Earth and High Heaven

by Gwethalyn Graham

  “Your mother seems to be waving at you,” said Marc.

  She got up with a sigh, saying, “I’ll probably be back sooner or later,” and went over to the doorway where her mother was talking to two young Army officers and their wives. Erica smiled at them but kept in the background. As soon as they were on their way down the hall to the front door, her mother said, “I was wondering if you could persuade Charles to come down, at least for long enough to say goodbye to Scotty and the others. I know they’re more my friends than his but I don’t think Charles realizes that they’re on draft and he probably won’t have a chance to see them again.”

  “I’ll try,” said Erica. “And do talk to Marc Reiser if you get a chance.”

  “Which one is he?”

  “René’s refugee friend I was suppose to rescue, only he isn’t a refugee, he comes from Ontario. He’s over there by the window with René now, and he’s awfully nice. You’ll like him.”

  Upstairs, she found her father sitting in the corner of the study with the evening newspaper on the floor at his feet and the ashtray beside him heaped with dead matches. He was very tall and heavily built with dark eyes and black hair streaked with grey, an unusually warm and pleasant voice, and a personality which was both magnetic and charming, so that quite involuntarily he fooled most of the people he met into thinking that he was far more interested in them than he actually was.

  The air was full of pipe smoke and the scent of blossoms from the garden next door; her father had his head against the back of the leather-covered chair and his long legs stretched straight out in front of him. He was listening to the short-wave English-language broadcast from Berlin. His custom-built radio-phonograph — with two loudspeakers — was a miracle of construction; the announcer’s voice sounded as though it were coming from the next room.

  “Hello, Charles.”

  “Oh, it’s you, Erica — come in,” he said, beckoning with one hand. He changed his position so that he was sitting instead of half lying in his chair; he was glad it was she, he was always glad it was she, and usually managed to show it in some way.

  He never realized that he made more of an effort for his daughter, more of an occasion of her arrivals and departures, than he ever did for anyone else. He knew that Erica was the only human being who really understood him and with whom he did not have to put up a false front of consistency, but that was as far as he got. To go any further would have involved some disloyalty to his wife, and in all the years of his marriage Charles Drake had never been disloyal to her, even in thought.

  The growing difference between one side of his character and the other, made Margaret Drake uncomfortable; she was baffled by the way he contradicted himself and was always trying to fuse the two opposing aspects of his nature by sheer force of logic. Since she was more at ease with his conservative side than she was with the other increasingly skeptical and unpredictable part of him, and since he realized that he could not be consistent to both at once and that consistency was what she wanted, with his wife he was tending more and more to be the complete conservative, emotional, prejudiced, and intolerant. In this way Margaret Drake got the worst of him and she knew it, but she had made her choice and did not know how to go back on it. Often when she came into the room where her husband and daughter were talking, there would be a pause, and she would have the very odd feeling that they were both waiting, hoping that she would say the right thing and that she would come in on their level. And sometimes for the first few minutes it was all right, but she could not keep it up. Sooner or later she always returned to her own level of pure logic where the matter of greatest importance was not whether Charles was being consistent in what he was saying now, but whether he was being consistent with what he had said yesterday. From then on, the argument fell into the meaningless pattern of most arguments between Charles Drake and his wife in which she struggled fruitlessly against a rising current of irritation and unreason from her husband, and Erica gradually became silent.

  She had accepted the duality of her father’s nature; unlike her mother, it seemed to Erica quite possible that an individual could have two opposing opinions on economic, political, and even moral questions and yet be equally sincere in both. It was primarily a conflict between the theories and beliefs on which he had been brought up and which were an integral part of his background and tradition, on the one hand, and the facts, as they presented themselves to him from day to day, on the other. He wanted to go on believing in the continued existence of a world which, although he admitted it only to Erica, he knew had gone for good.

  Almost everyone needs at least one person to whom he can talk off the record, and in the case of Charles Drake, that person was his daughter Erica. He had a great many friends, but they were all cut from the same economic and social pattern as himself, and if he sometimes deviated from that pattern, he did not care to have them know it. He neither wanted, nor could he afford to have people going about saying that C. S. Drake had got some rather advanced and unconventional ideas and, worse still, possibly classing him as a “radical.” That sort of thing doesn’t go down well with your fellow members on the Board of Directors. Erica, however, was safe; he could trust her not to quote him afterwards. He could talk like a Tory one day and like a Socialist the next, without — as often happened with his wife — being informed that he was “hopelessly illogical” and without running the risk of having anything he might say used against him the next time he chose to contradict himself.

  As for Erica, her father had fascinated her ever since she could remember. Because she knew when, and still more important, how to disagree with him, he rarely tried to override her opinions and never tried to override her personality. She was the only one of his three children with whom his relationship had so far been entirely successful.

  Gesturing toward the radio he said, “Listen to him, Eric. It’s too good to miss. He’s trying to explain how the r.a.f. got through their ‘impregnable’ anti-aircraft defences.”

  Erica lit a cigarette and sat down on the arm of a chair. The broadcast seemed to be almost over, and after making an effort to keep her mind on what the announcer was saying, she gave up and went on thinking about Marc, letting the voice from Berlin drop away from her out of hearing. She was wondering what people meant when they talked about love at first sight, and whether she was already in love with Marc Reiser or simply knew beyond doubt that she was going to fall in love with him.

  Her father got to his feet to switch off the radio with the observation, “There don’t seem to be any limits to the amount of bilge they think we can swallow.”

  “Speaking of bilge,” said Erica. “That reminds me of our lunch. What happened to it?”

  “I had to meet some men at the Club.” He sat down heavily, yawned, and changing his tone he stated, “‘The only way to guarantee full employment after the war is by a return to prewar freedom of enterprise.’ What in hell are we supposed to have been doing during the Depression — firing our employees for fun?”

  “It must have been a nice lunch.”

  “Yeah,” said her father moodily, then, asserting himself, he said, “Damn it, I don’t like the idea of living under a bureaucracy any more than they do. I believe in capitalism,” he added firmly, and then remarked with a faintly amused expression in his fine dark eyes, “when it works.”

  “Yes,” said Erica. “Well, in the meantime, Mother thinks you would like to come downstairs and say goodbye to Scotty and the rest of them.”

  “Does she? Why?”

  “They’re going overseas, Charles ...”

  “Oh, are they? All right,” he said resignedly, but without moving an inch.

  Erica wanted to tell him about Marc and was trying to make up her mind how much to tell him and where to begin, when she realized that her father was looking at her intently, as though he also was trying to make up his mind about something.

  Finally, he said, “Eric ...”

  “Yes?”

  He
took up his pipe and began to repack it, asking, “Do you like your job at the Post?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “I was just wondering. Do you really like it or is it just a job?”

  “No, I really like it.” She waited for him to go on and then asked, “What were you wondering, Charles?”

  “About you. You can’t go on being a newspaperwoman all your life. It doesn’t get you anywhere — you’ve already gone about as far as you’re likely to go, from now on you’ll probably just mark time until they fire you because they want a younger woman, or pension you off.”

  “My, you make it sound attractive,” said Erica admiringly.

  He grinned, and then, leaning forward and punching the air with his pipe for emphasis, he said, “The same thing would happen to you anywhere else — as a woman you can just go so far, and then you’re stuck in a job where you spend your life taking orders from some fathead with half your brains, whose only advantage over you is the fact that he happens to wear trousers. What you need is a job where you can get away from all this sex prejudice and be given a chance to work your way right up to the top if you want to.”

  “Yes, but ...”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t see it long ago ...”

  “See what?”

  “The answer to the whole thing,” said her father impatiently. “Evidently I’m just as narrow-minded as everybody else.”

  As Erica still did not seem to have a very clear idea of what he was talking about, he said, “Look, I start out with a business, a son, and a daughter ...”

  “Two daughters.”

  “Miriam doesn’t count. She’s the kind of girl who gets married ...”

  “Ouch!” said Erica, wincing.

  “Well, damn it,” Charles exPostulated, “she’s already been married once and she’s only — how old is Miriam?

  “Twenty-four.”

  “And how old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Besides, Miriam hasn’t half your brains,” said her father, dismissing Miriam, and asked, “Where was I?”

  “Starting a business with a son and a daughter,” said Erica. “Though why you have to pick a time when your wife’s in the middle of giving a cocktail party ...”

  “Yes,” said her father unconcernedly. “Anyhow, the point is that with you and Tony to choose from, I just automatically picked Tony. I don’t know why. It isn’t even as though Tony had ever particularly liked the idea of going into the firm. He did all right, he was there for five years, but I often had a queer feeling that he was just waiting for something to happen.”

  “So did I.”

  “Well, something did happen. I don’t know what he’s going to do after the war, he’s talked a lot about staying in aviation, but at any rate, I might just as well face the fact that he’s not going back to Drakes’. After four generations, it looks as though we’re finished ...”

  “Wait a minute,” said Erica, staring at him. “Are you offering me Tony’s job?”

  “Not Tony’s job — just a job. From then on it’s up to you.”

  “No,” said Erica involuntarily. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly.”

  Ever since her childhood she had had one recurrent nightmare of an interminably long corridor from which there was no turning back and no exit, except the door at the other end toward which she was walking faster and faster, trying to get away from something which threatened to close in on her. Nothing ever happened; the door always remained the same distance ahead of her and whatever it was that threatened her, the same distance behind. The nightmare had neither beginning nor end, and when she woke up, she was still hurrying along the corridor, with a sense of oppression which was so strong that it often stayed with her half the morning.

  Sitting on the arm of a chair in her father’s study she wondered why the mere suggestion that she should go into the family business had been enough to bring back that unpleasantly familiar sensation of something closing in on her, unless it was simply that, like the corridor, there would be no exit from Drakes’ except a door which it would take her forever to reach. The job would be permanent; after all, that was the whole idea. Once there, she would have to stay, and the only way of getting out would be for her to marry someone, and even that possibility would become increasingly remote as time went on. Her father would dominate her life; she would not only be living in his house but working in his office, and at some point, that domination would begin to take effect, probably without her even realizing it. It is all very well to view a situation from a distance and vow to remain detached, but when you are actually in the middle of that situation, detachment is not so easy. Your point of view and your scale of values alter without your being aware of it. Between her father’s opposition — and influence — on the one hand, and her own sense of responsibility to him and to her job, on the other, marriage would not stand much of a chance.

  “Don’t you like the idea, Eric?”

  She glanced at him, then got up suddenly from the arm of the chair and went over to the window. There was an apple tree in the sloping garden next door, and as she looked at it, she remembered Marc and felt free again. The tree was in full blossom and half of it was white against the bluish haze of the city below and half of it was gold against the setting sun. The apple tree, the singing and the gold ...

  “You and I have always got along so well together ...”

  She could not bear the sudden drop in his voice and she said quickly, turning back to the room and the dark, heavy figure in the chair in the corner, “It isn’t you, darling,” remembering that in spite of all his dogged, rather touching efforts — though Tony had never made much effort! — he and his son had never got along well together. “I wouldn’t be any good at it, Charles,” she said desperately.

  “Yes, you would. You’re good at everything you really put your mind to.” He shifted a little in his chair and added, smiling at her affectionately, “Anyhow, I’m glad it isn’t just me.”

  The smile did not quite hide his disappointment and she said, hoping that if he understood it, he would not mind so much, “There’s something too final about going into a family business, particularly when it’s been the family business for four generations. Dash it, Charles, I’d have the feeling that I was going to join my ancestors! People are always coming and going on the Post, I couldn’t be stuck there for the rest of my life even if I wanted to, but Drakes’ ...”

  She shook her head and said, “I don’t want to end up with rum and molasses instead of a husband and children!”

  “Well ...”

  “After all, I’m only twenty-eight!”

  “It depends on the husband.” He relit his pipe and went on, puffing, “You can be a lot surer that you’re not getting married in order to escape from a more or less unsatisfactory set-up, if you’ve got a really good job that’s going to lead somewhere, than if you’ve got the kind of job that leads nowhere.”

  She said incredulously, “Do you really imagine that I’d marry anybody for a mealticket?”

  “Not anybody,” he said, flicking a dead match across the carpet and into a wastebasket standing beside his desk. “And not for a mealticket, but as you’ve just finished saying yourself, for a husband and children.”

  “Yes?” said Erica. “Who, for example?”

  He blew out a cloud of smoke and as it drifted upwards he said, watching it, “René.”

  “René! René’s not in love with me ...”

  “I’ve never been wrong yet about any of the men who’ve been in love with you.”

  “Well, you can always start.”

  He said unperturbably, “And I’d prefer rum and molasses to René.”

  “But he doesn’t want to marry me!”

  “Why not?”

  “Why should he?”

  “I can think of a lot of reasons besides the fact that he’s in love with you ...”

  “Now, look, Charles,” said Erica. “René doesn’t approve of mixed
marriages between French and English Canadians, particularly when the English Canadian is Protestant ...”

  “Don’t you believe it. He’s headed for politics — there’s even some talk of his running as Liberal candidate in the provincial by-elections next month ...”

  “Where?”

  “In Saint-Cyr down in the Eastern Townships. Apparently his great-grandfather owned a mill there or something.”

  “He’s never said anything about that ...”

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you yet that René has a talent for never saying anything about anything — even to you? And he never will, either.”

  “Really, Charles,” said Erica, exasperated.

  She sat down on the arm of the chair again. “Have you got a cigarette?”

  He tossed her a package and when she had lit one, she said, “Anyhow, if René’s going to be a politician, he won’t have much use for a wife who’s one of the ultra-Protestant Drakes, will he?”

  “That depends on whether he intends to end up in Quebec City or Ottawa. My guess is Ottawa. And if I’m right, then marrying you wouldn’t be at all a bad idea.”

  “I suppose you think René’s got all that figured out, too.”

  “Obviously.”

  She blew three smoke rings, considered her father for a while with her tongue in her cheek, and finally observed in a detached tone, “You know, Charles, you have a very suspicious mind. No matter who it is, as soon as some poor man shows signs of wanting to invite me out to dinner, you start to think up a set of perfectly hideous motives. Rather unflattering, if you ask me. Who knows? Some day some poor deluded idiot might want to marry me just for the sake of my beaux yeux and then where would you be?”

  “I never had any objection to George — George — I’ve forgotten his last name. Anyhow, I never had any objections to him, did I?”

  “No, but you knew damn well that I did.” She said reminiscently, “He was always making speeches about how pure he was ...”

  “Now, see here, Erica ...”

  “I know, Charles, I know.” She began to laugh and said, “Only really, you can overdo anything, even being pure. And his last name was Strickland.”