She liked to joke that neither she nor George were ever cut out to be Communist. He was too insubordinate—even by Party standards—and liked money too much. George was an awful snob, and part of Jane’s appeal for him was her wealthy background and fine sensibilities. Jane, too, was “a bit of a snob.” She considered all the Party rules and regulations a bore, and was disappointed that her comrades in arms were not exactly what one would call “jolly companions.” Moreover, she was “useless” at Party tasks. Once, when told that every member was expected to sell the Daily Worker on street corners, Jane got all “gussied up” in her mink coat and Bergdorf Goodman suit and made rather a spectacle of herself in Union Square meekly offering the paper to passersby. She managed to sell only a handful of copies while earning a lot of queer looks, but she obstinately maintained it was better than going around “like one of the slouching, leather-coated characters who gave the Party a bad name.” She and George “so hated this chore” that they took to dumping their allotted issues in the garbage and just pretended that the money they handed over the next morning was from paper sales. The Communist Party was not for her, and with the advent of the war her focus shifted to fighting the fascists.
The more Betty saw of George, the less she liked him, but the opposite was true of Jane. After a few weeks, it was apparent that their relationship was very much on again. They went out on the town night after night, racking up huge tabs in expensive restaurants and clubs, giddily spending their war savings. Each regarded the other as exotic and ungovernable without ever stopping to consider that their lack of anything in common might one day pose a problem. What united them as Catholic and Jew, according to George, was that they were both “incurable romantics,” fueling each other’s passions and propensity for martyrdom. It was an ill-considered union, in Betty’s view, but they were too entangled to part. What could she say anyway? That she had a vague feeling of unease about George and “did not really trust him”? She and Dick had gotten married in June and were caught up in their own lives. Since moving out of the apartment she shared with Jane, she had seen less and less of her old friend. They moved “in very different circles.”
Once they reunited, Jane and George fell in with the same careless bohemian crowd they had known before the war. At the center of their group were Martha Dodd Stern and her husband, Alfred K. Stern, a wealthy investment banker. The couple threw huge parties in their penthouse apartment in the Majestic on Central Park West, and all sorts of artists and intellectuals, rebels, and radicals came to eat their hors d’oeuvres and drink their liquor. Among the regulars at the Sterns’ soirees were Lillian Hellman, Paul Robeson, Margaret Bourke-White, Clifford Odets, and Isamu Noguchi, along with members of the Soviet and Eastern European diplomatic set. Regarding the crowd of famous faces, one amused guest dubbed the Sterns’ salon “La Très Haute Société Communiste.”
Jane had been introduced to Martha at a concert at Carnegie Hall when she first moved to New York, and they quickly discovered they had much in common. (It was Martha’s brother, Bill Dodd, Jr., who lent Jane his apartment.) Jane and Martha came from similar backgrounds: Martha was an “F.F.V.” (as in first families of Virginia), had toured Europe with her parents, and, like Jane, had lived in Berlin during the 1930s, although the two did not know each other at the time. Martha, who was pretty, blond, and amorously adventurous, had written a surprisingly frank book, Through Embassy Eyes, chronicling her early infatuation with Hitler and her affairs with handsome Gestapo officers before she understood what was really happening in Germany. She eventually saw the light, switched to Communism, and became equally fervent about her new cause. Despite her Bolshie politics and love of all things Russian—the two swans that ruled the lake on the grounds of her Ridgefield, Connecticut, estate were named Vladimir Ilyitch and Krupskaya—she was cagey about her party affiliations. She boasted about slipping Nazi secrets to her Russian lover in the early days of the war, and, as far as Jane could tell, she “loved intrigue, both political and personal, for its own sake.” She was always hatching plots, and she would create compromising situations between friends and then “slyly hint” about what she knew. Jane resented Martha’s meddling in her relationship with George, and the degree to which he seemed at her beck and call, but continued to see her on the cocktail circuit.
In the fall, Jane announced her intention of getting married. As far as her parents were concerned, she was finally wedding her longtime beau, whom they had met briefly before the war. On September 26, 1946, she and George carried out the charade of their second nuptials—even taking themselves downtown to the New York Municipal Building and obtaining another license—all in the name of sparing her parents “the pain” of their secret elopement. Though if Betty had to venture a guess, she was pretty sure that given Mr. and Mrs. Foster’s feelings about George’s radical politics and his influence on their only daughter, they would have preferred the pain of a divorce. Since George was still in the army, he had to report back to Vienna at the end of his three months’ leave. Jane, who was thrilled to have an excuse to get back to Europe, made plans to join him. Naturally she could not resist splurging on a week’s holiday in her “adorable, adored Paris.” Betty genuinely wished her the best. With all the disappointments and lost dreams of the war, there was something reassuring about knowing that for a few members of their detachment, at least, it had ended in a happily-ever-after.
By this time, Paul Child was back in Washington and, since the liquidation of OSS, officially an employee of the State Department. Paul was initially quite pleased, and not a little impressed, to find himself working for such a venerable institution. “Break out my striped pants and my chapeau haut-de-forme, my monocle, my gardenia, and my pearl gray spats,” he had instructed Charles prior to leaving China. “I want to look reet when I arrive in Washington.” The thrill faded quickly enough, though he enjoyed the executive-level position and freedom from drudgery. He had the catchall title of project director, which meant he was responsible for planning and executing all the visual media presentations—from short films, slide shows, diagrams, and exhibits to articles and brochures—required by the different departments, as well as for big meetings and international conferences. He had a large office, adequate staff, and all the supplies and specialized equipment he had dreamed of back in Kunming. If the job was not particularly creative or inspiring, at least it paid the bills. He planned to apply for another foreign post, preferably in Europe, when his life was more settled.
He was temporarily bunking with Charles and Freddie, and their three young children at their large home at 1311 Thirty-fifth Street in Georgetown. As much as he loved his brother, being back in the bosom of family was at times quite taxing. Paul had an extremely complicated, competitive relationship with Charles, and he spent most of his life defining himself in opposition to his identical twin. It was not that Paul resented his brother’s good fortune; he did not. It was just that he could not help feeling left out or, more precisely, left behind: “This brings up the difference in our timetables,” Paul once wrote, lamenting his perennial rear view of life’s promise. Everything always happened to Charles “first”: he was the first to marry, to get a government job, to merit a raise, to move to Washington, and, last but not least, to advance up the career ladder to an important new position (with UNESCO). “If you think back, or just wait for the future to unroll, you will see that I am right,” Paul added. “You are always ahead.”
Julia’s fly-by visit in November on her way home to California was a salve to his wounded ego. There she was, the devoted friend featured in so many of his wartime letters, larger than life in the crowded sitting room, radiating admiration and affection for him and him alone. Just seeing her did him good.
Julia had traveled back on a packed troopship with Rosie Frame and was full of funny stories. It had been a long, boring trip, and naturally there was a certain amount of fraternization between the troops and female civilians on board. One night on the mild Indian Ocean, a yo
ung OSS officer, Bob North, and a secretary were caught in flagrante delicto on the top deck by the master at arms. In his haste to get away, North tossed most of their clothes down the steep ladder, swung his date—who was passed out cold—over his shoulder, and carried her to the women’s quarters. Julia, who found him struggling to get into her cabin, relieved North of the half-naked girl, telling him with good-natured disapproval, “I’ll take her from here.” By the time they arrived in New York, she and Rosie were “tired and bedraggled” and smelled like they had come by “cattle boat.” Thibaut de Saint Phalle, who was waiting on the pier to meet his fiancée, took one look at them and stopped by the nearest phone, called the Elizabeth Arden salon, and took them both directly there for a thorough beauty treatment.
During their brief reunion, Julia and Paul agreed to “pursue the plan” they had formulated on the hilltop at the Wenjen resort. What Paul had in mind was a waiting period of sorts, “to see what we looked like in civilian clothes and meet each other’s friends and family, then see if we still felt the same way.” He had managed to get through the war—no mean feat—but it had cost him dearly. Now he needed to give his depleted mind and body, to say nothing of his soul, time to heal. Over the Christmas holidays, he wrote her a long, ruminative letter, musing about her progress since he first met her “on the porch of the tea-planter’s bungalow” in Ceylon:
You have been emerging from the mists, indecisions, and attitudes of your past into a fuller and more balanced life. I am curious to know if your family will have noticed that you are indeed a newer, better Julie, a more emotionally stable Julie, a more thoughtful Julie, a darlinger, sweeter, and lovelier Julie—or are these perhaps qualities which you have always had and which it took my old eyes two years to see—finally?
Paul was too self-analytical not to “allow for the possibility” that he, too, had changed, and that it was perhaps he who had become more open and perceptive “and finally able to see the reality.” That this “reality” might mean finally parting with his fixation on an impossibly idealized and unattainable woman (the Zorina) remains unstated if not unrecognized. What he does recognize, and pay homage to, is that both he and Julia were better people for knowing each other, and that “a relationship based on appreciation, understanding, and love can work that sort of double-miracle.” He added: “Whether we do or do not manage to live a large part of our future lives together, I have no regrets for the past, no recriminations, and no unresolved areas of conflict. It was lovely, warming, fulfilling, and solid—and one of the best things that ever happened to me.” He signed the letter “Affectionately, Paulski.”
While Julia welcomed these sentiments, she found herself wishing for less talk of regret and more in the way of resolution. She had agreed to Paul’s wait-and-see plan in theory but dreaded what it meant in practice. She was impatient to get on with their courtship, and a long hiatus spent in quiet reflection and renewal was the last thing she really wanted. Moreover, returning to her father’s home in Pasadena and her prewar role as the spinster daughter cum caretaker—currently occupied by her sister, Dorothy—felt like a giant step backward. She needed to move forward with her life, but with no job prospects and absolutely no idea what she wanted to do professionally, she felt completely at sea. Her OSS experience had improved her confidence and people skills, though the only obvious career path it had prepared her for was some form of administrative work, and she had made it clear on her government employment form that she would never have anything to do with files again. She listed “public relations” as an alternative, for want of a better idea, but that seemed far-fetched even to her. The one thing she was sure of was that she did not want to lose Paul. But how was she going to win him over when they were living on opposite coasts?
If Julia had learned anything about Paul during the war, it was how much he cherished letters from friends and family, and she remembered the time and attention he had lavished on the Homeric offerings he penned nightly for his brother, often reading long passages aloud to her in her room after dinner. She knew he savored missives from old friends and past flames, carefully tucked them away, and took them out to read over and over on rainy days. Words, she decided, were the way to his heart. If they had to be apart, then she would keep him close by way of a persistent, intimate correspondence, an outpouring of love and desire not even his defenses could withstand. As with everything she did, Julia embarked on their epistolary romance in January 1946 with great gusto, infusing her letters with her irrepressible enthusiasm, passion, and personality. Acutely aware that Paul was a very physical man, the pages fairly tremble with her burgeoning sensuality:
Dearest Paulski:
Oh. I love hearing from you. I find myself haunting the mailbox. When I read one of your letters I am engulfed with pleasurable warmth and delight which glows in me. What have you done to me, anyway—that I continue to long and languish for you? I want to know what you think about, what you would think about things here and people. I want to sit next to you, closely. Well.
Julia kept her tone buoyant and optimistic, describing busy days filled with the kinds of self-improving activities Paul would find commendable. She had bought a book on semantics, the philosophy of language, which she knew he had made a study of and considered crucial to any understanding of the deeper and hidden meaning of words and symbols. This had opened her eyes to the extent to which she was being “led around by words—slantings, loadings, judgements, inferences—but had never taken the trouble to see how.”
Under Paul’s influence, she was avidly reading the newspapers, with particular attention to the political pages and their conservative bent. “I am noticing things in the pages now, and with a sneer,” she reported. “I have become insanely angry at the LA Times for being a biased and inadequate ‘leading’ paper in this every day more enormous community.” For a more balanced view, she had subscribed to the daily Washington Post and Sunday New York Times. “I am going to make a detailed analysis of why the LA Times is inadequate—what news it misses and discolors. Then I am going to confront the Chandler family with the ineluctable facts, instead of raging at them with empty emotions. That will take at least two hours a day but will be very fruitful for me in (1) semantics, (2) general information, (3) newspaper techniques, (4) possible benefit to the community in improving the paper (very doubtful.)” She was closely following all the foreign news, and was intensely interested in Russian imperialism, which she understood to be “historic and crucial,” with profound implications for the future of Europe, Asia, and the United States. “I wish you were here so I could sit in your lap and you could tell me all about everything and why,” she wrote. “How little I know, to witness all of this intelligently—and it is the beginning of a new era, the end of an old regime and way of life.”
To further address the grave shortcomings of her education, she was taking advantage of her leisure time to improve her mind. She had majored in history at Smith, but was too much of a “dilettante” in those days to concentrate on her studies. It was not until she joined the OSS, and found herself regularly in the company of academics—anthropologists, geographers, and historians—that she discovered that she “liked that type of person very much.” Late in life, she had stumbled upon a whole new world and was ravenous to learn. To make up for lost time, she began reading everything she could lay her hands on, relying on Paul for guidance. At his suggestion, she read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, a controversial novel based on the writer’s youthful exploits in Paris, but confessed it was “too much of a stiff-prick forest” for her taste. As Paul insisted Miller was “a magnificent writer,” she was attempting another of his works, The Cosmological Eye. She would return her “elementary book” on semantics and pick up the more advanced text he recommended. She had even started in on psychology, enthusing, “There is so much that is fascinating!” Ever his devoted protégée, she reported, “I have luxuriously surrounded myself with everything I am eager to know about.” Piano lessons were also
on the agenda, along with the promise to “practice laboriously.” Knowing food was a subject dear to his heart, she concluded her letter with the description of a favorite delicacy and tried to tempt him with an invitation: “Now I am about to eat some cracked crab (would you care to join me?).” She signed the letter “Much loving and more so.”
Determined to impress Paul with a fine homemade dinner the next time they met, Julia began taking cooking lessons. She studied under “two old English ladies” at the Hillcliff School of Cookery in Beverly Hills, dutifully attending classes three times a week. Paul responded with encouragement, observing drolly that he was sure she would one day make a superb chef “because you are so interested in food.” Julia was not exactly at home in the kitchen. Unlike Paul’s mother, whose taste buds were so exacting she once spent six months searching for the right coffee bean—and in the end roasted her own combination of three—Mama McWilliams had been no gourmet. She had relied on a family cook to get simple all-American fare to the table, raising her brood on baking-powder biscuits, Welsh rabbit, and roast beef. Julia lacked even the most rudimentary skills, admitting that her maiden effort with spoon and spatula resulted in a “debilitating kitchen experience.” Her first forays—an array of breakfast dishes—were limited in scope, but her enthusiasm knew no bounds. After graduating from omelets to pancakes, she wrote Paul that she now considered Aunt Jemima mix to be “pedestrian,” and boasted that her own recipe was an “experience in superbity,” and that “a mediocre substitute will be but phlegm after a Julia Child pancake has once been eaten.”
A Covert Affair Page 26