What I was experiencing was dread, but it was not dread of Richard as such. It was as if the illuminated dome of the Royal York Hotel had been wrenched off and I was being stared at by a malign presence located somewhere above the black spangled empty surface of the sky. It was God, looking down with his blank, ironic searchlight of an eye. He was observing me; he was observing my predicament; he was observing my failure to believe in him. There was no floor to my room: I was suspended in the air, about to plummet. My fall would be endless-endlessly down.
Such dismal feelings however do not often persist in the clear light of morning, when you are young.
The Arcadian Court
Outside the window, in the darkened yard, there's snow. That kissing sound against the glass. It will melt off because it's only November, but still it's a foretaste. I don't know why I find it so exciting. I know what's coming: slush, darkness, flu, black ice, wind, salt stains on boots. But still there's a sense of anticipation: you tense for the combat. Winter is something you can go out into, confront, then foil by retreating back indoors. Still, I wish this house had a fireplace.
The house I lived in with Richard had a fireplace. It had four fireplaces. There was one in our bedroom, as I recall. Flames licking on flesh.
I unroll the sleeves of my sweater, pull the cuffs down over my hands. Like those fingerless gloves they used to wear-greengrocers, people like that-for working in the cold. It's been a warm autumn so far, but I can't let myself be lulled into carelessness. I should get the furnace serviced. Dig out the flannel nightgown. Lay in some tinned baked beans, some candles, some matches. An ice storm like last winter's could shut down everything, and then you're left with no electricity and an unworkable toilet, and no drinking water except what you can melt.
The garden has nothing in it but dead leaves and brittle stalks and a few diehard chrysanthemums. The sun is losing altitude; it's dark early now. I write at the kitchen table, indoors. I miss the sound of the rapids. Sometimes there's wind, blowing through the leafless branches, which is much the same although less dependable.
The week after the engagement had taken place I was packed off to have lunch with Richard's sister, Winifred Griffen Prior. The invitation had come from her, but it was Richard who had packed me off really, I felt. I may have been wrong about that, because Winifred pulled a lot of strings, and may have pulled Richard's on this occasion. Most likely it was the two of them together.
The lunch was to take place in the Arcadian Court. This was where the ladies lunched, up at the top of Simpsons department store, on Queen Street-a high, wide space, said to be "Byzantine" in design (which meant it had archways and potted palms), done in lilac and silver, with streamlined contours for the lighting fixtures and the chairs. A balcony ran around it halfway up, with wrought-iron railings; that was for men only, for businessmen. They could sit up there and look down on the ladies, feathered and twittering, as if in an aviary.
I'd worn my best daytime outfit, the only possible outfit I had for such an occasion: a navy-blue suit with a pleated skirt, a white blouse with a bow at the neck, a navy-blue hat like a boater. This ensemble made me look like a schoolgirl, or a Salvation Army canvasser. I won't even mention my shoes; even now the thought of them is too discouraging. I kept my pristine engagement ring folded into my cotton-gloved fist, aware that, worn with clothes like mine, it must look like a rhinestone, or else like something I'd stolen.
The ma ®tre d' glanced at me as if surely I was in the wrong place, or at least the wrong entrance-was I wanting a job? I did look down-at-heels, and too young to be having a ladies' lunch. But then I gave Winifred's name and it was all right, because Winifred absolutely lived at the Arcadian Court. (Absolutely livedwas her own expression.)
At least I didn't have to wait, drinking a glass of ice water by myself with the well-dressed women staring at me and wondering how I'd got in, because there was Winifred already, sitting at one of the pale tables. She was taller than I'd remembered-slender, or perhapswillowy, you'd say, though some of that was foundation garment. She had on a green ensemble-not a pastel green but a vibrant green, almost flagrant. (When chlorophyll chewing gum came into fashion two decades later, it was that colour.) She had green alligator shoes to match. They were glossy, rubbery, slightly wet-looking, like My pads, and I thought I had never seen such exquisite, unusual shoes. Her hat was the same shade-a round swirl of green fabric, balanced on her head like a poisonous cake.
Right at that moment she was doing something I had been taught never to do because it was cheap: she was looking at her face in the mirror of her compact, in public. Worse, she was powdering her nose. While I hesitated, not wishing to let her know I'd caught her in this vulgar act, she snapped the compact shut and slipped it into her shiny green alligator purse as if there was nothing to it. Then she stretched her neck and slowly turned her powdered face and looked around her with a white glare, like a headlight. Then she saw me, and smiled, and held out a languid, welcoming hand. She had a silver bangle, which I coveted instantly.
"Call me Freddie," she said after I'd sat down. "All my chums do, and I want us to be great chums." It was the fashion then for women like Winifred to favour diminutives that made them sound like youths: Billie, Bobbie, Willie, Charlie. I had no such nickname, so could not offer one in return.
"Oh, is that the ring?" she said. "It is a beauty, isn't it? I helped Richard pick it out-he likes me to go shopping for him. It does give men such migraines, doesn't it, shopping? He thought perhaps an emerald, but there's really nothing like a diamond, is there?"
While saying this, she examined me with interest and a certain chilly amusement, to see how I would take it-this reduction of my engagement ring to a minor errand. Her eyes were intelligent and oddly large, with green eyeshadow on the lids. Her pencilled eyebrows were plucked into a smoothly arched line, giving her that expression of boredom and, at the same time, incredulous astonishment, which was cultivated by the film stars of that era, though I doubt that Winifred was ever much astonished. Her lipstick was a dark pinkish orange, a shade that had just come in-shrimpwas the proper name for it, as I'd learned from my afternoon magazines. Her mouth had the same cinematic quality as the eyebrows, the two halves of the upper lip drawn into Cupid's-bow points. Her voice was what was called a whisky voice-low, deep almost, with a rough, scraped overlay to it like a cat's tongue-like velvet made of leather.
(She was a card player, I discovered later. Bridge, not poker-she would have been good at poker, good at bluffing, but it was too risky, too much a gamble; she liked to bid on known quantities. She played golf as well, but mostly for the social contacts; she wasn't as good at it as she made out. Tennis was too strenuous for her; she would not have wanted to be caught sweating. She "sailed," which meant, for her, sitting on a cushion on a boat, in a hat, with a drink.)
Winifred asked me what I would like to eat. I said anything at all. She called me "dear," and said that the Waldorf salad was marvellous. I said that would be fine.
I didn't see how I could ever work up to calling her Freddie: it seemed too familiar, disrespectful even. She was after all an adult-thirty, or twenty-nine at least. She was six or seven years younger than Richard, but they were pals: "Richard and I are such great pals," she said to me confidingly, for the first time but not for the last. It was a threat, of course, as was much of what she would say to me in this easy and confiding tone. It meant not only that she had claims that predated mine, and loyalties I could not hope to understand, but also that if I ever crossed Richard there would be the two of them to reckon with.