There is a short, uncomfortable silence. Then she says rather stiffly, “Not that I’ve given any orders, but he’s far too fond of drink, you know. Could easily become a lush, in my opinion. He’d probably be into the sauce before ten in the morning if allowed.”
Wittgenstein has now inched his cautious way to my foot. He leaps into my lap with a triumphant little bleat and curls himself up there.
“The thing is, I don’t think it was his welfare Mrs. B. had in mind. Not at all. It was a war of some kind, and she won it.”
But Pam has turned her head aside momentarily and does not seem to hear this. And it occurs to me how convenient it must sometimes be not to hear – or appear not to hear – some things. “Anyhow,” she says rather vaguely, “sweet of you to be concerned. Poor old brute, I suppose he can’t help being such a pain at this stage, but he certainly is, I suppose even to himself. I’m doing the best I can in the circs., and that’s really all I can do, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is. Please don’t think I’m –”
“It would really be so much better if we could be born at, say, Colin’s age, which is quite sweet, really, all that drooling and crying stage nicely done with, and then die with tidiness and dignity at about sixty-five, before we go dotty and get awful things wrong with us. On the other hand I’m rather looking forward to being a terrible, wheezing old hag nobody dares to cross, think of the power.”
Behind the waterfall of this chatter, I perceive two things clearly enough: she wishes I would go home, and she doesn’t want to know anything more about Sebastian’s fear. I make a move to get up, and half-contritely she leans forward to touch me on the arm. “Look – do take Witty home with you, if you like having him around. I’m sure he’d be much happier with you; this kitten really does make his life miserable.”
“Oh, do you mean that? I’d love to have him. But he’s your cat – how can I take him away from you?”
“Call it a permanent loan,” she says, giving his black head a careless stroke.
“Thanks,” I say, clutching him firmly to me. Just the same, I do not feel my visit has been a success.
The kitchen window of Dream Pies overlooks a garbage-haunted city alley. But this afternoon it also frames a western sky gloriously on fire. Huge clouds of russet, gold and purple burn there like a celebration. I stand at the work-table gazing out, the chopping knife slack in my hand. I should get on with feeding chunks of carrot and onion into the food processor, but Steve is on the phone and Arlene is daydreaming, too, one hand over her belly. I think she is pregnant again, which will certainly add interest to their June wedding.
At the very least I should be busy planning a quickly prepared dinner for Cuthbert tonight, because his embrace on arrival often leads to immediate further action. Unless the meal is ready at once, we may well not sit down to eat until the middle of the night.
“No doubt you take a dim view of all this,” I say to Mrs. Wilson, dutifully dropping vegetables into the processor’s tube.
“What, sky watching? Certainly not. I’m a great looker-out of windows myself. You poor Torontonians, though, with no sea or mountains – what poverty. I don’t know how you manage.”
“No, I mean this relationship with Cuthbert.”
“Oh, that.”
“You think it’s insignificant?”
“Of course not. Nothing is insignificant. Trivial, maybe. Take those neat little squirrel tracks out there in the snow. If we were God, we’d know everything they mean; as it is, just being you and me, we only know that they’re nice to look at, they somehow complete the snow, and they indicate the squirrels will be around in the spring to eat up our tulip bulbs.”
“Yes, but about Cuthbert, Ethel?”
“What a lot of questions you ask nowadays. You ought to know by now the only ones worth asking have no answers. Cuthbert? – he’s like all growing people – a wayfarer; a transient. And that’s all there is to Cuthbert.”
“Growing? Yes, he is. Only I –”
“You wonder about complications. What next and how and why and so on.”
“Yes.”
“Well, try to keep out of all that, Clingers,” she goes on with some severity, “come to no good, as you should know. Look at what you clung to in the name of stability and safety all those years. Edwin. Almost as bad a name as Eddie. Such birds never migrate. Or mutate. To mate with that kind is like being embalmed while you’re still alive. And for some people not to mate at all may be the best of all possible worlds.”
The sun, emerging from under the cloud bank, briefly turns the window glass to gold and then disappears.
“I must be off to a baptism, my dear. Wish I could stay, but there it is – duty calls.”
I turn on my side to watch Tom buttoning his shirt. The blue of his eyes is bright and clear, and his still-thick hair and square clipped moustache are daisy-white. His cheeks are still rosy from recent exertion. My eyes rest on him with affection.
“It doesn’t bother you to go from this to that on a Sunday afternoon, does it?”
“No, why should it? It’s you that has the Puritan conscience, my dear.”
I can hardly explain, though, that what troubles my conscience is not our sexual activity at all, but the rather squalid little strategies involved in making sure Cuthbert’s visits and his own do not coincide. Which shows pretty devastatingly how far gone I am in moral corruption. Still, Tom’s serenity intrigues me. “Just the same, Tom, you’re the one who has to stand up an hour from now and hold forth about the sins of the flesh.”
“Rowena, it’s a matter of relativity. We are carnal creatures, but we must try to live by the spirit. Get the two in proportion somehow. The Almighty gave us both sides, for reasons of His own, and all He asks is that we put the spirit first. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.”
Fat, soft flakes of snow are drifting past the window. “Well, it’s always bothered me, that part about being conceived and born in sin. Remember Marion at her christening – two months old and fast asleep – all us sinners gathered round her – but she wasn’t one of us, surely.”
“In that, like the rest of us, she was human, of course she was a sinner.”
I sigh. “Christian doctrine is too much for me altogether. Though, to be fair, it’s not too much for Marion, apparently. Sunday school, confirmation – she’s sailed through it all. Never questions anything, as far as I know. She still goes to communion regularly, I believe. But then, I don’t know; Marion doesn’t seem to have any hormones to contend with.”
Rightly judging that these remarks call for no comment, Tom thrusts his arms into his jacket and takes out a pocket comb to tidy his hair.
“It makes me a bit giddy, in fact,” I go on, “all that mystery in the universe. As a child I can remember turning sick with fear one Sunday because some creed or other proclaimed that the Holy Ghost ‘is neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.’ For some reason that made everything solid seem insubstantial – made of air – and abstract things the only real ones. I had the same feeling, only worse, when we took Marion to the planetarium years ago. You know how they darken the place and you look up into this vault and see the planets, while a recorded voice tells you all about light years and the dimensions of space that can’t even be defined. I actually had to get up and go out onto Bloor Street to get rid of the panic.”
“I’m sure that did the trick,” he says, smiling.
“It did.”
“Well, I’m only a steward, my dear,” he says, coming to the bed to kiss my cheek. “We’re told that the Lord in His own time will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the heart, and that will have to content us, won’t it? Bless you. Till next time.”
When he is gone I stretch out peacefully. I feel everything drift away – money worries, the Holy Ghost, strategies and all spiritual perplexities. I yawn largely and give myself up to pagan sleep.
Notwithstanding such interludes, I
spend most of my time actively worrying over how to make ends meet. With increasing zeal I brood over the help wanted ads. Surely some time soon I will find a job that pays better than Dream Pies. But it’s profoundly discouraging to find that even nannies seem to be required not only to be loving and reliable, but to have certificates, references, experience, a driver’s licence, creativity and a positive attitude. Office help, however humble, is even more demanding: applicants must offer communication skills, career orientation (whatever that is) and the ability to operate an Apple Macintosh word processor.
Desperation, as bill-paying looms at the end of the month, sends me to the local wool shop where I’ve been a customer for years. Perhaps they might buy some of my work. This time I do no rehearsing and pause only a moment to glance at the window display of handsome hand-knit sweaters.
The bell pings loudly as I enter. Two elderly women stand at the counter conferring with a salesgirl over a heap of wools. Pretending to inspect a table piled with balls of green angora on sale, I glance around for the friendly fat lady who owns – or used to own – the shop. There is no sign of her. Instead her place at the cash desk is occupied by a sharp-looking youngish man with a Vandyke beard that makes him look faintly sinister. I study the green angora display, trying to muster the courage to approach him. I wish the women at the counter would go, but they seem in no hurry; indeed, one of them sits down on a stool and loosens her coat.
“… and I said to him, I said Herbert, if you would take tranquillizers, I wouldn’t have to. I’m going out, I said, you get your own lunch, if I stay in this apartment with you one minute more, Herbert, I said, anything could happen. Suit yourself, he says, nothing gets through to that man. I said to the doctor, I said, have you got some kind of pill I can take for matrimony, I said, because it’s killing me, I can tell you. The purple is nice, but who can wear that colour, I’ll have this peach instead and then let’s have a coffee somewhere; I’ll have to be home by five, though, to take my pills. And when I walk in, there Herbert will be, laying on the sofa with a book, and he’ll say, sweet as pie, Well, there you are, have a nice day? I tell you that man, ever since he retired, it’s read, read, read, enough to drive you crazy. If you would take a tranquillizer, I wouldn’t have to, I say to him, but does he listen, never.”
I would gladly hear more about Herbert, who sounds like my kind of person, but the two women finally collect their parcels and leave. I look longingly after them as the bell pings them out. My heart gives a little jump of alarm when the Vandyke man comes towards me and says, “Good afternoon. Something I can do for you?”
Swallowing hard, I force myself to speak. “Well, yes – I mean, I hope so. The thing is, I’m afraid I’m not actually here to buy anything; in fact I was wondering if by any chance – if you’d consider – you see, I’m a fairly good needlewoman, that sort of thing – probably you don’t handle embroidery or anything like that, but I wondered – I see you sell a lot of baby wool, I knit and crotchet, too, and these sweaters you have in the window – that kind of thing – do you ever buy articles like that and sell them on commission?”
“No,” he says.
“Oh. I see. Well, I just thought I’d ask.”
“Good afternoon,” he says coolly.
“Thanks anyway,” I add politely. It is such a relief to get out of there that I might have bought myself a coffee to celebrate, if it weren’t for the fact that I recognize this is another defeat – and I can’t afford many more of them.
“Mother.”
“Yes, dear.”
“When are we going to do our Christmas shopping?”
“Oh. Well, surely this year – I mean, I have no cash to spare for presents, as you know.”
“Never mind that. I’ll pay for everything. Meet me downtown tomorrow after work.”
“But dear –”
“Continuity is important, Mother.”
To whom? I want to ask, but refrain. “We always did our shopping near home,” I remind her instead.
“The big department stores have some good sales on. Meet me at the south end of the Eaton Centre at six-thirty, all right?”
I stifle the many objections I have to this plan, because I find something touching about this wistful clinging to Christmas rituals. Nostalgia for her childhood, I suppose. Yet Marion seemed to be a child only very briefly. I was the child in our house – timid, dependent, immature. Yet until she moved into her own place, she always insisted on a tall tree at home, overriding Edwin’s objection to the cost and mine to the dropped needles. But I’ll not deny her now. Next evening I stand obediently among the jostling shoppers at the Eaton Centre, peering about for her navy coat.
“There you are,” she says, darting into view. “Honestly, Mother. I told you the south end. Well, come on; we haven’t got all night.”
I fall into step with her, trying not to plod in my heavy boots. I unbutton my coat because the throng of people round us creates heat as well as a surflike, roaring sort of din. Through it all filters gusts of pop music from hi-fi shops and “Silent Night” pumped into the air courtesy of Muzak.
The broad indoor concourse linking two department stores teems with teenagers eating fast food on benches, affluent young people feverishly buying things, and the unemployed, who sit and gaze pensively at the fountain that periodically shoots a jet of water fifty yards into the air, like some gigantic mercantile orgasm.
“I thought a CD for Cuthbert,” Marion says, peering at her neatly written list. “He likes baroque music, right? Vivaldi, perhaps.”
“Um – I think he already has quite a bit of Vivaldi.”
“Mozart, then.”
“Aren’t these new discs awfully expensive?”
“Not if you know where to go. Besides, I told you, Mother, I’m buying everything this year.” Meekly I fall behind while she pushes our way into a record shop where, after a thorough search, she finds a set of Mozart horn concertos on sale. “Now for Tom,” she says, as we struggle back to the concourse. My feet are already aching. My coat feels as heavy as a suit of armour, and I long to sit down. Yet Marion looks fresh and invigorated; I can barely keep up with her long strides.
“I’ve made Tom a nice big Christmas cake full of brandy,” I say hopefully. “Won’t that do for him?”
“They have some lovely Italian sweaters reduced at Eaton’s,” she says firmly. We choose a rather sophisticated black cardigan with pale-blue trim, and after that, riding up two people-clogged escalators, we choose a yellow blouse for Bernice. After that again, struggling fiercely into and then out of a stationery shop, we buy rolls of Christmas paper and ribbon.
“I’m afraid I really will have to sit down soon, Marion. Could we maybe find someplace for a cup of tea?”
“Oh, all right, if you’re tired. There’s a little snack bar over there.” She seizes a tiny table just vacated by two other shoppers, and we sit down on the railed side of the gallery, which affords a view of hundreds of foreshortened people below. Trying not to groan with relief, I wriggle out of my coat and stuff our parcels under the table. Marion orders tea, which eventually appears in those stubby little pots seen only in restaurants, with the kind of spout that pours tea all over the saucer and place mat. I sup the part that lands in my cup with gratitude.
“Well,” says Marion, dropping a cube of sugar into her tea. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen you, Mother, what with one thing and another. How have things been?”
“Oh fine – just fine.” Thank heaven for platitudes, I think, and to forestall her asking just what is fine, and how, I ask, “What’s developing with that commissioner’s job, dear? Anything new?”
“Well, Babs Harrington is going after it, too, as you know. Running around charming people left and right. It makes me sick. As if charm had anything to do with the job.”
My poor Marion, I want to say, but of course do not. I feel like reaching across the table to touch her hand, but don’t do that, either. What can be said or done to hel
p someone who despises charm?
“I’ve been thinking lately, Mother, that it’s high time something happened in that case of yours. Surely Cuthbert’s being terribly slow. It’s been more than two months now, with no sign of any action whatsoever. In the position you’re in, it’s really – I’ll have to have a word with him.”
“Oh, surely that’s not necessary,” I say, alarmed. “He’s doing his best, I’m sure. The law is horribly slow, everybody knows that. And don’t forget he’s been helping to support me till this application thing gets settled. Nobody could be more generous than he’s been. And I wouldn’t for the world hint to him he’s not doing everything –”
“That’s all very well, but Cuthbert is a bit of a wimp.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Marion.”
“Come on, you know he has no drive at all.”
Here a vivid recollection of a recent example of Cuthbert’s drive (which, to me anyway, left nothing to be desired) rises to mind. My cheeks turn hot and I hastily mask my face with my teacup. But Marion’s sharp, clear eye is fixing me like a gimlet.
“You’ve put on some weight, haven’t you?” she says.
“Well, I may have put on a pound or two. Not a bad thing, do you think? I was quite scrawny before.”
“And your colour’s awfully high. Have you had your blood pressure taken lately? Or maybe it’s a hot flush. Aren’t you on hormones, though?”
“Yes, I am. No problem there. I’m perfectly all right.”
She continues to look at me critically. “Twice now when I’ve called you quite late in the evening, you’ve been out. It can’t be to the library – wherever do you go?”
A Serious Widow Page 15