She said, "They don’t ’go on’ about you, darling; you’re hardly ever mentioned".
After dinner they drove through the gray streets lined with trees, every shade and depth of green in the evening light, out of the city, through a village and across the canal, then on the straight new highway for a while and finally off to the left down a series of narrow country roads until they came to the river, and the primitive cable ferry which sailed back and forth on the current between Ile de Montréal and Ile Bizard. They found the old ferryman sitting as usual on a kitchen chair at one end of his barge, puffing on his pipe. There was no sound but the movement of the water in the long grasses by the bank, and some bells ringing in the monastery across the river. The old man stood up, beckoning them to drive onto the barge, then he cast off, and barge, car and kitchen chair started for Ile Bizard. Of all the islands near the island of Montreal, Bizard was the one Erica loved best.
"How can anyone make a living out of ferrying people across here?" asked Erica. "Nobody ever goes to Ile Bizard but us, I mean not on this thing. Everybody else uses the bridge. Which river is this anyhow?"
"The Back River".
Erica sighed. "I’m always hoping it will turn out to be the Ottawa or the St. Lawrence but it never does".
The top of the car was down and looking up at the sky she remarked, "By the way, Vic and Barbara Wells are having a cocktail party on Friday. Do you want to go?"
"Was I invited?"
"Yes, Barbie asked if I’d bring you. She’s going to phone you herself tomorrow".
"I don’t have to be brought".
It sounded more like an observation than an objection.
So far so good, thought Erica, and said, "May I have a cigarette, please?"
He lit one for her and then one for himself and said at last, "I’ve known Vic ever since my first year at law school; he was a year ahead of me and he went into his father’s firm as soon as he graduated. I’ve had lunch with him a couple of times since but that’s about all-strictly business. So why the sudden interest?"
Farther up, the river was dotted with heavily wooded islands and there were a few villages hidden among the trees along the shore, although all you could see of them was an occasional roof or a church spire. Erica had been born and brought up in Montreal but she had never managed to get the geography of the region completely straightened out; it remained a green and watery tangle of islands, rivers, lakes and villages all named after saints, the more obscure and improbable, the better. Just who, for example, was St. Polycarp de Crabtree Mills?
The sudden interest was due to the fact that she had had lunch with Barbara Wells the day before and since she knew Barbara very well, she had asked, "You wouldn’t like to invite a friend of mine too, would you? His name is Marc Reiser, he’s a Jewish lawyer and Charles won’t have him in the house".
"Good Lord", said Barbara. After a moment she remarked, "If he’s a lawyer, Vic probably knows him".
"That’s more than can be said for Charles", said Erica. "He’s one of those people who judge the quality of the contents by the label on the can".
"Your father’s not the only one. Vic can be pretty stuffy when he wants to be, particularly about the Jewish legal fraternity-he was well away on some frightful story about a firm of Jewish lawyers last night before he remembered that the Oppenheims are Jews and they were sitting on the opposite side of the table. Of course they’re Austrians and you’d never guess…"
"Yes, dear", Erica interrupted patiently. "Well, Marc’s parents are Austrian too, if that’s any help". She could not imagine anyone who knew Marc not liking him and she said, "Anyhow, ask Vic what he thinks".
Later on in the afternoon Barbara had phoned to say that Vic had said by all means, bring him along, and that was that, except for the fact that there was something in the tone in which Marc had asked about the sudden interest which made Erica suspect that he had no intention of going.
She did not care particularly whether he went or not, but she knew that this business of always being alone together was bad for them both and sooner or later, something would definitely have to be done about it. As things were, they were simply playing the parts Charles Drake had assigned to them-the parts of a couple of outcasts. With the exception of one or two friends of Marc’s who, like himself, were waiting to go overseas, most of his other friends having gone long since, and an occasional friend of Erica’s, they had kept to themselves. The longer they went on keeping to themselves, without even trying to behave like ordinary people with a place in the society which surrounded them, the easier it was for Charles. If, on the other hand, enough people outside the family got to the point where they took Marc and herself for granted, the situation would begin to be thoroughly awkward for her parents. The Drakes could not go on indefinitely refusing to meet someone whom a steadily increasing number of other people they knew had met and accepted, without appearing rather silly. Vic and Barbara Wells combined an unassailable social position-which meant that their approval would automatically carry some weight with her father and mother, since the social aspect of the problem seemed to be one of their chief worries-with intelligence and, in spite of Vic’s temporary lapse in the presence of the Oppenheims, a general lack of stuffiness, so their cocktail party looked to Erica like a good place to start.
The ringing of the monastery bells had died away. They heard the long whistle of a distant railway train, then a faint shout from somewhere on the shore behind them, and then there was silence again except for the splashing of the swift current, driving at an angle against the barge, and the noise the pulleys made as they creaked along the cable up in the air.
"I think I’d rather not go", said Marc.
"Why?" Before he could answer Erica said, "You know what cocktail parties are like, Marc-a lot of people bring their friends without even asking".
"Did you ask, Eric?"
"No".
His right arm was lying on the back of the seat behind her, and all he had to do was let it down to her shoulders in order to bring her around so that she was facing him. "Say it again".
"All right then", said Erica defiantly, "I did ask her. Good heavens, I’ve asked dozens of people if I could bring someone to their parties. Look at the one we gave in June-we started out with thirty people and ended up with over fifty".
"I know, I was one of them", said Marc noncommittally.
He took his arm away from her shoulders and turned so that he was sitting under the wheel again, looking past the bent figure of the old ferryman who was standing on the bow staring upriver, to the tumble-down landing stage on the green shore in front of them.
"You said once that…"
"Go on".
"You said it was important not to start imagining things".
"I’m not imagining anything, darling. You don’t realize what the legal profession is like. It isn’t the same as being a Jewish doctor, or professor, or even a Jewish businessman. You’ve got Vic on the spot, and the only thing for me to do is not to turn up. He knows he’s never made any effort to see me outside of business hours since we were at law school-I tried once or twice after we graduated but he was always busy or something-and I know it, and he knows I know it. So now when you come along and finally get me invited to his house after twelve years-what does it all add up to?"
"It adds up to everybody going on forever playing this idiotic game according to the rules and never getting anywhere!" She said miserably, "You’re just helping to make it work".