A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  “Twenty dollars for a man and woman: in slave days they got more.”

  They wrangled.

  Grant became very angry with Flack, whom he thought of as standing in his way. He shouted, “You’re trying to get me and Gilbert into this. Your idea is not to get him out but to get me in. All you radicals are social blackmailers. Not to get him out. It’s a simple thing, isn’t it, to go to them and say, ‘Here are ten dollars and you get ten dollars when you get him out’? Why won’t you do it for me, as a favor?”

  They parted in irritation. Flack said he would go down South and get the young man and Celia out himself with his own money, with the permission of the Congress. Grant was soothed by this and told Flack to telegraph him from the South—“Telegraph to Miss Robbins, not to me, for the boy’s sake, I don’t want the name mentioned, and call him—call him—Jack.”

  “All right, if you want it that way.”

  “Telegraph to Miss Robbins and call him Jack. And her, Barb—I said she was a red, by God,” he said, and burst out laughing, but would not explain it.

  The morning Flack left for the South, Edda telephoned Grant at David’s request to say good-bye and promise that they would telegraph Miss Robbins with the name “Sinclair,” which Grant had requested. After delivering this message, Edda said, “And here is a message from me. Do not weep for me, I am going along. I’m calling in at Washington where I have got a job in the foreign-language service of the Commerce Department. I hope to get through the interview successfully, and then, Robbie, we’ll wipe your dust from our boots. I’m going to tell you now what I think of you—you ruined Papa and you ruined a lot of people. You promise them joy in the Never-Never but they work for you in the here and now. I know your game. I know your Land of Canaan. My memory’s good. I’m taking charge of Papa and I substitute myself for Robert Grant. You don’t have to bother about us any more. Keep your farms! Keep your honey. I saw enough etchings at any rate—”

  “Don’t say that, my girl, don’t talk like that, I understand you, when it’s a question of your father you’re up in arms, you’d do anything, it’s just like a tiger with her young, I understand perfectly, you misunderstood me completely with the Land of Canaan—”

  He stopped, laughed a little, tenderly, proceeded, “Rely on me, my dear girl, and don’t get bitter at your age. If you need anything, I understand you, you’re young, you’re bitter, no boyfriend, you’re Presbyterian you say, thin hair, big nose, you’re bitter, if you need anything, telegraph Miss Robbins and sign Sinclair. I’ll see about it. I’ll take it to the Congress. I’ll tell them, ‘Here are two impartial outsiders taking your side, get in touch with Marcantonio, get in touch with anyone you like, send a telegram to Congress, I’ll pay for it, they’re helping out my boy, they’re outsiders, you got him into this, you help him; I’ll do what I can.’”

  “I’m dying laughing! I can’t help it. Well, good-bye,” said Edda.

  “Look, my dear girl, if you’ve got some grievance against me, let me know, I don’t like things done in the dark.”

  “I’ll let you know, you’ll hear from me, we’ll have a little chat,” said she. Laughing, she rang off.

  Grant had a bad day. In the evening he saw the blonde Mrs. Downs, told her the whole story of his relations with the Flacks. He said, “Flack’s all right, in his way; I sort of like him, but I hate her, she’s bitter and she has no romance. She doesn’t understand me and she’s bad-natured.”

  “You shouldn’t have let them mix in this Southern affair, they’ll involve you,” said the blonde.

  This idea kept him awake many hours.

  “You keep right out of it, they’ll only involve you and it’ll cost you thousands. What is he but a spoiled young swine who never listens to a word you say, but goes off with all kinds of women, leads a libertine life, and calls it some idealism? Are you really taken in by Gilbert? You spoil him, I don’t blame him, I don’t say he’s bad, and then when he gets in a jam you allow two people I wouldn’t trust, two leftists, to go down South and represent you. You must be mad. You’ll be in this for thousands, I say. Keep out of it. Wipe your boots and say good-day. If they telegraph, don’t answer. Don’t go near the Congress. They’ll get the boy out, but let it be on their own hook. I’m tired of seeing you throw your money at everyone who asks for it, and buying cocktails for every bought woman and man like Goodwin. Keep out of it. They’ll survive. You can’t save the whole world. They’ll get on without you. Take my advice.”

  He was torn between his duty to his son and the good sense he found in the blonde. He had not realized that the Flacks would expect a contribution from him for their services, and for lawyers for Gilbert and Celia and probably later, if it became a newspaper item, for the Congress. How would he get out of it? People would come round sympathizing and asking for checks. He resolved not to go to the Congress and not to offer them ten dollars in a check or in bills. He had no foresight. He arose in great physical misery, dizzy, his heart beating wild. He walked up and down his disordered apartment, thinking of his ruined hopes of having a quiet place with his son, of Celia Grimm who had denied him, of everything that had happened. From what did all this misery come? From whom? He was a rich man, with plenty of friends and a good business, people came to him for loans. From whom did it come? Some enemy? Some fool? Some bad luck? He suffered. Upton wanted to give up the chicken farm for some girl. Gilbert was in jail for some girl. Flack was a slave of his daughter, this adder-tongued Edda. The blonde wanted him—she should have him. She alone had shown loyalty. He could actually feel his brain burning, it seemed to him; he could feel a network of fire. Would he get brain fever? Everyone deserted him. What harm did he do—ever? To anyone? He only thought of doing kindnesses to people. He promised them this, that, and the other, whatever they needed, in the kindness of his heart. If he couldn’t perform, it was physically impossible. Who else had worried that much about that crowd? He laughed bitterly, “To hell with them all; I don’t mean them any good and they’ll get no good out of me. What did any of them do for me? It’s all out of cupidity they stick to me. I have the art of waking up their cupidity even if they have none. If they have none I plant it in them. To hell with them.”

  When he got to the office, he found Miss Robbins with one telegram addressed to her and signed “Sinclair.” He said, “It’s a mistake, burn it, and if any more come, burn them. Don’t let me hear any more about it.”

  52

  He bought all the papers but was too impatient to read them. The blondine, whom he saw at night (putting off Mrs. Grant and the Goodwins, who were having a party), irritated him beyond endurance, in detailing the crimes of his friends. When he went home he determined to punish the Flacks for having got him into this intolerable situation. He wrote a letter to the Department in which Edda was to be a foreign-language secretary and told them what he knew about her, that she was immoral and a Communist and had gone down South to join a friend of hers, Celia Grimm, at present in jail in —— County. He told the views of Celia Grimm which he had heard, he said, from Edda Flack. When this went off—he walked far to post the letter so that it would not appear to have come from the district of his present hotel—he felt easier in mind and that night he slept better. It was the Flacks, he thought, who had tormented him and led Gilbert into this. To the blonde alone was he able to tell what he had done, he knew it would have her approval.

  “Get rid of them, get rid of them,” she said several times, and suddenly burst into a denunciation of him, putting on his shoulders all her sorrows as a woman. He was unable to bear it in his present lonely, bare state, and kept repeating, “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

  She at once told him certain things he must do: get rid of the Flacks, for good and all; get rid of Spatchwood, a man now whining and begging for the payment of the outstanding bills for the partly remodeled house in the St. Lawrence; send Mrs. Grant back to Boston; send Gilbert to the farm and not even $5,000 unless—and so forth.

&nb
sp; He was pleased to have a program, for his affairs had reached an unhappy, aimless state. In the morning he wrote letters in his own style, to fill in the program they had made up the night before. He also wrote a letter to Laura telling her that he hoped the house was in order, for he hoped to come and see her after the war, talk things over with her and try to get themselves back to the old happy basis.

  The next day Flack came back from the South, twinkling with his diplomatic and oratorical success in getting young Grant and Celia, too, out of jail. He had brought them back with him. He sat for an hour in Grant’s office and vociferated joyously, that young Grant was a credit to the family, like those young fellows who—sensing the turn of opinion, sensing that a disunited country, a set of old realms, was turning into a modern democratic nation—started to give up privilege and profit, were real men, “Don’t tell me men can’t change—or perhaps they can’t, but give them only a chance to prove they’re human beings, with decent feelings, and they’ll give up money, and even their future and even their homes, to do something creative, constructive, as you say, Robbie, for the world—you’ve gone and got yourself a son like that. I’ll wager you didn’t mean to, you old bastard, but you shouldn’t sow words on the wind, someone hears. You talk daily about socialism and now you’ve got yourself an honest son. And so whatever you do with your money, Robbie, one day it’ll have a good use. Of course, I don’t guarantee the future of any young man with Gilbert’s expectations. A young man’s a liberal just because his father is sitting on the dough, and he can become stricter than ever the old man was, once he pockets it—I don’t say Gilbert is an angel, but he shows good signs. It just shows—free people from pecuniary worries, without spoiling them, and they’re good-hearted, willing to brave terror for a cause—or even a woman, as you’re always saying. Why, he’s your son, after all. You wanted to reconstruct Poland for a woman and he wants to reconstruct the South for a woman—if you want to put it in those chivalrous terms.”

  “For a woman, for a woman,” said Grant a number of times, frowning and looking ill-pleased. When Flack left, he dictated a couple of letters to Miss Robbins, and then muttered to her energetically, “That man’s no good, always trying to involve me, very inconsiderate. Sticks to nothing. Has no sense of measure. Question is sense of measure. I don’t want any monkey business with Gilbert. Let him attend to business; he got me in plenty of jams. No sense of measure. Take this letter:

  Dear Spatchwood,

  I am sorry you let yourself in for a lot of expense about a house in the St. Lawrence, I never saw this house and could not have been interested in it and am sorry, as I see that you were so unbusinesslike as to go ahead and get specifications, etc., from architects, plumbers, carpenters. I must tell you that I am sorry to see an old friend in trouble, but I do not see that I am responsible. I see the letter you enclose. This letter was signed not by me but by David Flack. Kindly get in touch with him. He may have been undertaking this business on his own account, and I see he uses my letterhead, but believe me, I can do nothing for you. My commitments are large at present and I receive no monies from abroad. I have many dependents and many people expect me to help them out in a bad season. If you have no funds you should not have gone ahead on a project like this without confirmation from whomever you supposed to be your principal. If you did it for yourself, then those who went in with you must, I regret to say, suffer financially from having acted without proper commercial inquiry. Please do not write to me again about this house matter.

  In the business of furs, you went beyond your instructions, Goodwin tells me, and have no written order from him, you acted on a telephone message: I know nothing of this. Your hard luck, you’re an old business man. Re the jobbing in steel construction bars, look around for my friend Delafield, see what you can do, I want you to give us some ideas.

  Yours,

  R. O. G.

  [Initialed illegibly only.]

  He then went on to consider the situation of Di Giorgio, one of his managers from Italy, who had just arrived in the United States from Milan and apparently believed that Grant would recompense him for his loyalty during years of trouble, and even think favorably of him because he had been an anti-fascist. He mentioned some promise of Grant’s which Grant could not call to mind, to employ Di Giorgio in one of the new businesses Grant would cause to be established in Brazil, the Argentine, or South Africa. Di Giorgio had been befriended by Laura, had actually lived in her attic for several years, and by her his life had been saved from the fascists, and he was doubly grateful. He had at last escaped to the mountains, then to Milan, and now to Grant, in whom he believed profoundly. He had come to him as an old soldier with scars to his captain.

  Grant first muttered for some half hour about this rashness of Laura, sheltering enemies of the State in his house, where would it get him if reactionary powers took over? He thought there would be ten years’ civil war in Europe before any state settled down. What did Di Giorgio mean by expecting gratitude after having put him in jeopardy like that? Nevertheless, he wrote a curt, vague, sentimental letter to Di Giorgio. His ex-manager replied at once, effusively; he would work for very little, in order to get a start, and would work at anything in Grant’s employ.

  Grant liked this letter, carried it about with him, and thought of it. Miss Robbins had the key to all his files, and even knew most of the material in the hatbox, for he had had Laura’s letters all copied by Miss Robbins, and other such letters. Not only Livy Wright, but the blonde too, had insisted that it was unsafe to let one woman know so much and an unmarried woman at that—“One day she will take you over, that’ll be the cake of soap you slip on.” He was becoming more timorous, had begun to notice, as he had never noticed, Miss Robbins’ objections to his various small and, to him, amusing, innocent conspiracies. She was stiff, starched “Presbyterian,” that was true. Supposing she met some man? She was still very good-looking in a Presbyterian way. Grant had quite enough of petty blackmail, with the Goodwin affair. Thus he presently reasoned himself into dismissing Miss Robbins, with three months’ pay, saying, “I want to be fair to you, but I don’t have much business now, it doesn’t pay me, I’m going to Rome, too.”

  He had paid Miss Robbins $50 a week for some years past. He now was able to install Di Giorgio in the office, at $35 weekly, promising him a job in New Orleans or Buenos Aires very soon, as soon as things political quieted down.

  Grant kept on occupying March’s flat; meanwhile, Walker and Goodwin used the Pickwick Hotel place. This was the first Christmas that Grant did not go to Boston. March paid the servants at the flat and Walker and Goodwin gave the traditional tips to the people at the Pickwick: thus Grant had little reason for putting himself out so far as to go home. He also felt he could not leave the neighborhood of the blonde in the continuing crisis. She announced to him every day that Downs was going to sue on such and such a day, that the lawyer had filed papers, that the matter was coming up in court, that it was actually on the calendar and such things; and although advised by everyone to fly, Grant found it impossible to do so. He could not give up the excitement of this danger, and he did not want to leave the blonde: he actually wanted to submit to this ordeal with the blonde, even if she had caused the whole trouble, even if he suspected her motives from beginning to end, even if she did not love him, even if he was a laughing-stock to all his friends. It did not seem to be love, for he had a schoolboy’s and seducer’s tin pan alley view of love; but it was the outcome of his deep union with this woman. He was true to her, in their fashion; he was one with her. He could not depart and leave her to this foul and great experience, public shame, by herself. He had left other women to disgrace, and divorce, and had felt no emotions about the previous divorces of Mrs. Downs. He did not even ask himself why he was different, nor know that he was different. At times, the threatened public disgrace with all its side-issues seemed to him the greatest experience he could hope for. It would prove to everyone he was a lover, he was not the kin
d of man they thought, he was greater than they thought. Meanwhile, the blonde woman, with her peculiar hats and handbags, and her flat gleaming eyes, her hollow temples, her childish mask, went about from café to restaurant telling all her intimates the details of the story. Wherever Grant went, he met people who knew the story. It was a base but general triumph. He could not leave it. Yet he still fancied himself “in hiding” because he was in March’s flat; and imagined somehow, that he had to go back to the March-Hoag society, where he could more freely discuss this affair. Here, naturally, they discussed the threatened divorce and gave their advice or offered to act as go-between. In the end, Hoag did apparently settle the matter, by arranging for Downs to withdraw his complaint, for Mrs. Downs to go once more to Reno, and for Grant to pay all expenses of any kind appertaining to this embroiled affair. It was not fair; but Grant had been having these dismaying, enthralling daily conferences with Mrs. Downs for weeks, even months on end, and was incapable for the time of getting out of it.

  He had a strange dream about this time. He dreamed he was walking across muddy fields in wartime. The landscape was dreary: it was winter. He slipped into a mud-wallow and the more he struggled, the deeper he sank, till the slime filled his mouth, ears and nose, and approached his eyes: but he kept on seeing the heaving field. He felt the filth folding him in, in his armpits, round his waist, his limbs. He kept sinking but was not yet submerged. The dream did not fade. He told it to people. He believed it meant, “I am getting lower, I am sinking in mud.”

  53

  Meanwhile, he became possessed of some more property. One day in June, 1944, Livy came from Philadelphia to meet him and begged him to lend her $4,000, which was the sum she owed on the houses she had contracted for in Montague Street, Brooklyn. She had not been able to meet payments and could borrow no more money against her own business in Philadelphia. As the houses were a sort of gauge from her to Grant, she hoped Grant might help her out. She was worn out with anxiety and business cares. She spent her strength, went down as fast as she came up. For old time’s sake she thought Grant would help her, had no doubt: he risked nothing, if the worst came to the worst, he would get the houses from her. Grant, however, refused the loan. He reminded her that he had already been good to her, had done business through her, paid her her commission on the Swiss watches; and that he had warned her against pyramiding, a thing he had never done. He knew she had done it to get him, but why? He had no need of houses. He wanted a woman, not houses. He had too many houses and no real refuge.