“I don’t understand them,” said the woman, who was wearing a red hat, which, René had already decided, would have looked much better on Erica, who was several inches taller, a great deal thinner, and who had hair which was naturally blonde. Except, thought René, sighing inwardly, that Erica took no interest in hats, even very chic red hats with coq feathers; she never wore one except in winter or on the regrettably rare occasions when she went to church. “Surely they must know that the war is going to be won or lost in Europe and the Pacific, so why all this ridiculous talk about being perfectly willing to fight for Canada provided they can stay on Canadian soil?”
“Because they don’t want to fight for Canada,” said the man on the right, yawning.
The man on the left was a young officer with a good-looking, but not particularly intelligent face. What he lacked in intelligence however, René realized, he made up in prejudice, and he now rendered judgment. “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “Quebec knows that the war isn’t going to be lost if they don’t fight. But, on the other hand, if enough English Canadians make suckers of themselves and get killed, then the French who had enough sense to stay home will be that much nearer a majority when it’s over.”
“Tiens,” observed René admiringly to himself. “Now why didn’t I think of that? Eric!”
“Yes?”
“Wait for me.” He caught up with her just inside the drawing-room door and asked, “By the way, where’s your father?”
“Upstairs in his study. He always gives up after the first half hour.”
“Have you seen Chambrun?”
“Who on earth is Chambrun?” asked Erica, taking advantage of the pause to sit on the arm of a chair for a moment. She was one of the few women René had ever seen who could wear her hair almost to her shoulders and still look smart. Seven years of working on a newspaper with erratic hours had given Erica a strong preference for tailored clothes; she wore her fine, well-made suits on all possible occasions and on some which, like the recent large, and very formal wedding of one of his innumerable cousins, to René were definitely not possible.
“He’s just arrived from Mexico — escaped from France two years ago on a coal boat.”
“Why must it always be a coal boat?” inquired Erica, closing her eyes.
“He’s a de Gaullist. I think he hopes to do propaganda in Quebec for the Free French.”
“What an optimist,” said Erica, and then asked hastily, “Friend of yours?”
“Well,” said René cautiously, “I’ve met him a couple of times.”
“Don’t tell me you’re committing yourself to something ...”
“Certainly not,” said René, looking amused. “Your mother knows him and said she was going to invite him today. I just thought you might have seen him around somewhere,” he added with a vague gesture which included the drawing-room, the hall, the dining room, and the library.
“Maybe he’s hiding,” suggested Erica.
“Are you asleep?”
“Practically.” She opened her green eyes wide, blinked, gave her head a shake, and asked, “What does he look like?”
“Like a Michelin tire with a drooping black mustache,” answered René, after due consideration.
“Oh, there are dozens of those running in and out of the woodwork in the dining room,” said Erica. “You might go and see if one of them is your Free Frenchman — and bring me back a drink, will you, René?”
“Rye and water?”
“Yes, please. You haven’t got a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on you anywhere, have you?” He shook his head and she said sadly, “I was afraid you hadn’t.”
She stood up for a moment when René had gone, looking over the room to see if everyone had drinks and someone to talk to, then collapsed into the chair with her legs straight out, and closed her eyes again.
She was aroused a minute later by her mother’s voice saying, “Oh, there you are, Erica. I’ve hardly seen you since you came in. I’m so glad you were able to get away in time for the party, darling.”
“I have to go back to the office after dinner,” said Erica, yawning. “Special Red Cross story — they sent us the dope but the morning papers will use it as it is, so we’ll have to rewrite. After that there’s a Guild meeting.”
“I didn’t know you’d joined the Guild,” said her mother, looking startled.
“I joined last month, as soon as they really began organizing.”
“Why?”
“Partly on general principles and partly because Pansy Prescott fired Tom Mitchell after he’d been on the Post for ten years, because he went on a five-day drunk after his wife died of TB up at Ste. Agathe.”
“Well, I suppose ...”
“It wasn’t because of the bat,” interrupted Erica. “Or because Pansy doesn’t like women interfering with his arrangements, even indirectly after they’re dead — it was mostly because Tom was the chief organizer for the Guild. I thought if Tom could stick his neck out, so could I. The Post is all for unions provided their employees don’t join any,” she explained. “They have to put up with the linotype operators and the ...”
“Mr. Prescott will object to your joining, then, won’t he?”
“You bet,” said Erica placidly.
“When I was your age, I didn’t even know men like that existed!” remarked her mother irrelevantly. In appearance, although not in temperament or in outlook, she and her daughter were very alike. They were about the same height, and Margaret Drake was still slender, with light brown hair which had once been even fairer than Erica’s and which she wore rather short and waved close to her head. She was intelligent, practical, and unusually efficient, born and bred in the Puritan tradition. She had very definite and inelastic convictions and had had the character to live up to them, and yet you could see in her face that somehow it had not come out quite right, although she herself was largely unaware of it, consciously at any rate. She never realized that the expression at the back of her blue eyes did not quite bear out what she said with such certainty and so little room for argument; it never occurred to her that there could be anything wrong with her system, but only, on the rare occasions when she had the time, and the still rarer occasions when she had the inclination, to think about Margaret Drake, that there must be something wrong with herself.
“You didn’t know Mr. Prescott,” said Erica.
“It seems funny to think of your joining a union. The Guild is a union, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, it’s a union. Or it will be someday if the Post doesn’t fire us all first.”
Her mother glanced over the room, remarking absently, “I’m glad you got home in time, Eric,” and then remembering that she had said it before, she added, “I wouldn’t know how to give a party without you any more. You don’t know how much it means to Charles and me just to — just to have you around,” she said, smiling down at Erica. “All the same, you can’t spend the rest of the afternoon in that chair. Get up and be useful, darling.”
“Where shall I start?” asked Erica without much enthusiasm.
“Start by doing something about that young man over there by the window. Madeleine was talking to him a while ago, but she seems to have disappeared.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. He looks like the one René phoned about. His name sounded foreign so I suppose he’s a refugee.”
“I don’t think René knows any refugees,” said Erica.
“Well, do something about him, Eric!”
“All right,” said Erica, struggling to her feet.
The strange young refugee was tall and very slender except for his shoulders; he had slanting greenish eyes, high cheekbones, a square jaw, and to Erica, looked more Austrian than anything else.
She said, “Hello, I’m Erica — one of the invisible Drakes. I’m afraid I got home rather late ...”
“My name’s Marc Reiser,” he said, shaking hands.
“Austrian?”
“Oh, Reiser — of course, you’re René’s friend, he’s often talked about you.” She sat down on the window seat and inquired, “Have you seen René recently?”
“Not since he disappeared half an hour ago.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Erica. “How long have you been standing here?”
“Well, I ...”
“And of course he didn’t bother to introduce you to anyone, he never does.” She said, looking amused, “Once he deserted me in the middle of an enormous party, all French Canadians, where I didn’t know anyone, even my hostess ...”
“What did you do?” asked Marc with interest.
“I just left. I don’t think anyone would have noticed if René hadn’t come to a couple of hours later and started running around in circles wanting to know where I was. I refused to phone and apologize the next day, so he had to, because they were rather important people and he’d made quite a fuss about bringing me. Now, whenever we go anywhere, he’s scared to take his eyes off me, for fear I’ll do it again. Wouldn’t you like a drink?”
“Not if you have to go and get it. I’ve spent most of the past half hour trying to look like a piece of furniture and all I want is not to be left alone.”
“All right, then, I won’t leave you if I can help it,” said Erica, smiling up at him.
There was a pause, during which he looked back at her with a curious directness, and finally he said, “This is an awfully nice room ...”
“Yes, it — it is, isn’t it?” said Erica, lamely. Something in the way he had looked at her had thrown her slightly off balance. He was leaning against the window frame, half-turned away from her, with his eyes back at the Van Gogh print over the fireplace again, and after another pause she asked, “You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I’m with Maresch and Aaronson. I was articled to Mr. Aaronson in my first year at law school and I’ve been there ever since.”
“What about Mr. Maresch?”
“He’s dead.” Marc glanced at her and then said quickly, “I’m not doing much law at the moment, I’m just sort of hanging around at Divisional Headquarters waiting for my unit to be sent overseas.”
“Army?”
“Yes, reinforcements for the first battalion of the Gatineau Rifles — unfortunately,” he added.
“Why unfortunately?”
“We’ve just been pigeonholed for the time being, apparently. It doesn’t look as though the first battalion is going to need us until they go into action somewhere. They’ve been sitting in England for almost three years doing nothing.”
The naval officer and his wife were coming toward them and Erica got up to say goodbye. When they had gone, she remarked, “I didn’t introduce you, because I never have seen any sense in it when people are just leaving.”
“Cigarette?” asked Marc.
“Yes, thanks.”
He felt through his pockets and finally produced a folder containing one match. As he held the flame to the end of her cigarette he said, “Your father isn’t here today, is he?”
“He was here for a while at the beginning and then he evaporated. He always does. It’s not shyness, exactly; he’s just not interested in people in general, he’s a rugged individualist. It’s Mother who keeps up the social end of things. Charles can’t be bothered, except at his club. Why? Do you know him?”
“I’ve seen him once or twice, I’ve never met him.”
“If you’d like to meet him, I’ll take you up to his study and introduce you to him ...”
“Oh, no thanks,” said Marc hastily. “I’m sorry,” he added, rather embarrassed, “I didn’t mean to sound rude, but I’m no good at meeting people, I never know what to say to them. The idea of barging in your father just ... well, I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”
Erica was looking up at him with interest. Finally she remarked involuntarily, “You and René are not a bit alike ...”
“Why should we be?”
“You’re one of his best friends, aren’t you?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t think so. I’ve known him for about ten years, but in all that time I doubt if we’ve ever had a really personal conversation. We usually talk law when we’re together. He’s a very good lawyer ...”
“Not politics?” interrupted Erica.
“No, not politics,” said Marc. “We stick to law. I suppose he’s told you that he’s going to run in the by-elections ...”
“Is he?” asked Erica, surprised. She said with a faintly amused expression: “One of our difficulties is the fact that René refuses to stop being funny about everything that really matters. Probably it’s just as well,” she added reflectively. “I don’t like quarreling with people.”
“René wouldn’t quarrel with you. He’s too good a politician.”
She could see René across the room talking — French, she realized by his gestures and his expression — to Mrs. Oppenheim, the Viennese refugee. Although she was not in love with him, the very sight of him moved her a little, and she said, her voice changing, “René’s not just a good politician. He’s really brilliant, he studied in France, and even though he disapproved of the French, it isn’t as though he’d been stuck in Quebec all his life! He’s an awfully good speaker and he knows what this war’s all about ...”
“Does he?” asked Marc.
“Don’t you think he does?”
“I’m not sure,” said Marc noncommittally.
Between the Drakes’ house and the house on the street below, the steep slope was planted with rock gardens, squat pines and cedars, flowers and flowering shrubs, and halfway down there was a cherry tree in blossom. Beyond the cherry tree and the lower houses half hidden by green leaves, the skyscrapers and church spires were turning to gold and the city was full of long blue shadows.
“What a marvellous place to live,” said Marc.
“Wait another hour when the lights are on and it isn’t quite dark. I’ve lived up here all my life and I still haven’t got used to it. I’ve been in love with Montreal ever since I can remember.”
He was watching a ship which was moving slowly up the Lachine Canal, and thinking of Erica, only half hearing her voice as she went on talking, softly and unselfconsciously as though she had known him for years. She was not only lovely to look at, she was also the sort of person whom you liked and with whom you felt at ease from the first moment. Her character was in her fine, almost delicate face, in the way she talked and listened to what you had to say; there was nothing put on about her and nothing hidden. You could tell at a glance that she had a good brain, that she was generous, interested, and highly responsive. Her manner was neither arrogant nor self-deprecating; it was as though she had already come to terms with life and had made a good bargain, asking little on her side, except that she might be herself. She was wearing a grey flannel suit and very little makeup, sitting on the window seat with the light falling on her long fair hair, and he knew that she had stirred his imagination and that if he never saw her again, he would not forget her entirely.
Erica was staring at René, who, with his shoulders against the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes squinting against the smoke rising from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, was listening to the talkative Mrs. Oppenheim with a polite expression, but not much interest. She was actually thinking of Marc, however, for there was something not only preoccupied but remote about him, as though he had spent half his life learning how to withdraw into himself and observe the world from a safe distance. He had an unusually fine body and a physical grace which reminded her of her sister Miriam; he was obviously sensitive and very intelligent, and she realized instinctively that his disconcerting remoteness and preoccupation were both a kind of defence. Defence against what?
Another thing that was interesting about him was the structure of his face. High cheekbones usually went with a light skin, but Marc Reiser was rather dark; his eyes were the
same greenish mixture as her own but set quite differently, and although he did not look particularly Jewish nor particularly foreign, at the same time, it would have been a shock to discover that his name was Brown, or Thomas.
“Where do you come from?” she asked suddenly.
“From Manchester. It’s in northern Ontario.”
Erica had spent a night in Manchester once, it was on the transcontinental line, but all she could remember was the sweetish smell of rotting lumber down by the docks, the brilliant blue of the lake with the sun cutting across the outer islands from the west, and the magnificent sculptured forms of the Algoma mountains, lying across a stretch of fields and bush behind the town. Of Manchester itself, she had only a hazy recollection of an interminably long main street which looked like all the other main streets of North America — the inevitable collection of groceterias, hardware and drug stores, gas stations, vacant lots, show windows containing approximately ten times too many unrelated objects, soda fountains, airless beer parlors, and three-storey office buildings.
She made an entirely unsuccessful effort to visualize the obviously civilized individual beside her, against a background of hardware stores, beer parlors and vacant lots, and finally asked, “How on earth did you get there?”
“I was born in Manchester.” He seemed rather proud of it.
“Where were your parents born?”
Marc grinned. He said, “You remind me of the man named Cohen who changed his name to O’Brien and then wanted to change it to Smith, and when the judge asked him why, he said, ‘Because people are always wanting to know what my name was before.’” He paused and then told her, “My parents were born in Austria.”
“Oh, that explains it,” said Erica.
“Explains what?”
“When I first saw you I thought you were Austrian. Why did your parents choose Manchester, of all places?”
“Partly because they didn’t want to live in a city, and partly because the Reisers had always been mixed up with lumber in some form or other and my father heard there was a planing mill for sale there. I like it,” he said, looking down at her. “I’d far rather spend the rest of my life in Manchester than in Montreal.”
Earth and High Heaven Page 3