I'm Dying Laughing (36 page)

Emily said, ‘Mighty, mighty good. I’ll try to imitate it, the first chance I get.’

Monsieur Valais said, ‘This wine now is a nice if not a great wine.’

‘It’s Lucullan,’ said Emily with great pride.

Stephen said, ‘I have a little, not much education. I’m not much of an eater, but when I read some of Horace’s Lucullan banquets, I myself feel tempted to try. In my opinion, both Horace and Cicero were dyspeptics. Excuse me! Not the word to use here. Now Horace mentions’—and here he gave one of Horace’s dinners.

‘I thought they ate lampreys and slaves,’ said Emily.

Monsieur Valais said, ‘You’re making us all hungry.’

Stephen said, ‘I once cured Emily when she thought she was dying. I read her the specialities of Tours and Blois. She regained her appetite and became well within two hours. She determined she must live to eat those dishes.’

‘Really? That’s superb!’ said Monsieur Valais.

They had then a few slices each of roast fillet of beef with a heavier red wine, and with green beans, and after this a salad of lettuce, eggs, tomatoes and shrimps, of which Stephen wrongly took some. Then came a platter of cheeses, unobtainable of course, except by such people as had friends in the black market, and a wine with that; and then a zabaglione with Marsala wine, and with this the champagne was brought in. Stephen was feeling worse and worse, with a paler and bluer face. He sipped more sparkling water, which hurt him more. Emily took her third glass of dry champagne, Mademoiselle de la Roche took her third glass of sweet. Cake was brought; and then the guests were taken to the salon where they had small cakes, coffee and cognac or liqueurs. Emily got into an excited friendship with a Belgian girl she had met on the boat, and offered to give her introductions for her next visit to the States. She said,

‘We know everyone. Stephen is a
fils a papa.
’

People stared, and Stephen, feeling ill, laughed feebly, ‘My wife doesn’t know how she is painting me.’

Emily cried, ‘He is the son of millionaires and not ten-cent millionaires.’

‘Real millionaires with a hundred thousand dollars,’ said Stephen.

Emily, drunk and resplendent cried, ‘Who live under the big top. There’s a kind of Howard-Tanner network, coast-to-coast link up. Stephen’s family have got their fingers into every pie, they’re always married to someone and there are even celebrated Gold Coast reds in his family.’

Stephen was trying to forget his stomach-pain. He said to himself, ‘It’s no good. And that’s how the water comes down at Lodore.’

Emily took three or four of everything, coffees, cigarettes, cakes, glasses of cognac.

Emily was telling endless tales. She said she had bought her typewriter from a fine, honest young salesman who had begun his career in Nevada by squiring women divorcing in Reno. He had had several offers of marriage but wanted to make his own way. ‘Original, eh?’ said Emily. They laughed.

A young American salesman said that something funny had happened to him in Chicago on his last trip east. He’d had to sleep in the foyer of a big hotel because there was a firemen’s convention. A fire had broken out but everyone was so drunk that it caught the whole east wing and several firemen were burned to death.

‘That’s excruciatingly funny,’ said Stephen gloomily.

‘Well, I know a thing as funny as that,’ said Emily. ‘A whole plane-load of pilgrims were going to Rome and they flew into the side of Mont Blanc, and bones and charred flesh and holy images were strewn for miles. There were three Muhammedans there too.’

This funny story cast a gloom. Presently people began to leave. Emily said, ‘But I don’t want to go home.’

Everyone laughed.

Emily said, ‘But I don’t want to go home. Don’t be so rude, Stephen. I could stay up all night. What are you doing, Stephen? Another half hour and then I’ll go.’ This remark was received curiously. Emily could not make out people’s expressions. She said, ‘Oh, all right; I don’t know. Perhaps you keep shorter hours in Europe. Well, OK, I’ll go home, but I’ll come another time. And you must come and dine with us as soon as we have our house.’

Handshaking, goodwishing now began, wishes for success, health, a fine house, good servants and teachers, and all kinds of counter-invitations were given, more courteous than pressing, for ‘in these days of shortages, we all know the difficulties’.

The Howards took the Belgian girl in their taxi. She said she thought she would like to practise law in the USA, where democracy affected the laws. Emily said she knew a Supreme Court judge. Stephen said he personally knew quite a few people who had been to jail or who were going, if that would help. One was his Uncle Benjamin, who had been in Teapot Dome and another was his cousin, Felicia, who refused to pay a fine for speeding, without even a licence. Another was a Hollywood friend of his who refused to pay alimony and then there was his sister, Florence, who had gone to jail during a strike for picketing.

Emily was beginning to laugh, ‘To think that we imported a water filter from the USA in case we wouldn’t even get good water, here! Haw-haw! The master race. We’ve got food packets coming from three points in the States by every boat. And we thought we’d have to fill in between the cans with boiled grass and soyabean powder, and perhaps surreptitiously catch pigeons on the public squares.’

Someone belched, but who? She hiccuped. Stephen gasped.

‘Most of them do live on that sort of trash,’ said the Belgian girl.

Stephen said, ‘I know another funny story. I knew a man knew a man who used to go to the Café Royal. Here he met a man named James P. Hudwant or something, originally a Viennese, who wrote operettas and had an immense fortune in Europe, where his music was a hit. When he came to the USA to make his fifth fortune on Broadway, no one knew him or wanted to know him. I used to lend him a dollar or two. He had a story. He had an inheritance in Vienna and it was coming through any time now and then he’d pay back and eat in good restaurants. He had lawyers’ papers, letters which he showed. I didn’t bother to read them, didn’t believe him. He got into the papers because he died of food poisoning. He’d been getting a living picking food out of garbage cans. Three days later the inheritance came through. Three hundred thousand dollars or so. We all used to laugh like hell at him behind his back. America, land of opportunity. Funny, isn’t it?’

Said Emily, hiccuping, ‘It is funny. You’d die laughing at the poor shnook. Why didn’t he either go back or get heard on Broadway?’

‘God, answer that one,’ said Stephen.

When they dropped the girl at the hotel where her parents were staying, Emily exclaimed, ‘Oh, Jee-hosaphat! What a wonderful evening! We’re going to love Europe, Stephen.’

When they got in, the lights were on and Mrs Fortescue, the babysitter, waiting for them. Giles was pretending that people couldn’t hear him and he wasn’t going to speak any more. He hid under the bed and said he was going to stay there. Olivia and Christy had fought over a cushion! Giles was in bed now but Mrs Fortescue had had to spank him to get him there. ‘Spank him!’ Silent with anger, but anxious, they tiptoed in and saw Giles’s flushed face in sleep. They paid Mrs Fortescue and sent her away.

N
EXT DAY THEY FELT
ill. Stephen had sinus and rheumatism, and Emily had sinus, rheumatism and headache; but they spent the day trailing Giles round town looking for agents and answering advertisements.

On the second day they left Giles at home with Olivia (Christy was out on his own looking at Paris) with lunch ordered for the two children, to be served in their rooms; while they went to have lunch with a fellow American, named Harrap, in some way connected with the Embassy. He took them to a restaurant near the Embassy for lunch, where Stephen, who was feeling better, ordered an omelette and cherry tart. Emily and Harrap had little river-trout, taken from the tank and plunged alive into boiling water, head joined to tail, poached and served with butter sauce, then roast pigeons and peas. Mr Harrap then had French salad, but Emily, whose appetite had been wide awake ever since the French dinner party, ate also veal and ham pie, a salad, strawberries and Chantilly cream. They gave up their bread tickets and received in exchange, not the ordinary black or yellow bread (the famous
friandise
) but small white rolls. These, the butter for sauce, their fresh table butter, the cream and a good many other things were of course black-market items; but compensated for by extra charges, which they gladly paid.

Emily, after eating, said, I feel rather low at eating so much and in the black market, when in fact people outside are starving partly or totally.’

Harrap said, ‘I wouldn’t worry about that. They’d still have the Boche if not for us.’

Stephen said, ‘One of these days we three will get shot along with the other aristocrats and you’ll give up worrying.’

Stephen did not feel well and was sad, downhearted, despairing.

Harrap said, ‘That’s old stuff. The Germans beat it out of them. They’ll never have the guts for that again.’

‘I guess you’re right and after I’ve eaten all that, it’s too late to worry: they’ve probably got photographs of me stuffing, taken through the swing-door,’ said Emily. She cheerfully filled her glass with wine again.

‘I know a good steak place, I heard of it from some Belgians,’ said Mr Harrap.

‘Yes, me too. It seems Belgians dote on steak. Isn’t that staggering,’ said Emily. She took down the name of the steak place; and that evening after passing another depressing afternoon looking at addresses which either they had mistaken or were non-existent, or at places which would not suit them (seven rooms, walk-up, bad-smelling, furnished, as Emily said, like the waiting-room of a pre-Pasteur doctor, or four rooms with bath) Stephen said he was going home to drink some milk and go to bed.

Emily said that in spite of their sorrows which were heavy and manifold, she had to eat. She took Christy along to the steak place. She said, ‘Thank goodness he is too young yet, or looks too young, for them to think I’m the queen who loved the page; and then, I’m getting so old and fat and ugly, they’ll probably think I’m the Ugly Duchess with a secretary, or else I’m his great-aunt.’

They took a taxi for which Christy gallantly paid. Christy recited Shakespeare in the taxi, to Emily’s delight, and behaved like a pretty boy of wealth and elegance.

‘Mademoiselle Valais on the boat told me that mussels are the speciality of Brussels and we must go there just to taste them—107 ways of making them! Let’s take the train, muscle in on Brussels,’ said he.

‘Oh, how clever of you, darling!’ exclaimed Emily, genuinely surprised.

The restaurant was a small room with shaded lights and delicate flowers, where almost everyone sat on the plush benches. Emily and her son were not noticed till Emily began to call out in her unabashed sonorous French, aided by Christy, who had more accent but less confidence. Nevertheless, a well-dressed captain, a wine waiter and a sourlooking but correct waiter, all spoke to them in sufficient Anglo-French for them to order sole with white wine, rare steak with sweet butter melting on it to compose the sauce which tasted of chives, cauliflower, sauce Mornay, french salad and then profiteroles with which Emily once more had crème Chantilly.

Said Emily to Christy, who was paying, ‘Oh, my goodness Christy, and what is the price of this after all, in dollars? To think of the time we ate with Anna at The Bell-Glass, just before we left, ten dollars a crack, and nothing to eat, just a whisper born on the air, a hint of what was going on in the kitchen; how to serve a thousand New Yorkers on two loaves and five fishes; and The Racecourse, a beggarly midtown coffee-pot for office-lunchers where you can’t get out under four-fifty a head, with cocktails, wine, champagne, coffee, bread, butter, cream all extra. I’m going to live in Europe forever! Garr-song!
Savez-vous
that it’s not dear here at all.
Amérique
is much dearer. You couldn’t get a jambong sandwich in New York for the price of this superb feast! Banquet superb!’

After, she wanted to take Christy to a café but the cafés closed early in those days of shortages, took in their chairs and tables, closed their shutters. So they took a taxi and went back to the hotel. Stephen was wretched and disagreeable. Giles had been unhappy. ‘He’s turning into a neurotic! He thinks we’ll have no roof over our heads and I won’t get a job and we’ll have no money. That’s the upshot of all this.’ He seized Emily’s large handbag, which as usual was open with its contents showing, handkerchiefs, letters, wads of bills, rings, in the pink satin pouches.

‘How much did you spend this evening?’ She told him. He was angry.

‘I can’t help it. The more trouble I have, the more I eat. I’ll take off ten kilos as soon as we get a home. My eating keeps the family together; it keeps me cheerful.’

The following day they started out again. Said Stephen, ‘Everything’s hideous beyond belief. I wish we’d never started out on this wild-goose chase! Where is it getting us? Do you know how much we’ve spent the last week? Entertaining, being entertained, running about celebrating to get relief from our miseries. And not counting the hotel, we’ve already run through as much as would last a month at home. We came here to save money.’

‘We will; and besides we’ve got to find a place soon, for I’ve got to settle down and make money. We’ve simply got to get this place on the avenue President-Wilson. I’ll pay more than he’s asking just to get a home. If only we didn’t have this hideous business of our three wretched, sad darlings. Hotel life is not for babies. And Jeehosaphat, I feel so fat and ugly and Giles thinks people can’t hear him; and Olivia is getting neurotic because she doesn’t know if they’re complimenting her in this foreign lingo. I don’t want her to turn into a sour, suspicious coquette and a bitter flirt. Oh, lor, children! I’m morose as well as you, Stephen. Of course, it’s a healthy, enjoyable, wonderful neurosis, the one I have; it’s not like taking to drink or drugs, which get you hangovers and bad moods and suicidal impulses and make you betray your best friends and fawn on the police, so that you become a social problem. But, oh my, though it’s enjoyable, I daren’t run for the bus because people laugh and God knows the others, the hungry ones, probably want to stick a knife into my ribs to see whether truffles, sausages and paté de foie gras will run out; as surely they will. The food’s superb—the situation’s terrible—and look at me!’