Goya'S Dog (27 page)

There was a round bedside table on the other side of the bed, with a black telephone.

“And what about a hot-water bottle?”

Burner looked frightened at Dacres, who was padding backwards out of the room.

“There's no need to call Doctor Willis then,” said Darly, aiding, in control.

Burner shook his head tentatively.

“Just stay with me a little, Dotty,” he said.

At the door, Dacres watched. It was like a scene enacted on a tapestry.

That night she took him out on to the terrace and asked him how he was and Dacres asked about Burner. She told him there was nothing to worry about. They sat in the gloom at the long summer table covered in abandoned leaves and sticky sap. It was strange to be outside, it was strange to see the evening approach. Darly said she didn't want to smoke but then changed her mind and they passed a cigarette back and forth. Her father worked at an urgent pitch, Darly said. Dacres didn't doubt her: her tone was simple, firm, a little strong, a little sad. He regretted that she had to mother everyone—who mothered her?—and told her he was improving all the time. She said that Stanley drove himself too hard and then when he burst he had to cease all operations for twenty-four hours, or forty-eight. Then he was a dynamo again and they never mentioned his little interludes. It was only every few months that it happened, which wasn't so bad. She'd heard of an executive, an important man in the country, who had a suite reserved at the Royal York year-round. He would disappear there for a week at a time, in order to drink. He kept a nurse on hand at the bedside, she said, appalled. Dacres thought of the Hotel Acton. He regretted all he'd told Burner; any kind of confession was shameful. He put it out of mind.

She was silent, pensive; his mind wandered. He was trying not to think, trying not to seem too well. She stood, walked to the edge, bent down—watching her, something in him stirred and moaned—and stubbed the cigarette out on the brickwork.

“Thank you for sitting with him,” she said. “God knows you have problems of your own.”

“I did nothing. It was all you.”

“It's just what I have to do, really. Mostly we care for each other. He lets me have my way,” she said ruefully. “But then he lays down
certain rules for me. About the biggest things in my life.”

Dacres waited, feeling gentle.

“I shouldn't talk about myself,” she said. “I heard what you told him.”

Did you.

“I'm sorry,” she added quietly. “You must have suffered so much. Your friend, I mean. To lose someone you love. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.”

He said, “You're really very special, Darly.”

She told him she was not.

Darly looked in on him when she could but she was in the last weeks of her university education, and had various social obligations, as well as serving on a ball committee, helping the indigent and infirm, volunteering with the IODE and Junior League, going to her choir rehearsals, and seeing Lorne. When Burner was not at the plant he was required in Ottawa, or at a hospital board AGM, or a yacht club reception, or the building site that would soon be Lorne and Darly's home, or at a lodge meeting, or something called “The Men of the Forest.” So for a few days more Dacres had time to himself, to husband his energies, to become well.

Perhaps he had never been so idle. He seldom woke before ten. After tea and crumpets in bed, grudgingly served by Mildred, he lay in the tub. Sometimes while imagining Darly in classical poses (and berating himself, mildly, for doing so) he dozed off. Later, dressed and dry, he would look out over the garden and make sure it was all still there. He went down to the cool kitchens to demand, say,
crêpes de rillettes de veau avec champignons
for lunch, to infuriate Mildred. Once he told her that the West had traded with the Orient for spices for five centuries: it was a dreadful shame to live in ignorance of them; she pursed her lips white. Then he made a point of not leaving, sitting down on a wooden stool instead and baiting the cat. After their little
chats he'd go back up the stone stairs whistling, feeling more zestful and vibrant. And after lunch he would challenge himself to a game of billiards or solitaire, or watch Goucher dig up the flowerbeds, until it was time for his nap.

When it was warm enough, he sat outside in a Bath chair, on the terrace where he'd spoken with Darly that night, with an old tartan blanket across his knees. It crossed his mind once that there were genuine invalids in this city, veterans, blind men and cripples, men who sold newspapers and matchsticks on street corners—not to mention the future veterans also, the boys in all the schools. Not to mention what he'd seen of his host: to think of that again made Dacres shiver. But he smoothed the thought down, the way that Mildred smoothed down the tablecloth before serving. He read the newspaper page by page, as was his wont: Heliconian Club announcements to RAF promotions to furniture advertisements. It wanted to talk about the destructive power of mechanized infantry—but again, he brushed such words out of his head, and they dropped between the paving stones to be carried off by ants and forgotten.

Perhaps he'd hated Canada so much, he reflected, because he'd been living badly, among the poor and irretrievable. Five square meals a day and a good dose of
dolce far niente
might yet make him change his mind.

A fellow could get used to this, Dacres thought.

There was a knock on the door and Dacres looked up from his sleepy book—Turgenev, taken from Burner's library, he was cutting the pages. He also had one of Darly's university primers unopened at his feet:
Great Men in History
.

Darly looked in and told him lunch was nearly ready.

“The famous Sunday roast,” said Dacres.

“Mildred's specialty.”

Halfway down the stairs she turned and put a finger to her lips, and like children they padded down the rest of the way silently.

“I want to hear if he's talking about me,” she whispered.

“Who?” Dacres said, too loud, and she shushed him again.

She silhouetted herself against the white wall to creep along sideways like an Arabian thief. Dacres walked along, taking a step, then pausing, then a step.

“No, he's just a little shrimp,” they heard from the sitting room. “He didn't put up a struggle.”

Laughter.

The loud and self-amused voice went on, “See, he probably quite enjoyed it in his way.”

“Probably. We all used to.” This sounded like Stanley, all well. “I mean we all used to do it.” The first voice was brighter and louder; Dacres thought it had to be Lorne's.

“So the lads got up early on Wednesday to teach him a lesson and tied him to the bed with his luggage straps, so that in the morning when he missed roll call—” then Lorne had to stop because they were both laughing. “So when he missed roll call, imagine. On report, Shebsky.”

“Shebsky?”

“The sergeant wants to be rid of him. Can barely wait. Little shrimp.”

“Of course,” said Burner. “Of course of course.”

Dacres wanted to ask Darly what the hell the men were talking about. They heard the florid tinkle of ice in glasses. She was ahead of him, her hand was flat against the wall, and his was an inch from the draping lilac silk that hung from the waistline of her dress. When Lorne wasn't talking he could hear her breathe.

“Cheers, Lorne,” said Burner, and Lorne cheered him back.

“We had pranks in the rugby club too,” said Lorne. “But this is better. Like when we locked Harry Sidgwick up in the trunk with all the dirty uniforms the whole ride back from Port Hope. You should have heard him banging!”

Burner laughed.

“Turns out he was claustrophobic,” Lorne added reflectively.

“He was what?” Dacres said, and Darly hushed him urgently.

“Luckily he banged his head and lost consciousness.”

Dacres's muscles were starting to itch. It was hard to stand so still.

“But you'll soon be rid of your chap?” Burner was asking.

“He's just a pigeon-chest little Jew. Came up from Baltimore to sign up. He's a Yank. Claims to have been born in Sydney, however. You have good strong lads dropping everything to sign up and they get turned down because of bad teeth or whatnot, and then this little shrimp … still … Stanley—how's your five wood? All better now?”

“I want to break that club in two.” They laughed together, again. “American, you say?”

“Well he says he was born here.”

“Oh, Miss!” said Mildred. She'd almost dropped a silver tray of very white, very tiny sandwiches.

Darly flushed and smoothed her dress down and went into the sitting room, leaving Dacres behind. Mildred glared, her face like an iron. He made the sign of the cross and followed Darly. The men were still animated by their good humour, and Lorne had Darly wrapped up in one arm, her head under his chin like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He was calling her “Dolly.”

“How are you, Dacres,” said Lorne, looking down at him, extending a hand.

What he liked about Darly, Dacres was thinking, looking from face to face, were the contrasts. Her hair was a shining dark black, but her skin was pale, with little rosebush capillaries too close to the surface, like something out of van Dyck. And then her eyes were etched, almost too sharp: and yet her expression was rarely anything but gentle. It all meant she looked different each time; it made her hard to place. Whereas her father represented unity: he was well-fed, his bald head was round and bright, his beard greying and a little curly. Moods exuded from him. Lorne, thought Dacres, looking over: poor Lorne's big plastery features made him look like a clown dressed up as Philip IV.

Lunch had been recently purchased from a local tannery, Dacres surmised. Burner sat at the head of the table, chewing. Darly was on his right, Lorne across from her, leaving Dacres to stretch the triangle into a rhombus and feel permanently like the extra man. He slid buttered green beans around his plate. Between potatoes, Lorne was talking about the boat he'd built the previous summer. Dacres leaned forward and with masochistic pleasure asked Lorne to tell him about it in much more detail, so he could understand. Eventually Lorne broke off and asked Dacres: “Have you ever built anything?”

“Yes, Dacres,” seconded Burner. “What are your hobbies?”

“Morbid self-obsession.”

“Sorry?”

“Nothing,” Dacres muttered, fixated on his plate.

“We have to keep you busy,” Burner said. Was it the same man Dacres had counselled, under the covers?

“There's always Proust, I suppose.”

“Did you say Proust?” Darly asked seriously.

“Do what?” said Lorne.

“It doesn't matter,” Dacres said abruptly, all of a sudden a surly child.

“But what do you do with your hands?” Burner asked again.

Dacres didn't want to answer that one.

There were flowers on the china, under the food. Lorne shovelled a final serving into his mouth and as he chewed he said, “Here's a hobby: I know a chap who jumps horses. But hear this: one over the other.”

“He does what?” said Darly, laughing. “Who?” She pushed her plate forward to hear.

“Dunlop's uncle. You have one horse standing here, like so, ready, and the other horse runs towards it, like so.” He put his knife and fork down and his hands modelled the movements. “And it approaches and then just as they're head-to-head, like moose running at each other,
one-two-three hup
, he leaps, and over he goes.”

They all gasped.

“Great trick,” Lorne grinned.

“That's ridiculous,” said Dacres automatically, as Burner asked how old the horses were.

“What?” said Lorne happily.

“Nothing,” Dacres replied.

“No what—tell me.”

Dacres spoke, chin in his shoulder, looking at something very dark and green and wet in the salad.

“It's just that it's impossible. A horse can't jump another horse.” “Oh? Why not?”

Lorne leaned back from the table, comfortable.

“Well it can't.”

“Yes, but why ever not, Dacres?”

“Yes, why Edward?”

Dacres suddenly wasn't sure but he went on regardless: “If they were perpendicular, then of course. Or if one lies down. But lengthwise? It's absurd.”

“Well I saw him do it, actually.”

“You saw it.”

“I saw it.”

Now they stared at each other, levelly.

Dacres snorted. “What's it called, Pegasus?” He turned to Darly and then Burner. His elbows were on the table now and his hands made a church steeple above his plate.

“I remember now,” said Lorne: “You're a wit.”

“It's a simple matter of equine anatomy,” Dacres said knowledgeably.

“What do you know about equine anatomy?” Lorne replied.

“More than you: I studied Reynolds.”

“Well, listen: I've seen it done. Have you ever ridden a horse?”