“What are you living on?”
Claudie waved her hand. “What does that matter? I shall never sleep on a couch in a parlor again. It is what you wanted for me, isn’t it?”
“Have you found a job?”
“All in good time,” said the boy. “It is agreed that Claudie and I do not support each other.” Was this irrelevant? He did not seem to think so. He was dark and delicate; he reminded Shirley of the Japanese dolls on the dressing table in James’s bedroom. He earned the equivalent of two dollars a day doing consumer research, he said, perhaps giving the reason why he could not support Claudie. He did not explain what the work consisted of. Shirley supposed that he knocked on doors. His father, a nose-and-throat specialist, made him an inadequate allowance. Young Proust worked for the sake of dignity and to pay for his own cigarettes. “ ‘Families, I hate you,’ ” he quoted. Claudie nodded her approval. He was expected to be home every Sunday for luncheon with the family. If he missed a Sunday, his pocket money was held up. “I have never cost my father one centime in cigarettes,” he said. That settled, he began questioning Shirley. “I want your opinion about certain Anglo-Saxon authors.”
Shirley, accustomed to this, knew that she would not have heard of any of them, but Claudie stared at her so anxiously that it was evident Shirley’s prestige hung on the replies.
“Richard Debendock?” said the young man severely. “Greta Winterhalter?”
She could only gaze her approval, as though hypnotized. She had forgotten to wear her glasses. The shadeless lighting made their faces gleam like plates. Voiceless approbation seemed to be all that was wanted of her. Claudie, satisfied, began describing her hotel room (it overlooked a street populated by no one but prostitutes) and Marie-Thérèse’s rage and shame when she had come to see where Claudie lived now and had looked out the window.
“Munter Brooke,” came the piping interrogation. “Juan Alexis Bell? Valentine Purse?”
Shirley wondered if he would be offended were she to ask him to write the names down. She remembered Philippe and the jazz musicians, and how long it had taken her to discover who everyone really was.
“Shirley, I am in great trouble,” said Claudie. “I think I might be pregnant.”
“Would you mind writing that down?”
“There has been only one valid thinker in America since Locke Abrams,” said the young man, “though Walter Jarvis Crispin has his adherents.”
Claudie held the boy’s fragile hand and announced their secret, important plan: they were going to the Middle East as volunteers in refugee camps. A Swiss organization would pay their passage from Marseille to Lebanon. Should the refugees turn out to be ungrateful and unrewarding, should the experience lack the spiritual returns they were after, why, they would then apply for permission to live in one of the Israeli kibbutzim reserved for zealous foreigners. Claudie glanced at the boy for confirmation. She was so much larger than he was; he could have danced on the palm of her hand.
“I’d like to say two things,” said Shirley. “Can anyone at this table hear me? First, isn’t there some unexpected trouble women can have? When men say they’re in trouble it can be one of a hundred things. With women, ‘trouble’ means ‘I am in love’ or ‘I am not in love’ or ‘I am pregnant.’ The second thing is, you can’t go to Israel if something goes wrong in Lebanon. You have to make up your mind now where you want to go and what you want to do.”
The young man began to explain about his family: they were Jews converted to Catholicism in Portugal in the sixteenth century. He lived in two worlds. He would be equally at home in a refugee camp or a kibbutz. The American author Mallet Blick . . .
“We shall need a ring,” said Claudie. “No, Shirley—you can’t give me that . . . it’s your wedding ring. The other, the turquoise. How kind you are!”
In a mountain village in Italy where everyone had gone to sleep except Shirley and Peter Higgins, a black cat walked along the path. Three long shadows, theirs and the cat’s, walked before them, thrown by a pale village lantern and a bright moon. Where the street ended the three came upon a field—a lake in the moonlight—and behind it were indigo mountains.
“You are the only person who can explain my situation to Papa,” said Claudie. “He respects you.”
“But he knows your situation. The whole family has been to see where you live. So you said.”
“All except Papa. He pretends he hasn’t noticed I’ve left home.”
“What do you want me to tell him? That you’re getting married?”
“No, she doesn’t want to get married,” said the young man.
“Oh, then it’s money. It’s only money Claudie wants.” Dismissing her brief memory of a field and mountains (so wounding that it could not be memory, she must have dreamed it) she said, “I’ve had enough brandy and I suppose you’ve had enough fruit juice. I’d better pay.”
“She always finds reasons for paying,” said Claudie, more and more proud of her.
“Claudie, that sounds like Renata. I think you have been seeing Renata and that she has been telling you a lot of rubbish.”
“No,” said Claudie. “You are the only person I listen to. Renata told me that Poland is the place for abortions, but there is all the bother of getting there and then trying to explain what you mean. Renata says they have the French culture, but still. My father will give you all the money you ask for, providing it is for me and you do the asking. I used to be the favorite, you know. I was always the favorite. They approved of my sister but they loved me. Now they despise me because I am poor and they hate me because I will not live in a cage.”
“I absolutely refuse to say you are pregnant in order to get money for you.”
“But it isn’t only that, Shirley. There is the problem of Alain.”
“We have already had Alain as a problem.”
“I do need money,” said Claudie anxiously, as if she had forgotten why.
“Keep Alain. Take Alain with you.”
“Yes, do take him,” said Marcel Proust in a thin voice. It was plain that Shirley was not proving to be as useful or sensible as he had expected.
Claudie placed her large white hand on the table and said, “Look at my ring.” It was not Shirley’s turquoise band, but a ring made of silver paper, a cigarette-paper ring. She was trying to bring him to a state of remembrance and guilt.
The boy ignored the ring. He said to Shirley, “I’m told that your husband is a celebrated critic. What is his name?”
She was not astonished to be the wife of a celebrated critic. She remembered where she might have seen Claudie’s friend before: in the Select, choosing Germans for that war movie. If it hadn’t been Marcel Proust it was someone very like him.
She would go to Monsieur Maurel. She would say, “Go and fetch Claudie and take her home. She isn’t fit to be on her own. I gave her the wrong advice. It would have been good advice where I come from, but it doesn’t make sense here.”
“What is the name of your father’s office?” she said.
“No one is allowed to call his office. He would murder any of us, even—no, particularly Maman. Did you get a letter from Maman? Perhaps she forgot a stamp on it. She often forgets. Maman thinks we still haven’t given you a good meal, and she wants to try again. My family never entertain, but when they start with someone they can’t stop. They always do something wrong because we are used to just being by ourselves, with a cousin or my grandmother sometimes. They are determined to go on inviting you until they finally get it right.”
“She may stop going,” said Marcel practically.
“Poor darling,” said Claudie. “You’ve never been asked, have you? Not even once.”
“She may have had enough of your family,” he said coldly, with a slightly feminine sneer.
“No, she hasn’t had enough yet,” said Claudie. “She will save me and Alain. Shirley, promise me . . .”
“I’ll see your father,” Shirley said. “Somebody has to.” As the
y stood up to leave she thought she noticed Marcel pocketing the change she had left for the waiter. It can’t be, she thought. I’m blind and I’ve had too much brandy. He bored me and she made me feel nervous and I went on drinking.
Just then she saw someone she knew. Shirley’s friend, a young woman wearing a belted raincoat, recognized her in the same instant and moved toward her. Shirley could not see her face—the other person was still across the room. She could distinguish nothing except the outline of someone familiar. It was not Mrs. Castle but someone much as Mrs. Castle must have been like when she married Ernie so as to get off the prairies. She was flooded with happiness, with relief, at seeing a person who knew her, who would not make mistakes with her name or ask for more than she could give. She walked toward the woman from home, unable to remember her old friend’s name, but confident it would come back to her during the first words of conversation. This friend was tactful and kind. Their identities would be established at once. Shirley would say to her, “Don’t leave me alone with these terrible people.” The woman smiled, as sure of Shirley as Shirley was of her. Claudie’s hand, which she violently tried to shrug away, prevented Shirley from walking into a large mirror.
Rain had rinsed the boulevard St. Germain. They emerged into a bright, moist, summer night. She was escorted, upheld, by Claudie and by Marcel Proust.
“It is the first time I have ever seen a woman drunk,” said Claudie.
“Your friend is an original,” he said. “She will certainly introduce you to a new world. But she lacks grandeur.”
Shirley heard this in the way that a drugged patient, waking too soon, catches sound before he can make any sense of it.
•
The next day was suddenly and violently hot. From the living-room window she saw a tarry street and men walking with their jackets over their arms, like Americans. Feeling sick and unclean, she dragged herself across the city. She was an hour late and was once again dressed in the store uniform she had been told not to take home. The man who sacked her looked like a policeman, or like one of the stone-faced shabby functionaries in the office where foreigners queued to have their residence cards renewed. He wore a grubby shirt and a soiled tie, and seemed wretched and underslept. Although the façade of the store had been brought up to date for the new prosperity of the 1960’s, his office was as full of string-tied dossiers as a provincial notary’s. In an atmosphere of old age, dust and melancholy, she was told she could go. It was her own fault, he said to her. She had so often been forgiven! Her failings had been overlooked until now because of her good nature and her ability to cope with the Anglo-Saxon dialects—American, Australian or what have you. Nevertheless, he continued, there had been an obstinacy, a blind spot, about wearing the uniform. It was store property and—as if this were what really worried him—the uniform was not a feminine costume. “I have often been disappointed in people,” her executioner remarked.
She understood that he had defended her until now and she had let him down. She was sorry. She wanted to tell him that she did not think harshly of him, but now he was handing her a check in lieu of notice. They did not want her around a minute longer. In another envelope was the cash deposit she had paid for the uniform before they had entrusted her with it: but the uniform was still on her back. Could she be relied on to go home, change, and return with the uniform in a cardboard box? He may have been clairvoyant; he must have known how it would be: how she would intend to come back, and how the uniform would be flung on the bed, then tossed in a cupboard; how her mind would click each time she saw it, and how finally she would not see it at all.
Wanting to be fair and, above all, to make him happier, she said, “It might be better if I bought some clothes now, in the store. Then I could change on the spot and leave the uniform with you.”
“I am going to do you a great favor,” he said, worn out with her. “I am going to keep you on the staff until noon so that you can have the employees’ reduction of eleven percent. Please realize what I am doing for you.”
She wandered off in the enormous store. “I don’t work here,” she explained to some north of England accents who wanted to buy a gallon of Chanel 5. After going upstairs and down on the escalator, she became hot and tired; finally, seeing a sign in the basement saying “This way to the Métro,” she went home. She felt as if she had been sent out of school with a sealed note for her mother—uneasy, apprehensive, and glad to be free.
•
She had to pass an examination on Balzac. The title of the novel selected was L’Album de Médecine Légale, which she had never heard of. She had not studied for years and knew she would fail. Papers were passed around the silent room. Just as she knew the beating of her heart would destroy her, she knew she was dreaming. She could not have described the examination, even if there had been anyone here to listen. Her father had been cranky about revelations. “You can tell me what you dream if you give me a quarter,” he would say, holding out a long hand. “If it has an unusually interesting plot I’ll accept fifteen cents. If you aren’t anywhere in the dream I’ll settle for a nickel.” Aged seven, she slid out of her chair at the breakfast table and fetched her pocket money, thus earning the right to complete attention. Her father pocketed the quarter, which was alarming of him. She could not always spend her money so unproductively. She learned that the easiest way of disposing of dreams was to forget about them.
She lay prone on the couch in the living room. Her hand, swollen with pins and needles, rested on the floor. The telephone rang in the dead afternoon. That was what had startled her—not something in the other world of the dream. She said to the telephone, “Philippe?” but the listener, on identifying her voice, had learned all he wanted. She heard a click, followed by a humming conversation of ghosts.
They are trying to frighten me, she thought. They are trying to kill me with fear. Then, across a new, sudden silence came an unmistakably Canadian voice. She said, “Mother?” The booming noise that followed was surely the waves of the sea.
“It’s Cat Castle.”
“Oh, Mrs. Castle—where are you? Has something happened to Mother?”
“I’m here in the airport. I’m on my way—on my way home.”
“Can’t I see you? Is there time? Which airport—Orly?”
Waves flooded the Orly telephone booth. Mrs. Castle surfaced and said, “Oh boy, French phones. How’re you getting on?”
“All right. I wish I could see you.”
“Does your mother say anything new about her cancer? Shirl! There’s about ten people waiting for this phone. Not that they’ll be able to hear anything once they get it.”
“Don’t hang up. Please, can’t I come? Where are you? Mrs. Castle, listen—Philippe has left me and I’ve lost my job.”
“I don’t hear. He did what? So he finally got mad at you, eh? What’d he do that for?”
“I don’t know. I read his mail. I wanted to be loved more.”
“Louder, child.”
“I wanted to be loved more.”
“You’re old enough to be smarter than that,” Mrs. Castle cried, before she drowned.
•
Panic, confusion and sleeping in the afternoon were not the way to live a life. It was the moment for the summing-up Philippe believed in. In the desk he had said would be her working place, without saying what she was to do there other than write letters to her mother, were six of the thick, lined scribblers school children used. Six meant that he had six times encouraged her to collect her thoughts. She had taken this to mean that he wanted her to write the past in one column and the future in another and cross out each step of living as Mrs. Castle had done in Pons. Shirley’s most recent plans for the future were dated April 12th:
1. Farm for sale in Nonville (S et M). Visit.
2. Herald Trib—do I owe them or do they owe me? Ask.
3. Coffee stains on carpet. What to do.
4. Renata’s birthday. When?
5. File Mother’s letters b
y dates.
6. Window boxes. Plants. Where buy earth. Ask.
10. Thyme, laurel, parsley, nutmeg, jello, sultana cookies.
11. Take all old handbags to place where they fix them. Ask Renata.
12. Change all lampshades. Measure them first. Buy tape measure.
13. Start radish and walnut diet.
14. Address book—bring up to date.
15. Separate summer and winter clothes. Decide what weather is going to be, and which to wear and which to put away.
16. Research for Philippe—“What use is a Festival?”
17. Who was Lord Arthur Savile? Ask.
18. De Beers, Western Holding, British Petrol, Shell, Courtauld, Dunlop, Canadian Pacific, Gillette, Xerox, US Steel. Find out.
When Philippe saw what she had written he said it was not what he had meant. She supposed, then, that he wanted in her a feminine variant of himself. Why, then, had he married her?
Madame Roux, stubbing out a cigarette, leaning forward, had said, “No matter who he is, regardless of what he is after, marry him. You can settle any misunderstanding later. If he thinks you are rich, let him think it. Once you are married you will never be alone on a Sunday again.”
It would have been cruel to answer, “I never am.” Madame Roux was evoking Sundays of sour good weather and empty streets. She was speaking about deserted Sunday gardens in Saint-Maur, the suburb to which she returned every night and which she praised so bitterly. She loved rainy weekends—she had said so—with the lights on at four o’clock and the white winking of television in every living room, for then she was not alone on her street. She was urging Shirley to escape from weekends of tisane: from Sunday fantasies in which husbands and lovers merged into the one rapist she had never been lucky enough to meet; from Sundays of not washing and not combing her hair. When she said, “Marry him,” she meant, “I would.”
A Fairly Good Time Page 20