Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [61]
“Goddamn it, Barney, I hate to tell you this, but I wasn’t the only one.”
“Oh.”
“Didn’t you know that much?”
“No.”
“She’s insatiable.”
“Not with me she wasn’t.”
“Maybe we ought to order a couple of coffees, then you can hit me if it will make you feel better.”
“I need another Scotch.”
“Okay. Now listen to your Uncle Remus. You’re only twenty-three years old and she’s a nut case. Shake her loose. Divorce her.”
“You ought to see her. She’s lost lots of blood. She looks awful.”
“So do you.”
“I’m afraid of what she might do to herself.”
“Clara’s a lot tougher than you think.”
“Was it you who made those scratches on her back?”
“What?”
“Somebody else then.”
“It’s over. Finito. Give her a week to get her shit together and then tell her.”
“Cedric,” I said, breaking into a sweat, “everything’s spinning. I’m going to be sick. Get me into the john. Quick.”
11
The intense, hennaed Solange Renault, who once played Catherine in Henry Vat our Stratford, was obliged to settle long ago for the continuing role of the French-Canadian settlement nurse in my McIver of the RCMP series.
(Private joke. I often request the weekly script that’s to be sent to Solange, and rewrite some of her lines for her amusement.
NURSE SIMARD: By Gar, de wind she blow lak ’ell out dere tonight. Be careful de h’ice, everybody.
Or, NURSE SIMARD: Look dere, h’it’s Fadder St-Pierre ’oo comes ’ere. Better lock up de alcool and mind your h’arses, guys.)
Actually, I have made it my business to find work for Solange in just about everything done by Totally Unnecessary Productions Ltd., going back to the seventies. Sixty-something years old now, still nervously thin, she persists in dressing like an ingenue but otherwise is the most admirable of women. Her husband, a gifted set designer, was taken out by a massive heart attack in his early thirties, and Solange has brought up, and seen to the education of, her daughter, the indomitable Chantal, my personal assistant. Saturday nights, providing the new, improved, no-talent, chickenshit Canadiens are in town, each one a multimillionaire, Solange and I eat an early dinner at Pauzé’s, and then repair to the Forum, where once nos glorieux were just about invincible. My God, I remember when all they had to do was to leap over the boards in those red-and-white sweaters and the visiting team was a goner. Those, those were the days. Fire-wagon hockey. Soft but accurate passes. Fast-as-lightning wrist shots. Defencemen who could hit. And no ear-piercing rock music played at 10,000 decibels while a face-off was held up for a TV commercial.
Anyway, it now seems that my traditional if increasingly exasperating Saturday night out with Solange is threatened. I’m told I behaved like a hooligan again last Saturday night, embarrassing her. My alleged offence happened during the third period. The effete Canadiens, already down 4–1 to the Ottawa Senators, for Christ’s sake, were on their so-called power play, scrambly, a minute gone and yet to manage a shot on the nets. Savage, that idiot, passed to an open wing, enabling a slo-mo Ottawa defenceman, a journeyman who would have been lucky to make the QSHL in the old days, to ice the puck. Turgeon collected it, glided to centre ice, and golfed it into the corner, Damphouse and Savage scrambling after, throwing up snow just short of the mêlée. “Goddamn that Turgeon,” I hollered, “with his contract, he’s earning something like a hundred thousand a goal. Beliveau was never paid more than fifty thousand dollars28 for the whole season and he wasn’t afraid to carry the puck over the blue line.”
“Yes, I know,” said Solange, rolling her eyes. “And Doug Harvey never made more than fifteen a year here.”
“I told you that. You didn’t know it.”
“I’m not denying you told me that, I don’t know how many times. Now will you please be quiet and stop making an exhibition of yourself.”
“Look at that! Nobody parked in front of the net, because he might have to take an elbow. We’ll be lucky if