by Brian Moore
And while I heard all the rest of it, it was that that I fastened on, Ernie as Hat’s best friend, it struck me as ludicrous, it made everything else he said suspect. ‘Hat’s best friend?’ I said. ‘Oh, come on, Ernie. It’s not so.’
‘It is so,’ he shouted. ‘I was with Hat the night he died. I was the last person to talk to him, the last person he saw.’
Once before, I was told the details of a death. Red Davis read the report of the inquest and told my brother who told me how the hotel maid in the Park Plaza Hotel in New York knocked on the room door at eleven in the morning, got no answer, went in, using her pass key, saw the man on the bed, began to back out, thinking him still asleep, then saw his opened eyes, staring at the ceiling. How she went out, locking the door again as she had been instructed to do in such cases, and ran down the corridor to use the house phone. And when Ernie said he was the last person to talk to Hat, I thought of the last person who must have talked to my father, the woman (whoever she was) who checked into the hotel with him the previous afternoon. They must have undressed and got into bed right away for the coroner put the time of death as late afternoon or early evening. I see my father begin to make love, then slump over and die. I see the woman’s fear as she tries to revive him. I see her stare at his open eyes, wondering whether to close them and cover him up, but she cannot do that, for then the authorities would know someone was with him at the time of his death. So she gets out of bed, puts on her clothes, and leaves the room, closing the door on him. It grows dark; he lies through the night, dead eyes staring at the ceiling, the glare of the New York sky casting its red pall over his naked body. First light, then morning sunlight and, at eleven, a pass key in the door, his vigil ended.
I sat and remembered it all, saw that which I never really saw. When my father died, I was two thousand miles away in school. If Red Davis had not told Dick and Dick had not repeated the story to me, I would never have known it. I would be a different woman today. I did not want Ernie to tell me how Hat had died. He died in Montreal and he died suddenly, was all that man said that night at Molly Lupowitz’s party.
But there was Ernie, mad Ernie, glaring and, God, I’d have done I don’t know what to get off the subject of death, so I said, ‘The evening, I mean, the evening you were talking about, the night you say I stayed over at your place, when was that, Ernie? Please, I’m not pretending, it’s just that there’s something funny with my memory today, I can’t remember things. I mean I can’t remember anything.’
Which seemed to mollify him a bit, for he picked up the wine bottle, poured the dregs of it into his glass, drank it in a swallow, nodded, leaned forward, nodded again, and said, ‘All right. Very good, let’s assume, yes, let’s assume you’re not kidding me. Yes, we’ll assume that. You don’t recall that evening which, as I said, was the most important, the most emotional evening of my whole life. Well, where does that leave me, Maria? Hmm? I’ll tell you where. It leaves me looking like what I am, no doubt, a goddam stupid fool to be in love with a woman like you. A fool.’
‘Ernie,’ I said, ‘I wasn’t trying to hurt you, honestly, I wasn’t. I just, I mean, I’m terribly confused today.’
‘Yes, Maria,’ he said. ‘I would say you are confused. Perhaps you forget these things because you simply cannot face remembering them. But, now, let me say this. I don’t think you should be allowed to forget them. You know the maxim: those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it? Do you really want to repeat your life, do you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No.’
‘All righty. Then I will tell you what happened that evening. Let’s see.’ And he began to talk. After a minute, Terence re-entered the dining-room and sat down again at the table. But Ernie paid no attention. He had begun his tale. He was the Ancient Mariner; he fixed us with drunken eye. We were captive.
‘Do you remember the beginning of that night, Maria? Do you remember I was sitting in the downstairs bar of the Tour Eiffel with Hat? It was about eight in the evening and we’d been there about two hours and old Hat was getting stoned. I’d been helping him on a story, doing the leg work on it, yes, and anyway, there we were, Hat and I, shooting the breeze at the bar when who walked in but the one person in the world who can make my heart stop. You just stood there in the doorway, looking at us, not saying anything and Hat looked over and saw you. I remember he said, very offhand, ‘Hello, there. Join us, won’t you?’ but you ignored that and walked past us and sat down at a table in the corner of the room. And Hat turned to me and went on talking in that high voice of his, but I couldn’t keep up my end of the conversation, Maria, not with you there. I mean, any time I’m in the same room with you – even now – I feel so excited, I have, well, I feel sort of breathless, you know?’
‘Oh, Ernie, for goodness sake.’
‘No, really, I mean it.’
‘All right, you mean it,’ I said. ‘But, please, can’t we talk about something else?’
‘Have some more wine,’ Terence said, rising, going to the sideboard for another bottle, but, as he went past me, he gave me an odd sidelong look which made my heart begin to race again. What must he be thinking, did he think there was something between me and this damn Ernie? Angry and afraid, wishing that my heart would quiet down, I turned to Ernie and, oh God, Ernie was crying. Tears were in his eyes, childish tears, a childish grief, unconcealed, unashamed.
Behind me at the sideboard, I heard a plopping sound, as Terence pulled the cork from a bottle of wine. And in the silence of the moment which followed, we both heard Ernie sob. It was awful.
‘What’s wrong, Ernie?’ I asked, foolishly. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’
‘I-I-I –’ he began, but could not go on, relapsing into his harsh sobbing.
‘Look,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful, ‘let’s you and I talk about this some other time. After all,’ I said, with a false laugh, ‘poor Terence has had enough of my former life told him by me, I mean, enough to last him a lifetime.’
Ernie, still sobbing, swivelled around in his chair, caught his breath audibly, stared up at Terence with naked tear-wet face, Terence who, stiff with embarrassment, came forward from the sideboard and hastily poured great dollops of wine in our three glasses. ‘But Terence seems,’ Ernie began, ‘I mean he seems a nice guy. And if he wouldn’t mind too much, I’d like to recall that night for Maria, I mean to get it off my chest, as they say. I feel it would be a great help – if Terence doesn’t mind too much?’
‘I don’t mind,’ Terence said, in a rush of embarrassment.
‘Well, thank you.’ Ernie took a wad of yellow Kleenex from his pants pocket, blew his nose, seeming to get a hold of himself. Uneasily, Tee sat down, putting the bottle of wine on the table, next to Ernie, then looking over at me with a look which tried to make a joke of all this. Of course, it wasn’t a joke and he knew it, but his look calmed me a bit. At least, he was on my side.
‘So,’ Ernie said. ‘To go back to that evening.’ He nodded, leaned forward, then nodded again, as though he had just found his place in a book he had been reading. ‘Anyway, I think, he, I mean Hat, had a date with you and he’d forgotten. And you guessed where you might find him. Right?’
I nodded. It wasn’t hard to know where to find Hat in those days.
‘Anyway, there you were, Maria, sitting in a corner of the Tour Eiffel bar, and there was Hat, talking to me. A waiter went over to get your order and then came back to us at the bar. And said to me, ‘Excuse me, sir, but that lady wishes to speak to you.’ And, of course, I thought the waiter had made a mistake, so I turned to Hat and said, ‘She means you.’ But the waiter said, ‘No, sir. You.’ And pointed to me and I looked back at you, Maria, and you nodded, yes, so I went over to you and, remember, you asked me to buy you a drink? And, by golly, I did, I sat right down beside you and ordered and there we were, chatting away, just the two of us, my gosh, me and my dream girl.’
‘A-hem,’ said Terence, grinning at me. ‘Let’s have some coffee,
shall we?’
‘I’ll get it,’ I said, jumping up, but Ernie looked at me. ‘Please?’ he said. Terence gestured to me to sit and, defeated, I sat while Ernie went on with his tale. ‘So, anyway,’ he said. ‘The waiter brought our drinks and there we were, Maria, sitting together at the table in the corner and just as you raised your glass and said “Cheers”, old Hat got down off his barstool and weaved across the room. I can still see him standing over us, staring down at us. He looked at me, then at you, and he said to you, “Haven’t you made a mistake? I thought I was your dinner date?” And you said, “No, I’m going to ask Ernie if he’ll buy me dinner. He’s taken me out lots of times.”
‘ “When?” said Hat.
‘ “When you were running around Europe this summer.”
‘And when you said that, Maria, Hat glared at us, remember?’
‘I’ve told you, Ernie, I don’t remember.’
‘But, you must remember that. Those mad black eyes that Hat had. Glaring at us, I’ll never forget it.’
I looked over at Tee who sat, head down, staring at the place mat.
‘Yes,’ Ernie said. ‘I used to be afraid of Hat, you know. Anyway, he looked at us and then he said, “Who’d believe it? May-ree-and her-True-Love, Mary’s little True-Love,” you know, sort of singing it, sneering, you know. And you just got up, oh, you were terrific, Maria, you got up and picked up your gin and tonic and you upended it over his head. Oh, oh, you should have seen that, Terence, the gin and tonic running through Hat’s hair and down his face and Maria here said to him, “Sober up,” and went right past him and walked out and I went after her and then the waiter ran up the stairs after us, so I paid the bill and as I paid the tab I could see old Hat still standing there by the table and he was towelling his wet hair off with a waiter’s napkin. I suppose it was funny, I suppose you could call it comic, but you know, Maria, it wasn’t funny to me, because all my life people have made fun of me and if you’re called Ernest Truelove, what else can you expect?
‘But that night, you, Maria, you made up for all of that. Yes, and we went to dinner, I remember we ate in the La Salle Hotel, the old downstairs room with checked tablecloths, it isn’t even there any more, and we had wine and dinner and talked a lot and I remember realizing that you were very emotional about what had just happened, the row with Hat, and because of that the drinks sort of hit you. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that you got high, I guess, while I stayed sober and we went from the La Salle, back to my place, remember, on the mountain, near Beaver Lake, and I broke out a bottle of Napoleon brandy that Sally had brought me back from the duty-free shop on her trip to Europe and we settled down to some serious drinking then. Gosh, I guess you don’t remember that, but all of a sudden, Maria, you stopped talking for a while and sat there and then you said it was a mistake, this idea of your marrying Hat Bell, that you were unlucky to yourself and unlucky for other people as well and that your father had come to a bad end, or something, and that you would too.
‘You see how well I remember it, Maria, yes, I can see you sitting there on my rug, sitting at that picture window I have that looks out on a view of Montreal, all the lights lit below us and you talking and me sitting opposite you, listening to you and the lights began to go out as the dawn came into the room. Terence, maybe you’ll understand it better than Maria, here, because Maria doesn’t even remember it, she says she doesn’t, but, anyway, it was dawn and she’d just finished telling me she wasn’t at all sure she should marry Hat Bell, that she could never make anybody happy – anyway, suddenly I got all my courage up and I said to her, “Maria,” I said, “if you married me, I wouldn’t care if you made me happy. Just being near you would be more happiness than I could ever hope for. Because I love you, Maria, I really do love you, I love you the way no one else loves you. I mean unselfishly – unselfishly. Why, listen,” I said, “if you don’t want to marry Hat Bell and you want to get away – to Europe, say – I’ll give you, say, two-thirds of my salary, no strings attached, no questions asked, and you just go away for a year, or for as long as you like.”
‘And, golly, you’d better believe it, Maria, when I said that in the dawn, years ago, I meant it, I meant every word of it, I still mean it, come to think of it, for if you love someone, really love them, it doesn’t matter what they’ve done or will do, it doesn’t matter about their goodness or badness, or what sort of person they are, for if you say you would kill for them or be killed for them, then what does good or evil mean?’
‘That’s nonsense, Ernie,’ I began, but he held up his large hand as though to silence me, then turned to Terence and said, ‘No, I’ll bet Terence knows what I mean. Anyway, as I was saying, it was dawn that morning and I’d made this declaration to you and we were sitting facing each other on my rug and suddenly you leaned towards me, Maria, your eyes shut, your face tilted up as though waiting for a kiss, and I remember how I felt, it’s far too intimate to describe in front of a third person, but, anyway, we kissed each other, and I’ll never forget that moment when I kissed you, Maria, I’ll remember it all my life. I’m sorry, I know I’m out of line, but I just want to tell you one thing. Just one thing. And that is: I would live my life over again just for the one moment, yes, I’d put up with my childhood and my name and people making fun of me, nobody really liking me, yes, and the worst of it is that I don’t blame people for not liking me, because even I despise people like me and I know in my heart that I’m not like Terence, although I want to be, I know in my heart that everything I’ve ever done or ever will do will somehow be third-rate, yes, even my novel I’m writing, the book I have such dreams for, yes.’
His blind eyes, bloodshot from tears, from drinking, sought me as though he waited for me to say something. I sat stiff and I controlled my trembling: but my heart frightened me. I said, ‘Have you finished?’
‘Yes, I have finished, at least I guess I have. I guess that’s it, that’s all, that’s my big story. Boring, isn’t it? I know. What I don’t know is why I inflicted it on you, on both of you, for really, I guess, its importance is all in my mind, you don’t even remember it, Maria. You were kind of high at the time and it was just a kiss, nothing happened, except that you said you were fond of me –’
‘Look,’ Terence said, ‘you’ve finished this story, haven’t you?’
There, in the dining-room, amid the wreck of dinner glasses, dishes, wine bottles, there settled on all three of us an instant of total immobility, as though the film of our lives had jammed. We sat, frozen in stop frame, until, suddenly, Ernie’s head jerked forward and he turned to me, his face screwed up in a painful parody of a boy’s embarrassed grin. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I guess I have finished. Eh, Maria? Golly, I’ve gone and done it again. Made a fool of myself, imposed on people’s kindness, irritated the people I most want to be friends with. You and Terence. Golly.’
Having castigated himself, he, like all those people who are quick to apologize, considered himself at once forgiven. He grinned again and said, ‘What a horse’s ass I am. I’ll bet that’s what you’re thinking?’
Terence, embarrassed and angry, shook his head and stood up. ‘Let’s go inside and have a brandy.’
I said I would get coffee and I remember that, in the kitchen, pouring water into the Melitta filter, hearing Terence open the sideboard to get brandy glasses, I felt my heart again, so loud and hard inside me that I wondered, my God, what if it’s not nerves, what if there is something wrong with me, what if it’s a rheumatic heart or something like that I don’t even know about, what if I topple over here in the kitchen and die, it would serve Ernie right, coming in here and starting up all this fuss and nonsense, I suppose I did use him that night long ago, because I wanted to get back at Hat, but it shows you, if you use people you pay for it, as tonight I am paying, years later, for that one silly kiss I gave Ernie. And, as I stood there in the kitchen, getting the coffee, I heard Ernie’s loud voice say, ‘No, I thought, maybe at the funeral. I was expecting her, I gue
ss, not you. I thought she’d probably come up on her own.’
‘She didn’t know anything about it,’ Tee’s voice said.
‘But what about my telegrams? I sent her a telegram.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, advising her. You know I was sharing my apartment with Hat at the time he died.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Tee’s voice said.
‘Yes, we were very close in the last year or two. I was his best friend, poor guy. I made all the funeral arrangements, notified his family, notified everybody. And Maria. I definitely remember sending her the wire.’
Tee muttered something I didn’t catch. My hands shook so I had to put the kettle down and sit down. I put the kettle on the kitchen table. I sat at the kitchen table and laid my cheek against the table’s wooden surface and, when I did, my eyes were reflected in the aluminium surface of the kettle beside me, my eyes were like my father’s dead eyes, Hat’s dead eyes, and, in nightmare, I saw Mama dead too, lying now on the kitchen floor in Butchersville, the wind from under the door jamb blowing her grey hair into her dead staring eyes –
‘Mary, what’s the matter? Are you sick?’
Tee was at the kitchen door. He came to me, sat on the chair with me, put his arm around me and felt me tremble, felt me shake, saw the state I was in, but I wasn’t afraid of him any more, he was alive, he was life, not death. I held him and I thought: he is my saviour, he restoreth my soul. I heard him ask again what was wrong and all the unreasoning, unreasonable emotions of my state spilled out beyond my control and I held him, kissed him, weeping, saying, ‘Tee, Tee, I love you, please love me?’
