Letty Fox (25 page)

My father told Mathilde to write to Grandmother Morgan and let her know that Phyllis was in danger. A certain man hanging around Phyllis, both Montrose and my mother thought to be a white-slaver. She attracted the attention of a very peculiar old woman in a cabaret. Phyllis herself said wildly, that she could not hold out much longer, she had to get a man, so she'd get married if they'd find her a rich man. She didn't mind an old man if he liked company and would take her about.

My mother had many friends who visited her and met her in cafés and these offered her different advice about my father; in general, they plotted feebly to reunite the couple.

“Persia's really stupid not to have a baby by him,” said many of them, “but, after all, my dear, that's your chance,” and each word was a stab to my mother.

Things were all very simple to these philosophers. They ate with my mother; my mother bought them drinks in the café; her pocket money dwindled, vanished. Mathilde lent money to Phyllis and Pauline, always in trouble. Pauline occasionally got jobs in cabarets which paid poorly in order to use Phyllis as bait there. Pauline was twenty-five, tired and corrupt; Phyllis still shone with her lovely youth, an apparently voluptuous virginity and unsatisfied longing for men. She had learned a lot from Pauline. They had parties at their flat near the Avenue Mozart, lasting sometimes three days, and most of the guests were men; sometimes Pauline packed Phyllis off to Mathilde while she had her own parties.

It was the corrupt Pauline who prevented Phyllis from becoming the prey of these men, some of them being very Parisian, elegant and delightful. “I must watch your sister, Mathilde,” she said; “American women—look, I don't want to insult you, but it's the truth—set up to be sex-careerists, but the plain truth is they fall the first time they get drunk or their senses are tickled; the sugary appetites of children. I don't let Phyllis get too drunk, and I watch her like a hawk. I've saved her virtue several times already. I'm a different type; I'm passionate. Her only danger will be when I fall for someone suddenly. I might disappear. Things come along which are irresistible. I think, Oh! God, this might be it, the grand passion. Then I throw up everything—and then your sister would be in danger, for pretty young girls in the U.S.A. are brought up without the faintest ideology—simply this: Get a home, get a husband who is liable for alimony. That's no way to start a marriage. Here they are more professional. But, my dear, the fact is that if I disappeared one day you must at once take Phyllis under your wing. She's as safe as a barnyard chick with vultures.”

Pauline wrote to my father in the same strain when asking him for money, and talked sentimentally of my mother's virtues and of us. “Poor children, they are quite out of hand and Mme. Gouraud, good soul, is a bit grotesque.”

Then she would write about Grandmother. Once Aunt Phyllis wrote my father a headstrong letter accusing him of living only for pleasure and neglecting his children's futures. Things happened to be tight that week in the
garçonnière
. Phyllis said Solander must send more money for his wife and neglected children.

Lily wrote a gentle, sad letter saying that Solander had never given her pocket money while in London, otherwise she would have stayed. She reminded him, allusively, of the nice young fellow with the toy business who had failed her since Solander had only got him a credit of one hundred pounds, not enough. Now he wanted Solander to guarantee him as an immigrant to the U.S.A.

Everyone wrote to Solander. He had many sympathizers; and as, at the same time, they managed to convey as an afterthought, or in a postscript, that they understood his troubles, that my mother was rather prosy, and that they themselves were ashamed to ask him for the small check which was nevertheless the only thing they would have to live on for the next week, my father spent all of his money and went into debt. This was good for him, said the adherents to my mother's cause when she heard of it. It would reunite him to my mother, and all they did was calculated to bring us all together.

In the spring my father moved to Antwerp. Grandmother Fox had developed the persistent dry cough of the aged. Solander offered to send her to Switzerland to be treated, and she accepted, while saying she was too ill to take the journey alone. He himself accompanied her to Zurich for examination, left her there, and returned to Antwerp where he was living in the old town, in a single room at the Metropole Hotel with
Die Konkubine
, who also worked in the office with him.

My mother also began thinking of medicine. She went at once to stay with some American friends in the south of France, near Grasse; and these friends, named Pample, now wrote to my father saying my mother was seriously ill, probably tubercular, and needed care. They thought that it was not pulmonary tuberculosis, but something worse, some bone decay; and in the letter was a note from my mother, saying she must have money to pay board to her friends, and for X-ray photographs.

Uncle Philip, who lingered on in Paris trying to pick up an acquaintance with artists, and to pick up some artists, also wrote to say that Mathilde was very ill and that he must make the journey south to see her. He added that Dora Dunn had inherited a little money from her Uncle McRae, who had just died; that a son had been born to them; that Dora Dunn was coming back to Paris leaving the child with a nurse, and they were to be married. Philip could not return to the U.S.A. because his first wife wished to jail him for arrears of alimony. What could he do? His mother was not at present in a position to support him at home, or to pay his back alimony. He felt it would be cheapest for all concerned if he went and stayed with the Pamples at Grasse. My father paid for the return ticket for Philip to Grasse, writing, “I cannot go, Phil; please let me know your own opinion. Mathilde is unhappy, but I do not like to be blackjacked.”

Dora Dunn arrived in Paris during Philip's absence, came to see us, took us out, pleased us, and quarreled with Pauline, who felt that her rights were being invaded. After several quarrels, Pauline and the wife-to-be made peace and had serious talks about reuniting our father and mother. “As for the young woman, Persia, we'll find someone for her; she isn't fussy. Evidently she believes in free love,” Pauline said; and went on, “I could do something for her, but you see I have just arranged for a concert tour for Phyllis and myself— Vichy, Aix, Marseilles, Alexandria, Constantinople. If this works out we will be starred in cabarets in Dresden, Munich and Berlin! It's a great opportunity. Phyllis is not a wonderful singer, but really magnificent physically. I have a small voice but am an accomplished cabaret singer, and we can get by on that. I am glad to go, also. I am on the point of losing my head about a French vaudevillist here; that's not in my schedule at all, my dear, and I know myself; I'm a perfect fool. My God! And Phyllis, that raving beauty, will never know love. She won't even know whether her sables are genuine or not, but she'll get them genuine, I don't doubt.” She added, “What luck you have, you American women! Men who pay for everything and don't ask for accounts. Yes, it's Protestantism. The men believe they've done their wives insult and injury by sleeping with them. They must pay forever! They must pay their mothers because their mothers suffered to have them. And as for the women, my child,” she said to Dora, “they want to get married, naturally. But they behave as if they are disabled for life as soon as they're married. They go in for man-sweating. Every man, legally related to them, must pay through the nose. The law allows it. Oh, Golconda of women! And then one's not obliged to stay with one man. Not at all! A woman can try one man after another and each one's obliged to pay her for the privilege of sleeping with her, but only, of course, after he has stopped sleeping with her: it is, sleep with, or go to jail for alimony. It's incredible,” she declared excitedly. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined a country where men went into such sacred frenzies of self-abnegation. All the same, they don't know love in the U.S.A. No, they are all miserable—the men, the women. They marry without dowries, so they think they marry for love. But afterwards—I'm not a philosopher, I can't explain all that. But I know I am happy. Comparatively, I am a bad woman. So some people say, but I have passions; men love me. It's the reason for living, don't you think?”

“Yes, yes,” said Dora Dunn, “but Americans love! Philip loves me madly, and to think I might never have met him! It was quite by accident. When I first saw him I thought, I wondered, Who is that hulking boy, sitting there drinking too much, he looks like a Greenwich Village bum from the Middle West. I went and sat by him, and he started to talk to me. I was surprised at how agreeable he was to me, smiling at me, charming, you know. We were together from then on. It was—you know. I still get cold sweats at night when I think I might never have gone to that party. I only went to please my friends and backers, the Gropers. He was a friend of theirs, and at first I didn't think he'd suit me at all. I didn't like his record. And then he seemed weak. But he says he needed me.”

“That's obvious,” said Pauline, pleasantly, “and tell me about your darling son, Bernard.”

“I called him Bernard, after Philip's father of course; but he looks like Philip—”

“I can't conceive why Philip wasn't here to meet you. Of course, he had to go to Mathilde, who is sick.”

“I wrote to him that I hope we'll get Solander and Mathilde together again now: we must protect the marriage. I arrived earlier than I expected, though. I made arrangements with the nurse in England—”

“And are you satisfied? One has to be careful with these nurses. You know, these baby farmers—unscrupulous, murderous, avaricious—”

“Oh, this one was recommended to me by my uncle, Mr. McRae. It was a friend of his. My uncle will bring me news of dear Bernard. He adores him.”

Pauline said curiously, “They are very level-headed, the English and Scots. For example, he didn't mind your going there without a husband and having a baby? But—good gracious, isn't he dead?”

Dora said, “Not yet. Someone telephoned me—it was a practical joke. They said, ‘Is that the McRae Heiress?' I was so relieved to find out dear Uncle McRae was alive. We were always like father and daughter.”

“The world's mad nowadays, anyhow! No one can ever be surprised at what happens,” sighed Pauline; “but I am very, very happy for you. And since the parents of these children, Letty and Jacky, are such infants, and I am obliged to leave in a few days for my concert tour with Phyllis, I am delighted that some relative of theirs is here. Frankly, no one knows if the old lady will return and she is quite senile; and as for Mme. Gouraud—a peasant, my dear, and an old maid. And you are so intelligent and a mother. That makes all the difference.”

Dora looked at us uneasily. She was plumper, but had much of the girl-about-town in her, still: “If no one comes, I'll ship them to their father.”

And looking anxiously at us, that evening (she stayed in the pension with us) she sat down to write a letter to my father, asking what should be done for us.

It will be seen that we did not lack for friends and intimates, and that everyone was concerned for us. We never at any time felt lonely or neglected, but, of course, we soon learned that we were to be pitied, and I, especially, would complain about the absence of my parents. I understood everything, I thought. My father was selfish, my mother lazy. Mme. Gouraud once or twice called us in her brisk voice,
Mes Orphelines
. We felt cheerfully that all women lived in a pension of tears in a whirligig of infinite possibilities as to husbands.

T
his was 1930. I was nine years of age, my sister Jacky, eight. Solander went to Zurich to bring back Grandmother, and I heard it said that during this time Persia, his mistress, was lying in bed in the Antwerp hotel, and had miscarried, with intent, of another child. My father did not go to her, but came straight to us with Grandmother; and leaving Grandmother with us, set about looking for a flat for all of us. Mathilde was on her way home from Grasse with her brother. Pauline and Phyllis had already left Paris, and were playing in a small hall at Vichy. We had a brief cryptic note from Pauline: “Phyllis has so many admirers and is keeping her head.”

Solander waited till Mathilde arrived in Paris, showed her the flat, which she disliked, installed us all in it, taking us away from Mme. Gouraud, and then left for Antwerp. My mother cried at this, but Solander said that Persia was leaving for Switzerland, where she would get a job in the League of Nations, and that we would hear no more of her. Nevertheless, he had to return to Antwerp where he was now situated in business, and would only visit us in the week ends. Mathilde would not live in a town so dismal, old-fashioned, and strange. She had managed to pick up some French, but could not make another attempt at outlandish speech. Mathilde refused also to live with Grandmother Fox; “How will we ever make a go of it with two small children, a mother-in-law? You've been very thoughtless of my comfort, Solander,” she said; “it is easy to send money to transport people back and forth, but the fact is you are just following your whims. It is easier to send money than to think, and it is I who have the burdens of looking after the house, arranging meals, and trying to fit in a cranky old woman and two restive, spoiled girls. I cannot look after all these people and the best thing you can do is to hire a maid for me, or else to send for your mother's niece, Lily Spontini. She could live with us, and look after the children—”

My father would not agree to this; and his mother, who was happy at the idea of living with her daughter-in-law and with us, would not hear of it. Two weeks of this life was enough. Grandmother, who seemed much younger, nevertheless had bad habits. She murmured to herself, walked about at night, and was always timidly appearing, with her eyes larger and more inquisitive in her pale little face, asking questions that angered my mother. When my father visited us for his week ends, the old woman went to her room and sat there, so as not to be in the way, and we would see her white head, small and low, like that of an aged child, looking timidly around her door. She was afraid and muttered doubtfully, “He is nervous. She, the poor woman, is nervous! No wonder. Who would blame her? It isn't right. They don't lead a regular life. It's not right to be living in a strange city. Children should be brought up at home. Poor woman, no wonder she's nervous.”