Earth and High Heaven (25 page)

“Do you know him, Miriam?” asked her mother, looking straight ahead at the empty fireplace.

“Yes, of course I know him.”

“So you were encouraging her behind our backs,” said her father.

She said immediately, “If you choose to turn your back, Charles, you can hardly complain about what goes on behind it!”

“Miriam ...” said her mother.

“Yes, darling?”

“I am interested in your opinion of Marc Reiser.” All the life seemed to have gone from her face, and her husband might just as well not have been in the room. Still looking straight ahead of her, she said, “I want to know what he's like, Miriam.”

She knew that at last her mother was in a mood to listen and to believe what she was told, and Miriam said quietly, “He's the opposite of everything you thought. If he weren't you wouldn't have been able to get rid of him so easily, because he really cares about Eric. Maybe you have to know him to realize what a difference it would have made if you'd only been willing to give him a break, not for his sake, but for Erica's ...”

“I wish I had known him.”

“Margaret ...”

She glanced at her husband without really seeing him and then said to Miriam, “Go on, please.”

“I can't tell you what Marc's like, except that he's the same kind of person as Erica, he's the other side of the same medal. They just seem to belong together, that's all. I guess if you didn't know he was Jewish, or if that didn't matter so much, you'd say that there couldn't be anyone better for Erica than Marc.”

Her mother went on staring at her for just a moment after Miriam had finished, then turning away, she began to cry in her corner of the sofa with her face hidden in her arms.

No one had ever seen Margaret Drake cry like that before. Watching her, Miriam found herself thinking dully that whatever Charles Drake did or said from now on, her mother was through. Miriam made a sudden movement toward her, then drew back again. She said, “Well, it wasn't really your fault anyhow, darling ...”

“My fault!” she repeated, gasping.

“Margaret, for heaven's sake ...”

She did not even hear him. With her face still hidden she said, “Of course it's my fault! All the excuse I've got is that I didn't know him and I didn't realize how much he means to her, and what kind of an excuse is that?”

She could not stop crying, she had to wait again before she could make herself intelligible, and then she said, “Mothers have no
right
not to know. It isn't as though Erica hadn't tried to tell me, she tried over and over again — she even asked me to lunch with her and Marc and all I ... I ...” she said incredulously, “all I, her own mother, could think of to say was that I was too busy!”

“Margaret, stop that!”

“I can't stop.” As she felt his hands she pushed him away, saying despairingly, “Leave me alone, Charles. I don't blame you, I blame myself.”

He was thoroughly frightened and he did not know what to do; he watched her helplessly for a while, his face working, and then he suddenly rounded on Miriam. He said, raging, “Well, you wanted your row, and now you've finished, I'd like to know exactly what you think you've accomplished ...”

Miriam did not answer. At that moment she had remembered a remark that Erica had made to her weeks before when they were walking on the mountain where Erica and Charles had once walked every Sunday afternoon after the Philharmonic broadcast from New York. They had stopped to watch the model yachts sailing back and forth on Beaver Pond, and out of nothing, except perhaps that the place itself was so associated with her father in her mind, Erica had said suddenly, “Charles doesn't want to go on this way, but he got started on the wrong track at the very beginning and he can't stop, he just has to keep on going.”

It was in order to stop him before it was too late that Miriam, who detested rows, had deliberately created this one, but as her father turned away from her, back to his wife again, she knew that so far as Charles Drake was concerned she had accomplished nothing. He had already gone so far that no one else could stop him either.

X

The managing editor of the Montreal
Post
was a slight, grey-haired man in his early forties, with small, unusually white hands, a soft voice, and a fondness for light grey suits, grey ties, and suede shoes. Nobody liked him, but he was recognized as exceptionally capable, and by and large, Erica reflected as zshe sat facing him across his desk, waiting for the verdict, and compared to the other
Post
employees of whom it was generally said that they learned more in less time and were fired faster than the employees of any other paper in the country, she herself had had a fairly easy time of it, chiefly because she was a Drake and Mr. Prescott was a snob.

This morning, however, Mr. Prescott was in one of his subtle moods. He had said nothing so far, he had merely regarded her rather curiously across the desk, listened to what she had to say, and then swung around so that he could look out the window and watch some pigeons on a nearby roof. She realized that she might have approached him more tactfully, instead of having come straight to the point, but during the past three years of war she had been gradually losing interest in the Woman's Section of the
Post
, and during the past six years, she had become thoroughly tired of being tactful with Mr. Prescott, who demanded the utmost tact from his staff, and then invariably walked all over them anyway.

He said at last, “You'd be away three days in the middle of next week, then, wouldn't you?” and then remarked vaguely, “By the way, one or two of the boys seem to think you're a member of the Guild ...”

“Yes,” said Erica. She had joined the Guild on the 20th of June, and unless Mr. Prescott was slipping badly, he had found out within something more like three hours than three months. Evidently he was leading up to something.

“We're not much in favour of it, of course.”

There was another pause, and finally Erica suggested that the three days be counted as part of her holidays.

“Yes, we might do that,” he said, and then added, “I'll just ask Miss Munroe to come in and give Miss Arnold a hand while you're gone.”

So it was Miss Munroe again. “I beg your pardon?” said Erica innocently. “I'm afraid I don't quite remember who ...”

“My niece,” said Mr. Prescott coldly.

“Oh, yes, you said something about her in July, didn't you? It seems hardly worthwhile to bring your niece in for just three days, though ...”

“No, it doesn't, does it?”

Erica said nothing. They had been over all this before, but she knew that Mr. Prescott could not manoeuvre his niece into Sylvia's job without her consent, and Mr. Prescott knew that she knew it. Although the managing editor of the
Post
went in for hiring relatives, the owner of the
Post
did not, and furthermore, the owner of the
Post
was a friend of Charles Drake's. Although Erica had never yet made use of that friendship, still it might come in handy as a last resort. Mr. Prescott knew that too.

On the other hand, Erica thought, if she did go directly to the owner of the paper in order to out-manoeuvre Mr. Prescott, the managing editor would think up some reason for firing her in fairly short order, and the Guild could do nothing about it, because most of the men on the
Post
, which was supposed to be pro-Labour in its editorial policy, were too frightened to join. But what difference does it make? Erica asked herself wearily. She was not only tired of being tactful with Mr. Prescott, she was tired of Mr. Prescott.

“There's a certain amount of give-and-take in any job,” said Mr. Prescott, in the same tone in which he reminded his staff from time to time that they should regard themselves simply as one big happy family. “Have you any particular reason for wanting to go away next week?”

“Yes. My fiancé is going overseas.”

“I see.”

After waiting for him to say something else, Erica got up. She said coolly, “As I have no intention of resigning from the Guild or of permitting Miss Arnold to be fired in order to make room for Miss Munroe, I think the simplest thing for me to do is to resign from my own job. Then Miss Arnold can take over from me, your niece can take over from Miss Arnold — and I'll have my three days' holiday.”

It was the first time that she had ever seen the managing editor really startled. He looked up at her, obviously taken aback, and then finally recovering himself, he said, “A rather expensive holiday, isn't it?”

“I don't think so.”

Mr. Prescott was strong on clichés. Presumably in order to be able to make the speech about watching her future career with considerable interest, he asked, “Have you any other job in mind?”

“Not at the moment,” said Erica, and then discovered when she was halfway to the door that all the time she had been wondering how she was going to manage after Marc left, she had had another job in mind without fully realizing it. Now that she was finished with the Post, there was nothing to stop her from joining up. In the Army, they don't give you time to think, or at least not during the basic training period anyhow, and by the time that was over, she would have had a chance to get used to things.

Back in her office again, she sat down at her desk by the window and opening the top drawer in which she had left a package of cigarettes, she announced to Sylvia and Weathersby, “I've resigned.”

“Congratulations,” said Weathersby.

Sylvia stopped typing in the middle of a word and asked, “Are you serious, Eric?”

“Yes, I'm leaving on Monday.”

“But why?”

“I didn't feel like making a deal with Mr. Prescott.” Opening another drawer in which she was certain that she had not left her package of cigarettes, she added, “It was sort of suggested that one good turn deserves another, and that if I wanted three days off in the middle of the week, I ought to be more reasonable on the subject of Mr. Prescott's niece.”

“Her again,” said Weathersby, groaning. “Have you ever seen her, Eric?”

“No, what's she like?”

“Dumb,” said Weathersby. “They don't come any dumber.”

“Does that mean that she's coming in here?” asked Sylvia incredulously.

“It means that she gets your job and you get mine.”

“And what about you?”

“Oh, me,” said Erica, abandoning the search through her desk drawers and starting to look among the litter on her desk. “I'm going to join the Canadian Women's Army Corps. Bubbles, have you taken my cigarettes again?”

“They were going stale,” said Weathersby defensively.

“I've only been gone a quarter of an hour. They couldn't go stale that fast. Here, hand them over.”

He recovered the package from underneath his typewriter and tossed it across to her. It missed her desk and as she stooped over to pick it up from the floor, she muttered resentfully, “And out of my desk drawer too. You never used to snitch them unless they were lying on top. It's about time I resigned, I can't afford to keep us both in cigarettes. Have we got any matches, Sylvia?”

“No, but your lighter's working. I got it filled yesterday.”

“Thanks, darling.”

“Eric,” said Sylvia after a pause.

“Yes?”

“What do they do about leaves if you're married to someone in the Army?”

“Who?”

“The cwac.”

“I think they arrange it so that you have your leaves together. Don't they, Bubbles?”

Weathersby grunted.

“I suppose he means yes,” said Erica, “and Bubbles knows everything, even if he has no manners, and is under the peculiar delusion that it is his duty to smoke other peoples' cigarettes in order to keep them from going stale.”

“Do you mind if I join up with you?”

“Mind!” repeated Erica in amazement. “Darling, would you?”

She had had one week of marriage which had ended three days before when Mike had gone off to camp; they had been the longest and emptiest three days that Sylvia had ever lived through, and she said, “Yes,” adding more definitely, “Yes, I would.”

There was a kind of explosion from Weathersby who demanded, as soon as he could talk again, “And who gets out the Woman's Section of the
Post
, may I ask?”

“You do,” said Erica and Sylvia together.

“You and Mr. Prescott's niece,” said Sylvia.

“Are you really serious, Sylvia?” asked Erica.

“Why not?” She looked across at Erica and said, “I'd have joined up long ago, I guess, if it hadn't been for leaving Mike. Besides, I didn't much like the idea of doing it alone, but now he's left me and I won't be doing it alone — so why not?” she asked again, shrugging. “We're sort of used to each other and we get along awfully well ...”

“My gosh, yes,” said Erica.

“Then let's stick together.”

“Leaving me holding the bag with Mr. Prescott's niece,” said Weathersby, brooding. “But I'll catch up with you,” he said, pointing a finger at them. “Six months and I'll be old enough for the Air Force. Did I ever tell you that my brother got the D.F.C. and bar?”

“You've told us about the D.F.C. several times,” said Sylvia, “but I don't think you've ever mentioned the bar. Has he ever mentioned the bar, Eric?”

“I don't think so,” said Erica, after due reflection.

“You may now tell us about the bar, Bubbles,” said Sylvia.

“Oh, shut up,” said Weathersby. “Women,” he said resentfully. “Women. I've had enough women around here to last me the rest of my life.”

“Speaking of women,” remarked Sylvia, returning to work. “How's your mother's jelly?”

“She still sets it with wax!” said Weathersby hotly.

Erica and Sylvia started to laugh. They went on laughing for a while and finally Erica said, “Well, it's almost over, Sylvia, but we've had an awful lot of fun.”

“Yes,” said Sylvia. Glancing first at Erica, who was rolling a fresh sheet of copy paper into her typewriter, with a light from the window behind her falling on her long fair hair and around her tired, sensitive face, and then at Weathersby in his corner, growling as he embarked on still another account of a wedding, she said again, “Yes, we've had a lot of fun.”

Back at work herself, she asked absently after a pause, “What was the bride wearing this time, Bubbles?”

“
Mousseline de soie
,” said Weathersby. “If I'm ever dope enough to get married, my wife is going to be ‘radiant in her grandmother's bathing suit,' God damn it. Anything for a little variety.”