They finally married. It had already been called off twice. In her family’s view it was an unacceptable thing because he was a Catholic. His family saw it as impossible because they did not recognize divorce.
During the years we were closest he lived in painter’s country, far out on Long Island; the flatness of the land, the incredible light. He had a small house in Sag Harbor — she did, actually; she had bought it before they were married with money she earned herself. The house had once been a brothel with men of every color lying in the street outside in the morning.
They lived in this house from time to time — from necessity to necessity, one might say — but also in fine houses on the bay or near the ocean, the finest of which stood at the far end of a long lawn that in back became pasture running unobstructed to the sea, a house they owned and that, tragically, burned. There was no place in the world I loved the evening meal as much as there.
He was then and remains the most successful man I have known, successful in his apprehension of life and in his values, untarnished after everything, even when reverses came and the tide was running against him, the phone in the office ringing and he not daring to answer. The secretary had been let go, the credit cards recalled. He would go through the morning letters. Like a gambler looking at cards, he glances, throws them unopened into the trash. But still a dinner for friends, which he prepares himself, fresh flounder fillets, a cold white wine. Outside it is winter and raining. The fire dies, the brandy is gone. We go to bed at two, the walls are icy but the bed soft and warm.
On a final trip to Europe we are sitting farther back in the plane, and as it lands and decelerates, he reaches around near his feet. His shoes have disappeared. “Anyway, they’re in first class,” he says wryly. They had been handmade, though now a nail was coming up through the sole of one.
We stayed for a time in London in the house of an old friend of his, Elizabeth Furse, beaming and unpredictable, in Chapel Street, sleeping in the coat-piled study like impoverished salesmen, the bath three floors above. Elizabeth Furse no longer had a restaurant — to which, above a small pub, one had gone, in any case, only by invitation — but the impulse survived. At Sunday dinner a crowd — there were members of Parliament, London editors, daughters of earls — sat in the basement kitchen with its large table, shelves of cups and saucers, piles of magazines, and flowers.
Flats, visas, jobs, were staples of her conversation. She was the fierce but generous matron of many lives, around whom animals purred and weaker spirits crumbled. “Robert,” she had warned Ginna, “I want to know about any lady friends you plan to bring in.”
She had earned her intractability, at the very least by her actions during the war, when she worked for British Intelligence in occupied France. Her son had been born while she was a prisoner, and she jumped off a train with him when they were on their way to the death camps. Later she had come to England. “Listen,” she explained, “I learned languages.” She’d been born in Latvia. She was instructing us all in the art of survival; the lesson was wideranging. “I knew all those people: Gide — he was kind, he was a kind man. Thomas Mann, God. His children … it was all incest, constantly.”
She was like a figure from the Old Testament, her sternness, her prejudices. On a large plate being passed was the fruit for dessert. She had gotten it at Covent Garden. “Lying in the gutter,” she said. “There were some bad spots on it but it was perfectly good. While I was picking it up they were insulting me and throwing fruit at me. Do you know what they did in the end? They came and began stamping on the fruit, crushing it! Perfectly good fruit. Wasting it. That’s what’s wrong with this country, I tell you. That’s why the Communists will sweep over you!”
There was still the threat of this at the time. She was like a commissar herself, whatever her politics, and one felt the chill of her warning: The waste will come back to haunt you.
Ginna knew her well and had lived through too many prophecies to be disturbed. He had his own formulas. In the evening, looking through the refrigerator, he discovered a bottle. After reading the label, he handed it to me. Polmos Zubrowka, I read.
“It’s vodka,” I said.
“Keep reading.”
It said something like, flavored by an extract of Zubrowka, the fragrant herb beloved by the European bison. I remember especially the word “beloved.” “Have you ever drunk this?” I asked.
“Very well known,” he assured me.
I did not know whether to believe him, but in such matters I hesitated to dispute his knowledge. I had seen him many times sign his name laboriously to bar checks late at night though in the morning he was always lucid and fresh.
The many nights and glasses. They were ritual, above all with old friends, Harry Craig, who had been, was it Beckett’s secretary? back from somewhere and signaling for another bottle of Haut Brion — Château O’Brien, he called it. His old friend, Jules Buck, at the Bibliothèque, over near the United Nations. It’s late, the restaurant is empty, in a hush that its name suggests. They know the bartender, Roger, however; they recognize him and pound on the glass door. He unlocks it, polite and tough-looking, like an Algerian boxer. They greet him in French. At the vacant bar Roger asks, “Que désirez-vous, messieurs?”
“Cognac, Roger,” they say.
“Oui, monsieur.”
He lays three large brandy glasses on their side and fills them until the amber-colored liquid is ready to pour over the rim. Then he sets them upright and places them in front of us. A quarter of an hour passes, perhaps more.
“Cognac, Roger.”
They have missed the place, they tell him. It’s good to see him again—c’est bon de vous revoir. Jules Buck is wearing an expensive trenchcoat, the belt unfastened and hanging down. They are talking about Peter O’Toole, with whom Buck has made films and who starred in one of Ginna’s. The deeply aromatic smoke from Ginna’s French cigarettes tints the air. One last cognac. They are so drunk they are looking at things with great discernment, as if discovering them. Finally it is time to leave. The bill is thirty-five dollars. We tip him fifteen and thank him. At the door, hands are raised in warm farewell, “Au revoir, Roger.”
He nods. “Bonne nuit. Je m’appelle Gérard,” he adds wearily.
We part with Jules Buck at the corner. Ginna’s speech is clear, but his thoughts seem to slide off into the ditches. “What time is it?” I ask him.
“A lot,” he mutters, then, “What the devil is this?” at something found in his pocket. He becomes difficult to steer. At last a cab stops. We head uptown. “Your old copain is torpedoed” are his final words.
—
You recall, perhaps, the three actresses the studio had named, any one of whom would have been a bottle of champagne across the bow, and down the ways, majestic and large, we would glide.
One of them was Maggie Smith. Ginna had given her one of her first movie roles in a film called Young Cassidy, taken from Sean O’Casey’s autobiography. She would remember that — it was easy for him to transfer to her his own sense of loyalty. We went to see her and she turned him down. He managed to hide his disappointment.