Crossings (29 page)

We waited a long time, Paul and me. Then we watched television. Then I went to bed and left Paul there, on the chesterfield, with the rifle on his lap. He stayed like that all night. Watching the front door.

In the morning I was stiff and sore and I ached in every bone.

‘Oh go home, Paul,' I said when I got downstairs. ‘It's all right.'

‘But what if he comes back?'

I made us some coffee. I said, ‘Paul? Look. You don't understand. If he doesn't come back, I'll go looking for him. Take the stupid gun and go home. Work it out with Marie.'

‘You're trying to destroy yourself,' said Paul.

‘Look. I'm sorry I dragged you in. Okay?'

‘Look, Vicky,' said Paul. ‘I know all about it. I know this sort of man. And I know about you, too.'

‘What do you know?'

‘How you feel about contraceptives. For an atheist, you're a bit RC, aren't you?'

I sighed. ‘Did Ben say that?'

‘I know you don't use anything. And, Vicky, Mik's going to get you pregnant, don't you realize that? And then he'll just walk out. And then what?' He was drinking his coffee, his face full of concern for me. ‘That's all he wants, you know. And if you get knocked up, he won't waste a minute on you.' He shook his head. ‘Up to now, you've been lucky. That's all.'

‘Paul?' I said. ‘You're a prick.'

And that was the end of Paul—for that year.

I cleaned the house from top to bottom. The cord to the vacuum was ripped but I fixed it with mending tape. That mending tape's still on, now that I think of it. I vacuumed and I scrubbed and I polished. Attacking the corners like enemies. I always do that when I'm mad or if the story isn't working. I used a whole box of Spic 'n Span and two cans of Dutch Cleanser. And all the Javex. I did the windows with Windex and oiled the mahogany panels in the dining room. I did a wash and hung it flapping out in the wind. A good brisk day for drying.

My fingers got that cracked puckered look. And my knees were all red. When there wasn't anything else to scour, I had another bath and got dressed and went down to the Safeway's. Bought enough food for an army. Ten pounds of potatoes. Trundling it home in a cart I snitched from the lot.

No one came. I made a Busy-Day Cake, a recipe of my mother-in-law's. I peeled a great cauldron of potatoes. I garlicked the steaks. I went out into the garden and picked every rose in sight, great cabbage roses, pink and white and red. Putting them in vases and bowls and even milk bottles. I even laid a fire in the fireplace, though it looked like a warm night coming up. I took in all the wash. It smelled so clean and good. I made up the bed.

Everything smelled of lemon oil and roses and Javex. And I waited.

Jocelyn didn't come home. And along about nine o'clock, bang crash thump, here he comes, the Thing from Outer Space.

He stands there beside the dining room panel doors, looking at me, stone-faced. I stand there, just out of the kitchen door, looking at him. Our lips quirk at about the same time. Mik guffaws. ‘“How dare you!”' he says.

‘You bastard!' And we stand there, five feet apart, snorting and roaring like two fools.

‘“How dare you!”' and he slaps his thigh.

‘That was because of the cats!' And this sends us off again.

‘All we needed was that great hound,' he says, meaning Sala, who was at the vet's or something, or maybe with Joss.

‘Paul sat up all night with a gun!' I say.

‘A gun!'

‘You know, a rifle. Waiting to kill you when you came in the door.'

‘Lucky I didn't come home. I'd've rammed it so far up, he'd be
spit
ting bullets.'

And we laugh and hold our stomachs and hold onto each other to keep from falling down. And then we have dinner and make up the fire anyway.

Somewhere around midnight he pokes the fire and says, ‘So you'll have to marry me now.'

‘Who says?'

‘I says. I humped you good. I humped you real good.'

‘Ah, you did before and I never got caught.'

‘Yah, but I put my mind to it that time.'

‘Your mind, was that what it was!'

‘I made a good job of it.'

‘Nevertheless …'

‘“Nevertheless,”' and he tickles me.

‘Nevertheless, I have no honourable intentions about you, buster.'

‘We'll see. I never met a woman yet didn't hit the panic button, she missed the curse.'

‘Don't worry. I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth.'

‘Yah yah. Keep it up.'

‘I am not kidding, Mik.'

‘We'll see when the time comes.'

‘What an influence
you'd
be on a child.'

He doesn't pay this any mind, but I go cold for a moment. I stare into the fire and I go fish cold. It's true. He'd make a terrible father.

And the next day I catch the bus to Horseshoe Bay. The ferry is pulling out when I get there and I phone the professor. ‘I'm sorry,' I say, ‘but I've just missed the boat.'

‘But there isn't another tonight,' he says. ‘Look, get a water taxi.'

So I do. We go zipping over the water, me standing all the way, feeling like a figurehead, the spray drenching my hair. He's waiting for us at the dock, and insists on paying. Twelve dollars. I feel guilty about it, but oddly pleased too.

The sea is that painful blue, that terrible heart-aching blue, and the sun glitters our eyes. At the cabin, everything glows. The mugs on their hooks, the thick rugs, the piano. It is a perfect, still blissful day and I say, ‘God, what a place. I'd give my soul for a place like this.'

We swam and he read me something he was writing, a complicated exegesis of Hume. But when I said, ‘Aren't you still falling into Kant's trap?' he got all upset, and explained the same thing over to me again. He was reading Malcolm Lowry and he said, ‘Let us go through the forest to the stream.'

We took machetes and hacked our way up, clearing the foliage that had grown around the thick black hose that ran down the hill to the cabin. Once, he stopped and said, ‘This is known as Conception Rock,' and I looked and saw a moss-covered piece of granite.

‘Why?' and knew what he would say.

‘Because lovers come here.'

Then we went back to hacking the undergrowth with the machetes and once I struck the thick black hose and laughed hysterically. ‘I've cut it right through, I think,' I said, giggling. I thought, Oh god, it's all going to be Symbolic.

We found the source of the stream and he stood there in a terribly portentous way. I think I kept giggling. I was horribly embarrassed. He looked so old and white, his scalp showing pink through his hair. I thought Ah, don't. Don't. For I did truly like him. In a way I almost loved him.

And that night, watching the sea, he said, ‘Would you consider marrying me?'

‘I don't know,' I said, hugging my arms between my knees.

‘I know how much you want children,' he said in an even, reasonable voice. ‘I can give you three. We can manage three, and when I'm dead, you'll still be a young woman.' It was terrible, terrible. I think I knew as soon as he paid for the water taxi.

‘What about Iris?' I said.

‘We haven't lived together as man and wife for years. I have a mistress.'

‘Oh.'

‘Of course I'll provide for Iris. I'd have to give her a decent living allowance. And if you want, I'll give up my mistress.'

I think I laughed.

‘Is it because I'm too old?' he said.

‘No, no,' and then, ashamed, because he honoured the Real, ‘yes, in a way. I never thought of you like that. I mean, I'm sorry, I just never …'

‘I waited until your divorce,' he said.

This I felt was a lie. I just did not believe he had harboured a silent passion for me all those years at university. No.

And the telephone rang.

‘It's for you,' the professor said, holding the receiver out to me. Walking to the French doors and looking out at the sea again.

‘Hello?'

‘Hi,' and he said the name I can't

‘Oh hello,' I said in what I hoped sounded a surprised tone.

‘Is
he
listening?' said Mik.

‘Yes, all right,' I said.

‘Hey, tough guy, I'm horny for you.'

‘Oh yes?'

After a pause, Mik said, ‘Say something.'

‘All right, I'll see to it when I get back.'

‘You bitch, do you love me?'

‘Oh yes?'

And he hung up.

And to the professor's back I said, apologetically, ‘That was the boarder.'

‘He's in love with you,' he said.

‘Oh no.'

‘Yes.'

‘Has he got you in bed yet?'

‘No, my goodness. No.'

‘You'd better watch out then.' He sounded so angry.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I really am. I do love you, in a way, you know.'

He gave a short laugh and said if we were going to get any work done tomorrow, we'd better go to bed.

I slept like a baby, in the guest house.

The next day the CBC big wig and his wife came with Iris.

We'd put in a good morning. I was finishing the play about the man from the sea. A bad play. There were so many symbols in it, one man (an English teacher) phoned and said he'd worked everything out but the bishop, in the chess game. What did the bishop represent? I mean, it was that bad. People played games with it. But I wanted to get it done. This other one, about Wilma and Ivan, was knocking at the door. Lines were already in my head.

Along about four in the afternoon, they came down the path.

‘Vicky!' Iris cried. She always seemed terribly pleased to see me. ‘Did you come up yesterday?'

‘Yes.'

‘Get lots of work done?'

‘Not bad.' I was awkward with her. I thought she could see right through me.

‘This is the delightful child my husband's taken up with,' she said to the couple. ‘She's awfully brainy. You know. She's the one who does those plays on radio.
The Carson Family
out of Ibsen?'

The man shook my hand and smiled. Said I looked younger than he'd expected. The woman smiled. I liked them right off, they were so lovely together, so well-mannered and yet easy at the same time. You could see they'd make terrific parents.

‘I liked the last one, dear,' Iris was saying, ‘but of course it's not
great.
It was a good story, though. I like a good story, I can't bear all these clever little things they do now. It's nice to find someone who isn't ashamed of simply
entertaining
people.'

‘It was a damn fine play,' said the professor.

‘Yes, well, it didn't break any new ground,' said Iris, ‘but we all know how you feel about Vicky. Don't breathe a word of criticism, sweetie,' to the wife, ‘he won't have it.' And, ‘Isn't it a shame nobody listens to radio anymore? I love it myself. I listen to everything, even the crap.'

A lot of things happened that weekend. It doesn't matter really, or maybe it does. I'm finding it hard to sort the non-causal from the causal; in a way, everything's causal.

When Iris got up Sunday morning, she came into the kitchen where I was washing up the dishes from last night and she put her hands on my bum and said, ‘It's only youth, you know.'

I was wearing the old bathing suit, size twenty. It was that or the leopard skin, and I was embarrassed about the leopard skin.

That afternoon, everything broke into pieces. Marguerite fell down a cliff, and her husband was horribly frightened for her. The professor drove madly down the gravel roads to arrange for a water taxi to take her into the hospital. He kept saying, ‘Iris will be so upset!' But, oddly, when the water taxi had taken Marguerite and her husband away, Iris was not at all upset.

When she drove me down to catch the ferry at five o'clock, she said, ‘He asks everyone, you know.'

‘What?'

‘To go to bed with him. He asks everyone. He's asked all my friends, you know. First he offers to marry them, and then he suggests a trial run, to make sure everything will work out.' She glanced at me. ‘You haven't done anything foolish, I hope, Vicky.'

I wasn't going to tell her one way or the other. But I said, ‘I have a lover actually.'

‘Does
he
know?' she said with a jerk of her head back along the road.

‘No. But I'll tell him.'

‘Yes dear, you do that.'

We drove for a while in silence and then I said, ‘Iris, do you say things like that on purpose?'

‘What dear?'

‘You know. The sarcastic things you say.'

‘I? Sarcastic? Vicky, I tell the truth and the world calls me a bitch for my trouble.' She pulled the car into the long line waiting at the dock. ‘Marion said that to me too. She says I say awful things to people.'

‘Yes, you do,' I said. ‘And I can never make out whether you mean them or not.'

‘Like what?' said Iris. ‘Give me an instance.'

‘Like, “This is Mr Victoria Ferris,”' I said. ‘That time you introduced Ben.'

‘But he
was,
darling!' she said. ‘That's all Ben ever was, your husband. Like I'm
his
wife. Wasn't that the whole trouble with you and Ben?'

But I wasn't getting caught like that. ‘And when you said to Marguerite, that she fell down the cliff to get her husband's attention.'

Iris smiled. ‘Well?' she said. ‘She is getting on, you know. And you're young and fresh and almost beautiful because of it. Oh, your face is too broad for real beauty. Later on, it'll get a real Irish
jut.
But now, since you've lost all that weight, and you're young, you see. You'll get old, we all get old, but we can't help hating your guts right
now.'
And she jerked the emergency brake.