Olive Jenkins turned Smith’s shirt collars. If he was feeling poorly she climbed the stairs to his room with beef tea made from an OXO cube. During the longest week of the month, the week before his pension cheque came, she had fed him bangers and mash or toad in the hole for supper. Well, now he could buy her a new colour TV or treat her to a movie and Murray’s for supper once a week. No. She’d smell a rat. “Where did you get the do re me, Bert?”
All that money in the bank. He could visit the Old Country, see where his parents had come from. Lightheaded, he ventured into Thomas Cook & Sons and inquired about ships to England, astonished to discover that now only Polish or Russian liners sailed from Canada, which would never do. But the insolent young clerk, his look saying you just stepped in here to get warm, you old fart, still stood before him, reeking of pansy aftershave, brandishing ship plans with cabin locations, quoting fares.
“Would that include meals?” Smith asked.
The clerk, cupping a hand to his mouth, failed to squelch his laughter.
“I suppose you own this establishment,” Smith said, fleeing.
Smith continued to draw two hundred dollars a week from his account. He stashed what he didn’t spend, which was most of it, in a hiding place that he had prepared by sawing through a floorboard one night. He took to treating himself to solitary lunches at Murray’s, requesting a table in the rear, but even so he started whenever the door swung open. Most afternoons he stopped at Laura Secord’s for a half-pound of cashews or chocolates, and then he would move on to the lobby of the Mount Royal Hotel or Central Station, never going home until he had finished every last bit.
“Where have you been all day, old buddy of mine?”
“Looking at magazines in the library.”
“What did you do for lunch?”
“Did without.”
Not according to her information.
“As the vicar said to the rabbi’s wife, I think we ought to have a little chat.”
She made tea. And when he sat down she spotted his new socks at once. Argyle. Knee length.
“Bert, I want to know if you’re shop-lifting.”
He was stunned.
“If you’re short, Olive will see you through, but you must tell me if you’re in trouble.”
He shook his head no, and started for his room. Mrs. Jenkins followed him to the foot of the stairs. “You never used to hold out on good old Olive.”
“Maybe I’m not the only one who’s changed.”
Once Smith had been the only one favoured with a special place in Mrs. Jenkins’s refrigerator, but now the shelf below his was crammed with bottles of Molson that rattled whenever the door opened or the engine started up. Saturday night TV with Olive, the two of them resting their tootsies, as she liked to say, sharing Kool-Aid and Twinkies, watching the Channel 12 movie, was now also a thing of the past. Olive no longer wore any old housecoat on Saturday nights, her hair in curlers. Now she was perfumed and girdled, Shirley Temple curls tumbling over her cheeks, wearing a candy-floss pink angora sweater a size too small and a green miniskirt, her fat legs sheathed in black fishnet stockings and her feet pinched into fluffy white slippers with baby-blue pom-poms. And it was “Hockey Night in Canada” on TV, the parlour stinking of spilt beer and pizza and White Owl cigars, Murph Heeney in attendance.
“Hey, Olive, how am I gonna concentrate on the power play when you’re making me feel so horny?”
Olive shrieked with laughter, squirting beer. “You’d better clean up your act, buddy, because after these messages.… Here comes Johnny! Whoops, I mean Bert, my loyalist pal in this tear of vales.”
“Am I intruding?”
“Naw,” Heeney said. “Come on in and haunt the room for a while, Smitty, you old turkey you. Canadiens 3, Chicago 4, with eight minutes to go. Time is becoming a factor.”
Smith fled to his room, scandalized, and the next morning he slipped out early for an Egg McMuffin breakfast at McDonald’s. Then, stepping out into the slush, he searched for a taxi. He waved off the first to slow down, because it was driven by a black man, but got into the next one.
“Central Station, please.”
“Hey, you know who once warmed their arses right where you’re sitting right now, mister? Nathan Gursky and his wife. Big bucks that. So I asked him for his philosophy of life. I collect them, you know. He says his old man taught him all men are brothers and his wife laughs so hard he turns red in the face. Guess where he’s going? Old Montreal. His shrink. How do I know? His wife says, ‘At those prices please don’t sit there for an hour saying nothing but um, ah, and er to Dr. Weinberg. Tell him the truth. Now it’s Lionel you’re afraid of.’ Imagine that. All those millions and he’s a sicko.”
Smith bought yesterday’s Gazette at the newsstand and sought out a bench that wasn’t already laden with drug addicts. He dozed and then ate lunch at the Peking Gardens, indulging his one daring taste, an appetite for Chinese food. Then he wandered over to the Mount Royal Hotel and rested in the lobby. Next he drifted through Alexis Nihon Plaza, stopping for a Tab, and snoozing on a bench. Later he splurged on an early dinner at Curly Joe’s. Steak and french fried potatoes. Apple pie. Bloated, more than somewhat flatulent, he was back at Mrs. Jenkins’s house before eight, resolved to announce that he was moving out, but not before giving the two of them a piece of his mind.
Murph Heeney was wearing a crêpe-paper party hat. “Surprise, surprise! We thought you’d never get here.”
“Said the curate to the go-go dancer,” Olive shrieked, blowing on a noisemaker.
Hooking him under the arms, they danced a shaken Smith into the parlour, where the table had been set for three.
“For horse-doovers we got devilled eggs and then Yankee pot roast and chocolate cake with ice cream,” Heeney said, shoving a chalky-faced Smith into a chair.
Smith managed to force an acceptable share of food down his gullet while Olive entertained Heeney.
“This guy goes to the doctor he’s told he has to have his—his—” She stopped, censoring herself in deference to Smith, and continued, “—his penis amputated, he hits the roof …”
Smith begged off coffee and struggled upstairs to his room. He wakened, his stomach churning, at three A.M., and raced to the toilet down the hall only to run into that hairy ape emerging in his BVDs. Heeney grabbed him by the arm, possibly to sustain his own uncertain balance. “I’d wait a while I was you,” he said, holding his nose.
“Can’t,” Smith said, breaking free of Heeney’s grip.
Four
One
1973. September. Pulling out of Wardour Street, gearing down with a gratifying roar, Terry tucked his battered MG into the carpark. Then he walked swiftly back to the Duke of Wellington, mindful of the plump grey skies for he was wearing his new suit, jacket nipped in just so at the waist, patch pockets, trousers slightly flared. They were all at the bar, waiting. Des, Nick, Bobby.
“Hello, hello, hello.”
“Saucy.”
“Ta-ra, ta-ra!”
A grinning Terry, dimples displayed to advantage, lifted the corners of his jacket and twirled about.
“Oh, my dear,” Bobby exclaimed, quaking with pleasure, “the wonders wrought by Cecil Gee.”
“Not bloody likely. Three hundred nicker it was. From Doug Hayward,” Terry announced, “tailor to the stars.”
Des reached over to stroke the fabric; then, abruptly, his hand dropped to Terry’s groin, fat fingers fondling. “And what have we here?”
“Forbidden fruit,” Terry said, slapping Des’s hand away as he leaped free.
“Bespoke, you mean.”