Earth and High Heaven (12 page)

“That isn't what matters,” said Erica. Fundamentally, Charles isn't really awfully interested in money.”

“I know. What does matter, though, is the fact that everything looks so horribly unsettled. He doesn't know where he's at now, and still less where he's going to be ten years from now. All he knows is that whatever is coming, it won't be his kind of world, and he's scared, or he would be if it weren't for you. He has a lot of respect for you — you know the way he's always saying that ‘Erica's got her head screwed on straight.' And besides, you know how to talk to him without putting his back up ...”

“It's perfectly simple ...” began Erica.

“It may be simple for you but it isn't for the rest of us! Anyhow, the point is that Charles will listen to you. You're about the only person who isn't hopelessly committed to the past that he
will
listen to. So far as he's concerned, you're about his only bridge between the past and the future because you can translate ideas into terms he can understand and because, when you say something, it makes sense. He's going to hang on to you as long as he possibly can, and I'm willing to bet you anything you like that no matter whom you pick, Charles will try to stop you from marrying him.”

“There's no way he can stop me,” said Erica. “This is 1942, not 1867 ...”

Looking at her rather oddly, Erica thought, Miriam interrupted, “And as a situation, it's been so overdone and it's so out of date that it just couldn't happen to you, could it?”

“What do you expect Charles to do? Lock me up in my room and feed me on bread and water until I come to my senses?”

“He doesn't have to do that, Eric — so long as you're living here, he can work on you without your ever even realizing it.”

“Look,” said Erica patiently. “You got married when Charles thought you were far too young and Tony married someone he didn't approve of at all — even if Charles doesn't want to let me go, if you two could get away with it, why can't I?”

“He didn't care half as much about us.” She said rather deliberately, “And we didn't care half as much about him either.”

“And you forget one thing,” said Erica. “I have far more influence on Charles than you ever had.”

“You'll probably need it.”

A door slammed somewhere downstairs and Miriam started, then said lightly, “If you're determined to stick around until someone decides to come and rescue you from your overly devoted father, at least pick a man who's got all the necessary qualifications and a couple of extra ones for good measure, so that Charles won't have any valid grounds for objecting. He'll object anyhow, but you might just as well make it as tough for him as you can ...”

“I wish you'd shut up,” said Erica with sudden violence.

Miriam glanced at her quickly and after a pause she said, “I'm sorry, Eric.”

“It's all right. Do you want this orange? It's all peeled.”

“Don't you want it?”

“No.” She got up and gave it to Miriam, then went over to the window and sat down on the seat with her hands in the pockets of her jacket. She said, looking down at the toe of her shoe, “I have picked someone, only he hasn't got the necessary qualifications — he came to a cocktail party here with René, and Charles refused to meet him.”

“My God, what was he?” asked Miriam in amazement.

“A Jewish lawyer.”

“Oh.” She said as though she were reading aloud to herself. “Mr. and Mrs. Charles Sickert Drake announce the engagement of their daughter, Erica Elizabeth, to a Jewish lawyer ...” She broke off and said, “Well, never mind, Eric, you can count on me anyhow. What's he like?”

“He's about six feet, with brown hair and eyes about the same color as mine, but they slant ...”

“Upwards or downwards?” inquired Miriam with interest.

“Upwards, you ass!”

“That's good. Otherwise I should think he'd have rather a droopy look — you know, like a bloodhound. Is he good-looking?”

“Not particularly, he's just attractive. Nice shoulders and no hips. His skin is dark enough so that he won't look as though he's come out from under a stone the first time he goes swimming — you know, that sort of golden skin that's very smooth ...”

“How many times have you met this guy?”

“Just twice.”

“I must say you notice a lot,” said Miriam admiringly. “And what sort of person is René?”

“Thirty-four, dark, aquiline, slightly satirical, very intelligent, and very Catholic.”

“Very Quebec Catholic?”

“I don't know. We usually try to stay off the subject. I somehow can't see René with twelve children, but you never can tell. We might even invite ourselves there for dinner tomorrow night. Mary's going to be out.”

“For heaven's sake let's get ourselves invited somewhere, then.”

“You'd better leave out the part about Tony ‘having the time of his life' when you're talking to Madeleine and René. Madeleine still has too many illusions about Tony and René hasn't enough. I suppose there's someone else in the picture?” she asked.

“Well, there was for a while anyhow. I don't know whether it's still going on or not, and if it is, how much it means to Tony or how far it goes. She was certainly nuts about him, at any rate. I ran into them together a couple of times.”

“So here's Madeleine,” said Erica, “having a baby in August and saying, ‘Of course Tony always hated writing letters, and anyhow he's so busy, and besides there are so many sinkings that we're not getting half the English mails ...'” She said furiously, “I could break his bloody neck!”

Miriam said calmly, “You can't imagine the sort of life he leads now, Eric. These are extraordinary circumstances ...” she began and stopped, confused by the sheer inanity of her own remark. “Anyhow, Madeleine doesn't need to know anything about it,” she added at last.

They were silent for a while and then Erica said idly, “John Gardiner's been phoning practically every day for the last month to see if you'd got here yet ...”

“Good Old Faithful,” said Miriam. “Is he still strong and silent and full of ideals?”

“I guess so,” said Erica, uncomfortably. The description, while recognizable, did not strike her as quite just, although there was no doubt that so far as his attitude toward Miriam was concerned, John was certainly too full of ideals for his own good. Erica had had to spend a good many evenings off and on during the past eight years listening to John on the subject of Miriam, and half the time he had sounded as though he were talking about someone else. Or so she had thought, but now Erica was beginning to wonder. It was possible that he had not been so far off the track after all. Unlike the rest of them, he had never regarded Miriam as impervious; unlike Charles and Margaret Drake he had never believed that Miriam had divorced Peter Kingsley “for no really good reason”; John had said over and over again that Miriam was altogether too vulnerable, that her emotions were likely to run away with her, that her ex-husband had given her a “raw deal” — Erica did not know exactly how John had worked that out for himself — and that what Miriam needed was someone to look after her. All of which, Erica reflected, might turn out to be true after all.

“How is he?” asked Miriam, turning her head toward the door again as the telephone rang.

“He's still mad about being sent back from England just because he's bilingual. Apparently they're short of bilingual officers.”

Miriam finished her second orange and then asked suddenly, “Why don't you tell him what I'm really like, Eric? He still thinks I'm some kind of superfatted angel. After all this time, he deserves a break.”

“Maybe he knows,” said Erica.

There was a knock on the door and Mary said, “The telephone's for you, Miss Miriam — a Mr. Eliot. I called you but I guess you didn't hear me ...”

Miriam was off the bed and out the door before Mary had finished her sentence.

Form the window Erica said resignedly, “I'll be alone for dinner after all, Mary.”

“Yes, Miss Drake,” she said, and then added vaguely, “but it's only a quarter past six and maybe something will turn up.”

“At a quarter past six?” asked Erica. “Well, maybe.” She got up from the window seat, wandered about for a while after Mary had gone, then decided she would kill the next half hour by taking a bath.

When the telephone rang again she did not hear it; she was cold-creaming her face in her bathroom with both taps running.

“Miss Drake ...”

“Yes, Mary?”

“You're wanted on the phone.” As Erica opened the door Mary said happily, “It's a gentleman, Miss Drake. I told you something would turn up.”

Erica went off down the hall to her mother's room to answer. By the time she got there, she had succeeded in convincing herself that it could not possibly be Marc, and that it was probably someone from the Post. Thus fortified against the inevitable letdown, she picked up the phone, sat down on the edge of her mother's bed and said, “Hello?”

“Hello, this is Marc Reiser — you know, the guy you only managed to get rid of three hours ago.”

“Yes, hello,” said Erica, taking a firmer grip on the phone.

“I'm in my office.”

He did not seem to know where to go from there so she said, “What are you doing in your office at this hour?”

“I don't seem to be doing anything much but sit here wondering why in hell I asked you out to dinner next Wednesday when it's still ...” He paused, evidently counting, and went on, “... almost five days off. Look,” he said hurriedly, “I know it's awfully late notice but ... Oh, Good Lord!”

“Now what?” Erica wanted to know.

“I forgot about your sister.”

“My sister has already forgotten about me,” said Erica, “so that makes us even.”

“Do you mean you can have dinner with me tonight?”

“I'd love to.”

“There's some kind of ghastly affair at the mess and I'm supposed to put in an appearance — do you mind if we drop in for a while later on?”

“I don't mind a bit.”

“We don't have to stay long. Is it all right if I pick you up about seven-thirty?”

“Yes, that's fine,” said Erica in a tone which was admirably matter-of-fact, she thought, under the circumstances.

“Goodbye, Eric.”

“Goodbye.”

She put down the phone and went on sitting on the edge of her mother's bed for a while, looking up at a watercolour of some calla lilies on the opposite wall. Instead of next Wednesday, she would be seeing Marc again in less than an hour.

Downstairs Miriam called out something which she did not hear, then a door slammed, and some minutes later Erica became slowly aware of a clock ticking somewhere in the house. She listened to it for a while, still half dreaming, and wondering idly where it came from, and then finally she recognized the sound. It was the clock in her father's study.

IV

At breakfast the following Wednesday morning Erica remarked to her mother, “By the way, I'm going to be out to dinner tonight.”

Her father put down his cup with an abrupt movement which spilled some of his coffee over the edge of the saucer onto the cloth, and looking directly at Erica around the corner of the table on his right he asked, “Are you going out with René?”

It was obvious from his expression that he already knew who it was without asking, but she said matter-of-factly, “No, with Marc Reiser.”

His eyes left her face and returned to his newspaper. He said nothing.

“More coffee, Eric?” asked her mother.

“Yes, please.”

Miriam was not down yet. Erica held out her cup, returned it quickly to her place as she noticed that her hand was shaking slightly, put in some cream and sugar, and then said into the silence, “I ran into Marc at the station when I was meeting Miriam and had dinner with him on Saturday night ...”

“Do you mean to say that you left Miriam to have dinner here alone on her first night home?” interrupted her mother.

“No, she'd already arranged to go out with a friend of hers from England — some American on the Purchasing Commission.”

Her father was still reading his newspaper but he could not avoid hearing her. In order to get it over with, once and for all, Erica went on as casually as she could, “I saw Marc again on Sunday. We went swimming at Oka.”

“You could hardly wait for your mother and me to get out of town, could you?” said her father without glancing up from his paper.

“After twenty-eight years I'm not likely to start doing things behind your back, Charles,” said Erica calmly. She had no intention of allowing herself to be sidetracked by losing her temper if she could help it; she had seen Anthony and Miriam make that mistake too often.

“You must have known that we wouldn't like it, Erica,” said her mother.

“How was I supposed to know? You've never objected to any of my friends before.”

There was another silence and finally Erica said, “I think we'd better get this thing settled now. So far as I'm concerned, I like Marc and I respect him, and I intend to go on seeing him ...”

“Regardless of our opinions on the subject?” asked her mother.

“You can't have ‘opinions' on the subject of someone you've scarcely met and Charles has never met at all ...”

Her father put down his paper and said, interrupting, “We've already been over all this, Eric. If some Jewish lawyer nobody's ever heard of is more important to you than we are, and as you say, you intend to go on seeing him in spite of knowing perfectly well the way we feel about him, then I'm afraid you'll have to do your seeing somewhere else.”

“Do you mean that I can't even bring him to the house?” Her father did not answer and turning to her mother, she said incredulously, “You're not going to be as unfair as Charles, are you?”

“It's not a question of being fair or unfair, Eric. It's simply a question of facing facts. There's no sense in going out of your way to create a situation which might turn out to be very awkward for everyone, when you can so easily avoid it. You scarcely know the man yourself, and he can't possibly mean anything to you.”

“And you, Brutus,” said Erica.

Her father said angrily, “You have no reason to feel so sorry for yourself, Erica.”

“The persecution complex seems to be catching,” observed Margaret Drake. With a gesture which had become almost automatic, she straightened the skirt of her pale blue linen dress to keep it from crushing, and then shoved her chair away from the table in order to change her sitting position. Although it was so early in the day, her back had already begun to ache again. She said, “I've never known you to behave like this before. You're usually so reasonable. And apart from everything else, since he is the only person we've ever objected to, why can't you just ...”

“You wouldn't expect me to sacrifice someone I like for a set of objections I don't agree with, would you?”

She was appealing to that sense of justice which was one of her mother's strongest characteristics and after considering it, her eyes raised toward the light flowing through the windows of the dining room, her mother said at last, “No, I wouldn't, but I would expect you to give us a fair hearing.”

“But the only thing you've got against Marc is the fact that he's Jewish.”

“No,” said her father. “What I've got against him is the fact that he's obviously making use of my daughter.”

“How? By taking me out to dinner on Saturday and swimming on Sunday?”

“A man who makes three engagements in five days with a girl he hardly knows is obviously out for something, isn't he? You're not exactly high school age, either of you.”

“Out for what?”

“Well,” said Charles shrugging, “say he seems just a little too eager.”

“And just why should you say a thing like that about a friend of mine? Or does the fact that you're my father automatically give you the right to say anything you choose?”

“I'm not going to quarrel with you, Erica,” he said, unmoved. He lit a cigarette, observing through the smoke, “I got your friend Reiser's number the moment I heard he'd turned up here with René.”

“That was remarkably psychic even for you, considering the fact that you were still upstairs and had to form your opinion of Marc's character through a hardwood floor.”

“What's the matter with you, Erica?” demanded her mother who had been watching her with increasing anxiety and surprise. “I've never seen you like this before. You're not yourself at all.”

“I don't think Charles is either.” Looking down at her empty coffee cup, Erica went on without raising her voice, “I told you that one of these days some guy was going to fall for me just for the sake of my beaux yeux. I'm not so bad, Charles — he doesn't necessarily have to have ulterior motives.”

“Why doesn't he pick up a Jewish girl then?”

“That's not supposed to be necessary in this country,” said Erica after a pause.

“Erica, what is the matter with you?” said her mother desperately. “There's no need to go on about it, is there?”

“Why don't you ask Charles?” Without taking her eyes from his face she said, “Charles knows everything. The only thing he doesn't seem to know is that what with the war and various other developments, the Drake connection isn't quite as important as it used to be, even to a Jewish lawyer. So far as Marc Reiser is concerned, you might just as well be a couple of people named Smith, except that if you were, you wouldn't be quite so likely to assume that he was ‘out for something,'” she added with a slight change of tone. “He's in the Army, he's going overseas in a few months, maybe sooner, and he's got something else to think about besides how to do himself a bit of good by getting to know the Drakes and running after the Drakes' daughter in order to improve his social, and indirectly his professional standing.”

She paused again and then asked, “That's about it, isn't it, Charles?”

“No, that is
not
it!” her mother burst out before Charles, still as impassive as ever, had a chance to answer. She did not know what to make of Erica; she was not only badly hurt, but utterly at a loss to understand her daughter's behaviour. As she had so often said to her friends in the past, in all her life Erica had never given either of her parents a moment of unhappiness or even a moment of worry.

Grasping the arms of her chair and almost in tears, Margaret Drake said, “It doesn't even seem to have occurred to you that all we're trying to do is protect you against yourself. I thought your father was wrong to take this man so seriously. I told him I thought he was simply being melodramatic when he said he knew that something like this was going to happen. I couldn't imagine you losing your head over anyone, particularly a man you hardly know, who obviously isn't your kind of person at all, and who can't possibly really matter to you.”

She broke off, her eyes searching Erica's face for some kind of change and then she said hopelessly, “I don't understand you, Eric. It isn't as though we'd ever tried to interfere with you before, and surely you can see why we don't want you to get involved with him for your own sake.”

“But Mother, I am involved with him,” said Erica steadily.

At that moment Miriam entered the dining room. She was wearing her flowered housecoat and had a red ribbon in her dark hair. She glanced from her parents to Erica, then slipped into her chair murmuring, “Good morning, everybody.”

Neither her mother nor father answered; they did not even appear to have noticed her.

“Hello, darling,” said Erica mechanically.

Her father asked her at last, “And what do you mean by that, exactly?”

“I don't know, except that I can't just stop seeing him.” It was no use trying to explain to them how she felt about Marc; so far as her mother and father were concerned, you could not feel deeply about someone you had only met three times, and that was all there was to it. As her mother had already pointed out, Marc Reiser could not possibly really matter to her, and anything else she might say to the contrary would simply be taken as a further proof that she had “lost her head” and was “simply not herself.”

Looking aimlessly at the breakfast table in front of her, Erica said, “I realize that it's awkward for everyone, but at least it's nothing like as awkward now as it will be if you go on refusing to have anything to do with him ...”

“In other words, you're not interested in our opinions. We're just to shut up and do what we're told.” He said, “Well, that's clear enough. You're not only deliberately walking into God knows what kind of mess, but you expect your mother and me to go along with you and back you up ...”

“Not necessarily,” said Miriam, helping herself to a piece of toast. “Why not just give the guy an even break and reserve judgment? Who knows? He may not turn out to be so bad after all.”

“Mind your own business, Miriam!”

“Yes, please, darling,” said Erica, as her self-control suddenly began to give way. The worst her father had been able to say had somehow been far easier to take than that one casual remark from Miriam.

“No,” said Margaret Drake from the head of the table. “That's not the point.” She sipped some cold coffee and went on more matter-of-factly, still determined not to allow herself to break down although she was so tired and so upset, “You can't pretend with people, Miriam. It isn't a question of giving him an even break, it's a question of being honest with him. It's no use our having him here and pretending that he's on the same basis as Erica's other friends, as though we were actually encouraging him in fact. You can't go just so far with people and then suddenly stop. It's not fair.”

“You sound as though I were already engaged to him,” said Erica under her breath.

His face more set than ever, her father said, “You probably will be next week at this rate.”

“Charles!” Gasped his wife.

“We might as well face it, Margaret.” He paused and then remarked, “Mr. Reiser seems to have done pretty well up to now. Erica would hardly be making all this fuss if he hadn't. Would you?” he asked, turning to Erica.

“No.”

“And you're going to go on seeing him, aren't you?”

“Yes,” said Erica.

There was a complete silence and then Erica said suddenly, “Charles, I want to know why.”

“Why?” he repeated, looking at her. “All right, I'll tell you why. I don't want my daughter to go through life neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, living in a kind of no man's land where half the people you know will never accept him, and half the people he knows will never accept you. I don't want a son-in-law who can't be put up at my club and who can't go with us to places where we've gone all our lives. I don't want a son-in-law whom I'll have to apologize for, and explain, and have to hear insulted indirectly unless I can remember to warn people off first.”

“In fact,” said Miriam coolly, “you don't want a son-in-law. Or not if it's Erica who's married to him at any rate.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” said her mother. “Charles has never objected to anyone else.”

“Erica has never showed any signs of wanting to marry anyone else.”

Her father was paying no attention. Still looking at Erica, he observed, “If Reiser is anything like you say he is, he deserves something better than that ...”

“We want you to marry someone — someone like us. Someone who'll fit in and whom we can ...” Margaret Drake caught her breath, then managed to say, “... can all be proud of,” and suddenly shoving back her chair, she got up and left the room. With one final glance at Erica, Charles followed his wife out the door.

“Mother was crying,” said Erica, and then began to cry herself, with her face in her hands and the tears running through her fingers.

“Have you got a handkerchief?” inquired Miriam after a while.

Erica shook her head.

“Take mine, then.” She gave Erica the handkerchief across the table, bit into her piece of toast, put it down on her plate again and asked at last, “Do you remember what I said, Eric?”

“No,” said Erica, blowing her nose. “What did you say?”

“I said they wouldn't have to lock you up in your room and feed you on bread and water.”