by Brian Moore
‘No, he went out, he’ll be back in a moment.’
‘Gee, what a place you have here.’
I was trying to fix my hair, and put the fall on. Why couldn’t he shut up and read a magazine or something? I rushed, and, as soon as I’d finished, I put on my red shoes, looked at my skirt in the mirror, then stepped out into the hall. I saw Ernie in the living-room, but he hadn’t yet seen me. I looked at him for a moment as he stood by the window, a large lumpish man, very Canadian square, in his navy blazer, white shirt, maroon tie, flannels, and sensible black brogues. As I went towards the living-room, he heard me coming and turned to peer at me in a way which made me think he ordinarily wears glasses. His eyes, I noticed, were a sea-grey colour with strange amber flecks in the irises.
‘Now,’ I said, very hostessy, ‘What will you have to drink?’
‘Oh, whatever you’ve got.’
‘Well, we’ve lots of things. Rye, Scotch, bourbon, gin, vodka, sherry – I think we have just about everything.’
‘I would say you have,’ he said looking around the room pointedly to show me he is aware of ‘everything’. Hands clasped behind his back, policeman-like, he rocked gently on his heels. ‘Yes, I would say you have it made, Maria.’
And of course, the way he said it made me feel guilty, the guilty feeling you get when you meet old friends who have not been materially successful. ‘What about a Scotch and soda?’ I asked.
‘Well, let’s see.’ He bent over the drinks tray, hands still clasped behind his back. ‘Ah, me. Choice is the foetus of unhappiness. Let’s see-eee.’
Silence for a moment, as he read labels on bottles.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘There’s always rye and ginger ale, the old Canadian standby.’
‘Rye and ginger,’ I said, moving towards the drinks.
‘But, maybe that would seem corny to you?’
‘Why should it?’ I asked.
‘Well, now that you’re one of the “smarts”.’
‘Smarts?’
‘You know,’ he said. ‘The sort of people who get written up in Time magazine.’
‘That’s a new one. Smarts?’
‘You’re married to one, Maria, my dear. Your present husband was written up by Time, wasn’t he?’
That ‘present husband’ angered me, so I said, ‘Oh, come off it, Ernie. Since when did you become a professional hick?’
He laughed without amusement, throwing his head back to simulate mirth. ‘Professional hick, eh? That’s rare. That is rare.’
At that moment, I remember, Terence came into the living-room. At once, Ernie stopped laughing. ‘This is Terence,’ I began, but Ernie cut me off at once with a great explosion. ‘Oh, you don’t have to tell me, Maria, why, I’d know your husband anywhere. It’s an honour, a great honour to meet you, Terence.’
‘Well, how do you do,’ Terence said, smiling, embarrassed, holding out his hand, which Ernie took and held, saying, ‘Yes, indeed, and what’s more I’ve read your books and seen your revue and admired your drawings and let’s not forget your play which I’m looking forward to seeing when it comes out with – who is it playing the lead, is it David Niven?’
‘Well, not actually.’
‘Anyway, I feel I know all about you. In short, Terence, I am a fan of yours, a real honest-to-God fan.’
‘Well, in that case I’d better get you a drink,’ Terence said hurriedly, going towards the drinks tray.
I had been putting ice into glasses and now I handed one of them to Tee, saying, ‘Ernie would like a rye and ginger.’
‘Rye and ginger?’ Ernie said. ‘You’re kidding, Maria.’
‘I thought that’s what you said a moment ago.’
Ernie laughed and I remember thinking he looked like a cow in a Disney cartoon. ‘Now you have to be kidding,’ he said. ‘Where’s that good old Canadian sense of humour?’ He turned to Terence. ‘You see, Terence, she’d just called me a professional hick. So I thought I’d better act the part properly. Rye and ginger, ha, ha.’
I remembered that I called him a professional hick after he ordered rye and ginger. I looked at him, thinking why are the awful ones, the horrors, why are they all my so-called friends? And, as if confirming it, Ernie turned to Terence, put his hand on Terence’s sleeve, and said, ‘I called you Terence and I should know better. I know you British don’t first name every stranger you meet. And a good thing too. I’m sorry. Forgive me.’
‘No, no, that’s all right,’ Terence said, embarrassed. ‘I mean call me Terence or whatever you like.’
‘Well, thank you,’ Ernie said. ‘Of course, in my own case I like to be called by my first name. I hate my last name. Truelove. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Umm.’ Tee nodded his head affirmatively, like a boy who has just mastered a difficult point in class. ‘Now, what will you drink?’
‘Teacher’s,’ Ernie said. ‘Teacher’s Highland Cream and a spot of water would do me nicely.’
‘And what about you, darling?’
‘A martini,’ I said. I felt I was going to need it. I asked Tee if he’d got the chops all right, and when he said yes, I excused myself and went to the kitchen, thinking again, oh God, why did I invite him and then, just as it did with old Mr Dieter Peters this morning, my mulish, unbiddable memory yielded up a sudden, isolated moment; Beaver Lake in Montreal and I, walking along the edge of the pond in the moonlight with Ernie Truelove, and I remembered that as we walked I was confiding in him and that, later, I knew it was a mistake. But I could not remember what it was I confided to Ernie. I thought: he took me out to dinner once or twice, the time I was living in Montreal and Hat was off in Europe and I was waiting for my divorce from Jimmy. But that was all I had time to remember for at that point Tee came into the kitchen, carrying a martini for me, his look saying hurry back. I took the martini, said I’d be in in a minute, and began to rush, setting the table in the dining-room, getting out a little jar of caviar and some melba toast, finally becoming so jittery about leaving Tee with Ernie that I stopped everything, took the caviar and toast, and went back into the living-room.
‘Caviar?’ Ernie brayed.
‘Oh,’ Tee said, beginning to spoon some out for him. ‘Do you like it?’
‘Well, let me say this.’ Ernie paused, put his hands on his kneecaps, and leaned forward like a judge announcing his decision. ‘Let me say it’s not something which I’ve had enough of to allow me to become tired of it.’ Smiling; waiting for Tee and me to collapse in a fit of laughter. We did not oblige him, so he added, ‘Yes, indeed. Caviar. The height of sophistication.’
I remember at that point I asked him if he was still with Canada’s Own. He said, yes, he was still on the desk and Terence asked if the ‘desk’ meant copy-editing.
‘Yes, indeedy,’ Ernie said. ‘We also serve who only punctuate.’ He picked up his Scotch, drank it as if it were coke, then munched a biscuit with caviar. ‘Dee-licious,’ he informed us. ‘What a nice spread these fish eggs be.’ Nodding wisely, licking his lips, leaning towards Terence. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘Maria here was quite the little Cassandra, in my case. She told my fortune once. She said if I didn’t get off the desk then – that was years ago – that I’d stay on it all my life. Looks as though she was right.’
‘Your fortune?’ I said. ‘I told your fortune?’
‘Yes, don’t you remember? It was just after I met you, I mean in Montreal. You were living in a flat on Ridgewood and you gave a party for old Mackie McIver one weekend when she came up from Toronto. Remember? I was there and the Sloanes and Eddie Downes. And after dinner you told fortunes.’
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘Mackie was the one who told fortunes.’ And, as I said it, I remembered her sitting on the floor in her good ‘dinner dress’ (it was black velvet), looking like an old child as she read our palms. And, reading mine, staring into my eyes as she told me things, things I knew then were disguised professions of love. ‘No,’ I said to Ernie. ‘Maybe my memory isn’t great, but I do
remember that. Mackie was the one who told your fortune.’
‘Wrong, Maria. Wrong. She did tell my fortune but afterwards I asked you to tell my fortune and you laughed and pretended to read my palm and then you said that about my staying on the desk for life unless I left it within the next three months.’
He was so vehement, I thought, well, what does it matter? I said, perhaps he was right, but I certainly didn’t remember ever telling him that.
‘Ah.’ He shook his head, sadly. ‘There are so many things you don’t remember.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like, for instance, how you promised to phone me when you came back to Montreal. You’ve been back quite a few times since, but I’m still waiting for that phone call.’
Yes. I suppose I did promise to phone him, I thought, but, dammit, when I go to Montreal it’s only for a few days, I can’t phone everybody.
‘Am I right, Maria?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
Abruptly, he turned to Tee and thrust out his glass. ‘Can I trouble you for a refill?’
Tee got up and poured Ernie another Scotch. I went back to the kitchen. I thought the sooner we eat, the sooner we’ll be rid of him. I remember looking into the living-room and seeing the back of his head, his brilliantined brown hair carefully combed over a vulnerable little bald spot at the crown. And as I stared at his head, he leaned forward and placed the drink Terence had just given him on a coaster on the coffee table. The neatly combed-over bald spot, the precise gesture of placing his drink, reminded me of his neatness in other things. How, before he began his day’s work as a copy-editor, he would sharpen six pencils and arrange them in a neat row near his right hand. How, the first night I was in his apartment, I opened his kitchen cupboard to get a glass and there were his dishes and glasses, stacked under neat typewritten labels: ‘plates, soup; glasses, sherry; saucers, small’, and so on.
Always neat. And then (probably because I was in my own kitchen at the time), remembering his neatly labelled kitchen shelves, I remembered the first time I saw his apartment. It was the night I came back from Ottawa after the senate divorce hearing: my divorce from Jimmy. Jimmy had not been present in Ottawa. The grounds against him had been adultery and desertion, both false. The divorce was collusive because, by then, Jimmy also wanted a divorce. At least I kept telling myself he did. But I wasn’t really sure. Perhaps he was saying it just to save his pride? Anyway, when I arrived back in Windsor station in Montreal that night, I remembered how Jimmy and I had waited in that same railroad station at the beginning of our marriage, waited for O’Keefe to send us enough money to go to Toronto after Old Tom, the idiot, had gone home to Halifax with his father. And, remembering, I felt down. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone there in the station. I had planned to go home and go to bed. But Ernie Truelove and his girl were standing at the ticket gate. Sally something, yes, Sally Harper, her name was. Taller than Ernie, a blonde. They had come, they said, to invite me to have supper with them at Ernie’s place and while I didn’t want to go, I didn’t know how to say no in those days and so they put me into Ernie’s little Renault and drove me up Mount Royal to Ernie’s apartment, which was very close to Beaver Lake.
It was summer, very hot, and when I walked into the apartment I was met by a blast of talk, and people coming forward to kiss me or shake hands. Ernie had assembled nearly all the people I knew at that time in Montreal: Janice and Charles Sloane, Blair and Peggy O’Connell, the Leducs, and Eddie Downes. It was a typical Montreal sort of party, everybody talking at once, both men and women getting drunk. I remember that someone had cooked lasagna and Blair had brought flasks of Chianti and that when I went into the kitchen to help with the supper, I opened the cupboard and saw Ernie’s glasses and dishes, all stacked and labelled in that odd way.
And it was then, staring at Ernie’s cupboard, that I thought back to the events of the day: I remembered a near-senile senator asking me if there was any hope of ‘patching things up’ between me and Jimmy and my saying, ‘No, sir, no hope,’ as my lawyer had instructed me to. But was there no hope? Wasn’t the whole thing my fault? And what had I let myself in for? Hat was divorcing his wife and I was divorcing Jimmy and I was going to marry Hat. Hat wanted to marry me, but did I want to marry Hat? And suddenly I knew that marrying Hat would be the same thing all over again, the sex thing wasn’t right with him, as it had not been right with Jimmy. I thought: there is something wrong with me sexually. If it’s not right with me and Hat, it’s my fault. And then, trying to cheer up, I decided that at least, with Hat, it was better than it had been with Jimmy. Besides, the divorces were all in court. We’d gone this far: too late to back out. And I thought: I like Hat and I can learn to overcome this sex thing.
And as I thought those gloomy thoughts, roars of laughter were coming from Ernie’s living-room. It was like a wake, it was a bunch of people celebrating the death of my marriage to Jimmy. I felt sick, and so, when the other women in the kitchen weren’t looking in my direction, I let myself out of the back door and stood there in the moonlight in Ernie’s little back garden and I was physically sick. Where, a few minutes later, Ernie found me, sitting on his solitary garden chair, my head between my knees. I said no, I wasn’t drunk, I’d had very little to drink, but I remember he ignored that and suggested a walk along the lake to clear my head. And so, we climbed up a slope behind his garden and there was Beaver Lake (it’s a park pond, not a lake), bright and unreal in the summer moonlight.
So Ernie and I walked along the edge of Beaver Lake, the guest of honour with the host, the noise of the party behind us. I don’t think I was even aware of Ernie, I was so full of my own miseries. And then, suddenly, he walked a few quick paces ahead of me, wheeled back, and stood there blocking my path.
‘Why were you crying, Maria?’
I stared at him in the moonlight. There was something frightening about him. ‘Aren’t you happy?’ he asked.
And I, like a fool, began to cry again and said, ‘No, I’m not.’
He caught at my arm and gave it a little shake: he was so eager to get my whole attention. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I’ve never loved anyone before.’
I stared at him. I thought he was drunk. I said to him, ‘But what about Sally?’
‘That’s not the same. I like Sally, but, look, you should know. A person can’t choose who they fall in love with, can they? I’m in love with you, Maria. You’re the worst possible person, you don’t care about me, you probably never think of me, but I can’t help that, I love you. I will always love you.’
I will always love you. That is what he said, and tonight, in the kitchen, just before serving dinner, it came back to me. And something else came back too, something Janice Sloane said to me earlier, at lunch, something about Ernie Truelove having broken up ‘with that girl, Sally something’, and I thought, my God, it’s true, he’s broken up with Sally because he thinks he’s in love with me.
And that frightened me. For it is frightening to be loved by someone you don’t love, someone you don’t even care about. And I remember thinking, what if Ernie starts going on to Terence about this love of his, what if he manages to make Terence believe that there was something between himself and me. Which sent me hurrying back into the living-room, the dinner not ready, afraid to stay away, afraid to miss what mad Ernie might tell Tee.
When I walked back into the living-room, Ernie did a strange thing. He sat up in his chair, put his legs together, sticking them straight out in front of him, then raised them up as though he were doing some gymnastic exercise. And there, his feet together balancing in the air, staring at his large black brogues, he pronounced, ‘Well, let me say this. I think New York, is, well, decadent is the only word for it.’
Tee was pouring another drink. ‘Umm,’ said Tee.
‘Let me explain what I mean by that, Terence,’ Ernie said. ‘As I see it, there are three types of people in New York. First of all, there are the people who were born here. Ordinary pe
ople who live in the Bronx, or wherever. You follow?’
Tee nodded. I thought how bored he must be.
‘That’s one category. Then there is a second category. People like you, Terence, whose specialized skills bring them to New York. Well and good.
‘That’s the second category. The third category is different. And it’s a big one, believe you me. And let me say this. The third category is the reason that, for me, at least, New York stinks.’
He turned to me, showing his large horseteeth, hissing out the word ‘stinks.’
‘The third category,’ he said. ‘The third category is made up of no-talent jerks, people who come here from other towns and, because they live in New York, somehow they think they’re better than the rest of us. Do you follow me, Terence?’
‘Umm,’ said Terence.
Ernie put his glass to his mouth. He had finished his drink and now he crunched the ice cube with his large teeth.
‘Another drink?’ Terence asked, and Ernie thrust his glass rudely in Terence’s direction. Then turned mad eyes on me. ‘I saw a play last night, Maria.’
‘Any good?’
‘Well, the main feature of this thee-atrical performance was that an actor got up on stage and gave the audience a look at his bare bum.’
‘The Marat-Sade,’ Terence said, handing Ernie far too big a Scotch.
‘His bare bum,’ Ernie said. ‘Now if that isn’t decadence, what is?’ He took a gulp of the Scotch. ‘Well, I guess it’s all we deserve, this fag theatre. I suppose it’s a natural reaction.’
‘Against what?’ Terence asked politely.
‘Against this female domination of the North American continent,’ Ernie said. ‘That’s what.’
Headshaking again, a Savonarola warning against the evils of the times. ‘Yes, I suppose we have to have something for the fags too. I mean, show them a few male bums to excite them. I mean, is that any different from these so-called actresses? I mean, how do you like that? There isn’t one so-called actress in the business today who isn’t ready to get up in front of an audience of total strangers and walk around showing her naked boobs, just like a whore. Now, isn’t that something.’
