A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  He threw the script on the table, though very loath to let it go from him. Karolyi, his hands hovering and trembling, picked it up, opened it eagerly, and began to show Grant the dialogue, saying as he went through it, “This will be a smashit; this will bring us a million dollars—”

  He began to rave again—“South Africa, Australia, all the British Empire and in Europe where my name is enough to sell, I do not have to go down on my knees—”

  Savagely Grant said, disturbed somewhat in mind, “Let me have the whole thing or nothing—and then, my boy, the whole world will be round our pushcart; but the whole thing or nothing! And I want three copies. Tell the typist he’s a swindler. I said three copies and you got nothing. I been swindled; I got nothing. And I don’t pay another cent till I see what I want.”

  He went on with a formidable frown, and began to push Karolyi out of the apartment, saying, “Let me see the thing in two days; see if you can finish it by then and three copies.”

  “But the typist—the typist—to town no more—he cannot—”

  “Then you ring up David Flack and tell him to tell his daughter to make three copies; we’ll get up a kitty, we’ll all put in and pay her out of the kitty. I won’t pay for a phantom typist. I see nothing—Tell Flack, go to Flack, tell him to hurry up, get it done—I paid and I got nothing—”

  He strode up and down, feeling injured. He telephoned Miss Robbins, telling her to pay no money to Karolyi, who might come yelping round the office, with his script, “Don’t believe him, it’s a try-on.”

  42

  Mrs. MacDonald paid him a visit very early, crying, saying she had been obliged to make breakfast and do the shoes for the Walkers, not mentioning Gilbert, whom she did not count; and that the housekeeping was beyond her at her age, this was never in the bargain, full-time servants were getting at least $125 per month. Grant was cozy and charming, taking her by both hands, leading her to a chair, sitting her in it, “Only for a few days, my dear woman, stand by me till I get settled; you know I’m being hounded and pursued, I’ve my back against the wall; and then I’ll be back again and they’ll be out, only a few days, patience, my dear woman. Then, when spring comes, you will come with Gilbert and me, just the two of us, two bachelors, out to Largo Farm, and you will be housekeeper there, your word will be law. Is that to your liking? This is a surprise I am keeping in my sleeve for you, but why not tell it now? So stand by me, my dear, you are like a mother to me and I need a mother and friend now. They are yelping round me, my back is to the wall, I want a good woman. When spring comes we will go to Largo Farm and live there for the rest of our lives and your word will be law. I’ll get you a servant, Gilbert will be my farmer, a cozy little family. Two bachelors, eh—is that to your taste? There was a time when two bachelors would have kept you awake at nights, but now you will be our mother.”

  “Is it really so, you are not fooling me, Mr. Grant?”

  “On my word of honor, as soon as spring comes—Largo Farm—you will have fresh-killed chicken and someone to cook it for you, you will only count the sheets, see none are missing. There…Will you go back and put up with the Walkers for only a few days? Will you?”

  The old woman mournfully went back, saying that she feared with the best will in the world she could not manage for two men and two women, and he must or they must get her a woman to help. Laughing and promising nothing and at the end asking after Jones, and beginning to chew his lips because she had not brought the telephone messages, he let her go.

  When he was alone again, he got the old-fashioned leather hatbox, the locked one, which had been all night on top of the wardrobe, and put it on the polished oval table in the center of the room. He looked at it several times and pulled at the lock. He spread out all his keys on the table, about thirty-five in all, and after sorting out about eleven smaller ones, he began to try them systematically. He was going through them a second time, with a serious, contented air, when the hotel desk telephoned him to ask if a lady could come up. He said to send her up, supposing it to be Edda Flack. When he flung the door open, he saw, however, Livy Wright.

  “I’ve come to have breakfast with you, like Laura,” she announced.

  She looked fresh and brilliant, her black hair piled in a braided crown. Her business dress, cut low in the bodice, was of silk shirred all over in two-inch bands, tight in the waist and very short. She had steel-studded buckles on her high-heeled shoes and long black kid gloves. She threw her black astrakhan coat on the sofa, with an enormous handbag in calf and gold. She had a wide bracelet of brilliants, much perfume, and no color in her cheeks but a dark red lipstick which brought out the darkness of her eyes.

  “I’ve come for breakfast, darling,” and she smacked her lips on his lips. They stood smiling, holding hands, while Grant ran his eyes over her freshly powdered skin and wondered about her visit. He closed the door and said, “I’ll get up some more coffee.”

  She vociferated, “What are you in your dressing gown for? I thought you got up at daybreak to get washed and dusted and scented and lotioned—”

  In passing round the room, she fixed on the hatbox, “What the hell’s that? Looks as if it came out of the ark!”

  “That’s a hatbox.”

  “Oh, that’s a hatbox. Surprise, surprise. What’s in the hatbox? Not hats, of course. Probably the missing shoe trees.”

  She pulled at the cover, “It’s locked. Have you been dancing a war-dance round it? Go and put a morning coat on, or your business coat, Robbie, I don’t want to see you round the apartment in the morning in your dressing gown. Don’t jingle your money, my darling. It’s not good manners. Ring for breakfast, now, darling; and let us sit down in a decent way, like a married couple. The place looks like Grand Central—are you going somewhere? I suppose it’s that damned blonde. Are you moving, or just moving in? Don’t you skip without letting me know, old boy! Come, now, telephone for coffee and telephone Mrs. MacDonald, and I’ll help her put your things in order. We must put these things off in the corridor somewhere. You look like a line-up of refugees at the Polish border. Station Six of the Jewish Underground. Or pengo billionaires unpacking enough pengos to get a sandwich and a cup of coffee…What the hell do you have pigskin for? It’s an invitation to the customs officers to rip out the linings and see what diamonds you’re bootlegging. No wonder the women try to take you over. You look like a walking checkbook. I’ll have to improve you a bit, old joker. You look like a god-damned Christmas tree. Now, Robbie, I found out that that Laura of yours on what you call the Pinchem Hill used to get up with the lark to look after you and if that’s what you want, son, I’m going to do it too. I’ll even wash your feet, if you like, like a blessed Magdalen, or Martha, or whatever you like, if you want that—you name it, and it’s yours. I’m a big gambler because I have nothing to lose. So here I am and I’ll come round every morning to be at breakfast with you, and get you off to work.”

  Grant made oyster eyes and listened to this mad address, first with astonishment, then with a wide smile, and then seriously. He kissed the woman, hugged her furiously, then went to telephone. All the time he kept smiling to himself and casting glances at Livy, who was rubbing her hand over the thick leather top of the hatbox and tugging at the lock.

  Now Gilbert arrived with a candid morning air and kissed Livy, then breakfast arrived for all three, and Livy bounced the hatbox off the table, and sent the waiter for a cloth, meanwhile making sallies at the two Grant men. She continued, “Why must you wash so much, Robbie? Are you washing away your sins? You want me around to see you sleep tighter and have fewer sins. These bachelor days are no good for you. You won’t stay the course if you get up at five to wash. What on earth do you do all that time? When I came, he had on his dressing gown only, and his hair wet. The place must look like a Turkish bath. I’ll put a stop to that, when we’re married, or even if we have a trial marriage. Excuse me, Gilbert, I know you’re friendly to that. That’s our bargain, isn’t it? Your father made that Grant
bargain with me. Try first, then no disappointment after. Is that so, Robbie? A Grant bargain.”

  He looked straight at her, arched his neck, eyed Gilbert, and came back to her. All the time she was pouring out coffee, putting in cream and sugar, shouting at Gilbert, “Don’t do it that way, but this way,” pouncing upon spoons and knives, quarreling with the amount of sugar, cream, and coffee given, with the quality of the coffee and its strength; and all robust and serious as a fishwife. When the cups were passed, she heckled still, with, “Robbie, you take too much sugar, think of your figure and think about diabetes, you’re likely to get it,” and, “I hate this kind of tablecloth, I like fine linen and old lace, and I’ll never allow a tablecloth cornerwise in our home, that’s a hotel mannerism, we’ve got to change many things in your way of life, haven’t we? Ah, in general I’ll have to clean up after you, the mess you’ve made of your life.”

  She rose noisily from her chair, once, to throw her arms round Grant. Bending over him she became warm; sparkling, she declared she loved him and was a blessing, not in disguise—“Leave it to me, bully-boy! There’s no disguise on me!”

  Grant hardly said a word, listening to her shouting, with his head slightly to the side, a faint confused smile on his face. She kept on prancing and making caracoles like a wild black pony. Bored, he at last pulled out his watch, when she cried, “You needn’t look, you’ve got all the time in the world, all day. You’re in hiding, aren’t you? No blondine to come here, no little tea, little chat, eh? Leave your timetable to me, darling, and you won’t have to go to Bermuda or Havana—which it was, I don’t know, your stories vary like hell. If you go out, I’ll send Gilbert out first to scout around and then I’ll hail you a taxi and hustle you into it. But you’ve got nowhere to go. You just sit here quiet and behave like an invalid, which you are, a moral invalid, a moral leper—let this be your leprosarium, bully-boy, I award myself the job of keeper. I’ll leave Gilbert here in charge and I’ll go off to my business and be back with you when the sun goes down.”

  She rushed to the telephone and ordered the waiter to return for the trays. When she came back, Grant had picked up the hatbox and put it in the middle of a side table.

  “Is that the hatbox?” asked Gilbert.

  “That is the hatbox. Isn’t he sweet, paddling round with a hatbox? Is there a head in it? No hats, I’m sure. He has fifty-three hats, and probably in the hatbox he keeps his old watches; because the hatbox was at the optician’s.”

  “The tailor’s,” muttered Grant. He had begun trying keys again. The telephone rang, Livy sprang to it and announced that Mrs. MacDonald and Miss Robbins were on the way up, “Quite a levee!”

  “I want the carpenter,” he said savagely. He went down on his knees before a valise, with a key he had just picked out, “This fits one lock and not the other, the carpenter must find me another. I told him to bring all the old keys in his workshop.”

  “Why not the locksmith?” said Gilbert.

  “At the corner of every street is a man who’ll make you keys,” said Livy.

  “I don’t want them,” yelled Grant.

  “I wouldn’t want to sit at breakfast opposite that temper; you go ahead and find some doormat to try that on,” cried Livy.

  “All this turmoil about a key is just an example,” began Gilbert.

  “—of living alone and we’re going to put a stop to that,” cried Livy.

  Grant turned round and grinned, “The trouble with me, sweetie, is you know I’m lonely. I live the life of a bachelor, get into bad moods, and so I fall for the wrong women, fall easy.”

  “Easy and often, too often for me; here’s your hatbox and where’s your hurry—don’t bother me; I don’t want any drill sergeants.”

  “Don’t talk like that, I need you, Livy, I need your common sense; the world’s a desert to me and you’re my oasis. The well was dry, then you came along and filled it.”

  “Fell into it, you mean; I heard that before somewhere. Where was it? It was here, you fraud, bully-boy. I know your salesline. Get a new fall line. Ha!”

  He laughed and pushed his bust forward, “I mean it, lovely woman, good companion, common sense, business woman, own property, not trying to go through my pockets, own opinions, understands me, consoles me—in your own way. Now this bloody ’ooman—in Jigago—I never would have believed it, I came to her like a little boy, I was looking for a wife, a sweetheart, and a sister, and she only thinks of drawing blood, a bloodsucker.” He hesitated and flushed slightly, giving Livy time to put in a shout, then he continued, “Trouble is, her husband’s a mean man, small nature, and all these months he’s pretended to live at home but not paying bills or speaking to her and she had to come crying to me to borrow a little money, not much—and it looks bad she says, or he says. Finally, he took a room and watched her with a detective—sitting in a car outside her apartment house. That shows a very small nature. He even had the newspapers delivered in his hotel, and wouldn’t let her read the newspapers! She had to come to me for the rent and to patch her shoes—she even asked me to keep my Coca-Cola bottles so she could return them and get the money—”

  Livy whooped, “That’s the meanest collector I ever heard of—and you stood for that?”

  Said Grant stoutly, “She told me she needed a pair of gloves, I bought them. Why not? You know one time I was sweet on her, but she gave me some of my presents back. And she carries my Coca-Cola bottles away in a shopping bag—shows she’s honest.”

  His laugh betrayed him. Livy fumed, “Does she carry off your old shoes too? You think she’s cute.”

  “Well, Livy, I admit I liked the woman, thought she was high-class, had character. Thought she had me round her little finger and cost me a forchun—and I didn’t mind it—I was naïve, I admit it—don’t want to lie to you, it’s no use—I liked it—but when she started playing double-treble, selling me short because there was a lot of me lying around ready to pick up, so she thought—I didn’t want it. It takes two to make a bargain. You got to have the supply. She made a mistake. She’s a cash-register type. Came to my place every day in a taxi and never had the money even for the tip and her friend Paula too. Told my doorman to pay. How does that look? I warned him; then next time I didn’t pay him, told him, ‘I told you not to.’ Next time she was stuck; had to phone upstairs. That taught her a lesson. And then when she was going away to Reno, she comes there on the way to the station with her bags all packed and marked for Reno. I sent her away; and I paid for the ticket, then someone tells me, the Mann Act and I don’t know what else. She didn’t know what she was doing. Used to having fellows looking after her. She’s innocent that way. Never looks ahead. I gave her the money for her ticket, she changed her mind, and then I have to go and pay all over again! Muddled, but a cash-register type and a one-way girl too. Never gave me but one tie in her life. She has a dentist, a White Russian, she says, ‘Give the poor fellow a bit of business.’ I send Gilbert to him and give her the money for the bill. She doesn’t pay. Says she has something urgent that day. I have to pay all over again. But she drives a hard bargain. Should have been in business or a diplomat. She knows men and she’s no fool. Says she saves money for me. Ha-ha! Then she writes to me, ‘Only a boor and a peasant haggles over money, or a Jew or a Syrian. You stick at every penny. Perhaps you have Jewish blood. But I forget what they say about the Scots. Am I to pay your bills for you? I cannot spare you a penny, I am poor.’”

  “For your money you get value,” said Livy.

  “Of course I had to pay the fellow,” said Grant.

  “What fellow?”

  “The doctor.”

  “It was a dentist a minute ago.”

  He laughed, “I couldn’t track her down; you try to.” He paused, evidently reviewing some events.

  Livy said, “Well, go on, you behaved like a worm and she got you into a mess. Serves you right. If you mix up with bought women. I don’t have to be bought. I give myself, and then I give something else too. I’m
generous. I’m an extravert. I don’t hang on to money. I don’t need laxatives for my purse. Take me. Forget that woman. Don’t keep harping on her. You don’t see her any more.”

  He looked up from the valise he was delving in, “Couldn’t have believed it, you know; she looked like a real lady. And she loves her mother, doesn’t want her to know anything wrong. It shows a very nice side to her nature.”

  “A stage mother—they’ve all got them. I’ve got a father,” said Livy over her shoulder.

  Grant made an impatient gesture and bawled out to Mrs. MacDonald, “Ring up the carpenter and the Flacks. I want Flack here. If the girl’s at work then I can’t help it.”

  “Look, about the Swiss watches,” cried Livy, turning about-face.

  “Yes?”

  “I got you five dozen very cheap.”

  “Is that so? How much?” He turned on his heels.

  “Five dozen Tavannes, eighty dollars basis.”

  “That’s not bad,” he said, turning back to her.

  “If the lot suits you, I can get twenty dozen at the same. Through the same party, a friend of my brother-in-law.”

  “Done, I’ll take it,” he said, turning back to his trying of keys.

  “Don’t stick me with them.” He took no notice.

  “I’ll bring them tomorrow with the invoice.”

  “All right, all right.”

  “I have to leave you for a while because I’m negotiating the purchase of two houses in Montague Street, Brooklyn Heights. They belonged to our family before, but my father had no business sense and allowed them to pass to an uncle who sold them off. One was valued at forty-four thousand dollars and can now be got for twenty-one thousand dollars. I can make an arrangement. It’s in excellent condition, oak panels, a private elevator, all the floors arranged for small apartments, plenty of electric light and hot water. The revenue from rents is four hundred and five dollars monthly plus rent of a two-story garage in the end of the garden which I am reconditioning, with an apartment above, ninety dollars, makes four hundred and ninety-five dollars monthly, plus a basement now used by the owner as a sort of table d’hôte for the tenants, which I’m turning into an apartment, with use of garden, an additional fifty-five dollars, say—it has to be lower although it is an entire floor, because it is a basement, rather dark, and there is the boiler room there, five hundred and fifty dollars monthly. My taxes will be five hundred and ninety dollars, mortgage payments four per cent on twelve thousand dollars, four hundred and eighty dollars plus two hundred dollars for amortization. In five years the house will be mine, if I raise the rents a bit by black-market arrangements, which anyone will accept. There is a house on the street not quite the same condition, fifteen thousand dollars and needs about ten thousand dollars on improvements, the garage turned into a small house in the garden. I am buying the two of them tomorrow.”