A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [43]
“I used to like Ruby Keeler.”
“She was years ago, Holly. Years and years ago.”
“Well, it wasn’t that long ago, I don’t believe. I’m no older than you are, Verla. It doesn’t seem that long ago to me.”
“Florence, what are you bidding?”
“With this mean old hand, I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, make up your mind, dear. Nothing venture, nothing gain. Try some of these, Holly. They’re not the ordinary Bridge Mixture. These have got chocolate-covered raisins, as well. I think it’s a nice addition, myself.”
“Oh, thanks, May. Just a few, then. Maureen tells me I shouldn’t eat candies.”
“Mercy, why not? You’ve hardly gained at all, not to speak of.”
“Well, she says –”
“I’m going to pass, May. Honestly, with this hand –”
“The one next week at the Roxy is The Doomed Women. I can’t imagine what it can be about. I don’t suppose it’ll be worth seeing. Harold says if I want to go, I can go alone. He’s reading the life of Albert Schweitzer. It’s very long.”
“I’ll go with you, Verla, if you like.”
“Oh, are you sure, Holly? I just hate going alone. I don’t feel right about it.”
The voices. Shrill, sedate, not clownish to their ears but only to mine, and of such unadmitted sadness I can scarcely listen and yet cannot stop listening.
There. That’s the last of the sandwiches cut fine and bite-size. So Rachel’s a bit run-down, is she? She needs to rest, eh? As if I were getting the opportunity to do anything much else. It’s been a week, nearly.
So much for my practicality and my stealth, persuading Mother over to Mrs. Gunn’s where the garden is pleasant to sit in (this pretext flowering so naturally that I wouldn’t have found it difficult, myself, to be convinced). Then running back to ransack her dresser like a she-Goth out for loot. Small blue glass bottles, once Evening in Paris but long since dried; a stack of heavy clotted-lace doilies she crocheted for the arms of chairs and never used, having a million others; new nylon nightgowns, pink pastel, still folded in the tissue paper, given to her by my sister each Christmas, but believed too delicate to wear – morbidly, she saves them for hospital and the last illness, so she’ll die demurely; a sachet of rose petals encased in stiff mauve voile and tied with a royal purple ribbon, the petals now ruined to the appearance of bran flakes; a chocolate box filled with sepia photographs of herself, a ringleted child with enormous long-lashed eyes and prettily pursed mouth, and one picture of Niall Cameron, awkwardly proud and unbelievably young in his new uniform as Private in the Artillery in 1915.
Under all the souvenirs, another one, the thing I was looking for. I took it back to my bedroom and hid it, not examining it, hardly able to pick it up for the loathing I felt. I sat on my bed and smoked and thought This isn’t the way to do it – something is all wrong here. I won’t ever be able to touch that contrivance. Anyway, it probably doesn’t work, not any more. It’s rotten with age, more than likely.
Let’s say I tell Mother I have to go to the city for a few days. What for? I could be buying books. There are plenty of drugstores, and not a soul to know a person. Could I ask, or would I get my words confused, come out with something I never meant to say?
None of this should be, not this way. How can I be steadier? To be nonchalant would be the best thing in the world, if I knew how. It’s all right for Stacey. She’d laugh, probably. Everything is all right for her, easy and open. She doesn’t appreciate what she’s got. She doesn’t even know she’s got it. She thinks she’s hard done by, for the work caused by four kids and a man who admits her existence. She doesn’t have the faintest notion. She left here young. She gave the last daughter my name. I suppose she thought she was doing me a favour. Jennifer Rachel. But they call her Jen.
“How about the sandwiches, Rachel? Are they ready?”
“Yes. You don’t want them yet, do you? It’s only eight.”
“No, I just