by Brian Moore
But Janice isn’t sensitive about where she is and, as soon as we’d paid off the cab, she took my arm and started marching me down towards a rustic bridge. I remember thinking she might as well be walking into a subway tunnel for all she notices. I looked at her: she was the tiger again, pacing the cage of her thoughts.
‘Mary, I need your advice. What am I going to do, should I call Perry, or shouldn’t I?’
A sudden spring wind blew hard on the path, blowing my hair into my face, my skirt tight against my legs. A dry, muddy scrap of newspaper plastered itself to my knee. I read, ‘Delta Viet Cong.’ I moved my leg and the paper swirled up grandly towards the sky. Janice waited my answer.
‘What has calling Perry Grandmaison got to do with this business of Charles? There’s no guarantee that your sleeping with Perry will annoy Charles. In fact, it might be just what he wants.’
‘How could that be?’ She stared at me.
‘Well, it might lessen the guilt he feels towards you. I mean his guilt about his own behaviour.’
I could see this thought was new to her. ‘Do you think so? Yes, well, of course, you’d know better than me.’
‘Now look,’ I said. ‘Keep a civil tongue in your head.’
She laughed at that. ‘I’ve called Perry,’ she said. ‘I’m having dinner with him tonight.’
Her eyes searched my face to see my reaction. ‘Well? Should I?’
‘Should you what?’
‘Have dinner with him?’
‘Look, Janice,’ I said. ‘It’s none of my business, but it strikes me that taking up with Perry just to make Charles jealous is a cheap thing to do. I mean to yourself and to Perry.’
The tiger looked at me: looked through me. ‘Oh,’ said the tiger.
Silence. We walked down the path. A pretty, uniformed nursemaid overtook us, wheeling one of those huge English prams. As the nurse passed by I looked in the pram and there was nothing inside, no blanket, no pillow, no child. The pram was new, the nursemaid’s clothes were new and there was no child in sight. And I know it sounds silly, but suddenly, irrationally, the nursemaid was sinister, part of some plot. What awful thing has happened or is just about to happen, I said to myself as I watched the sinister nursemaid draw ahead of us.
‘Well, what’s the alternative?’ Janice asked. ‘I mean to my having an affair.’
‘I suppose, a divorce.’
‘Divorce?’ (You’d think I’d suggested murder.) ‘No, that’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘Although, I could, couldn’t I? But, let’s face it, I don’t want a divorce.’
‘Does Charles want one?’
‘Why should he? He’s having his fun, with no responsibilities.’
‘Well, then,’ I said. ‘Why not ignore it?’
Ahead of us, the nurse had come to a fork in the path. She adjusted her head-dress, then wheeled the pram down the left fork. I decided that we would take the left fork when we came to it.
‘But supposing he won’t stop? Supposing he goes on with it, what’ll I do then?’
‘Oh, Janice,’ I said. ‘How could anyone advise you on something like this? Nobody can. You’ll just have to make up your own mind.’
‘Maybe. But I know what you can advise me on. You know a lot about furs.’
I thought ‘furs’ is what I heard, it must be the Curse, there is something wrong with my ears today.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘there are two things I can do to get back at him. I can go off and sleep with Perry, but, as you say, that might be a mistake, it might work against me by absolving Charles. So that’s out. I won’t even call Perry.’
‘I thought you said you did call him?’
‘Did I?’ Her stare; the brass mask of the habitual liar. ‘I meant I was going to. But, anyway, that’s out now, you’re quite right, the thing I had in mind when I decided to come to New York, the thing I had in mind when I phoned you about having lunch with me is quite different. I think it’s more subtle. It’s going to hit him where he lives. I’m going to buy a fur coat.’
She looked at me to see what I was thinking. ‘A fur coat?’ I said, sounding like the straight man in vaudeville.
She smiled. ‘Not an ordinary one. I mean a sable. I mean ten thousand dollars. I mean one I love, one I really love. One that, when I go back to Montreal with it on my back, will make him wonder if his slap-and tickle is worth it, I mean ten thousand bucks’ worth. When I think how I’ve denied myself all these years, saving up his money for him, well, he can afford it, don’t you worry, he has lots of pennies socked away. Anyway, that’s what I want to do. And you know furs and you have marvellous taste. I want to get one styled by someone really good, someone from New York. For ten thousand I should be able to find something pretty nice, shouldn’t I?’
Ahead of us the nursemaid had halted and was signalling to someone farther up the path, someone I could not see. An accomplice?
‘I mean,’ Janice said, ‘when I think I’ve given that man the best years of my life, I’m entitled to something, don’t you agree?’
(And he, didn’t he give you his best years?) But the nurse had signalled again and now she began to walk forward very slowly, pushing the pram ahead of her. (I guessed it then: ahead in some little glade, a child was playing. The false nurse will pretend the child is her charge, pick it up, hurry it to a waiting car; oh why, I thought, why is there never a policeman around when you want one?)
‘I know it sounds selfish,’ Janice was saying. ‘But why should I divorce him, I mean what would I do? I’ve spent the past seven years of my life fixing our house up, slaving over every detail, giving dinner parties to help his career, ignoring my own career, anyway, what am I apologizing for, he’s the one’s been running around behind my back all these years. The office letch, God. When I think that people have been laughing at me behind my back all these years, I could spit.’
‘Oh, that’s not true,’ I said, but I was no longer really listening for, ahead of us, a tall young gangster stepped out of the bushes, waved the fake nursemaid on, then came up to us, his palm up to stop us, policeman-fashion. He was just a kid: black vinyl cap over his greasy blond locks, black leather windbreaker, black riding boots. But he frightened me.
‘Hold it a minute,’ he said. This, with a grin at me. Then turned to Janice. ‘We’re filming down there,’ the liar said.
‘No kidding?’ Janice was all interest.
‘Yeah, teevee commercial,’ the liar said, but I stared past him, saw no camera, nobody. Mad Twin trembled inside me, but as she did, two men pushed a little dolly out from behind some bushes and there was a man sitting on the dolly and the man was peering into a movie camera and from the bushes opposite came another man, in a yellow sweater, carrying a big silver reflector. The nursemaid walked towards the camera pushing her empty pram. I felt weak, as though wakened from nightmare.
‘How long will you be?’ Janice asked the young gangster and he said about ten minutes, then suggested we cut across the grass and take the other path. ‘Shall we?’ Janice asked me and, not waiting for an answer, started off across the grass and there was I following, feeling my feet sink into the grass which was dry on top but spongy, wet earth underneath. I felt my shoes getting wet, asked myself why was I following her, why was I going now to Reveillon Frères or Bergdorf’s to help her spend ten thousand dollars on a fur coat to revenge herself on her husband. And I said to myself, Janice isn’t rich, none of us are rich people who do things like this. Why, I bet my father never earned more than – what? Ten thousand dollars a year. Before the war? Oh, more like seven thousand, more likely. And there, following Janice across the grass, I thought of you, Mama, I wondered what you would say if we were sitting at home now in Butchersville and I was telling this story to you and maybe to Madge Gordon who’d dropped in. And you and Madge, you’d smile afterwards and say, ‘Oh, that Mary, she’ll not let a story spoil in the telling of it,’ but Mama, Mama, if only you knew, most of the things I’ve told you, I didn’t hype
them up, I toned them down, for my life, this life I live, isn’t believable, not even to me. Who would believe that this afternoon Janice Sloane wanted me to help her spend ten thousand dollars on a fur coat because Charles is sleeping with some girl?
And there, plodding after her across the grass, thinking of this, I found myself suddenly calling out, ‘Janice? Janice?’
She turned and looked at me.
And, oh God, it happened again, panic, panic, I did not know why I had called her or what I had meant to say to her. I stared across the park at the skyline, while Janice stood, waiting, looking at me, her blonde hair blowing into her ice-blue eyes.
I knew her name. She was Janice, Janice Sloane, but I, who was I? I was Big Gertie’s daughter, Big Gertie’s daughter, that’s me. I did not know why I had called her or what it was I had meant to say to her.
‘What is it, are you all right?’ she asked and I nodded and smiled, afraid she would find out that whoever I am had gone away and left me in a panic, with nothing in my head but a silly music-hall song and now, worse, like the ticking crocodile in Peter Pan, the clock inside me started up, the metronome tick tock tick tock between each word-that-came-in-to-my-mind-I-was-in-the-tick-tock-tick-tock-the-tick-tock –
‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘You look all trembly. Are you ill?’
Her-hands-took-my-hands. Her-face-came-close-my- mind-went-ve-ry-slow –
‘Mary?’
Ma-ry-she-said-Ma-ry –
(I remembered then.) Mary Dunne. Old-and-Dunne.
‘I want to go home,’ I said.
‘Home? Well, yes, of course, if you’re not well,’ she said, reluctantly. ‘What is it, do you feel dizzy, perhaps you’d like to sit down for a while?’
The tick tock had gone. My name was once Mary Dunne and now I was Mary Lavery. I was General MacArthur stepping ashore, returned to memory, wading back up the beach through the shallow water. So damn relieved that I said, out loud, ‘Do you ever have moments when your mind, I mean when, just for a second, everything goes blank, you can’t remember who you are, it’s like fainting without blacking out?’
‘Is that what it was?’ she asked. ‘Oh, I know, I used to have those spells. It’s funny, isn’t it, how women never faint any more, yet in our grandmother’s day they were always doing it. Of course, they used it as an excuse to get out of things.’
I looked at her, silently thanking her. I would be her grandmother. ‘It’s my period,’ I said. ‘Often I have a bad time just before it, and this seems to be one of those times.’
‘Maybe we could go and have a cup of tea, some place? Would that help?’ Smiling a charmer’s smile, but I said no, I really did think I’d better go home.
‘Damn,’ she said. ‘Oh, dear. I’m sorry. I was hoping to spend most of my day with you. Well, never mind, it’s New York, after all, there must be things I can do.’ Looking helpless, a lost charmer, but I took lessons in this from Hat who was a master at making you feel selfish, so Janice’s effort, good performance though it was, was amateur. I hardened my smile and said yes, it was a shame, but I did feel rotten, I thought I’d better take a cab home right away.
Ahead of us, above the treetops, was the roof of the Museum of Natural History, the whole building, big as a Roman basilica, coming into view as we went down the path towards the West Side. A yellow rush of cabs moved uptown on Central Park West, passing the museum entrance. I thought of the plaque at the front entrance honouring Teddy Roosevelt; the place was built for him, it’s his sort of museum, stuffed animals, boy scout enthusiasms, dinosaur bones and scale models. I hated it when we used to go there, Hat’s kid, Pete, and I and Pete’s little school friend, Skip. At the other end of the block was the Hayden Planetarium – we used to go there too and I remembered there was a bus stop on the corner. I could get a bus there, which would take me across town, right to the corner of Seventy-Ninth and Third, all the way home in, maybe, ten minutes. Perfect, I thought, then asked Janice what she wanted to do, saying, ‘I could get a bus over there by the Planetarium if it’s all right with you?’ Pointing out the Planetarium, trying to ignore her sudden effluvium of hurtness, damn her, I wasn’t going to let her make me feel guilty.
And then:
‘You want to get rid of me, don’t you?’ she asked and the worst was happening. I looked at her and saw wild staring eyes, the beginning of tears, the thread of her self-control unravelling by the second and I was not up to another emotional scene with her. I just wanted us to leave each other be.
‘No,’ I began. ‘It’s just, I’m not feeling, I mean I’m very nervous today, I can’t concentrate on anything; honestly, I wouldn’t be any use to you.’
A man and his wife, out for a walk, were coming up the path towards us. It was crazy, but the man looked like Sigmund Freud. He was tall with a shovel beard and a grey tweed suit, his watch on a waistcoat chain. Arm-linked with his wife, a small dumpy woman in green velveteen with a fox boa around her neck, the little vulpine jaws biting a bushy tail under the fold of her chin. Both she and Siggy had big ears for Janice as, melodramatically, she paced upstage, going away from me, then, turning on her mark, threw out her hand, pointing at me, her voice going into high register, ‘Oh no, Mary. No, no – you’re just trying to get rid of me.’
I saw Sigmund Freud look at his wife, significantly. (Paranoia, Liebchen, ja, ja!)
‘Janice, that’s not true.’
‘Oh, but it is true. And, look, I don’t blame you, I know I behaved badly back there in the restaurant, walking out on you, insulting you. Yes, it is true, why can’t I learn it, nobody wants to hear anyone else’s troubles, least of all mine.’
Sigmund and Frau slowed to an almost-stop, not wanting to miss any of this.
‘It was the fur coat,’ Janice said. ‘I knew the minute I said it, that it put you off. Yes. But isn’t it better to go out and buy a fur coat than do the other thing?’
At which moment she became aware that Sigmund and his wife were part of her audience and turned, magnificently, I admit, to glare at them. Sigmund tightened his grip on his wife’s arm and, watched by both of us, the Freuds passed by.
‘Yes, the other thing,’ Janice said, again. She pointed at the underpass beneath us. Cars rushed under a little bridge, coming up into the park. ‘Which is to go to that bridge and jump off it.’
I looked at Sigmund’s back. Had he heard? But he and the missus were hurrying towards the Ramble.
‘Or,’ said Janice, ‘going into these bushes and calling out to the first man who comes along and pulling down my pants and letting him screw me and screw me. When I think that for the past seven years I never as much as looked at a man, when I think of the propositions I’ve had, damn, I’m not ugly, if you knew some of the things men have suggested to me. I suppose I don’t have to tell you but, anyway, all that time I never even looked at another man while, according to you, Charles has been the office letch, he’s probably had a dozen affairs. This one’s different, I suppose, only because he’s decided to come out into the open with it, at last. From now on, probably, he’ll get his kicks by humiliating me in public. Oh damn, damn, why am I telling you all this, you don’t care, you don’t, do you?’
Weeping now, covering her face with her hands, and there were other people coming up the path, I had to calm her down, and get her away somewhere. I put my arms around her. ‘There, there, come on, it’s not as bad as you think, let’s find a bench and sit a moment.’ And so, off we went down the path, she still weeping but letting me lead her and I saw Sigmund Freud and his Frau peeping back at us and felt like shouting out at them, ‘Mind your own damn business.’ Yes, yes. Madness is catching: it seemed so silly, it was funny.
‘Why are you laughing?’ Janice asked, shocked out of her weeps.
‘I don’t know. I think we’re both lunatics, I do, I do.’
I know it makes no sense, we must have been mad, both of us, for at once we switched from tears to giggles, hysterical, I guess, but such a relief and what
fun to look back and see the cheated faces of Freud and Frau who glared at us, then at each other, then stamped off, affronted, giving us their backs in what was the cold shoulder if ever I saw it.
‘He looks like Freud, did you notice?’ I said, choking with giggles.
‘You’re the end. Freud, oh, Mary, you are mad.’
Holding on to each other, staggering along the path, two women, people would have thought us drunk. ‘Did you see the face on old Sigmund?’
‘And you – ohh – going on about taking your pants down, I wonder if he heard that?’ I said and it was so liberating to laugh again, to laugh like we once laughed long ago when we were young and silly, when simple things were funny, when life was ordinary and often dull. When I was Mary Dunne.
But no, I wasn’t Mary Dunne when I met Janice, I was still Mary Phelan. I met Janice the time I came to Montreal with Hat to do that first story for Canada’s Own. When I think of Montreal at that time, for some reason I remember one winter evening, snow on the ground and very cold, we were all bundled up in winter overcoats, scarves, fur-lined gloves, and overshoes, coming out of a pub called the Ticker Tape near the Stock Exchange, walking arm in arm, five of us, coming up a steep, slippery, icy little street towards St James Street. It was a Friday night and Hat and Charles (they’d been to school together at Upper Canada College) had run into each other after work. Janice and I had come down to the Ticker Tape to join them and Eddie Downes, the photographer, was there too, and as we came out of this side street into St James Street, there was a line of six or seven limousines, black Cadillacs and Chrysler Imperials, waiting outside the Canadian National Railways building, the chauffeurs walking about, stamping their feet, flailing their arms to keep warm and, as I say, just as we turned into St James Street, the revolving doors of the Canadian National building started turning and the chauffeurs stopped their foot stamping and went rushing to their limousines, opening the doors, revealing pearl-grey interiors and neatly folded lap robes, while out of the C N building came ten, or maybe fifteen, old financiers, most of them in old-fashioned, long racoon coats and black homburg hats and one, I recall, in a black overcoat with grey mouton collar and a long cigar. They were so perfectly the capitalists of fancy that we stopped and grinned and Hat suddenly shouted out at them, ‘Mange la merde, mange la merde,’ which means ‘eat shit’ and was the insulting punch line of an old French-Canadian joke and we five guffawed as the old tycoon faces turned, worried, staring at Hat, hoping a policeman would happen along to protect them. Then, bending, folded themselves into their limousines, the chauffeurs slamming doors, running to get behind their steering wheels, the tycoons peering out at us through back-seat windows as, laughing, reeling about in the snow, we five linked up again and went past the limousines, silly, happy, and young. Yes, young. When I remember that now, I feel empty.
