Barney's Version

by Mordecai Richler

  When Michael won the mathematics prize on his graduation from Selwyn House, there was a letter of congratulation from “Uncle” Blair and an inscribed copy of a book of essays on Canadiana that he had edited. I read it with rising anger, because the truth is it wasn’t that bad.

  On another trip to Toronto, this time without the children, Miriam asked, “I suppose you’re busy for lunch?”

  “With The Amigos Three, alas.”

  “Blair has offered to take me to lunch and to a vernissage at the Isaacs Gallery.”

  I told her about the afternoon I had run into Duddy Kravitz at a gallery on 57th Street in New York. Duddy, who was then furnishing his Westmount manse, pointed out three pictures that interested him, and sat down with the epicene, hyperventilating owner. “How much if I take all three off your hands?” he asked.

  “That would come to thirty-five thousand dollars.”

  Duddy winked at me, unstrapped his Rolex wristwatch, set it down on the tooled leather desktop, and said, “I’m prepared to write you a cheque for twenty-five thousand, but this offer is only good for three minutes.”

  “Surely, you jest.”

  “Two minutes and forty-five seconds.”

  After a longish pause, the owner said, “I could come down to thirty thousand dollars.”

  Duddy closed the deal for twenty-five thousand dollars with less than a minute to spare, and invited me back to his suite in the Algonquin to celebrate. “Riva’s getting her hair done at Vidal Sassoon’s. We’re going to Sardi’s and then to see Oliver! House seats. If you ask me, Oswald was a patsy. That Jack Ruby is connected, you know.”

  We consumed eight Scotch miniatures out of his mini-bar, and then Duddy fetched a full teapot he had hidden under the bathroom sink, lined up the miniatures on a table, refilled and capped them, and set them back in place. “How about that?” he said.

  Whenever an academic conference brought Blair to Montreal, suspiciously often I realized too late, he would phone in advance to invite us both out to dinner. Once, I remember taking the call, covering the receiver with my hand, and passing it to Miriam. “It’s your boyfriend.”

  As usual, I pleaded a previous commitment, and urged Miriam to go. “Why hasn’t he ever married?”

  “Because he’s hopelessly in love with me. Aren’t you worried?”

  “Blair? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Once all the children were at school, Miriam’s former producer, Kip Horgan, urged her to ease herself back into work, if only as a freelancer to begin with. “You’re sorely missed,” he said.

  Out to lunch together at Les Halles, Miriam waited until I was into my Remy Martin XO and Montecristo before she said, “What would you say if I went back to work?”

  “But we don’t need the money. We’re loaded.”

  “Maybe I need the stimulation.”

  “You’re at the CBC all day, what would I do for dinner when I get home?”

  “Oh, you’re such a bastard, Barney,” she said, leaping up from the table.

  “I was only joking.”

  “No you weren’t.”

  “Where are you going? I haven’t finished my drink yet.”

  “Well your wifey has finished, and I’m going for a walk. Even maids are allowed an afternoon off.”

  “Hold it. Sit down for a minute. You know, we’ve never been to Venice. I’ll go straight from here to Global Travel. You go home and pack. We’ll get Solange to stay with the kids and we’ll leave tonight.”

  “Oh, terrific. Saul is leading his debating team against Lower Canada College tomorrow night.”

  “Bellinis in Harry’s Bar. Carpaccio. Fegato alla veneziana. The Piazza San Marco. The Ponte Rialto. We’ll stay at the Gritti Palace and hire a launch to take us to Cipriani’s for lunch on Torcello.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t offered me a mink coat.”

  “Everything I do is wrong.”

  “Not everything, but enough. And now, with your permission, I’m going for a walk. I might even take in a movie. So you don’t forget to drop off the cleaning at Miss Oliver’s, it’s on the back seat of the car. Here’s the shopping list for Steinberg’s and the receipt for the hassock I left to be recovered at Lawson’s at the corner of Claremont. If you don’t mind circling the block three times, you’re bound to find a parking spot. You won’t have time to take Saul for a new pair of shoes at Mr. Tony’s, but you could stop at Pascal’s to get me eight picture hooks, and I want you to return and get a refund for that toaster while you’re there, it’s no good. I’ll leave dinner to you. I adore surprises. Toodleloo, my darling.” And she was gone.

  We ate Chinese takeout that night. Lukewarm. Gluey. “Isn’t Daddy clever?” said Miriam.

  The children, sensing bad vibes, ate with their heads lowered. But after they went to bed, Miriam and I shared a bottle of champagne, and made love, and laughed about our luncheon quarrel. “I know you,” she said. “I’ll bet you never returned the toaster, but threw it in the nearest wastebin and only pretended you got a refund.”

  “I swear on the heads of our children that I returned the toaster, as instructed by my housekeeper.”

  The following evening, a Thursday, I came down with the flu, couldn’t go to the hockey game, and had to watch it on TV, bundled up on the sofa. Guy Lafleur, intercepting an errant Boston pass behind his own blue line, swept over centre ice, his hair flying, as a roaring rocked the Forum. “Guy! Guy! Guy!” Lafleur weaved round two defencemen, decked the goalie, and was just about to go to his backhand … when Miriam started in on me again. “I do not need your permission to free-lance.”

  “How could he miss an open net like that?”

  “I wasn’t born to pick up your socks and wet towels, and drive kids to the dentist, and do the household chores, and to pretend you’re out when you don’t want to take a phone call.”

  “The period will be over in three minutes.”

  As Milbury tripped Shutt behind the net, Miriam stepped immediately in front of the TV set. “Attention must be paid,” she said.

  “You’re right. You don’t need my permission.”

  “And I apologize for that crack about the mink coat. You didn’t deserve that.”

  Damn damn damn. I had gone out and bought her one that very morning. On St. Paul Street. “How much for that shmata?” I asked.

  “Forty-five hundred. But we can forget the tax, if you pay me in cash.”

  I’d taken off my wristwatch and set it down on his counter. “I’m prepared to pay three thousand dollars,” I said, “but this offer is only good for three minutes.”

  We stood there, staring at each other, and when the three minutes were over, he’d said, “Don’t forget your watch.”

  “I’ll take it, I’ll take it.”

  Fortunately, the coat was still hidden in my office cupboard. I could return it. “You never should have made that crack about a mink coat,” I said to Miriam. “I was deeply insulted at the time. I’d never do a thing like that.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  So Miriam resumed work for CBC Radio, doing the occasional interview with authors who had hit the road to peddle their books. I did nothing to encourage her but, of course, tree-hugger, refuser of non-biodegradable plastic bags Herr Professor Blair Hopper né Hauptman did. “Who were you talking to for so long on the phone?” I asked one evening.

  “Oh, Blair heard my interview with Margaret Laurence and called to say how impressed he was. What did you think?”

  “I was planning to listen to the tape tonight.”

  “Blair says if I did a set of ten with Canadian writers, he is sure he could find a publisher for it in Toronto.”

  “There aren’t ten, and anything can be published in Toronto. Sorry. I never said that. Hey, do McIver. Remind him about the time he read at George Whitman’s bookshop in Paris. Ask him where he steals his ideas. No. They have to be his own. They’re so prosaic. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

 
“I’m going to listen to the tape right after dinner.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  It was Miriam who insisted that Michael continue his studies at LSE.

  “He’ll come back from London a snob. What’s wrong with McGill?”

  “Mike needs to get away from us for a while. You’re a bully and I’m too caring. A Jewish mama, in spite of myself.”

  “Mike said that? How dare he?”

  “I said that. You cast too long a shadow. You take too much pleasure in demolishing him in argument.”

  “LSE?”

  “Yes.”

  To come clean, I had barely made it out of high school, just managing to matriculate with a third-class pass, and envying classmates who went on to McGill with ease. In those good old days, there was still a Jewish quota at McGill. Our bunch needed a seventy-five per cent mark to gain admittance, while goyboys qualified with sixty-five per cent, so I was a non-starter. So ashamed was I of my failure that I avoided student hangouts, like the Café André, and would cross the street if I saw one of my old classmates heading in my direction, anointed with that white sweater with the big red M sewn into it. After all, the most I could say for myself at the time was that I had graduated from busboy to waiter at The Normandy Roof. So I was inordinately proud that our children had excelled in their studies, winning prizes, and going on to one university or another. On the other hand, I doubt that Cardinal Newman, never mind Dr. Arnold, would have been impressed with the winds that blew in the latter-day groves of academe. Glancing through Kate’s Wellington syllabus, I noted that she could take a course on Household Science, that is to say, how to boil an egg. Or vacuum. Saul, looking for a Mickey Mouse credit, had signed on for Creative Writing at McGill, taught by, you guessed it, Terry McIver. Superannuated Gazette reporters were teaching Journalism at Wellington, arranging their lecture hours so as not to conflict with their AA meetings.

  Mike met Caroline at LSE, and, when we flew over to London on a visit, we were invited to dinner at her parents’ home in The Boltons. Nigel Clarke was a well-known barrister, a QC, and his wife, Virginia, wrote the occasional gardening piece for The Tatler. Such was my apprehension (or insecurity, according to Miriam) that I prejudged both of them as snobs and virulent anti-Semites, whose families — no doubt listed in Debrett’s — had probably conspired with the Duke of Windsor to impose a Nazi regime on the U.K. in 1940. Clinching matters, I discovered that the Clarkes’ country estate was not far from the village of Eaglesham, in Scotland. “I hope you realize,” I said to Miriam, “that’s where Rudolf Hess landed in 1941.”

  “Virginia phoned to say dress will be casual, but I bought you a tie on Jermyn Street all the same. Oh, for your information, that’s spelt J, E, R, M, Y, N.”

  “I’m not wearing one.”

  “Yes, you are. She also wanted to know if there were any foods that disagreed with you. Isn’t that nice?”

  “No, it isn’t. Because the subtext is, are we so Jewy that we don’t eat pork.”

  Nigel wasn’t wearing a tie or a jacket, but a sports shirt and a cardigan with a missing elbow, and the imposing Virginia had on a loose sweater, what we used to call a sloppy joe, and slacks. Dressing down for colonialists, I thought. I must remember not to tear my meat apart with my fingers. Forearmed by a good deal of Scotch, consumed alone in a Soho pub, which was a violation of a solemn promise to Miriam, and riding my second glass of Marks & Spencer’s champers, I set out to shock at the dining-room table. Filling my father’s office, I slid into telling tales of his days with Montreal’s finest. The time they tied a felon to the hood of the car like a deer. Izzy’s methods of persuasion. The courtesies he was shown in bordellos. To my chagrin, Virginia guffawed at my stories, and begged for more, and Nigel responded with steamy anecdotes about his divorce cases. So once again I got everything wrong, but instead of warming to the Clarkes, a nifty couple, I sulked at the failure of my strategy, Miriam covering for me as usual, until I loosened up.

  “We are absolutely delighted with your brilliant son,” said Nigel. “I do hope you don’t mind his marrying out of the faith.”

  “That thought never occurred to me,” I lied.

  Then Nigel invited me to join him on a salmon-fishing trip on the Spey. We could stay at the Tulcan Lodge. “I wouldn’t know how to manage a fly rod,” I said.

  “You see,” said a roused Miriam, “when Barney was a boy he fished in a brackish pond, with a twig cut from a tree in lieu of a proper rod, and a line made up of string saved from butchers’ parcels.”

  A delighted Virginia pressed Miriam’s hand. “You simply must come to the Chelsea Flower Show with me,” she said.

  On our return to Montreal, among the plethora of messages on our answering machine, there were three from Blair. Could we join him for lunch at the University Club next Wednesday. “You go,” I said to Miriam.

  Kate said, “How come you’re so sanguine about Mom meeting Blair so often?”

  “Kate, don’t be foolish. This marriage is a rock.”

  8

  Hold it. This is not to suggest for a minute that Miriam was having an affair with Blair Hopper né Hauptman. She enjoyed his company, that’s all. Possibly she was flattered by his attentions, but there was nothing in it. I’m the one who is responsible for the break-up of our marriage. I failed to respond to minatory signals sufficiently loud to alert a village idiot. And I sinned.

  Wolves, I read somewhere, establish territorial rights to their domain, warning off trespassers, by pissing along its borders. I did something similar. I was amazed that a woman as intelligent and beautiful as Miriam would marry somebody like me. And so, fearful of losing her, I made her my prisoner, methodically alienating the friends she had made before we met. Whenever she had former CBC colleagues to dinner at our place I behaved abominably. My truculence was not entirely unjustified. Charged with virtue, those intellectual mice from the People’s Network tended to condescend to me as a money-grubbing TV shlock-meister, even as they selflessly protected us from the cultural vandals to the south. Maybe this cut too close to the bone. In any event, I replied by ridiculing the Canadian-content quotas for radio and TV, a licence for mediocrity (a profitable chunk of it supplied by me, as Miriam pointed out mischievously); and I accused them, à la Auden,75 of having hung their arses on a pension years ago. The worst case was Miriam’s former producer Kip Horgan, a cultivated and irreverent man, a drinker, who was disconcertingly capable of puncturing my sharpest digs with a witticism of his own. Had he not enjoyed such a rapport with Miriam, we could have become chums. Instead, I loathed him. One night after he finally staggered out of our house, the last guest to quit a dinner party, Miriam turned on me: “Did you have to sit there yawning for the last hour?”

  “Were you and Kip lovers?”

  “Barney, you amaze me. It was before we had even met.”

  “I don’t want him coming here for dinner again.”

  “And, correct me if I’m wrong, but I do believe you were twice married before we got together.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a keeper.”

  That did not earn me a dimple on her cheek. Miriam was not amused, but distracted. “Kip told me that Martha Hanson — she was no more than a script reader in my time, and not that good at it — is going to be appointed head of Radio Arts.”

  “So?”

  “In future I will have to submit any ideas I have to her.”

  Another evening we flicked on the CBC-TV National News just as a new young woman correspondent was reporting from London. “I don’t believe it,” said a distressed Miriam, “it’s Sally Ingrams. I gave her her first job.”

  “Miriam, don’t tell me you’d like to be a television reporter.”

  “No. I don’t think so. And I’m sure that Sally will be very good at it. It’s just that it sometimes bothers me that everybody I used to know seems to be doing interesting things now.”

  “Don’t you think giving birth to and bringing up three wonderful child
ren is an interesting thing?”

  “Usually I do, but there are days when I don’t. It doesn’t command much respect these days, does it?”

  As long as our children were still living at home, in unending need of Miriam’s support, our little tiffs were rare, usually culminating in hugs and laughter, and we continued to be passionate lovers. But in these days of rampant sexual self-advertisement, I remain unfashionably committed to reticence, so I will say no more than that I did things in bed with Miriam I never did with anybody else, and I believe it was the same for her. After the last of our brood quit the nest, we celebrated our new-found middle-aged freedom by treating ourselves to more frequent trips abroad, but Miriam was suddenly given to bouts of depression and dissatisfaction with the quality of her freelance work, adjudging herself inadequate. Foolishly, I made light of her problems. Count on me to dismiss them in my oafish manner as an irritating but only passing menopausal phase.

  Mike got married and Saul moved to New York. And one night before we made love in that parador overlooking Granada, I said, “I think you’ve forgotten your diaphragm.”

  “It’s no longer necessary, but of course you’re still capable of having children, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, Miriam, please.”

  “Do you envy Nate Gold?”

  Nate, who had divorced his wife of thirty years to marry a woman twenty years his junior, could now be seen pushing a stroller with an eighteen-month-old babe in it down Greene Avenue.

  “I think he looks foolish,” I said.

  “Don’t knock it, darling. It has to be rejuvenating.”

  One afternoon after Kate got married in Toronto, I came home early from the office to find a McGill syllabus on the dining-room table. “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “I’m thinking of registering for some courses. Anything wrong with that?”

  “Of course not,” I said, but later that night, fearful of coming home to an empty house while she was sitting in a lecture hall, I stupidly launched into one of my anti-academic harangues. I insisted that Vladimir Nabokov was right when he told his students at Cornell that D. Phil. stood for “Department of Philistines,” and went on to say that the most gifted people I knew had never been to university.