The Master of Happy Endings (18 page)

He'd suggested the simple plot might have been inspired by the story of the abandoned Lena Grove in a William Faulkner novel, though the three main roles could have been modelled on characters in Chaucer's
Troilus and Cressida
. The title encouraged this, though the story was set in modern-day Nebraska. It was as though Cressida had returned to Troy after the end of the poem and discovered that Troilus was not dead after all, as he was in the Chaucer, but was no longer interested in the woman who'd betrayed him. Naturally, Pandarus, who had assisted the love affair in spite of his own interest in Cressida, would be willing to act on her behalf again, though with better hopes this time for himself.

To take on the role of the jailbird husband, Topolski was willing to put aside his daily role as the expensively dressed future duke temporarily teaching high school French. But he was critical of Thorstad's casting of the minor characters—convinced he'd assigned the role of Clarissa Alvarez to the school secretary, for instance, simply because he felt sorry for her after the breakup with a boyfriend. He accused Thorstad of trying to make everyone happy. “This will drive you crazy. It isn't in your
power
to make everyone's life turn out the way they want.”

He'd expressed this opinion over a dinner prepared by Thorstad's mother, who explained that her son was like his father in this regard. “A happy man himself, he had a compulsion to make others happy as well.” According to her, he would stop for every flat tire or car-in-trouble, and wouldn't give up until he'd helped to make things right. Once, when he was about to fly east to visit his folks, he'd given up his seat to a young man who would otherwise miss his girlfriend's birthday.

“Your son,” Topolski said, flashing his on-off smile, “confuses teaching with sainthood. What he needs is a dose of Barry Foster's cynicism to keep him in balance. Like an inoculation, before it's too late.” It had probably not occurred to his mother to wonder what Topolski meant by “too late.”

He could remember Oonagh raising her glass and showing every tooth to the world. “It's neither too late nor too early to toast ourselves, my darlings.” She was wearing a black silk dress with a low neck, a white rose tucked into the left side of her gleaming dark hair. And large silver earrings. Half a century had gone by since then and yet he could still hear her voice. “Here's to a production that makes stars of us all! Either that, or scandalizes the population so profoundly that we're run out of town!”

Directly below, at the foot of these wooden steps, was the little cove where he set out each morning for his swim. Shallow waves raced shoreward into the narrowing wedge of bay until they were confused into a turmoil by earlier waves thrown back by impact with the worn-smooth embankment of stone. Ropes of seaweed swirled in winking foam. At this time of year you had to be grateful for the lengthening daylight. No doubt the longer days and improved weather would be welcomed by the people sleeping in parks and alleys and down on the rocky beach as well— a small, temporary mercy in lives of discomfort and hunger.

You had to wonder how tutoring a wealthy family's son in Los Angeles measured up against staying to volunteer in Travis's stead, helping to bring a little comfort and companionship to some of those difficult lives. An ordinary heart could possibly break from the effort. How many of those desperate souls could expect or even hope to be rescued one day from their need for that shelter? Of course you had to wonder, too, how many had, like Angus Walker, fled from jobs that would at least have kept a roof over their heads.

The world had destroyed any number of young teachers before they'd managed to find their feet. Yet, miraculously, it seemed, young Axel Thorstad had known by January of that first year that he would be one of those who survived. Parents had begun to stop him in shops and on the streets of town to tell him how pleased they were with what they were hearing at home. Students, too, were friendly outside of school, some of them offering assistance if he should need it—“I work at my dad's service station, so any time you want a cheap oil change!”

Though Oonagh seemed capable of walking into a classroom without a moment's preparation and pulling off a raucous but unforgettable lesson, at one of their earliest play readings she'd expressed her admiration for what she was hearing about Axel Thorstad's classes: the city mayor involved in a rehearsal for a student-written scene; a school board member participating in a debate on dress codes (“Should jeans be allowed in school?”); the newspaper editor listening while a bunch of sixteen-year-olds told him how to improve his paper. “Good lord, Thorstad! If you insist on being so innovative you may find yourself promoted to administration and forbidden to do anything innovative at all!”

How eagerly he'd absorbed her praise! In the company of Topolski and Oonagh Farrell he had almost believed he might become, one day, as unique and amusing and perhaps even as attractive as they.

Once the air had begun to cool he returned to the guest house where he kicked off his shoes and went about in his long blue socks to turn on some lights. Because of the tall firs and arbutus trees, the lowering evening sun barely entered these rooms. He boiled water in the electric kettle and poured it over a tea bag dropped into a mug. He found a classical music station on the little radio and, sitting sideways on the thickly upholstered couch, stretched out his legs and crossed his feet on the armrest, and sipped his tea while a British orchestra played Sibelius's lively
Karelia Suite
. His cello, no doubt glaring at him from within its case, wondered when he intended to replace those strings. Travis's history text was within reach though not a serious temptation.

Would he have met with Oonagh Farrell and Topolski by the time he returned from California? He could not recall seeing Topolski mentioned in the magazines. If Andrzej Topolski was there with Oonagh he would take control of their itinerary, perhaps arrange for a camping trip into the southern California mountains. Of course, Topolski would have to be into his eighties by now, and probably no longer up for strenuous hikes.

It was Topolski who'd taken command of their weekends during the early spring, before the play rehearsals took over their after-school lives. He'd driven them out of town to canoe around Cameron Lake, to climb partway up Mount Arrowsmith, and to walk the beaches south of Port Renfrew. Oonagh, Barry Foster, and Thorstad. He had a way of making even a hike in an old-growth forest as civilized as an excursion of aristocrats in pastoral Europe. He brought silver cutlery, a set of china dishes, and wine, as well as a tablecloth to lay out on the ground once it had been swept clear of fir cones and fallen branches. There was no “roughing it” with him, who gave the impression he had been sent into this rugged world to teach the locals how to live a life of “quality.”

But when their duke-in-waiting began to spend his weekends with a wealthy widow in Vancouver and Barry Foster started working Saturdays for a car sales company, Oonagh and Thorstad had been left to spend their days off on their own. They dined at Nicolino's and sometimes went to a movie afterwards. They drove to the Cowichan Valley to buy fresh vegetables for a meal in either Oonagh's kitchen or his mother's. They fell into the habit of holding hands while exploring the markets, possibly to keep from losing one another in the crowds.

He'd spent so much of his growing-up years in the local pool that he'd had little experience with romance. During high school he'd had crushes on certain girls, and had later dated Lorraine Wooldridge from White Rock for much of his fourth year at university, but nothing had prepared him for either the frightening attentions of Cindy Miller or the extraordinary magnetism of Oonagh Farrell.

He remembered her now as clever, beautiful, unpredictable, and of course loud. He had never before met anyone so confident of her charms and at the same time so casual about them. When she'd sashayed down that Hollywood street waving to the strangers who believed she was Yvonne De Carlo, he'd known that he was in danger of falling in love with someone who would belong in a foreign world.

He wondered now, as he'd wondered then, how it was that he had her company so often to himself. Why would such a vivacious beauty not be surrounded by men competing for her attention? Possibly, there was something about her that conveyed a sense of the extraordinary future she would eventually achieve in a world that would not include any man she might meet in this one.

During the Easter break, the two of them set off with tents and ice chests and sleeping bags in the trunk of his Pontiac, to zigzag on dusty switchbacks up the side of one mountain after another and then to descend several hours later upon the long sandy beaches of the central west coast. For several days they would have an entire world of ocean, tide pools, driftwood, and wilderness to themselves.

Before going down onto the sand to set up their tents, Oonagh was distracted by the row of summer cabins overlooking the beach, separated from one another by stands of stunted spruce. She was especially intrigued by a birdcage sort of structure painted red, with a wraparound veranda and a glassed-in second storey with a look-out gallery cut into the veranda roof. “Test the lock, Thorstad. Let's have a look inside.”

He had never knowingly done anything illegal in his life. Still, when the door would not give way, he found an unlocked window and pried it open, then crawled through to open the door from the inside. They held hands as they might if they'd been children exploring the home of a dangerous witch. They climbed the staircase to the second floor to admire the ocean view, and peered through a powerful telescope set up to observe whatever ships might pass on the endless sea, or, he supposed, to admire summer visitors out on this wide expanse of sand.

When they'd returned to the main floor they'd visited the bedrooms—one and then the other—both with unpainted walls, thumb-tacked marine maps, chests of drawers, and tattered mattresses stripped of sheets and blankets. “It would be a helluva lot more comfortable in here than out in our tents,” she said. “There's a cold wind in off that sea.”

Of course he'd believed she was joking.

“Well, why not?” she said. “Live dangerously for once!”

She could not have imagined the danger there was in this for him.

Because she had not moved away when he'd inadvertently pressed closer than he'd intended, it seemed natural to put a hand to her chin, turn her towards him, and, since she had still not stepped away, to lean down and kiss her. A tentative kiss, he supposed it was now, and a little timid. But apparently it was not unwelcome.

“Axel Thorstad,” she said, stepping back and taking hold of both his hands. “A man of surprises.” She beamed up at him, all her perfect teeth displayed.

He bent to kiss her again, much longer this time, while she murmured something amused against his mouth but did not pull away. He was aware of the mysterious scent she always wore, the strawberry taste of her mouth, the sleek shine of her dark Irish hair, and his own body responding in its involuntary way. Raising a hand to either side of her face, he walked her backward to the couch where she stumbled and pulled him down with her so that they both collapsed along its length, the rough upholstery emitting a gust of musty-smelling air. But the couch could not accommodate his long body, and he found himself with one leg wedged in beside her and the other kneeling on the linoleum floor. When his attempt to straighten himself out caused her to bump her head on the wooden arm of the couch, she yelped, and struggled out from beneath him. Laughing. “My God! Where has this wild man
been
?”

“Don't move,” he eventually said, and ran back through the woods to his car and brought the ice chest and their camp stove to the cabin while she laughed at his frantic industry. He went out again and came back with their sleeping bags and tossed his own rolled-up bag onto the bare mattress of the front bedroom. Then, light-headed at his own daring, he unrolled her bag and prepared to toss it onto the bed as well, but stood holding his breath instead—probably the clumsiest invitation in the history of the sexes.

Had he been, at twenty-two, as mindlessly ravenous as the adolescents reeking of hormones in the back-row desks? Was this how she had seen him? If she had, she was kind enough not to show it. “Oh hell.” She stood up from the couch and put a hand on his arm. “Axel Axel Axel! Shoot! I can be so
thick
! I wouldn't have suggested breaking in if I'd imagined—”

He was quick to prevent an end to that sentence. “That's okay.” Though of course it hadn't been okay at all.

Still, she'd put her face against his chest and wrapped her arms around his ribs and held him tight. “Ummmmm,” she said. “A good man smell. Come back to the couch. We don't have to go whole hog just because of a little smooching! I was rather enjoying myself till you tried to give me a concussion on that stupid arm!” The little beach house threw back echoes of her wonderful laugh.

Amazingly, they had not been caught by the owners during their six days in the house. When the weather was fine they'd spent hours exploring the beach, and occasionally ran into the water for a difficult swim in the giant waves. They'd built bonfires and cooked their meals over the flames, and then had returned to their bedrooms with the marine maps on the unpainted walls, where he lay awake imagining that she was waiting beyond the wall for him to get up and go to her, and yet knew that she was not.

He could still recall Andrzej Topolski's reaction when he learned of their holiday. The Polish Prince became the disapproving older brother. Thorstad ought to have known better, he said, than to behave like a teenager sneaking off for a dirty weekend. He should not have exposed Oonagh to the kind of gossip she would be subjected to if certain people found out. In this small town, they could both be stripped of their jobs. He knew this had happened to others.