A Fairly Good Time Page 11

  “ ‘Stern Daughter of the Voice of God,’ ” announced Mrs. Norrington, equably, proceeding on through the repulsive “ ‘Denial and restraint I prize,’ ” to the final, nauseating “ ‘Give unto me, made lowly wise,/The spirit of self-sacrifice;/The confidence of reason give;/And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!’ ”

  Never, never, said Shirley to herself. Aloud she responded, “Thank you, Mummy, that was quite helpful.”

  Now that she was in her middle-twenties and closer to her mother in social stature—for in theory Shirley was now an adult—she understood that she had inherited her mother’s uneasy generosity as well as an idiosyncrasy of dress she did not desire. The difference between Shirley and her mother was that while Mrs. Norrington did not see how other people were or guess that her own appearance was in any way unusual, Shirley longed to dissolve in a crowd but did not know how to go about it. The same climbing roses that had been lent distinction by the very person of Mrs. Norrington had turned the child into a freak, and she grew up with the idea that this could never change. In time Shirley discovered that no woman ever liked the way she had been forced to dress as a child, and that each was inclined to trace her fears and anomalies of feeling back to the fact that she once had not looked like other people; but what had become of the girls who were those other people? What had become of Ruth Griffith, of Elizabeth Macfarlane and of Margaret Rose Wagner? Perhaps they had died of sameness before reaching maturity. She suspected that in her personal peculiarity she was less distinguished than her mother had been. Still, it was part of her inheritance and perhaps all of it, which meant that Mrs. Castle had not been mistaken in handing over The Peep of Day with the remark, “It’s all you’re ever likely to see.”

  Shirley’s father, recalled as mild, kind and obstinate, had put his foot down on having her named Ralph, Michael and the rest, but his own choice could have been just as disastrous. He favored Isadora because of the dancer—a fine healthy woman, no corsets, and an excellent mother from all accounts. But this, in turn, her mother opposed for fear of nicknames. Shirley was born at home in her mother’s bed. Mrs. Norrington had wished to be attended by her own husband or by no one at all, for she had read that birth was as simple as breathing and that the umbilical cord could be bitten in two by any agile woman. She believed that a child produced under such conditions would be lively and intelligent and able to read music from the age of two. Conviction gave way to panic with the first contraction and became hysteria within the hour. Her husband, who had foreseen this, had already arranged for a colleague to come when summoned. Dr. Norrington then went downtown to St. Catherine Street and saw an American travelogue about Berlin in which there was no trace of Hitler, the news, which was too loud, a Donald Duck that kept him awake, and a movie that annoyed him from beginning to end but in which Ann Harding figured and she looked, to him, like his wife. He then took the precaution of eating a mixed grill at Drury’s, fearing that home would be chaos for some time and that he would need a solid base of protein. He then returned by streetcar to find that Shirley existed, was very ugly, and had not been named.

  For the next twenty-four hours he and Mrs. Norrington remained locked in courteous but immovable discord and so the naming of the infant fell to Dr. Hector Walsh, who was to register the birth. Dr. Walsh cast about him for the nearest saint and discovered the Norrington’s maid, who was called Shirley Smart and came from Newfoundland. This squat, tranquil girl was one of a family of sisters who replaced one another in the Norrington household like annual plants. Winnie, Mary, Violet and Dot had arrived in turn in Canada (a foreign country), learned the Norringtons’ tiresome ideas about hygiene, survived their balanced diet, realized they were grossly underpaid even for Quebec, and departed to a factory after ensuring that a younger sister would follow, as though the Norringtons were a necessary initiation. Dr. Walsh had been grateful for Shirley Smart’s assistance. She had remained stolid and attentive throughout, chewing licorice to keep from vomiting and limiting her comments to the occasional “Jesus!” He asked her name, and understood it to be “Shirlum Smatt.” She wrote it down and he thought of the Brontës, and then of his own mother whose name had been Anne; and so he registered the birth of “Shirley Anne,” which was the name of one of Mrs. Norrington’s ancestors, and which Dr. Norrington wholeheartedly disliked.

  The name created trouble for Shirley in France, where it was not on the religious calendar. It had no equivalent that anyone could find, either saint or heroine. Its spelling was a mystery and its pronunciation obscure. Philippe had enchanted her by saying “Shelley”; her first mother-in-law had said something like “Shay-Lee.” Canadians wrote it “Shirl” and pronounced it “Shurrul.” James Chichalides, meeting her on the staircase on Tuesday morning, said “Ah, Shairlee!” She had wakened a few minutes earlier in a room as cold as March, pursued by the faintest remnant of a dream, remembering a painting her mother had made of birch trees and snow. She could smell the cold varnish of her old bedroom. In the picture a shadow of each tree, depicted as a rod of steely blue, lay as neatly as Mrs. Norrington thought shadows ought to in nature. Her mother had taken up painting not to make a fortune, not to develop a latent talent, not to expand her personality, but to prove how terribly easy everything is. The memory of the picture was mixed up with the death of Dr. Norrington and the extreme frugality that followed; for Mrs. Norrington’s unstinting contribution to the war effort, which included not only the entire support of the Team-Brownings for more than six years but also the turning over of all her uninvested savings to a Spitfire fund, had left the family very much on the edge. Her husband’s last coherent sentence, “Don’t touch your god damned capital, Margaret,” took on an added poignancy when it became known how depleted it was. Economy had sent them—mother and daughter—south of Montreal to a house warmed by two Quebec heaters, one upstairs and one down. The icy mornings, the sound of the stove shaken down by her tireless mother, the sight of the daunted landscape framed and hung over her desk, rushed together and evoked one more sensation—the feeling of a bumpy rag rug underfoot and the glacier linoleum beneath it. She opened her eyes and saw a blue sky through a pitiless coating of ice, and it was seconds before she knew that she was grown, in Paris, in June, and alone; that Philippe had jaundice and had told Madame Roux; that he would not so much as bother to come to the telephone; that Saturday was irreparable, Sunday a confirmation of disaster, and Monday . . . on Monday she had seen Madame Roux, taken Philippe’s two sleeping pills, and crept back to bed. This was Tuesday, the end of the catastrophic holiday weekend, and now, with luck, they would return to normal life.

  James Chichalides, wearing a spy’s raincoat, carrying two croissants in a square of flimsy paper and a folded copy of The Times, put on his English face when he saw her. He had two favored English remarks, which he could make apropos of nothing known to his hearers. These were “Brains, my dear fellow, brains,” meanwhile tapping his forehead, and “What, may I ask, is the meaning of this?” She tore down to him, equipped as always for floods, dams bursting, torrents in the streets.

  “What, may I ask . . .”

  “I’m late, that’s what. My husband usually looks after the alarm and he’s away traveling and I forgot about it. Usually he hears the seven o’clock news on one station, then the half-past seven news on another, and he makes the coffee and brings me some, but he makes me drink a glass of cold water first so I won’t forget the coffee and go back to sleep. Then the cleaning woman comes. Nothing happened this morning. Even she isn’t there. I remember now he said she’d stolen something. I’d sooner not know. Even if I knew I’d pretend I didn’t know, rather than talk about it. I mean, I’d rather be stolen from. She couldn’t go on and on stealing. Finally she’d have just stopped out of embarrassment, and then we could have gone on as before—don’t you think? After he fired the poor old thing she came to the door and I just shoved some money in her hand and shut the door and she was still trying to tell me something. I�
��ve always had thieves and drunks working for me. Madame Roux finds them. Unmarried mothers from Brittany with idiot children, and shuffling old female winos wrapped in stinking sweaters. And I feel sorry for them, or maybe I’m just lazy—I don’t know.”

  “Fasten your watch,” said James. “You are losing it. Why do you say ‘my husband’ all the time as if I have never met Philippe?”

  The painting of birch trees in her dream, the magpie cleaning woman, Madame Roux and Philippe, something to do with discomfort, the wrong principles, and the mismanagement of living had brought her close to weeping.

  You are someone who never cries, she had to remind herself.

  “God, I’m so late,” she said. “I’ve got my old summer job again, one I had years ago. Not bad. About five hundred francs, or fifty thousand, depending what kind of francs you count in.”

  “A week, of course.”

  “No, a month. A week! I’m not trained for anything. Why, I couldn’t even get a job as a mother’s help. All I can cook is coffee. I majored in French lit., though I don’t expect you to believe it. I know some German. I got married the week I graduated . . .” She colored, afraid that her admission of knowing a little German might be taken as boasting. “I don’t know anything,” she said firmly, once and for all.

  “What is this job?” said James, who did not understand why women should work.

  “What’s yours? I mean, what is it really? I used to wonder. Philippe supposes all sorts of shady things where you’re concerned.”

  “But you and I know all about each other,” he said, trying a different voice.

  Why does he say that, she wondered? Because we used to sleep together? What she had liked about Philippe at the beginning was that he had not instantly moved from vous to toi on the conceited assumption that now they were intimate.

  James became haughty and English again. “You know I am an architect, though you may not believe it. Here I buy apartments and sell them. I wanted to live in Paris while I was still young enough to enjoy it . . .”

  “Enjoy the au pair girls, you mean. I’ll bet you’ve never had a French girl, ever. Well, I’m an interpreter in a store. I wanted to stay here while I was still young enough to enjoy it too. Let’s stick to our stories. Here we both are, in Paris, in the middle of a staircase, young enough to enjoy it.” James, attempting to re-create an atmosphere he had invented or that existed only in crowded recollections of other women, moved closer to Shirley. She felt as she had when Claudie’s mother had blocked her path—alarmed and frustrated, yet obliged to seem polite. She showed him the plastic-covered label she wore on which was printed “Mrs. Higgins.” “It’s the same one I’ve always had,” she said rapidly. “I kind of like the work. You take these people round the store, where they want to go, the washrooms and all that, and to look at the gloves, and they like to smell all the perfumes before they finally buy their Chanel 5. The men are nice. They go to so much trouble for their wives.”

  James was staring, more and more anxiously. “Is the term for Chanel not ‘scent’?”

  “If you like. Scent is what immigrants buy in Woolworth’s.” Having said something extremely petty, she began to feel more cheerful, as if she had discharged part of the burden of constant concern for others.

  “. . . in Woolworth’s,” James went on repeating to himself, privately. “You shouldn’t have to rush out in the morning for five hundred francs,” he remarked.

  She took this to mean a criticism of Philippe. She could not explain to James how it would have been wrong for her to stay at home and do nothing while Philippe worked. He gave all the money he could spare to his arthritic mother, for one thing. So did Colette, who kept back only as much as she needed for her two-tone jersey costumes, her lumps of gilt jewelry and an occasional holiday in Taormina. Shirley supposed that Madame Perrigny invested the money for her children, or else made green tomato pickle out of it, or else was saving up for three lavish funerals. Her children never asked. They had been trained that way—pay-conditioned. Another reason why Shirley worked was that Mrs. Higgins, her first mother-in-law, had expected her to use up her life. Shirley, the survivor of Pete, inheritor of his mother’s affection until Mrs. Higgins’s death, had been called on to complete his life for him. That she did so incompetently, and to invisible witnesses, was not James’s affair. She snatched off the watch that would not stay on her wrist because the strap was frayed. “For once I’d love not to be late. You’re supposed to be on time in that place.”

  “My sisters long to meet you,” said James. He stepped aside so that she could descend. She went by slowly, her hand on the bannister.

  “They’ve heard about me? What did you tell them?”

  “I’m having a party at five,” he said. “You can meet them then.”

  “I’m still working at five.”

  He bent over the railing. She looked back and up and remembered something of the old secret shared. “Wear your uniform,” he said. “It’s so funny, and it is smarter than any of your dresses.”

  As this was her own opinion, it could not offend her. “All right; I need a party,” she said. “I’ll be there. I promise.” Out of earshot she added, “Depending on Philippe,” which was said as one would touch wood; it was a conjuration.

  Sun bleached the gray street. Her arctic morning had been dissolved in rain and re-created with sun, leaves and the smell of honey. She saluted the marble bust of an entirely forgotten figure of the Third Republic. She and Philippe had given him a name—Rigobert Arcadius—and acknowledged him their private high priest. This was a game for two, not one, but she bowed to Rigobert Arcadius all the same, for luck, and she did not feel absurd but only happy. She heard sparrows whose chirping was a country sound—had to be, for she had no other reminder. Wearing the blue usherette’s uniform she was strictly forbidden to take outside the store, she lined up for a bus and was carried on a cloud across the enchanted Seine. She had something to look forward to—James’s party—which meant that her life was not finished. Anything promised was reason enough for living. She beamed at her fellow passengers and did not care when they looked contemptuous and withdrawn. Even the children won’t smile, she reminded herself. The reason you pay so much attention to clouds and light and monuments and the shape of rooftops here is simply because no one ever smiles and you have to look at something.

  As she had explained to James, who already knew but could not be bothered remembering, she was an interpreter in a large old department store. It was a creaky building with splintered floors, and cockroaches in the employees’ dining room. Wearing her Higgins label, she was a lifebuoy for holiday hordes of bewildered, put-upon tourists. Often they came from small towns and knew little about cities, even in their own countries. They were afraid of being a nuisance, they longed to be liked and admired, and became confused when they inspired insolence. Their lack of fluent French did not lead to amusing chatter with policemen but was taken as a personal insult. They had read the advertisements telling them how friendly the chefs of celebrated restaurants would be, and how they would be invited to postmen’s weddings. No one had warned them that in 1963 Parisians were not happy-go-lucky but dour, reserved and irritable even with one another. Some of the visitors were hurt, most were startled, and several were rude back. Today’s first victim was a man of about forty, wearing a hat quite like Mrs. Castle’s. He said suspiciously, loudly and clearly, with a pause between each word, “Do you speak any English at all?”

  “Try me.”

  “Are you sure you understand?”

  “I have to—it’s my job.”

  “Well, I want to know where I can get some fresh orange juice. I can’t get what I want anywhere.”

  She would have walked straight out of the store, taken him home, and prepared his breakfast for him, but the thought of Philippe put a stop to any such fancy. Philippe had never recovered from the first party she had given after they were married and his discovery that she had not known who half her guests we
re. “Your life is like a house without doors,” he said. She saw cold dashes of rain coming in and wondered why he had not thought of building her a proper house.

  After the man wearing Mrs. Castle’s Salzburger hat had wandered off in quite the wrong direction (she had learned that strangers did not often want the information they asked for and seldom heard her explanations), she began planning a new party. Philippe showed his records to Shirley’s friends and spoke of musicians whose names sounded so strangely Irish, such as Kullman O’Kings. There were records Shirley would never hear because they were stored in Geneviève’s country house: the importance of this today was the size of a poppy seed. Her mind raced round the party all day. In the stuffed bus that carried her home she invented a dress cut out of a sari, then destroyed it when she realized it was something her mother would have worn. A new note from James, a reminder about tonight, made her feel he had taken away a party belonging to Shirley, something she owned.

  •

  She was halfway up the stairs to James’s when the telephone rang in her flat. Someone is trying to prevent me from enjoying myself, she said. Someone wants to spoil the party. She paused and came back slowly, one step at a time, like a child clinging to a bannister. Before she had taken out her key the ringing stopped. She knew it had been Philippe crying for help and that she had let him drown.

  No one knew about this.

  Later she heard James saying, “Somebody, I can’t tell you who it is, has bought every apartment in the house.”

  “The Japanese importer?”

  “I can’t tell you, but some of us are going to have to get out” was his answer. “Shirley, you will soon receive a letter telling you to buy your apartment or move.”