybear: they’re all got up for New Year’s. I’ll see you on New Year’s Eve. And don’t commit suicide, you nut; remember this is the time when everyone commits suicide. But remember, you nut, we love you, and we’ll see you tomorrow if you’re not too busy.”

  It was three days to New Year’s Eve. He thought, “I must be loved this afternoon; I must make up for all my headaches,” and he set out in a taxi to call upon Mrs. Coppelius, who lived in a hotel near 71st Street, West Side. When he reached the hotel lobby, he did not remark at all a preoccupation of the hotel servants, but he felt himself neglected. He rapped on the counter with his malacca cane.

  “Get me Mrs. Coppelius; room—” said he, and turned away toward the house phone. He heard someone calling, but it took him some time to know the clerk was hailing him.

  “Are you a friend of the lady in room—?”

  He eyed the fellow sharply, said in a low voice, “What’s wrong? Anything wrong? Friend of hers said, no news lately, asked me to call in passing—My sister, Mrs. Goodwin,” he mumbled.

  They asked him, “Friends of hers? Do you know her friends?” For the price of two dollars, he heard the reason for this: the woman had jumped or fallen into the courtyard from the seventh floor just before his arrival.

  “Are you a friend of hers? She may be able to say something.”

  “No, no, I never saw her—my wife asked me to give her a message, but—my wife knows more about her, I know nothing. My name’s Flack. I’ll get my wife. All she wants is a woman with her now.”

  He turned around and left the hotel briskly. He hailed a taxi and got home in a strange state, thinking without words, but what, he did not know. He was pale and trembled. Time passed. All he could think of was “I nearly met Azrael.” He was late for his rendezvous at the Little Bar and found them all assembled there. He declared that he had caught a chill and must go home soon.

  In the meantime he had thought out his chances. If the woman Coppelius had left a suicide note, she might have sent a message to him, and he would be questioned. She might have blamed him, though it was not his fault. Was she known as the doctor’s wife at the hotel? Should he have given her husband’s name and address? Had he been followed? After a few drinks, he felt stronger. Never once did he allow himself to think of the woman. It was a simple black-out in his mind. He thanked his luck that he had not mentioned Mrs. Coppelius to any of them recently. He went home very late to avoid telephone calls and left very early the next morning. By the evening, his confidence was restored. He had carefully gone through the newspapers and had not seen the suicide recorded. At first this worrie
d him—would there be an inquiry? But in two days he breathed freer and was able to prepare a party at the Golden Tassel with his usual friends and Livy, who had come to town for the New Year season.

  30

  At night, when Mrs. MacDonald was in bed, Grant would walk up and down for some time thinking of his tangled affairs and trying to quiet his fears. He knew that the blondine could and might get him into trouble. Well, he would run away, she would not get him in a trap. He did not feel well: he took a little brandy. He did not notice time passing, but when Gilbert came in, he would be cold, it would be some time after one o’clock. He would see the boy to bed and go to bed himself, but get up without rest. For the moment, he tried to make a friend of the boy. One morning, he heard the young man saying to Mrs. MacDonald, “Don’t do it that way, I’ve got him eating out of my hand. I just speak my mind. He likes it because he must, and that’s a rule with men. A man’s truth is like armor. There’s no way to get around it or through it.”

  “You are his son.”

  “Of two things, one, I’d like to see any fellow in the Army telling me to get dressed and where to put my drawers; to wash my socks. But why? I was a good officer. I was such a good officer as not to be too good an officer. I tempered my zeal with humanity or, you might say, caution. Imagine a sheet—is this the sheet?”

  “That’s a blessing; it is.”

  “I always lay my hands on lost things. Being no accountant, one day I found an error in Goodwin’s annual bookkeeping. Everyone was looking for it, I found it. The accounts for Largo Farm need a palaeographer and a detective; but I’ll see daylight there, too. I have a theory that people have an interest in keeping things muddled; there’s a conspiracy of fraud. Not Dad, of course, he just never had my opportunities. It isn’t the ability, it’s the will and a certain eye. You could go out with a hogcaller, not find a straighter eye, and I say the Yanks have the straightest eyes.”