Joshua Then and Now (57 page)

“Well now, time for Jack to quit school. Right? I worked as an office boy. I took correspondence courses. I worked here. I worked
there. And, in 1942, I got a job as a curb-service waiter at Miss Montreal. Remember it? The first drive-in on the strip. The Jewish kids used to drive out there in Daddy’s black-market Buick. Outremont punks. Big tippers, though. Then the real McGill crowd. The quality. McTeer. Tim Hickey. Dickie Abbott and Wendy. The beautiful Pauline Hornby. Kevin in that
MG
. The outrageous Jane Mitchell. Yeah that’s right. I knew them back then. Not to speak to, mind you, but to serve. Two Michigan Red Hots and fries? Yes, sir. Four burgers dressed and coffees? Coming right up, sir. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. Once I caught Kevin and Jane doing some heavy necking in the MG. They were loaded, both of them, and he had one hand on her bare tit and the other under her dress. I came up with the order and they didn’t even bother to stop. Me, I blushed. I was terribly embarrassed. But they didn’t stop. I was no better than a nigger for them,” he cried, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Who had to be ashamed? They didn’t see me. I didn’t exist.”

Trimble wiped his nose on his sleeve and reached for the bottle again.

“Fuck it. It was the army and off to war for Jack Trimble. Only I wasn’t going to be anybody’s batman. I joined the ordnance corps and it was up through the ranks and even into officer’s training school once they began to run short of properly born second lieutenants after Normandy. I found out that in class-ridden England, I was not only acceptable to middle-class girls, they found me attractive. I had money. I wore two bars on my shoulder. Then three. Captain Trimble. When we were demobbed, I didn’t go home. No more Point for me, thank you very much. I took up my
DVA
education grant and entered the University of Leeds. Redbrick. Just my style. From there it was Lloyd’s and then Warburg’s. I learned German. I studied French. I was a hotshot. I had the touch. Money stuck to me. But those
Gazette
society pages were still burning holes in my head. ‘Mrs. Angus Mitchell of Westmount and Georgeville …’

“I figured out that if I was going to have everything, it would only have meaning for me in provincial fucking Montreal, where I had never had anything. I didn’t get a charge out of having my hair cut at Simpson’s. I didn’t give a shit about eating at the Savoy Grill. I wanted to send the wine back in our very own Ritz-Carlton. I dreamed of it. I could taste it. I was leading a good life. I had lots of girls. South Ken pussy, Belgravia pussy. I had it all. But damn it to hell,” he shouted, “you are looking at the man who was going to get his dirty fingernails under Jane Mitchell’s skirts. She would see me. I existed. I was going to ram it up her ass and make her howl for more. She was going to take my barber boy’s Point St. Charles cock into that well-bred mouth and choke on it.”

“Obviously,” Joshua said, “you were in love.”

“O.K., I pretended to be British.
Why not?
In those days if you were a tea boy at Barclay’s over there, you could come to Canada and get to be president of the Royal. If it was British, we were impressed; if it was Canadian, it was shit. I got myself established here easily enough, and one day I was invited to a cocktail party at the British Trade Commissioner’s residence and there she was, Jane Mitchell, the family fortune exhausted, her long romance with Kevin Hornby kaput. I wined her. I dined her. Café Martin. Drury’s. The Ritz. You name it. But there’s something I want to make clear. If she had a bun in the oven when we were married – and it’s true enough – nobody was taking me for a sucker. Charlie’s my son,” he said, beginning to weep again. “No matter what she says now. You just look at him. You look at me. He’s my son.”

“But I’ve never heard otherwise,” Joshua said, surprised.

“Yeah,” he said dubiously, reaching for the bottle. And his voice softer now, a spent force, he said, “I still serve, but now I exist. I manage their portfolios for them. I make those wankers pots of money so now they sure as hell know who I am. They come into my office,
they
grovel. They adore my parties. I put out a better barbecue
than anybody else on the lake. I’m not going to carry the can for Kevin’s fancy footwork. I’m not to blame if he turned out a coward. I didn’t run his airplane into Owl’s Head.”

“Why did you set him up?” Joshua asked.

“I most certainly did not,” Trimble protested.

Joshua had already spoken to Dickie Abbott.

“As far as I can make out,” Abbott had said wearily, “and I’m telling you this ‘without prejudice,’ as I’m bound to say, they were screwing each other. In my opinion, they were both lying. But now Jack will come out of it clean, if not exactly smelling clean. It will take years to unravel.”

Watching Trimble closely, Joshua said, “I’ll tell you what happened. You were in deep trouble on the market last summer, and then you found out about Jane taking up with Kevin again in Bermuda. So you decided to have your cake and eat it too. You would cover your ass and make Kevin the patsy. Right?”

“You’re out of your mind, you crazy fool!”

“Possibly it didn’t occur to you until you drove back early from Montreal that day and saw them going at it together in the boathouse.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t entirely blame you, all things considered. But neither do I believe you.”

“Jane may fool around. O.K., everybody’s after her, she’s so gorgeous, and she’s a bit of a flirt. But she always comes back to me, because I’m the only one who can satisfy her. Dickie Abbott is a premature ejaculator, did you know that?”

“For God’s sake, Jack, why don’t you leave her? She’s such a bitch.”

“Now you watch it there. You watch what you’re saying. I’m not leaving her, she’s not leaving me. We’re going to open the house for the summer. We’re going to have our regular Sunday barbecues. Everybody will come, you’ll see. And we’re going to have dinner parties again. I’ve made Jane the leading hostess on this lake. We
were in the
Gazette
, the social pages. You must have seen the story. And I’m more of a man than anybody here, including you. She told me that night at your house that she found out you were thirty seconds of action and an hour of apology. We have nothing to be ashamed of. Kevin ran it. The whole show.”

Leaning on his cane, Joshua walked to the window, his back to the raging Trimble.

“I gave him a chance when none of his so-called friends would touch him with a barge-pole. And let me tell you something. If he had had to serve a year or two in the pokey, you are looking at the man who would have hired him again, no matter what.”

But Joshua wasn’t listening any more. His heart was soaring. He felt himself quivering all over. My God, but she was out there, at the bottom of the hill. Pauline was in the vegetable garden. A fork in her hand.

“Coral will be wound up by the receivers and I will do my bloody best to minimize everybody’s losses. Kevin wouldn’t have wanted his friends to suffer financially.”

“Go now. Please go, Jack.”

He could see the children approaching her. Tentatively.

“What?”

“Will you please get the hell out of here, Jack. Right now.” And he slipped out the side door, starting for the garden.

Joshua, leaning on his cane, met his father halfway down the hill to the vegetable garden. Joshua was descending, his step cautious; his father was coming up, the senator trailing a little behind.

“I once flinched from your kiss,” Joshua said.

“Did you?” Reuben asked, startled.

“Don’t you remember?”

“I guess I do. Josh, there’s something you got to know.”

“Isn’t she here to stay?” he demanded.

“Hold it. Don’t get excited. It wasn’t the morphine, Josh. You didn’t dream it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She came to the hospital more than once when you were there. I brought her.”

“You mean to say you knew where she was all this time?”

“Yeah, well, right.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Reuben took off his straw boater and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “I promised her not to say anything. She needed time to work things out. Well, now you know.”

“How could you do such a thing to me?”

“Well, you’re no longer all I’ve got. There are the kids now. There’s also Pauline. I was doing what I thought was best for everybody. What did Trimble have to say?”

“He had a stone in his shoe and he took it out himself.”

“Now, look here, she’s still rocky on the subject of Kevin. I want you to go careful. I want you to lie if necessary.”

“Don’t worry.”

The senator smiled shyly. “Everything is going to be fine,” he said.

Reuben was already whistling for the kids, collecting them under the cedar tree. “Well now,” he said, “the senator and I are going to take you to Magog for ice creams. How about that?”

The two old men continued down the road, the kids trailing after, and everybody piled into the Jeep. Reuben could see Joshua and Pauline in the vegetable garden. They weren’t embracing. He was touching her hair. Then, watching from the rear window of the moving Jeep, Reuben saw them start back for the house. Joshua wasn’t leaning on his cane. Pauline was supporting him. Well, yeah, right, he thought.

An excerpt from this novel originally appeared in
Playboy
magazine.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permssion to reprint previously published material: