Earth and High Heaven (26 page)

XI

From the Friday evening when Erica had told her parents that she was going to spend the first half of Marc's embarkation leave with him in the Laurentians until a week from the following Monday, less than two hours before her train was due to leave, Charles Drake did not mention the subject again. During those ten days he scarcely spoke to her at all; even the indirect references to Marc which had acted to some extent as escape valves had abruptly come to an end, and he said nothing in Erica's hearing which could possibly be related to Marc by even the most roundabout route.

Shortly after three o'clock on Monday afternoon, Erica went up to her bedroom to pack, and a few minutes later she returned from her bathroom with a handful of toilet articles to find her father standing against the closed door leading to the hall.

Erica had not heard him come in and on first sight of him she started, dropping one of her cosmetic jars on the soft carpet, although she had known all along, and in spite of his silence, that some kind of ultimatum was inevitable. He was simply not going to allow her to walk out, on her way to spend three days with Marc, without making any effort to stop her.

She picked up the jar and asked calmly, “What are you doing home at this hour, Charles?”

“I wasn't getting any work done. I couldn't keep my mind on it.” He watched her for a moment in silence, while Erica went on with her packing, and then said jerkily, “I came — to ask you — not to go.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

He moved out of the shadow by the door into the light, a big, dark-haired man with hands clenched at his sides, and said, “That other weekend you were away was bad enough but I didn't know definitely ...”

“There's nothing more to know now than there was then.”

He went on as though he had not heard her, “I didn't know for certain that he was going to be there, or whether you — whether you were definitely ...”

His voice trailed off; he left the sentence unfinished and fumbled in his pocket with one hand, taking out his cigar case and a bunch of keys, then putting them back again. He looked almost ill; the flesh around his fine dark eyes was puffed and discoloured and in the strong light from the windows his skin had a yellowish tinge. He said, trying to keep his voice level, “You can't expect your mother and me to sit here for three days, from now till Thursday night, while you — while you ...”

He swallowed, and then said with sudden violence, “We can't stand it. I tell you, Erica, we can't stand it! We're too old; if you go through with this thing, you'll leave a mark on us that will last the rest of our lives.”

“You sound as though I was going to commit murder.”

She took two pairs of shoes from the cupboard, then sat down on her bed with the shoes in her lap, remarking aimlessly, “It's a bit late, isn't it? Marc left Petawawa two hours ago and it's less than two hours till my train goes. Why didn't you get all this over with last night or even this morning? You went off downtown after breakfast without saying a word.”

“I wasn't going to say anything. Your mother didn't ...” He stopped again.

“What made you change your mind?”

With his eyes fixed on her face, he tried to say something, but nothing came. At last he answered only, “I told you, I can't go through with it.”

“I don't know what you want, Charles, except that you seem to want everything.”

“All I want you to do is to stay at home and behave like any decent girl who values her own self-respect!”

“You don't know what this is all about.” She put one pair of shoes into the suitcase lying on the bed beside her, and looking down at the other pair in her lap, she said hopelessly, “Apparently you play the game on the principle of ‘Heads I win, tails you lose.' You haven't the remotest idea what this is all about because you've never given me a chance to tell you. Ever since the beginning, whenever I tried to tell you,
you told me
. You knew. You knew without being told, just as you knew exactly what Marc was like without ever having met him.”

He said, staring at her, “I'll admit it hadn't even occurred to me that you might try to justify yourself by putting the blame on me ...”

“I'm not trying to justify myself! I don't give a damn about justifying myself.”

She began wrapping the second pair of shoes in tissue paper with her hands shaking. She had no idea where this was going to end, but she knew that if she lost her temper, it could only end in disaster. She had kept her feelings dammed up for too long.

“Do you know what I've been doing for the past two months, Charles?” she asked without looking at him. “I've been trying to out-balance thirty-three years. It's been quite a job with only two months to do it in, and now when all I've got left is three days, you ...”

He said, cutting her short, “You've got the rest of your life!”

“... I've got to prove ...” She stopped, glanced at him, and said, “No, I haven't got the rest of my life. It isn't even a question of whether he comes back or not, but whether I'll ever see him again if he does.”

Evidently he did have at least a vague idea of what it was all about, for he said, “Isn't it possible that instead of all these subtle reasons you keep looking for, it may simply be that he's not really in love with you?”

“Otherwise it would be a case of all for love and the world well lost, is that it? I thought that was one of the notions you get over when you grow up.” She turned suddenly and said, facing him, “And supposing he isn't in love with me, or not enough in love with me — then why?”

“Why what?”

“Why isn't he?”

He fumbled for his cigar case again, still standing in the middle of the room a few feet from the foot of her bed, and answered finally through a cloud of smoke, “You wouldn't be the first girl to find out that respect is what matters most in the long run.”

“Doesn't that depend somewhat on the individual?”

“No, it's just human nature.”

“There's a generalization to take care of everything, isn't there?” asked Erica, starting toward the chest of drawers behind him.

He said angrily, “Generalizations only exist because they represent the accumulated experience of the human race right down through history!”

“And so whenever we find someone who doesn't fit, we go to work on him and by the time we're finished, we've damn well made him fit! Like Procrustes and his bed — all you have to do is stretch him or chop him down to the right size.”

He scrutinized her in silence for a moment as she stood with her back to the chest of drawers, and at last he said, “You haven't any idea how much you've changed in the past three months ...”

“It doesn't do to lose all your illusions at once, does it?”

“Eric, for heaven's sake!”

She could feel the anger mounting higher and higher inside her, but it had not yet broken loose and she said almost conversationally, “You know, Charles, I had illusions about practically everything. About you and Mother and this precious country of ours, and the kind of world we're supposed to be fighting for — I was so full of illusions that really, I must have been quite a spectacle.”

“I liked you better that way, Eric,” he said under his breath.

“I liked you better too.”

It was as though she had struck him. She took note of his reaction, without reacting herself in any way. He might just as well have been someone else, not her father.

He said, his voice trembling, “Listen, Eric. I don't know what's already happened between you and Reiser, and neither your mother nor I want to know ...”

“Is Mother included in this?”

“No. She doesn't even know I'm home.” He paused, and forcing himself to speak more matter of factly, he said, “We'll forget about it — that's fair enough, isn't it?”

“Go on,” said Erica, watching him.

“Anyhow, we didn't ask you not to go last time, and it isn't as though you went in spite of everything we could do to stop you. But this time, we
are
asking you ...”

“Yes?” said Erica. “What right have you to ask me not to go?”

“What did you say?”

“Are you and Mother the only ones who have any rights?”

“I don't think I have to answer that.”

“As you like,” said Erica, shrugging. “Go on. I'd still like to know what you're getting at.”

“I told you. I don't want you to go. If you do go, you'll go deliberately this time, knowing exactly how we feel about it and the price we're paying for your three days of happiness or whatever you call it, and as long as you live, you'll never be able to forget what you did to us and to yourself, and neither will we. You'll never be quite the same to us again.”

“You don't mean that,” she asked incredulously.

“I do mean it.” He looked straight at her. His face had become quite colourless, and he said, “We'll go to our graves knowing that when it came to a choice between your mother and father and a rotten ...”

“Don't say anything about Marc,” said Erica warningly.

“I'll say anything I like!” he burst out angrily.

“I don't think you'd better. I've had about enough from you on the subject, Charles. I don't intend to listen to any more.”

“If you'd listened to me in the first place, none of this would have happened! I told you Reiser was just out for what he could get. I told you that, didn't I? Well, he's got it evidently, and I was only wrong about one thing — I'll admit I was wrong about that. I thought he really intended to marry you.”

Erica stared at him in silence and finally she said, her heart pounding, “Charles, get out. Go away ... please go away, because I — I ...”

“No,” said her father.

“All right,” she said faintly. “I guess I can't make you.” It was twenty minutes to four and her train left at five, but she did not move. Still standing with her back against the chest of drawers she said, “What you want me to do is wire Marc to meet me at the drug store on the corner of Peel and St. Catherine. That's your idea of a suitable way for Marc to spend his last leave, isn't it? Meeting me on street corners, going from Charcot's to the Ritz bar and from the Ritz bar to a bench in Dominion Square, looking for a place to sit down because his car's in storage and we can't sit in it any more. Well, why not, you're probably asking yourself. He must be used to it by this time.” She took a step forward and looking up at him she said, “I'll tell you why not, Charles. He's had enough of that. For me to ask him to come here and do just what we've been doing ever since we met, would be like saying, ‘This is all you get — this is all you're ever going to get if you stick with me,' when the one thing I've been trying to get into his head from the very beginning is that this is
not
all he's ever going to get. Heaven help me, I even promised him that you would not only change your mind but that you'd like him and be really nice to him. You don't realize what a difference it would have made if you'd given us a break ...”

“Oh, yes I do,” he said before he could stop himself.

“Yes,” said Erica. “Yes, of course you realize. I forgot. And now you want us to stay in town for your sake.”

“Eric ...”

Turning away from him she said, “You're just wasting your breath.” She went back to the chest of drawers and gathering up a few articles of clothing, she carried them over to the bed and put them in her suitcase. When she glanced at him again, she found that her father's expression had changed, and she regarded him without interest, waiting for whatever was coming next. She had an odd idea that it was something which he had been holding in reserve until now, intended to be used only as a last resort. Finally he said with a visible effort, stumbling over the words, “Erica — if your mother and I — if we agreed to have him here, the way you said ...”

“Good God!”

For a moment she could only gape at him in amazement. Then she thought that she must have misunderstood him, for it could not be true, it was so utterly outrageous that it could not possibly be true. She said, “Wait a minute — I don't think I quite get it. You're not suggesting that you're willing to make some kind of deal, are you?”

He said despairingly, “I guess I'm willing to make almost any kind of a deal to keep you from going.”

“Why?”

“
Why
?” Almost beside himself he said, “Good God, don't you realize that after what he's done to me, having him in the house is really more than I can stomach? The idea of you, my daughter, and that ...”

“I see,” said Erica, for now at last she did see all of it, including the motive which had been largely hidden by all the other motives and had remained unaccounted for. It was not what he was saying, or even the rasping tone of his voice, but the way he looked.

Her father managed to get hold of himself again, for the time being at any rate, and went on with a little less emotion, “You wanted us to treat him like anyone else. That's what you said, isn't it? That's what you've said all along. Well, he isn't ‘anybody else,' now less than ever,” he said between his teeth. “But don't worry, we'll manage some way or other. You needn't worry about that.”

“I'm not worrying about that.” She was lost now, and she knew it. She was going down for the last time, but before she went down, she was going to do the talking for once, she was going to make up for all the times she had sat and simply listened, in order not to have a row. She was finally going to tell her father what she thought of him.

She said, “Not for the sake of my soul or even out of common decency and kindness, but for the sake of my virtue which you regard as your private property, you're going to start treating Marc ‘as though he were anyone else.' You needn't look like that, Charles. You gave yourself away when you said, ‘After what he's done to me.' It would have sounded nicer if you'd at least said ‘After what he's done to you.' Better still if you'd said, ‘After what
I've
done to you.'”