Joshua Then and Now

by Mordecai Richler

  Jane and Pauline had been to McGill together. If Pauline was a senator’s daughter, Jane, though her profligate father had squandered the family fortune, was not without her own cherished connections. A great-uncle had been a premier of New Brunswick. The two girls were inseparable on campus. Jane, in those days, had been the reckless leader, provoking the more naturally timorous Pauline, a loyal though resentful follower, into what passed for outrageous behavior in their set. Competition between them became fierce. So if it was Pauline who got to date Oscar Peterson, it was Jane who captivated Dylan Thomas, after he had floated on campus to read, and got to take him to Rockhead’s and, she allowed, into her bed as well. Then, if it was Pauline who absconded to Europe after the family scandal – Europe, where she was to marry a decidedly well-born but avowed Communist – it was Jane who really shook everybody up four years later. Marrying Jack Trimble, of all people. Two children, a boy and a girl, came out of their marriage: Charles and Margaret Rose. Jane remained stunningly slender, her darkly ruined air heightened, if anything, by the startling streak of gray that now ran through her raven-black hair and the casual, frankly sexy manner in which she wore her expensive clothes. In 1972, she still filled the defiant and attention-getting office of the set’s shocker. She had been the first one on the lake to read Kate Millett, subscribe to Rolling Stone, and see Deep Throat. She was something else, the men said. But, after all, she was married to a broker. A bore. And now Pauline, her one-time acolyte, was back on the lake, and in her annoyingly quiet manner had finally outstripped her. She was married to a Jew. A prizefighter’s son. Jane didn’t care for it, not one bit.

  Ostensibly, Pauline was touched by what she understood to be her old mentor’s submission to a marriage of convenience, but her concern was tainted by satisfaction. Jane, on her side, infuriated Pauline by making it a point to be flutteringly attentive to Joshua, popping up unannounced on their lawn, inviting herself for drinks, engaging him with her sometimes malicious wit or by borrowing books that had shaped him, like Isaac Babel’s collected short stories. A book she had never returned – mislaying it somewhere, she said. Jack Trimble muddied the two women’s relationship even further. His manner with Pauline was courtly, although she shrank to see him bearing down on her, his cloying smile made all the more hideous by his recently capped teeth. Trimble’s flirting would have been tolerated by Jane, a more-than-acceptable convention – but not his deference.

  From the beginning, Jack Trimble had eschewed the less fashionable, book-reading crowd on the lake, largely academics, a retiring lot ensconced in modest cabins, and had elected to run with the country club set. He didn’t water-ski or sail, leaving that to Jane and the children, but he was an adequate golfer, and for his sake the club subscribed to Punch, even as he did to Country Life, and kept a tin of Earl Grey tea on a kitchen shelf. But Trimble didn’t understand Westmount’s progeny at play. He failed to grasp that if the Hornby cottage had perhaps the most cachet on the lake, it was precisely because its dilapidated boathouse tilted further than the others, its wraparound porch sank lower, and what was laughingly known as its powerboat was actually a leaky wooden tub, its outboard unreliable at best. Trimble, seemingly British to the core, surprisingly enjoyed display. He had torn down the drafty old Mitchell cottage with its haphazard additions, slapped on over the years as children had made them necessary, and now presided over a mansion of his own – an architect-designed, ranch-style house, commanding more than a thousand feet of choice lake frontage, its picture windows enormous and its teak deck larger than anybody else’s, just as his tennis court was in a state of better repair, his workshop equipped to suit the most exacting professional, and his Grew 212 easily the most imposing boat on the water. His rock garden was floodlit at night. The croquet lawn could have served as the surface for a snooker table. The fattest goldfish in the Townships slumbered under the water lilies in his pond. Indoors, there was a cathedral ceiling, a billiards room, and a library. “Trimble’s Folly” Jane herself dubbed it, squelching any possible criticism from the others, and the first time Joshua had been invited there to dinner, Trimble had grasped his hand, indicated the bronzed young man scraping the dock, and said, “I want you to meet a future prime minister of Canada.”

  Charlie dipped his head, blushed, and said, “P-p-pleased to meet you, Mr. Sh-sh-shapiro.”

  Another day, seated with Joshua on the sun deck at one of his Sunday barbecues, Trimble observed, “You know, there’s only one thing wrong with all this. I earned the lolly to pay for all of it myself and that’s unforgivable, as far as this lot’s concerned,” he said, gesturing at his guests gathered at the bar. “Just like your marrying Pauline.”

  “Oh, really,” Joshua said tightly. “Why?”

  “Now come on there, old son,” Trimble said, and before Joshua could reply, he had darted off to fetch Jane’s beach robe.

  Jane had just emerged from the water, climbing onto the deck, deeply tanned, black hair clinging, nipples showing bold and hard though her bikini, everybody turning to watch as she bounced on one long leg, trying to shake the water out of her ear.

  “There you are, Mother,” Trimble said, enveloping her in the towel robe, and then he sat down beside Joshua again. “She has no idea how dishy she still is.”

  Trimble (on Jane’s insistence, Joshua suspected) entertained often, dutifully serving up thick steaks from his built-in brick barbecue, his smile forced, his Bermuda shorts biting into rolls of overlying fat. Although he himself liked nothing better than a bottle of Guinness at lunchtime, there was often champagne for the others. Lobster, hideously expensive, was not unusual. But then, driving to the post office at the cocktail hour, he might see eight cars parked in the Hickey driveway, among them Jane’s Volvo, or taking his Grew out for a spin in the evening, all the familiar boats collected at the McTeer dock, laughter washing across the water. He didn’t complain. He resolutely continued to court the country club set.

  Trimble, with his ordnance corps tie, his yachtsman’s cap, his brass-buttoned blazer, his British slang, was tolerated not only for Jane’s sake, or the even more opulent parties he threw in his Westmount mansion, but also because he seemed to be awfully good with money and helped the others untangle their tax and estate problems, often doubling the yield of their portfolios by enlisting them into a fund he managed, its membership limited to one hundred. Ironically, even as they condescended to him, it was evident to Joshua that he was more intelligent than any of them. It was also clear that he was a liar, an outrageous liar; not at all what he pretended to be.

  And now Joshua invited him to sit down, Trimble ordering a Glenlivet, straight up, no ice please, and setting right in to chat compulsively about Kevin. Kevin, he told Joshua, his manner mocking, had twice been Quebec amateur golf champion. He had once tried to acquire a PGA tour card but couldn’t qualify, poor sod. “You should have been there,” Trimble recited, his small eyes watchful, “the night he drove his MG up the clubhouse stairs and right into the bar.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to have missed that.”

  “You know, we have something in common, old son. We’re both married to smashing girls. Does that worry you?”

  “Should it?”

  “I once returned from a trip to Zurich and found a bookmatch from Les Halles in Jane’s bag. I never eat there.”

  During the summer of ’73, their second summer on the lake, Pauline, though she continued to mock the old crowd, was increasingly drawn to the country club, if only for the tennis. She allowed that Joshua was an inhibiting presence at the club, a Jewy thunder-cloud, casting a pall on her admittedly nostalgic fun; and just as she was declared redundant on his Mackenzie King Memorial Society poker nights, so it was agreed that he could, if he chose, confine his appearances at the club to the annual dinner dance and, of course, the closing-day sailing race. The latter ritual was also followed by a dinner dance. Crazed couplings in the parking lot. Illicit unzippings at the ninth hole. A disheveled, obviously zonked Liz Harper ho
isting her skirt and kicking off her shoes to dance on the bar. Repeated expressions of regret from Jane Trimble that Kevin couldn’t be there. Good old Kevin. A savage row between the Friars. The sodden stragglers refusing to depart until good old Gavin McTeer had been cajoled into going home to fetch his bagpipes and kilts and play out the summer on the dewy lawn. And then there would be a perplexed but still ingratiating Jack Trimble wandering out there in his Bermuda shorts, his knees dimply, imploring, “Anybody seen Jane?”

  Nobody saying.

  “I’m afraid she may have passed out somewhere.” Trimble cupping his hands to his mouth, calling, “Jane! HALLO! Time to go.”

  And even as the stragglers were departing, drifting across the deliciously wet grass and fallen leaves to their cars, the giggly ladies carrying their shoes, the men nudging each other, the ladies shushing them, saying oh you’re terrible, oh you’re simply awful, boys, even then, they could still hear him calling into the wind, “Jane! Party’s over. HALLO!”

  In succeeding summers on the lake, there continued to be what Joshua, trying to lighten matters for Pauline, airily dismissed as “Trimble trouble.”

  Jane, whom he had yet to see in the same outfit twice, continued to appear unannounced on their lawn, usually at their private cocktail hour. Late one afternoon she came striding across the grass, pausing at the one flower bed that was in need of weeding, just as a somewhat forlorn, clearly exhausted Pauline emerged from their vegetable garden.

  The vegetable garden, Joshua understood, was Pauline’s pride. It was also her sanctuary, her downtown bar, where she retired to ruminate, away from his problems and temporarily liberated from the demands of the children. He adored watching her, unsuspected, from a window as she stooped so intently there in her floppy straw hat, unaware of just how charming she appeared. Cutting back the tomato plants, thinning carrots, pondering over the peas, or simply weeding. And, in August, bounding rosy-cheeked onto the porch, bearing a basketful of the season’s hard-won bounty, Joshua and the kids lining up to whistle and applaud, shouting, “Let’s hear it for Ma Shapiro.” Pauline handing out gnarled, delicious rose tomatoes, big as potatoes, for them to feel. Showing them the cucumbers that she would be pickling. The green peppers that would be stuffed for dinner. Cabbages. Brussels sprouts. Beets. Carrots that could be wiped off on your trousers and eaten on the spot.

  But that summer there had been far too much rain. Bugs had infested the garden. Slugs devoured the cabbages. Cutworms attacked the tomatoes. And now, as she stepped onto the porch, her porch, lugging a basket of skimpy, blighted produce, there sat her husband, laughing at something, and there stood a smiling Jane, drink in hand, looking as if she had just skipped out of the pages of Vogue. “Damn it, Pauline, I do admire your energy,” she said, peering into the basket, “but why bother any more? I certainly don’t. Local produce is so cheap and plentiful this time of year. I can’t imagine that it’s worth the effort.”

  In succeeding summers on the lake, Joshua also took to a ritual of his own. After work, say around four o’clock, if he knew Pauline was playing tennis, he would load the kids into the old Hornby Jeep, drive out to the club, and settle with them on the grass overlooking the tennis courts. Oh, but his heart leaped to watch Pauline at play. Her honey-colored hair drawn back with a bauble, her fine arms tense, her long bronzed legs ready to spring. Chaste white shirt and shorts notwithstanding, she struck him as incredibly sexy. Pure joy, his Pauline.

  All of which led to the incident and his becoming, albeit belatedly, a most unwilling part of the country club lore. “Remember the night Shapiro stormed into the clubhouse …”

  Occasionally, after her game was done, he would wander out onto the court with the kids and Pauline would try to entice him into volleying with her.

  “I’d only embarrass you, Pauline. I probably couldn’t even hit the ball.”

  “You could never embarrass me, and if you’d only try we could play together.”

  “Yes, yes,” the kids cried, bouncing up and down.

  Joshua was tempted more than once, and then one day last summer he had finally yielded. Had he or Pauline been more observant that splendidly sunny Wednesday afternoon in August, a taste of autumn already in the crisp air, the leaves running to gold here and scarlet there, they might have noticed the small seaplane moored at the club dock. Mind you, there had been other seaplanes, other Wednesday afternoons.

  Pauline lofted the ball at him, a lazy serve, and hello, hello, he caught it with his own racket, sending it back over the net. He was still riding that unexpected triumph when he badly flubbed her return shot. Now he tried to serve, murderously of course, his racket swooshing through the air, utterly failing to connect with the ball. Pauline, calling out encouragement, served another ball and he took a chop at it, smashing it into the net. She tried again, he returned the ball, took her next shot and sent it back again, missing the shot that followed. Pauline served once more, imploring him not to rush the ball, and he managed another return. They were having fun, the children squealing at his every pratfall, and he did not notice that they had acquired an audience. An audience of one. A tall lean man, wearing a floppy straw hat, a gold necklace with a medallion attached, white silken trousers cut jaggedly below the knees, and espadrilles. He was seated on a bench, brooding, his skin stained dark as walnut by the sun. Joshua didn’t notice him. He was also unaware of his audience’s audience. The ladies drinking on the terrace had stopped talking, the more intrepid ones drawing closer to the courts. Joshua didn’t notice because at that moment nothing meant more to him than connecting with the ball, earning a satisfying thunk. Alas, the greater his ambition, the more inept he became. Even more baffling, Pauline didn’t seem to be having fun any more. She was flushed, agitated, and the next time he flubbed badly she suddenly snapped, “Had enough?”

  “No, not yet,” he said, stupidly missing her distress signal as well as her next service, a surprisingly swift one.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she cried out, “it wasn’t that difficult to hit.”

  Startled, he rushed toward the net. “Pauline, what in the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Damn,” was all she said. “Damn damn damn. And here he comes.”

  The tall lean man with the straw-colored hair and twinkly blue eyes was striding toward him, his smile captivating, but a little too fully aware of its own charm. “Hi, there,” he sang out. “You must be Joshua.” Shaking Joshua’s hand with immense warmth, as if his search for him had been long and arduous and the pleasures of this meeting indescribable, he also eased the tennis racket away from him, his manner benevolent but firm, much as Joshua had once relieved Alex of a hatchet he was then too young to handle. “I’m awfully pleased to meet you at last.”

  Before Joshua could respond, he had scooped up the ball, bounced it once, twice, slid away, and sent it booming over the net with a sudden leap and a deft thrust of his racket. Pauline, swooping low after it, returned the ball with more anger than grace.

  Seething, Joshua backed out of the court, only to discover that most of the ladies had now gathered round, rapt.

  “Hey, why’d you let that guy take the racket away from you?” Alex asked, with his infuriating gift for reaching him.

  “I think,” Joshua said as calmly as he could manage, “that that man just happens to be your uncle.”

  Joshua couldn’t take his eyes off Pauline, who was now playing with more rage than skill, fiercely intent on winning. Charging the ball, attempting vicious serves, she was easily outplayed by a tolerant, seemingly bemused Kevin, who did not once need to extend himself. And then, without warning, the game took a poignant turn, settling into a kind of intimacy, the ball flowing between brother and sister, both of them playing superbly. The ladies, shedding years even as he watched, Westmount debutantes once more, oohed and ahhed to see such casually brilliant play from Kevin and such spirited moves from an aroused Pauline. Once or twice, they even clapped hands. Joshua, his cheeks hot, his stomach churni
ng, grasped that he had reached a new plateau in his life among the gentiles. Something was clearly expected of him.

  Then, all at once, the mood of the game shifted again, and once more Pauline tried to knock Kevin literally out of the court. This time, however, he did not respond with tolerance. He absorbed Pauline’s wickedest shots, coaxed her out of position with hanging returns, and then slammed the ball into undefended corners. A breathless Pauline, lunging, obviously flustered, was caught looking bad again and again. She was not being beaten, she was being punished. The ladies, who had been pressing against the fence, began to retreat from the court. Joshua desperately wanted to intervene, but had no idea how to manage it without further humiliating Pauline. Finally, mercifully, it was over; and Pauline and Kevin were strolling out to confront each other at the net. Brother and sister didn’t embrace, didn’t even touch each other. “Come on, Trout,” he said, laughing easily, “one more set.”

  “God damn it, Kevin, what are you doing here?” he heard her demand sharply.

  “I’m only here overnight. I’m flying to Georgian Bay in the morning to meet with some of the Argos people there. It’s big stuff this time, Trout. Awfully big.”

  “Isn’t it always,” Pauline said, as Joshua joined them at the net, the children hanging back, bewildered.

  “They’re thinking of putting together an offshore fund, and they need a good man out there. I took them out fishing. They talked to me about it in the boat. I told you that would be a good investment.”