“I believe you,” she said. “He has English eyes.” Her voice dropped. He had to ask her to repeat something. “I said, was it Ninette?”
It took him a second or so to see what she was after. He gave the same kind of noisy laugh as when she had tried to place the child in Missy’s arms. “Little Miss Cochefert? Until this minute I thought you were the only sane person in Montreal.”
“It fits,” said Nora. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “I don’t know. There are two people that know. Your father, Ray Abbott and Alex Marchand.”
“Did you pay my Dad?”
“Pay him? I paid him for you. We wouldn’t have asked anyone to look after Neil for nothing.”
“About Ninette,” she said. “I just meant that it fits.”
“A hundred women in Montreal would fit, when it comes to that. The truth is, we don’t know, except that she was in good health.”
“Who was the girl in the lane? The one you were talking about.”
“Just a girl in the wrong place. Her father was a school principal.”
“You said that. Did you know her?”
“I never saw her. Missy and Louise did. Louise is my wife.”
“I know. How much did you give my dad? Not for Neil. For me.”
“Thirty bucks. Some men don’t make that in a week. If you have to ask, it means you never got it.”
“I’ve never had thirty dollars in one piece in my life,” she said. “In my family we don’t fight over money. What my dad says, goes. I’ve never had to go without. Gerry and I had new coats every winter.”
“Is that the end of the interrogatory? You’d have made a great cop. I agree, you can’t stay. But would you just do one last Christian act? Wash your hands and comb your hair and sit down and have lunch. After that, I’ll put you in a taxi and pay the driver. If you don’t want me to, my mother-in-law will.”
“I could help you take him to the hospital.”
“Forget the Fenton family,” he said. “Lunch is the cutoff.”
Late in the afternoon Ray came home and they had tea and sandwiches at the kitchen table. Nora was wearing Gerry’s old white terrycloth robe. Her washed hair was in rollers.
“There was nothing to it, no problem,” she said again. “He needed a hospital checkup. He was run-down. I don’t know which hospital.”
“I could find out,” said Ray.
“I think they don’t want anybody around.”
“What did you eat for lunch?” said her mother.
“Some kind of cold soup. Some kind of cold meat. A fruit salad. Iced tea. The men drank beer. There was no bread on the table.”
“Pass Nora the peanut butter,” said Ray.
“Did you meet Mr. Fenton because of Ninette,” said Nora, “or did you know him first? Did you know Dr. Marchand first, or Mr. Fenton?”
“It’s a small world,” said her father. “Anyways, I’ve got some money for you.”
“How much?” said Nora. “No, never mind. I’ll ask if I ever need it.”
“You’ll never need anything,” he said. “Not as long as your old dad’s around.”
“You know, that Mrs. Clopstock?” said Nora. “She’s the first person I’ve ever met from Toronto. I didn’t stare at her, but I took a good look. Maman, how can you tell real pearls?”
“They wouldn’t be real,” said Ray. “The real ones would be on deposit. Rosalie had a string of pearls.”
“They had to sell them on account of Ninette,” said her mother.
“Maybe you could find out the name of the hospital,” Nora said. “He might like to see me. He knows me.”
“He’s already forgotten you,” her mother said.
“I wouldn’t swear to that,” said Ray. “I can remember somebody bending over my baby buggy. I don’t know who it was, though.”
He will remember that I picked him up, Nora decided. He will remember the smell of the incense. He will remember the front door and moving into the dark hall. I’ll try to remember him. It’s the best I can do.
She said to Ray, “What’s the exact truth? Just what’s on paper?”
“Nora,” said her mother. “Look at me. Look me right in the face. Forget that child. He isn’t yours. If you want children, get married. All right?”
“All right,” her father answered for her. “Why don’t you put on some clothes and I’ll take you both to a movie.” He began to whistle, not “Don’t Let It Bother You,” but some other thing just as easy.
Afterword BY ROBERTSON DAVIES
How pleasant to be asked for an Afterword, instead of a Preface. A Preface always suggests criticism, and I do not want to criticize Mavis Gallant’s book, but to celebrate it and, in so far as I can, express my own enjoyment of it. Criticism is a weariness of the spirit to writers, who are all too conscious of the aptness of Christopher Fry’s words: “everywhere today can be heard the patter of tiny criticism, the busy sound of men [and women] continually knowing what they like. How anything manages to create itself at all is a wonder.”
As Fry suggests, even positive criticism imposes a restriction on a writer; it tells him who and what he is, when he is struggling to discover those things for himself. Mavis Gallant has had plenty of criticism and much of it has been warm praise. But does it help her to be told by one critic that she puts him in mind of Jane Austen, and by another that her social vision is worthy of Chekov? To my mind she is not a bit like Jane Austen or Chekov. She is splendidly like herself and that is a fine achievement. What is it? She knows, and it would be impertinence on my part to seek to explain her to herself. I can only say what she means to me, and doubtless there will be readers to whom my words of praise, though obviously well meant, are wide of the mark.
To my mind, she is a great mistress of the art of implication. Her writing is beautifully economical, and by a hint here and a simple statement of fact there she contrives to give us finely realized portraits of her characters, so that by the end of one of her short stories we know the people better than those we meet in many a full-length novel. We have learned enough about their past, and have had enough hints about their future, to make their present firmly apparent. Though it is unwise to speak of one art in terms of another, her manner might be likened to pointillism; as we read we pay attention to each small dot, and when we have read, and as it were stepped back from the picture, it is suddenly full of light and meaning and we may be startled by what we have found. As with pointillism, the art lies in knowing what dots to choose. If Mavis Gallant were a painter she might be known in the galleries as The Mistress of the Right Dot.
Consider the title story of the book you hold in your hand, “Across the Bridge.” What bridge? The bridge from the Place de la Concorde, to begin with, but when we have finished the story is there not another, and perhaps a third, that has been crossed by the hapless Sylvie Castelli, who is desolate at the thought of her approaching marriage to Arnaud Pons, because she is deeply in love with Bernard Brunelle? Not an unusual situation, at first glance, until we learn that the marriage with Arnaud is of the “arranged” variety and that she barely knows Bernard, and he has not written the letter her mother very sensibly wants to see, in which marriage is plainly offered. Mme. Castelli is a decisive woman and not one to stand in the way of true love. She throws the invitations to Sylvie’s wedding to Arnaud over the bridge into the river, and a difficult situation is thereby set in motion.
What is difficult about it? The nature of the people involved, of course. They are not extraordinary; indeed, they are commonplace. Sylvie’s father is a well-doing physician, an ear specialist; he is also rather a crook, as he demands his fees in cash, so that they need not be revealed to the tax authorities. Mme. Castelli, though no enemy of romance, is essentially a practical person, and wants facts to support her in quashing the engagement to Arnaud. Arnaud himself is a young man against whom not a word can be said, except that he is a dreadful bore and a music snob, and tight with money. But of course they are all tight with money.