Travelling Light (19 page)

We did not speak. What was there to say? We were on our way to — where exactly? Philadelphia? I stared at gas flares on the refineries. Across the river, the ribald lights of Wall Street were winking and making money, and on all twelve lanes of the magnificent highway, on access ramps and bridges, the glittering flow of thousands of headlights surrounded us, embracing us. I could feel my sinews beginning to relax. We were safe; we had gotten away with everything. We were safe at home in our beautiful country.

CUP OF
TEA

The river is frozen, I can see that. As the airplane taxis to the terminal I notice a pack of wolves frolicking on the runway, animals down from the north, famished. Welcome to Montreal, ferocious town. Welcome home. I am in from foreign parts and it is the third week of January. They said that my father is dying, that I must come quickly. But I hate winter.

He's in a private room in the Ross Pavilion of the Royal Victoria Hospital, and I aim to turn his last hours into a piece of writing; literature is to be my brilliant career, although it hasn't yet started and never does. All I ever am is the wary child of a great white, grizzled sea captain, the last Edwardian, at this moment snoozing in a hospital he isn't ever going to leave.

This city is grey, not charming, not
vivant.
Steep streets nasty with ice. Just inside the hospital's main door the Queen-Empress sits heavily on her throne, rings on her fingers, eyes blank as stone. The hospital so warped and warrened by overlapping reconstructions that first- and second-year medical students study maps while steering themselves from one era to another. It's Montreal, January, early 1980s. No acrobats in town, not yet; no Euro-clowns; months' worth of festivals as yet uninvented; and what I feel here, baby, is the cold.

He stirs, recognizes me, and insists that I check to see that his seabag is undisturbed in the closet. It is, and he orders me to start packing, for he has been in hospital long enough; he's bored and prepared to ship out. Sliding open the drawer in his bedside table, he displays a sheaf of passports along with his favourite chronometer. We can go anywhere, he declares, and there is plenty of time.

I live in a town on the beachy central coast of California, my own anti-Montreal. An excellent surfing break, sharks offshore, black cod, halibut, a shortage of safe anchorages, and no deepwater harbour. Oranges, Meyer lemons, and avocados fester in the backyards. I sail a pickup truck into a dusty zone beneath the freeway, and labourers scamper onboard and ride back to the house to eagerly gut the bathroom, lay sod, pick oranges, do anything asked, in return for meagre wages. This is horrid, I agree. Yes, this is exploitation. Not very Canadian at all. But I have never liked winter and won't pretend otherwise.

If we can't leave here in a taxi, he says, why, let's at least step down the hall and find ourselves a cup of tea, which he calls “tay,” an Irish pronunciation borrowed from the French. My father is — let's keep him in the present tense for the time being — a mariner. An old captain, a bucko seaman who has known many a storm and carried many a passport and now finds himself dying, just like everyone else, which is something of a surprise to both of us. He swings his lovely legs out of bed, for the first time in a week, his nurse admits. My father groans and whistles while I slide red leather slippers onto horny feet and help him into his seersucker dressing gown. He clutches my arm with some ferocity as we exit the death chamber and start tottering down the corridor to the solarium, where afternoon tea is being served. We can smell the buttered toast. How nice.

The sheaf of passports? My old man has travelled too far, past the point where he could ever return to good old Ireland, England, Germany, or even Brooklyn. Pack ice has closed in on my papa, snapped his vessel to splinters; he's another Franklin who has gotten hopelessly lost searching for the Northwest Passage, for the cheap route to China. Way back in November he was already eating his sled dogs, and they told me he would be chewing his boots in the waiting room at the radiation clinic, every second Thursday.

The dying man's voice is missing here. What about it, Dad? Do you hear wolves barking? Are you seeing everything? Are you snow-blind?

What I feel here, baby, is the cold. The father's dying stops the callow son the way missing an elevator does. It's nothing at all like getting on a plane and flying back to California. It's not like coming home to the sun.

TRAVELLING
LIGHT

Leaving Montreal, driving south for the border, he crosses the St. Lawrence on the Victoria Bridge. The convertible roof is down, the windows rolled up. It's night; it's August 1946. The war in Europe has been over for fifteen months.

He can smell the river, its salts and stinks. Irish navvies and Mohawks built this bridge in the 1860s. The Irish working low — dredging, ballast work — and the Indians working high — iron men, riveters. Looking up, he scans for ghosts walking the fretwork of iron beams.

The car chases the splash of its headlights. Tires sing on steel decking.

Driving south to see a woman. He is married, but she isn't his wife.

Anticipation, lust — he wouldn't be feeling such things if he were dead. No sense of speed if he were dead. No sense of time.

Only that morning he had decided to buy himself a car. His father had given him a cheque a week before. One thousand dollars. His weekly salary at the firm was seventy-five bucks.

“Buy a car. Do something lively! Take your wife to New York! Make her happy! And let me make a few telephone calls. It's August, almost too late, but still there's time. I have a few strings to pull, you know.”

Ever since he'd come back from the war, his father, Louis-Philippe Taschereau, KC, had been urging him to apply to the McGill law school, meanwhile paying him a salary to sit in the file room of his law office, proofreading documents.

“I don't understand you. You're not getting any younger. You're no kid!” When annoyed or impatient, Louis-Philippe tended to jump back and forth between languages. Having started in English, he now switched to French. “When I was your age,
mon dieu
,
I'd won some great cases! I'd argued before the Privy Council in London! I put vicious gangsters in jail — remember Buck Cohen? I sent men like that to their executions!”

“I remember you saying you admired Buck Cohen.”

Louis-Philippe raised extravagant eyebrows. “Not precisely.”

“At the dinner table. I remember, it was a Sunday night. They'd hung him at Bordeaux Jail the night before, just after the hockey game — Maroons versus the Canadiens
.
He had money riding on the game and you let him listen to it on the warden's radio.”

“He was a dangerous criminal, but he had certain qualities. A civilized man, meticulous even. And he understood very well the practice of affairs. In another realm he might have been a truly significant figure.”

Johnny tapped a cigarette on his wrist. “He
was
guilty, right?”

Louis-Philippe smiled. “I do believe you ought to have been one of those Jesuits. We began by discussing the difficulty you seem to be having settling down to a serious life; now we interrogate the condition of my soul. You would make a very effective lawyer.” He paused. “In any case, consider my profession. As Crown prosecutor, I sent men to their deaths. You might say I functioned as a professional killer. So, perhaps, did you.”

Louis-Philippe had never enquired about his war experiences. No one had. The war now seemed like a movie he'd watched with his nose five inches from the screen. He'd killed, participated in killings, but hadn't thought of killing Germans as killing people,
except once or twice.

“I wish to reorient our little talk,” Louis-Philippe said. “Is anything wrong with you, physically? Did you acquire any disease during the war?”

“What do you mean?”

“You are able to enjoy your wife?”

“Papa, you didn't used to talk such
merde
. Jesus. If you've got something to say, say it plain.”

Louis-Philippe nodded, then briskly proceeded to lay out his case. “Stop being a superior, snotty-nosed little Jesuitical bastard looking down at the rest of us because we were not fighting by your side for the liberation of Europe. Accept that you are a grown man, that you live in this city, have a wife and child, and it is your obligation to make a successful life. Submit yourself to learning the law — McGill or Laval, it doesn't matter to me — and training your mind. Otherwise you might as well drive a taxi. That's all you'll be good for. You're no Buck Cohen; you haven't his gifts. Am I plain enough? Are you hearing me,
mon fils
?
Tu comprends
?”

“Loud and clear.”

“
Tiens.
”

That would have been the moment to lay the cheque down on the desk and walk out of the office for good. Instead he'd deposited the money, though without mentioning it to Margo, and kept walking to work every morning.

Until this morning. When he'd made up his mind. To buy a car.

Just that. Nothing more than that.

“If you're looking for a new machine, you're out of luck.”

They sat in Ed Doyle's small beige office at Doyle Motors in Verdun, chatting about men they'd known at Loyola, where they had never been close pals. Ed's buxom red-haired secretary brought coffee. Then Ed got down to business.

“None of us dealers have new machines available at the moment. We'll be getting inventory any day now, but here's the catch: it's already spoken for. My dad's had customers on a waiting list since nineteen forty. So I won't have anything for you for maybe three, four months. By then we'll probably be in another depression. What sort of machine were you looking for?”

“Convertible.”

“You need it right away?”

“That's what I was thinking.”

“Our used cars are clean and solid; we don't deal in junk. Interested?”

“I suppose so. If that's all there is.”

“I'd be moving twenty, thirty new cars a week if I could get my hands on them. Let's see what's on the lot. We'll find something to suit you, Johnny. How much you willing to spend?”

“Depends.”

“Uh-huh. Well, let's have a look around, pal.”

They had graduated in the class of 1939 at Loyola, earning BAs from the Jesuits and commissions through the officer training corps. Johnny had gone active with the Régiment de Maisonneuve, Ed Doyle with the Black Watch.

A few days after landing in France, Johnny had been leading his company through a wheat field when he'd come across a dozen Black Watch corpses laid out in a neat row, probably caught by a single machine-gun traverse. The wheat had been ripe, dusty, waist-high. Weapons, rations, and pieces of equipment had been picked over and were strewn about, another sign that the Germans in Normandy were running out of ammunition and food. The Black Watch, like the Maisonneuves
,
were a Montreal militia regiment, but he hadn't recognized any of the dead. He hadn't looked too closely, though, before detailing two of his men to fix bayonets on the rifles and plant them along the road, where a Graves Registration party would see them.

Ed led him out to the lot. Placards with snappy sayings were on all the windshields.
STEAL THIS BABY! ONLY $499
!

“Ignore that bullshit, it's embarrassing.” Ed Doyle took a handkerchief from his pocket, hunkered down, rubbed the inside of the tailpipe, then displayed the handkerchief to Johnny. “A little grey smudge — that's fine, that's what you want. If it comes up with black grease, soot, means she's burning oil, the rings are gone, probably the engine's cooked. If your hanky comes up clean, the seller has been shining her up and hoping for a sucker. Light grey is fine. All things in moderation, eh? Let's take a recce under the hood.”

The hood opened with a groan. “V-8,” Ed said approvingly. “Battery looks almost new. We'll put in a couple of new hoses.” Unscrewing the radiator cap, Ed poked his finger inside, sniffed the fluid, then rubbed the moisture between his thumb and forefinger. “Clean. You don't want oil in the rad, or something's cracked. Have a look underneath, Johnny. See if there's any drips. She's been sitting here a week at least.”

Johnny got down on hands and knees and peered underneath the engine. “I don't see anything.”

“The rubber looks pretty darn good. She must have been stored for the duration. Why don't you slide in, see how she feels.”

Before the war, he and his sister had shared a white Studebaker coupe. The engine block froze and cracked sometime during the war, after Lucie had entered the convent at Sault-aux-Recollets. Their father still drove a stately black Packard he had bought from the bishop of Trois-Rivières.

The Buick's seats were red Naugahyde. The rubber floor mats had been swept. There was room to stretch his legs, and the clutch pedal felt firm when he pressed it. He gripped the wheel and cupped the gearshift in his fist. “Who owned it before?”

“I'd have to check. We might have picked it up at auction. What's the mileage?”

Johnny read it off the odometer. “Eleven thousand, five hundred, and forty.”

Ed gave a low whistle. “And I'll tell you one thing: my old man's probably the only dealer in town who never turns back a clock. For five hundred bucks, Johnny, this really is a steal. We're making no money. It sounds like bullshit, I know, but if you don't buy it somebody else will, and pay six hundred bucks at least. You're getting a Fifth Brigade special here.”

“Where's the key?”

“Never let the customer cold-crank a car. If they ask, I say I left the keys in the office. We walk back and one of the mechanics sneaks out to turn her over. Any machine'll run better when it's warmed up. But go ahead, do your worst. Under the floor mat, passenger side.”

He turned the key and pressed the starter pedal with his foot. The engine instantly kicked into life. Ed gave a thumbs-up.

The car, trembling slightly, felt solid and alive.

Ed leaned in at the window. “Well, what do you think?”

“I really want something a little newer.”

“Johnny, for four hundred bucks you're looking a gift horse in the mouth. Now you want to kick it in the ass?”

“All right. Four hundred.”

He'd been overseas nearly three years. Margo had given up their apartment and was living at her parents' home in Westmount.

When he wanted to make love, in the bedroom that had been hers as a girl, she didn't resist, but she didn't respond with much feeling either, or so it seemed to him. After thirty-six hours he was convinced that he didn't love his wife and never had. As far as his daughter, Barbara, was concerned, he had hardly any feelings, except impatience when she cried.

Margo had found them an apartment in lower Westmount by the second week. Most of their furniture had been a wedding present from her parents and had spent the past two years in storage; it was unfamiliar to him.

A cleaning lady came in two mornings a week. They lived in the apartment like a couple of old people. Their new-found privacy only made the distance between them even more obvious. He bought two suits and walked to work at his father's law office, five days a week. He came home, sat in an armchair in the living room, and tried to read the
Star
. But the only pages he could bear to look at were the sports and weather.

They ate alone together after Barbara was put to bed. Margo lit candles, set out their wedding silver, and used the good china, even if they were eating at the little table in the kitchen. Her manners, her style were perhaps some version of love. Maybe that would have been enough for him before, but now it plainly wasn't.

“Do we love each other, Margo?”

He'd been a little drunk. Maybe she was too. He'd mixed martinis, then gimlets, then opened a bottle of wine from the case Louis-Philippe had presented to them.

“You tell me.”

I married you
, he thought,
for those cold green eyes, that chin, that Irish toughness
.

“I know you're
unhappy,” she said.

“How about you? I don't feel your happiness. I don't feel it in the air of this place.”

“I'm trying to adjust to having you home. Looking forward to it for so long somehow makes it harder.”

“I wish you'd let me fuck you on the kitchen floor.”

“Why do you have to talk that way?”

“Don't you think it's important?”

“You're just trying to sound like a soldier.”

“If you're buying a car you must have a job.” Ed Doyle spoke without looking up from the paperwork on his desk. They were back in the beige office.

“I'm doing a little work for my old man,” Johnny replied.

He lit a cigarette. The chairs in the sales office were red leather with chrome armrests. He liked them. They could have been car seats, or bucket seats in a bomber. Montreal was full of old-fashioned crap, dark and heavy.

“Nice to be home,” Ed said.

The Black Watch had been a strong outfit, though they'd had their bad days. Of course the Maisonneuves had had their bad days too.

“Ed?”

The car dealer looked up.

“Are you married?” Johnny asked.

“Not yet. What about you?”

“I married in forty-one.”

“Oh yeah. One of the O'Brien girls, right? Frankie?”

“Margo.”

“If she's anything like Frankie, she's a peach. I dated Frankie once or twice. Their old man still around?”

“He is.”

“He's a tough nut. Have any kids?”

“One, a girl.”

“The world needs kids.”

“I find I don't know her at all. My wife.”

Ed didn't respond at first, and Johnny thought he was pretending he hadn't heard.

Then Ed looked up from the paperwork. “Sure, I can understand that. Hell, it's got to take a while — it was a long fucking war. Sign there and there.” He pushed papers across the desk. “I took Frankie O'Brien to a dance at Victoria Hall. Remember after those dances, the girls always taking off their shoes and stockings and wading in the pool under the fountain, holding up their dresses? I used to think they looked like swans.”