The Fatal Gift

by Alec Waugh

  For the most part I was mixing with Americans, but I had two good English friends there in my cousin Claud Cockburn, then on the London Times, and Raymond, who kept no office hours but was vaguely representing—the adverb is the one he used—a firm of London stockbrokers. His employers had provided him with a dapper duplex apartment on Park and 47th and underwrote a share of his expenses. We had a number of friends in common, at whose houses we kept meeting. We also used to manage to see each other on our own at least once a week. We enjoyed comparing notes, and being able to let our hair down. Each of us loved New York, yet when we were with New Yorkers we had a slight feeling of being on parade. The English had not made themselves popular in the USA during the 1920s. They had been patronising and conceited; they had also shown too marked a readiness to let Americans ‘pick up the check’. It was up to us, we felt, to show Americans that all Englishmen were not like that. We cast ourselves in ambassadorial roles.

  It was the first time that I had seen Raymond regularly since Judy had left, while Claud and Raymond had scarcely met since Oxford. There was a good deal of reminiscing. There was also a good deal of political talk between Claud and Raymond. Claud was moving towards the left. Within eighteen months he was to resign from the Times, join the Communist Party and start his own ‘News behind the news’ in his mimeographed six-sheet The Week; while Raymond, who had spent several weeks in Chicago, had been startled by the poverty that he had found there. He became acutely conscious of the faulty distribution of the world’s resources. What had struck him most—and it was something that struck a number of others during the late twenties—was that while people were starving, in Brazil coffee was being burnt on the wharves and in the North Sea fish were being chucked back into the ocean, because they could not be marketed at a profit. ‘The system’s wrong,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you,’ said Claud. ‘Russia’s found the answer.’

  That, Raymond was not ready to concede. He thought that Mussolini had found a better answer. They discussed rather than argued the issue, amicably; they never came to a conclusion and as often as not they changed the subject before a conclusion could be reached. They had so much else to chatter over. They were as absorbed as I was by the New York scene.

  We were each of us at that time involved with New York ladies; we often went out on foursomes, occasionally on six-somes. Claud was courting Frances Hope Hale, whom he was to marry the following year, and whom I was to see, only a few months ago, now as Mrs Herbert Gorham, at the PEN congress at Dublin. She was so warm and lively and attractive, it was hard to believe that forty years had elapsed since those speak-easy days when Claud lived at the Brevoort. Raymond was involved with a tall, long-legged New Englander who was staying with an aunt in a mid-town apartment while she was reading for a Master’s at Columbia. For discretion’s sake I will here call her Myra Bedford. She had a flat accent that I was later to associate with seaboard society. Raymond knew very little about her background. ‘That’s one of the fascinations of life over here,’ he said. ‘In England we all know each other, or know about each other. You’re attracted by someone at a dance, you ask her out to dinner; before you’ve finished the fish, you’ve discovered what mutual friends you have and before you know where you are, you’re having a cosy family chat about Bill and Gertrude, and that isn’t why you asked her out. In America, on the other hand, it’s the other way. You meet a girl at a cocktail party, there’s a flicker and you make a date. Before you’re through your second cocktail, you’ve finished discussing your host and hostess, as far as you know they are all you have in common, so you can get down to the real reason why you asked her out, and start telling her that she’s a highly attractive female, and your campaign is launched. It’s not till much later that you find you have quite a number of friends in common. Which is an adventure too.’

  ‘And have you found that you and Myra have a lot of friends in common?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I haven’t.’

  ‘Aren’t you inquisitive?’

  ‘Not really. After all, why should I be? What does it matter who she is, it’s what she is that matters. We have a wonderful time together. She makes everything more fun.’

  I was not surprised at him saying that. He was related by vague ties of cousinship with half the debutantes that he had met during the seasons when he had gone to dances. Half his conversation with them was ready-made. It must be a relief to him to be anonymous. And there was no doubt that he and Myra were having a considerable ball together. Half the time they were laughing. And when they were talking seriously, there was an intense, concentrated expression on their faces that proved them to be absorbed by what each was saying. They were a striking couple when they danced together, and when they walked together on a bright brisk February afternoon, on their way to a cinema or theatre. They were living in their moment. But I, a spectator, was curious about her.

  At 136 East 36th Street Rollin Kirby’s daughter, Janet, had an apartment too. She was then married to Langdon Post, an assemblyman in FDR’s New York administration. Elinor Sherwin had introduced me to her, and with Lang often away on duty, we fitted into each other’s lives, the borrowing of gin from each other when our bootlegger failed us being one of the many practical links we had. I asked Janet if she knew Myra. ‘I’ve never met her, but most of my friends seem to have. Let’s look her up in the bible.’

  ‘The bible’ was the New York Social Register, which I have always found a fascinating compilation. ‘Dilatory domiciles’ for example. How was that definition found for socialites who had moved outside the radius of Manhattan ? And again, ‘Married Maidens’. I looked up Myra Bedford, but the record did not tell me much beyond the fact that she was the daughter of a second marriage, that her father, who was now in his fourth marriage, was living in New York and that her mother, now in her third marriage, was in Cape Cod. I learnt nothing about her father or either of her stepfathers’ careers. ‘Is she rich ?’ I asked.

  ‘I imagine,’ said Janet, ‘that in October, 1929, they fancied that they were ruined; but that by now they’ve realised that their losses were mainly paper ones. That type lives on the interest on its interest. Now that the dust has settled, they’re much where they were in 1926. They’re probably better off, because everything costs less. Even bootleggers have dropped their rates.’

  I told Raymond what I had learned from Janet. He did not seem interested. He was satisfied with the situation; my curiosity was still alert, however, and during my last week in New York it was given an unexpected fillip. An Englishman like Raymond relished the anonymity that he can enjoy in New York society. He was able to meet social types that lie outside his range in London; while someone like myself, who was not a socialite, now and again found himself, through the accident of a lucky letter of introduction, moving in a far grander atmosphere than any he would know at home. I, for example, had arrived in New York in the previous summer with a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt. I had been invited for a weekend at Hyde Park. I had felt an immediate sympathy for her mother-in-law, Mrs James. During my winter on 36th Street she often invited me to her lunch parties, some of which were quite grand occasions, and in particular the dinner that she gave for Lord Beau-champ, then on his way back to England for a personal drama of whose nature the world was yet unaware. There were twenty-two guests, one of whom to my considerable surprise was Myra Bedford. ‘Yes, I know Mr Waugh already,’ she said when we were introduced. ‘You needn’t look so surprised,’ she added when we were alone.

  ‘Frankly, I am. You seem to take my being here for granted.’

  ‘I knew that you knew The Dowager.’

  ‘You’ve never mentioned her.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  There was no answer to that.

  We sat at different ends of the table. No wine was served; after dinner the men separated into a small library to smoke cigars. When we returned to the drawing room, Myra caught my eye. I went across to her. It was the first ti
me I had been alone with her. On our foursomes and six-somes we had always been engaged in group conversations across a table.

  ‘It’s been strange,’ she said, ‘going round a city that is one’s home with three Englishmen for whom it’s a foreign city.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out while I’ve been discussing the Governor’s showdown with Tammany. Because in one way Claud knows more about New York than I do.’

  ‘Do we take you to places where your style of American wouldn’t go?’

  ‘No, it isn’t that. One speakeasy’s very like another. It’s a different atmosphere. You’re looking at it with different eyes. Things are strange to you that wouldn’t be to Americans, and vice versa.’

  ‘Can you give me an example?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to do all evening, and I can’t . . . It’s all so different.’

  ‘Do the other two, Claud’s and mine, feel it ?’

  ‘I haven’t asked them.’

  ‘You’d never seen either of them before ?’

  ‘And shall probably never see either of them again, once you’ve gone. That’s one of the things that’s made it so much fun.’

  ‘It has been fun then ?’

  ‘Enormously. It’s like being in disguise. No, it’s not like that. It’s more like being invisible. Leading a New York life about which none of my friends know anything—not having them ring up to ask them how I enjoyed Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Being in New York this way is as much an adventure as it is for you. It’s made New York a new city for me. You may not believe it, but I’ve never had any affair in New York before. Doesn’t that surprise you ?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘All my affairs, they’ve been—I talk as though I’d had a hundred, but of course I haven’t—it’s that I’ve been on my guard here, with Americans, with men who know all about me—it’s different in Europe or meeting them on ships, or resorts like Newport, that’s like being on an island, but in New York, marriage always seems to come in somewhere, sooner or later. If it’s someone in my own world, I begin to wonder why he doesn’t start talking about marriage —does he think I’m not good enough for him, does he rather despise me for being . . . ? well, it puts a rein on me, I don’t let myself go the way I want to—I don’t want to be looked down upon. I may not want to marry him, but I want him to want to marry me. That, of course, is with someone in my own world. It’s the same thing the other way round, when it’s someone not in one’s world, someone who’s obviously unmarriageable, and that’s something that really gives a kick—an affair with a steward on a boat for instance; there was a barman on the Ile de France, how I let myself go with him—but in New York, very soon that kind of man develops a chip upon his shoulder. “Of course you wouldn’t marry somebody like me.” If you suggest going to an inexpensive restaurant it’s “so that you won’t see any of your grand friends,” he’ll say. He becomes impossible. Row after row, and it’s such a business to get rid of him. I had that kind of trouble once in Boston with a crazy Irishman, when I was at Radcliffe … Never again, I vowed, never in Boston or New York. You can’t guess what a good time I’m having now. I’ve always thought “New York must be heaven to be in love in”, and now at last I am.’

  So she was in love with Raymond. I had wondered that; while he with her? It was hard to tell. He had once said ‘I’m so much in love with life that I can’t tell if I’m in love with anyone.’

  I made no comment. I did not try to lead her on, to invoke a confidence. I waited for her to start again.

  ‘But of course this can’t go on, I realise that,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to marry some time. A woman has no life unless she does. And in my case I suppose it should be pretty soon. I’m twenty three, after all. That’s a good age for marriage, with someone experienced, but not top much. I want marriage to be an adventure, even though it’s something that one has to work at. Everything that’s worth while has to be worked at. Like your books. You get the idea for one in a flash—you explained that in that lecture of yours—it’s like meeting someone at a party, love at first sight, even though it may not go very deep, though it may turn out a fiasco; there’s the first second of exaltation, then there’s the routine of courtship; what was that cliché?—at least you called it a cliché in your lecture—two per cent inspiration, ninety-eight perspiration. Most marriages fail, don’t they, because couples forget the ninety-eight per cent part of it. Even so there has to be that flicker first—that’s what makes it so difficult for me: I meet all these fine, suitable New Englanders, so straight and stern and handsome, so right for me in every way, we understand each other so well. We can talk in shorthand, but that flicker, that sudden recognition of an affinity that has nothing to do with upbringing—do you see what I mean?’

  ‘The English,’ I said, ‘have the same problem; we know each other so well, we’re like brothers and sisters to one another and then the stranger comes.

  ‘English women say that English men are cold, and Englishmen say the same about English women, but American women don’t find us cold, and foreign diplomats are delighted when they are accredited to the Court of St James. I thought it was different here, with every state a little different; here you can get surely both strangeness and familiarity.’

  She shook her head. ‘When a Texan’s meeting a Chicagoan maybe, but in seaboard society, no.’

  This was one of my early visits to the USA. I had not then learned the special ingredients of seaboard society.

  ‘I know what I want,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know where to find it. The trouble is that when one does meet a stranger, one realises after a little while that one doesn’t know enough about him. One needs to know his background. They all say, you know, that Englishmen are quite different at home.’

  ‘Isn’t that what worried Henry James ?’

  ‘I’d give a lot to see Raymond in his own setting.’

  ‘I don’t think you’d find him very different. Three quarters of the time he’s out of England.’

  ‘I’d like to see that quarter. Is he likely to be in England in October?’

  ‘Most likely. October is one of the best months in England.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll come across then. Don’t warn him, though. I want to take him off his guard.’

  I kept my promise. But I did tell Raymond that I had met Myra at Mrs James’. He did not seem surprised, or for that matter very interested. T wonder if she’s the English equivalent for Elizabeth Ponsonby,’ he said. Elizabeth Ponsonby was partly the model for Agatha Runcible in Vile Bodies.

  I asked him about his summer plans. ‘I expect to be over in early June. I want to go back to Chicago first. There are one or two of the Labour Left that I want to meet.’

  ‘You’re not going into politics, are you?’

  ‘I might do worse. Something’s going to blow up soon, and someone like myself who’s not committed and who’s independent might have a part to play.’

  ‘Would you run on the left or on the right?’

  ‘On the left wing of the right.’

  Which bore out what he had said about Mussolini.

  ‘The Conservatives at Charminster would welcome you as their candidate.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Would you like me to be one of the speakers on your platform ?’

  ‘You’d be highly welcome.’

  ‘Your sister-in-law suggested that I should come down and play cricket for the hall against the village.’

  ‘That should send up your stock there as a canvasser.’

  ‘The match will be at the end of August. Will you be there ?’

  ‘I’ll make a point of it.’

  If I were to help him in his campaign, I should have all the alibis I needed for visits there. Would he come to resent my presence ? I remembered how he had refused the idea of providing alibis for Margaret, but this was different, or was it? We always excuse ourselves by pretending th
at our case is different. Time would show. I did not want to forfeit Raymond’s friendship.

  I outlined my plans; I wasn’t aiming to spend more than a few days in England. ‘I’ve an idea for a novel. I want to go down to Villefranche right away to work on it. It should be a ten-week job.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll join you there.’

  ‘Do that.’

  I only spent a week in England. I rang up Charminster to give news of Raymond. Margaret answered the telephone. I told her that I was going to Villefranche to write a novel. ‘Is there any chance of your coming to the South of France?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Is there any chance of your being in London during the next six days, so that we could lunch?’

  She hesitated. ‘Well, let’s see.’ There was a pause. I could guess what was passing through her mind. It would be possible for her to lunch in London. But she was wondering whether it would be a good idea. There would be an atmosphere of haste. Perhaps an attempt to hurry things that would prove fatal; I was glad she hesitated. I was relieved when she said that no, it wasn’t possible. She was feeling, as I was, that it was not worth running the risk of spoiling things. Yet she would be grateful that I had rung up.

  ‘You haven’t forgotten that I’m going to play for your side against the village ?’

  ‘Indeed I haven’t.’

  ‘Will your son be playing?’

  ‘For the first time, yes.’

  ‘Quite an occasion, then.’

  ‘Quite an occasion.’

  Was there an undermeaning to that ‘quite’. I wished that I could have seen the expression on her face. My heart was beating. It was going to be all right. Some things were much better for not being hurried.