A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  “Bring a good dialogue and a finished play to suit me and you’ll get the twenty dollars.”

  Grant cut him off in the midst of the next phrase. His mad harping fell away into silence. Grant took the receiver off the hook.

  The blondine said, “I don’t believe he’s written one complete scene; he’s crazy.”

  Grant said, furiously, “I’ve paid him eighty dollars for his typist; if he hasn’t paid it out I’ll sue him, I’ll get it back. I’ve waited five months and paid him eighty dollars! I know he’s behind in his hotel bill. He gets nothing till he’s got something to show. I’ll have him thrown out and seize his clothes. He has a silk scarf of mine, French, Charvet. He can’t play me for a sucker. My play should have been produced long ago. I want to get my profit.”

  “What do you want to fool round with these people for? They’re only trying to pluck you. They laugh at you behind your back. They think you’re an angel. You watch out or they’ll take you over. I wouldn’t touch any of them, your friends. I can’t see why you have such friends, not one of them has a cent. Why do they have you for a friend? They flatter you so they can get something out of you. Spatchwood trying to get your house on Owl Island. You’re naïve. Someone flatters you and you take them out to dinner. Last month you took the Flacks out to dinner three times: what for? What do they do for you?”

  Grant put out his hand, “Now, sweetie, I got to do something for them, for old sake’s sake. He’s no good, he hasn’t worked for years, and she’s a cold, unattractive sort of girl, I don’t like her, and she laughs at me behind my back—”

  He began to flush and said in a harder tone, “To hell with them—you’re right—why do I waste my time? I invited them everywhere and they backbite. I gave them free passes to my house in Canada, and in France, and in Rome—and I talk too much, I told them too much, now they take advantage of me. They want to live on me. Why the hell should I keep them? I didn’t work for anybody but myself. The boys and that bastard in Boston are fixed up for life. Let’s have a good time, sweetie—a short life and a merry one and all for ourselves. Who cares for us? Let’s forget that crowd of parasites, you’re right, sweetie. Just you and me, eh?”

  He thought for a while and continued furiously, “Flack wrote four scenarios for me and I haven’t sold one of them. To hell with Flack. He’ll get nothing out of me. Twenty per cent, I told him, he’ll wait till I sell them. I’m not a Christmas tree, there for the plucking!”

  “It makes me angry to think what you’ve spent on them! You’re soft, you’re downy! What did it get you? You listen to anyone who asks for a ten-dollar check. You made your money the hard way, let them. You watch out for them. They’ll suck your blood, all those ten-dollar-check friends of yours. Do they care for you? This picture she drew of you, with a long nose and a fat belly—that’s what they really think. They’re laughing at you, and you’re naïve. I wouldn’t give them a sandwich or pay for a cup of coffee for any of them.”

  Grant demurred, a little frightened by this picture. But he patted her hand and murmured, “I’m softhearted, I can’t be tough, I can’t be tough,” and as he was expecting a call, he put the receiver back on the stand.

  Instantly the phone rang, and Grant picked it up, anxious that Mrs. Downs should not hear the female voice he expected. He only heard the voice of Karolyi, like a sharp hill river now in the rapids:

  “—together and must protect ourselves. Not only will there be radio and movie rights—but we will sweep the world and in South Africa—we have this office in Radio City—and Australia, wherever you like, I was played in Sydney, Capetown, last year—and now in Melbourne I am playing—twenty dollars only you understand, my dear, and in Amsterdam at this moment—and at the Savoy, London—and in all these places, they’re only waiting for Hitler to go, and they will play me again, you understand, my dear, what is there to lose? But he must not wake up tomorrow and I with my word in shreds, send him away empty-handed. Guilders, florins, Belgian francs, Swiss francs, and even blocked rubles—I have all those, in mountains heaps, I have only to go to Europe after the war and I am much richer than the magnificent gentleman who is a miserable, cheap, big miser, stinking with avarice, a moth-eaten rotten old skin full of money and ready to burst. I assure you, my dear, I am but midway of my career and when I go to Ollyvood you and I will be rich, my dear. Yes, I will be, as you say, at your office tomorrow at eleven, but it will be better for me to call upon you earlier at your hotel—no time is too early, I rise at five and walk about the streets, not a sound, everyone sleeps, and I am walking in the park—then I have a cup of coffee, not more, and go back to the hotel and write all day, you understand. My friend Mr. Grant, a rich broker on the Cotton Exchange, will give me five hundred dollars, but then I will pay this twenty dollars and he speaks to me of such a wretched sum of money, but money—”

  Grant turned to the blondine, “It’s him again. He’s mad. I’m afraid of the fellow.”

  “Send him to me, I’ll finish his little game.”

  Grant laughed, shut down; then picked up the phone, and called the hotel desk, where he left a message that he was not to be disturbed in the morning, if anyone called. He then rang Karolyi’s hotel and left a message for Karolyi to call upon Mrs. Downs in the morning at eleven, to receive the twenty dollars.

  “That’ll fetch him,” said he.

  “I don’t want him at my place, you know my husband is having me watched.”

  “Wait for him in the lobby,” he said, eying her with irritation.

  The unfortunate dramatist rang at the door of Mrs. Downs’s apartment at eight in the morning, was admitted at nine. He told her he had already visited Mr. Flack at seven. He was sleeping. He had thought of visiting the secretary, Miss Robbins, a kind woman, but had not done so since she lived alone and he might disturb her. He kissed the hand of Mrs. Downs and offered her, in a piece of tissue paper, a single red rose, superb in form and fresh. He also had, under his arm, his script. The blonde, who had never brusqued a new male acquaintance, forgave him for his early visit. Her face was the flooring for a ballet of little agreeable artificial smiles. She turned her face toward him wherever he went, as he walked up and down talking; she seemed to dote upon him.

  He suddenly took the script from the table, snatching it from under the hand he had just kissed. Rushing to the window, he began reciting with extraordinary passion. Sometimes he stopped declaiming and his voice with its broken surging parlando went on, explaining his own past successes, reminiscent, and passionate for new success, with such an elaborate sustained yearning that her hair stood on end. She became serious and said, “If only you could act it to people, it would sweep the country.”

  “I cannot recite English—my accent—”

  “Yes, we must have someone known—”

  But he did not wait for any compliments, only raised his dark eyes, brilliant with preoccupation, to her, and without seeing her, went on with his intricate plans for their wealth and success—immense, worldwide, when the war was over—money, money everywhere and castles, houses, properties, all to be returned by the beaten fascists, tossing the speeches out of him like smoke, himself glinting and trembling and crying, “Dear Madame, O, gnädige Dame—” and then he stopped. His trembling hand lit a cigarette, his eyes were now peculiar as unclosed buds in a northern spring. He said, “And where shall we go? Let us find the Russian Tea Room—no, no, Manetti’s, is it—tonight we meet together and fête our success, is it you, Madame? Grant has invited me and I will bring the script. You have seen the script and you will tell him, Karolyi never lies.”

  And out came one of his long explanations, with foreign phrases madly tripping over their foreign neighbors, jostling their way, panting out of his mouth, so that he hardly waited to draw breath, yet in fact, orchestrated his phrases before they were said and sent them out, poured them so frenziedly without sense but with such form and sound and with a throat so full of inner agony, that his whole speech was very moving and lik
e new music full of a sense that she could make out. It had the form of music and no form of speech. Then the blondine who, naturally, had in spite of all her lust and avarice a great love for men, drew closer and became more attentive to this man who never looked at her nor answered her questions. At length she deduced that a party was being given at Manetti’s that evening to which Karolyi thought she had been invited and at which Grant and some “charming honored ladies” would be. She even grasped that Karolyi thought he had been assigned to her as escort, Grant being partner to another “charming honored lady,” who thought the world of Karolyi’s genius. At first she said she was not going there, but seeing a sudden darkness, even despair, on his face, she said, “Go there and you will find them there. Perhaps I will come if my headache is better.”

  He remarked, “My breakfast is very light, only a cup of coffee, but for lunch I dine very well, soup, a steak, salad, a dessert, coffee, and a liqueur, there is an excellent place on Sixth Avenue where I go, indeed I eat very well—and I am not accustomed to receiving checks from ladies, though many wish to support my genius. In Europe, there is no such thing as the ‘angel,’ a bad system—I kiss your hand, Madame.” Then picking up his script, bowing, kissing her hand, but still absorbed and without actually looking at her, he turned from the door.

  36

  The blondine experienced a very strange sensation in her body, as if her heart had leaped, but it was such a long time since she had loved a man that she did not realize what this was. Almost at once, she began thinking furiously of the money the dark agitated creature demanded, and that she had saved the $20, and of the party which was being given, by Grant, without her, to the hangers-on who were spittling after his checkbook. She thought of Karolyi for several moments poignantly. She despised and detested his beggardom! She despised it more than the pocket-love of others. He seemed to her more of an enemy to Grant’s money, and yet with a greater incapacity. She envisioned for a moment the end of the war—she knew it was true that Karolyi had once had a large fortune and owned estates, and that the Nazis had confiscated them. She had seen the script. Suppose the drama succeeded? She wished to go back to Europe, where life was more amusing and professional mistresses could reign. But a natural hatred of poverty put an end to this momentary dream. She asked herself if Karolyi were not mad. If so—they could—she thought of a scheme to put before Grant. Let them see the typist, let them have the copy! Then her anger turned against Grant. The previous evening she had told him all her troubles. Her husband, Downs, whom she had supposed a gentleman, had done an un-gentlemanly thing. He had had her followed, and now had photographs of damning scenes. In some of these scenes, said the blondine, Grant figured.

  “But how, but how?” Grant had kept on saying, puzzled and disturbed at this betrayal. He had thrown himself into an armchair and stared blackly at her, trying to review the occasions on which he might have compromised himself. The photographs were in the possession of her lawyer Walker; and she believed Walker was in love with her. She believed that, with a small sum in addition, she could get those photographs which were perhaps photomontages, but involved Grant. Grant fought back, “I myself can pay for photomontages, the boot will be on the other foot. Let Alexis pay.”

  “And there was a recording apparatus installed, and I thought him so inexperienced. He is furious with me. I cannot handle him.”

  “How could such a thing have happened without your knowledge, Barbara?”

  “Why should I be suspicious? The guilty are suspicious. I had no idea Churchill was so hypocritical, pretending to be so inexperienced. Now he feels himself an aggrieved party and he is out for our scalps.”

  “How did it happen that you told all this to the Goodwins first? I felt very embarrassed. I go to the Goodwins and they spring this on me. I was terribly upset. I expected you to have some confidence in me; further, I am very much involved if he had—photo—montages. What proof just the same that it is me? It might be James Alexis.”

  She had said with savage coldness, “It is no compliment to me to see you sitting there writhing inwardly, and figuring out how you can slide out of this.”

  “Why shouldn’t I writhe inwardly? He’s a blackmailer. Don’t you see that? And this lawyer, Walker—what’s he doing in it? You say you can buy him off for some amount? That’s blackmail. And I don’t like Alexis’s leavings, taking the rap for Alexis.”

  “That’s hardly the light in which to view it. This lawyer’s hard up, he likes me, and for me he will do something.”

  “They have nothing against me. It’s a frame-up. I’ll do nothing. I never forgot March gave you five hundred dollars…”

  “You’re afraid for your wife and sons, you’re afraid for the money your wife has.”

  He had turned on her. “To hell with my wife and sons, I’ll do what I like; I’ll have you if I like. Let them know the worst. But no one will blackmail me. She won’t divorce me; she’d rather do anything than divorce me. Don’t flatter yourself. You’ll get no divorce from her. You won’t corral me so easily. As for the boys—let them mind their own business. I’ll not arrange my life to suit them. They don’t like me. Too bad. I’ve got them tied up in a bundle in my pocket—” and he made a terrific gesture of squeezing something together and tying it round the neck.

  He stared angrily at her, “But I won’t let anyone blackmail me. And I won’t pay a cent. If he thinks he’s an injured party, let them get money out of those that injured him. If you’ve done that to him, I’ll tell him it’s Alexis.”

  She said in an ordinary tone, “Downs is going round town asking people to burst out crying over his injuries. His heart injuries. He asked me, ‘What will my mother think when she knows this? This is a very terrible thing.’ Poor man. We must get up a subscription for him, I thought. It’s my opinion that any heart-wounds of that sort can be healed with a hundred-dollar bill, and if he has been stabbed a lot of times as he says, then perhaps five or six thousand dollars will heal him. Then he can go away and rest with his dear mother and not think any more of the terrible woman he got in with. After all, I am a young woman, and I cannot allow him to ruin me. It is better to buy him off. It is extraordinary how you can always buy off these romantic heart-afflictions. Or else it is just a strange coincidence that you give an honest, injured party five or six thousand dollars, and then, somehow, he sees new horizons.”

  Grant had opened angry eyes upon her and fixed her, “You want me to put up five or six thousand dollars? Get it from the others.”

  “What others? There are no others.”

  “The syndicate mentioned in the indictment.”

  “What indictment? You mean the complaint? There are five or six others. Only five or six thousand dollars. I know that Downs lost money in the market, and now he is trying to realize on his wife. His mother told him I was too great an expense, and now she has pushed him to make money through me. You see he does not think he is blackmailing, or a pimp. It is an idea that came to him that he must be paid, the world owes him five or six thousand dollars to bandage his honor, because he once or twice saw me in the street or in Manetti’s with a man.”

  “With me? What does that prove?”

  “As I say, it doesn’t prove a damn thing. I said to Churchill, ‘What will your poor mother feel when she sees your name in the paper, Downs vs. Downs, and you claim that you were made ridiculous by Alexis and Grant, Inc. You are being ridiculous now. I am of unblemished character and I will bring character witnesses.’”

  Grant laughed mildly and said, “Oh, we must be careful, think this thing out. Of course they have nothing on me—but he is a child, if he feels himself the injured party, he’ll try to vindicate his rights, if you can put a poultice on them—but I have no money free, you know how I stand with the exchanges—you know how short I have been lately—”

  She had cried, “Don’t cry poverty to me—I think I have had astonishing forbearance—you have abused me. You promised to marry me. I marry someone. What do you d
o? You seduced the wife of a man. There is such a thing as normal expectation. You let me see you were pleased enough to get me on his payroll so I should weigh less on yours, and I made no complaint when I saw your meanness getting the better of you week after week, while all the time my expenses were the same and our relations were the same—I kept him from any suspicion—you had all the protection and all the pleasure—I was the lonely, poor, anguished person. I know very well how you treat your friends. Don’t I know what you do for all those mangy dogs you have round you, sniffing after your money? You promise them a pension and pie in the sky, like you promised me. Let’s speak plain. But you pay them in peanuts like you pay me and all the time they have the exceptional compliment and pleasure of your company! They are paid off with a fat Christmas bonus too, you think, with an œuf à la russe, a cocktail. But I am not taken by the same trick twice. You can’t wriggle out of this. You must stand by me.”

  “Sweetie, I’m not trying to wriggle out of anything. Let’s look at this sanely. You are married to a man who, whether he knows it or not, is a blackmailer. Perhaps he’s right. I don’t know, I don’t say. I don’t know if he has proofs or not. He has nothing on me. That’s my story and I stick to it. Photomontage—perhaps; nothing else. We’ll face this together. Depend on me. As for five or six—ridiculous—if you’ve been making a little whoopee with someone with that much money to throw down the sink, you must go to him, but with me, my dear girl, you have the wrong number.”