A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  “Yes, he says she taught him what love was. Poor Dad.”

  “Did she? I don’t see the results of much education.”

  Gilbert laughed.

  Livy cried, “He must have been a terrible hick if she taught him anything, from what I see.”

  “She was elegant, of a good family, very rich—”

  “That must have been it; he appears to have nothing but rich women to fall madly in love with.”

  “Mrs. Kent, now, is not rich; if she has anything now, which I doubt, for she’s always asking Dad for ten dollars, it’s because he gave it to her, that’s a weakness of his, but shows he’s not entirely angling after money. He wanted to build her up, it’s the constructive side of his character. He wanted to see what she could make of herself. He gave her a little money to go to Hollywood—”

  “Not forty thousand dollars?”

  Gilbert looked shocked, “The house in Rome cost forty thousand dollars.”

  “It’s a figure he’s fond of and it’s worth keeping in mind. But why did he leave Laura if she was so fatal?”

  “He did not want to. But she betrayed him too often. Even at the end he wrote to her, ‘Take me back’; she didn’t even answer. It was her coldness in the end.”

  “But he doesn’t look like the sort of man, to me, who would put up with a woman cheating.”

  “It took him years. He never knew where he was.”

  “He’s not fond of her now, he’s through with her,” said Livy.

  “Who knows? But I rather think it’s his entanglement with her affairs, the money question. Money goes where money is, money yearns where money is.”

  “You’re right. He doesn’t come out of it too well! But if she’s got his money, why doesn’t he make her give it back?”

  “He’s very kindhearted. It’s a kind of regret, expressed in money, an obligation. He choked back his feelings—she sneered at his social origin. It took him five, nearly six years to leave; it’s the story of a passion.”

  “But why—why? If she was such a crook?”

  “She got up early in the morning, looking very sweet and pretty, to make breakfast for him. He never had that kind of attention.”

  “And what did your mother think of all that,” she said nervously, in a lower voice.

  “I don’t know. I was too young.”

  He paused and said, “You have no idea, Dad says, what Laura did for him. He said he was a wild man, a bear, like we see now, only much worse, he was younger then, uncontrollable, in-toler-rable, as he says. She made him a gentleman and his entire attitude toward society changed. She handled him with silk gloves, she had a silk rein. She made him exercise, go out in the fresh air…She made him read poetry, think! She made him sit up late at night with people he couldn’t stand, but who were people of culture. She taught him Italian—”

  “He doesn’t know Italian!”

  “Yes, he gets all his letters from her in Italian. She taught him when and how to drink apéritifs, wines, and brandies. But he still doesn’t drink much. She made a contribution, as he says.”

  Livy’s tone changed, her eyes sparkled, “He doesn’t drink? I don’t know much but I know that he came to—see me once before work in the morning and when he asked me what he would bring, I said two bottles of brandy. It was on a bet; but he did it; and we drank it. Since we’re being so frank—”

  Gilbert looked seriously at Livy and thought for a moment; then, “I suppose none of us knows him too well.”

  “But your mother is satisfied with all this?”

  “Mother has always been very rich and I’ve come to think it’s a mistake. It makes people indolent and they seem to have no sense of reality. They trust their wealth to bring them everything—no hands, no sense of smell, no eyes! I am sure Mother does not know. I am telling you because—”

  He looked at Livy again and stopped. But Livy grinned and seized his arm, “You’re swell, Gilbert! You are a tonic for me. I don’t want to live in any dream world either. Tell me more about this Laura. What else did she do for him?”

  “She ordered the dishes he liked, even before he himself knew he wanted them. He’d come home from work grumpy, tired, not wanting to eat, and she would have made something for him with her own hands and when he saw it, he’d call out, ‘That’s just what I needed but I didn’t know it.’”

  “What a romance!” cried Livy sarcastically.

  “Even if she was ill, she was there in a fresh dress, smiling, with perfume on her hair and handkerchief. She drove him into the country every week end, to her farm to get fresh eggs and milk, and she drove like a demon. He used to say, ‘You’re such a tiny thing and you drive like an ace.’ Although she is a society woman, she sewed on buttons, darned his socks—and if he had one of his headaches she gave him powders and got a basin for his feet. She washed his feet!”

  Livy shook her large handbag and plunged her hands into it, getting out one thing after another, tossing her head and saying miserably, “And he liked that coddling? It doesn’t seem like him! It must have been a home away from home. Surely your mother noticed those things about him, when he changed?”

  “You know, I don’t believe, now that you mention it, that Mother ever noticed anything in her life.”

  “Well, why did your father marry her!” inquired Livy savagely.

  Gilbert started; then answered, “She was beautiful, young and—very innocent; very sweet. She was famous for her beauty.”

  Livy’s voice became more strident, she twitched more than ever, “He never told me any of those things; he never told me they were all rich society women! She owned a house? And a farm? And your mother owns houses and a farm?”

  “Yes; I am going to own the farm.”

  “But they all own houses. And Mrs. Kent—”

  “That is not the same.”

  “So you say,” she said rudely.

  “And he left her for her corrupt ways? And Mrs. Kent’s corrupt ways?”

  “But it is not the same with Mrs. Kent.”

  Livy cried out, “Your old man likes them corrupt, too. He’s corrupt himself. Why should he have told you all that? Doesn’t he introduce you all round, to all these pills and pikers, and these pickpockets he’s with day and night? Don’t you know them all? You don’t know the company you’re keeping, fair youth. Low company! That’s his idea, to get you into it. Isn’t it? I see through that bully-boy, though he’s not transparent…Very well, I’ll get up early in the morning—I’ll buy a house, I’ll wear perfume on my handkerchiefs, I’ll—”

  She howled with laughter, “I won’t wash his feet!” she shouted.

  People in the soft, sophisticated, and depraved mid-Manhattan set which at that moment filled the bar turned, and turned back. But Livy, like a breeze at a suburban corner, blowing, turning and hooting, kept up, “I’ll take your offer, fair youth. I’ll take on the bully-boy. And why did he leave this Laura? She had everything, then.”

  “He just says, she broke his heart, she wounded him too much.”

  Livy looked at him with big eyes, but dubiously, “She broke his heart. He loved her, then? But why? Did he really love her then? Why, when she was such a crook! For her house and her farm?”

  Gilbert looked at her with surprise, “Don’t ask me to explain it. One day he moved to the hotel. He waited for days. She phoned to say, ‘Where will I send your clothes?’ That was all. He waited for her to say, ‘Come back.’ But she didn’t. That broke his heart. And at that moment she was having a furious affair with a pro-fascist. He couldn’t stand it. It wounded him when she knew he was a liberal and anti-Hitler.”

  Livy, tying and untying a knot in her handkerchief, looked intently at him, and seemed puzzled, “Did that really mean so much to him? I don’t know. He keeps funny company for such a radical. I don’t seem to know him. And this Laura—she knew all society.”

  “She still knows everybody. He says she knew all the wrong people too, the Hitler gang, she was, perhaps, an agent.�
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  “She went everywhere—all the nobs—and he lived in that society five years? In Rome. And he speaks Italian. She made him dishes. You know he never told me that? He told me lies, and he said, ‘I tell you lies but I’ll tell you when I’m telling the truth.’ But he always said he was telling the truth. Then he would say, ‘Beware of me, I’m a liar, when I get warmed up, when I admire a woman I say anything.’ I didn’t mind. I thought I could follow him somehow through the mess of lies. I thought I was getting a ground-plan of the whole thing. But he told me lies and he left out all the romance and all the interesting bits. Now I know nothing. No one knows anything about that bright boy, do they? What a bright boy is the bully-boy. The man who lies most says he lies.”

  Gilbert said, “I wouldn’t say that Dad exactly lies, he cuts his cloth to suit his company, and in a way that’s good manners.”

  “He mixed with people in embassies. He let me think that an ordinary punk like me, from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, could carry him off. He’s not a squareshooter. He’s a rattlesnake; he rattles and says, ‘I’m a crook, I’m a liar.’ I’ll tell the bully-boy what I think of him. ‘Take your hat and umbrella out of my hallway,’ I’ll say to him. ‘I don’t know people in embassies. You had a woman who had everything’—she drove like the wind, and I expect to get him to stay in my back yard. Off with his head! Out with the bully-boy! We’re through. Oh, why isn’t he here, the bright boy, so that I can tell him, ‘We’re through, sonny. It was a long time meeting you and it’s a short bad time since.’”

  Gilbert looked at her with concern, and said, “Livy, he sent me here to meet you. I know he’s breaking with Mrs. Kent and I know he’s broken with Laura. What does it matter? He told me you were his woman.”

  She burst out laughing, “His ’ooman, his ’ooman!”

  At this moment, Grant himself appeared beside them, with Mrs. Lawrence. He appeared busy and natural and the woman unusually soft and modest. Grant kissed Livy noisily, sat down beside her, and said his lawyer’s appointment had been cut, and he had just met Mrs. Lawrence. Mrs. Lawrence said that just as she was leaving the business place down near 20th Street, someone had come in who had to tell everyone about her sinus and its many various cures.

  “Doesn’t that always happen to you at closing time?” Livy laughed noisily. “I hope you haven’t been playing puss-in-the-corner with the bully-boy. Take him? Take him with a trading-stamp! I’m through with him. I have no houses and I have no pearl necklaces or ruby tiaras.”

  Grant looked at Gilbert and Livy and his face became grave. He pressed them to drinks. Livy sputtered with laughter and called out, “You’re in the ashcan, sonny. Who was that man I saw you with last night? That wasn’t a man, that was Robbie Grant.”

  “Now, Livy,” he said, soothing her, leaning forward and delicately offering a cigarette and a match. He looked half puzzled, shot amused glances at one and the other. He did not look at Mrs. Lawrence at all.

  “How can we be through, when we haven’t even started,” he said, looking at Gilbert, and making a sign to the young woman.

  She called, blowing smoke across the table, “You’re starting behind the eight-ball with me. Let the cloud be thick.” She pressed the smoke together with her hands. “I don’t want to see that big face in my dreams any more. ‘Take, O take those lips away.’ To hell with it. I’ll cut a loss, bully-boy.”

  He laughed, and glancing now at the other two, very brightly, “Come and hug me and you’ll squeeze a profit out of me, yet.”

  “Maybe I will and if I do look out, I’ll squeeze you to death. I’d love to see you the victim of a first-class murder mystery. Hasn’t any of your dates chased you with a revolver in her handbag? Hasn’t anyone sent you anonymous letters telling you what she thinks of you? Hasn’t anyone set a big bulldog on you? Oh, it hasn’t happened yet, but it will happen here! Someone will soap your stairs. You’ll land on a big rock at the bottom, the way you’re going.”

  Gilbert, offended at this, was surprised to see how gladly his father received it. His father took it as a compliment. He was blushing, his eyes shone, and his head doddled like a water lily when a rowboat passes. Said he eagerly, “What way? What way?”

  “You’re not looking for the exit yet. You’re looking pale under the suntan, though. You’re afraid of the last trump coming too soon. I bet you take all those washes in the morning to wash away your sins. But though you’ve got a whole day to work in, you don’t get any farther. The liar is more than skin deep. He lies most who says he lies. You say you lie; is Epaminondas the Cretan a liar?”

  “Why, Livy, what is the matter with you?” said Gilbert anxiously, for he could now see he had told her too much.

  She laughed, smoked, and seemed in a good humor, but she went on in a lower tone, “I know his weak spots. He’s afraid to be sick and he’s afraid to die. He’s afraid to die and he’s afraid to lose his money. He won’t go near a cemetery or a funeral home or a headstone factory. ‘Azrael,’ he says, ‘I nearly met Azrael.’ Perhaps he sent customers to Azrael. Perhaps he ordered his casket already. Say that frightened him! He won’t look at a funeral and he passes the other side of the street to avoid a blind man or a beggar, and a widow and an orphan. I know my bully-boy.”

  Grant, who was very angry, did not know how to extricate himself. “I don’t know why she’s angry with me.”

  “I’m not angry with you. You have to be involved with someone to be angry with them. I’m indifferent to you.”

  She turned to Mrs. Lawrence, “I bet you’ve heard all his lines, Sue! Have you heard this one—”

  “My lines?”

  “His lines?” said Mrs. Lawrence and Gilbert simultaneously.

  Mrs. Lawrence looked steadily at them as if in fright. “His lines! You mean—”

  Grant was serious. His eyes fixed themselves on Gilbert and wavered.

  Livy said, “It’s my birthday today. I’m lonely and away from home, and I want to celebrate.”

  Grant cried instantly, “It’s your birthday? Let’s celebrate.”

  He snapped his fingers for the waiter, “Some champagne, it’s the lady’s birthday.”

  Livy shrieked with laughter, but sobered up and said mildly, “That’s his line.”

  “That?” said Mrs. Lawrence, in wonder.

  “It certainly is.”

  “You mean Robbie says that when it’s not his birthday?” asked Mrs. Lawrence.

  “There’s little harm in that,” said Gilbert, laughing and blushing.

  Grant was blushing and frowning.

  Livy said quietly and earnestly to Grant, “My life has been a desert and when I met you I found an oasis.”

  Grant smiled, and Mrs. Lawrence looked steadily at them without moving. Grant said, taking Livy’s hand, “Do you really mean that, Livy?”

  “That’s his line,” said Livy.

  Gilbert laughed. Livy continued, holding Grant’s hand fast, kissing him and pulling him toward her, with her arm in his arm, “I had a terrible shock just now, Robert, and I need consolation.”

  “Was it something Gilbert told you?” asked Grant.

  Livy held on to his hand, “Let’s have a little chat and a little tea together tomorrow, I want to consult you.”

  Grant looked at her queerly, but not injuriously. The others did not laugh. Livy said, “Do you mind coming upstairs with me for a minute? I’m expecting a long-distance telephone call.”

  Gilbert said, “You mean that’s a line?” He looked at his father; and laughed a little.

  Livy said, “I’ve got everything; all I want is a woman.”

  At this she burst out laughing in his face and Grant laughed. He hugged her and cried, “What’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with it? I make a play for ’em. I’m only looking for the right woman. I’m only asking ’em, Reform me. Go to Europe, Rome, France, after the war. Build up something, constructive. A woman’s always constructive; and I want one. I’ve been a bad boy in my time, and now I want
to reform. I should have been different under a different system. Listen, sweetheart darling—”

  He turned to Livy and pulled her by both hands toward him, “I like you. I fell for you the first time I saw you. Let’s have some fun. Do me a favor. Don’t give me any trouble. Don’t hurt me.”

  “All right, old man of the sea. You can do it better than I can.”

  Mrs. Lawrence spoke up, “You mean he says those things to—many people?”

  Livy said, “Not many people, dear, many women. Good God, the way we talk before your son. I like Gilbert. He has character. Sue—he’s a box of tricks. Don’t play with the latch. The jack in the box will spit out in your eye. I’ll box him up, though, I think. Be careful, Livy, he knows more than you. He lies most who says he lies. Livy, you better watch your step. The bully-boy’s a K.O. champ. Watch out for that sideswipe, and here comes the haymaker. And out goes I.”

  She laughed, and grabbed Grant, leaning toward him with her lowcut dress, “You baffle me! I don’t know how to approach you! You make me nervous. I’m a neurasthenic when I’m with you.”

  Grant laughed, “That’s not like you, Livy.”

  “But it’s very like you, bully-boy. And that, Sue, is another of his sweetheart posies. Love is not blind. Gilbert gave me permission to try to kidnap you and I will. I’m not afraid. I’m a guerrilla fighter. Watch out for me, you haymaker.”

  They were all cheerful again, except Mrs. Lawrence, who had, as usual, retired into a piteous silence, leaning out of the circle, her large eyes sorrowing in her veil.

  Livy said, “Are you laughing at me, Robbie? Do you mind my telling them your sweetheart posies?”

  He fixed her wisely with his eyes, “Well, if you know them, you know them, then you can use them! And so can I! But let Gilbert just walk down Lover’s Lane, but not to the end. Let’s go somewhere! Never mind my lines. I take them up and show ’em my etchings. That’s all. I show ’em the pretty pictures, but they deserve it, eh? Neurotics! Looking for Canaan. I show ’em the Land of Milk and Honey. Not my fault if I persuade ’em. Eh? Do I look like a half-wit? I deceive no one who doesn’t ask to be taken in and sold for tripe.”