Joshua Then and Now (36 page)

“Yes.”

“And if I told you that he killed at least one man I know of, what would you think of that, Mr. Writer?”

“In the ring?” Joshua put in nervously.

“He was fast. Oh, on his good days there were none faster. Stick, stick, and away you go. But he didn’t knock out too many people.”
She paused. “No. Not in the ring. He took out a man on a back road on our side of the Vermont border. When he was running booze for the Gurskys. A gun fight.”

“I see.”

“Tell me,” she asked, smiling, “does the senator’s daughter know what kind of family she’s married into?”

“I suppose pot.”

Esther laughed. So did Joshua.

“Neither did I. Him. That crazy Oscar. Your Uncle Harvey begged me not to throw everything away for your father. He wanted to send me to McGill. But I was highly sexed and Reuben was like nobody I had ever known before, and he told me he was going to be a champion and I believed him and look at him now. An ex-con in a Panama hat. A hoodlum’s bum-boy. Did you know he used to break people’s hands for Colucci?”

“Yes, I knew.”

“Tell the senator’s daughter.”

“What have you got against Pauline?”

“Her age. And the way you follow her everywhere with your eyes. I’m leaving your beloved father as soon as I can find work. Getting together again was a mistake.”

“But I thought it was your idea?”

“Think again. Anyway, it isn’t working. I want more than five-and-two out of this lousy life.”

“What will you do?”

“I have plans.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

“I don’t need your money. I have family of my own.”

Joshua winced.

“That hurt. Good. You’ve hurt me plenty. Hey,” she asked, relenting, “what happened when the Alabama Assassin met the Brockton Blockbuster?”

“Rocky Marciano dumped him in the eighth round.”

His mother began to sob. “And who did Floyd Patterson beat for the crown?”

“Archie Moore. Fifth round. Chicago. November thirtieth, fifty-six.”

“Maybe I’ll just find myself a younger man,” she said, pouring herself another drink, “who can fuck me like Mr. Ryan once did.”

“God damn it, Maw.”

“Don’t you ever cry?”

“No.”

“I’m not that old, you know. I can still handle it. She’d understand, your classy-assy tootsie. Because she’s been around, my son. If you don’t know, I do.”

“Pauline and I will be just fine.”

“This is the six o’clock news. Brought to you by ungrateful children, highly recommended by doctors everywhere. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea. Hear this. Joshua Shapiro married above himself.”

“Like father,” he said, taunting her, “like son.”

“I was one of the Leventhal girls.”

“Wowee,” he said. But she didn’t react. She didn’t remember.

“You never cared for them, any of them, but when you were in trouble with the cops, who always came through for you? Your beloved father or Uncle Harvey?”

“Daddy once told me that they treated him like dirt.”

“O.K. So? We were much more cultivated people. I could play the piano. We wore white gloves on the High Holidays, the Leventhal girls. I didn’t jump out of my pants at the sight of a policeman. My father used to take me to lectures. John Mason Brown. Pierre van Paassen. We attended symphony concerts. You know, I once asked your father if he would take me to
Macbeth
, Donald Wolfit was in town, at His Majesty’s, and do you know what he said? ‘Shakespeare,’ he said. ‘Take away the fancy costumes and the swordplay and what are you left with? Poetry, for Christ’s sake!’ ”

Joshua could not hold back his laughter.

“I knew you’d find that funny,” and now she was laughing and weeping at the same time.
“Tell him not to leave me again. Speak to him.”

“But I thought you said –”

“You thought. I said. He did. I didn’t. Fuck you,” she shouted, knocking his glass to the floor.

Joshua took his shaking mother in his arms. He stroked her thick black hair. My God, she’s small. I never realized.

“Let me go,” she said, breaking free.

“Do you want me to speak to him?”

“Certainly not.”

“What do you want?”

“Who knows?”

He stooped to pick up the broken glass.

“Do you at least earn enough to support your family, Mr. Writer, or are you living off her stocks and bonds?”

“I haven’t taken a penny from her.”

“You will. Wait. Then her background will come out. Westmount will be heard from. Watch out for your balls, kiddo.”

M
ONEY, MONEY
.

Once, no thought for tomorrow, he could con Barclay’s into an overdraft and, his pockets stuffed with crinkly, white, handkerchief-sized fivers, splurge on Front Closure Bras, draw-stringers from Renata, and softie, slim lingerie from Dior. His
finca
in San Antonio, with a cook thrown in, had set him back no more than $50 a month. A £150 publisher’s advance had been sufficient to put him merrily to work on a book. His first book. But now the $25,000 in advances he had squeezed out of Toronto and New York publishers to write the definitive book on hockey seemed a pittance, an insulting reward, for the work he knew would be involved in researching and writing the book. Now he had a wife born to champagne as well as Kool-Aid in her fridge and three kids who expected the
right
ski boots. Now he was earning more money than he had ever dreamed of, and yet there never seemed to be enough.

Where it sprang from, as well as how it went, continued to confound him.

There was the fat check for the sports column he still cranked out monthly; a thin trickle of royalties on paperback reissues of books he’d otherwise rather not be reminded of; magazine assignments out of New York; and, above all, the money he earned doing television work for
CBC
Interviews. And documentaries that he narrated himself.

Each year he solemnly entered these projected earnings into a ledger with reassuringly lined pages, estimated his outgoings, conscientiously adding ten percent, and tottered out of his office to tell Pauline this was the year, the biggie, when he was bound to come out a big five thousand ahead minimum. How about that? Hug hug. Kiss kiss. But when the year was out, he unfailingly emerged $7,500 short and found himself, a Grub Street Mr. Micawber, counting on something turning up.

Once it had been the sale of his manuscripts to that twit Colin Fraser in Calgary. Fraser, who had come out of the closet, as it were, and was living with a young actor. Another time it was a whacking royalty check out of East Germany for the people’s edition of
The Volunteers
. But what now, Joshua?

“So, yes,” Pauline had said, “I helped to buy him the boat. He’s cost me thousands over the years. I finance his dreams.”

Never mind his dreams, darling, what about my nightmares?

But the truth was, Pauline couldn’t help. What with inflation, the money that still dribbled in from her trust fund was negligible. So Joshua had, he calculated, two options. He could negotiate a larger mortgage on their house, creaming off the cash, or he could finally fall back on his inheritance, the long thin key that still hung from a silvery chain round his neck. But he was superstitious about that key, he really didn’t want to know how many stocks and bonds or whatever were fattening in Reuben’s safety deposit box. It was only to be used, he felt, in the event of a real catastrophe. If, for instance, anything happened to him, and Pauline was left to cope with the children. And neither did he want Pauline to know he was troubled about money. She was far too edgy these days, even short-fused, the continuing presence in the city of that late bloomer, Kevin Hornby, seemingly casting a pall on her days.

Jolly Jack Trimble was also becoming a nuisance.

Only a week after Joshua had confronted him in The Troika, he had phoned to invite him to meet there yet again.

“I want to apologize for being such a nit. Of course,” he implored, “you were only trying to take the mickey out of me when you went on about my not being born British.”

“Yeah. Right,” Joshua said uneasily.

“And certainly,” Trimble said, those hard little eyes glittering, “the joke stopped right there.”

“Yes. Certainly.”

“I asked you to meet me here,” he said, “because I’m on to something hot. I can’t even whisper the name of the stock, it’s that confidential, but if you can let me have ten thousand, I can double it for you in three weeks.”

“Jack, I don’t play the market.”

“This isn’t playing, it’s a dead cert. Do you understand me?”

“I’m afraid I do,” Joshua said, stiffening, “and I don’t care for it. And anyway, I wouldn’t know where to lay my hands on ten thousand.”

“Borrow it from your bank.”

“I’m already into my bank for all they will tolerate.”

“I’ll sign for the loan. Or I can even lend you the money.”

“Jack, this really isn’t necessary. You don’t owe me a thing.”

“Of course I don’t owe you a thing,” he said, his cheeks flaring red. “What an absurd thing to say. I’m just trying to be a friend. I thought you would appreciate that.”

As autumn yielded to winter, the trees bare, fur coats being redeemed from storage, Christmas decorations going up everywhere, the investment trust that was Kevin’s special domain in Trimble’s office began to attract attention. In this country, a sour Joshua noted, where prophets were without honor, but profit-makers venerated, he was becoming a figure. He was acclaimed in the
Financial Post;
there was a short, snappy profile in the business pages of
Maclean’s
. “Westmount’s Whizz Kid.” In all his interviews, Kevin paid fulsome tribute to Trimble, the acknowledged financial wizard who had given him his chance, and his slippery benefactor unfailingly responded in
kind. “Kevin Hornby,” he told one reporter after another, “is the Guy Lafleur of this office. He’s a natural. If Coral is this year’s success story, well, he deserves all the credit. I consider myself lucky to be able to share in the profits.”

The profits, on the evidence, were prodigious, not only shareholders but also Kevin quivering with delight as Coral fattened on points day after day.

WESTMOUNT WHIZZ KID FLIES OWN PLANE
ran a headline in the
Gazette
. Kevin was no longer dependent on the vagaries of commercial airline schedules, but could now pilot his own Beechcraft to New York or Toronto or Calgary or wherever it was crucial for him to strike next. He was, the reporter noted, the only son of Senator Stephen Andrew Hornby, and a portrait of that grand old man held pride of place in his office. “I’m just crazy about having the old s.o.b. hanging up there,” he was quoted as saying. “Keeping me honest. Watching over me and my work.”

Joshua ran into Kevin, inevitably, on Sherbrooke Street, immediately in front of the Cartier, where he had taken an apartment. Kevin insisted he come right upstairs with him for a drink.

“You have no idea how inadequate I feel in the presence of people with real talent. People like you. All I make is money,” he said, dimpling.

“On the evidence, a good deal of it, too,” Joshua ventured, scanning the apartment.

Trophies trooped across the mantelpiece. Golf, bridge, fishing. And there were photographs of Kevin everywhere. Standing alongside an enormous marlin hanging from a dockside scale. Goldenhaired, younger, assuming a linebacker’s stance, a McGill Redman. Cuddling with two starlets from
Thunderball
. There was also a framed photograph of Kevin and Pauline, embracing on a tennis court. The Mixed Doubles Champions. But that had been in 1952, and the man who sat before him now carefully combed his hair to conceal a
burgeoning bald spot. His eyes were pouchy, rimmed with red. He was putting on a paunch. His hands were far from steady.

“Coral’s been my salvation,” he said.

“I read somewhere that Jack thinks you’re the Guy Lafleur of brokers.”

“Well, that was typically generous of him. But I wouldn’t go that far. I prefer to think I’ve been lucky. How’s Trout?”

“Pauline’s just fine, but she’s worried about you.”

“Worried? I’m doing fabulously well. She ought to be pleased.”

“Oh, but of course she’s pleased. So am I.”

“Don’t get pompous with me, please.”

“As long,” Joshua continued, “as you don’t do anything to hurt her or the senator.”

“Do you speak for my dear father as well now?”

“No,” Joshua said, retreating, “not really.”

“But I understand that the two of you get on famously.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“How is the old boy these days?”

“Thriving, considering his age.”

“Interesting, don’t you think, that I should have to ask a stranger about my father?”

“Why don’t you drive out to Ottawa and surprise him with a visit? He might respond to that.”

“Or show me the door again.”

“Give him the option.”

“No way.”

A week later, Kevin was adjudged one of Montreal’s Most Desirable Bachelors in a feature that appeared in
Chatelaine
. The magazine came out on the day of Trimble’s annual Guy Fawkes party and a twinkly-eyed Kevin, arriving late, a fashion model on each arm, took the inevitable ribbing good-naturedly. It was, by common consent, the most opulent of Trimble’s parties and, sometime later, cursed
with hindsight, Joshua would come to wonder whether he already knew there would never be another.

The theme, naturally, was resoundingly British. Union Jack lampshades and wastepaper baskets and ashtrays everywhere. Smoked salmon had been flown in from Harrod’s, and the kippers that would be offered to those who stayed on for breakfast, from Fortnum’s. Waitresses offered a Queen Elizabeth rose to each lady as she drifted into the living room. Waiters, dressed like buskers, held forth over a counter offering cockles and winkles; they brought round trays laden with sizzling brown bangers or Scotch ale, as well as champagne. There was a pearly king and queen and disco music from a group called The Lambeth Walk. An actor with a cockney accent had been hired to fry the fish and chips. Dover sole. The real stuff. “And only the bona fide Québécois here,” a bouncy, rosy-cheeked Trimble announced to cheers, “will be allowed to sprinkle vinegar on their
pommes frites.”