A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  “I assure you his visits are not very pleasant for me, but I must insist on seeing him sometimes, for Andrew’s sake. I think if in the beginning I had pushed him a bit he would have gone farther and made more money, I have plenty of backbone, I have all the will power there is between the two of us—but why should I? I told him once, ‘I could push you into something,’ but I cannot push a man; it is for him to take the initiative. But your father has no enterprise, and so I gave it up as a bad job. My life has not been as quiet and humdrum as you suppose.”

  Gilbert looked at his mother, dumfounded.

  She continued, “Yes, I know what you are going to say, what Aunt Martha says, that I should have done more, but he is a dead weight round my neck. I was so happy and contented as a girl, and imagined I should be well looked after when I married. Everyone said Robert had promise and talent, but I have never seen a spark of fire since we married—the first couple of years, of course. He soon slumped down into the house-slippers style, just as so many men do. If I had married a brilliant, lively man with character and will power, I should have been much happier. I could have done something myself. I should not have minded—even perhaps not really minded—if he had not been thoroughly honest, a bit of a charming rascal, for it does seem strange that honest people like your father are so dull and mousy.”

  “Mother, that’s not a bit like Father really is—”

  “You don’t know. You never lived at home. You were always at school. Another thing I disapproved of. But he said children made too much noise in the house. That’s another thing, he’s so neurotic. He should be psychoanalyzed, I think. He is always afraid he has an enemy in Boston. As soon as he comes, he wants to go, because he says someone is going to get him, he has a feeling in his spine.”

  “Does he tell you why?”

  “He won’t answer the door or the telephone, but runs into the bathroom and puts his head in the clothes bag!”

  “The laundry bag?”

  “And, Gilbert, I feel a man should be spick-and-span, and your father goes everywhere with a two days’ beard and never changes his shirt—all through the Christmas season. If you knew the humiliations that man gives me. His table manners are shocking—he eats with his fingers and sucks up his soup.”

  “Mother, he never does that, never! Father has excellent manners.”

  “Don’t idealize your father. I need someone to understand me and what I have gone through all these years. If I had married a man of good education and breeding, who looked after himself—Your father—I hate to say it—doesn’t even wash—and has dirty hands at table—and he eats raw onions—oh, it is a shame to tell you, but you must know sometime.”

  “I never heard such a story in my life.”

  “You see, you don’t know what I go through. I simply sleep all day both before your father comes and after he goes away. It upsets me so.”

  “Raw onions? The laundry bag?”

  She said coldly, “I should not perhaps say this to you—but you realize he is a stranger to me: I have not had a husband for years.”

  She turned away.

  “I know he rarely goes home, Mother. That is what I am talking about.”

  “How can you understand? Many years ago, when he was about thirty-three, your father got into a taxi accident. The other occupant of the taxi, a Mr. Delafield, by a miracle escaped injury; his eye glasses were broken, that was all. But your father was disabled for life in that way—that way—so that we became strangers.”

  “Oh—I—he told you?”

  “He was obliged to tell me himself. I was too young and innocent. I did not know the whole story—what it meant to my life.” She put her hand to her face.

  “Oh, it’s—look, let’s go to dinner. Dad will be up soon, perhaps, and I don’t want to meet him just now.”

  “Why not? I upset you? Let’s go to a nice quiet place and you’ll feel better. I blame myself, but it is time you knew something about life.”

  “You will never know as much about life as I know at this moment,” said Gilbert, impressively.

  48

  Some hours later, Gilbert was sitting on a folding cot that the hotel had brought for him, in the disorderly sitting room of his father’s apartment. He had just come back from taking his mother to the Pickwick, where—after some slight argument with the Walkers, who had already moved in—she had, for the night, Gilbert’s old room. Robert Grant, in a very good frame of mind, with a cheerful eye, was pouring out for his son a large dose of Scotch whisky and saying, “But no more, Gilbert. Three is enough, so late.”

  The son rudely held out his hand and gripped the glass. He scratched his shoe gloomily. At last he took up, “Now this question of the hatbox, as I was saying—”

  “All right, my boy, all right. Leave the hatbox alone. You said your say. Leave it to the morning. Get your sleep.”

  “Oh, you’re as bad as Mother with your eternal sleep-sleep.”

  The father looked at him in a lively manner and in a minute reprimanded him for speaking so of his mother: “—an angel, a good mother, a sweet wife.”

  “Cut the comedy,” said Gilbert.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I know everything about you—I’ll never know any more about life than I know now. There can’t be any more to learn.”

  “Who told you everything—about me?”

  “Mother—about the laundry bag—”

  “The laundry bag?”

  “About the raw onions, about the whiskers, the accident in the taxi—”

  “The taxi accident? Which one?”

  “Long ago—with Delafield—”

  “Oh, Lord! Did she tell you that? Some women will blab anything. Oh-ho-ho! That’s ripe, eh? That’s choice. What do you think of it, eh? You know that was unnecessary. She was not right. Women are coarser than men.”

  “At home you are a dull and unclean old man; here with your favorites, and in low company, with stock-exchange runners, you use cosmetics. But with honest and respectable people, with whom you could count, you must show your worst side. It’s incomprehensible.”

  “That’s what it seems to you,” said the older man, indulgently.

  “The truth of you is what I just heard. I thought you had glitter, I was taken in by your glamor, I saw you throwing money around. I’ve just discovered the other side. I feel I’ve been a child.”

  “You’ve had a shock.”

  “I’m the son of a woman with sleeping sickness and a man who puts on greasepaint to show better under the street lamp with whores.”

  “What does this mean?” Grant said dangerously.

  “I saw you just now in the street—while Mother was here and your favorites were here—waiting—and then—I saw everything. And then this story about the taxi—everything is rotten!”

  “You’re drunk, son. Look!”

  He picked up and shook the hatbox. “Put down your glass!”

  The young man did so, sulking.

  Grant said, genially, “This is an old hatbox! It came from Benjamin Bungay, your grandfather, who built the firm of Bacon and Bungay. Look at the workmanship! The leather is as solid as iron. This was for one of those old-fashioned tophats like—Lincoln wore. You’ve seen that?”

  “And what’s in it—an old-fashioned tophat, a relic from the court of Queen Victoria?”

  “A man pulls a rabbit out of a hat—on the stage. I wear greasepaint, you say. You mean suntan; you say that’s wrong. You have ideas about right and wrong which are childish. If I wear greasepaint and I don’t look an old man, I am not an old man. You are childish. You’ll wear greasepaint one day—some sort. You’ll smear up your conscience, I know you. You’re like Benjamin Bungay and your mother. Ha-ha. I do too. Is it wrong? Ten years ago, you did not know there was any right or wrong. Now every day you make a fresh decision: this is right, that is wrong. You have the mania of making decisions. Even your mother never makes any. You think you’re an adult—You will only be an adult when
you have no more such decisions to make, when you have forgotten the questions. Yes-no, yes-no, is that a man of action! This is a British hatbox and like the old-time British, it is a solid hatbox and they don’t make their equal today. Also, it isn’t necessary. That isn’t right or wrong; it’s the way things are. Now, my dear boy, you haven’t the slightest idea how things are.”

  “I learned enough today to last me a lifetime.”

  “You learned nothing today. But you will not go to bed this evening—without learning—everything I can teach you. You’re a different man from myself.”

  “It’s because you’re an old man and I’m young.”

  The father frowned, but his face cleared and a kind of tender merriment swam into it. The sun rose on it. He said, “You know, Abe Lincoln had a big hat, and Steve Douglas had a little hat. Abe Lincoln used his hat for carrying his papers. Gettysburg Address—was in his head, then in his hat. Campaign against Douglas was in his hat. Then in the box. I got nothing from nobody. Your mother married under a separation agreement. All I have was in my head—then in my hatbox! Ha-ha!”

  He unlocked the hatbox, opened it, and stood looking into it for a minute, with an intent, speculative expression. The young man started to rise.

  Grant shouted, “You’ll stay where you are. You’ll see—”

  He got out a wad of papers and he began searching through them. They were in no sort of order. Letters, photographs, telegrams, bills, were mixed with stock receipts and titles to real estate and with lawyers’ letters. Grant held out a paper which he seized upon in the first pile, “That is my list of holdings! David Flack’s handwriting. You can believe him. He got it up the other day.”

  Before the young man could glance at the three typed pages, Grant tore it out of his hands and folded it, adding: “I always carry a big position, something to think about, mostly conservative, because I’m not a natural bear. They bring me in upswings eighty-five thousand dollars net, yearly. Last year, that fella Flack, he’s a bear, gave me the wrong advice, I dropped three thousand dollars at the year-end, no presents, had to go to Boston for Christmas. There’s the title to the Boston house, not ours, the one your Aunt Sally lives in; that’s the house I own in Brookline, I built it myself. I made the plans myself, intended to live there at first, but didn’t get on with your mother’s relatives. Never mind. See this, ‘With reference to the property at No. 29 —— Street,’ Jigago that is—don’t read it, just look, date March 25, 1945—yesterday—what business am I in? How did I make my money? You want to get some of it for your comic-strip film business—how do I make the money you want to get hold of?”

  “In cotton?”

  “In cotton, he says—in cotton, like a summer shirt—Here! Plaquet and Grant, Cotton Brokers, Jigago; Bungay and Grant, Ltd., Liverpool; Filatures Grant, Lyon, France; Grant, Cotton Dealers, Genoa, Milan, Cotton Union (Georgia) Inc.; Grant & Co., Rio de Janeiro—Grant, Grant, Grant, me, me, me—us! In Jigago, two hundred thousand dollars; in Liverpool eighty thousand pounds sterling, fully paid up; in Lyon five hundred thousand prewar francs; in Genoa and Milan, five million lire; in Cotton Union, eighty-five thousand dollars; in New York, fifty thousand dollars with Samson; in New Bedford, a little firm, ten thousand dollars. Here are the agreements for you and Andrew—twenty-five thousand dollars upon arriving at the age of twenty-five, subject to, of course—subject to our agreement, you will get yours in three months; we have to agree. Andrew has to wait a little, not a business type too. The farm in Pennsylvania, valued—thirty-three thousand dollars; the farm in Normandy, valued one hundred and eighty thousand gold francs; here’s the fur business—never mind that—raw furs, St. Louis—sorry I ever touched it, that fella Goodwin is a plague, a blackmailer; that Delafield never did me any good, all a mistake. I dropped three thousand dollars last month; had to pay it, too, he quarreled with his brother, no good. No business sense, never quarrel with a member of your family in business. Your mother began with forty thousand dollars which I never touched, not a penny, marriage agreement; no sense to it, but there it is. An estate in Rome worth fifty thousand dollars (he mumbled a name) and a farm in the campagna if I can ever get it back, don’t belong to her, I O U’s: those are subsidiary, the house in Rome, a place in Liverpool, small rows of houses, Dublin, never mind, just sentiment, those are baked beans, not interesting. You needn’t worry your head.

  “Now, I ask of you only that you put your hand to the plow and help me a bit—I have no one but you and it’s going to be Grant & Grant, no nephew, no cousin, no women, no chiselers, no Flacks—let them sleep easy, thinking they’re going to get a chip! Not they! They love me for myself or not at all. I’ll be gone before your brother grows up and he’s neurotic anyway. I’ll see it never goes out of our hands. Let your mother stick to the Bungay money: that’s the way she arranged it when we got married. Didn’t like it, right away. Well—probably was a left-handed compliment, in a way. All that—my boy—an empire, a bit scattered now; but that’s because the war scatters empires, but this is too little for them to bother about. I exist under the fascists, the Nazis. Someone holds on to it for me. Di Giorgio hid in the mountains two years, and holds on to my property for me, has my titles. Loyalty, eh? So he holds on to it for you, if it’s yours. Not one empire will stand up after this war, not even mine, perhaps, though. That’s why I want you to stick to the day-old chicks, too. A hedge. Always must have a hedge. No gambling. If you gamble you must be ready to cut your throat. That’s impractical! You can stay alive too, and not pay the fella. I’m an old man and dirty, huh? Have dirty nails, eat raw onions, eh? I live my own life and I have no use for any Bungay or Bacon or any other name living. You are nearly my sole heir. That Andrew will perhaps never live to grow up. Can’t say, all things told, I’d be sorry. A neurotic. The entire forchun, the Grant Estates, will go to you. You’ll think of me, at any rate. Think of me on my birthday. But now you must work for it—fair enough, eh? Never mind how I do my hair in Boston, or whether I put on a clean shirt Christmas Day. Keep your nose pointed to the essentials. Ha-ha—raw onion—oh-ha-ha—and she told you about the laundry bag—oh—”

  “But you don’t know how Mother feels—”

  “Oh-ho—I don’t know? If she had had a man with talent, she would have done uncommonly well—eh?”

  He went off into a series of laughs.

  The young man said, “But aren’t you throwing your money away? Is that businesslike? Aren’t you throwing away thousands and thousands every year? And why are the farms so scattered? Why don’t you buy a row of houses like Benjamin Bungay, not one here, one there, one in Rome?”

  Grant became engaging, “Let me throw it away! It’s mine. Why, my dear boy, why should I leave even you a cent? We have no such law here. I could leave you a pauper and even Upton would have a better claim to the chicken farm; and you sue for it! I could leave it to old maids and old dogs and cats—to my little pay-girls, Janet, Katia, all the rest—I could leave it to your brother, or your mother, or your grandfather, or the Flacks or Mrs. MacDonald, old servants, if I wanted to. It’s mine. I can throw it out the window and go bankrupt, and give it to Livy Wright or Mrs. Downs, or use it for toilet paper and throw it down the drain—if I want to. It is mine! I made it! I can lose it! Do you know what that means? In your terms? In my terms too? I can lose it—but I won’t!”

  He put a hand on the shoulder of his tipsy son and smiled radiantly, almost innocently, “Don’t worry! But I want you to run the farm, no movie-educational films; show me what you can do. The investment’s already there—no new investment. Your cousin Upton is writing very nasty letters, has something of the blackmailer, surprises me very much, don’t want the guy around, must get rid of him, need someone to protect me, only a Grant, that’s my motto, from now on, only a Grant. All I’ve got in this world; no bloody ’ooman, want to shake you down, want to promote you. You think you know the way of the world? Wait till you get to my age, the way of the world will be clear—but I don’t want you t
o make the mistakes, and then you’re not the same type—you’re my son, don’t have to, since I blazed the trail. I’ll tell you the way of the world: the money don’t belong to the do-nothings, they get it, it’s deeded to them, trust funds, protected, sewed up, no good, the constructive boys get it anyway, you can’t be like your mother. Slept her life through. She’s blind, like all do-nothings. You learn when you have to fight someone for a profit. If someone had handed you caviar on a shovel you could remain blind all your life. You’re not going to inherit yours the soft way—not for you, not for you, for it, for the money—and then, I don’t give a damn if you do get it that way, I’ll arrange so there are no loopholes, no booby-traps—there has to be one exception—and then, mark you, I don’t care if you go to pieces when I’m gone—but wait till I’m gone and don’t tell me I need a hair restorer now, damn you, like the other day.” He laughed.

  Gilbert flushed and started to speak.

  Grant hesitated, frowned, “I’m joking, that’s a joke. If I weren’t sure you wouldn’t waste a cent, I wouldn’t let you stick your nose inside the farm—and you won’t yet, inside the hatbox! Ha-ha. I don’t want any ne’er-do-well, I don’t want an artist, can’t count, no good. You can only get on yourself on five thousand dollars next year if I’m not satisfied—the rest will be doled out to you if you don’t make good. I’ll explain to you my reason for everything—I’ll be fair. Everyone has to learn. I’ll teach you the signboards. Then you must learn to drive: and avoid the hairpin bends and the closed roads and the dead-ends.”

  He waved his arms, went about chuckling, daintily avoided the stuff on the floor, then suddenly gave it a kick, saying, “I’ll get the damn Walkers out, only pay two hundred dollars, why the hell did I? And they want me to get rid of Mrs. MacDonald: she’s too old, can’t work. No heart, no sentiment. Don’t like them.” He stood still, his arms akimbo, faced the boy, sagged his head in his collar, said, with rolling eye, “You must not analyze the way you do in public, not even at all—it must be instinct. Train yourself to listen to instinct. Instinct is always right because before we had brains we had to have instinct, so it must be right—no wrong switches. No analysis in public. Doesn’t look smart. If you know already, you don’t analyze. If you know something, you don’t tell others.