“No, don’t let’s. Cuthbert’s just a dear old friend, that’s all, and I wonder why I haven’t heard from him. No doubt he’s busy with all sorts of things besides my affairs. I wouldn’t think of calling him, with all he probably has on his mind.”
“I should hope not. He’ll call you when he’s ready.”
“It’s true I have those papers from the bank now –”
“He’ll ask for them when he needs them.”
“Of course. I have no intention of bothering him.”
“It would be very inconsiderate.”
“You’re absolutely right, Charles.”
“Of course I am.”
“I’m so glad you called me, Rowena. And how nice of you to invite me to dinner.” Cuthbert tucks the napkin into the V of his tartan vest and looks around with approval at the embroidered place mats and polished candlesticks. When I bring in the meat on its platter, he draws up a deep, appreciative sniff of it – as well he might, I think, since it cost so much, eating it is going to be almost an act of sacrilege.
“I’m afraid, though, Cuthbert, I’ll have to ask you to carve. I cut my finger yesterday.”
He leans forward to look with concern at my bandaged forefinger. Any kind of illness or injury (particularly, of course, his own) always interests him – so much so that once Edwin, after a slow recovery of Cuthbert’s from flu, said he had the soul of a school nurse.
“Poor girl. How did you do that?” he asks, and I find it endearing that he really wants to know.
“Well, you see I’ve been working at Dream Pies – you know that take-out place in the shopping plaza? Cutting up things, chickens, mostly. Five dollars an hour.”
Cuthbert stops whetting the carving knife. He turns his thick glasses on me in real dismay. “My dear, you haven’t.”
“Why, yes – why not? I have to be practical, Cuthbert. It means over twenty dollars a day after tax.” The businesslike sound of this pleases me, but it only seems to increase his discomfort.
“But Rowena, that’s barely over the minimum wage. And besides, work like that –”
With this, self-pity washes over me in a sweet, warm wave. The cloying smell of chicken steamed in big pressure cookers, the plastic apron I have to wear, the bloody guts and pimpled flesh of the birds – it’s been obvious why Dream Pies has trouble getting – and keeping – help. But Steve and Arlene have been so kind and patient with me that so far I haven’t had the courage to let them down.
“No,” continues Cuthbert warmly, “you know as well as I do that’s not suitable work for someone like you. Not at all. Haven’t I told you not to worry about money for the time being? I’ll look after all that, until your court hearing comes up. So we’ll regard that matter as settled.” Resolutely he flourishes the tools and begins to carve.
I swallow with difficulty the qualm of pure fear invoked by the word hearing. “Cuthbert, you don’t mean I’ll actually have to appear in court.”
“Yes, but you probably won’t have to say anything, Rowena. Don’t worry about it.”
This is roughly tantamount to advising me to stop breathing. With an effort I drag my mind back to what we were originally talking about. “Well, it’s very sweet of you, Cuthbert, to subsidize me, but you must see I can’t keep taking – I mean it may be months before –”
He wags the knife at me warningly. “This is beautiful meat. Have you got plates there? Ah, gravy, as well. What a delicious feast you’ve prepared.”
Here I am tempted to tell him (but do not) what a struggle I had with old habits at the supermarket meat counter. Many years ago Edwin invested in a tall aluminum pot with a vented lid. Into this fitted several smaller vessels with pierced bottoms. In just a little water a whole meal could be cooked – a cheap cut of meat, with potatoes and other veg. – thus saving both money and energy. The result was that our food bills were wonderfully low and all our dinners tasted of wet flannel. It was defiance and reckless rebellion that sent me home with this expensive cut of veal, which I then cooked wastefully in a slow oven. A pity, really, and one in the eye for prudence, I think now, pouring gravy, that all that self-discipline and thrift should produce this kind of backlash. But there it is. I even allowed one extravagance to lead to another, as witness the bottle of Beaujolais Cuthbert is now lifting.
“Chin-chin,” he says, beaming at me. “Absolutely delicious.”
“Help yourself to vegetables. I hope you like broccoli.”
“I have had,” he says, after a moment’s devout attention to the food, “one or two phone chats lately with John Hill’s lawyer.”
“Oh, have you?”
“Mm. Superb veal. Yes, quite a pleasant man. The lawyer, I mean. So often they’re nicer people than their clients, if I may say so. And our friend Hill is a case in point, I’d say. Quite comfortably off, he turns out to be, you know. Something in lumber. He’s not married or anything, either. There’s a house in Ottawa where he and, er, the mother live. Mortgage paid off, too, which is more than we can say for this one. Hill knows your position, but he seems determined to claim absolutely every cent he can, right down to the cash in Edwin’s account.”
My first reaction is to think grimly, A true son of his father. But the second comes as a surprise: I feel flattered. It’s a tribute of sorts, after all, to be so strongly resented. John Hill’s desire for vengeance makes me feel important; even, in a retrospective sense, dangerous. My smile manifestly puzzles Cuthbert, who has paused with the gravy ladle suspended. “I call it a very poor attitude,” he says with severity. “And so would you, if you weren’t so sweet and good.”
With an effort I prevent the smile from extending itself in a grin. “Oh Cuthbert, you can’t really blame the man for claiming what’s legally his, can you? Also, of course, he wants satisfaction of another kind. Just as I did at first, till I began to realize it can’t be had. Anyhow, it’s all just one more reason I’ve got to face earning a living on my own.”
“Rowena, I’m confident you have a good case under the terms of the Succession Law Reform Act. Your claim is perfectly clear-cut; I have no doubt about that at all.”
“God knows I hope you’re right. If I could just be sure of a roof over my head, it would be … But it might easily be a year before anything is settled, isn’t that right? And meanwhile I have to live somehow, which I can do, thanks to Dream Pies and some help from you. Now I hope you have some room left for the crème caramel.”
“But I can’t let you do a menial job like that, Rowena. I suppose it’s terribly old-fashioned of me, but I can’t help feeling that people like you and my mother are ladies, and should never dirty their hands with sordid manual work.”
Without comment I hand him a helping of the pudding.
“Now making pretty things like this –” and here he puts his nose down close to his place mat, one of a set Nana and I worked in drawn thread many years back “– made these yourself, didn’t you? Exquisite. Couldn’t you find a shop somewhere that would sell work like this on consignment for you?”
“Well, I suppose I could try,” I say tepidly, because my thoughts have wandered again to satisfaction, compensation, revenge and John Hill – topics Cuthbert left behind minutes ago. “Fill up your glass,” I urge him.
“Nobody does beautiful needlework like this any more, and yet I know there’s a market for it – all these yuppies with no time, but pots of cash. Children’s clothes, for instance. My secretary not long ago paid nearly two hundred dollars for a little smocked dress for her one-year-old! Come to that, I spent eighty dollars myself yesterday for a nice silk knitted tie, the kind of thing you could probably make in an afternoon.”
I wrench my mind away from a dream vision of John Hill being nailed up in a coffin – something in lumber. “More pudding? No coffee, I suppose.”
“Pure poison to me, my dear. I won’t spoil your beautiful dinner.”
“Take your glass into the sitting-room, then. I’ll join you in a minute. It won’t take me a
second to clear this stuff away.”
“We will clear it away together and wash it all up in tandem,” he says gaily. So we don aprons and tackle the job side by side, while he tells me all about the pair of golden hawks he saw on Sunday with the bird-watchers, and I give him an account of my day with the Whittakers. Unlike Tom, he laughs.
“To me, the only good thing about children is that they eventually grow up and become human beings,” he says. “I don’t know how you stuck it out, even for a day.” He hangs up his apron and rolls down his white shirt-sleeves. “Now virtue can be rewarded. I’ll finish my wine now, if I may. And where’s your glass – you must join me. No, I insist.”
Before I can stop him, he has found and filled a clean glass for me. He brings it over with his own and sits beside me on the sofa. I edge unobtrusively a little aside to give him plenty of room. Somewhere, audible only to me, Prince Charles clears his throat.
“Your mother is well, I hope,” I say.
“Oh, not too bad, thanks. Except for her diverticulosis. I’m a bit worried, because she’s been having trouble with it lately, and at her age, surgery would be – well, I hope it won’t come to that. No point borrowing trouble, is there?”
“No.” I think suddenly of the cold, thin hand of Pamela’s father. “Poor old people. They’ve run out of chances – for sure trouble’s ahead, and they’re in for it.”
Cuthbert looks thoughtfully into his empty glass, then reaches for the rest of what’s in the bottle. “Not for me,” I say hastily.
“You know sometimes I think quite seriously that when I’m old and start going downhill, I’ll just find some dignified way of finishing myself off.”
With interest I see that he is serious about this. “Really? Which would that be, then, do you think – cowardly or brave?”
“Neither one. Just intelligent. Because I’ll be alone. Nobody to be involved, one way or the other.”
Somehow – impossible to tell on whose initiative – my hand finds itself in his. “That’s never completely true, you know. Anyhow, I’d never have the courage. Scared as I am of everything to do with living, I’m even more scared of dying. Unfortunate position to be in. No dignity there.”
“But you are very brave, Rowena. Look at the way you’ve coped since Edwin’s death and all the rest of it … it’s been quite heroic. I’ve really admired you. I said as much to Marion last time I was here, and it surprised me that she looked surprised.”
“Did it?”
“I believe you’re blushing.”
And now quite naturally somehow his arm is around me and my head rests in the hollow of his shoulder. When I half-close my eyes the wine makes the room sway around me not unpleasantly, like deep water. In a crack between the drawn curtains a bright star peers in at us. Get lost, I think peacefully. What’s happening here is nice but not cosmic.
“I feel so relaxed with you,” he says in a sleepy voice. “So comfortable.”
“Me, too.”
“Isn’t it strange? Because before neither of us really …”
“No.”
He turns and begins to place a number of small kisses at random over my forehead and cheeks. In what seems like seconds we are lying flushed and closely entwined, full length on the sofa. My skirt has pulled up thigh-high. His glasses have fogged over and he pauses briefly to pull them off.
“I have never felt like this with anybody before, you know,” he tells me earnestly.
“Come to that, I never have either. But why do we bother talking?”
“It’s got to be right for us, though, hasn’t it, Rowena?”
“But what has right or wrong got to do with –”
“Everything,” he says firmly. “For people like us, everything’s to do with right and wrong. Unless you think everything physical between the sexes is meaningless, like hiccups. No, I was right in the first place when we … perfectly right. Only later, you see, I sort of panicked. That’s where I was wrong. Now I’m asking you again to marry me. This time I really mean it. I’m going home now, and I want you to think about it. Seriously. If I stay here one minute longer – well, that would never do.”
“I don’t really see why marriage has to come into this at all, Cuthbert. For one thing, I’m just beginning to recover from mine. And for another –” But I don’t like to add that though we are nearly the same age, I feel immeasurably older.
Now he is getting slowly to his feet, where he brushes and shakes himself tidy and resumes his glasses. “I understand all that,” he says calmly, “and of course I realize you need more time. But we’re the same kind of people.” (Oh, dear, I hope not, I think.) “And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?” Once in his street clothes, he pauses, briefcase in hand, to look at me. “I don’t dare go near you again,” he says. “If you invite me, though, I’ll come to dinner again next week. Take your time and think about what I’m asking you. Nobody needs to know a thing about it yet, of course; but I want to consider us engaged. Meanwhile, please be sure to give those pie people your notice. Good night, Rowena dear.”
The front door closes gently behind him. I hope he has not heard me sigh.
CHAPTER FIVE
In the next few days, as if to illustrate tranquillity, the sun beams down from a windless, smiling sky of postcard blue. Because the habit of passivity is still strong and the line of least resistance is so attractive, I have resigned from Dream Pies, and one midday, rich with my new leisure, I set out for the library. Just as I pull the front door shut behind me, Pamela rushes up the steps on her side of the porch. She is hatless and looks harassed.
“Oh, hi there, Rowena – so glad to run into you, because I’ve been wanting a chat. The fact is life has become utterly frantic ever since Pa broke his toe, which I’m sure he did on purpose to get back at me, and of course Mrs. Blot, for quitting on him … She was his daily till he called her a flatulent old sow. That’s exactly what she is, you see, so of course she was furious. But what it all boils down to is that now I have to rush over there twice a day to feed and water him, and it is driving me totally desperate.” She fans herself with one end of her silk scarf. The sun warms our heads like a blessing, and a little breath of air lightly frills the skirts of the pine tree on my patch of lawn. Wittgenstein is under there, emerging from time to time to pounce on fallen maple leaves.
“Now, I seem to remember you once said you might know somebody who could cope with Pa,” Pam goes on, “because if this goes on much longer –”
My attention focuses itself sharply. “Well –” I begin.
“I mean, it’s just caretaking, really, there’s no actual nursing involved, all anyone would need is the time and ability to endure him, though of course this last is the stickler, because he really is exasperating to the last degree. Well, you’ve met him, so you know.”
“Yes, but actually –”
“And I don’t think it’s being related that makes me find him so impossible, though that probably doesn’t help. He’s depressed lately, I know that, hence more bloody-minded than ever, and it’s effect not cause that’s the point here, because I don’t know how to cheer the old devil up. In fact I just seem to get up his nose more every day. He says to stay away, I constipate him, but how can I just leave him there to starve? I really am utterly desperate, do you think it would be any use to advertise? I mean we’d pay practically anything -”
“Well, actually, Pam, I –”
“This afternoon, for instance, Rowena, is typical … I’ve just given him his lunch. In half an hour I have to be downtown with Colin for his shots. Then just as he’s beginning to get a reaction – he always runs a temp afterwards – I’ll have to rush over to the house again. It really does make me feel I might as well douse myself with gasoline and light a match. Sorry. Did you say something?”
“Pam, I’ll go over there and get his supper tonight, if that would help. In fact, if you really need long-term … I could – Anyhow, he lives near here, doesn’t he?”
/> “Oh, my dear, if you could just fill this gap till I can lure Mrs. B. back, I’m negotiating like mad, so – that would be marvellous. Yes, he’s quite near; it’s that big house at the corner of Garland and McKenzie – green roof, gingerbread front balcony. It started out as a farmhouse, and of course it’s absurd of him to hang on in that big place alone, but – well, here’s the key, and bless you. I’m so grateful. Just soup and an egg or something will do him. My God, I must fly. Thanks again, just pay no attention to anything he says.”
It’s rather exasperating that Pam hasn’t seemed to hear my hint about salaried help, but so graphic is her account of the old man’s frame of mind that I may have had a lucky escape. Even on a short-term basis, I’m not much looking forward to confronting him. However, I stride along toward the library, telling myself stoutly that a promise is a promise. Ahead of me a car is parked squarely on the sidewalk. Setting a good example of aggression, a teenager kicks it hard in the bumper with his Greb boot. A quite respectable woman about my own age actually picks up a clot of mud and smears the back window with it. But I pick my way meekly round the obstacle and carry on, wondering how best to deal with a cantankerous old man. No doubt he’ll make it difficult, but surely I can put up with him for an hour or so. And I’ve been feeling (foolishly, of course) rather guilty about leaving Pam’s friends at Dream Pies, so doing her a small, neighbourly favour is a sop to my conscience.
Bolstered by thoughts like these, I put the key in the farmhouse door at six, tell myself to be a woman, and walk into the hall. “Mr. Long?” I say with caution.
There is no answer. Though dusk is thick outside, not a single light is on anywhere in the house. After some fumbling I find the switch of an overhead light and peer into the sitting-room. It is a space made glum by the faded upholstery of overstuffed furniture and dingy wallpaper dating back at least a generation. One hem of the sallow window curtains has torn down, and everywhere there is a smell of carpets thick with dust, old toast crumbs and solitude.
A Serious Widow Page 9