“I ’m feeling smug today.”
“Why are you smug?”
“I believe I’ve succeeded. I may even have saved lives … whether that’s worth while … I think so. Alberto saw Vardoe. He was having dinner and dancing at the Panorama. Very pleased with himself. There were four of them. Alberto was funny. I said Who was Vardoe dancing with. He said How do I know, she was scrowny, I do not look twice when they are scrowny, I am too busy … a tribute to my figure I suppose,” Mrs. Severance slumped down comfortably into the big chair. “He said Why did that nice woman marry him. He is very cheap. She was crazy. She couldn’t love him. I said No of course she couldn’t love him, it was compassion. He said Compassion! Compassion is to sympathize and carry the suitcase and give a drink of brandy but not to marry. What the devil is Compassion to marry anyone for. There is love, and not love. Both of them okay. You know where you are. But this Compassion! Well, I said, he had spaniel eyes, she was sorry for him. Spaniely Eyes! Alberto said. Marry a man for dog’s eyes! That’s a new one. And anyway he’s got them shut all night…. Alberto is very nice. Why don’t you marry him, Hilda? He likes you. He thinks you are very distinguished. We could all live together and have a lot of fun and keep a restaurant, love or not love.”
“I don’t have to marry him for us to keep a restaurant. Why don’t you marry him yourself? He’s your friend, not mine.”
Her mother continued, “We could have a restaurant and you could sit up high in a cashier’s desk looking handsome and Alberto would be maître d’hôtel and give it style, and I would walk through once an evening in my cape and all the tourists would say Hush, that’s the woman Elmer told us about who makes the risotto and can hit a fly at thirty paces…. What Vancouver needs is not a hundred thousand dollars advertising for tourist trade. It needs ten plain restaurants with famously good food. It’s got nearly everything else … too much rain for tourists but you can’t change rain by act of parliament. I’ve often thought …”
“You realize, I suppose, that if you walked through a restaurant once a night you’d have to get up out of bed every day and dress yourself.”
“Oh … oh … so I should,” said her mother. “No restaurant. Come darling, and kiss me.”
Sometimes the power that flowed from Mrs. Severance withdrew, and in these timid withdrawals was manifested a tenderness that seemed to belie her.
“Come,” said the mother, holding out her little hands, “my beautiful cross darling. I’ve seen no one all day but the delivery boy. I need the human touch.”
“I won’t,” said her daughter.
Mrs. Severance put down her hands.
Hilda went over and set her lips to her mother’s face. Mrs. Severance then drew back and with the tips of her index fingers followed the winglike lines of her daughter’s dark brows. In this creamy box of her brow, the mother thought, she is nearly always unhappy – even now she looks cross and unhappy – why does she hold herself so still, why can’t she let down like other people, nice and easy. She kissed her daughter.
“You’re right,” she said. “Don’t marry one of these foreigners. They just care for l’amour and their stomachs. What are you doing tonight. It is Alberto’s night off and he is coming in late and I am making a goulash. I made a Sacher torte this morning. It’s too bad that he likes red wine and I like white wine because that always means that we have to have a whole bottle apiece. Well, he brings both.”
“I’m going to the Haida Theatre.”
“To the Haida Theatre!” exclaimed her mother, beginning to pull herself up out of the chair, “I’ll go! I’ll come! I’ll put off Alberto….”
“It’s two flights upstairs,” said Hilda.
“Blast the Haida Theatre,” said Mrs. Severance, letting herself down again. “Who’re you going with? That stick Cousins?”
“Yes. He’s not a stick … why do you always say ‘stick’! You’ve never even seen him!”
“Well … Albert Cousins’! … I shouldn’t have said ‘stick.’ But what a name.”
“No you shouldn’t have said ‘stick,’” said her daughter shortly.
Mrs. Severance proceeded to talk to Alberto Cosco, a waiter who was a friend of hers.
“Alberto said ‘Yoogle the little gun. I love to see you yoogling the little gun’ … but I can’t juggle it properly any more.” She took up the Swamp Angel and it slid from hand to hand, molding and curving – it seemed almost – like goldbeater’s skin in a warm palm. “I’m stiff … but when I think how I used to be able to keep them moving so fluid and slow – how you had to work to get that timing! … and then the drums beginning, and faster and faster – all timed – and the drums louder and louder – a real drum roll … and I’d have the three guns going so fast they dazzled, one behind my back and one under my elegant long legs (such lovely legs!), and one out as if out toward the audience and then crack-crack-crack and the audience going crazy and me bowing and laughing like anything … how I loved it.” She put down the Swamp Angel and lighted a cigarette.
While her mother spoke of her distant triumph, Hilda idled in her low chair, and her own long shapely legs showed in her attitude the extreme elegance that belongs only to long and shapely legs displayed in the relaxed indifferent grace of repose. Her mind, idling, also, but on two clouds, was aware of her mother recounting the distant triumph of guns and drums and skill and legs and applause and the laughing girl. Only in this did her mother seem old, that she recounted from time to time this triumph of over sixty years gone, just as though her daughter had not heard it before. This legend (which was almost a song) was, together with the Swamp Angel, her only proof of a life which had once been garish and vivid to some girl (could it be that I, sitting heavily here, am that girl?), who had long been fugitive into the past, but not yet gone with all the others of whom there was now no trace nor witness; who (this girl) could be retained and treasured only in the retelling of the scene. Memory alone would not do. Memory would fall into the chasm where lay – perhaps waiting – all things and people gone, and so this girl would cease; therefore Mrs. Severance told the tale, and I, the girl, lived. Each time that Mrs. Severance recalled this scene, it sparkled fresh into her mind and she savored it as one might savor an old wine, fresh at each tasting, sharing it with one who, however, did not so much care for the wine. Yes, Hilda reflected, only in this recounting was there any sign of her mother’s age. The physical appearance of Mrs. Severance of heaviness and years was intrinsic, now, in her – was, in fact, Mrs. Severance – and seemed to have nothing to do with age, suiting her perfectly as a medium for the expression of her compassion for the human predicament through which she also had passed, for a certain contempt, and for the entertainment which she derived from her view of the human scene which, from the chair where she habitually sat, was both constricted and universal. She enjoyed her life as an observer. She suffered no longer from the inhibition of beauty. Passion was done. She was not cynical, but she was of ironical and amused habit. She spoke again.
“Hilda,” she said, “I often think, sitting here when you’re out, I’ve had everything. All the fun. It’s not fair. That, and Philip too … and now I’m content, and all I need are some cigarettes, and the Angel, and these …” she riffled the papers, “and good food … and you, of course.”
“In that order?” asked her daughter.
Mrs. Severance was about to laugh and say lightly in her usual way “Yes, in that order,” but there was a warning in her daughter’s tone.
She said to herself I’m demented. I could say these silly things for forty years, and Philip paid no attention, or he thought I was funny. I was a belle laide with a funny tongue, and now I’m a plain fat old woman with a silly tongue – and my poor child all set to be galled so easily.
“I know,” she said humbly. “I suppose I show off (why do you take things so seriously, my lamb, you are too earnest, I have told you before, you are far too earnest). I don’t know how wise or how unwise I’ve been. None of us know, do we. But I suspect…. You see, you were born late to me, and your father’s life and mine was set in what they call ‘a pattern’ nowadays – our own ways of talking, and being amused, and paying no attention – and the pattern has stayed. You may have a child, late, and then you will know how hard it is to change, and abandon things, and be wise with a child.”
“I shall not have a child,” said Hilda.
“Don’t say that. How do you know? You will marry someone, or this Cousins….”
“There,” said Hilda, very angry, standing up. “That’s what you do. You say that kind of thing. You say a little thing like ‘this Cousins,’ and all the time perhaps I shall marry Albert Cousins – yes, I say – Albert Cousins. Why is ‘Albert Cousins’ funny and ‘Alberto Cosco’ not funny? You have set up a feeling about him between you and me the very way you always say his name. Mother, you are so used to playing God and playing so cleverly that you make gross mistakes…. I know, you did well with Edward Vardoe, very well … and it’s gone to your head.”
Her mother gazing fixedly at the ashtray, flipped off the ash of her cigarette and flipped again. Then she looked up and in her tender voice she said “Forgive me … my darling … for a woman who thinks she is so wise I can be very stupid,” and she got up and went into the kitchen and shut the door. Even now, see! thought Hilda, she frustrates me; she just goes away.
Hilda was putting on her coat when she looked up and saw her mother standing there.
“Are you going to get that week off?” asked her mother in her ordinary voice.
“I think so.”
“Good …” and she turned to go.
Hilda felt the needle of compunction. “If I do, I shall take the car and go on the Island,” she said. And then – was there a pause? yes there was – “Would you like to come?”
Mrs. Severance’s heart lifted within her. “Thank you darling, no. It would be all scenery, wouldn’t it. I don’t enjoy drooling over scenery or listening to drooling – ‘Oh look at the mountains! How sweet the clouds! Behold the cow!’ And I’m too unwieldy to sit in that little bathtub of a car all day – no thank you. But I do adore being asked. I like it best here. Would you take Margaret if she could get away?”
“I might,” said Hilda, relieved. “I shall get the Spink to sleep here and do the cleaning and …”
“Certainly not. I’m very much attached to Mrs. Spink but she breathes too loud and talks too much … for a whole week. Alberto shall leave his room and come and stay. We shall look after each other. He suits me. We shall drink too much wine and I shall have gout in my fingers again. Good night my lamb, in case I’ve gone to bed when you come in.”