“Mm?”
“Do you want me to do the stuff on wartime canning?”
“I suppose you know all about canning too?” inquired Sylvia.
“I’ll bet I know just as much about it as you do. Don’t I, Eric?
“Don’t you what?”
“Don’t I know as much about canning as Sylvia does?”
“Leave me out of it,” said Erica. “I’m busy.”
Weathersby returned to his desk, regarding Sylvia thoughtfully for a while, and asked finally, “Now supposing you wanted to make jelly ... how would you go about it?”
“What kind of jelly?”
“Any kind.”
“Couldn’t we start with jam and work up to it gradually?”
“We did,” said Weathersby patiently. “We did the jam yesterday. Today, we are going to make jelly. So what would be the first step?”
“The first step would be to read the government bulletin on wartime canning, just like you,” she added pointedly. “If you can understand it, presumably anyone can. Give,” she said, holding out her hand.
“I haven’t read it yet,” said Weathersby without moving.
“Oh? How did you get to be such an authority on making jelly, then?”
“Because I’ve watched my mother. The trick is to get it to set so it doesn’t come out all runny.”
“Not really,” said Sylvia. “Did you figure all that out for yourself?”
“And just how would you get it to set?”
“I’ll bite,” said Sylvia. “How would I?”
“Well, if you knew anything about canning, which you obviously don’t, you’d mix it with wax.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’d mix the fruit with melted wax — after you’d strained it, of course.”
“I see,” said Sylvia. She regarded the long stringy figure of Weathersby Canning with some admiration and then said at last, “Bubbles, how would you like to have a column of your own? We could call it ...” She paused, her chin on her hand, and then suggested, “We could call it ‘Canning on Canning.’ If you were given a sufficiently free hand, the results ought to be genuinely interesting.”
“I don’t know,” said Weathersby doubtfully. “I don’t think I know enough about it to keep it up indefinitely.” He picked up the government bulletin, glanced through a few pages and said, “Well, can I do it, Eric?”
“Ask Sylvia.”
“What is it?” said Sylvia. “A press release?”
Weathersby nodded.
“O.K., go ahead and rehash it but stick to what it says there and don’t put in any of your mother’s bright ideas. We don’t want all our readers to be poisoned.”
“Why not?” said Weathersby. “They wouldn’t be poisoned all at once; a lot of them wouldn’t get around to eating the stuff till sometime next spring. I mean, it would be so gradual that no one would notice.”
“No one but the circulation department and they’d start noticing in a couple of days. The circulation department is unusually sensitive.”
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Erica, finally ripping the sheet from her typewriter with one hand and reaching for her phone with the other.
“I wouldn’t know about Weathersby,” said Sylvia dreamily, “but I’m getting married.”
Erica’s hand dropped from the phone and she said, “Mike?” Sylvia nodded. “Oh, darling, I’m so glad!”
“Thanks, Eric. I still feel sort of dizzy,” she remarked apologetically. “We’re going to be married a week from Saturday. We’re only inviting a few people — just you and Marc and one or two others. Do you think Marc will be able to make it?”
Erica shook her head. “He won’t get any leave till the week after. I’ll come, though. That doesn’t mean you’ve given up your job, does it?”
“No such luck. Mike’s joined the Army. We’ll have a week together somewhere and then he’s going to camp.”
“He’ll be here for months yet, anyhow,” said Erica, her face changing. “You’re lucky.”
“After all,” said Weathersby, talking to himself out loud.
“What difference does it make? She’s probably died of old age by this time, so why bother?”
“Why bother what? Who are you talking about?” asked Erica.
“Why bother answering your telephone.”
“Good heavens,” said Erica, and grabbed her phone. “Hello, Mimi ... are you still there?”
“Hello, Eric. This seems to be a lousy time to call you ...”
“No, it’s all right. I was finishing up a job and then Sylvia suddenly announced that she was getting married.”
“Who to?”
“Mike O’Brien, one of the reporters.”
“Wish her luck for me,” said Miriam. “How are you, Eric?”
Erica looked blankly at Weathersby who was sitting with his feet on his desk in the corner, engrossed in the government bulletin on wartime canning, and she said, “I guess I’m all right.”
“When did you get in?”
“On the ten-thirty from Ottawa, only it was late. Marc’s train left just after mine so I didn’t have to ...” She stopped, and asked, “What do you want, Mimi?”
“I wanted you to lunch with me.”
“All right. I’ll meet you at that Italian restaurant round the corner from the cathedral at one. It’s just off Place d’Armes ...”
“I know where it is,” said Miriam. “Thanks, Eric.”
Erica rang off, sat for a moment, then straightened up, drawing in her breath, and asked, “Where’s the stuff on the Wrens?”
“On your desk underneath that pile of pictures,” said Weathersby. “Are you feeling all right, Eric?”
She stared at him and then said suddenly, “Shut up.”
“O.K.,” said Weathersby. “O.K.” He glanced at Sylvia, raised one eyebrow and demanded, “Why Mike, for God’s sake?”
“And what’s the matter with Mike?”
“He’s got red hair. If I were a woman, I wouldn’t marry a guy with red hair who can’t even afford to pay for his own lunch. Well, anyhow,” said Weathersby kindly, “congratulations. I hope you’ll be happy on relief.”
“Thank you, Weathersby,” said Sylvia. “Just for that, I’ll allow you to write up my wedding. Eric ...”
“Yes?”
“I’ll do the Wren story for you.”
“No, thanks, I’ll do it. What’s this?” she asked, referring to a pile of photographs. “Don’t tell me we had that many weddings left over!”
Erica started to work again. When the final edition was ready to go to press, she began to line up her material for Tuesday’s first edition. The thing was to go on working and not to look up, for fear you might see him standing there and hear the sound of his voice and feel the touch of his hands, not to stop for a moment for fear you would be caught. The thing to do was to go on working and not to think of the future which contained forty-eight hours, one weekend, and probably nothing more. Some women were lucky; they say goodbye and knew exactly what they’re up against — the simple, straightforward, uncomplicated all-or-nothing alternative of life or death. If he lives, he comes back; if he’s killed, he doesn’t. But Marc may live or he may not, and if he lives he may come back, or he may not.
Later, put it off until later. Get your mind on something else.
She looked down at the typewritten page in front of her which was headed “Women’s War Group Extends Work,” and a moment later she heard her own voice call out, “Sylvia!”
“Yes,” said Sylvia, starting. “Yes, what is it?”
“I ... I don’t ...” She put one hand to her forehead, wondering what it was she had meant to say. Sylvia was looking at her in alarm, and it was necessary to say something, so she asked, “Where’s the syndicate stuff?”
“On your desk, Eric.” She got up, crossed the room and standing in front of Erica she said, “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
“Yes, I’
m sorry.”
She said, “He hasn’t gone yet, Eric. Besides, they get Postponements — my brother was home three times after his embarkation leave.”
“Was he?” Erica looked up at her for a moment, and then said, “It isn’t that.”
“Why don’t you go and get some lunch.”
“What time is it?”
“Five past one. Weren’t you supposed to meet Miriam at one?”
Erica remembered Miriam then, and she said, “My gosh, I must be going nuts.”
She found Miriam sitting at a small table by the wall which was decorated with a large colored photograph of the Bay of Naples. She was wearing a white dress, and in spite of the heat which swept into the half-shuttered restaurant from the blazing street outside whenever the door was opened, and seeped through cracks when it was closed, her face was chalky and she looked cold.
She cut short Erica’s apologies for once more keeping her waiting, with, “Let’s order and get it over with.” When the waitress had come and gone and Erica asked if there was something wrong, instead of answering she asked, “How was your weekend, Eric?”
“It was almost perfect.”
Her eyes left Miriam’s face, followed a waiter as he made his way down the stuffy little room and disappeared through the swing door leading to the kitchen, and finally came to rest at a bad oil painting of Venice hanging on the back wall. There was nothing, no typewriter, no story of the Wrens, no weddings or meetings, not even two familiar voices discussing the best method of making jelly on the other side of the room — nothing to hold her to the present and keep her from slipping back into the past. She gave up trying and let herself go, back to the mountain lake, the little brightly painted houses like toys on the hillside opposite the hotel, the terrace with orange and yellow umbrellas, the light panelled bedroom with homespun curtains and a small lamp on the bedside table which cast a long oval shadow across the ceiling. Everywhere she looked she saw Marc again, lying on the float beside her, sitting in the stern of a red canoe watching the water dripping off the blade of his paddle, stretched out on a deck chair in a pair of dark red bathing trunks, grinning because some woman had just remarked very audibly to her companion that he ought to be in the Army. “What does she want me to do — wear my uniform in swimming?”
“Why ‘almost’? asked Miriam.
Her eyes left the painting of Venice on the back wall and returned to Miriam and she said, “Because I’m not going to win after all, Mimi. I’m going to lose.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why,” said Erica, having failed to think of any way of explaining it so that it made sense. Sometime during the past three days she had realized that Marc was tired out, that was all, but added to everything else, sooner or later that tiredness would prove to be fatal. He had been up against it for seventeen years, ever since he had left home, and he had already had more than enough; he was simply not fit to take on another and far worse struggle involving another person, when he needed his resources for himself. He was due to go overseas in a few weeks, and although he had somehow contrived to get through his officer’s training, one of a total of seven out of a class of five hundred to finish with a Q-I rating, and by the same willpower he would somehow contrive to get through the war just as creditably, at the same time it was not going to be easy. Of all the men Erica had ever known, he was by nature the least adapted to military life. There are limits to the number of demands you can make on anyone’s endurance, and to expect Marc to take on his family, his wife’s family and most of his own friends as well as hers, at this time of all times, was really to expect too much.
“Did he say anything in particular?” asked Miriam.
“No. It wasn’t anything he said or did, it was just something I ...” she paused and then said hopelessly, “something I could feel.”
“You’re not imagining, are you?”
Erica shook her head.
“Then how much longer do you give it?”
“Until he goes home for the last half of his embarkation leave.”
“It’s too bad it’s not the other way round,” said Miriam. “I’d rather you had the last half.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference,” said Erica, looking down at the plate of food which had appeared in front of her. “I guess I’m just hopelessly outnumbered.”
“You think his family is going to work on him, is that it?”
“I don’t think it, I know it. They’ll say everything he knows my family has been saying for the past three months, only they’ll have to pack it all into three days.”
He had often talked to her about his home and his own people, but she could not remember his ever having said anything to suggest that they would not go to work on him, and in her confused, exhausted mind, there was only the growing fear that his family and his environment would be as inimical to her as hers were to him, and this new realization that he was too tired, too discouraged, and too ridden with other problems not to give in, particularly when he knew that he might never see his parents again. Like Erica, he was greatly attached to his father and mother, but unlike Erica, who had believed and who had never for a moment ceased to believe, that her parents were wrong, his whole experience of life would lay him open to the conviction that the Reisers were right. His parents even had the Drakes on their side. They might not know it at the beginning, but they would find out sooner or later, and Erica could imagine what they would make of it when they did find out.
She said, “I wonder who’s going to take the case for the defence ... I can’t very well take my own case when I’m five hundred miles away. Anyhow, it would have to be someone who’s Jewish. Nobody but a Jew can help me now.”
She picked up some coleslaw on her fork and then put it down again. She laughed and said, “That’s funny, isn’t it, Mimi?”
“Not particularly,” said Miriam, looking at her. “Eat some lunch.”
After a brief silence she said, “I suppose it hasn’t even occurred to you that there just might be someone who’s Jewish and who would back you up?”
“Don’t be silly.”
A moment later she said suddenly, “Mimi, I’m going to tell you something. Everybody else is wrong and I’m right. To the day I die, I’ll know that we should have got married and that our not marrying each other was the worst mistake we ever made.”
She laughed again and said, “Do me a favour, Mimi. When I’m dead, see that they put on my tombstone, ‘Everybody was out of step but our Erica.’ It’s all right, I’m not getting hysterical.”
“I wish you’d eat something,” said Miriam miserably.
“It’s a sort of drawing-room version of Abie’s Irish Rose, without the comedy relief, isn’t it? Very high class, of course, and brought up to date with the background of World War II.”
There was a fat man drinking soup a few tables away with a napkin tucked under his chin and Erica watched him for a while. Then she said to Miriam, “You know, all the way up the mountains in the car, I kept wondering if the hotel people knew Marc was a Jew when they made the reservations. I guess they usually go by the names, but ‘Reiser’ doesn’t sound Jewish, necessarily, and I didn’t know if Marc had remembered to volunteer the information. I looked up the hotel advertisement in the paper but they didn’t say whether their clientele was selected or not and I didn’t like to ask him about it so I just sat and worried. To be thrown out of a hotel on arrival seemed a rather grim way of starting a weekend. It was all right, though, so I guess he had remembered. Incidentally, how do you suppose it’s done?”
“What?”
“I mean how do they manage to work it in gracefully? Do they say, ‘I should like to reserve two rooms and a bath for three days beginning Friday, the 27th, provided you have no objection to Jews,’ or do they just write an ordinary letter and stick ‘By the way, I’m Jewish’ in a Postscript?”
“Eric, for heaven’s sake!”
“Sorry,” said Erica. “But it all goes together,
doesn’t it?”
She tried to eat some coleslaw and then some cold salmon, but it was too difficult to swallow and she pushed her plate away from her. After a while she said suddenly in complete despair, “I never knew anyone who seemed to be so alone — even with me, and I know I’m closer to him than anyone else has ever been. But there’s still something — something I can’t get through, except for a little while, and then he’s on the other side of it again, with — whatever it is — between us. He’s so alone, that I can’t bear to think of it. I used to lie awake at night after he’d gone to sleep and look at him, and just cry.”
“Eric ...”
“But Mimi, I want to know why. Marc’s never done anything to anybody ...”
“It’s going to get better, darling!” said Miriam in agony.
“Oh, sure. Sure, we’re going to win the war so we can go on hanging out our own ‘Gentiles Only’ signs instead of having the Nazis do it for us. After all, that’s what’s known as democracy, isn’t it?”
“You don’t mean that, Eric.” It seemed to Miriam that the most intolerable aspect of this intolerable situation was what it was doing to Erica and as her eyes filled with tears, she said, “Don’t talk like that. You mustn’t change, Eric, you’ve got to go on being the same person you’ve always been. You’ve got to, Eric ...”
“Have I?” said Erica. “Why?” As Miriam did not seem to be able to think of a reason she remarked, “You just want me to go on being a sucker. Remember, you said there was one in every family.”
“No,” said Miriam almost inaudibly. “No, that’s not what I mean.” She took a mouthful of food, then sipped some water and went on more steadily, “If you don’t pull yourself together, Eric, you’ll go to pieces.”
“Not for a while,” said Erica matter of factly. “Not till Marc says, ‘Well, so long, Eric, see you after the war.’” She paused and then observed, “What a relief that will be to Charles and Mother. If Marc goes overseas by the end of September, they might even still have time for a holiday.” As she saw Miriam’s expression, she said, “They bought their share, Mimi, and provided I can arrange not to go to pieces in front of them, they’re not even going to have to pay for it. So stop worrying. What are you crying for?”
Earth and High Heaven Page 22