Montreal Stories (40 page)

During the Chopin Edie went to sleep, wearing one of those triangular smiles that convey infinite secret satisfaction. Her husband wiped his forehead with a cotton scarf he took out of her handbag and returned carefully, without waking her up. I had the feeling they got along better when one of them was unconscious. He adjusted his glasses and frowned at a gilt Buddha sitting in front of the cold fireplace, as if he were trying to assess its place in Mr. Chadwick’s spiritual universe. During the pause between the Chopin and the Albéniz, he unlocked the French doors, left them wide, and went out to the baking terrace, half covered by the branches of a jacaranda; into the hot shade of the tree he dragged a wrought-iron chair and a chintz-covered pillow (the chair looked as if it had not been moved since the reign of Edward VII), making a great scraping sound over the flagstones. The scraping blended with the first bars of the Albéniz; those of us in the salon who were still awake pretended not to hear.

I envied Lapwing, settled comfortably in iron and chintz, in the path of a breeze, however tepid, with trumpet-shaped blue flowers falling on his neck and shoulders. He seemed to be sizing up over the chalkier blue of a plumbago hedge the private beach and white umbrellas of the Pratincole, Rivebelle’s only smart hotel—surviving evidence that this part of the coast had been fashionable before the war. In an open court couples were dancing to a windup gramophone, as they did every day at this hour. We could hear one of those tinny French voices, all vivacity, but with an important ingredient missing—true vitality, I think—singing an old
American show tune with sentimental French lyrics:
pour toi, pour moi, pour toujours
. It reminded me of home, all but the words, and finally I recognized a song my aunt had on a record, with “She Didn’t Say ‘Yes’ ” on the other side. Perhaps she used to dance to it, before she decided to save her energy for bringing me up. I remembered just some of the words: “new luck, new love.” I wondered if there was any sense to them—if luck and love ever changed course after moving on. Mr. Chadwick was old enough to know, but it wasn’t a thing I could ask.

Lapwing sat between two currents of music. Perhaps he didn’t hear: the Pratincole had his whole attention. Our wives longed to dance, just once, in that open court, under the great white awning, among the lemon trees in tubs, and to drink champagne mixed with something at the white-and-chromium bar, but we could not afford so much as a Pratincole drink of water. I don’t know how, but Lapwing had gained the impression that Mr. Chadwick was taking us for dinner there. He sat at his ease under the jacaranda, choosing his table. (A later review of events had Lapwing urging Hagen-Beck to join us for dinner, even though his share of the day was supposed to end with the petits fours: a story that Lapwing continued to evoke years after in order to deny it.)

The rest of us sat indoors, silent and sweating. We seemed to be suffocating under layers of dark-green gauze, what with the closed shutters, and the vines pressing on them, and the verd-antique incrustation in the ancient bronze ornaments and candelabra. The air that came in from the terrace, now that Lapwing had opened the French doors, was like the emanation from a furnace, and the sealed windows cut off any hope of a crossbreeze. Mrs. Biesel fanned herself with a program, when she was not using it to beat time. Fergus Bray slid from his sofa to the marble floor and lay stretched, propped on an elbow. I noticed he had concealed under the sofa a full tumbler of whiskey, which he quietly sipped. Once, sinking
into a deep sleep and pulling myself up just in time, I caught sight of Lapwing leaning into the room, with his eyes and glasses glittering, looking—in memory—like the jealous husband he was about to become.

If a flash of prophecy could occur to two men who have no use for each other, he and I would have shared the revelation that our wives were soon to travel—his to Madrid with one of that day’s guests, mine to London on the same train as our host’s gardener and friend. (It was Mrs. Biesel’s opinion that Lily had just wanted company on the train.) Mentioning two capital cities makes their adventure sound remote, tinged with fiction, like so many shabby events that occur in foreign parts. If I could say that Lily had skipped to Detroit and Edie to Moose Jaw, leaving Lapwing and me stranded in a motel, we would come out of it like a couple of gulls. But “Madrid,” and “London,” and “the Mediterranean,” and a musician, a playwright, a novelist, a recital in a winter salon lend us an alien glow. We seem to belong to a generation before our own time. Lapwing and I come on as actors in a film. The opening shot of a lively morning street and a jaunty pastiche of circus tunes set the tone, and all the rest is expected to unfold to the same pulse, with the same nostalgia. In fact, there was nothing to unfold except men’s humiliation, which is bleached and toneless.

The compliments and applause David received at the end of the recital were not only an expression of release and relief. We admired his stamina and courage. The varied program, and David’s dogged and reliable style, made me think of an anthology of fragments from world literature translated so as to make it seem that everyone writes in the same way. Between fleeting naps, we had listened and had found no jarring mistakes, and Mr. Chadwick was close to tears of the humblest kind of happiness.

David looked drawn and distant, and very young—an exhausted sixteen. I felt sorry for him, because so much that
was impossible was expected from him; although his habitual manner, at once sulky and superior, and his floppy English haircut got on my nerves. He resembled the English poets of about ten years before, already ensconced as archetypes of a class and a kind. Lily liked him; but, then, she had been nice to Hagen-Beck, even smiling at him kindly as he walked out. I decided that to try to guess what attracted women, or to devise some rule from temporary evidence, was a waste of time. On the whole, Hagen-Beck—oaf and clodhopper—was somehow easier to place. I could imagine him against a setting where he looked like everybody else, whereas David seemed to me everywhere and forever out of joint.

Late in the evening Mr. Chadwick’s dinner guests, chosen by David, climbed the Mussolini staircase to the square, now cleared of stage and chairs, and half filled with a wash of restaurant tables. A few children wheeled round on bikes. Old people and lovers sat on the church steps and along the low wall. Over the dark of the sky, just above the church, was the faintest lingering trace of pink.

The party was not proceeding as it should: Mr. Chadwick had particularly asked to be given a round table, and the one reserved for us was definitely oblong. “A round table is better for conversation,” he kept saying, “and there is less trouble about the seating.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Chadwick,” said Edie, in the appeasing tone she often used with her husband. “This one is fine.” She stroked the pink-and-white tablecloth, as if to show that it was harmless.

“They promised the round table. I shall never come here again.”

At the table Mr. Chadwick wanted, a well-dressed Italian in his fifties was entertaining his daughter and her four small children. The eldest child might have been seven; the youngest
had a large table napkin tied around his neck, and was eating morsels of Parma ham and melon with his fingers. But presently I saw that the striking good looks of the children were drawn from both adults equally, and that the young mother was the wife of that much older man. The charm and intelligence of the children had somehow overshot that of the parents, as if they had arrived at a degree of bloom that was not likely to vary for a long time, leaving the adults at some intermediate stage. I kept this observation to myself. English-speaking people do not as a rule remark on the physical grace of children, although points are allowed for cooperative behavior. There is, or used to be, a belief that beauty is something that has to be paid for and that a lovely child may live to regret.

A whole generation between two parents was new to me. Mr. Chadwick, I supposed, could still marry a young wife. It seemed unlikely; and yet he was shot through with parental anguish. His desire to educate David, to raise his station, to show him off, had a paternal tone. At the recital he had been like a father hoping for the finest sort of accomplishment but not quite expecting it.

We continued to stand while he counted chairs and place settings. “Ten,” he said. “I told them we’d be nine.”

“Hagen-Beck may turn up,” said Lapwing. “I think he went to the wrong place.”

“He was not invited,” said Mr. Chadwick. “At least, not by me.”

“He wasn’t anywhere around to be invited,” said Mrs. Biesel. “He left before the Ravel.”

“I told him where we were going,” said Edie. “I’m sorry. I thought David had asked him.”

“What are you sorry about?” said Lapwing. “He didn’t hear what you said, that’s all.”

“Mr. Chadwick,” said Lily. “Where do you want us to sit?”

The Italian had taken his youngest child on his lap. He
wore a look of alert and careful indulgence, from which all anxiety had been drained. Anxiety had once been there; you could see the imprint. Mr. Chadwick could not glance at David without filling up with mistrust. Perhaps, for an older man, it was easier to live with a young wife and several infants than to try to hold on to one restless boy.

“Sit wherever you like,” said Mr. Chadwick. “Perhaps David would like to sit here,” indicating the chair on his left. (Lapwing had already occupied the one on the right.) Protocol would have given him Mrs. Biesel and Edie. Lily and the Biesels moved to the far end of the table. Edie started to sit down next to David, but he put his hand on the chair, as if he were keeping it for someone else. She settled one place over, without fuss; she was endlessly good-tempered, taking rudeness to be a mishap, toughened by her husband’s slights and snubs.

“It’s going to be all English again,” she said, looking around, smiling. I remember her round, cheerful face and slightly slanted blue eyes. “Doesn’t anyone know any French people? Here I am in France, forgetting all my French.”

“There was that French doctor this afternoon,” said Mrs. Biesel. “You could have said something to him.”

“No, she couldn’t,” said Lapwing. “She was sound asleep.”

“You would be obliged to go a long way from here to hear proper French,” said Mr. Chadwick. “Perhaps as far as Lyons. Every second person in Rivebelle is from Sicily.”

Lapwing leaned into the conversation, as if drawn by the weight of his own head. “Edie doesn’t have to hear proper French,” he said. “She can read it. She’s been reading a French classic all summer—‘Forever Amber.’ ”

I glanced at Lily. It was the only time that evening I was able to catch her eye. Yes, I know, he’s humiliating her, she signaled back.

“There are the Spann-Monticules,” said Mr. Chadwick to Edie. “They have French blood, and they can chatter away in
French, when they want to. They never come down here except at Easter. The villa is shut the rest of the year. Sometimes they let the mayor use it for garden parties. Hugo Spann-Monticule’s great-great-grandmother was the daughter of Arnaud Monticule, who was said to have sacked the Bologna library for Napoleon. Monticule kept a number of priceless treasures for himself, and decided he would be safer in England. He married a Miss Spann. The Spanns had important wool interests, and the family have continued to prosper. Some of the Bologna loot is still in their hands. Lately, because of Labour, they have started smuggling some things back into France.”

“Museum pieces belong in museums, where people can see them,” said Lapwing.

“They shouldn’t be kept in an empty house,” said the Admiral.

Lapwing was so unused to having anyone agree with him that he looked offended. “I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the collection,” he said. “They might let one person in. I don’t mean a whole crowd.”

“The day France goes Communist they’ll be sorry they ever brought anything here,” said Mrs. Biesel.

“France will never go Communist,” said her husband. “Stalin doesn’t want it. A Communist France would be too independent for the Kremlin. The last thing Stalin wants is another Tito on his hands.”

I was surprised to hear four sentences from the Admiral. As a rule he drank quietly and said very little, like Fergus Bray. He gave me the impression that he did not care where he lived or what might happen next. He still drove a car, and seemed to have great strength in his remaining arm, but a number of things had to be done for him. He had sounded just now as if he knew what he was talking about. I remembered the rumor that he was here for an underground purpose, but it was hard to see what it might be, in this seedy border
resort. According to Lily, his wife had wanted to live abroad for a while. So perhaps it really was as simple as that.

“You’re right,” Mrs. Biesel said. “Even French Communists must know what the Russians did in Berlin.”

“Liberated the Berliners, you mean?” said Lapwing, getting pink in the face.

“Our neighbors are all French,” said Edie, speaking to Mr. Chadwick across David and the empty chair. “They aren’t Sicilians. I’ve never met a Sicilian. I’m not even sure where they come from. I was really thinking of a different kind of French person—someone Harry might want to talk to. He gets bored sometimes. There’s nobody around here on his level. Those Spanns you mentioned—couldn’t we meet them? I think Harry might enjoy them.”

“They never meet anyone,” said Mr. Chadwick. “Although if you stay until next Easter you might see them driving to church. They drive to St. George’s on Easter Sunday.”

“We don’t go to church, except to look at the art,” said Edie. “I just gradually gave it up. Harry started life as a Baptist. Can you believe it? He was fully immersed, with a new suit on.”

“In France, it’s best to mix either with peasants or the very top level,” said Mrs. Biesel. “Nothing in between.” Her expression suggested that she had been offered and had turned down a wide variety of native French.

I sat between Fergus Bray and the Admiral. Edie, across the table, was midway between Fergus and me, so that we formed a triangle, unlikely and ill-assorted. To mention Fergus Bray now sounds like a cheap form of name-dropping. His work has somehow been preserved from decay. There always seems to be something, somewhere, about to go into production. But in those days he was no one in particular, and he was there. He had been silent since the start of the concert and had taken his place at table without a word, and was now
working through a bottle of white wine intended for at least three of us. He began to slide down in his chair, stretching his legs. I saw that he was trying to capture Edie’s attention, perhaps her foot. She looked across sharply, first at me. When his eyes were level with hers, he said, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life with that shrimp?”