Sunday Best

by Edward O. Phillips

  I was also interested to observe that whereas at Lois Fullerton’s dinner party he had chafed under the heavy decorum imposed by house and hostess, as my dinner guest he was just another young man at the table, a listener as well as a participant.

  As a matter of fact, Charles and I found ourselves spectators to a conversation between Richard and Douglas that grew increasingly animated with each glass of wine. It was one of those discussions graduate students are given to having, about whether music or literature best expressed the spirit of the eighteenth century. I interrupted to suggest perhaps they were not mutually exclusive, but I could tell they listened out of politeness, not conviction. The second I had made my point they were off and running. Charles tipped me the wink as I turned to summon the waitress, and in the process of ordering another bottle of wine I tuned out of the discussion. Besides, it was not a subject over which I have ever lost sleep.

  The argument petered out, as such pointless arguments must, just about the time I was beginning to hear the siren song of my Saturday afternoon nap. I signalled for the check, but not before Douglas and Richard were off and running once again over whether Bach keyboard suites ought to be performed on the piano, the pianoforte, or the harpsichord. They both argued as if winning the point depended on the amount of energy expended on making it. I have never seen Richard so animated, while Douglas came close to losing his campus cool.

  Because Charles was seated directly across the table from me, not to one side, it proved impossible to start a satellite conversation. Nor did I feel up to exchanging remarks across the combat zone. Having dispatched the apple strudel I urged him to have, Charles put down his fork and announced he had once heard the Fifth French Suite played on comb and tissue paper, and a rousing rendition it had been, especially the gigue. Both Richard and Douglas looked at him with the impatient hauteur of people frivolously interrupted in the midst of making a telling point. I seized upon the interruption to point out that we were the last people in the restaurant and perhaps we should think of moving on.

  In the street I waved off thanks, said I would see them all in a matter of hours, and set off on the brief walk back to my apartment. As I paused for the traffic light at the corner I glanced down the street to see Richard and Douglas deep in discussion, with Charles trudging along behind. Were I given to envy I could have felt it over the prodigal energy of youth, that superabundance of vitality which can waste itself arguing over issues that have no ultimate solution. A long time has passed since I burned up calories trying to separate black from white. Now I let them bleed together into a comfortable grey, not a colour one bothers to defend.

  I had been struck once again by how much Richard reminded me of my own father, even though I have always mistrusted that bit of lore about genes jumping generations. But in Richard I caught glimpses of my father, the visual equivalent of echoes or overtones. It was less a similarity of bone structure or sameness of colouring than a recollection of gesture, the angle Richard held his head when listening, the way he looked me straight in the eye when he spoke. He had my father’s hands, large and shapely, and almost computer- designed for the keyboard.

  Poor old Pop. I sometimes wonder how he would have felt had he known that not only his son but his only grandson had gone tripping down the garden path and over the stile into the alternate lifestyle. Oddly enough, I think he would have minded less than other men of his generation, just so long as we minded our manners and did not make others uncomfortable.

  I had found myself thinking of Father from time to time during these past weeks. I suppose it was only natural, mired as I was in this wedding, such a family affair. Even now I caught myself remembering the last time we were alone together, the day we buried Susan and my daughter.

  The Mount Royal Cemetery stretched bleak and desolate on that blustery March day. A handful of hardy mourners, who had left the warm church for the cold graveside, shivered through the short ceremony, then hurried back to the limousines. I had still failed to make the connection between Susan, the baby, and the trench hacked into the frozen ground.

  By way of cheering me up, Father took me to lunch at his club, away from the women. After a couple of stiff drinks at the walnut and brass bar, we headed upstairs to the oak and damask dining room for Melton Mowbray pie and a bottle of claret. I could see Father trying to strike the right balance between solicitude and common sense. “I suggest,” he began, breaking a roll, “that you pack up the baby’s things and store them in the basement for the time being. And you’re welcome to move back into your old room for a few days, or to stay as long as you like.” .

  Suddenly, for the first time since the accident, tears welled up. I pushed away from the table and ran sobbing downstairs to the cloakroom. As I struggled to regain control, the door opened quietly and Father came in. Without a word he handed me the spotless white handkerchief he always carried neatly folded in his breast pocket. Then he put an arm around me and drew me close. I wept onto his shoulder, his solid, warm, reassuring presence only pushing the flood gates wider open instead of grinding them shut.

  The door opened a second time to admit one of those Waspy Nigel Bruce types, who stood bug-eyed at the spectacle of two grown men embracing beside a rack of coat hangers. I raised my head, angry and embarrassed to be caught in a display of emotion. Even under stress I always had a mouth. “He’s my father, not my date!” I snarled. Huffing, the man retreated. Father led the way back upstairs, and without further ado we finished our lunch.

  It is the portrait of the way he looked that day at lunch that hangs in my memory. What a beautiful man he was, even though back then we did not refer to men as beautiful. I can only hope he knew how much I loved him. Yet to have told him, as one grown man to another, that I did love him would probably have made him uneasy. Displays of strong feelings made his generation uncomfortable, and men, even married ones, did not admit to loving one another. The admission would have made him shy. And I would probably have stumbled over the words.

  13.

  PATRICK ARRIVED ON THE DOT OF SIX wearing a loud tweed sports jacket, which made him look like a tourist. “I think I called the wrong escort service,” I observed as he removed his overcoat. “Do you glow in the dark?”

  “I’m supposed to be a friend from out of town. Would you have packed a three-piece blue suit for an all-stops-out weekend in Montreal?”

  “Yes. But I have always counted on neutrality rather than disguise for protective colouring. Would you like a drink before we leave?”

  “I’ll pass. I’m not averse to enjoying myself this evening, but I think I’ll start off easy.”

  “No drinking on the job?”

  “I’ll drink, don’t worry. From what you told me about our hostess, there won’t be any shortage of liquor. Did you move your car?”

  “Yes, it’s parked over at Mother’s. Did you bring yours?”

  “No, I didn’t. It’s snowing quite heavily, and there is what is laughingly called a weather warning on the radio. I thought we’d take a cab.”

  “No difficulty from this end. But if, as you say, it’s a bad night we may have trouble getting a taxi all the way up at Mayfair Crescent.”

  “We’ll manage. Wear overshoes. In a pinch we can walk down the hill to Boulevard and flag something. Maybe someone will give us a lift. Or, better still” – Patrick winked a broad wink – “maybe we can get the chauffeur to bring us home.”

  “With a pit stop before he goes back up the hill? What the hell! If we’re going to drink we shouldn’t drive anyway.”

  I folded the cuffs of my trousers and tucked them into a pair of rubber galoshes that zipped closed. They’ll never be featured in Gentlemen’s Quarterly, but they do keep feet and trouser cuffs dry.

  Sure enough, as we pushed into the street a blast of wind saturated with fine, sharp snow stung my face. I tucked my scarf more snugly around my neck and wondered whether I should pull on the toque I had taken the precaution of tucking into my overcoat pocket. Pa
trick wore a sensible nylon ski cap with ear flaps that could be pulled down. Snow had already drifted across the sidewalks, so we waded into the freshly salted road. As luck would have it, a taxi pulled up about half a block away, and three passengers climbed out. With one accord we broke into a lumbering run and managed to catch the vehicle before it pulled away.

  I explained my destination to the driver in English, then again in French. He replied in joual, the Gallic equivalent of impenetrable cockney dialect. True joual is heavily seasoned with references to the Catholic Church and its rituals. Blasphemous in French, they sound curiously watered down when translated into English.

  “Hostie!” he replied. “(Host!) Une nuit de même! (On a night like this!) C’est pas un cadeau! (Just what I need!) Calice! (Chalice!)”

  I assured him in fluent but stilted French that he would be well tipped for his trouble. The cab smelled of stale cigar smoke and the floor of the back seat was covered in soggy newspapers to sop up the slush. But, as Mother used to say, beggars can’t be choosers. Following the path of the salt trucks, the cab made its tortuous way up the hill and drew to a stop in front of Number 15. I tipped the driver generously, but obviously not generously enough. “Baptême!” he muttered.

  “Bonsoir,” I replied, turning the other cheek.

  With lights blazing in every window under a snow- covered roof, Lois Fullerton’s house had the fake Currier and Ives cheeriness of glossy magazine ads aimed at new money. The driveway had been cleared of the wedge of snow pushed up by the plough. Patrick and I made the small detour to the front walk, which lay under eight centimetres of white powder in spite of having been recently shovelled. If anything, the snow was increasing in intensity, and I did not tarry in ringing the bell and stepping smartly inside.

  Extra staff had been hired for the evening. A young woman, who had the look of a moonlighting college student, took our coats and gave us each a fresh plastic shopping bag in which to put our overshoes. She then wrote our names on a slip of paper clipped to the collar of each garment. Already it was evident that nothing had been left to chance. I had only time to glimpse an enormous fan-shaped arrangement of calla lilies and birds-of-paradise before Lois bore down upon us, rippling across the floor in a gown of royal blue jersey almost liquid as she moved. The overall effect was Grecian, although the engineering involved suggested the age of Leonardo da Vinci rather than of Pericles. It was the kind of gown the wearer stepped into wearing only her step-ins, the contour controls all artfully built in. It was a gown for the stage, for a soprano about to sing arias from Alcestis or Medea. It was not the gown I would have chosen to wear to an engagement party, not even my own; but then, royal blue has never been my colour.

  Her greeting, polite but perfunctory, told me she was preoccupied. I shook hands and gave her a social peck on both cheeks. I have to admit she smelled good, obviously something French instead of the outrageously packaged and priced varnish remover pedalled on Rodeo Drive. I introduced Patrick Fitzgerald. Lois smiled a conditioned-reflex smile, proffered an automated hand to shake, and parroted how delighted she was he could come. She did not check him out, to my surprise. Even in that horsey Harris tweed, Patrick was a striking man. That she did not zap him with those big blue orbs demonstrated her mind was elsewhere.

  “Of all the nights to be having a party! I’ve already had five couples telephone regrets because of the blizzard. I insisted it was only a snowstorm. I even offered to send the chauffeur, but they wouldn’t be swayed. I was furious.”

  “Don’t worry, Lois,” I said in my most reassuring voice. “There seems to be a goodly number of people here already, and there will be just that much more food and drink for the rest of us.”

  The doorbell rang. Pausing only long enough to insist I see that Patrick get a drink, Lois melted away to greet the arrivals.

  Even though it was early the party had managed to subdivide itself into camps. Those who drank had gravitated to the library, where a long bar had been set up in front of the fireplace with two bartenders on the jump so nobody would have to wait. People who have been served but remain at the bar, talking and blocking access to others, ought to be ticketed, like jaywalkers. I shouldered my way past two men discussing politics, the corners of their mouths pulled down to indicate seriousness, then snagged a pair of scotches and moved to where Patrick stood taking in the scene.

  If the drinkers had graduated towards the library, the sippers – the sherry-Campari-Perrier set who seek to avoid the feeling of heightened awareness that liquor and being in a roomful of people can bring – had taken over the drawing room. Patrick whispered that he would catch me later and slipped away, just as Audrey Crawford, dressed in claret challis and the tan newly acquired on a cruise to South America, zeroed in on me like a heat-sensitive missile.

  “Geoffry, pet!” She embraced me in that effusive way some people adopt when aware others are looking. “I thought you’d never get here. What an awful shame about Mildred and that beastly flu. Having to miss her own daughter’s engagement party.” She reached up, ostensibly to toy with her pearls but in reality to adjust a shoulder strap. Dropping her voice to a stage whisper, she leaned forward. “Actually, if I had known Mildred wasn’t coming I would have begged off. I wouldn’t put the dog out on a night like this, but I have to brave it myself. Hartland drove me over; he has some sort of athletic dinner on tonight. But I suppose I’ll have to snowshoe home. How did you manage to get here?”

  “I lassoed a cab.”

  “Was the driver Haitian?”

  “No.”

  “Thank goodness for that. Which is to say if you had landed a Haitian driver you wouldn’t be here but in the middle of an accident, with lots of shouting and arm waving and not a police car within miles. At least you’re not a woman. Do you know, I once had a Haitian driver make a play for me? I could hardly believe my ears. He actually suggested we go back to his squalid walk-up for coffee – and you can guess what else.”

  “Tell me honestly, Audrey, can you blame him? With this love goddess palpitating in the back seat? Reflected in the rear view mirror? Sort of like the Lady of Shalott, but in reverse.”

  Pleased with the compliment, Audrey bridled archly. “Oh, Geoffry, you really are too much. But I still wonder how I’m going to get home.”

  “Perhaps the chauffeur will drive you.”

  “Heaven forbid! I’ll end up in a snowbank with my throat cut. Have you seen him? He looks like a hit man.”

  The observation did not please me.

  “Have you seen our hostess?” Audrey inquired after taking a sip of her vodka and something. “We can overlook the double chignon, which nobody has seen since ‘Saturday Night at the Movies.’ We can try to ignore the industrial strength makeup. But we cannot forgive the gown: The Phantom of the Parthenon. All she needs is a large earthenware jug of water on her shoulder.”

  In spite of myself I laughed. A day without malice, and so forth. Then, as if to make amends for my laughter, I came to Lois’s defence.

  “I think she looks pretty good. The gown is very high sewing, as the French would say. A bit theatrical, perhaps, but that’s her style. And she knows how to organize a party. Every detail has been worked out.”

  Right on cue, a moonlighting maid appeared at my elbow carrying a platter of smoked salmon hors d’oeuvres, topped with thinly sliced onion and capers. The maid’s cap clung uneasily to her frizzed hair. Absent-mindedly, I took the cocktail napkin she handed me, “Jennifer and Douglas” embossed across one corner in silver script, and tucked it into my jacket pocket.

  “She can throw a party, all right. She doesn’t have anything else to do. I’ve approached her any number of times to serve on volunteer organizations: jobs for battered women, clothing for immigrants, daycare for unwed mothers. All she ever does is send a cheque, but she never does any real work.”

  “At least she sends the cash. That’s already more than most.” I wondered how Audrey would react to the idea that Lois would rather thr
ow a leg over the chauffeur than scrounge second-hand clothing and furniture for illegal immigrants.

  “True, and she’ll work on a committee if it’s a glamour job, a ball for the museum or a gala for the symphony. But nothing that will bring her into contact with the underprivileged.”

  Many years have passed since I read the Boy Scout Handbook. I don’t remember a section on cocktail parties, but I am certain the spirit of that slender volume would argue against bad- mouthing the hostess whose scotch you are drinking and whose dinner you are about to eat. I knew Audrey Crawford was a worthy woman, diligent and caring in her work with society’s unfortunates. Yet she was afflicted with the arrogance that comes with the awareness of one’s own goodness, if not quite holier-than-thou, at least more-deserving-of-a-pat- on-the-back-than-thou.

  “Where’s the bride-to-be?” I asked to change the subject. “I caught a glimpse of the groom, but he lives here.”

  “I suppose she encountered the same difficulties getting here as the rest of us.” Audrey’s eyes flickered over my shoulder. We had exchanged our ritual cocktail chatter, and it was time for her to move on. “If you’ll excuse me, pet, there’s someone I really must say hello to. I’ll see you at supper.” She moved away.

  I couldn’t see Patrick anywhere, so I squeezed my way up to the bar for a refill, quite literally bumping into Charles in the process. Even in a dark blue suit he still looked convex. He had just ordered a rum and coke.

  I spoke first. “You know why Cubans and Central Americans and Brazilians do all those energetic dances, don’t you? It’s because rum goes straight to the hips.”