There was an Old Woman (4 page)

FOUR

I let myself into my parents' town house in the north end of the city. I always carried the key on my chain, it made me feel a little less adrift in the world. Although, what kind of anchor is decorated in burnt orange, I ask you? Ma was sitting in front of the television set, which was roaring away at top volume. She had her head buried in
Barchester Towers.
The continuous news station was being ignored while Ma lost herself in the last century.

“Oh, it's you! I didn't hear you come in, Benny.” I leaned over and gave her a hug and kiss, which she returned with Victorian propriety. “It's a good thing I've got a roast in the oven. I must have had a feeling you were coming.”

“Ma, I usually come for dinner on Friday nights. Haven't you noticed?”

“Make yourself a cup of tea, I'm nearly finished this chapter.”

I went into the kitchen, filled the kettle and plugged it into the socket on the stove. I could feel the heat coming from the oven. The teabags were in the usual tin. Since coming to know Anna Abraham a few years ago, I had started making tea in a pot when I could find one rather
than in the cup, which was a family tradition. There was an old photograph of my father's parents on a Lake Ontario beach, probably near Toronto, with a picnic hamper and an old brass samovar sitting in the sand. There was a large teapot set on top. The potless tradition must come from Ma's side of the family. The teapot I finally found was part of a display tea service near the kitchen window. “Leeds Spray” were the words I read on the bottom as I emptied it of keys, bus tickets for seniors, pencil stubs and loose change. I heated it first under the hot tap and then with steaming water from the kettle.

“Will you take a look at the roast, Benny. It's been in the oven two hours. I like to brown it for the last hour.”

“Ma, I don't see any potatoes or other vegetables.” I went around the entrance of the kitchen to face the chef. “Do you want me to put some potatoes around the roast?”

“Vegetables I've got in the cupboard. There's mixed peas and carrots or corn. It doesn't take two minutes to heat them. And I'm out of potatoes. I know you love my roast potatoes, but I don't have any.”

“I could run across the street to the store,” I said, trying to be helpful.

“It's not worth the trouble. What more do you want? A good roast and mixed veg? Did you check the roast like I asked?”

“I was just going to.” I retreated to the kitchen, took a sip of my tea and opened the oven. The old aluminum roasting pan was covered. I removed the lid with a cloth and discovered the roast submerged under water. I stuck a
fork in it and lifted it to the surface. It looked cooked, but not strictly roasted.

“Leave the lid off so it can brown,” I heard from the other room.

“Ma, it won't brown under water!”

“Water? What are you talking about?” In a moment she was peering into the roasting pan with me. “That's not water, that's gravy! You reduce it before serving.”

“Do you mind if I reduce at least half of it into the sink?”

“Benny! Always joking! Will you get out of my kitchen so I can cook dinner in peace?” I retreated to the couch and the
Beacon,
awaiting the arrival of my father, who got home no earlier than absolutely necessary.

The
Beacon
carried a summary of the morning's testimony in the Lizzy Oldridge inquest. I refreshed my memory reading it and caught up on the witnesses I hadn't heard. The assistant manager of the bank couldn't account for the failure of her boss, Clare Temperley, to appear as a witness. She knew for a fact that he was not planning to be away for the holidays. She read the rubric to the jury about what the arrangements were regarding access to Miss Oldridge's safety deposit box. She said that once the agreements were signed, there was no way of altering the instructions without the further agreement of both parties. She recalled a heart-rending scene in which Kogan and the deceased tried to persuade the manager, Mr. Temperley, to breach the rules. She described how this upset the diminutive Mr. Temperley, who had to
ward off blows from Miss Oldridge's umbrella. In the end, he had threatened to call the police if they didn't leave the building. She admitted that the deceased looked under-nourished and neglected.

A public health nurse testified that she had visited the home of the deceased on several occasions and reported finding the house indescribably filthy, that the deceased had refused to be examined by her and had heaped abusive language on top of the abusive smells emanating from every corner. She could find no sign of a working toilet in the house. I could see the hand of Victor Kogan here at least. The nurse said that she had discontinued her visits because there were no visible signs of sickness to be found.

A building inspector testified that he had visited the house and described the same horrors of dirt and smell that the nurse had seen. He said that he did not deliver his list of items that needed to be fixed in order to bring the dwelling in line with the city's minimum standards because he felt that the shock of it would, in his words, “send the old woman around the bend.” Nothing else was done.

I heard my father come in. I looked up and he smiled at me, looking older and wearier than I'd seen him recently. “Were you at the club?” I asked.

“I played a few hands. But those games are getting too rich for my blood. I can't afford the stakes. They're playing over a dollar a line.” I split the paper with him and we settled in reading until the call to dinner came.

“I ran out of potatoes,” Ma explained as we sat down, “so you'll have to make do with the mixed veg. I can make a salad if anyone wants one.”

“Sure,” I said and Pa nodded. Ma didn't move.

“Pa, what do you know about Thurleigh Ramsden?”

“Not while I'm eating, Benny. That man! The less you say about him, the better!”

“Why?”

“He reminds me of something you find on the underside of a restaurant table.”

“I'd rather eat an unkosher chicken from a supermarket than talk to that man,” added my mother. I repeated my question subtly rephrased.

“Thurleigh Ramsden is the worst kind of Gentile,” Pa said.

“Jew or Gentile, he's the worst!” Ma corrected. Pa looked at her to see if she had more to say. When she remained silent, he continued:

“He's all gentility and manners wrapped up around a greedy cheapskate. Even the Mallet Club won't let him in. He's what they call lace curtain.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. Pa shrugged.

“All I know is that's what they call him on St. Andrew Street. He writes letters to the paper complaining that they don't bring back capital punishment. For him they could bring back the lash too, but there I'm only guessing. He thinks we've gone over to the Chinese communists because we have utilities collecting our garbage and selling us electricity. What can I say? If he's your friend,
I don't want to meet your enemies. When he ran for mayor, he wrapped himself up in the Union Jack, saying that he was going to send all the foreigners back where they came from. What he didn't notice is that the ‘foreigners'—some of them here since before the last war— are the majority nowadays. So, what's the percentage of an appeal like that, except to bring out all the loonies in town?”

“It's too bad he lost that wife of his. That Dora. She was the nicest thing about him.”

“She left him?”

“She should have, what with him being the way he is—”

“Silk pants and no underwear, that's Ramsden, if you ask me,” Pa added. I pressed Ma about Mrs. Ramsden.

“She was killed in a highway accident a few years ago. Out of town. It was in the paper.”

“I heard at the club that Ramsden bought a stereo in Buffalo and didn't declare it at the border. He nearly lost his car over that.”

“This is not the sort of evidence that would stand up in court,” I said. “It would be called ‘highly prejudicial.' And I would tend to agree, in spite of the fact that I love you both dearly.”

“Prejudicial, shmedudicial,” Pa said. “As long as you're healthy.” He gave an old-country shrug. “I'm not asking you to take my word for it. Take his standing in the last election for mayor. He came in after the Independent Marxist-Leninists. And
they
polled lower than
the regular Marxist-Leninists. That proves there are a lot of people who think the way I do.”

“He moved his own mother out of her house and into a charity ward when she was eighty-seven. That's the kind of man he is.”

“Don't give me any ideas,” I said.

“You?” Ma said. “You I wouldn't trust with my affairs for a second. You who never remembers to shut a drawer or turn off a light! Would you remember to pay a bill? Would you remember to do the banking? Never in your whole life have I seen you clip a coupon from the paper. Your fate is spelled out in big letters, Benny. Just lucky your father and I have been spared to look after you. Another piece of roast beef, dear?”

After tea was served in the traditional way—the teabag passed from cup to cup, followed by a squirt from the plastic lemon—we gathered around the television set to watch the local news.

“I always like her,” Ma said, looking at the face of the evening news, Catherine Bracken. “She's always such a lady the way she rations out the daily calamities. Like she doesn't want us to blame her for them personally. That fellow on the Toronto news, I don't think he gives a damn. But she
cares,
she really
cares.”

“I think she does a good job,” my father said, his old eyes eating her up on the screen.

“Good job?” Ma repeated. “What can be so difficult about it? It's not like she invents the news. She just reads it. Your father's got a crush on her. A cross between Ava
Gardner and Liz Taylor. Look at him! He's like a teenager. He could watch her all night.”

I looked over at Pa, who hadn't noticed what Ma had said about him. He was watching and listening to the news. Catherine Bracken was wearing a green silk blouse on the screen. Pa watched, I watched and Ma watched. Even
she
couldn't blame us.

FIVE

The Mallet Club stood at the head of King Street, where it met Ontario in a “T” intersection. It was in one of the best-preserved older buildings in town, with a severe early-nineteenth-century face and an elegant stone flourish around the central chimney at the top. I'd been inside only once. It was my father's conviction that Jews were unwelcome. When I pointed out to him that I had seen Dr. Adelstein going in, he revised his opinion so that now he said that with the exception of Dr. Adelstein, no Jews were allowed.

I went in the wide front door and was welcomed by a butler or some sort of doorkeeper. “Mister …?” he said with a rising inflection and a tilt of his head.

“Cooperman. I'm having lunch with Mr. Julian Newby,” I said. “Is he here yet?”

“Not yet, I'm afraid, Mr. Cooperman. Would you care to wait for him in the library or would you like to go into the dining-room? I have your table ready. Mr. Newby telephoned to say that he might be delayed by as much as ten minutes.”

“I see,” I said, trying to give the impression of a man whose sensibilities were easily damaged. “I'll wait in the library”

“This way, sir.” I picked the library since that would give me a look at another of the rooms I'd probably never see again. I already knew I was going to spend some time in the dining-room. The butler led the way first to a closet where he put my damp raincoat and hat and then to the predictably dark-panelled library, which stood just to the right of the entrance hall. I'd forgotten to take off my rubbers, so I would be forced to brazen it out if they were noticed. I sat in a big wing chair after selecting at random a fat bound volume of
Punch.

The wall of books next to me contained hundreds of volumes. The shelves reached from the floor to the high ceiling. The books were all pink bound volumes like the one I was holding open on my lap, dated 1849. I flipped the pages past steel engravings and text. There were full-page cartoons and jokes I would never understand. I looked around me and saw that there were a few quiet figures in other wing chairs like the one I was sitting in. Together we looked like a living cartoon waiting for the right caption.

I was waiting for Julian Newby this Monday noon-hour because he'd telephoned less than two hours earlier, inviting me to discuss a proposition over lunch. It was Friday when I'd run into Stan Mendlesham at the inquest. I was curious about why a man who had never seen fit to call on me before should be doing so after an accidental
meeting with a member of his firm. I'm a great believer in coincidence, but this was ridiculous.

I hadn't got very far in
Punch
before Julian Newby's shadow fell across my reading. “Sorry I couldn't get away earlier, Mr. Cooperman. Damned sorry I was in Mr. Justice Penner's chambers and he, as usual, wasn't watching his clock.”

I got up and we shook hands. Newby had a round face that looked as though he had spent some time in the ring: his nose was slightly flattened and favoured the left side of his face. Besides that, there was a hard mouth and watchful eyes. This rugged effect was spoiled by a mane of white hair, which a blue rinse had suburbanized. He was wearing a dark business suit and carrying a square-cornered briefcase. His grip was temperate; he wasn't trying to prove anything. I followed him into the dining-room, where the waiters smiled at him and he waved at several of the diners under their white table napkins.

The dining-room was crowded but sedate. There would be no lunch-time revelry, no cluster of waiters singing “Happy Birthday.” Although I could have guessed this, it was a pleasure to see it in the flesh. I particularly liked the white napery and the gloves on the waiters. Did they suspect that we were suffering from undiagnosed diseases? I accepted an invitation to have an aperitif: I ordered rye and ginger ale, he asked for a dry Martini.