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By Root 584 0

managing to matriculate with a third-class pass, and envying classmates who went on to McGill with ease. In those good old days, there was still a Jewish quota at McGill. Our bunch needed a seventy-five per cent mark to gain admittance, while goyboys qualified with sixty-five per cent, so I was a non-starter. So ashamed was I of my failure that I avoided student hangouts, like the Café André, and would cross the street if I saw one of my old classmates heading in my direction, anointed with that white sweater with the big red M sewn into it. After all, the most I could say for myself at the time was that I had graduated from busboy to waiter at The Normandy Roof. So I was inordinately proud that our children had excelled in their studies, winning prizes, and going on to one university or another. On the other hand, I doubt that Cardinal Newman, never mind Dr. Arnold, would have been impressed with the winds that blew in the latter-day groves of academe. Glancing through Kate’s Wellington syllabus, I noted that she could take a course on Household Science, that is to say, how to boil an egg. Or vacuum. Saul, looking for a Mickey Mouse credit, had signed on for Creative Writing at McGill, taught by, you guessed it, Terry McIver. Superannuated Gazette reporters were teaching Journalism at Wellington, arranging their lecture hours so as not to conflict with their AA meetings.

Mike met Caroline at LSE, and, when we flew over to London on a visit, we were invited to dinner at her parents’ home in The Boltons. Nigel Clarke was a well-known barrister, a QC, and his wife, Virginia, wrote the occasional gardening piece for The Tatler. Such was my apprehension (or insecurity, according to Miriam) that I prejudged both of them as snobs and virulent anti-Semites, whose families — no doubt listed in Debrett’s — had probably conspired with the Duke of Windsor to impose a Nazi regime on the U.K. in 1940. Clinching matters, I discovered that the Clarkes’ country estate was not far from the village of Eaglesham, in Scotland. “I hope you realize,” I said to Miriam, “that’s where Rudolf Hess landed in 1941.”

“Virginia phoned to say dress will be casual, but I bought you a tie on Jermyn Street all the same. Oh, for your information, that’s spelt J, E, R, M, Y, N.”

“I’m not wearing one.”

“Yes, you are. She also wanted to know if there were any foods that disagreed with you. Isn’t that nice?”

“No, it isn’t. Because the subtext is, are we so Jewy that we don’t eat pork.”

Nigel wasn’t wearing a tie or a jacket, but a sports shirt and a cardigan with a missing elbow, and the imposing Virginia had on a loose sweater, what we used to call a sloppy joe, and slacks. Dressing down for colonialists, I thought. I must remember not to tear my meat apart with my fingers. Forearmed by a good deal of Scotch, consumed alone in a Soho pub, which was a violation of a solemn promise to Miriam, and riding my second glass of Marks & Spencer’s champers, I set out to shock at the dining-room table. Filling my father’s office, I slid into telling tales of his days with Montreal’s finest. The time they tied a felon to the hood of the car like a deer. Izzy’s methods of persuasion. The courtesies he was shown in bordellos. To my chagrin, Virginia guffawed at my stories, and begged for more, and Nigel responded with steamy anecdotes about his divorce cases. So once again I got everything wrong, but instead of warming to the Clarkes, a nifty couple, I sulked at the failure of my strategy, Miriam covering for me as usual, until I loosened up.

“We are absolutely delighted with your brilliant son,” said Nigel. “I do hope you don’t mind his marrying out of the faith.”

“That thought never occurred to me,” I lied.

Then Nigel invited me to join him on a salmon-fishing trip on the Spey. We could stay at the Tulcan Lodge. “I wouldn’t know how to manage a fly rod,” I said.

“You see,” said a roused Miriam, “when Barney was a boy he fished in a brackish pond, with a twig cut from a tree in lieu of a proper rod, and a line made up of string saved from butchers’ parcels.”

A