He allows his blue eyes to travel significantly over my own bundled form, and in spite of myself I have to smile. How marvellous at his age – or any age – to have the energy to think about such things in weather like this. “Sorry, Tom, I’m invited out to tea myself,” I tell him, trying not to sound too cheerful about it. I stamp my feet lightly in an effort to keep them warm.
“Pity,” he grunts. “Shall we make it next Monday, then?”
“Well – yes – come for tea.”
With reluctance he releases my hand. I give him a noncommittal smile and hurry on my way, wondering ruefully how I am going to find a tactful way to let him know that one freakish indiscretion is not going to lead to another. Just how I am going to manage this without offending or hurting him is far from clear; but pondering the problem passes the time and helps me forget the cold until I ring Sebastian’s bell.
A broad middle-aged woman with a bush of frizzy black hair and a flat face like a pie plate opens the door. She wears a pair of once-pink bedroom slippers and a surly expression.
“Good afternoon. I’m Mrs. Hill. I’ve come to see Mr. Long.”
“He sick in bed. No see anybody.” She would have closed the door and the discussion here, but I add rather loudly, “He invited me to tea.”
Her small eyes narrow. “No see anybody,” she repeats mulishly.
“My name is –”
“You go now.”
“But Mr. Long invited me to tea, Mrs. Blot.”
“That not my name. You sell thing. No want.”
“No, no. I’m a friend of Mr. –”
“You go now, lady.”
This impasse might have gone on indefinitely, but a bellow at last reaches us from upstairs. “Is that Mrs. Hill? Let her in at once!”
At this, with reluctance, Mrs. B. removes her bulk from the doorway and allows me in. She immediately slops off to the kitchen, leaving me to pull off my boots and coat and put them wherever I please. Quickly, my heart still beating fast after this encounter, I mount the familiar, creaking staircase.
“Stupid woman,” Sebastian grumbles. “Blot, not you.” The bed is made up and he is sitting in an armchair, his plastered foot extended on a hassock. A faded cardigan hangs open over a tieless shirt that exposes his ropy neck, but his white hair is meticulously brushed and he smells of aftershave.
“What is her name, then? We really ought to call her by it, don’t you think? She’s entitled.”
“Of course. But you might not be so keen when you discover it’s Blovantasakis. She is indisputably a valuable part of our cultural mosaic. Actually, she has the beautiful first name of Calliope, though there are reasons why we don’t call her that, either. Do sit down. I’m glad to see you.”
“Glad to be here.” I sit down and smooth the old beige skirt over my still-cold knees. I wish now I’d obeyed the impulse to wear my red towel outfit. There is something infinitely sad about this dim and stuffy room with its old-fashioned furniture, and the crutches and Aspirin bottle established familiarly by the bed. The window, which needs washing, frames a bleak outlook of icicles, clotheslines and telegraph wires – not a very satisfying outlook for a philosopher, or come to that, anybody. Here, in the anteroom of his own termination, the old man sits alone by the hour with only his thoughts for company. He is gazing out of the window now in silence, as if preoccupied, thin shoulders hunched, eyes hooded.
“How’s your toe coming along?” I ask, to remind him I am there.
“We won’t discuss that. Boring.”
“All right. My cold’s better. Now we’ve got health out of the way.”
“Your nose looks red.”
“It’s hellishly cold outside, that’s why.”
“Ah. Bloody country, this.”
“What made you settle here?”
“Depression. Second marriage. Land of opportunity, we were told.”
“And was it?”
“Yes; more or less.”
“This was your wife, then?” I indicate a photo in a tarnished silver frame on the bureau. He glances at it in surprise as if he’s long forgotten it’s there, or even perhaps who the woman was. “Yes, that’s my first wife, Enid. Pretty woman. Brain like a peahen.”
I get up to look at it more closely. “But this isn’t the bride in the picture downstairs. How many wives have you had, then?”
“Ah, that was Gwennie, my second. Pamela’s mother. Another cardinal error. We were divorced in 1950, after committing two children. After that I gave up matrimony.”
“Where’s your other child then?”
“My son was killed in Korea in ’52. Nineteen years old. You’d wonder what he was begun for, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, what a pity.” I cast around for a more cheerful topic of conversation, but can find none. I remember the melancholy face of the bridegroom in the picture downstairs, and as if he remembers it, too, he says, “There can’t be much to be said for a man who makes the same mistake twice, can there? Marriage is not a rational arrangement, of course. Too big a divergence in expectations. Men want emotional partnership with a mental equal. Women want sex and all that goes with it – brats and so on.”
“Most people would say it’s the other way around.”
“Would you?”
I think this over. “Well, my own case – I hope – is hardly typical.”
“One’s own seldom is. What was so different about yours?”
“Well, I married for security … protection. And Edwin … crazily enough, I think he wanted adventure. Romance. Something like that. It wasn’t me he wanted; it was just the idea. Terrible motives, anyway, on both sides.” This is the first time I’ve articulated these thoughts, and the sound of my own voice surprises me, as if a stranger has spoken. But having begun, there seems no reason I should not add, “Anyhow, it settled down, like most unions, into a sort of holy deadlock.”
He gives a snort of appreciation. “Trouble is, by the time you’ve defined who wants what, it’s too late, and the lawyers move in like jackals on a corpse.”
“Well, that could be preferable to …”
“That’s what I thought. Divorce like surgery. Better than the disease.” Without warning he throws back his head and shouts, “Mrs. Blot!” When a mutter from below answers, he shouts again, “Bring up the tea, please. And the whisky.”
“Anyway,” I go on, because the subject interests me, “why should getting married be any more rational than all the other things we do? Surely none of our relationships are logical. And I’m glad they’re not, really. Otherwise there’d be no surprises, would there?”
He looks at me under his wrinkled eyelids with a wry smile. “Wittgenstein would agree with you. He thought logical truths are meaningless. Tautologies, he called them. Claimed they say nothing. So you like surprises, do you?”
“Well, I’ve had a few lately that … They’re sometimes pretty devastating, though some turn out to be rather nice.” (Tom here foxtrots lightly across my mind.) “Anyhow, I’m getting rather used to them.”
“It takes a lot of self-confidence to like surprises.”
“Does it?” I say, flattered.
Noisy breathing and the clatter of china herald the arrival of Mrs. Blot with the tray. She sets it down with a light crash on the table beside him, gives me a bitter glance from her small eyes and slops off again downstairs, all without a word. The pot of tea proves to be strong but not hot. There is no lemon and not enough milk. The digestive biscuits on a cracked plate are crumbling with old age. All in all, Mrs. B. has without question won this round on points.
“Muse of epic poetry indeed” mutters Sebastian, pushing away his half-empty cup. “Debased, in this case, into the modern keyboard steam whistle. Here, get yourself a glass out of the bathroom and have a drink with me.”
I do that and find that malt whisky, while a new experience – another surprise, in fact – is not without its attractions. We sit in silence a little while over our drinks. The sky outside deepe
ns to a dense and beautiful blue. Sebastian draws a long sigh of satisfaction. “I like you,” he says. “You don’t talk too much.”
“I’d rather listen. To you, for instance. You studied at Heidelberg. I’m not even a graduate of the Don Mills Public Library.”
“Well, I drank a lot of beer there. That was just after the war – the old war. Unfortunately I was just too young for that one, and too old for the next. Another planet, anyhow, that world. Soon after that I married damn-fool Enid (can you believe it, in spite of studying Strindberg), and went to work for an advertising agency in London. Perfectly good sense in all that; but I couldn’t even be consistent. Met Gwen, who had academic ambitions for me. She pushed me into a M.Litt., married me and then decided we should emigrate. Not that I blame her for any of it, you understand. She’s not responsible for my failure.”
“But you were a professor at York.”
He grins sardonically. “You call that success? No, I’ve written nothing, that’s the point, except a few little penny-ante articles in the lesser journals. Nothing of any significance whatever.”
“But writing things isn’t enough to make anybody a success. Look at all the junk that’s written. There are people who think Kahlil Gibran or Jonathan Livingston Seagull are great philosophers, but that doesn’t make them right, does it?”
“You may pour us another drink, Rowena.”
“No, not for me – I’m afraid I must go – look, it’s quite dark. I’ve stayed far too long. But I have enjoyed it. Thanks for asking me.”
I’m afraid he may press me to stay into the dinner hour, and thus create another stressful encounter with Mrs. Blot; but he has suddenly drifted into one of his half-dozes and hardly seems to notice when I say goodbye and slip away. Downstairs I get soundlessly into my outdoor things and ease the front door open with caution. In the kitchen, pots clash and cupboard doors bang dangerously, and I step out into the cold with a sense of escape.
The crystal night contains one brilliant star. It pulses overhead, bright, remote, but not entirely unfriendly.
“Thank you, darling,” says Tom into my neck.
There is no appropriate answer to this, coming as it does only minutes after I have kindly but seriously explained to him that what we’ve just done must not and cannot happen any more. It is a considerable shock to discover that only a few expert gestures on his part have been needed to sweep away every one of my scruples. What began half an hour ago over the teacups has led to the bedroom with the most effortless ease and speed.
Now I lie here under him as the pleasure slowly ebbs and wonder whether I can be quite normal. Surely susceptibility like mine must be highly unusual. It is a surprise, too, to find that another aftermath of this encounter is a kind of fleshly tenderness I have never felt before. As for Tom, the blue eyes looking down into mine are so loving that to ask for a definition of exactly what it is he loves seems ungenerous. Is there anything wrong, after all, with simple animal gratitude?
“Must go, my dear – there’s a vestry meeting,” he murmurs, and heaves himself off the bed. Cheerfully he whistles into and out of the bathroom. After climbing into his trousers, he pauses to drop a kiss on my forehead. Seconds later he has disappeared down the stairs and banged the front door exuberantly behind him. Wittgenstein then jumps on the bed, his fur fragrant with the cold outside air. The two of us are just settling down on the pillows when Prince Charles walks in.
“Well,” he says, with a cold glance at the dishevelled bed, “I must say both you and the Church of England surprise me. Surely, at his age and in his line of work the Rev. Foster ought be above this kind of thing. As for you –”
“As for me,” I say, stung to defiance, “you could say I’m making up for lost time.”
“In Edwin’s bed. How tasteless.”
“It’s my bed now.” But because he is an old friend, and looks sad rather than angry, I feel I owe him some kind of explanation. “This is not an inappropriate place for it, as you know. Helps to exorcise a lot of other occasions.”
“But where’s your dignity, Rowena?”
“Nowhere, I guess. But does that matter a lot?”
“To me it does. But the point really is, I thought you’d made up your mind quite definitely that –”
“I know. Well, I changed my mind. Or something did. The thing is, you see, that first time, at his house – well, that sort of – er – detonation was something I honestly didn’t think could ever happen again. It was so – it was so – it actually scared me.”
“That’s typical of you, heaven knows.”
“And now it’s happened again, with even more … Well, I mean, is that – does it always –?”
“You mean you didn’t know you could have that feeling again?”
“Charles – Sir – I had no idea. Good Lord, then I wonder how people ever bother doing anything else like earning a living, and so on. As for self-abuse, if this is what it does, well, no wonder it’s so popular. Nana called it that, you know, I suppose to put me off – her mother told her it made people crazy or blind, and while she didn’t quite believe that, she warned me against it anyway, just in case. So I never … Why, if that were true this whole city would be full of lunatics going blind this very moment.”
The Prince shakes his head in a deprecating manner. “But a man of the cloth like that. What an outrageous old pagan.”
“But that’s the best of it. If he were furtive about it and full of guilt afterwards – but he’s not. After all, it was Paul, you know, not Christ, who was so anti-sex. I think I agree with Tom that nothing that feels so good can possibly be bad. Anyhow, what harm are we doing anyone? Neither of us is married any more, and as you hinted yourself, at our age there’s no risk of pregnancy.”
He gives a sniff of disapproval, the Battenberg nose being specially useful for this purpose. “And what,” he says, “about those ladies of the Parish Guild? Promiscuous old trout.”
“Well, that’s his affair. So to speak. It makes no difference, really. No, there’s no use trying to doomsay, Charles.”
“That’s all very well. But these things never happen in a vacuum, you know. What about Marion? Have you thought about that at all? What if she ever found out that you and Tom –”
I stare at him. “Thanks. You’ve made your point.”
With dignity he stalks away, hands behind his back, and for once I am not sorry to see him go.
“Still, it was a really beautiful funeral,” Cuthbert says bravely. He juts up his chin in a not quite successful effort to look less sad. “And Tom is always marvellous at times like that, as you know. Here, I’ll take your coat. Now you just go in and say hello to Basil there. I’ll be right back.”
He trots off busily. I walk into the sitting-dining area of his condo, which is a space rather than a room, furnished in bleak, basic, blond-wood style. Everything in it is new and specklessly neat. The broadloom carpet is pale beige, as are the drapes framing a splendid after-dark view of several downtown office blocks and the hypodermic needle of the CN Tower. Bright modernistic prints framed in metal emphasize the general air of sterility. The one living thing in the place is small, yellow Basil swinging on his perch. When I go over to greet him, he flutters about in such real or pretended agitation that a feather and some droppings shower to the bottom of the cage.
“You’d hardly believe what a comfort he’s been to me,” Cuthbert says, carefully edging into the room with sherry decanter and glasses on a tray. “Somebody to come home to, it just makes all the difference. Aren’t you good company, sweetie; aren’t you Daddy’s boy, then?” Basil replies by flying at the bars of his cage and clawing his way up the side of it, eyeing us coyly from a bright black eye.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, Cuthbert. But I’m sure Tom took the service very well. That big voice of his – he almost makes you believe those incredible promises, doesn’t he? ‘Though he die, yet shall he live,’ and all that. Sheer power of language, I suppose. He’s so rig
ht to have no truck with the new prayer book.”
“Well, I believe it all – while he’s talking, anyway. And whenever I go to church. It’s in between times – that’s the hard part. But nobody’s a believer one hundred per cent of the time; Tom once told me that, and it made me feel a lot better.”
I sip my sherry cautiously. What with the bottle of brandy Tom has installed on my sideboard, and the occasional malt whisky at Sebastian’s, I am becoming quite an experienced drinker.
“My, it’s nice to see you again, Rowena,” he says comfortably. “Such a pity I had to go down with flu right after the funeral. Settled right down in my bronchial tubes, too, till the doctor bombed it with Aureomycin. You knew that Tom’s had it, too?”
“Yes, I knew.”
“Anyhow, it’s ages since we got together. And you were so good to me that day after Mother –”
“You did the same for me, if you remember.”
“And how is Marion these days?”
“Oh, she is in good form,” I say, trying not to sound discouraged about that.
“There’s no date set yet for your court hearing, but I hope there will be soon. Meantime, as I keep on saying, I’m sure Edwin left a will somewhere to provide for you – if only we could find it. Then most of your troubles would be over.”
Those dire words court hearing give me such a pang of fear it is a moment before I can reply. What will be heard, and by whom? and what will become of me if –? But I wrench my mind back to what Cuthbert is saying.
“Yes – well – I’ve looked everywhere in the house, Cuthbert. The other day I even flipped through the kitchen cookbooks, but no luck, of course.”
“Never mind, Rowena, I just feel in my bones that things are going to be all right. Blind faith, I guess you could call it.”
I raise my glass to blind faith and wish I could share it. Cuthbert pushes up a striped shirt cuff to look at his watch. “The Black Pearl man ought to be here by now. I hope you like Chinese food. Perhaps I should give them another call.”
“Oh, they’ll be along. This is nice sherry.”
A Serious Widow Page 13
