The bed was empty.
Ida was brooding over a third cup of coffee with toast and strawberry jam before Morrie got back.
“I thought he was with you,” Ida said.
“You’ll never believe this, but Solomon’s in the workshop trying to make something. Whatever it is, let’s tell him it’s wonderful.”
“I’ll take him lunch.”
“Neither of us is to even go near the shop until he’s finished in there. He took the keys. He says what he’s making has to be a surprise.”
“Oh, for me!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He looks at me I can tell he’s undressing me with his eyes.”
Solomon had begun work at six-thirty, firing the boiler. Then he rooted about for some framing squares and sorted out mallets and chisels and other essential tools. He retrieved four drawer pulls mixed up with other fixtures from a large bucket. They were flush-fitting and made from cast brass. Exactly what he wanted. Sifting through the lumber that was stacked on the steel trays, he was tempted by the bird’s-eye maple, but finally settled on the wild cherry wood. Difficult to work with, but strong. It was light brown, but of an amber hue at the heart that would darken further with age, its pores following the outline of the growth ring boundary. He sorted out the planks, sniffing and stroking them, and then he studied them for checking and warping. There was more than sufficient lumber for his needs. A good thing, because Solomon anticipated a lot of wastage. Except for the drawer pulls, not one nail, not one screw, would compromise his work. All the joints would be tongue-and-groove or else mortiseand-tenon. The piece he had in mind for her was a dressing table. She would keep her diary, rich in girlish surmise, in one drawer, and the jewels he would astonish her with in another. There would, no doubt, be fragrant sachets in each drawer. On the surface, a silver candlestick, a crystal bowl filled with pot-pourri, her vanity set. On a hot summer’s evening, the window open to catch the breeze from the lake, she would sit there brushing her thick honey-coloured hair, counting the strokes.
Solomon was determined to finish the table by Friday noon, but the first day he was content to square his lumber, smoothing the edges with a joiner plane.
He had met her father once. A big man, barrel-chested. My name is Russell Morgan, Jr., K.C., look on my inheritance, ye mighty, and despair. He was active in the Empire League and a colonel in the Black Watch. He was the inept, hard-drinking senior partner in Morgan, MacIntyre and Maclean, whom the younger partners tolerated only because of his esteemed name and useful Square Mile connections. He was a notorious snob. But, to be fair, there was also something quixotic in his nature. Twice he had stood for parliament in Montreal as a Tory and twice he had gone down to inevitable defeat. Once, a Liberal heckler planted at one of his meetings put a question to him in French. Russell Morgan, Jr. tried to dismiss him with a wave of his hand, but the heckler persisted. “Is it possible,” he demanded, “that your family has been here all these years and you still do not speak French?”
“It is no more necessary for me to speak French, my good man, than it would be contingent upon me to understand Chinese if I lived in Hong Kong.”
Mr. Bernard, terrified by rumours that the brilliant Stuart MacIntyre might be representing the government in court, had foolishly approached the firm himself. Russell Morgan, Jr. had never heard of anything so outrageous. So Mr. Bernard, compounding his folly, tried to seduce him with numbers.
“Oh, isn’t that rich, boys?”
Finally Mr. Bernard played his ace in the hole. “I wonder if you are aware that your grandfather and mine were once involved in a business negotiation? The New Camelot Mining & Smelting Company.”
“Miss Higgins will show you to the door, Gursky, as surely as Stu MacIntyre will see you and your brothers behind bars where you belong. Good-day.”
THE LIGHT WAS FAILING when Solomon slipped into the kitchen to find a sour Ida waiting for him.
“Ida, you look adorable.”
Her shoulder-length permed hair had been gathered into a flat rolled chignon. She wore a black lace dress by Chanel, that threatened to split at the seams. “It’s nothing,” she said, sucking in a breath.
Barney had already eaten and been put to bed when Ida served dinner by candlelight. Morrie, bubbling with good humour, said, “Maybe I should take him on as an apprentice. What do you think, Ida?”
Solomon was out of the house at six-thirty every morning and didn’t return until nightfall. But he didn’t spend all of his time in the workshop. He also went for walks. Once he saw her from a distance. At ease in her rose garden, cutting blooms for the table. She wore a broadbrimmed straw hat with a pink bow. She will keep the book she is reading on the surface of her table. It will be encased in a tooled leather slipcover with a red silk bookmark. Say, Sense and Sensibility or Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. He will read aloud to her at night. He would tell her about Ephraim in Van Diemen’s Land and on the Erebus and how her grandfather had held him prisoner in that hotel in Sherbrooke.
“Say,” Ida said, “could you use a sweeper-upper in there? I charge two bits an hour, but no pinching.”
“It’s a surprise,” Morrie said. “I told you. We’re not allowed in there.”
“Oh, did you remember, Morrie?” Solomon asked.
“Did he remember what?”
“Miss Diana Morgan is coming to tea,” Morrie said, averting his eyes.
“Hey, I live here too. Why wasn’t I told?”
“He’s telling you now.”
“If you think you’re going to screw her, mister, you’ve got a surprise coming.”
“Ida!” Morrie said.
“Ida! Pish pish. I’ll bet even a milk bottle isn’t safe alone in a room with Solomon. Poor Clara, that’s all I can say.” Ida shoved her chair back from the table and marched out of the dining room, pausing at the door. “She won’t come, Solomon. At the last minute she’ll have to shampoo her horsey-worsey or go to church for confession. Forgive me, Father, but on the hay ride last Saturday night Harry McClure kissed me on the lips and slipped his hand under my skirt. Describe it, my child.”
“She’s not a Catholic,” Morrie said.
“Big deal. Neither am I.”
“And who is Harry McClure?” Solomon asked.
“Just one of the many young men who are after her. I mean talk about naches. She’s by Sir Russell Morgan a granddaughter. I’d be practising my curtsies right now only I know those people and she ain’t coming to this house, her father sees me on the road you’d think he’d stepped in dogshit.”
The wild cherry wood table was finished by Friday noon. Solomon covered it with a blanket, locked up, and went into the house to bathe and change his clothes. Punctually, at 4:30, a Ford pickup twisted into the long winding driveway leading to the house. Emile Boisvert, the Morgans’ caretaker, had come to collect the bookcase. “Miss Morgan sends her apologies,” he said. “She is not feeling well.”
Solomon went directly to the workshop, picked up an axe and, at the last minute, drove it not into the table but the floor. Then he carried the table into the house, still covered with a blanket.
“My surprise,” Ida exclaimed, jumping up and down.
Solomon announced that he wouldn’t be able to stay for dinner, he had to get back to Montreal, and then he pulled the blanket free and revealed the table.
“Now that’s what I call a cabinet-maker,” Ida said.
Morrie ran a hand over the surface of the table. He stooped to stroke the legs. He opened and shut a drawer.
“Say something,” Ida said, nudging him.
“It’s beautiful.”
Early the next morning Morrie trudged out to his workshop, sat down at the craftsman’s bench and held his head in his hands and wept. He packed his tools away and covered both the bench and his foot-pedal lathe with a sheet and then padlocked the workshop from the outside, intending never to return again.
Ida had taken her brea
d and jam into the living room, where she could admire the table as she munched.
“We’re going back to Montreal,” Morrie said.
Ida wiped her sticky fingers with a napkin and put the record on the victrola again.
She started a heat wave,
By letting her seat wave.
And in such a way that the customers say,
That she certainly can can-can.
She shimmied. He watched.
Eight
By the time Moses got to the Chalet Antoine, early one spring afternoon in 1968, it had changed hands many times. In its most recent reincarnation the chalet was a nursing home, septuagenarians sucking up sun on the flagstone terrace where Solomon had once told Diana about the Kingdom of Prester John. Moses didn’t linger, but drove right on to the cottage on the lake that was still owned by Mr. Morrie. Happily, the French-Canadian caretaker, a convivial old man, was pleased to join Moses for a crêpe aux pommes and several beers in the village and then show him around the estate and the cottage.
“The family doesn’t stay here any more,” he said, “but Mr. Morrie keeps an eye on things. He may not come out for months at a time and then he’s here twice in the same week.”
The furniture was covered with sheets.
“What does he do when he visits?”
“Sometimes he can sit on that swing out there under the maple tree for hours, thinking about things.”
The wood-workshop was locked. “Have you got a key?” Moses asked.
“Sorry, Mr. Berger, but I’m the only one allowed in there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, to keep all the machinery oiled, you know, the wood fed and polished, and to make sure there are no uninvited guests. Squirrels. Field mice.”
“Does Mr. Morrie ever use it?”
“Funny you should ask. I caught him peering in that window once and I could swear he was crying. Hey, hold on a minute, Mr. Morrie, I’ll run and get the key. No, no, he said. Not yet. But one day.”
Then Moses continued on to what the locals still referred to with pride as the Sir Russell Morgan estate, where the elusive Diana had finally agreed to see him. Following a long meandering driveway, Moses drove slowly past a small apple orchard, a stand of sugar maple trees, stables, a barn, a tennis court, an immense greenhouse, a potting shed, an asparagus bed, a raspberry patch, and many more tilled beds, separated by brick walks, already planted with flowers and vegetables he imagined. There were clusters of daffodils here, there, and everywhere before the main house. White clapboard. Wraparound porch. Solid oak door with polished brass knocker. A maid led Moses into the solarium, where Diana McClure sat in a wingbacked wicker chair surrounded by greenery. One eye brown, one eye blue.
“It needn’t be tea, Mr. Berger. I can offer you something more invigorating.”
“Tea would be fine, thank you.”
“As you pulled up, I couldn’t help noticing that your front tires look distressingly soft. You must stop at M. Laurin’s garage on your way back and have him check the pressure. First left just before you reach the bottom of the hill. If he’s the least bit officious do tell him that I sent you.”
“I’ll do that,” Moses said, mumbling something flattering about her gardens.
“It’s a form of tyranny. Self-imposed, but tyranny all the same. I dare not leave here this time of year when everything will soon be coming up in such a frenzy.”
“Including the black flies.”
“Do you garden, then?”
“I’m new at it and not very good.”
“Take my advice, then, and don’t read too many books. They will only discourage and confuse you. Get yourself a copy of Vita Sackville-West’s A Joy of Gardening and follow her.”
“I’ll do that. Thank you.”
“Shouldn’t you write it down?”
“Yes,” he said, fumbling for his pen. “It is very kind of you to let me intrude like this, Mrs. McClure.”
“Not in the least, but I doubt that I can be of much help. May I ask you a direct question?”
“Certainly.”
“You wrote to say you were working on a biography of Solomon Gursky. I do admire your industry, Mr. Berger, but who would be interested after all these years?”
“I am.”
“The only valid reason for embarking on such a project. Now tell me why.”
“Oh my. That’s such a long and convoluted story.”
“I’m in no hurry, if you aren’t.”
An apprehensive Moses gathered that he was being weighed on the scales of her intuitions, its measures unknown to him, and, all at once, found himself gabbing away like a silly schoolboy. Telling her about L.B. Lionel’s birthday party. Ephraim Gursky. His involvement with Lucy. Henry in the Arctic. Then, suddenly, he stopped short, amazed at himself.
“Is the family co-operating?”
“No.”
“There was no love lost between Solomon and Bernard.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Oh come now, Mr. Berger. You’ll have to do better than that,” she said, laughing flirtatiously.
He blushed.
“If I may be so presumptuous, I think an excellent model for you might be The Quest for Corvo by A.J.A. Symons. Brilliant, I thought.”
“Yes.”
“Have you a publisher?”
“Um, no. I mean it’s premature.”
“I think McClelland & Stewart are the most adventurous of the lot here, though a touch vulgar in their promotions. However, the likelihood is that they would be more interested in a biography of poor Mr. Bernard.”
“Why ‘poor’ Mr. Bernard?” Moses asked, stiffening.
“I suspect,” she said, smiling, “that you think I am badly disposed to him because he is a Jew.”
“No,” Moses lied.
“Don’t you find it exhausting?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I would.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Being Jewish. For all its gratifications it coloured Solomon’s reactions to everything. Like you, he always had his hackles raised. I am not an anti-Semite, Mr. Berger, and neither did I consider the bootlegging such a disgrace. On the contrary. It was frightfully clever and quite the only interesting thing about Mr. Bernard. I said ‘poor’ Mr. Bernard, because all he ever wanted out of our pathetic, so-called establishment was a seat in the senate. A modest enough demand. I would have awarded him two, happily.”
“About Solomon.”
“And me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You have been told that we had an affair,” she said, surprising him.
“Yes. But I don’t mean to pry,” he protested, stumbling.
“Of course you do, young man, or why are you here?”
“Sorry. You are absolutely right.”
“This is hardly what I would describe as an age of discretion, Mr. Berger. I have seen the president of the United States pull out his shirt and lower his trousers on television to show us his abdominal scars. Public figures, if they be drunkards or womanizers or even swindlers, seem compelled to write steamy, self-pitying best-sellers about it, beating their breasts for profit. What I’m getting at,” she said, her voice softening, “is that I’m afraid, much as I’d like to be helpful, that I couldn’t tell you anything that might be hurtful to Mr. McClure or my son.”
“At the risk of being rude, why did you agree to see me?”
“A reasonable question. A most justifiable question. Let me think. Possibly because I’m a bored old lady and my curiosity got the better of me. Wait. There is something else. I have read your occasional book review in the Spectator or Encounter and I was not unimpressed by your intelligence. I took it that you were a young man of sensibility and I have not been disappointed.”
Moses, beaming, wondered if it would be pushy of him to slip in that he had once been a Rhodes scholar. He decided against it.
“I need time, Mr. B
erger. I must think about this very carefully.”
Before he left, she had the gardener bring him a bundle of fresh asparagus. “Don’t throw out the water you cook them in—for no longer than twelve minutes, as I’m sure you know, the crowns kept out of the water—and you will have the beginnings of a nourishing broth. And please do remember to see about your tire pressure or I shall worry about you on the road.”
Driving back to Montreal, Moses was suffused with a feeling of well-being, unusual for him.
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.
Well, not quite. But Diana McClure née Morgan did describe me as a young man of intelligence and sensibility. Not bad, he thought.
Nine
Instead of heading directly back to his cabin in the Townships, Moses drove in to Montreal, stopping at Callaghan’s apartment. Inevitably, they fell to talking about Solomon.
“Solomon’s jokes were always at somebody else’s expense,” Callaghan said, “but he was indifferent to the damage. Take that prank of buying the Chalet Antoine in Ste.-Adèle, for instance. Far from being overjoyed, the bunch from Fancy Finery were intimidated the minute they came spilling out of those chartered buses and saw what kind of hotel they were being put up at. Tennis courts. Lawn bowling. Croquet. Canoes. Instead of a bottle of seltzer at each table, a snobby waiter presenting them with a wine list and a menu they couldn’t understand. Pâté de fois gras. Ris de veau. Tournedos. A couple of the more enterprising husbands piled into a pickup truck, drove out to Prévost, and came back with a sack of kosher chickens and briskets, gallon jars of sour pickles, stacks of rye bread and so forth, and their wives took over the kitchen. But then there were those bastards who gathered in boats offshore, come to gawk at the fat ladies taking the sun in their bras and bloomers and the men playing pinochle in their underwear. So the beneficiaries of Solomon’s largesse, confined to the hotel for the most part, longed for nothing so much as the corner cigar & soda or the familiar front-door stoop. Moses, there are some eggs in the fridge if you’re hungry. Mrs. Hawkins marks the hardboiled ones with an X for me.”