I'm Dying Laughing (18 page)

‘If you know it, tell me the secret,’ Stephen shouted.

At this Godfrey got up and sat on the settee beside Millian, his wife. He had in his hand three or four sheets of paper, covered with single-spaced typing. He said mildly in his fine round voice, ‘Sit down Emily, this concerns you both.’

‘Holy mackerel, not another parson at the graveside,’ said Emily.

He said gently, ‘Sit down, Emily. It concerns Olivia, the rape of Olivia.’

‘The—WHAT—of Olivia? Oh Jehosaphat—‘

Stephen hushed her. ‘Let’s hear this indictment to the end. For I assume it is another indictment.’

Godfrey put his hand on Millian’s arm as he began to read, ‘This has not been written without long and careful thought, painful thought, and has been discussed with others.’

He looked up and then at his wife, ‘Millian and I have been over every idea expressed here, every word, you may say.’

He went on to read, ‘I have the permission of those others to read this; and it incorporates their view of a situation which may seem private, but which, on account of elements in it which have social implications, affects us all. This concerns the little twelve-year-old girl Olivia Howard, who now resides with Emily and Stephen Howard and is introduced as their daughter and is Stephen’s daughter. A court case is pending in which Florence Howard Baldwin and Mrs Anna Howard, the grandmother, are also asking for joint guardianship. We have been asked our opinion and this is the testimony which Millian and I have agreed to give, as neutral observers. I must add that we are friends of all parties, friends too of Isaiah Higham, a close friend of Bertram and Florence Baldwin; Higham agrees with us.’

He put the papers on his knee and looked thoughtfully at Stephen and Emily; then said gently, ‘I ought to prelude by saying that it is known that Stephen and Emily, for personal and to pinpoint it, mercenary reasons, fraudulently obtained possession of Christopher Potter two years ago, when Jacob Potter, the true father and a widower, was under the influence of alcohol. There can be no doubt of this. Stephen and Emily have several times related the circumstances in public. We admit here that Jacob Potter who is now in the hands of a psychoanalyst, is a compulsive drinker, subject to fits of deep melancholy and is even morose at times; and that Stephen and Emily may have had also an admirable or at least fully excusable motive for taking the child from him. When he was incapable of clear thought, however, an agreement was presented to him by them and signed by him and when the grandmother made claim they showed this agreement, and testimony as to Jacob Potter’s unfitness, which appears unassailable.’

‘Well, by golly, this is the limit,’ said Emily.

Godfrey put up his well-shaped hand. ‘Listen, Emily, I have thought of you, had your interests at heart, too; and Millian too, when thinking this through.’ He continued, ‘Four years ago, Emily and Stephen had a son of their own, Giles. They had already adopted Lennie. Two years ago, they adopted in the manner I have shown, Christopher. Now, they wish to take back Olivia, who had already been handed over to Florence Howard Baldwin and Mrs Anna Howard, the grandmother. What is the reason underlying this avidity for adoption, this child-catching? It must surely be part of that aberration which makes young women steal children from their baby-carriages, from their beds.’

‘It’s horrible, it’s horrible,’ said Emily.

He continued, ‘We all know since Emily Howard is of a free and frank nature, that Emily has always longed for a daughter; nothing more natural. In a way, her motherhood spent on boys only had been suppressed. Suppressed motherhood in itself constitutes a claim. But I am not a formalist. Social formulas and prejudices are embalming of what was once useful to society.’

‘If I had any gold ink I’d take it down in shorthand,’ Stephen sang out.

‘What I have written to the referee is as follows:

‘“Mr Referee: it is our opinion (that is, Millian’s and mine) that Stephen and Emily Howard are unsuitable guardians for Olivia Howard, the daughter of Stephen Howard and his deceased wife Caroline. We do this without the diffidence that might be thought prudent, because of our concern for the child and for the psychological comfort and affective needs of her aunt, Florence Howard Baldwin, who is very well known to us. We cannot judge accurately of a domestic interior. Marriages contain infinitely varied relationships and no one can pass judgment upon the satisfactions which may or may not be received in a relationship so intimate and indeed secret. But this thought is only for the man and the woman, the adults. The child caught between the two, undergoes not only the strain of his or her own adjustment to the world, which varies with every day and every year; but also the tensions of parental conflict in a context he cannot yet understand; not to mention strong intimations that filter through every conversation of an upset world.”’

‘Heard and approved, God,’ said Stephen; ‘go to the head of the class.’

Probably Godfrey did not hear him.

‘Too many facts of an interior and exterior world for which he has no slide-rule are shuttled before him. And we are speaking of a little, sheltered girl. Conflict and economic and psychological tensions, and even suppressed conflict will produce mentally or even physically battered resentful and rebellious children, who will not adjust to any norm. Yet what is more normal than the family relationship? And where it concerns children of a sweeter more pliable nature, as for example Olivia Howard, whom we all have seen, it may produce either victims, masochists, or natures which become double-dealing, secretive, unstable, furtive; or insinuating and deducing natures; children who are not frank and self-reliant, or too much so who sit in judgment—’

‘What a cast of characters!’ said Stephen.

‘Won’t sell,’ said Emily, ‘too morbid, not for the suburban mamma.’

‘—in silent judgment; in fact, strangers in the house and in the world, sneaks, cowards, those who triumph in malice and suspicion, the voyeurs of others’ troubles. Is this the best way to bring up a child? Perhaps Olivia is Stephen’s daughter—’

‘Perhaps! Cicero, you will be sued for that—’ said Stephen.

‘That was rhetorical, I withdraw it. We know Olivia is Stephen’s daughter—’

‘How do you know?’

‘But if other claims on him are greater, if the family background fails her in her deepest needs, would she not be happier in her grandmother’s or her aunt’s peaceful and well-ordered, if more conventional households?’

‘That is the question!’ said Stephen. ‘Say an aunt who comes home drunk every night in a taxi? Is that good for the young psyche, a goodnight kiss of that flavour?’

‘Stephen,’ said Godfrey, ‘since what is at issue here is the care and future of a girl, a beautiful, enchanting little girl, who is by reason of her background and her own personal fortune and her large expectations, entitled to expect the very best this country can provide for her—’

‘You mean a further million and a half in government bonds at the age of sixteen? I believe you! What more could her country do for her? Two million? That will come. She attracts money. My daughter Olivia will be of intense interest to all; but I come first.’

Godfrey said, ‘Yes, the money is a factor. But it is real; we must deal in realities: it is part of the child and her future; and it makes her more interesting to you admittedly.’

‘Godfrey,’ said Emily, ‘get it over with. Chop off our heads. Where are the tumbrils? Let’s get out of here, Stephen. This is simply the Paul Pry Committee in executive session. Come on, Stephen.’

‘I am sorry, Stephen,’ said Godfrey, ‘to make direct references to Emily; and her possible motives as well.’

‘You mean because Emily’s father was originally an automobile worker and what money she has and what money is in our bank account, she has made? We grant it all. Good for her! Bad for me!’

The other guests were fascinated by this trial without jury, entirely in the spirit of mid-century and of their society; but they were helping themselves to drinks, also. Emily, in spite of Stephen’s cranky whispers, made trips to the table too.

‘Why can’t we go? The play must go on, eh? If I stay I get something out of it.’

Godfrey was speaking again, ‘Emily, like myself, is a member of the lower middle class and what money she has made is a credit to her. But where is that money? It is spent in a reckless manner, in accord with general incoherencies of speech and behaviour, and inconsistencies of opinion. We can only regard her behaviour-history of the last few years as a kind of rake’s progress—’

‘A rake? What rake?’ said Emily recrossing to her chair.

‘—intellectually, morally and politically; financially as well perhaps. Is not the present and expected fortune of the child regarded by Emily as the finger in the dyke? Can we not say that?’

Stephen said, ‘Say that too: say anything. I’ve often wished I could sit in one of those high booths in a Chinese chow-mein palace where the lights are low, and listen to all my friends in the next booth talking about me. So you get your wishes. It’s as good as the little play in
Hamlet.
The king sees his crime done in public’

Godfrey said, ‘Let me get to the end, Stephen; I didn’t come to wound you or to get into a battle. It was thought necessary by us all to get you here and be frank and clear; not to work against you behind your back.’

‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones,’ said Emily, draining her glass and laughing. ‘Godfrey, I know how you feel, everyone talks about Godfrey the honest man, we call you Godfrey the Good.’

Godfrey flushed, ‘I’m glad of that!’

Stephen took off a shoe and exercised his toes; ‘Yes, I was thinking it would make an epitaph.’

Godfrey scarcely heard this. He continued, ‘Emily refers to herself always as Olivia’s mother. Is she equipped for the task? Compared with a real parent and putting aside for the moment the notion of biological motherhood—what is her equipment in this field? She is a woman, she is the guardian of two boys and mother of a third, she is an American and she can by her earnings provide a background of reasonable comfort and security. But Olivia’s social obligations will be large in a few years. We have here not merely a little girl, but a girl who in her adult years will have the control of an estate, perhaps two estates; and so we hear, will come into a large inheritance later on. We are not living in the ideal commonwealth, though we are living in one in which adjusted people can be happy. Is Emily by nature and training, by the way she makes her living and by emotional maturity, by present psychical state, a fit tutor, guardian, custodian, mentor, a fit all, for a mother is all, for this girl of great estate? That is to say, we know that on her twelfth birthday Olivia will have an accrued monthly income from government bonds of four hundred dollars. Now, with Millian and friends, on the information we have had from Olivia’s aunt and grandmother, we have carefully considered this situation, discussed it in all its intentions, over many nights and days, ever since we received the request.’

‘What request?’ said Vera.

Godfrey explained patiently, ‘Isaiah Higham wrote to me and I saw Florence Baldwin a number of times. Mrs Howard Senior and Florence Baldwin want custody of Olivia. Stephen some years ago made them her guardians; then two years ago he took her back. Not only this but we have studied everything and reached a conclusion and we stand by our judgment that Emily Wilkes Howard shows an advanced and progressive case of mental confusion, a disordered psychism, though whether this is accidental or constitutional psychopathy, we cannot say.’

Stephen, putting on his shoes, said, ‘Say those words again! Do you mean to say you put your name and Millian’s to this goddamn trash and sent it to the court? Who are you? Freud? Jones? How would you like to go where the good niggers go?’

Godfrey drew back, appalled, ‘What did you say? What word did you use?’

‘Skip it. Forget it. Is there much more to your indictment?’

‘It is not an indictment. It is a conclusion, a series of observations.’

He read from his papers, ‘A natural classification of universal application is really impossible at this moment. The unreasonable self-indulgence, the exploitation of her own personality for which Emily Howard is known, disturbs the nervous system, if it is not a result of a disturbed nervous system. We do not believe that such a person with no self-control and no self-criticism, a pronounced cult of her own individuality and of all or any circumstance connected with her life, acquaintances, name, pursuits, amounting almost to a delirium of self, can be a good guardian for any child, let alone such a child. In any case, the almost kidnapping that took place two years ago seems to show that Emily and Stephen themselves were aware of their real impropriety.’

Emily put down her glass, got her strong bulging form off the sofa and said, ‘I’ve been thinking, Godfrey, what is behind all this. I like to let things sink in and then I see the basic reason. What I see is that you are an ally of the big money, the real big money, I mean the Howards’ and the Tanners’ money. They have got at you through your virtue. Money can always get at anybody through some damn thing. You adopted children; but you adopted poor children. We adopted rich ones. You’re probably jealous. I’m making more than ever you made and I’ve just come out here. But you have sense enough to prefer established money. Good man. What an instinct! You goddamn hypocrite you—what’s the name of that man, Stephen?—who crawled into a family and—’

‘Tartuffe,’ said Stephen.

‘Tartuffe,’ said Emily sinking back again. She was wearing a long silk dress of yellow with slanting stripes of purple and silver. She rolled over towards her neighbour, the man called Beauclerk, put her head on his shoulder and began to cry.

Stephen said, ‘The man says. But I will get others to say different. Look at my wife sobbing her heart out. What would you think if I came to your house for dinner and started attacking your wife?’

Godfrey said, ‘This is an interesting reaction. I am not attacking your wife.’

Stephen said in a mean voice, ‘OK, it’s just a suppressed wish to attack my wife; on top, philanthropy.’