A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  “It’s like the night before Christmas.”

  “Do me a favor, my dear girl, make a note, just as it comes to me.”

  He took several turns and muttered rapidly, “Unlock the closet in the corridor and bring the liquor here, but leave the Coca-Cola bottles, and the milk bottles; I keep them for the blonde, it’s her hobby. Bring the Nescafé. Don’t leave anything in the closet.”

  When Edda got tired and threw down the pencil with a childish laugh, he said urgently, “Look, Edda darling, you’re like my Little Sister, you’re sacred to me, we can live together for years, I’d never think of touching you, I respect you and I know you’re such a bloody Presbyterian—it’s good for me. It’s what I want, sister and friend and nice girl too, all in one. Do this for me. It’s for us all. We’ll take over that house in Rome from that bloody ’ooman hurt me so much, she’s a fascist anyway, and we’ll do just as we please. Good for Davie, too, he needs it, needs to be free from worry. Now write, make a note please, my dear girl.”

  He went on. Then he broke this off too, to become nervous and wonder why Flack did not return. He began to soften toward Mrs. Downs, “Don’t like her waiting there. Let her wait. I paid a lot for the cow but she’s worth it. She had me round her finger. Didn’t know how to keep me. Now she’s trying strong-arm methods. Perhaps she thinks I let her down. Maybe I did. Where’s Flack?”

  Presently he said, “She made me need her and I like it. She’s got the honeypot and I’m the honeybear.”

  The young woman listened to him curiously. He was pleased, “I paid a lot for the ’ooman; but she was worth it.”

  He became restless, “She gave me good value, but now I’m through with her: she outstayed her welcome.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said the girl.

  He was pleased. He began to rave, sitting opposite her and spitting out his stand-bys, his romancero, with a tender, sweet expression. They heard Flack coming up the stairs. He sprang to his feet and rushed out on the landing.

  Flack said, “Everything is going to be all right.”

  The Hugo March apartment was in a quiet hotel near Central Park and just off the Park, east side. In it professional people and business men lived the year round. It was near all Grant’s haunts and in the heart of the most fashionable district, where he daily took his walks. Flack, who feared for him, warned him a hundred times about walking out and going to the St. Regis, to the Chatham, to the Ritz, to the White Bar, to Manetti’s, to Charles, Pommes Soufflées.

  “Hide your head for shame, for once, you bum.”

  “Trust me!”

  39

  They all took a taxi uptown to the place. The apartment looked on the street, and on a light-well, and contained a large bedroom and a sitting room, connected by a pretty corridor full of windows, and leading into bathroom and kitchenette. Numerous tall old-fashioned wall closets opened into the rooms and corridors. This pleased Grant, who ran about opening and sniffing. As soon as he had sent Flack and Edda out, with orders to go to his apartment and begin to pack, he telephoned Miss Robbins, Miss Livy Wright, Betty Goodwin, and two or three of his young female acquaintance, giving them his address and making appointments with them.

  “If I have to lurk here in a hideaway, I got to keep myself amused; otherwise, I’ll start running out and advertising myself everywhere.”

  He laughed to himself and began peering into the cupboards once more. He found some salt, coffee, and canned milk in the kitchen—a profit. In one of the drawers was a small enameled pillcase about one inch square. He liked this and pocketed it. He looked under the chest of drawers and wardrobe, puffing and flushing, and found one or two things which he examined and discarded. After this, he found the wait intolerable and telephoned Mrs. MacDonald at his apartment to find out if the Flacks were there with Miss Robbins, packing, and to tell her to get Jones, the carpenter, to come for any locks that stuck. He then called each one to the phone in turn to give fresh instructions, always the same. Flack yelled, “I told you to lie low and not even to telephone, you lummocks. How do you know the switchboard girl isn’t the one who’s watching you?”

  He grumbled and rang off. But after a moment he called again, saying, “I know her, I took her to tea. She wouldn’t. Do me a favor and bring the first load here at once, I want to see what you’ve packed. I’m the only one who knows what I want. Take a taxi, two taxis. I want you all to come.”

  When he telephoned again, Flack had left with some valises in a taxi. Grant at once commanded Miss Robbins to proceed to the new hotel, in a taxi, to receive his instructions. The two taxis arrived at the same time, for Flack had thought to take a roundabout route via Grand Central to fool possible pursuers, while Miss Robbins, in a hurry to appease him, went direct. Grant at once tore open the three valises Flack had brought and raged about, “If you don’t know how to pack the stuff, get the hotel valet, he knows! Go back, give him the three pairs of pants to press that are lying on the bench, and get them from him and tell him to sort out my—”

  He wanted to telephone his apartment to give instructions to Mrs. MacDonald. Flack said, “If you telephone again, I wash my hands of you; I leave you; get out of it your own way.”

  “I can manage the affair myself. It was you got me into all this mess.”

  “I’d like to know how, you idiot.”

  “If it hadn’t been for you I would have seen the ’ooman and fixed it all up with her. Now she’s angry with me and she’s probably gone to her lawyer. God damn it, you put me off, I know the technique, I know the cow—get out of here and let me unpack. Everything’s missing. Where are the white silk socks? Who packed the bags?”

  “I threw the stuff in. I didn’t pack.”

  “You didn’t put in one thing I asked for! Where’s the list?”

  He took the telephone and rang up his apartment, angrily shaking off Flack and roaring at Mrs. MacDonald, “Not there, unpack that—” and so forth. He ordered Edda to come at once, bringing his umbrella out of the bathroom with her, also a pair of cufflinks and his “leather-jack.” She must take a taxi. He then spoke to Mrs. MacDonald, ordered her to be at this new address first thing in the morning, eight o’clock, and to bring with her Jones, the carpenter, in a taxi, to try the keys. He shouted across the phone, to Flack, “Where’s the hatbox? Did you get the spectacles? Did you look in all the pockets? I told you to get the collarbox! The hatbox is at the tailor’s—goddamn it all, no one listens, I have to organize everything.”

  He returned to the phone, “I wasn’t speaking to you, Mrs. MacDonald, my dear, good woman, but to the bloody fool—to someone else. Ring the carpenter tonight or go and see him. Tell Miss Flack to come at once with the umbrella, if she can’t find it—perhaps I lent it to Goodwin, to buy me another this evening, before the stores close…I know it isn’t raining, my good woman, but it will rain sometime. Get Miss Flack—Edda, look in the upper top drawer right hand of the—” and so forth. The telephone call, interrupted by objurgations and commands to the miserable pair unpacking his valises, lasted twenty minutes. Triumphantly, he jammed down the receiver and strode toward them, parted them, pushed them away with his hands, and knelt down by the first open valise. He took each thing out and looked at it, began piling things in heaps according to a system of the moment. He grumbled, “Nothing here, what do I want with that damn stuff? Nothing here I wanted.”

  Flack showed him the list. He pushed it aside, “No one does what I want! Nothing here—where are the shoe covers? Can I travel without shoe covers? Where are the shoe trees? There were three tins of shoe polish, one half empty—”

  He pushed the stuff aside that he had just piled and ranged into the cases: “God damn it, Flack, why can’t you do a thing I ask!”

  Flack bit his thumb and looked at Grant with anger.

  Grant at once said, “Oh, ho, sorry, sorry, but you know I’m glad you both came, help me. We’ll settle in the country, Flack, Edda and you will have a quiet life when this rumpus is over. We’l
l get back that farm in France and grow French beans, we’ll go to Rome and live on the Pinchem when it’s not too hot, there’s always a breeze there, nice house, have servants, Edda won’t have to work any more, recover, get back her color, not so Presbyterian, or we’ll go when we want to Pontresina, she can skate, get a young man, anything you like—only bear with me now, my dear boy. The blonde got my blood up, I don’t know where I am. Stand by me now, my dear boy. I’m not a bad fellow, but don’t bother me now. Did you send that bloody fool Gilbert away for a week? All day, whatever I say, he drags in Celia Grimm. I’m afraid he got in with that bloody woman, she’s no good, went native. I took her out three times and not even a kiss. She’s not a squareshooter. I don’t spend money on a woman for nothing, to be made a fool of. Sorry to see him get in with a woman of that type. She’ll skin him and leave him high and dry, no morals, no sense of responsibility, no sense of reality. I told him, ‘I know that girl, look out for her, she’s not straight.’ The young jackass laughed. By God, if she got her claws into him, she’s making a mistake. I got a woman away from him before, I’ll do it again. Money talks and what the devil—I can do it without money; but why should I? Money talks faster than I do.”

  He laughed, “I said, ‘There’s a fresh wind today,’ and he comes in with, ‘Celia Grimm says that she loves a fresh wind, it’s good for her skin.’ She’s got her hooks into him, eh? I’ll take her out, give her a good time. I found out he bought her a couple of Scotch-and-sodas. Ho-ho. A college boy. Let him stay with old Mr. Wright in Philadelphia; Livy owes me something. I wasn’t so bad to her. And if she leads him astray—ho—I should worry, as long as he doesn’t tell me all day long, ‘Negroes dance better than white people.’ Do me a favor, my boy, and go back to the hotel and look for the leather-jack; I can’t understand why you didn’t find that plaited leather belt with the Mexican silver clasp, it’s in the night stand.”

  As soon as he had dispatched these two, Mrs. MacDonald arrived, with some keys, and he entertained her for half an hour with instructions for the morning, meanwhile telephoning to the blondine to meet him downstairs in the Awning Bar, but to tell no one. He also cautioned Mrs. MacDonald about telling anyone of his movements or of his present rendezvous. He laughed, “Flack thinks he’s my wet nurse. Got to have a bit of freedom, or I’ll tear down the house.”

  As the blonde could not meet him till ten-thirty, he kept Mrs. MacDonald by him, occasionally telephoning the other apartment to find out how things were getting along, and arguing with Flack, who eventually took his daughter out to dinner and refused to see Grant until the next morning. Flack said crossly, “And I give you my word, Robbie, if you don’t give up all your doings with this lowdown crook, this blonde woman, a thief and a harlot, I’ll not do another stroke for you at any time, not even for your farm and your house on the Pincian.”

  Grant let out a grand, musical laugh, “Don’t worry, my boy, don’t worry, my boy, you love me too much, you think too much of me, go out to dinner, I swear before God I won’t see the ’ooman again, not in my life, I swear it to you by all that’s holy. And tell Edda too, I wouldn’t associate with a woman like that, I know, though I’ve done some bad things, perhaps, that she’s not in the same class, and that now that you and I are going to live together in the same house in the St. Lawrence, I’ll never go near a woman like that again, she’s reformed me, tell Edda. By God, what I like about her is she’s so Presbyterian. But she doesn’t know enough, doesn’t understand the blonde. The blonde’s innocent, only not her style, that’s all.”

  When he put down the telephone, Mrs. MacDonald said to him, “Mr. Grant, it is your own affair, but it surprises me to hear you so untruthful.”

  He bellowed with laughter, smacked his knee, and going up to the old woman, kissed her on the forehead, “Allow me, my dear good woman, that is what I would do if you were my own mother. I don’t deserve a mother like you and indeed I didn’t have such a one. But I want you to watch over me, I’m not the best of men, though my heart is in the right place. You and I are going to stay together. You’ll come with me everywhere. You’ll be my housekeeper at Largo Farm, for my boy and me. It will be good for your latter days, see the old country once again, eh? Because you’re a good influence over me and you come out with it—a good woman’s honest tongue, with a little mustard on it, has set many a man straight.”

  “Indeed, I like to believe you and I do believe you have a good heart.”

  Grant puttered about and said deprecatingly, glancing at the old woman, “It’s all over, I swear. I’ve lied often, but not about this; I lie because it’s a quick exit. If I lie, I say I lie, sooner or later. But I’ve had my lesson. My mother told me never to lie and I know she had to meet the hard knocks.”

  Having said this, he fell silent and thought it over. He began defending the woman to himself, and then he came out with it, “But the husband put her up to it, that I’d swear on the Bible. It’s not like her. I don’t want to say she’s more sinned against than sinning—”

  “Well, you’re perfectly right to be charitable, Mr. Grant.”

  “—who would think a Presbyterian like that, a church deacon who maybe goes to bed in his Sunday-best, loved her, he said, thought the world of her, never met that kind of a woman, he said, would turn against her like that? Is that love? It shows stupidity, it shows a small mind. You don’t turn against a woman, you say, ‘The fault is mine, mea culpa.’ That’s my idea. I’m no angel, but when I do a wrong thing with a woman I don’t blame her. I made a mistake, that’s all. I don’t know what she thinks of me either.”

  “Shall I repack these shirts, Mr. Grant?”

  He immediately passed into a great state of excitement, “What can I do without the shoe covers? Why can’t they do as I ask?”

  “You can very well wait till the morning for your shoe covers, and I must go home soon; it is nearly ten o’clock.”

  Grant went round the valises and the apartment, repeating sadly, wisely, comically, shrewdly, pensively, boyishly, and even to the accompaniment of a bizarre and gay pas seul, “What will I do? I can’t pack my things without the shoe covers; shoes are a great packing problem—” and he would come close to her (as she bent over his things, sorting them out, picking out a few soiled things), and start an examination into the nature and kinds and uses of shoe trees and the laxity of so-called friends of indolent character, and of the natural interest of a true friend in his friend’s shoe trees and shoe covers, and of the lasting question of keeping the creases out of his seventeen pairs of shoes; and a forensic statement in which a considerable number of that week’s events as recorded in the New York Times, the New Statesman and Nation, the New Republic, and the Manchester Guardian, were rounded up, added up, and cut down to the period of his missing shoe covers. Then, to amuse the old woman who wanted to go home to bed, he started a small jesting vein, about the wits of certain persons who were brilliant enough to turn out any number of predictions about the ups and downs of the stock exchange, and were fairly dependable on the exchange, and even wrote articles for the New Republic and Collier’s, but had so little sense of humanity, so little realism, that they could not lay their hands on shoe covers when requested urgently by a friend who surely merited their attention, just as a favor.

  “That’s the trouble with men like that, impractical, surely there’s nothing more simple and everyday than shoe covers! How can I get to Havana without my shoe covers?”

  And thus working himself up to a fury, coloring with resentment, and down to a drizzle of sorrow and longing about the shoe covers, he came to the end of the corridor and shouted to Mrs. MacDonald, asking if she had not some old shoe covers, and after rummaging among the things she had just arranged, came out with an old shirt of Gilbert’s, put in there by mistake and holding it out to her, cried, “Do me a favor, my good, dear woman, and cut this up tonight, you hear me, make a patron, cut them out tonight before you go to bed, then you’ll remember and sew them up for me tomorrow morning
and bring them over, eh? Just for once, please.”

  She had tears in her eyes, her hands shook as she stood holding the big striped shirt, and she said, “It’s indeed a great pity to cut up this good shirt, Gilbert could use it.”

  He came forward, twinkling, smiling, blushing like a boy, looking into her eyes and took her hands through the shirt, “Do it for me, like a good, dear woman, make a little patron, cut out the shoe covers and sew them for me with your own needle and thread. You have needle and thread, haven’t you? It will give me a great pleasure to see your stitching in it and I’ll think, Mrs. MacDonald did this thing for me, when I asked it. I have to go away but that big apartment will be home to me, for I’ll think, Mrs. MacDonald is there, and it’ll be the first home I had since I left my mother. You and I are going to be together for years. The other women are no good to me, I confess to you, you see, what I want is a mother and a housekeeper who’ll do me some little kindness when I ask it. You have your little home with me and you make the place like a home.”

  “But, Mr. Grant, you can buy shoe covers in the stores, three pairs for a dollar ten.”

  He pressed her hands, looked into the shirt, “I’ll say to myself, they were made for me by the needle and thread of a fine honest woman and that woman’s in my apartment at this moment, until I come home. Do me this one favor.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what to say to you, to tell you, there’s no need for such sewing.”

  “You’ll do it for me, then, like a good woman.”

  At this, he brusquely changed manner, got a piece of brown paper out of a drawer, pushed it into her hands, said, “Take it for the patron and wrap the shoe covers in it. Well, go home now, come again in the morning with the carpenter.”