The Paris Wife

experience and the connections. He couldn’t let Ford know that, though, because he couldn’t stand not to have the upper hand, most particularly when the upper hand would have been impossible to get. Ford’s novel The Good Soldier had received some very nice attention. He’d written other novels as well and had published Yeats, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, and others in a magazine he’d founded earlier, called the English Review. All of this was bad enough, but Ford was also a gentleman with money and a pedigree, a combination Ernest never had any patience for. He came home from the meeting muttering about how Ford’s tastes were slanted so far backward the man was about to fall over on his ass.

“So he’s not modern. Why should everyone be? I’m not.”

“No, you’re not modern, little cat. But you’re very beautiful and good, and a bang-up mother besides. This fellow Ford is too full of his own good opinion, and he wheezes when he talks. It’s so bad you’d think every last word has to swim through his lungs to reach his mouth.”

“Good gracious, Tiny. Please tell me you took the job anyhow.”

“Of course I did.” He smiled broadly and wickedly, reaching over to tweak one of Bumby’s feet. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

When I met Ford I was inclined to like him, even after all Ernest had said. He and his lover, the painter Stella Bowen, had us over to lunch, and I was delighted to find they had a baby, too, a darling little girl named Julie, about the same age as Bumby. I hadn’t brought Bumby out of politeness for our hosts, but I told Stella I would the next time. She was warm in her encouragement about this, and about everything-feeding us a beautiful four-course lunch and engaging me graciously with her charming Australian accent. Ford was ruddy and plump, with wispy blond hair and a mustache. I did wonder at first how Ford, well into middle age, was able to woo such a lovely woman as Stella, but he soon revealed perfect manners and spoke with an appealing conviction for everything he cared about, including Stella, good wine, creamy soup, and literature. All through lunch, he emphasized how important it was for him to help young writers like Ernest find their way. I knew Ernest would rather not need Ford’s or anyone’s help, but the truth was, he did.

“I can bring a lot to this magazine,” Ernest said when we’d said our good-byes and were headed home. “He should be grateful to have me.”

“I liked him.”

“Of course you did.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” He came upon a loose stone and kicked it into the street. “Don’t you think he looks like a walrus?”

“A little,” I admitted.

“And the wheezing?”

“That’s fairly serious, isn’t it? Stella said he got it in a gas attack in the war.”

“I could forgive him that, then, if he wasn’t so superior.”

“You don’t have to love him. Just do the work.”

“There’s plenty of work to do. That’s lucky, I suppose.”

“So much is lucky, Tatie. You’ll see.”

Ford and Stella took to having literary teas on Thursdays at the Quai d’Anjou. I often went for the company and took Bumby, too, parking his pram in whatever sun was coming in through the windows. It was at one of these teas I first met Harold Loeb. Harold seemed to be about Ernest’s age and was very good-looking-tall, with a sharp, straight nose and strong chin and towering waves of dark hair. As soon as Ford introduced us, we began talking easily about the States.

“I don’t miss home exactly,” he said. “But I can’t seem to stop dreaming about it. I wonder why that is.”

“It’s part of you, I guess,” I said. “It’s locked in, isn’t it?”

“That’s nicely put,” he said, and peered down at me with clear and intense blue eyes. “Are you a writer, too, then?”

“Not hardly.” I laughed. “Though I don’t think I’d be half bad at it. I’ve always loved books and felt they spoke to me. I’ve played piano since I was a girl, but not seriously.”

“I’m not sure I write seriously,” Harold said. “I try very hard to be funny, actually.”

“I should think you’d be very funny if you put your mind to it.”

“That’s swell of you to say. Here, come tell Kitty. She thinks all my jokes are a bust.”

We crossed the room together to meet his girlfriend, Kitty Cannell, who was truly beautiful, slim and graceful and golden all over.

“Kitty used to be a professional dancer,” he said. “If she moves to get more wine, you’ll see it instantly.”

“Oh, Harold,” she said. “Please don’t try to be charming.”

“See, Hadley. I have to be very dour around Kitty or she gets impatient with me.” He pulled a face and Kitty laughed, showing her nice teeth. “And sometimes,” Harold went on, “she surprises me utterly, the dear girl.”

“It’s why you keep me around.”

“That and your ankles, sweetheart.”

By the end of the afternoon I was quite taken by Harold and Kitty both, and happily accepted when they invited Ernest and me to dinner the next evening, at the Negre de Toulouse.

“It’s a wonderfully secret local place,” Kitty said. “You won’t find it in the guidebooks.”

“I swear not to breathe a word of it,” I said, and then began to wonder what on earth I could wear. I was still at a loss the next evening when it was time to leave for the restaurant. It had been five months since I’d had Bumby. My maternity clothes swam on me now, but I couldn’t yet squeeze into anything from before.

“No one really cares,” Ernest said. “You could go in sackcloth and still charm everyone.”

“I could not. You might not give a whit about clothes.” I gestured at his patched jacket and sweatshirt, the uniform he wore day and night, without any regard to fashion or even decorum. “But people generally do take care and want to make a good impression.”

“You’ve already made one, obviously. But if you like, I’ll tell them I’ve listened too carefully to Gertrude, who’s always said to buy pictures instead of clothes.”

“She does say that, but we don’t buy pictures, do we?” I frowned at myself in the mirror.

“Don’t fret, Tatie,” Ernest said, coming behind me to plant a kiss on the back of my neck. “No one’s as lovely and straight and simple as you.”

I met his eyes in the mirror. “You’re awfully sweet, aren’t you?”

He kissed me again and then pushed me firmly out the door.

In the end the restaurant was so dimly lit, I found I wasn’t self-conscious after the first bottle of wine. While the men talked of Princeton, where Harold had gone to school, and scratch starts at first novels (Harold was working on his just then), Kitty and I had a surprisingly intimate conversation about her first marriage, to Skipwith Cannell, a poet who’d apparently made her miserable, then refused to divorce her.

“How terrible for you. How will you marry again?”

“I’d never marry again, dear. Thank goodness Harold and I are in agreement about that much. But I’d rather not be chained to Skip forever. It was hard enough to bear when he was nearby. Now he clinks and clanks and bedevils me all the way from London.”

“It’s freedom you want, then.”

“Good God, yes. Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I want to be happy I suppose.”

“Happiness is so awfully complicated, but freedom isn’t. You’re either tied down or you’re not.”

“Blaming marriage doesn’t solve it. As soon as you love someone, you’re bound up with them. It’s unavoidable-unless you swear off love.”

“Even I’m not that hard-nosed.” She laughed and raised her glass. “To love, then.”

Harold turned to us with a quizzical look. “What’s going on here?”

“Hadley’s turning me into a romantic,” Kitty said.

Harold chuckled. “Fat chance, sweetheart, but it’s a very nice idea.”

“Only one romantic per table,” Ernest piped in. “There’s a sign at the door.”

After a vast dinner, they came back with us to the sawmill apartment for a nightcap, and though they