Letty Fox (83 page)

We had a good, long chin about political affairs on which we were absolutely agreed, and Tom told me all about Hollywood, where he had been a thousand-dollar-a-week man at one time. At present he was on his uppers. They were living badly at the back of a divided railroad flat. The wife had put in a lot of Woolworth rayon goods to brighten it up a bit, as she imagined. It looked very tawdry.

Tom and I had always got on like a house on fire, and we kept chiming in with new bright ideas, while she sat there smiling like a Cheshire cat, and thinking nothing, I suppose, in the way of wives. She gave parties for Chinese relief, anything that was the fashion at the time, and the real reason was that she thought she could pass as Chinese herself. I understood why a bright little boy like Tom left her so often for transients; and everyone knew about their many and various rifts. Naturally, in front of me, she kept up the turtle-dove comedy.

Tom went out with me when I left, to get beer, rye bread and sausage for their supper, as they had had nothing to eat since lunch. Bronte did not cook very much. She stabbed at painting a bit, some of her amateur decorative efforts being exhibited on the walls and mantelpiece, like some bright progressive child's. It all made me feel quite out of sorts, and I was glad when Tom and I got into the streets. It was just as the gypsy said—everything ticked. I felt the spark when he looked at me. He held my hand at once, and as soon as we got round the corner, bent down to kiss me. “Lovely Letty,” he said, “I wish we could go some place.”

“I have a place; come up and see me some time.”

I told him Jacky was leaving soon for England, to join her Faust, and he told me Bronte had to go to Washington for some cause or other. She dabbled quite a bit in radical politics and would go anywhere where she could cut a figure. This was lucky for Tom and me. I went home, walking on air, very pleased with the gypsy and resolved to go back the next day.

I had left the publishing office some weeks back, for the usual reason. The head of the office had started fooling round with one of the other girls, and I couldn't stand this indignity. I seized the first honorable occasion, this time a question of falsifying news, to quit. Now, however, what with Tom and a general feeling I had, I got a new spurt on, and soon got a job with the United Nations information offices at Rockefeller Center.

I had quarreled sharply with Bill van Week. He was playing with Edwige. I had seen them one night through the window in the café of the Lafayette, and had gone in and made quite a scene, hoping we all would be thrown out. They are far too patient at the Lafayette and too humane, like all the French, as my father, that incurable Gallophile, will persist in saying.

Since then, Bill and I had been on the outs. I heard vaguely that he was madly in love with Edwige, who was no better than a harlot. She went in for cute little things like cocktail napkins whose motif was a coozy with skirts or drawers you could lift up, and cocktail glasses with a similar sort of design. The girl was dressed on the outside of the glass; when the drink went down, inside you saw her naked back. She had stacks of obscene books, the lowest kind, and everything the undressed girl can still wear. My wretched cousin had a crowd of young lechers in her wake, and made use of them, as she made use of her loving husband who was now in the Pacific. They were writing an indecent novel intended to be a bestseller. They intended to process it in what they considered the new scientific way. First they would make it as improper as possible, with a going-to-bed on every second page, then they would have it multigraphed and sent to as many producers, publishers, and agents as possible. At the first bite they would send out Edwige and others of her
bagnio
(she had already set up as a flesh-peddler, masquerading as a movie agency). The name of the modern (and worser) Fanny Hill was to be, “If I Had the Time and Space—”

The book was written and was now going the rounds. Bill said it was very bad but he thought it could be placed, since book publishing had entered monopoly capitalism with the movies and best-book clubs. They were crazy to get the book that would net them millions, no matter what the subject matter. The taxes—one could whistle them away, one way or other. He said Edwige and her suitors, or consorts, had a brilliant idea there; one of the best he had ever heard of. He had been all his life on the track of bright ideas, just to show his family he could make good too, and that the Van Week blood ran good and strong in him. Bill was pulling all the strings he had to put the book across.

I told Bill and Edwige a good many home-truths. It was only too easy to do this, and I felt like a fool. Furthermore, it had not the faintest effect on them. Bill said tartly, “I'm a socialist; don't you think I know the society we're living in? The common-sense thing to do is to make use of capitalists, not let them make use of you.”

“Pander to the profiteers,” said I. “You're a stinking social-democrat. Why don't you join the honest millionaires like your old folks? It isn't that you're too modern to go to church, it's that they wouldn't let you in even to have a look around. As for Edwige, she's just a—”

And I said everything that I could think of that she was, which was a lot and none of it complimentary. Edwige's sweet face hardened to a flint and I could see the tigress in her. She will go far, I thought.

This was a disgraceful scene and had made more than one of my days morbid. What was I coming to? First, so sentimental that every tear-jerker did business with me; and then, brawling and bawling like a fish-wife. What sort of girl am I, I asked myself madly, eating my heart out. Good Gosh, what will become of me?

It's easy to imagine that in these rages and agonies I let Jacky's departure creep up upon me, almost unnoticed, though I cried honestly enough on the last day, and told her many things, quite untrue, but which seemed honest to me at the time, as, that she was the best of us all, and I loved her more than anyone else, and never could love anyone as I did her, and so forth. In a way, too, they were true; and they did no harm, for she was quite exalted and for weeks past had been in a state where every old bent man on the street with hazel eyes had reminded her of Gondych.

I
had been in this particular information office of the United Nations organizations for some weeks, and had made a lot of friends of both sexes, and become very friendly with the chiefs, mostly because of my hard work and real ability, I may say, with honest pride. I was an excellent office manager, not drawing back from show-downs and not pussy-footing when the hard and sharp word was needed; but also, in spite of my rather wild and selfish behavior, which I freely admit, I was at times a good friend of the girls and confided in them most of my troubles. This is one of the secrets of success in human relationships. He has much who can give himself away frequently and lavishly.

I worked without question, also, nights, week ends, at all times; and was no clock-watcher, overtime grouser, pennypincher. I was good at accounts, could do anything in an office, and also by this time had so much worldly experience that in a pinch or quandary I was worth ten ordinary girls. I knew where the dog lay buried; it seemed like instinct; it was just old campaigning. I got on very fast. This rapid rise which was, of course, partly due to my friendship with the chiefs in the office, and even to some night-clubbing and friendship with the wives, did not get me much in the way of salary, but I was once more in clover. I went out frequently, always had someone to pay my bills, and was able to spend most of my pay on my own marginal needs. I never lived in a small way, never could live inside my income, and indeed felt small, unhappy and mean-spirited when obliged to scrape.

I was in the midst of these hearty, improvident joys, but pretty much without a man. Tom Bratt and I had quarreled as he had turned out to be a shocking philanderer of the one-night-stand variety. I tried to shut my eyes to it, but I thought, Why should I put myself in the class of Bronte? I am not his wife.

Bill and I had not seen each other for weeks. Edwige's book, “If I Had the Time and Space—,” had actually been placed and was now being combed against the indecency laws; Bill was in high feather. He had seen it, he had predicted it, and so on.

Edwige was trying to find a way of divorcing her husband, who was in the service. She could not at the moment, and hoped for the end of the war, for like many a bright lady before her, she had her eyes on the Van Week millions. Only my knowledge of Bill's history gave me courage. Bill could not stick. Bill loved all women!

Into my office came Cornelis de Groot, a tall, handsome Dutchman of good family, blue-eyed, blond, of slim elegance. Before the war he had flown his private plane to the Cape, had a factory of his own, owned race horses, and had a wife or two. He made a ripple when he entered the office the first morning on business; the men started to laugh at and after him. It turned out that his first question had been, “Where can I get me a pretty girl?”

He had been showered with replies, but my name had been mentioned. They told him I knew the way of the world, was accommodating, intelligent, pretty, witty, and knew all there was to know about night-life in New York. My best office friend, Charmian, a swarthy, tough woman, unmarried, but not an old maid, told me this in one of her good moods. With us, Charmian and me, it was off-again, on-again, most days of the week. She was a girl a bit like me, or had been, but was now coarsened, toughened, who would sleep with strangers, and was getting desperate about her chances. She was thirty-six and looked more, being one of those fleshy, hang-cheek stubs with wiry hair and a heavy bust. Charmian, however, was the one who designated me as the companion for Cornelis, for she had the sense to feel at once that he would never take her. She preferred, therefore, to have him pick her lieutenant. There were plenty of other passable girls in the office, and some, even, were well-bred enough and knew a few languages. He might have chosen one of them. I thought it a good choice. They were too babyish, or too babyishly corrupt for such a man.

We took to each other at once. We merely glanced at each other across the room and something sparked. I was delighted to have such a desirable escort, and I soon whipped him into open admiration with my sparkling wit and common sense. I had the art of being myself, or rather, of always seeming to be myself.

We had not been out more than three times before he told me quite plainly what he wanted in me, beside companionship; and I had no hesitation in granting it to him. I had known from the beginning that this was part of the unwritten bargain.

Meanwhile, he had much money to spend and he spent it all on me, with
savoir-faire
, choosing a dress or bracelet for me, which smelled of the Kalver-straat and the Rue de la Paix, and a lifetime of experience with girls. He was an excellent friend and lover.

However, in a quaint European way, before we entered upon the carnal part of our friendship, he made me a little speech to this effect: That our love relation was not to be love, but necessity, a respectable partnership without emotion, and that if we showed any signs of becoming “involved,” both agreed to break it up.

I might have not liked this in another man! But in Cornelis, while it injured my pride, I thought it showed yet another of his greatly strange qualities. Cornelis was the man most suited to me that ever I met; not inscrutable, for it was always his will that was in question, and his will came first and his will was all turned to his career. He was making his way toward the Governorship of Curaçao, hence the Government of the Dutch West Indies, and though quite young, only forty-one, he was likely to get it after the war. There was the possibility of Surinam, Celebes! And later, much later, he had his eye on Java, but his head was not clouded by any dreams; he had planned each step in his intended rise in the Civil Service.

It was for this reason that he now made this unflattering proposal to me, but he carefully explained this to me, and nothing, to my mind, could have been fairer. I accepted. He explained to me that he was married, though not much to his satisfaction, and without children; but that he would not leave his wife unless a great occasion came his way. Naturally, I did not look upon myself as a great occasion, and I had good reason to fear that by that he meant title, money, a career-building woman. How bitterly now I thought of the girls I knew without ability, but with families behind them and plenty of money. When we passed one of these in the street, De Groot, while properly attentive, would observe her; it was clear enough that she was the possible great occasion, and not I.

Being hardy, enterprising, and optimistic, I yet hoped that something would happen to change his mind about me—it could not be wealth or title—it could only be love. I did not think of this all in the twinkle of the eye; but gradually, as I became accustomed to him, and to our connubial relationship, I longed to be with him in the Caribbean and saw for the first time how tired I was of my relatively successful career in the great Metropolis of Get-By. I suddenly saw the attraction of Gondych and Europe for Jacky. She had been offended by her ill success here, and probably was led by her library years to imagine that in Europe things would be different—chastity, beauty, romance, idealism, self-sacrifice, might have some spiritual value there. I doubted it, for the world is a rough and self-centered world, but in a material sense, I saw the beauties of distance; the tropic seas—Atlantic or Pacific—began to flash through my mind's eyes. Life might become a rapturous travelogue, and I knew myself well suited to entertain, to fit my place as governor's lady, to make a drawing room politically and socially brilliant.

This was the chance that I longed for and I saw it—through the looking glass. Cornelis had to go and come on various missions, and sometimes went as far away as the West Indies. He conducted himself according to his contract, with good breeding, decorum, but too much coolness. I was getting into deep water. I loved him and in a more serious way than ever before. He was too
old
for me, too clever, too cold, too ambitious. Naturally, I wanted him particularly.