A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  “I have always liked you, Gilbert, and you liked me. I am not less than human. I am doing this for you more than for Robert, who merits nothing good from me. Perhaps you think your father is innocent, pure, with spotless character, a scholar and a gentleman, a very gallant gentleman, no doubt.”

  “I was not thinking that.”

  “But you think I am much more guilty. A woman is worse than a man.”

  “I do not think that. That is against my principles.”

  “I know your mother is having a bitter struggle. It is not easy for a woman to find herself virtually without a husband and then to come and find the husband is intending to leave the country. I do not want to add to her worries. I would even do something to help her. Especially as I know that Robert has other fish in his big frying pan, isn’t that so? It isn’t really I who am the sinner, not I alone? This situation is very tragic for me. Am I the only woman Robert has ever known? I looked to him for companionship and comfort, I am no longer a young woman, I am thirty-five, and this relationship of ours has been broken into—first by myself, who married honestly and intended to do the right thing, and then by your father, who begged me to leave my husband. There are other things—I know your father has other women friends! You yourself have met them. Can you say to your mother, ‘This is a bad woman, but my father has other friends, ladies, who are better suited to him? I have met them and like them.’ Can you say that?”

  Gilbert said, “You are quite right. This is not blackmail, but the truth. And Dad by his complaisance, by his idea of showing life to me—because I am sure he is a very naïve man underneath—himself got me into this hole. I am glad you showed it to me. I should have behaved like a cad—and I should have done infinite harm. But what is there to do now? I am an honest man. I don’t see what an honest man can do in this situation. I don’t really know what your motives are, but I don’t trust Dad, either; and I analyze it this way: I don’t know enough about life. You are not at fault. I am at fault. I was a good officer, they said. Probably I couldn’t have helped one of the men to write a letter home to his wife. I have never been married. It’s a different kind of life. It kind of hits you in the nose when you see it for the first time. I thought what you said to Dad was a bold attempt at intimidation; now I think perhaps you were trying to do the right thing in a situation where there was no right thing. Even my mother, I know, might have done more. She sleeps, poor Dixie! She should not sleep. My father took the initiative, that I admit. And my poor mother is guilty of the most extraordinary laxity and sleepiness and dullness there ever was, probably, in a married woman. I don’t say you are to blame—”

  “Gilbert—do you know what is in that hatbox?—I am sure you know very little about your father.”

  “That old thing? Not hats, of course—”

  At this moment the telephone rang, and the desk announced that Miss Livy Wright was coming up. Gilbert did not say anything, but went to the curtains. Looking down sadly to the street, he was surprised to see his father’s unmistakable figure under the awnings on the other side of the street. His father walked up and down and boldly eyed all the women from head to foot, continuing his pacing. Occasionally, he stopped to stare after a woman.

  The apartment door rang.

  Livy flung her arms round Gilbert and kissed him lustily, “Hello, big boy! You’ve put on three ounces at least. Watch that waistline! Civilian life doesn’t suit you. You look morose. How is the educational movie game? Did you get the old tightwad—?”

  She had taken her arms away from the boy and saw the other woman. “Oh, Lord, I didn’t realize you had company—shooting my mouth off—behaving like a sister to you—”

  “Mrs. Downs—Miss Livy Wright.”

  To Gilbert’s surprise, the women showed no emotion, but acted the lady.

  “Are you waiting for Mr. Grant, or are you a friend of Gilbert’s?” asked Livy.

  “I’m collecting old clothes for Bundles for Britain.”

  “You expect to get some from Robert Grant? He wouldn’t give a torn tambourine to the Salvation Army! He collected squeezed-out toothpaste tubes from me. I had to save them for him. Some dame, friend of his, wanted them. If you prize one pair of old torn pants from—h’m—pair of cotton socks he bought in a subway and wore into holes, from Robert Grant, Esquire, I’ll give you a punched nickel.”

  “Livy,” said Gilbert.

  “Well, it’s true, big boy, isn’t it? You know the old hyena. We love him, but we know him. Mrs. Downs may as well not waste any more of her valuable time on your old tube-collector. He’s the original Scrooge. He’s got suntan and rosy cheeks, he’s a bully-boy, but he’s not the prince of bighearted jakes. Ma’am, excuse the freedom of speech, but you are wasting your time. He wouldn’t give away—h’m—he keeps the parings of his nails, I can show you the drawer, the upper left-hand drawer in his tallboy, with the key of the collarbox. You won’t get the moving picture of a Coca-Cola bottle top. He keeps them too, for some dame, same one, I guess. Must be same type of chiseler. To have and to hold is on Robert Grant’s pocketbook. God bless you, man of means, I say, you can’t make money by throwing purses out the window to the hydra-handed mob. I’ll tell you his type of patriotism: if they didn’t give him a free ride in a Constellation or a free peck at an Army hostess, he paid taxes for nothing. It butters him no waffles.

  “It’s useless, my dear; you must take your business elsewhere. If you came to my place, I’d give you a couple of old hats, barrelfuls of old clothes. Lavish is the word for Livy. I want, I buy. If I’m in a big game, I bid high. I’m in a big game now, the stakes are the bully-boy; I’m not in his class yet but I’ll be there. I’ll have houses, I’ll be in the ninety per cent bracket. And even now, I get a hell of a kick out of looking at Robert Grant holding on to his millions and hearing the Doomsday Book of his great estates in Spain. Ma’am, he’ll end up like Queen Victoria with a museum full of old petticoats. Don’t forget they’re all bundles in Britain and there’s a lot of the British in him. That’s his rag-picking side. They’re all wearing politics over there that have been musty since Queen Anne; and he’s an ardent supporter of ‘British scientific evolutionary socialism, no bones broken, but if I have to give bundles for Britain, you’ll find me at the end of the queue.’ So now you know where you stand, if you didn’t know already. You won’t get half a shoe cover from old Grant.”

  “And you defend his old shirts very well,” said the blondine.

  “Why not, what the heck? And a man is as he is, you can’t change him much though I’ll do my darndest, when he’s my forget-me-not.”

  “Are you a close friend of Mr. Grant?”

  Gilbert, horrified, advanced toward them, which both women observed severely. Livy said, “You might call it that. You’ve got to be a friend of Robert to stand for him at all. You have to love him, not to hate him.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “No, I’m from the sticks, I live at present in Philadelphia. I’m in real estate. I come up to town to go on wild parties—ha-ha!—with Robbie. Sit round half the evening talking about Winsome Churchill and Major Elstree—I mean—British evolutionary socialism, better than the Continent with those reds—Do you know Mr. Grant?”

  “Yes, I met him abroad years ago.”

  “On the Continent, ha? In France? Not in Rome?”

  “Yes, I met him in society there; and in Rome. I have a house in Rome. On the Pincian Hill.”

  “Must be quite a colony there! Are there a lot of houses on that hill?”

  “Naturally!”

  “H’m. Is it fashionable, airy, a nice quarter?”

  “Oh, yes, yes.”

  “I have been invited there to live: a friend of mine has a house there.”

  Gilbert, standing at the window, turned round in surprise. Livy continued, tossing her head, “My friend and I have a cheese farm in Normandy, also, and we may pass six months of the year there. Gilbert will send us day-old chicks by airmail. Or he sends the
eggs on and they hatch on the way. I forget the technique. I should make the place pay. I’m a very good manager. I should like country life. I worked hard enough in business. But I’m going to keep my two houses here, too. I just bought two houses in Montague Street, Brooklyn.”

  “Brooklyn!”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s a coincidence! My friend Mr. Grant told me yesterday that he was buying two houses on Montague Street!”

  “Well, well, did he! Well, the old so-and-so! He makes good time, he has his eye on the ball. Ha-ha-ha! I bet those are my houses! When you were in that house in Rome did you ever meet a Roman society woman called Laura—Manganesi? Is that it, Gilbert? Grant’s not been friendly with his wife for—”

  “Oh, hush, you don’t know—” said Gilbert suddenly. He came away from the window. He had just observed his father walking round the corner of the block with a young woman, and toward the hotel bar downstairs.

  “I don’t know what? I want to find out about this Roman bitch for good and all. This Laura had a house on the Pincian Hill! It must be densely overpopulated, two-thirds of the Italian nation.”

  “Father had a house on the Pincian,” began Gilbert.

  “That makes four,” cried Livy; then, “Is it the American quarter? To hell with it—it sounds noisy.”

  She got up, pulled off her hat, and went over to the valises, “The big boy hasn’t got his laundry sorted out yet. Don’t sit there with yer tongue hanging out for the big boy’s laundry, Mrs. Downs. Britain could sink in mud before Robert Grant, son of Lancashire and Paisley, sent one cotton shirt or Paisley shawl to —— And where’s the hatbox? I just love that. I am longing to be here at the opening of the hatbox. Here’s his ration book. He has extra sugar stamps—”

  She walked up and down, counting the stamps, “I can make some preserves, he doesn’t need sugar in a hotel—”

  Mrs. Downs said icily, “Mr. Grant gives all his sugar stamps to me.”

  “To you—what the?—Oh, well, I’m sorry. He ought to divide them up. Does he bring you tea and marmalade too? What a guy! A pinch of sugar and a pennyworth of tea, eh? Old style Briton, he is. I see you’re—in on the game—not worth it. Fair words butter no parsnips. Who the heck wants buttered parsnips? Or any kind of parsnips? What are parsnips? So the sugar stamps are your territory. What else do you take in? Meat coupons? Don’t you get enough at home? I buy black market; sorry, but I can’t help it. I help the war effort other ways—what other ways? Search me! I buy bonds, I’m forced to, for the business. That’s enough. And if you come out to my place or send someone out with a hand cart, I’ll give you a bundle of old bras and girdles, and God knows what—Can you get face tissues? That’s something I miss. What’s the good of saying you can do without face tissues because they had a civil war in Spain? That’s what Grant says. Crazy argument. In the old days they didn’t wear clothes, either. I’m not hardhearted—it’s a mess!”

  At this moment the door to the bedroom opened and Mrs. Grant came out, looking very neat and mild. Livy stared and cried, “Gilbert, who in creation is that?”

  Mrs. Grant was carrying the hatbox. She stared indignantly at Mrs. Downs, and with ladylike coldness at the black-haired hoyden. She put the hatbox on the center table.

  “This is my mother! Mother, this is Miss Livy Wright.”

  “So pleased! I heard voices and thought that your father had come back.”

  “Oh, I don’t think he’ll be back for some time.”

  “Why not? They could send the keys up! Do you think you should wait, Mrs. Downs?”

  “The apartment seems to be a bit overcrowded,” said Livy, who had been staring insistently at Mrs. Grant. “Like the Pincian Hill and the chicken farm! And the cheese farm in Normandy.”

  Mrs. Downs said, “But I should not dream of living in such places. I intend to spend my summers on the Lago di Como; and in winter we shall go to Pontresina, St. Moritz.”

  “Does everyone do the same thing in Europe?”

  Mrs. Grant picked up the ration book and said, “Gilbert, your father has not used his sugar stamps. That is a good thing. I can make some preserves. He just throws them away, I suppose.”

  “No, he gives them to Mrs. Downs.”

  “What for?” said Mrs. Grant, suspiciously.

  “To make preserves for Britain,” said Mrs. Downs.

  “Oh-ho-ho, that’s the best yet!” said Livy.

  “But I thought you didn’t know my husband.”

  “Only through the Goodwins.”

  Livy said, “What, do you know the Goodwins, too?”

  “They’re my closest friends—perhaps.”

  “Have you ever seen—” she looked at Mrs. Grant and then went on brusquely—“this woman, a blonde, who is in trouble, a perfect so-and-so, she seems to me, he calls her a swindler, a cheat, fraud, and bought woman? Do you know her? Everyone seems to stick by her. I can’t understand it.”

  Mrs. Downs answered, “I know her; but she’s not like that. She’s a really nice woman who has had a lot of misfortune, but she lives modestly and earns her own living. She has had bad luck, but she has plenty of courage and in equity she should collect damages, not the husband.”

  “You speak like her lawyer.”

  “I could be. I know all about it, all—more than I can tell you.”

  “I can’t believe it. It doesn’t sound like her! What he says about her is fantastic—but he seems to like—men that age seem to like bad women and cheats and rotters. I’d like to see her and make up my mind. But I know enough! It’s disgraceful! Well, are you staying long in New York, Mrs. Grant?”

  “I don’t know,” said the wife through close lips, looking aside.

  “Well, I’m blowing, and give my love to Mrs. Barbara Kent, your dear friend, and tell her I think she’s a rattlesnake.”

  Livy looked at the woman sharply, started to laugh, and while she was putting on her things, looked back and forth at the woman, then said, “You’re not Mrs. Barbara Kent, by any chance, are you?”

  The blonde did not answer.

  “You have the hair knot, you have the hat, by God, that’s the kind of hat!” Livy laughed roughly. “I see there is only one house on the Pincian Hill. It’s quite a lonely spot, after all, perhaps. I’m blowin’. Gilbert, I’ll telephone your sweet papa tomorrow or the next day. I’ll be downstairs tomorrow as arranged at six-thirty to see about this business of Swiss watches. Tell him I can arrange for a hundred dozen: and some to go to Venezuela and some to Chile. And tell him I fixed up the three-way affair with the Argentine and Switzerland. Will you remember? Good-bye, ladies.”

  “Good-bye! Your father is a long time at the locksmith. I think you should go and fetch him,” said Mrs. Grant.

  “Mother, let me take you out to dinner; Father will not be in till midnight.”

  “Why didn’t you say so before?”

  “I only just recalled!”

  “And will Mrs. Downs stay here?”

  “Oh, no! I must come back.”

  47

  When the blonde woman had gone, Mrs. Grant said, “This is very tiring. Where are you taking me to dinner, Gilbert? And where am I to sleep?”

  Gilbert said angrily, “Did you like those women, Mother?”

  “Gilbert, don’t bother me now. Of course I didn’t like them. I thought the first was a lady, but I am not sure; and the other screamed her lungs out, like a fishwife. I can see as well as you that they are hanging round your father, for of course I do not believe that Mrs. Downs only met him once. But it is a boring subject, and I prefer not to discuss it.”

  “But, Mother, don’t you want to do something? It seems to me either you are married or not married. It is a question of personal honor. You are such a sweet woman, Mother dear, an angel, but there’s Dad, too. A man cannot live alone. You must think of him, too.”

  “I should not worry about it. Most things are better left unsaid.”

  “But this lofty attitude, Mother, i
s actually wrong, because you are encouraging Dad to lead a life of his own. One could not blame him if—” he waved his hand—“the woman sees him alone! A man can get into messes.”

  “I should not bother my head about that if I were you, Gilbert. There is absolutely nothing to worry about. If those women run after your father, I do not want to think about it. It destroys my peace of mind. I love my tranquillity. I can only manage to get proper rest by ignoring many things, my dear boy, though if I liked to think about it, like other people, my life would seem a real tragedy, an agony, a pure waste. But I think discretion is the better part of valor.”

  “What will you do if some woman gets hold of Father? Mother, you shut your eyes to the consequences of a man’s living alone.”

  “There are many things in life I prefer to shut my eyes to. You will find that after a while they go away, they go up in smoke. These things are not important. I am philosophical. We are such stuff as dreams are made of and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

  “If you will not see, Mother—that it is wrong—”

  She laughed, a high, clear tinkle, like the tinkle of china in a large room. She put her hand on her son’s sleeve and laughed girlishly. She clutched his sleeve and put her handkerchief to her mouth. Then seeing his indignant look, her merriment went down and she said, “My dear, I know your father! He’s a very dull, quiet man, with no initiative. When he comes home, the rare times he does, I get quite tired of seeing him sitting around, moping in a chair with nothing to say. He eats anything that’s put before him and never asserts himself. He doesn’t even speak in the right tone to the servants, but in such a subdued way that I’m quite ashamed. I am always simply exhausted when Robert is about. He goes out for the papers and comes back. Then, almost at once he wants to go to sleep. He sleeps half the time. If we go out to visit Uncle Bernard or Grandfather, or my friends, he sits there for two hours without opening his mouth, and then if he’s asked a question point-blank, he just grumbles, ‘Yes, yes,’ as if it hurt him to get it out. I am not at all proud of my husband. If they ask him what he does in New York, he says, ‘I read the paper and go to bed early.’