A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  Livy had counted on him. She knew him for a straight dealer in business, a joker in personal affairs, but a lover; they had spoken often of their future, their marriage and the arrangement of their properties to suit both parties. She went home and showed quite a different side of her nature. She sent him passionate, pleading letters, and passages of denunciation. He read them with intense interest and even ardor, but at the same time, arranged through an agent to take over the houses unknown to Livy. Presently he had a letter from her in which she said she was losing the houses as she had lost him and would lose her business perhaps; that she had lost heart, did not believe in life, if he could treat her in this manner; that if he did not send a check to save her within forty-eight hours, all would be lost and she would never see him again; that she was brokenhearted. The note was final: she had really given up hope. Grant did not answer the letter; and became possessed of two well-built, somewhat old-fashioned houses in Montague Street, which were sold to him at bargain prices. Livy knew real estate excellently. She had sifted the real estate offerings of the same kind in all New York and had picked out these as a rarity, a real acquisition. Each had at the bottom of the garden, a brick garage with an apartment above it. Each house had been used as a lodging house, and could soon be renovated so as to yield apartments for which he could charge high rents, especially in the present housing hunger. Grant knew all about the houses and their possibilities from Livy. He surveyed the houses and made arrangements for prudent alterations, putting Di Giorgio in charge of all this business. He was gradually getting out of the cotton business, selling out to his partners at an excellent price, and had now enough to employ Di Giorgio. He decided to use him as his factor, at the same salary, but with a promise of ten per cent on rental receipts at the end of the year.

  In June, 1944, Rome fell and it became again possible for him to open a weekly correspondence with Laura Manganesi about the house on the Pincio. He told Laura that manifold business affairs kept him from visiting Rome, and put her off when she spoke of visiting New York to settle her financial affairs with him. Although their arrangement about her American property (which had been alien property and which he had been able to take over) were inavowable, she seemed to have perfect confidence in him and to expect him to give her some reasonable price for what he had taken over. He put off the discussion from month to month. At one time, in the autumn of 1944, when this discussion had been going on in weekly letters for some months, Grant had a letter from Laura’s maid, Lina, a devoted servant of many years’ standing. Lina, a plain, square-set, honest and pious old woman, had always sympathized with Grant and felt that her frivolous mistress had done him too much wrong: “You were a simple, affectionate man and she was a society woman who had too many admirers,” she had told him after their break-up. Lina, in her letter, told Grant that she had served Laura during the war and all the troubles, because it was the best thing to do, and Laura had suffered bravely for her loyalty to an unpopular cause; she had earned the hatred of an elderly police official who had expected to win her at a word. She was still suffering, just as everyone was: she was cold, did not even eat enough. She could have let their house out in small apartments, in rooms, half-rooms, as they did in Rome at present, but she wanted to keep that house, which was Grant’s and hers, in decent condition for Grant’s sake, so as not to destroy its value. It was hard for her. She had a few faithful tenants from before the war, but she could not earn enough; she had taken a job as nurse, and still could not earn enough. She could not afford to keep Lina or even the man who did the heavy work, and was obliged to stoke the furnaces, sweep up the coal, and do the cooking. She did all this very cheerfully and like a brave woman, said Lina, but she had grown older, and now she seemed to have lost hope: she did not believe that Grant would come; or she believed that he would come too late. She believed her old lover would not pay her anything at all, or would only pay her five per cent, which would never be enough. She had actually been to a lawyer and the lawyer had said he could do nothing, her title was not clear. For, said Lina, Mme. Manganesi had thought of selling the house and dividing up the price fairly between Grant and herself. Then she would go to her cousin’s farm and die there. Things were bad. Everything was black-market. Laura could not live. Lina begged Mr. Grant to think about this urgent matter.

  Grant did not answer this letter, but presently wrote to Laura that he could not come to Rome for some long time. Conditions were unsettled, he had to assist his son Gilbert in a new business Gilbert had taken up, technical films, “and you know that I am glad to see some idea take root in that virgin skull.” Following upon this, he wrote to Laura that he had contracted a very unpleasant, even disgraceful, disease and would not be able to frequent honest society for a considerable time and could not think of traveling. The week after this, he wrote to Laura that she must not think of coming to New York, that nationals of enemy countries were hated in the city, and that she would never get her permission in any case. He followed these by other letters. He knew that Lina knew her mistress very well; he trusted to Lina’s letter. He believed Laura could easily die of a broken heart now, and then his title would be clear in Rome.

  He was busy: his days were full. He was even getting enough mail to divide between Di Giorgio and Flack. Flack had established himself with his daughter in a small flat near 125th Street and Broadway, for which the rent was $45 monthly. Edda had not got the job she hoped for in Washington, but on returning to New York City had at once got another job at $60 weekly, so that the Flacks were in no way dependent upon him. From time to time, Grant would take them out to dinner or go to a newsreel with them. Their relations were much as before. Edda was a little more friendly to him than before, having suffered, and needing Grant more than before. Her father was now permanently feeble, with a dangerous, though never painful, malady, and could only work intermittently: the work Grant gave him, Grant’s quarterly accounts, Grant’s personal letters, the affairs of Largo Farm, was quiet work, and although he received no ordinary payment, it was understood that presently, when things were fixed up in Europe, Edda and David would go with Grant to Rome, live there peaceably. David would do Grant’s accounts, act as general factor, and Edda would get a job somewhere, with the Americans no doubt: she knew French and Italian. David needed this security in his present state and Edda now partly trusted Grant. They had no attraction for each other as man and woman, but each was tired of the long contest of wills.

  One day, when lunching with March and Hoag at the Bankers’ Club, March smiled between his hanging jowls and said quietly, “There’s a fellow in town asking for you, Mr. Hilbertson, seems anxious to meet you, seems very anxious to meet you. I didn’t give him your address: not my affair.”

  After a hesitation, Grant replied, with a slight flush, “Can’t have anything to say to me: a has-been, oldtimer; knew him twenty years ago. Lost touch.”

  “He said, his opinion seemed to be, that he had some unfinished business.”

  “Don’t remember any. If that’s so, let him come to me, let him come to me.”

  “He was very anxious to come at you, he said.”

  “Let him come to me, then.”

  “He seemed to have something on his mind, not my affair. I didn’t tell him your address. Said he was in Boston, you weren’t there. He seems genuinely anxious to meet you.”

  Grant was silent, but looked suspiciously at March. March added, “He had a band on his arm: I hear his wife passed away last month.”

  “Sorry to hear that, sorry, sorry! He was very fond of her.” Grant became as if doubtful and drooping.

  There were days when Grant, released from business and with too much spare time on his hands, had fits of depression. In one of these he wrote to Laura:

  My dear Laura,

  Here is five hundred dollars which I send you because I heard you were not too well off. Spend it wisely. Money is never too easy to acquire. I have been very sick with headaches, and wish I could see you, you always
had something for that. Also, my wife is here, so much to do. My son, Gilbert, I never depended on him, suddenly left me with the farm on my hands and went to Hollywood with a certain Sergey, to make educational films. He won’t do anything by it. I know him: he’ll soon come begging. In the meantime, much expense. Must get someone else to run my farm, I have in view Upton, a reliable person, who got married recently to a woman who wants money. As to Di Giorgio, you know him, but I think he has degenerated during the war. It happens: we mustn’t ask too many questions of those who went through fascism. He told me much about you and so I send you the five hundred dollars, a present, why not? I am glad to do something. I don’t expect to be in Europe for a year. I am not well. Something spinal. Better look out for a buyer, sell the best you can and we will discuss the results. You will get your percentage on the sale.

  [Signed illegibly] R. G.

  Laura, upon receiving this, went to bed, could make no business deals, and was very easily persuaded to sign all necessary documents to get rid of the house to the third party. She then went with a friend to Tripoli, in Libya, with the intention of not returning, thus leaving her farm in the hands of her incompetent relatives. It was thought generally that soon she would have no place to come back to. Grant instructed Santelli, a former Roman employee, who had been hiding in the mountains from the fascists, and had now returned, to look into the matter. If one could save it for Laura, well and good; if it were sold at public auction, then one must take care of it, see it did not pass into alien hands. He would give Santelli the money to buy it in, though not Laura, for he did not “want Laura to get any ideas.”

  54

  He began to see something in certain kinds of women that he had not seen before. A woman had laughed at him one evening when he had come into Manetti’s, looking haggard. He now saw that in certain types, these befurred and strange-hatted types, the ringed and powdered ones, their “hard laugh showed their hard hearts.” He never looked at young girls: he had met a few recently with rough tongues. He met every day Mrs. Goodwin, Gussy, a few modest women like that, but the blonde was too much for him. Her way of life was not his. She never rose till twelve or two in the day and he could not help rising, as he had always done, at six-thirty. By three he was fatigued, he wanted to “take a stretch.” And the blonde saw little of him; she was very much in the power of Alexis at that moment. Grant’s wife kept coming to New York to find out what he was doing and had written a letter of complaint to Gilbert, which Gilbert had sent on to his father, with a polite note.

  Grant suddenly gave up the March flat in which he had been all this time and went to live in one of the two Brooklyn houses. This one had already been altered and made modern. He now began to live quietly in the first floor of the house in Montague Street, with Mrs. MacDonald downstairs, a whole apartment to herself. She made his meals, pressed his clothes, darned his socks, “like a mother,” and did all for $40 a month, his theory being that if she wished she could work for the other bachelors in the house. She found the basement humid, could hardly make the beds for the others, had to employ a young schoolgirl to help her, out of her money, yet she stayed with him because he promised that very soon, in the summer, they would go to the farm with Mrs. Goodwin. Mrs. Goodwin would run things and Mrs. MacDonald would have little to do.

  His affair with Mrs. Goodwin continued. He could see she was really in love with him. He was able to get along with her, never giving her anything: this astonished and flattered him. He often felt a bit queer about this relationship and would promise her that she and Alfred would soon go on the chicken farm, Alfred as the manager, she as housekeeper, so that she could look after Alfred’s health. He was very strange, “psychopathic” everyone said, perhaps partly mad—at any rate, almost uncontrollable. Betty would cry to Grant that she had so many, many terrible scenes with Goodwin, and would have left him, as she had threatened, but that Goodwin either à propos of this or of nothing at all, would say, “If you make a move to leave me, not that I want you so much, but I don’t intend to let that whore-master get you, if you do, I go to the District Attorney.”

  “What have you on him?” Betty asked many times.

  He had not told her until recently, very inflated, convinced that he had done many things of state, for example, that he had supported General de Gaulle and this was the reason for the General’s success. Grant had better beware of him. Grant trembled at this notion, though Betty would clutch his sleeve and repeat, “Don’t you understand that Alf is half-crazy! He told me he is going to finish Mussolini and that you and that blonde are like Mussolini and Clara Petacci and he’ll sell you for tripe.”

  Grant said, “She’s only a woman, not her fault: if a woman’s at fault, it’s the man: she loves him, she can’t tell him, ‘You’re a fourflusher,’ can she?”

  “Robbie, old boy, don’t argue with me. I’m telling you Alf’s crazy. He says you’re a Red but he wants to see if your blood is not white, one day he’ll just try and see. I wish you’d go away, even if it’s to Rome.”

  Grant shivered horribly and said, “Don’t say things like that.”

  “I know; but Alf’s crazy and that’s what he believes. Now, I’ve got to keep him quiet for your sake.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. What does he say?”

  The devoted woman said, “It’s a terrible story, but this is what he says: That he learned it all from James Alexis and that this is the real reason why you are partners in the blondine.”

  “In the blonde!” He started and moved away from her.

  “I’m only saying what I heard; I wanted to tell it to you weeks ago. We were at home and Alf had one of his fits on him, it’s terrible, I don’t know how I stand it, but I do it for you, for he keeps up this song, ‘I’ll go to the D.A. I’ll be crazy. I know you think I am. You all think I am. I’m not so crazy. I can get fifty per cent dividend out of being crazy. That’s the kind of crazy I am.’ You know the way he goes on. Then he says, ‘I know you’re sweet on the bully-boy. I kept tabs on you. You both made a fool of me. I’ll see he gets it where the chicken got the ax. I take my own good time. He’ll buy my drawers and toothpaste and prophylactics, till the statute of limitations, and then some.’ I felt very bad, Robbie, I felt very bad, I can’t stand the man, but he said often, if I leave him he’ll go straight to the D.A. about you. I said to him about two weeks ago, ‘But tell me, Alf, finally, what you know about him? I really think you’re crazy. Don’t you know he wants you to go out on his chicken farm, be his manager—what can you have against him?—you mustn’t be neurotic.’ He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, you won’t get it out of me till I want to tell it,’ but at last, Robbie, he did tell me, and I’m telling you what he thinks he has on you. I don’t think for a moment it’s true, but a letter of denunciation can say just one thing that’s true and the rest is carried along with it. And they have that file on you in that affair with the blonde. They’ll put Alf on record and they’ll just add to your file, even if it isn’t true: what do they know? My dear, I’m so sorry—”

  “It’s all right, what does he say? The point is, what does he think he’s got? Don’t hold you responsible—”

  “He says, Grant Associates sent bales of cotton from Brazil which contained small scattered pieces of rare alloys essential to the Nazi war effort. I’m sure that’s right, for I listened very carefully, you can imagine. You said you exported only cotton and they put the alloys in when your back was turned. And Alf goes on, ‘And the bully-boy has a long and big back so that’s possible, though not probable.’ The British let it get through to Cadiz. Ultimate destination was some place in Nazi Germany.”

  “It’s a terrible story, he can’t prove it,” said Grant.

  “He says he can. I asked him, naturally—such a fantastic story! He says the German bank paid the Spanish bank two checks, one for alloys and one for cotton. They paid somewhere about one million Spanish pesetas; roughly two hundred and fifty thousand pesetas for cotton and roughly seven hundred and fifty
thousand pesetas Spanish for alloys. The Spanish bank—just like the Spanish says Alf, only I think there might have been a friend of the resistance in it, myself—paid two checks to Rio, one equaling the amount paid for cotton and one the amount paid for alloys. And all paid like that, in that incriminating manner, to Grant’s Associates. Now there are two reasons to examine this story, Robbie. Is it true? Who made it up? A third reason, my darling—is there someone in your business, or among your awful friends, say, March, who has power and who hates you, is out for blood?”

  “Look, glad you told me, correct, correct thing to do, but very upset. A great shock. Alf shouldn’t say things like that. You better get him put away. Look, in every organization there is someone thought you trod on his toes once. You don’t know who it is, don’t know how to put your finger on him. Got to watch out with anyone. Everyone has an inflated ego, is greedy, wants what you have. A lot of people don’t like me, I did no harm, but they don’t like me. Got nothing on me; but don’t like me. It could be anyone. Did he say anything else? James Alexis—James Alexis—it couldn’t be—nonsense—”