David looked drawn and distant, and very young—an exhausted sixteen. I felt sorry for him, because so much that was impossible was expected from him; although his habitual manner, at once sulky and superior, and his floppy English haircut got on my nerves. He resembled the English poets of about ten years before, already ensconced as archetypes of a class and a kind. Lily liked him; but, then, she had been nice to Hagen-Beck, even smiling at him kindly as he walked out. I decided that to try to guess what attracted women, or to devise some rule from temporary evidence, was a waste of time. On the whole, Hagen-Beck—oaf and clodhopper—was somehow easier to place. I could imagine him against a setting where he looked like everybody else, whereas David seemed to me everywhere and forever out of joint.
Late in the evening Mr. Chadwick’s dinner guests, chosen by David, climbed the Mussolini staircase to the square, now cleared of stage and chairs, and half filled with a wash of restaurant tables. A few children wheeled round on bikes. Old people and lovers sat on the church steps and along the low wall. Over the dark of the sky, just above the church, was the faintest lingering trace of pink.
The party was not proceeding as it should: Mr. Chadwick had particularly asked to be given a round table, and the one reserved for us was definitely oblong. “A round table is better for conversation,” he kept saying, “and there is less trouble about the seating.”
“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Chadwick,” said Edie, in the appeasing tone she often used with her husband. “This one is fine.” She stroked the pink-and-white tablecloth, as if to show that it was harmless.
“They promised the round table. I shall never come here again.”
At the table Mr. Chadwick wanted, a well-dressed Italian in his fifties was entertaining his daughter and her four small children. The eldest child might have been seven; the youngest had a large table napkin tied around his neck, and was eating morsels of Parma ham and melon with his fingers. But presently I saw that the striking good looks of the children were drawn from both adults equally, and that the young mother was the wife of that much older man. The charm and intelligence of the children had somehow overshot that of the parents, as if they had arrived at a degree of bloom that was not likely to vary for a long time, leaving the adults at some intermediate stage. I kept this observation to myself. English-speaking people do not as a rule remark on the physical grace of children, although points are allowed for cooperative behavior. There is, or used to be, a belief that beauty is something that has to be paid for and that a lovely child may live to regret.
A whole generation between two parents was new to me. Mr. Chadwick, I supposed, could still marry a young wife. It seemed unlikely; and yet he was shot through with parental anguish. His desire to educate David, to raise his station, to show him off, had a paternal tone. At the recital he had been like a father hoping for the finest sort of accomplishment but not quite expecting it.
We continued to stand while he counted chairs and place settings. “Ten,” he said. “I told them we’d be nine.”
“Hagen-Beck may turn up,” said Lapwing. “I think he went to the wrong place.”
“He was not invited,” said Mr. Chadwick. “At least, not by me.”
“He wasn’t anywhere around to be invited,” said Mrs. Biesel. “He left before the Ravel.”
“I told him where we were going,” said Edie. “I’m sorry. I thought David had asked him.”
“What are you sorry about?” said Lapwing. “He didn’t hear what you said, that’s all.”
“Mr. Chadwick,” said Lily. “Where do you want us to sit?”
The Italian had taken his youngest child on his lap. He wore a look of alert and careful indulgence, from which all anxiety had been drained. Anxiety had once been there; you could see the imprint. Mr. Chadwick could not glance at David without filling up with mistrust. Perhaps, for an older man, it was easier to live with a young wife and several infants than to try to hold on to one restless boy.
“Sit wherever you like,” said Mr. Chadwick. “Perhaps David would like to sit here,” indicating the chair on his left. (Lapwing had already occupied the one on the right.) Protocol would have given him Mrs. Biesel and Edie. Lily and the Biesels moved to the far end of the table. Edie started to sit down next to David, but he put his hand on the chair, as if he were keeping it for someone else. She settled one place over, without fuss; she was endlessly good-tempered, taking rudeness to be a mishap, toughened by her husband’s slights and snubs.
“It’s going to be all English again,” she said, looking around, smiling. I remember her round, cheerful face and slightly slanted blue eyes. “Doesn’t anyone know any French people? Here I am in France, forgetting all my French.”
“There was that French doctor this afternoon,” said Mrs. Biesel. “You could have said something to him.”
“No, she couldn’t,” said Lapwing. “She was sound asleep.”
“You would be obliged to go a long way from here to hear proper French,” said Mr. Chadwick. “Perhaps as far as Lyons. Every second person in Rivebelle is from Sicily.”
Lapwing leaned into the conversation, as if drawn by the weight of his own head. “Edie doesn’t have to hear proper French,” he said. “She can read it. She’s been reading a French classic all summer—‘Forever Amber.’ ”
I glanced at Lily. It was the only time that evening I was able to catch her eye. Yes, I know, he’s humiliating her, she signaled back.
“There are the Spann-Monticules,” said Mr. Chadwick to Edie. “They have French blood, and they can chatter away in French, when they want to. They never come down here except at Easter. The villa is shut the rest of the year. Sometimes they let the mayor use it for garden parties. Hugo Spann-Monticule’s great-great-grandmother was the daughter of Arnaud Monticule, who was said to have sacked the Bologna library for Napoleon. Monticule kept a number of priceless treasures for himself, and decided he would be safer in England. He married a Miss Spann. The Spanns had important wool interests, and the family have continued to prosper. Some of the Bologna loot is still in their hands. Lately, because of Labour, they have started smuggling some things back into France.”
“Museum pieces belong in museums, where people can see them,” said Lapwing.
“They shouldn’t be kept in an empty house,” said the Admiral.
Lapwing was so unused to having anyone agree with him that he looked offended. “I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the collection,” he said. “They might let one person in. I don’t mean a whole crowd.”
“The day France goes Communist they’ll be sorry they ever brought anything here,” said Mrs. Biesel.
“France will never go Communist,” said her husband. “Stalin doesn’t want it. A Communist France would be too independent for the Kremlin. The last thing Stalin wants is another Tito on his hands.”
I was surprised to hear four sentences from the Admiral. As a rule he drank quietly and said very little, like Fergus Bray. He gave me the impression that he did not care where he lived or what might happen next. He still drove a car, and seemed to have great strength in his remaining arm, but a number of things had to be done for him. He had sounded just now as if he knew what he was talking about. I remembered the rumor that he was here for an underground purpose, but it was hard to see what it might be, in this seedy border resort. According to Lily, his wife had wanted to live abroad for a while. So perhaps it really was as simple as that.
“You’re right,” Mrs. Biesel said. “Even French Communists must know what the Russians did in Berlin.”
“Liberated the Berliners, you mean?” said Lapwing, getting pink in the face.
“Our neighbors are all French,” said Edie, speaking to Mr. Chadwick across David and the empty chair. “They aren’t Sicilians. I’ve never met a Sicilian. I’m not even sure where they come from. I was really thinking of a different kind of French person—someone Harry might want to talk to. He gets bored sometimes. There’s nobody around here on his level. Those Spanns you m
entioned—couldn’t we meet them? I think Harry might enjoy them.”
“They never meet anyone,” said Mr. Chadwick. “Although if you stay until next Easter you might see them driving to church. They drive to St. George’s on Easter Sunday.”
“We don’t go to church, except to look at the art,” said Edie. “I just gradually gave it up. Harry started life as a Baptist. Can you believe it? He was fully immersed, with a new suit on.”
“In France, it’s best to mix either with peasants or the very top level,” said Mrs. Biesel. “Nothing in between.” Her expression suggested that she had been offered and had turned down a wide variety of native French.
I sat between Fergus Bray and the Admiral. Edie, across the table, was midway between Fergus and me, so that we formed a triangle, unlikely and ill-assorted. To mention Fergus Bray now sounds like a cheap form of name-dropping. His work has somehow been preserved from decay. There always seems to be something, somewhere, about to go into production. But in those days he was no one in particular, and he was there. He had been silent since the start of the concert and had taken his place at table without a word, and was now working through a bottle of white wine intended for at least three of us. He began to slide down in his chair, stretching his legs. I saw that he was trying to capture Edie’s attention, perhaps her foot. She looked across sharply, first at me. When his eyes were level with hers, he said, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life with that shrimp?”
I think no one but me could hear. Lapwing, on the far side of Fergus, was calling some new argument to the Biesels; Mr. Chadwick was busy with a waiter; and David was lost in his private climate of drizzle and mist.
“What shrimp?” said Edie. “You mean Harry?”
“If I say ‘the rest of your life,’ I must mean your husband.”
“We’re not really married,” Edie said. “I’m his common-law wife, but only in places where they recognize common law. Like, I can have ‘Lapwing’ in my passport, but I couldn’t be a Lapwing in Quebec. That’s because in Quebec they just have civil law. I’m still married to Morrie Ringer there. Legally, I mean. You’ve never heard of him? You’re a Canadian, and you’ve never heard of Morrie Ringer? The radio personality? ‘The Ringer Singalong’? That’s his most famous program. They even pick it up in Cleveland. Well, he can’t live with me, can’t forget me, won’t divorce me. Anyway, the three of us put together haven’t got enough money for a real divorce. You can’t get a divorce in Quebec. You have to do some complicated, expensive thing. When you break up one marriage and set up another, it takes money. It’s expensive to live by the rules—I don’t care what you say.” So far, he had said scarcely anything, and not about that. “In a way, it’s as if I was Morrie’s girl and Harry’s wife. Morrie could never stand having meals in the house. We ate out. I lived for about two years on smoked meat and pickles. With Harry, I’ve been more the wife type. It’s all twisted around.”
“That’s not what you’re like,” said Fergus.
“Twisted around?”
“Wife type. I’ve been married. I never could stand them. Wife types.” He made a scooping movement with his hand and spread his palm flat.
In the falsetto men assume when they try to imitate a woman’s voice, he addressed a miniature captive husband:
“From now on, you’ve got to work for me, and no more girlfriends.”
“Some women are like that,” said Edie. “I’m not.”
“Does the shrimp work for you?”
“We don’t think that way. He works for himself. In a sense, for me. He wants me to have my own intellectual life. I’ve been studying. I’ve studied a few things.” She looked past him, like a cat.
“What few things?”
“Well … I learned a few things about the Cistercians. There was a book in a room Harry and I rented in London. Someone left it behind. So, I know a few things.”
“Just keep those few things to yourself, whatever they may be. Was your father one?”
“A monk? You must be a Catholic, or you wouldn’t make that sort of a joke. My father—I hardly know what to think about him. He won’t have anything to do with me. Morrie was Jewish, and my father didn’t like that. Then I left Morrie for a sort of Baptist Communist. That was even worse. He used to invite Morrie for Christmas dinner, but he won’t have Harry in the house. I can’t help what my father feels. You can’t live on someone else’s idea of what’s right.”
“You say all those things as though they were simple,” he said. “Look, can you get away?”
She glanced once round the table; her eyes swept past me. She looked back at Fergus and said, “I’ll try.” She lifted her hair with both hands. “I’ll tell Harry the truth. I’ll say I want to show you the inside of the church. We were in it the other night. That’s the truth.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant, leave him and come to me.”
“Leave Harry?”
“You aren’t married to him,” Fergus said. “I’m not talking about a few minutes or a week or a vacation. I mean, leave him and come to Spain and live with me.”
“Whereabouts in Spain?” she said.
“Madrid. I’ve got a place. You’ll be all right.”
“As what? Wife or girlfriend?”
“Anything you want.”
She let go her hair, and laughed, and said, “I was just kidding. I don’t know you. I’ve already left somebody. You can’t keep doing that, on and on. Besides, Harry loves me.”
We were joined now by Michael Hagen-Beck. The stir caused by his arrival may have seemed welcoming, but it was merely surprise. On the way to the restaurant Mrs. Biesel had set forth considerable disapproval of the way he had left the concert before the Ravel. Lily had defended him (she believed he had gone to look for a bathroom and felt too shy to come back), but Lapwing had said gravely, “I’m afraid Hagen-Beck will have to be wiped off the board,” and I had pictured him turning in a badge of some kind and slinking out of class.
He nodded in the curt way that is supposed to conceal diffidence but that usually means a sour nature, removed the empty chair next to David, dragged it to the far end of the table, and wedged it between Mrs. Biesel and Lily.
“Hey, there’s Hagen-Beck,” said Lapwing, as if he were astonished to find him this side of the Atlantic.
“I’m afraid he is too late for the soup,” said Mr. Chadwick.
“He won’t care,” said Lapwing. “He’d sooner talk than eat. He’s brilliant. He’s going to show us all up, one day. Well, he may show some people up. Not everybody.”
Lily sat listening to Hagen-Beck, her cheek on her hand. In the dying light her hair looked silvery. I could hear him telling her that he had been somewhere around the North Sea, to the home of his ancestors, a fishing village of superior poverty. He spoke of herrings—how many are caught and sold in a year, how many devoured by seagulls. Beauty is in the economics of Nature, he said. Nowhere else.
“But isn’t what people build beautiful, too?” said Lily, pleading for the cracked and faded church.
A waiter brought candles, deepening the color of the night and altering the shade and tone of the women’s skin and hair.
“This calls for champagne,” Mr. Chadwick said, in a despairing voice.
David had not touched the fish soup or the fresh langouste especially ordered for him. He stared at his plate, and sometimes down the table to the wall of candlelight, behind which Lily and Hagen-Beck sat talking quietly. Mr. Chadwick looked where David was looking. I saw that he had just made a complex and understandable mistake; he thought that David was watching Hagen-Beck, that it was for Hagen-Beck he had tried to keep the empty chair.
“Great idea, champagne,” said Lapwing, once he had made certain Mr. Chadwick was paying for it. “We haven’t toasted David’s wonderful performance this afternoon.” From a man who detested the very idea of music, this was a remarkable sign of good will.
Hagen-Beck would not drink wine, probably because it had been unk
nown to his ancestors. Summoning a waiter, who had better things to do, he asked for water—not false, bottled water but the real kind, God’s kind, out of a tap. It was brought to him, in a wine-stained carafe. Two buckets of ice containing champagne had meanwhile been placed on the table, one of them fatally close to Fergus. The wine was opened and poured. Hagen-Beck swallowed water. Mr. Chadwick struck his glass with a knife: he was about to estrange David still further by making a speech.
Fergus and Edie, deep in some exchange, failed to hear the call for silence. In the sudden hush at our table Edie said distinctly, “When I was a kid, we made our own Christmas garlands and decorations. We’d start in November, the whole family. We made birds out of colored paper, and tied them to branches, and hung the branches all over the house. We spent our evenings that way, making these things. Now my father won’t even open my Christmas cards. My mother writes to me, and she sends me money. I wouldn’t have anything to wear if she didn’t. My father doesn’t know. Harry doesn’t know. I’ve never told it to anybody, until now.”
She must have meant “to any man,” because she had told it to Lily.
“It’s boring,” said Fergus. “That’s why you don’t tell it. Nobody cares. If you were playing an old woman, slopping on in a bathrobe and some old slippers, it might work. But here you are—golden hair, golden skin. You look carved in butter. The dress is too tight for you, though. I wouldn’t let you wear it if I had any say. And those god-awful earrings—where do they come from?”
“London, Woolworth’s.”
“Well, get rid of them. And your hair should be longer. And nobody cares about your bloody garlands. Don’t talk. Just be golden, be quiet.”
I suppose the others thought he had insulted her. I was the only one who knew what had gone on before, and how easily she had said, “Wife or girlfriend?” Lapwing merely looked interested. Another man might have challenged Fergus, or, thinking he was drunk, drawn his attention away from Edie and let it die. But Lapwing squeaked, “That’s what I keep telling her, Bray. Nobody cares! Nobody cares! Be quiet! Be quiet!”
Montreal Stories Page 32
