“You don’t think I’d ask Butch to lunch, do you?”
“That depends on whether or not you thought I could afford it,” said Weathersby, typing rapidly with two fingers.
“All right, I’ll meet you at Luigi’s at one.” Mike and the other reporter went out; Sylvia’s eyes met Erica’s and smiling at her, a little embarrassed, Sylvia said apologetically, “Well, you don’t want him, do you, Eric?”
“Mike?” asked Erica, surprised, and shook her head.
“That’s good, because I do.”
“Women,” said Weathersby derisively.
“Bubbles, get me René de Sevigny on the phone and be quick about it,” said Erica.
After a pause she heard Weathersby asking, “Est-ce que M. de Sevigny est la, s’il vous plait? O.K., Eric, he’s coming.”
Erica picked up her phone. “Hello, René ...”
“Is that you, Eric? I was just going to call you. I only got back this morning and I’m in an awful rush but I’ll be through in half an hour. How about lunch?”
“Love to. Where?”
“Charcot’s — in the bar downstairs?”
“Yes. René ...”
“Yes?”
“How about bringing Marc Reiser with you?” It was out before she had even realized that she was definitely going to say it.
He started to answer, then stopped. “Just a minute, I’ve got to talk to someone — hold on a minute, will you?”
The silence lasted more than a moment, during which she sat rather nervously, drawing small squares on the back of a photograph of some officers in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps. Then René said, “Hello, Eric — did you say you wanted me to ask Marc?”
“Yes,” she answered, adding uncertainly, “if you think he’d like to come.”
“Have you heard from him since that day at your house?”
Damn René, she thought, and trying to keep the awkwardness out of her voice, she said, “I wouldn’t be asking you to bring him to lunch if I had.”
“Well, I don’t think he’d like to come.”
“René, please listen a moment. I want to ...”
Weathersby was gesturing violently toward the phone on his desk in the corner or the room; she broke off long enough to say, “Tell whoever it is to go to hell,” then heard René’s voice again.
“My dear child, I am listening. I’ll invite him if you like, but after the kick in the pants that he got from your father, I think you’d better leave Marc alone.”
She said desperately, “But don’t you see, it’s because of that ...”
“Is it, petite?”
“All right,” said Erica, giving up. “Forget the whole thing. Lunch à deux, Charcot’s, one-thirty. Right?”
“Entendu.”
“Well, little man, what now?” she asked Weathersby. “Did you tell him to go to hell?”
“No, I didn’t. It’s the Managing Editor and he’s still there.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants to know if you’ve made up your mind about his niece. Say, Eric, you’re not going to let her work here just because she’s Pansy’s niece, are you?”
“What do you think I joined the Guild for? Don’t look so frightened, darling,” she said to Sylvia. “Anybody who gets your job gets it over my dead body and that goes for Pansy’s relations just like everybody else. Switch him on, Bubbles.”
She took up her phone and disposed of Mr. Prescott’s niece as tactfully as she could and for the time being at any rate; finished the Merchant Navy story, did half a column on wartime clothing, sorted out the announcements of next week’s meetings and with the Woman’s Section of the final edition ready to go to press, she set out to walk to Charcot’s.
It was a clear, sunny day with a fresh wind blowing off the river and although she was already a little late, she stopped to buy some corn for the pigeons and to chat with the old gaspésien sitting on a stool in the shade of the cathedral. He had been there with his big sack of corn and his pile of little paper bags weighted down with a stone, ever since Erica had gone to work on the Post. During the past six years she had bought enough corn from him to fill several wagons and had finally come to understand his French, which was pure Gaspé to start with and further complicated by the fact that the old man had no teeth. From year to year she had watched him grow steadily older, dirtier, poorer, and happier. He was always happy, even when it was twenty below zero and nobody would stop long enough to buy corn, and he had to feed the pigeons himself.
René was waiting for her at Charcot’s, having somehow managed to take possession of one of the eight little tables in the crowded little bar downstairs. He was wearing a brown suit and his intelligent face lacked its usual expression of half-amused skepticism; he looked thoroughly tired.
“I’m starved — I’ve ordered a Manhattan for you, a martini for myself, and lunch for both of us.”
She took the cigarette he offered as he sat down opposite her and asked, slightly irritated, “Do you mind telling me what you ordered?”
“Lobster, a green salad, and coffee. You can choose your dessert later.”
“Thank you,” murmured Erica.
“What for?”
“For allowing me to choose my dessert.”
“Don’t be American,” he said, raising one of his highly arched eyebrows. “You don’t lose your feminine prestige merely because I order your lunch without consulting you. Any woman but an American would be more interested in the lobster than in her independence,” he stated, and then remarked with a complete change of tone, “You look nice, petite, though your beautiful hair needs combing. Isn’t that the suit you insisted on wearing to Philippe’s wedding?”
“Do you want me to go and comb my hair?”
He shook his head. “Another martini, please,” he said to the waiter who was just setting his first martini in front of him. “How about you?”
“No thanks. Where have you been all this time, René — down in St. Cyr?”
“No, mostly in Quebec City. The Conservatives have decided not to run anyone against me — there’s a lot of feeling about wasting money on provincial by-elections in wartime, and besides, St. Cyr has always been a Liberal riding.”
“So you’re already in,” said Erica. She considered him in silence for a moment and then said, “Tell me, René, what’s your program? What do you stand for?”
He paused, gazing reflectively at the ceiling, and answered finally, “Let me see — national unity, of course; the preservation of French-Canadian independence and our way of life; compulsory education for Quebec, more and better jobs for French Canadians and a bigger share in the national wealth.”
“I see,” said Erica. “With a program as revolutionary as that, you’ll probably be a sensation.”
Some time later, when she was halfway through her lobster, which had turned out to be excellent, she said suddenly, “You’re on your way up now, aren’t you, René?”
He shrugged and said, “With luck.”
“You’ve always had luck.”
“What’s that?” he demanded, turning to the waiter.
“The salad dressing, monsieur.”
“No, no, no!” said René, closing his eyes. “I told you I wanted to mix the dressing myself. You haven’t put any on the salad, have you?”
“Oh no, monsieur.” The waiter scrutinized the dressing, remarking at last, “Owing to the war, there is no olive oil. That is what makes it look like that.”
“It isn’t the way it looks, it’s the way it tastes. Bring me some oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and mustard.”
“You forgot the sugar,” said Erica.
“Oh, yes, and some sugar. What was I saying when we were interrupted by the outrage?” he asked Erica. “Luck ... that was it.” He paused, his eyes running over her and said, smiling faintly, “Who knows? My luck may be running out.”
“You’ve always got everything you’ve ever wanted.”
“Perhaps I’ve been careful never to
want anything I couldn’t have — that is, up till now.”
“If, now, you’ve decided that you want to be Premier of Canada, then you’ll be Premier of Canada,” said Erica.
René’s French dressing was even better than usual, and she had two helpings of salad.
“You are now about to be able to choose your dessert,” said René, signaling the waiter.
“I’m sorry I was nasty about the lobster. It was very good.”
He bowed to her across the table, and as she looked undecidedly at the tray of French pastries which the waiter was holding for her inspection, he said without thinking, “Take the one with the strawberries,” and then said apologetically, “I didn’t mean it, petite. Take whatever you like, the one with the strawberries is probably uneatable.”
The waiter looked offended and said, “Pardon, monsieur, but everything at Charcot’s is eatable.”
“Everything but your French dressing.”
“Look,” said Erica, falling back in her chair and addressing the waiter, “there’s really no reason why I should choose my own dessert either. Which pastry would you like me to eat?”
“The one with the strawberries, madame,” said the waiter.
“Mille-feuilles,” said René when the tray came round to his side of the table. “And bring the coffee right away, please. How is your pastry?”
“It’s all right so far. If I should wake up with violent pains in the middle of the night, I’ll telephone you and you can sue the waiter. How’s Madeleine, by the way?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t been home yet. Haven’t you seen her lately?”
“Not since I had dinner with her on Monday night,” said Erica, shoving her chair back a little so that she could cross her legs. “Why? Do you think anything’s likely to go wrong?”
“I don’t know. I only wish Tony were here.” He pushed his plate away from him and said unhappily, as she had heard him say so often during the past six months, “I’ll be glad when it’s all over.”
“You haven’t told Madeleine what you think about Tony, have you?”
“Of course not,” he said almost angrily. “What do you take me for?”
“I’m sorry.”
“She knows just as well as I do that the R.C.A.F. wanted him to stay here and instruct, that he was pretty old for a pilot anyhow, and that if he hadn’t kicked up such a fuss he wouldn’t have been sent overseas just when she was starting to have a baby. It’s all in your point of view, Eric,” he said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. “I’m not so enthusiastic about women doctors and lawyers and politicians as Tony is, but I wouldn’t desert my wife when she was having her first child if I could help it.”
Erica said nothing. The old loyalty to Tony refused to die; she could not discuss him even with her father.
“It isn’t just Madeleine,” said René. “It’s his whole outlook on life. The war seems to have knocked him right off his base.”
No, thought Erica, there never was a base, even before the war. Anthony had spent his whole life, not just those five years at Drake’s, as her father had said, waiting for something exciting to happen. He was clever, and very good-looking, and he had got by all right; you had to know him very well to realize that he had never found himself, and that he had never done anything but mark time.
Erica had no idea why he had fallen so violently in love with Madeleine de Sevigny; as Charles Drake still observed moodily to his wife and daughter on an average of once a week, Anthony and Madeleine didn’t seem to have much in common. As for Erica, she had finally lost contact with her brother sometime toward the end of 1940. Until the war broke out they had been unusually close, partly because there were only two years between them, while the other war had created a gap of almost five between Miriam and herself.
She said mildly, in order to get René off the subject, “You never object to your charwoman or your stenographer earning her own living. You only object to women doing jobs you might like to do yourself.”
“Of course,” said René. “Trying to stop other people from doing something they like and you don’t is a characteristic of Protestants, not Catholics. Who ever heard of a Catholic W.C.T.U.?”
Several of the tables in the little room were already empty, and there were only two people left at the bar, a sailor sitting with his chin in his hands staring fixedly at a bottle of Cointreau and an Air Force officer lounging with his hands in his pockets, apparently waiting for someone. Erica glanced at her watch. It was twenty past two, which gave her another half hour before she would have to leave to meet Miriam at the station. She wanted to talk to René about Marc, but she did not know how René was going to react; he had an implacable streak, and leaving Marc out of it altogether, he himself had been put in a thoroughly awkward position since it was he who had brought Marc to the house and had attempted to introduce him to her father. Erica did not know how to start; she would have preferred to have René bring up the subject first, but they had been sitting here for almost an hour and he had not once referred to either Marc or the cocktail party, even indirectly.
“May I have a cigarette, please?” she asked absently, with her eyes on the familiar small placard reminding readers, “Acheter des certificats d’epargne de guerre,” which was hanging among the whisky, wine, and brandy advertisements at the back of the bar. Rather an odd place for it, she thought, and then glanced at René to see if he had heard her.
He was looking at her with such an intensity of feeling in his dark eyes that she forgot all about Marc and everything else in the one overwhelming realization that René was in love with her and that his desire was an agony to him, partly because he could not have her and partly because he knew that if by some chance he did, having her would bring so much unhappiness to both of them.
The look in his eyes began to die away and after a while he remarked flippantly, “For once in my life I wish I were an English Canadian ...”
“Why?”
“Then I could take you up Mount Royal in a cariole and kiss you for an hour and feel better, instead of infinitely worse.”
“René ...”
“Don’t say anything, petite.”
She relaxed against the back of her chair, feeling rather weak, and remarked at last, “You seem to have a peculiar impression of English Canadians. Also, you’re one of the most race-conscious individuals I’ve ever met ...”
“That’s what Marc says,” he interrupted without thinking. He gave her a cigarette and lit it for her, lit one for himself, sighed, and said resignedly, “Well, there’s your opening, Eric. You’ve been looking for one, haven’t you?”
“How did you know?”
He beckoned to the waiter, said, “Bring some more coffee, please,” and then asked Erica, “Do you want a brandy?”
“No, thanks.”
“Just one brandy, then.”
“What did you mean this morning when you said you thought I’d better leave Marc alone?” Erica asked him when the waiter had gone.
He shoved his chair around so that he could sit with his legs crossed and still lean with one elbow on the table, and said, “Marc has enough trouble without your adding to it.”
“Why would I add to it?”
“Ask your father.” Looking away from her toward the wall he said unwillingly, “Marc liked you just as much as you liked him, I realized that as soon as I saw you together. If he hasn’t called you, it’s quite deliberate, Eric.”
With her eyes following the line of his slightly aquiline profile she asked with difficulty, “René, did he say anything about Charles?”
He turned sharply and asked with a sudden edge on his voice, “You don’t really imagine he would, do you?”
“I don’t know.” She looked down at her hands and said wretchedly, “I suppose it depends on how well you know each other.”
There was a pause. He said at last, “The whole thing was my fault,” with a curious bitterness in his voice.
“Why?”
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“Because I let Marc in for it.” His expression changed slightly but he went on looking at the wall. “I’m not usually so naïve as that.”
“What’s being naïve got to do with it?”
“Isn’t it rather naïve to imagine that a man with your father’s background and tradition really means what he says?”
“Please look at me! I can’t go on talking to the side of your face.”
He turned his chair back again and with one hand drumming on the table with a fork, he said, “I’ve known your father for more than a year, Eric. I know what he thinks about the war, what a violent anti-Nazi he is, how revolted he is by the way the Germans are treating the Jews and the Poles and the Czechs as ‘inferior’ races either to be exterminated or intellectually sterilized and reduced to the mental and psychological level of robots. I know what a good democrat he is, and that unlike a lot of his friends, he does not imagine that he can have his cake and eat it — or win the war and hang on to his profits and his taxes.”
“But he really means it.”
“Of course he means it.”
“Well?” she asked, after waiting for him to go on.
He looked at her speculatively and said, “I took him a little too literally, that’s all. And that was where I was naïve.”
“René, don’t talk like that!”
He said acidly, “Sorry, I’m just a French Canadian. I don’t quite grasp these subtle distinctions. You English Canadians are always preaching at us, but it never seems to occur to you that if you’d once make an effort to practice what you preach, your preaching might have a little more effect.”
He took the brandy from the waiter’s tray, swallowed it all in one movement, put the empty glass back on the tray and said, “The cheque, please.”
“It’s there, monsieur.”
Having glanced at the total René pulled some bills from his pocket and waved the water away with, “Non, non, c’est correct. More coffee, Eric?”
“Yes, please.”
As he was pouring it he said expressionlessly, “So there we were, two representatives of minority groups being entertained by the democratic majority. Don’t worry, I know what your father thinks of French Canadians and the Catholic Church.”
Earth and High Heaven Page 8