Cormorant Books

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Queen's Court (Preview)

For a while I could not decide whether I had a bigger crush on John Keats or Federico Garcia Lorca. Postcardsized drawings of both poets hung in brass frames on the wall of the spare bedroom I liked to call my office. From time to time I would study the young, untroubled faces and wonder idly what might have happened had we met. In some obscure way I was relieved they were both dead, thereby cancelling the possibility of a real meeting and potential disappointment. That was before the move.

To paraphrase Emily Dickenson: "Moving is all we know of heaven,/And all we need of hell."

A number of my possessions went missing somewhere between Victoria and Montreal, among them the portraits of Keats and Lorca. Perhaps the loss was a kind of sign, or portent. Dead poets do not hold out much hope for a widow in her mid-sixties, even were she to overlook the fact that one was tubercular, the other gay.

A word or two of explanation might be in order, as I appear to be playing the tape backwards. Most Canadians in their sixties daydream of moving to Victoria, with its balmy climate and near absence of the harsher realities of winter. My late husband,Walter Bingham, had done just that; and I went along readily as both our children, his daughter and my son by earlier marriages, lived in Vancouver. The ineluctable fact remained that you can take the girl out of Montreal but you can't erase the memory of that vibrant city from the girl. I may no longer be the girl, but I never ceased to miss the place where I was born and raised.

During my married time in Victoria I managed to visit Montreal at least once a year; however, these brief sojourns only served to whet my appetite. Like a teenager nibbling on salted snacks, I wanted more. My departure for the West Coast was always tinged with ambivalence, the pull of husband and home warring with the desire to immerse myself for a few more days in that revitalising urban energy. I consoled myself with the subversive, not to say wicked idea that were I ever to become a widow I would blot my tears with a oneway ticket to Montreal.

This idea was no more than a velleity, a wish I never expected to fulfill, not unlike my modest crush on Keats and Lorca. Then Walter died, and the one link that held me in Victoria broke loose.To be sure,Walter did not so much die as become daily more insubstantial, his reddish hair and freckled skin growing almost translucent with the passage of years. At times I felt only his skeleton prevented light from passing right through him.

Lest I sound callous, I found myself quite disoriented by Walter's death. I suppose I should jump in and affirm that I loved him. It's just that "love" is one of those four-letter words that frighten me to death, a verb of such protean imprecision that it can be bent to mean just about everything from "I think you're cute" to "I must be obeyed!" Walter and I had been married over thirty years and negotiated together the bumpy road along which lovers gradually become friends. My skin no longer tingled at the touch of his pale hand, but there was no one in the world with whom I felt more at ease.

I sold the house and called the movers. Fortunately, the new owners were decamping from an apartment in Toronto and wanted as much of the furniture as I was prepared to sell. I decided to take very little: clothing, wedding silver, china, personal effects, and my postcard drawings for chaste consideration. While the movers, burly and courteous, wrapped my possessions in what looked like sheets of newsprint, I had an ominous feeling that I might never see these things again. In part I was right, as two of the boxes went astray somewhere along the three thousand mile journey. For all I knew, John Keats and Federico Garcia Lorca may be lost on the frozen tundra, a fanciful idea, but more romantic than imagining them abandoned in a Lethbridge warehouse.

My Victoria farewells turned out to be relatively painless. Walter and I had made our western friends as a couple, and I soon learned that a widow is not unlike a single bookend. Without the matching mate, she is not much in demand. At first there had been a round of duty dinners. ("We must have poor Louise over for a meal, to get her out of the house.") But once the duty had been fulfilled, interest petered out. I have never been good at talking about baking and grandchildren, and the men were of an age to feel uncomfortable at being asked by a woman why they had voted for the incumbent government. The few close friendships I had formed were with people who regularly visited the east; I knew I would see them again.

I gave a cocktail party at which most of the guests drank white wine or Perrier and nibbled on cherry tomatoes stuffed with crab or bits of broccoli dipped in curry mayonnaise. The chicken livers wrapped in bacon went largely untasted, as did the whiskey. Even though I drank scotch and got a little drunk, I managed not to blot my copybook. Only once did I veer close to the edge when asked why I was leaving Victoria. "I'm not old enough to live in Victoria," was my reply to a group my own age or younger. For the rest, the occasion passed without incident. One or two of the party guests promised to write, real letters with stamps. Others asked me to send an E-mail address the moment I had one. All of them urged me to return for a visit, the sooner the better. Even as I smiled and returned air kisses beside each ear lobe, I knew I would never come back. Did Sir Edmund Hillary climb Mount Everest a second time?

The last act I performed prior to leaving for the airport was to sprinkle Walter's ashes over the garden he had loved and where he had spent most of his retirement years. The idea had been his, a slightly tipsy suggestion made one evening after he had drunk more than his customary quota of martinis. Rather than tossing his ashes into the ocean, or scattering them from a bluff, or disposing of them in some other quixotic locale, why not use them to enrich the garden over which he had toiled so diligently. Not having a better idea of my own, I clumsily emptied the box containing the mortal remains of Walter Bingham into the rose bed, the showpiece of his entire operation. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Unsure of what to do with the box itself, I put it into the bin for recycling. I know Walter would have approved.

My cousin, Diana Hamilton, met me at the airport in Dorval and proceeded to take charge. Tired from the flight and the intense activity of the past weeks, I did not interfere, but stood aside while she grappled my suitcases onto a luggage trolley and wheeled them out to a waiting limousine.

"You look surprisingly well, all things considered," was her opening salvo as she air kissed me on both cheeks.

"That's reassuring. I feel like a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair — and bumsprung to boot.Were you able to get me a room at the Château Fontainebleau?"

"Of course not.You'll stay with me, until you find a place of your own."

"Oh, Diana, I don't want to impose. I have no idea what my schedule will be. Househunting is not a nine-to-five undertaking." I really would have preferred the independence of a hotel to the overpowering kindness of my cousin, but now was not the time to take issue.

"Money spent on a hotel room is money down the drain."

Diana perched her compact frame on the edge of the rear seat. Even at rest she appeared poised for flight.

"Still, I hate to start off my new life being a nuisance, and I have no idea how long it will take to find a place to live."

"All the more reason for you not to fritter money away on lodgings." Diana gave her pewter-coloured bowl-cut bangs an affirmative shake.

The only way to win an argument with my cousin is to lock her in a closet, and I was resolved to start off my new life in Montreal on the right foot. Over the years Diana and I have had our ups and downs, although as we are both verbal women we cannot go for very long without speaking. Scrapping is preferable to silence any day of the week, but my determination to be accommodating remained incorruptible.

"In the meantime," she continued, "I called Beryl Burke and told her you were coming in to town to house hunt. She's the best agent in the business — and honest. She won't try to sell you a condo overlooking a mall and try to persuade you it's convenient for shopping. I suppose you'll be looking for a condo, or a co-op."

"There's a difference?"

"Yes and no.With a condo you purchase the place outright, just like buying a house. With a co-op you acquire shares in the building, almost as if it were a corporation. Also, you don't have to pay a land-transfer tax. I bought a condo, and the transfer tax almost put me into debtor's prison."

I nodded, one of those non-committal nods that signals you have been listening. Like most wealthy women, Diana knows the value of a dollar. When she sold the family house on Mayfair Crescent at the top of the Westmount Mountain, she moved down the hill to Number Three Forest Road, one of the most prestigious addresses in the city. I had visited once, before Walter died, and had to admit that for a widow with bucks it was the way to go: a living room the size of a croquet lawn, vast kitchen with dining alcove, master bedroom suite, large guest bedroom with its own bath, entrance hall, powder room, cupboards she could have sublet, and indoor parking. (Diana was temporarily between cars, hence the limo.) Of comfort there was no question, but age had not sweetened my disposition, and I felt uneasy about my cousin's propensity to meddle.

"I called Beryl Burke because she deals mostly in Westmount properties, with a few upscale listings in adjacent communities. I assume you'll settle somewhere in Westmount?"

"To tell the truth, Diana, I haven't given the matter much thought. I hope to live somewhere I can afford. Besides, with this One Island, One City movement which has been let loose, won't Westmount as we knew it as girls cease to exist? The story has made the papers west of the Rockies."

"I'm sure it has. But we have no intention of being swallowed up by what is commonly known as Greater Montreal. We will never surrender our autonomy, at least not until the Supreme Court rules that we must."

The limousine crackled with tension. On a whim I began to sing: "There'll always be a Westmount/ And Westmount will be free./ Does Westmount mean as much to you/ As Westmount means to me?"

Diana managed a frosty smile, and we lapsed into our respective thoughts for the rest of the drive. After turning off the highway and negotiating a series of narrow streets, the limousine pulled up under a porte-cochère where a liveried doorman dealt with the bags. A moderate drinker, Diana kept a well-stocked bar, a legacy from her father; and after my long flight I wanted a shower and a scotch, not necessarily in that order.

Beryl Burke looked more a librarian than a real estate agent, at least to me. Most of the female agents I have met in the past struck me as women who were too old to turn tricks, so they drifted into real estate, faute de mieux.The men, most of whom wore suits, seemed less like hustlers, but caveat emptor nevertheless. In particular, watch out for those who shake hands with both hands.

When looking at real estate, it pays to read between the lines. "Low maintenance and convenient to stores" means there is probably no garden or parking apron. "Prestigious address in exclusive neighbourhood" translates into high taxes; "bright and sunny" suggests no curtains or Venetian blinds.And "charming view"may well turn out to be an alley onto which backs a row of poorly tended yards. Eternal vigilance is the price of not being taken for a ride.

But Beryl Burke, hair in a bun, medium-heeled pumps, high-necked écru silk blouse under a tan cardigan, suggested plain dealing. So did her manner, polite yet without deference. According to Diana, Beryl Burke's late husband had left her very well off, and the Widow Burke had elected to sell real estate instead of filling her days with golf, bridge, and volunteer work.

She came by at ten, two mornings after I had arrived, the appointment having been arranged by Diana. I was permitted one day of grace; there would be no lying in late, shopping for things I did not need, and long lunches washed down with vin rosé, my compromise between red and white. The leisurely lunches would one day happen, but not until I had found a place to live. Again I realized that to have the most reliable agent helping me to relocate was a boon, if only Diana's undeniable goodwill did not roll over me like a fire truck. Diana even cooked me breakfast. Having sent her surly housekeeper into retirement after selling the big house, Diana had rediscovered the joys of privacy, of not having resident staff underfoot, lurking, listening, breathing up the air.To be sure, she was not without help. A cleaning woman came in two days a week to tend a spotless apartment and to look after laundry. Diana also had caterers on call; her cocktail and dinner parties required no more than a telephone call at one end, a cheque at the other. Such entertaining as she did was almost always in the service of a higher cause, fund-raising for arts or charity. She distrusted politics and limited her civic participation to the vote. Diana was what passed in the community for a good woman.

Dressed in denim from L. L. Bean, I climbed into Beryl Burke's Lexus SUV. The heavy gold chain Walter had given me on our thirtieth wedding anniversary suggested that, although I was dressed for gardening, I knew better. I found Beryl — we had moved at once onto a first-name basis — comfortable to be with. Her goal was to find me a condo or a co-op within my price range and preferably in Westmount. She did not want to know about my family, my preferences in decorating schemes, my hobbies. We did not speak of our being widows; neither of us claimed to have the ultimate recipe for bran muffins, gazpachio, or crème brulée.We each understood, without having to declare, where the other was coming from. I felt at ease, and relieved that Diana had not made good on her threat to tag along.

The first condo Beryl showed me turned out to be the kind of apartment that looks ideal on paper: three bedrooms, two bathrooms plus powder room, living room with fireplace, two balconies, and all the requisite etceteras. What the photocopied sheet did not mention was that the walls had been constructed of drywall one could have pierced with a sharp poke, or that a six foot man or woman could easily have reached up to touch the ceilings. Balconies turned out to be small concrete rectangles enclosed by frosted glass panels with all the privacy of a department store window display. A great deal of expense had been spared.

"You couldn't possibly live here," said Beryl as we pulled out of the guest parking lot holding eight cars, "but seeing it will give you an idea of what is available and offer a basis for comparison."

The next building we visited, a handsome six storey structure, fairly gleamed with the money that had gone into its recent construction.Why a ground floor apartment in such a well-engineered and ideally situated building should be selling at such a reasonable price had me puzzled; that is until we went inside. The apartment itself could not be faulted for comfort and convenience, with one tiny drawback: all the curtains had to be kept drawn at all times. Ringed by taller buildings, the front windows only a few feet from a main thoroughfare, the apartment opened itself to the world at large. Tropical fish might not mind being on constant display, but I certainly would.

My disappointment was palpable; in all other respects the condo would have suited me perfectly. How often is one satisfied with someone else's kitchen? But in order to have any natural light I would have been obliged to live a blameless life. Much worse, I would have to wear clothes at all times. Reluctantly I shook my head, and we left.

"One doesn't want to see the world through sheers," observed Beryl as we drove away. "Unfortunately the choice of apartments for sale in Westmount is limited, and your cousin assured me you did not want a duplex. She insisted you did not intend to bother with property maintenance. I have one more listing that might interest you, a former industrial building that has been converted into apartments, very successfully in my estimation.The vacancy rate is zero; apartments are soon snapped up. The big problem is price. I consider the unit I am going to show you to be overpriced, but you can decide."

It was a case of love at first sight. The apartment, quirky but congenial, boasted huge windows that flooded the space with natural light. A large living area opened onto a covered balcony with a handsome view across the local park. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, large closets, and a sun-drenched kitchen completed the layout. The one major drawback was the price, about seventy-five thousand dollars more than I was prepared to pay.

The current owners, refugees from the Sixties with much hair and little taste, also wanted to sell the furniture. Bulky, corduroy-covered sectional pieces sat along the wall, treacherously deep and without arms to help the trapped sitter lever himself upright. The dining room table had begun life as a door. Stools and ottomans were much in evidence. Duvets covered the studio beds.

I did not want the furniture, but I did like the apartment. As we drove away, Beryl agreed to present an offer below what she thought the owners might be willing to accept. She dropped me off in front of Diana's building and promised to be in touch.

"I'm sure the apartment is quite pleasant," allowed Diana over tea, giving her bangs a toss; "but it was a laundry and dry-cleaning establishment. Not to mention the trains rattling past at all hours. For that amount of money you can certainly do better. There's a nice little one bedroom flat in this building that's just come up for sale. It has an alcove off the living room where you could put a hide-a-bed for guests. I've seen the place. It would make the perfect pied-à-terre."

"I don't want a pied-à-terre, Diana; I want a home. I do not intend to spend my time on the road. Travel is very hard work, not to say expensive. I want a place where I can breathe, and one bedroom plus alcove does not fill the bill. Excuse me. I want to go and wash up."

I escaped to my room, suddenly overwhelmed by the idea of buying a place in which I would live out the rest of my life alone. I missed Walter; and the predictable, uneventful life we had lived in Victoria seemed like a kind of enchantment from which I had been exiled. I mistrust those who mythologize the past. If, as has been suggested, the past is a foreign country, it is one bristling with pockets of hostility and sprinkled with emotional landmines.Yet in contrast to the familiar terrain which had gone before, the future stretched ahead unmapped and vaguely forbidding. Not least of the obstacles was finding a place to live.

The first scotch made me feel better; the second even more better, as my son Craig used to say when a child. I was in the kitchen mixing the ingredients for the tuna melt which was to be our supper when the telephone rang. The name of Beryl Burke appeared on the display screen, and I beat out Diana in picking up the receiver.

"I have bad news about the Westmount Mansions apartment."

"You mean the former dry-cleaning establishment?"

"Precisely." Beryl went on to explain how the owners, vague except in matters financial, were prepared to come down twenty-five thousand, not a loonie more. That left the price at considerably more than I was prepared to pay and, in Beryl's estimation, far more than the condo was worth. I agreed. A slight pause followed.

"Louise, are you dead set on living in Westmount?"

"Not necessarily. I grew up here, and Diana lives in the old postal code. But, no, I'm prepared to cross the border, if I find what I want."

"Are you familiar with the apartment building known as Queen's Court?"

"Yes, isn't it the one near the Museum, on the edge of downtown?"

"That's it, the building that looks like one of the old Canadian Pacific hotels, the Chateau Laurier or the Fort Gary. This afternoon, after going back to the office, I learned of an apartment that's just about to come onto the market. An estate sale. The place belonged to a widow who lived alone. Such family as she has lives in Toronto, and the niece left a message on my machine. I called and found out that this same niece had been thinking of moving to Montreal, but her husband has just been offered one of those jobs he can't refuse.The niece now wants to sell the apartment, and has given it to me, as an exclusive, for a month. It sounds like what you want, and it's in your price range. Living room, small dining room, two bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a kitchen that was remodelled only a few years ago. It's a popular building, so if you are interested I think we should act now.

"I'm very interested. Let's do whatever it takes."

"Would you be free to see the place tomorrow morning, if I can set it up?"

"Indeed I would. I won't go out until I hear from you."

I hung up and returned to preparing the melt when Diana bustled into the kitchen. "What did Beryl have to say?"

"The couple in the condo are sticking to their asking price."

"How tiresome of them. And to think it was once a laundry."

"Also dry-cleaning. That's higher on the food chain."

"Louise, I do wish you'd look at the apartment downstairs."

"Perhaps I will," I said as I slid the slices of toast heaped with tuna mix and grated cheddar under the grill. "Would you mind setting the table? I'd like to keep an eye on these."

I decided against telling Diana about the apartment in Queen's Court. To borrow an expression of Walter's, she would have had a shit-fit over my even considering not living in Westmount. Diana is nothing if not territorial, and I wanted to see the apartment before declaring my intention to secede. Finding the right house or apartment is not unlike falling in love. You understand at once this is what you want, then you work backwards in a process of justification, of rationalizing the snap decision you have made on a gut feeling. I knew the second I walked through the door of the apartment in Queen's Court that I had, in a manner of speaking, come home.

To begin with, light poured in through generous windows, illuminating the generously proportioned spaces: living room, dining alcove, master bedroom with en suite bathroom, second bedroom, house bathroom with shower stall, kitchen large enough for a small table, all feeding off a spacious central hall. I have been in houses which offered less scope. As well, the apartment brimmed with attractive details found only in older buildings. Handsome mouldings surrounded the doors and windows set off by broad sills.The doors themselves were not hollow plywood rectangles but solid structures, inset with panels. Bathrooms had not been brought up to date, but still boasted the massive porcelain fixtures of an earlier era. None would ever call the kitchen state-of-the-art, but it held all the necessary appliances, including a dishwasher.

What I would have found difficult to describe was the feel of the place, a sensation of rightness that comes with putting on expensive kid gloves or a well tailored suit. Although perhaps not to everyone's liking; many would have found the place too old-style, too lacking in mod cons, the apartment fitted me like the aforementioned gloves.

Wisely, Beryl Burke said nothing and let the place sell itself. When I turned to her after a while and said, "I'll take it," her reply was, quite simply, "I think you have made the right choice."

There remained only the necessary paperwork before I became the official owner. Now I would have to tell Diana.

"For heaven's sake, Louise, why on earth would you want to live downtown?"

About to point out the mixed metaphor, I decided not to let the sleeping dogs out of the bag.

"I like the apartment, and I can afford it. Both pluses I'd say."

Over mugs of tea Diana and I were sitting across from one another in her kitchen alcove, whose motif was sunflowers, a bit overwhelming for the restricted space. I had just broken the news that I intended to buy the apartment in Queen's Court, and Diana had reacted as though the building was in Ulan Bator.

"But where will you shop? You don't intend to buy a car, so you will have to take the bus." Diana uttered "bus" as though a nasty word. "Or taxis — and they're not much better. Most of the drivers don't speak English, let alone French for that matter."

"There are several local depanneurs where I can buy the basics, and all the major markets deliver.There is a doorman to take in packages. And I love taxis. Someone else has to dodge the potholes and rollerbladers." I blew on my tea to cool it. "You can take a lot of cabs for what it costs to run a car in the city. I like to walk. I'll manage."

"What about the library, the pool, the recreational facilities?"

I decided to face down Diana's social worker certainties with the courage of my lack of convictions. "I can join the library as an outpatient, or whatever the term. And with the new amalgamation won't the library be open to everyone? Even interlopers from other municipalities?"

Diana shook her head in irritation.

I continued. "As for the pool, nothing could get me into water frequented by children. Regardless of chlorine I don't fancy swimming in other people's pee. For the rest, if I really want to take yoga, or painting in water-colour, or Beginner's Urdu, I'll find a way."

"Before you sign next week I do wish you would consider the apartment in this building. The location is so much more convenient, not to mention the fact that we would be neighbours."

Unwittingly, Diana had just articulated my biggest reservation about moving into her building. Fond as I am of my cousin, I did not want to be under her thumb. As a houseguest I was prepared to accommodate myself to her schedule, but once resident in this building I would find both my apartment and my routine becoming extensions of her own. With the best will in the world she would invade my life, and I understood that after a while I would have to push back, and hard. I did not want to go in tandem to the hairdresser, the bank, the supermarket. I dreaded being on call for lunch, or dinner, or whenever Diana felt she needed company.

(Fortunately I did not play bridge, so I would be spared the burden of resident fourth.) To live alone after a long marriage was not going to be easy, but hanging out with my cousin did not strike me as the right solution. Far better not to let the situation arise.

"I looked at the apartment yesterday afternoon," I fibbed.

"Beryl arranged for me to see it. I could manage it alone, but when Craig comes to visit I want him to be comfortable. An alcove off the living room is a poor excuse for a spare room. I'll really be better off in Queen's Court."

"How will you furnish the place?"

"Cheap and cheerful. IKEA. Classified ads. The Salvation Army Store if necessary."

Diana looked as though I had suggested going to a soup kitchen for dinner. "I have some furniture in storage. I was saving it for the children, but so far no one has shown the slightest interest.There's a bedroom set, a couple of armchairs, a drop-leaf table you can put in your dining room."

"Thanks, cousin. Consider them on loan. If any of your brood really does want anything, take it back and welcome. Your things will really help me to settle in."

"Then there's that small love seat." Diana pointed at a handsome, newly upholstered piece blocking her living room window. "I brought it from the big house, but it crowds the place.You'd better take it along."

I smiled my appreciation. Beneath the bossy exterior Diana was a kind-hearted woman. I loved her for it, but I still did not want to live in her building.

I would be the first to applaud a respect for family traditions and links with preceding generations, so long as viewed through the prism of that uncommon virtue known as common sense. Diana's apartment was a case in point. In the large house (or mansion, were that word not so pretentious to North American ears) where she had grown up, the ample spaces swallowed up grandfather clocks, glass-fronted bookcases, high-backed dining room chairs with carved legs, and family portraits. In the still generous but far more contemporary space of Three Forest Road, her family furniture looked cumbersome. The specific gravity of oak, walnut, mahogany, brocade, and gilt compressed the space and constricted the rooms. Not even the reflective surface of a large mirror could lighten the effect, capturing as it did a twenty four volume set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Interior decoration is not morality. The road to salvation does not lie through colour swatches, curve past paint samples, fork into the menacing terrain of furniture departments, before erupting into the apotheosis of an impeccably tasteful room. But is there another colour for living room walls besides green?

Diana, being Diana, would have considered buying new furniture for her new apartment out of the question.With a large house full of perfectly good pieces, she would make do. To suggest that the money spent on refurbishing her flat flowed into the economy and helped painters, upholsterers, and cabinetmakers to pay their bills and send their children to school would have been dismissed as Readers' Digest economics. A pushover for the pornography of poverty, Diana sent large sums to those supposedly philanthropic organizations whose ads featured ragged children, emaciated adults, or pathetic animals. Money spent on luxuries was money wasted. Her call. De gustibus non disputandum est, but I did not intend to clutter my new condo with relics of the past. I do not need garnet earrings to remind me of my mother; my father lives in my head whether or not I am holding his gold pocket watch. And I would far rather give money to the busker on the street corner than to some third-world principality whose dictator lives in despotic splendour while slightly dim but high-minded aid workers are routinely raped and abused. The milk of human kindness that flows through Diana's veins has curdled in mine. Another attractive feature of my new apartment, one that I did not mention to Diana, was that it stood vacant and ready for immediate occupancy. I hired a cleaning firm to hose the place down, eager to move in as soon as possible. I filled the days prior to leaving Diana with shopping for essentials: a coffee maker, a can opener, sheets for the double bed Diana is donating. (Her spare room held twin beds. I truly dislike single beds; one reckless move and you are on the floor.)

In the meantime I paid my dues by preparing the evening meal. I am a reliable if uneventful cook; Walter loved comfort food, so I can slap up a meat loaf in the dark. Once I came home with the deed of sale — signed, sealed, delivered — Diana resigned herself to the fact I was moving to a foreign land. Suggesting I would be eight stops away on the Sherbrooke Street bus did not allay her misgivings that I had somehow left the compound. It was typical of Diana that she suggested I continue to stay on in her apartment until my own place was well and truly habitable. Much as I appreciated her offer I couldn't wait to move into apartment 5-D Queen's Court, even if it meant sleeping on an air mattress on the floor. At the very least, if I rolled over too abruptly I wouldn't have far to fall.

Diana insisted on having a few friends in for dinner the night before I moved out. I would have preferred an early night, as I knew tomorrow promised to be a long, full day; but Diana would not be gainsaid. I remember she had a Bon Voyage party before I moved to Victoria. To suggest that moving perhaps a dozen blocks east hardly amounted to a major upheaval would have poured cold water on her determination to send me off in style.

The dinner party turned out to be a last-minute affair, meaning all Diana's A-list friends had previous engagements. Moving resolutely through her Rolodex, Diana cobbled together a table of six. Then she called her caterer to order an unadventurous meal of consommé madrilène, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, followed by salad and trifle. To be fair, my cousin served only the choicest cuts of beef, and a generous shot of Harvey's Bristol Cream sherry went into the trifle; but the meal still suggested an upscale boarding academy for young ladies.

Not surprisingly, Diana did not have a list of single men or bachelors (a.k.a. gays) to round out a dinner party. She believed, and I agree, that we had reached the age when single women did not need to be paired off, like andirons or bookends. Still, I was sorry she hadn't invited at least one gay man, as nothing livens a dinner party like a little malice.

My heart leaped down when I learned whom she had managed to corral: the Milfords and the Carters, both couples I had met on previous visits to Montreal. Janet and Dick Milford are both on a second marriage and grimly determined to make this one work. He is her Big Dick, no joke intended; and she is his Little Woman. Small, neat, pretty, she turns to her husband in mid-conversation and says things like, "Dear, what is the name of that chocolate bar you know I like so much, the triangular one from Europe?" Big, beefy, bluff, he replies, "Toblerone, Dearest." He helps her on and off with her coat and interrupts when she is speaking. She smiles, a bit grimly, and waits patiently while he makes her point. She is the more intelligent but dares not let it show. I would not be surprised one day to read in the paper that she has killed her husband with an axe.

Pamela Carter is something else again. I am certain when Pamela gives blood for a test she is shocked to discover it isn't blue. Her mother married a minor British peer, a baron or a marquess, and the connection marked Pamela for life. Somewhere between fifty and the old-age pension, she wears her hair in a pageboy tucked behind her ears. She wears a plain grey skirt the way Little Orphan Annie wore a red dress. In the winter Pam tops it off with a sweater set and pearls, in the summer with a Liberty blouse and diamond bow-knot pin. When she lowers her voice into the conversation she speaks English like a foreign language. She pens letters, motors in the country, and dines at eight, or, according to Diana, whenever the smoke alarm goes off to signal dinner is now overcooked.

Reginald Carter — "Call me Reggie!" — looks like the kind of man who examines golf clubs in his underwear. He parades a kind of machismo, grinding your knuckles in a killer handshake and wearing an old necktie as belt. He is also fond, too fond, of stating he is "straight but not narrow." He is equally fond of observing that considering they don't reproduce there's a lot of them around, that is when he is not telling good-natured racist jokes, the no-offense-meant kind. "The trouble with Chinese chicks is that one hour after sex you're horny again." Pamela puts up with him, just so long as he isn't late for meals and doesn't drop the final "g" from gerunds and participles.

As a woman who already has her ideas firmly in place, Diana does not encourage the kind of conversation during which a novel point of view might be examined.After drinks and banalities about the weather we moved to table for roast beef and platitudes.The vegetables, in matching covered dishes, were handed around by the ad hoc maid in an ill-fitting black uniform, her hair scraped back into a bun. She reminded me of all Three Fates rolled into one.

There was a brief flurry of interest when Dick Milford and Reginald Carter both arch-conservatives, got into a wrangle over whether those with unpaid parking tickets should go to jail. They obviously dislike one another, and it took Janet Milford to suggest they were both arguing on the same side of the issue, that prison was the only answer. I chose silence.To suggest they were both a pair of rednecked nitwits might cast a pall over Diana's dinner. Pamela Carter rambled on about her dogs and how the local dog runs were being taken over by mongrels from the SPCA. She had pure-bred Pugs; always had, always will. But the brutes let loose in the dog runs today? Heaven forbid.

Diana sat at the head of the table, impervious to what was going on. Just so long as she hears a murmur of conversation she is content. Like people in broadcasting she fears silence. My scheme for dealing with this kind of situation is to say as little as is politely possible, which probably explains why Diana's friends find me "perfectly charming." I am good at making the small, inarticulate murmurs that telegraph attention. Nobody is the least bit interested in what I have to say, and I am here to eat, not proselytize.

Over trifle I chatted up my new apartment, concluding with an insincere invitation that they all come to visit, but only when I had enough furniture. To my relief, nobody drank the proffered coffee, although we were not spared the reasons for this denial.

Finally, it was over, and the two couples left in tiny explosions of gratitude and goodwill. But it was not over for me, as I heard Diana telling the cook to bundle up the leftovers in aluminum foil so I could have something to put into my refrigerator. I did not want to begin life at Queen's Court with an undercooked lump of protein in my fridge, so I decided to have a senior moment. Unless Diana happened to remember the leftovers while she was organizing me out of her apartment, I would not raise the issue. And if I was caught? Like Scarlett O'Hara, I would think about that tomorrow.