Howard Engel - Dead and Buried

“Are you all right?” she asked. “You look like you’ve had a shock.”

“I’m fine,” I said and she could read the lie on my face.

“Here, drink a little of this Irish whiskey. Frank has a private supply in the kitchen.” She handed me the glass and I killed most of it. The three professors had stopped whirling around in my head. Now they were just three friends of the departed Martin and not figures from a personal allegory. I thought that perhaps I should sit down. It seemed like a good idea. But before I could move, a grey cat skipped between my legs and disappeared in the curtains. He was followed a second or two later by another, this time a greyish tabby with an orange nose. At the same time, a song was beginning in another part of the room. Bill Palmer was leading, with the painter Wally Lamb chiming in with his arm around Bill’s shoulders.

They say there’s a troopship just leaving Bombay,

Bound for Old Blighty shore,

Heavily laden with time expired men …

“That’s right,” said Frank Bushmill, “let’s give ’em a song! ‘Bless ’em All’” Frank wasn’t my idea of a singsong kind of person, nor do I think he thought of himself that way, but here he was joining in with his own version of the lyrics. Even Jonah Abraham added his voice. I found a chair and sank into it, feeling a little more weight than I thought I was carrying. Was the drink getting to me? Couldn’t be. Shock would have carried off the sting of twice what I’d had. Anna came over to me again. She was lovely as ever. She had a way of surprising me with sides of her that I’d never seen before. She was wearing a long pearly linen jacket over a skirt with a floral print. Under the jacket was a shirt that buttoned up the front, but she was only partly buttoned, as though it was a crime against nature to button the rest of the way.

“Any better?”

“Sitting works better than standing up. I took your drink, I guess. Is the real stuff in short supply?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get us both one when you want it.” She sat down on the arm of my chair and we watched the wake in progress for a few minutes without talking.

In the middle of the room a song had ended. Now Bill Palmer, who must have been among the earliest arrivals at Frank’s apartment by the look and sound of him, began reciting a mock epic of some kind. With his right hand thrust into his jacket and with a Napoleonic intensity, he declaimed something like the following:

I lost my arm at the Battle of the Marne,

I lost my leg in the Navy,

I lost my biscuit in the soup

And I lost my spoon in the gravy!

The verse was so bad, they made him say it again, this time those close to him recited along with him, lengthening out the syllables Nay-vee and gray-vee with delight. They went through it a third time and we all joined in. This time the last words in each line were exaggerated even more. The words Nayyy-veee and grayyy-veee stuck in my head.

Pia Morley came over to us. She was holding a glass of soda water, by the look of it. She looked terrific in a simple dress that probably cost the earth in Toronto or New York. I asked her how she was after making appropriate introductions.

“Me? Hell, Benny, haven’t you heard? I’m a momma. A real downright, up-all-night momma. And my kid’s the baby from hell. He’s six months old and chewing the paint off his windowsill. If he can’t get into the New York Marathon in a few months, he’s going to be very frustrated. You want pictures? I got pictures.” She dipped into a large leather bag and pulled out several pictures of a baby with most of Pia’s own features but the smile of his father, Sid Geller. I didn’t have to ask about the paternity. I went through the pictures a second time, with Pia adding comments from the arm of the chair. The names of baby playthings filled the room. I heard Anna ask about Jolly-Jumpers and Kanga-rock-eroos. I felt the walls closing in on me and I wanted to get out of there.

When I left the wake, it was nearly eight o’clock. Anna had gone with her father back to the house on the hill. Pia Morley had gone home to her husband and son. I walked back to the Stephenson House to pick up my car. It was a chilly night with the moon in its first quarter, scudding about the back-lit clouds like a picture in a Mother Goose book. I walked around the car once to make sure I couldn’t see any wires attached to it that didn’t belong there. I was getting jumpy and I didn’t care if it showed.

I think we’d done well by Martin’s memory. I think it was a party he would have enjoyed, snuff or no snuff. I had had rather too much to drink at the beginning, but I mellowed towards the end when everybody began telling his favourite Martin stories. Since many of my fellow wakers knew Martin through the book trade, a lot of the detail went over my head. What was “foxing,” for instance? I asked Anna, who stayed close to me until she had to leave.

“You know those liver-spots that old books get, Benny?” She gave me a warm kiss goodbye, which Jonah, standing by, accepted as the lot of every father with a grown daughter. It goes with the territory, whether you’re a millionaire or a pauper.

I turned off Ontario Street into Church, still thinking of the wake and Martin and the Blue Jays training camp down in Florida and losing my arm at the Battle of the Marne and losing my leg in the Nay-vee. I was thinking of the cunning way Anna’s shirt buttoned, when I saw a familiar shape getting out of a car. I slowed the Olds to a walk. It was Fred McAuliffe from the office. I slid into the parking space behind him and turned off the ignition.

“Mr. McAuliffe!” I called out, as soon as I’d achieved the sidewalk. Fred turned around and came slowly over to me. He was dressed with a little more care than I’d seen before. These were his best clothes I was willing to bet, things he had been saving to wear at Sherry’s wedding last Saturday.

“Why, hello, there, Mr. Cooperman. Glad to see you. Are you coming in?”

“‘Coming in?’” ‘Coming in’ where?” McAuliffe smiled at my apparently dumb question and looked over at the big house on the corner.

“Why, to the Forbes’s, I mean. Didn’t you recognize the house?” I examined the scalloped tile shingles on the turret and the round porch and conservatory to one side, all illuminated by a streetlight. “This is where they all grew up,” McAuliffe said.

“Ah, right. I remember it from the picture of the Grantham Hunt, now that you mention it. It looks a little different at night and without the horses.” Fred smiled politely. “Don’t tell me they are entertaining tonight? I shouldn’t have thought there’d be anybody home. Ross is in jail, Mrs. Forbes is in the hospital and Sherry’s on her honeymoon.”

“You’re forgetting the people from out of town. And of course you might not know yet that Mr. Ross was released late this afternoon.”

“They didn’t have enough to lay a charge, I guess. Enough to arrest him, but not enough to make it stick.” I nodded my head, recalling the conversation I’d had with Chris Savas. “Have you been summoned by the family, Mr. McAuliffe?”

“Please, outside the office ‘Fred’ will do,” he said. “In answer to your question, no. There was no general muster or call to assemble. Concerned friends pay calls at times like this. That’s all.”

“I don’t think I qualify there,” I said. “I hardly knew the Commander. I’d be wrong to intrude now.”

“Nonsense, Benny-if I may call you Benny-I’m sure you’ll be welcome. You did have lunch with Mr. Ross quite recently, didn’t you? I’m sure you’ll be welcome.”