VI
During the Great War, Nellie Jacobs had heard more aeroplane motors above Washington, D.C., than she’d ever wanted to. Aeroplane motors, back in those days, had always meant trouble. Either observers were over the city taking photographs to guide bombers and artillery, or else the bombers themselves paid calls, raining destruction and death down on the Confederate occupiers. Later, Confederate bombers had tried to slaughter U.S. soldiers in Washington. Neither side cared much about civilians. Nellie had needed years after the war to stop wanting to duck whenever motors droned overhead.
Now, though, she and her husband stood in the street on the bright, crisp New Year’s Day of 1926, staring into the blue sky, pointing, and exclaiming in excitement like a couple of children. “Look! There it is!” Hal Jacobs said, pointing again.
“I see it!” Nellie answered. “Looks like a big old fat cigar up there in the sky, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does,” Hal said. “That is just what it looks like, I think.”
Clara tugged at Nellie’s skirt. “Ma, I have to go potty,” she said.
“Well, go on in and go,” Nellie said impatiently. “Your dad and me, we’re going to stay right here and watch the zeppelin a while longer.” Clara made the beginnings of a whimper. “Go on,” Nellie told her. “Go on, or I’ll warm your fanny for you. You’re going to be six this year. You don’t need me to hold your hand any more when you go tinkle.”
Her daughter ducked into the coffeehouse. Nellie kept staring up at the Kronprinz Friedrich Wilhelm as it neared the mooring station that had been set up at the top of the newly refinished Washington Monument. “Can you believe it?” Hal said. “It flew all the way across the Atlantic. All the way across the ocean, without stopping once. What an age we live in!”
“Paper says the crown prince himself is in there.” Nellie tried to point to the little passenger gondola hanging beneath the great cigar-shaped gas bag. “On a state visit to President Sinclair.”
As Clara came back, Hal nodded. His voice was troubled. “We fought side by side with Kaiser Bill all through the Great War. Sad we should squabble with Germany now. I hope Friedrich Wilhelm can patch things up.”
“That’d be good,” Nellie agreed. “Don’t want to worry about little Armstrong going off to war one of these days.” She doted on her grandson, not least because her daughter Edna had to take care of him most of the time. Edna’s half sister Clara, on the other hand, had been a not altogether welcome surprise and was an ungodly amount of work for a woman well into middle age. She would, thank God, be going back to kindergarten in a few more days.
Suddenly, the zeppelin’s engines stopped buzzing. “They’ve got it,” Hal said, as if he personally had been the one to moor the Kronprinz Friedrich Wilhelm to the white stone tower. He sounded delighted to repeat himself: “What an age we live in! When my father was born, there was no telegraph and hardly any railroads. And now we have these wireless sets and—this.” He pointed toward the Washington Monument again.
“It’s something, all right,” Nellie agreed. But then, perhaps incautiously, she went on, “I don’t know that it’s all to the good.”
“Not all to the good?” Her husband looked indignant. “What do you mean? What could be grander than—that?”
“Oh, it’s—swell, the young people say now.” Nellie brought out the slang self-consciously; like anyone of her generation, she was much more used to bully. “But when your pa was born, Hal, this here was all one country, too, you know. We’ve spilled an awful lot o’ blood since on account of it ain’t any more.”
“Well, yes, of course,” he said. The two of them, in conquered and reconquered Washington, had seen more spilled blood than most civilians. He sighed and breathed out a big, puffy cloud of steam. “I can’t imagine how things could have been any different, though. You might as well talk about us losing the Revolution and still belonging to England.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Nellie sighed. Hal was the sensible one in the family. He was, as far as she was concerned, sometimes sensible to a fault. Clara came back out. Nellie absentmindedly ruffled her hair. Then she decided to be sensible, too, and said, “Now we’ve seen it. Let’s go inside. It’s cold out here.”
“Oh, Ma!” Nobody had ever accused Clara of being sensible.
But Hal said, “Your mother is right. If you stay out here too long, you could catch pneumonia, and then where would you be?”
“I’d be out here, having a good time,” Clara answered. Pneumonia was just a word to her, not one of the many diseases that could so easily kill children.
“Come on in,” Nellie said. She knew what pneumonia was, all right. “Edna and Uncle Merle and Cousin Armstrong are coming over in a little while.”
That did get Clara back inside, at the price of continual questions—“When will they come? Why aren’t they here yet?”—till her half sister, Edna’s husband, and their son arrived half an hour later. Armstrong pulled Clara’s hair. She squalled like a cat that had had its tail stepped on, then stamped on his foot hard enough to make him wail even louder.
He got little sympathy from his mother. “Serves you right,” Edna said. “I saw what you did to Clara.”
“Happy New Year,” Merle Grimes said above the wails of the two irate children. Behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, irony glinted in his eyes.
“Well, I do hope the rest of it’ll be happier than this godawful racket,” Nellie said. “Maybe the crown prince will bury the hatchet once and for all.”
“He’d like to bury it in our backs, I think,” Grimes said. “One of these days, we really will have to worry about Germany. The Germans are worrying about us right this minute, and you can bet your bottom dollar on that.”
Hal handed him a whiskey. After they clinked glasses and toasted 1926, Nellie’s husband said, “We’ll have a hard time worrying about Germany when we don’t even worry about the CSA.”
“I know,” Grimes said. “Well, good old Kaiser Bill’s got other worries besides us, too, and that’s not bad.”
Nellie raised her glass for a toast of her own. “Here’s to no more war anywhere,” she said once she’d caught everybody’s eye. “Haven’t we had enough?”
“Amen!” her husband said, and drank.
“I know I’ve had enough, enough and then some,” her son-in-law said. He drank, too. “Wasn’t for those . . . miserable Confederates”—he didn’t swear around women, but he’d come close there—“I wouldn’t limp for the rest of my days.”
Edna also drank. “I hope they never, ever come anywhere near Washington again,” she said. Nellie eyed her daughter. Edna looked back defiantly, but couldn’t help turning red. She’d nearly married a Confederate officer. In fact, she would have married him if a U.S. shell hadn’t killed him on his way to the altar. Almost ten years ago now, Nellie thought, amazed, wondering where the time had gone. As far as she knew, Merle Grimes had no idea Nicholas H. Kincaid had ever existed.
That was Edna’s worry, not her own. She had secrets in her past, too, secrets she wanted to stay buried till they shoveled dirt over her. Her husband reminded her of those secrets by pouring everyone’s glass full and proposing a toast of his own: “Here’s to our missing friends, gone but not forgotten.”
“Oh, God, yes!” Merle said, and gulped that drink down. His mouth tightened; harsh lines sprang out at its corners. “Too many good fellows dead for no reason: Ernie and Clancy and Bob and Otis and—” Behind his spectacles, tears glinted.
“And Bill Reach, too.” Hal Jacobs sounded as maudlin as his step-daughter’s husband. “He was worth a division, maybe more, in getting the Confederates out of Washington. I wish he’d lived to see this day, with an American empire stretching north to south, east to west. . . .” He sighed. “He should have, too. Just bad luck.”
Now Edna eyed Nellie. Now Nellie flushed and had trouble meeting her daughter’s eye. She didn’t reckon Bill Reach a missing friend. Reach had mortified her during the war, drunkenly taking her for the strumpet she’d been a long time before. She’d never been able to tell Edna anything since, not hoping to be taken seriously.
But not even Edna knew how Bill Reach had died. No one but Nellie knew that, which was just how she wanted things. She’d been foraging for supplies when he tried to rape her, counting on a broken bottle to intimidate her into cooperating. But she’d carried a butcher knife, and she’d been sober. Bill Reach’s body was one of God knew how many hundreds or thousands from the time of the U.S. bombardment, the time before the Confederate Army finally and sullenly pulled out of the U.S. capital. So far as she knew, nobody’d ever found it.
I hope nobody ever does, either, she thought savagely. I hope he rots in the ground and burns in hell forever. It’d serve him right, by God.
Her husband had said something to her, but she had no idea what. “I’m sorry, Hal,” she said. “I must’ve been woolgathering.”
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” Hal said with a tender smile. He did love her. She knew that. She was absently fond of him, too, not least because, being a long way from young, he didn’t try to make love to her very often. She’d had more than enough of that. Now he went on, “I said, I know you feel the same way about poor Bill as I do. He always praised the information you got to the skies. He did like the bottle a bit too much, but he was a fine man, a first-class patriot.”
Nellie managed a nod and a glassy smile. They sufficed. Edna made a small noise that might have been the start of a snicker, but did stop at Nellie’s glower. And then they all got distracted, for Clara came in shouting, “Ma! Ma! Armstrong went and put somethin’ down the potty and then he flushed it, and now there’s water all over everything! Come quick!”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Nellie sprang to her feet, as did the other grownups.
Getting out the pair of long johns and mopping up the water didn’t take long. For Merle Grimes to wallop Armstrong’s backside with a hairbrush didn’t take long, either. Armstrong’s howls needed some little while to subside. So did Nellie’s temper. “He’s only a little boy, sweetheart,” Hal said.
“Boys!” Nellie snorted, in the tone she usually reserved for, Men! “You’d never see a little girl doing something like that.”
“You tell ’em, Ma,” Edna said. She and Nellie argued whenever they got a chance, but she would back her mother in a quarrel against the other half of the human race.
Except there was no quarrel. Hal Jacobs and Merle Grimes looked at each other, as if wondering who would bell the cat. At last, Hal said, “Well, Nellie, you may be right. If the world held nothing but women, we probably wouldn’t have fought the Great War.”
Merle chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know if I’d go that far. They wouldn’t have fought it over Serbia, though—I am sure of that. More likely over which was better, Macy’s or Gimbel’s.”
He laughed. So did Hal. And so did Edna, betraying her sex after all. Nellie glared at her—yes, they would squabble over anything. Defensively, Edna said, “Oh, come on, Ma—it was funny.”
“Well, maybe,” Nellie said with the air of one making an enormous concession. She was so obvious about it, her husband and son-in-law started laughing again.
“Peace,” Merle Grimes said when he could speak at last. “Peace. It’s 1926, and we’ve already drunk to peace. Let’s keep it for as long as we can.” Not even Nellie could find anything to argue with there.
Jonathan Moss got to his feet in the courtroom. “May it please your Honor,” he said wearily, “but I must object to the prosecution’s speaking of my client as ‘the guilty party.’ The purpose of a trial is to find out whether or not he is guilty.”
His Honor was a U.S. Army colonel named Augustus Thorgood. Down came the gavel. “Overruled.” He nodded to the prosecutor, a U.S. Army major named Sam Lopat. “You may proceed.”
“Thank you, your Honor,” Lopat replied. “As I was saying, Stubbs there is plainly guilty of insurrection against the military government of the United States in the former province of Ontario, as defined in Occupation Administrative Code, section 521, subsection 17.”
Horace Stubbs, Moss’ client, leaned toward him and whispered, “Thanks for trying.”
“We’re not out of it yet,” Moss whispered back. But he was whistling in the dark, and he knew it.
Major Lopat went on, “Before witnesses, the defendant said the United States deserved to be booted out of Canada on their backside. His very words, your Honor!” His voice trembled with indignation.
“Objection.” Moss got to his feet again. “No witnesses have been produced before the court to show my client said any such thing.”
“We have the testimony,” Lopat said smugly.
“But no witnesses,” Moss persisted. “Testimony can come from a man with a personal grudge, or from one out for a profit. How do we know unless we can cross-examine a witness?”
“This is not an ordinary criminal proceeding, Mr. Moss, as you know perfectly well,” Colonel Thorgood said. “Testimony from certified informants may be admitted without their being liable to appear in open court, for fear of reprisal against them from the unreconciled.”
“How can you possibly hope for justice under such conditions?” Moss asked.
“We aim to stamp out rebellion,” the military judge said. “We will, too.”
“Yes, your Honor. No doubt, your Honor.” Moss turned Thorgood’s title of respect into one of reproach. “But, sooner or later, ignoring the needs of justice and caring only for the needs of expedience will come back to haunt you. As Ben Franklin said, your Honor, ‘They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ ”
He’d pulled that quotation out of his Bartlett’s, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it. If he did, his client would be in trouble. Well, Stubbs was in trouble, and Moss, like any lawyer worth his pay, used whatever weapons came to hand. And this one struck home. Colonel Thorgood turned red. Major Lopat jumped to his feet. “Now I object, your Honor! Incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial.”
“Sustained.” Thorgood thumped the gavel. “The record will be stricken.”
“Exception!” Moss said. “If you’re going to railroad an innocent man, at least be honest about what you’re doing.”
Bang! The gavel came down again. “This inflammatory speech will also be stricken,” Colonel Thorgood declared. He nodded to Lopat. “Carry on, Major.”
Carry on Lopat did, with soldierly precision. The case against Horace Stubbs was strong—was, in fact, airtight—as long as one believed what informants said about him. Moss was convinced the informants were lying through their teeth. But he doubted whether Colonel Thorgood cared one way or the other. Thorgood’s job was to keep Canada quiet. If he had to shoot every Canuck in sight to do that job, he would, and go to dinner with a hearty appetite five minutes later.
When Major Lopat finished, the military judge nodded to Moss. “Now, Counselor, you may have your say.”
“Thank you, your Honor.” Moss fought to keep sarcasm from his voice. He thought he still had some small chance, not of getting his client off—that was plainly hopeless—but of earning him a reduced sentence. Further affronting Colonel Thorgood wouldn’t help there. He set forth the evidence as best he could, finishing, “May it please your Honor, the only people who claim Mr. Stubbs was in any way involved with recent unfortunate events in Ontario are those whose testimony is inherently unreliable and who have a vested interest in giving him the appearance of guilt regardless of whether that appearance is in any way justified.” He sat down.
From the prosecution’s table, Major Lopat muttered something about a “damn Canuck-lover.” Moss sent him a hard look. The military prosecutor gave back a stare colder than any Canadian winter. Had he worked in the CSA rather than the USA, he would surely have muttered about a “damn nigger-lover” instead.
But, to Moss’ surprise, Colonel Thorgood’s gavel came down again. “That will be quite enough of that, Major,” the judge said.
“I beg your pardon, your Honor,” Lopat said politely. He didn’t beg Moss’ pardon, though.
“Very well, Major. Do keep your remarks to the business at hand. Having said as much to Mr. Moss, I can hardly fail to say the same to you.” Thorgood looked down at the notes on his desk. He picked up a pen and scribbled something, then said, “Horace Stubbs, rise to hear the verdict of this court.”
With a sigh, Stubbs got to his feet. He could see the writing on the wall as plainly as could Moss. He was a small, thin, middle-aged man. On looks alone, he made an unlikely insurrectionist.
“Horace Stubbs,” Colonel Thorgood said, “I find you guilty of the crime of participating in rebellion against the U.S. occupying authorities in the former province of Ontario.” Stubbs’ shoulders slumped. The military judge scribbled something else. He continued, “Due to the unusual nature of this case, I sentence you to six months’ imprisonment and to a fine of $250: failure to pay the latter will result in a further six months’ imprisonment.” Bang! went the gavel. “This court is adjourned.”
A couple of husky U.S. noncoms strode forward to take Horace Stubbs off to jail. “Just a minute,” he told them. “Just one damn minute.” He grabbed Jonathan Moss’ hand, hard enough to hurt. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “Everything they told me about you, it was all true, and then some. God bless you.”
“You’re welcome,” Moss said in slightly dazed tones as the noncoms took charge of his client and led him away. He’d hoped Colonel Thorgood would go easy on Stubbs. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined Thorgood would go this easy. Six months and $250? From a military court? That was hardly even a slap on the wrist.
Major Lopat must have felt the same way. As he put papers back into his military-issue briefcase, he sent Moss a sour stare. “Well, Clarence Darrow, you pulled a rabbit out of the hat this time,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” Moss said—he was damned if he’d admit surprise to the other side. “You didn’t have a case, and you know it.”
Lopat didn’t even bother arguing with him. All the military prosecutor said was, “Yeah? So what? Look where we are.”
“Canadians deserve justice, too,” Moss said.
“Oh, yeah? Since when? Says who?” Having fired three clichés like an artillery barrage, Major Lopat added, “And a whole fat lot you’d care, too, if you weren’t sleeping with a Canuck gal.”
That might even have been true. Even so, to Moss it had only one possible answer, and he used it: “Screw you, Sam.” He packed his own papers in his briefcase and left the courtroom, grabbing his overcoat as he went. The calendar said spring had started three days earlier, but Berlin, Ontario, paid little attention to the calendar. Snow whitened streets and sidewalks, with more falling even as Moss walked along the street.
He paused thoughtfully in front of a sign that said, EMPIRE GROCERIES. Below the words, a large, American-looking eagle was painted. Maybe the storekeeper meant the American empire, the one that stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of California, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But maybe, too, it was meant to call to mind the name Berlin had briefly borne during the Great War, when its citizens decided living in a town named for an enemy capital was unpatriotic.
Moss chuckled. Laura Secord still refused to call the town anything but Empire. As far as she was concerned, the occupying authorities had no right to change back the name. There were no Canadian patriots more fiery than Laura.
And yet she’d warned him the uprising was imminent. He still didn’t fully understand that, and she refused to talk about it now. His best guess was that she hadn’t thought the revolt had any chance to succeed, and so she wasn’t committing treason by talking about it. But that was only a guess, and he knew it.
He stopped at a diner a few doors down from Empire Groceries. A waiter brought him a menu. The man walked with a limp; he’d taken a bullet in the leg trying to hold back the U.S. Army. He knew Moss had flown aeroplanes for the USA, but didn’t hold it against him—much. “Case over?” he asked as Moss sat down at an empty table.
“That’s right,” Moss answered. “Let me have the corned beef on wheat, and coffee to go with it.”
As the waiter scribbled on a pad, he asked another question: “They going to let Horace live?”
“Six months in jail and $250,” Moss said exultantly.
The waiter dropped his pencil. “Be damned,” he said, grunting in pain as he bent to pick it up. He called back to the cook, who was also the owner. “Hey, Eddie! This fast-talking Yank got Horace off easy!”
“What’s ‘easy’?” Eddie called back. “Twenty years? Ten?”
“Six months,” the waiter answered, sounding as excited as Moss. “And $250.”
“Be damned,” Eddie said, as the waiter had. That impressed him enough to make him come out front. He had on a cloth cap in lieu of the toque a cook at a fancier place might have worn. He tipped it to Moss. “Lunch on the house, pal.”
“Thanks,” Moss told him.
“You did it,” Eddie said. “Seems like our own barristers haven’t had much luck in Yankee courts. Maybe it takes one to know one.”
That wasn’t exactly praise, though the cook no doubt meant it as such. It also wasn’t so, or not necessarily. With a sigh, Moss said, “That fellow they said was a bomber, they threw the book at him no matter what I did.”
“Enoch Dupree, you mean?” the waiter said.
Moss nodded. “That’s right.”
The waiter and Eddie looked at each other. After a long pause, Eddie said, “Hate to tell you, but Enoch, he was a bomber. I happen to know it for a fact, on account of his brother-in-law’s married to my cousin. I—”
“I don’t want to hear about it.” Moss held up a hand to show he really meant it. “My job is to give people the best defense they can get, regardless of whether they’re guilty or not.”
“Don’t know I much fancy that,” the waiter said. “Shouldn’t be guilty people running around loose just ‘cause they’ve got smart lawyers.”
“Well, your other choice is to send innocent people to jail,” Moss answered. “How do you like that?”
“I don’t, much,” the Canadian answered. “But I thought it was what you Yanks call justice. Sure has looked like that since you came.”
“You shouldn’t blame him,” Eddie said. “He’s done everything he could for us, ever since he hung out his shingle here.”
“That’s so,” the waiter admitted, and Moss felt good till the fellow added, “Sure as hell wish he could do a lot more, though.”
Lucien Galtier sighed as he and Marie and Georges and Jeanne—the last two children left at home—got into his Chevrolet for the Sunday trip to Rivière-du-Loup. “I’d sooner go to Mass in St.-Antonin or St.-Modèste,” he said, “but sometimes there’s no help for it.”
“Doing this is wise,” his wife said. “As long as we come to church every so often and let Bishop Pascal see us, everything should be fine.”
“We don’t want to give him any reason to complain about us to the Americans, no,” Lucien agreed.
“But the Republic of Quebec is free and independent,” Georges said. “And if you don’t believe me, just ask the first American soldier you see.”
Georges always liked to sound as if he were joking. Sometimes he was. Sometimes . . . Lucien had learned an English expression: kidding on the square. That summed things up better than anything in Quebecois French.
“You’re getting pretty good at this driving business,” Georges went on as they rolled up the paved road past the hospital and toward the town on the southern bank of the St. Lawrence. “Anyone would think you’d been doing it all your life.” He chuckled. “They’d hardly even invented horses when you were a boy, eh, Papa, let alone motorcars?”
“They hadn’t invented such smart alecks, I’ll tell you that,” Lucien said. His younger son preened, as if at praise.
The Église Saint-Patrice in Rivière-du-Loup was called a cathedral these days, though it was the same building it had always been. Quite a few motorcars parked nearby. Times were . . . Lucien wouldn’t say they were good, but he thought it now and again.
As people filed into the church (being the stubborn Quebecois farmer he was, Galtier refused to think of it as a cathedral, no matter what Bishop Pascal declared), some of them talked about the stocks they’d bought, and about how much money they’d made from them. Lucien felt Marie’s eyes on him. Ever so slightly, he shook his head. He’d stayed away from the bourse, and intended to go right on staying away from it. It struck him as being much more like gambling than any legitimate way to make money. Gambling, now, gambling was all very well—so long as you knew you could lose as easily as you could win.
He was almost to the door when he heard the word scandal for the first time. Now he and his wife looked at each other. He shrugged. Marie did the same. A moment later, he heard the word again. Something juicy had happened. And I’ve been on the farm minding my own business, and so I haven’t the faintest idea what it is, he thought regretfully.
“Tabernac,” he muttered. The look Marie sent him this time was definitely reproachful. He pretended not to notice. It wasn’t—quite—as if he’d cursed on holy ground. The other side of the door, it would have been a different business.
No sooner had he gone inside than someone else—a woman—said scandal, and immediately started giggling. “What’s going on, mon père?” Georges asked. Scandal—especially scandal that might be funny—drew him the way maple syrup drew ants.
A young priest named Father Guillaume stood by the altar in Bishop Pascal’s place. As Lucien took his seat in the pews, he asked the fellow next to him, a townsman, “Where’s the bishop?”
“Why, with the children, of course,” the man answered, and started to laugh. Lucien fumed. He didn’t want to admit he didn’t know what was going on. That would make him look like a farmer who came to town only to sell things and to hear Mass. Of course, he was a farmer who came to town only to sell things and to hear Mass, but he didn’t want to remind the world of it.
His eldest daughter, Nicole; her husband, the American doctor named Leonard O’Doull; and their son, Lucien, sat down behind his family. He started to lean back and ask them what was so delicious, but Father Guillaume began speaking in Latin just then, so he had to compose himself in patience.
He dared hope the priest’s sermon would enlighten him, but it only left him more tantalized and titillated than ever. Father Guillaume talked about those without sin casting the first stone. He praised Pascal, and wished him good fortune in whatever he chose to do with the rest of his life.
Lucien wiggled like a man with a dreadful and embarrassing itch. What ever the scandal was, it must have got Bishop Pascal! He’d never cared for Pascal; the man was too pink, too clever, too . . . too expedient, to suit him. But Pascal had always come up smelling like a rose—till now. And I don’t even know what he did! Galtier thought in an agony of frustration.
He went up and took communion from Father Guillaume. He swallowed the wafer as fast as he could; he didn’t want to speak of scandal with the Body of Christ still on his tongue. But then he made a beeline for his son-in-law.
“What? You don’t know? Oh, for heaven’s sake?” Dr. O’Doull exclaimed. He’d come to Quebec during the war, speaking tolerably good Parisian French. After ten years here, his accent remained noticeable, but only a little. He sounded more as if he’d been born in la belle province—la belle république, now—every day.
“No, I don’t know,” Galtier ground out. “Since you are such a font of knowledge, suppose you enlighten me.”
“Mais certainement, mon beau-père,” O’Doull said, grinning. “Bishop Pascal’s lady friend just had twins.”
“Twins!” Lucien said. “Le bon Dieu!”
“God was indeed good to Bishop Pascal, wouldn’t you agree?” his son-in-law said, and laughed out loud. “I should say, to former Bishop Pascal, for he has resigned his see in light of this . . . interesting development. Father Guillaume will serve the spiritual needs of Rivière-du-Loup until the see has a new bishop.”
“Twins,” Galtier repeated, as if he’d never heard the word before. “Yes, I can see how he would have to resign after that.”
No one was surprised when priests had lady friends. They were men of the cloth, yes, but they were also men. A lot of women, down through the years, had sighed over Father, later Bishop, Pascal. Lucien didn’t understand it, but he’d never been a woman, either. And few people were astonished if the lady friends of priests sometimes presented them with offspring. That, too, was just one of those things. Life went on, people looked the other way, and the little bastards were often very well brought up.
“But twins!” Lucien said. “You can’t look the other way at twins. By the nature of things, a bishop’s twins are a scandal.”
“Exactly so, mon beau-père,” Leonard O’Doull said. “And that is why Bishop Pascal is Bishop Pascal no more, but plain old Pascal Talon.”
“Pascal Talon!” Galtier exclaimed. “That’s right—that is his family. I hadn’t thought of his family name in years, though. No one has, I’m sure.”
“Of course not, not when he belonged to the Church for all those years,” Dr. O’Doull said. “That’s what belonging to the Church means. That’s what it does. It takes you away from your family and puts you in God’s family.” He laughed again. “But, now that he’s gone and made God’s family bigger . . .”
Galtier laughed, too. He asked, “Since you are in town and hear all these things the moment they happen—and since you don’t bother telling your poor country cousins about them—could you tell me what M. Pascal Talon plans to do now that he is Bishop Pascal no more?” Whatever it was, he had the nasty feeling the man would make a great success of it.
And, sure enough, his son-in-law said, “I understand he’s decided Rivière-du-Loup is too small a place for a man of his many talents. He will be moving to Quebec City, they say, where he can be appreciated for everything he is.”
A snake, a sneak, a worm, a collaborator, a philanderer—yes, in the capital of the Republic he should do well for himself, Galtier thought. He found some more questions: “And what of the twins? Are they boys or girls, by the way? And what of their mother? Is Pascal now a married man?”
“They’re a boy and a girl. Very pretty babies—I’ve seen them,” O’Doull replied. Being a doctor, he’d seen a lot of babies. If he said they were pretty, Lucien was prepared to believe him. He went on, “I am given to understand that Suzette is now Mme. Talon, yes, but I don’t think she’ll be going to Quebec City with her new husband.”
Marie heard that and let out a loud sniff. “He made himself a member of God’s family. If he cheated on his vows to the Lord, how can anyone think he won’t cheat on his vows to a woman? Poor Suzette.”
“Yes, very likely Pascal will cheat on her, but she must have known he cheated when she first started her games with him,” Lucien said.
“Why do you always blame the woman?” his wife demanded.
“Why do you always blame the man?” he returned, also heatedly.
“Excuse me.” Dr. O’Doull made as if to duck. “I’m going somewhere safer—the trenches during the war were probably safer.”
“It will be all right,” Galtier said. “We’ve been married this long. We can probably last a little longer.”
Marie didn’t argue, but her expression was mutinously eloquent. And, as a matter of fact, Galtier wondered why he did take the former Bishop Pascal’s side. It wasn’t as if he liked the man. He never had. He’d never trusted him, either. Pascal had always been too smooth, too rosy, to be reliable. That was what Lucien had thought, at any rate. Plainly, a lot of people had had a different opinion.
But was Suzette, the new Mme. Talon, such a bargain? Galtier also had his doubts about that. After all, if she’d let Pascal into her bed, what did that say about her taste? Nothing good, certainly.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
“All right,” Marie answered. Her voice had no, We’ll come back to this later, in it, so he supposed this wouldn’t be a fight that clouded things between them for days at a time. They’d had a few of those, but only a few: one reason they still got on so well after thirty years and a bit more besides.
“Why do you dislike Bishop Pascal so much?” Jeanne asked on the way back to the farm.
“Well, just for starters, because he tried to get us to collaborate with the Americans during the war. And when we wouldn’t do it, he got them to take away our land and build the hospital on it,” Galtier replied. “You were just a little girl then, so you wouldn’t remember very well, but he alienated our patrimony.”
“But . . .” His youngest daughter seemed to have trouble putting her thoughts into words. At last, she said, “But my sister married an American. We’re paid rent, and a good one, for the land the hospital sits on.”
Georges laughed. “How do you answer that one, Papa?”
That was a good question. Galtier did the best he could, saying, “At the time, what Father Pascal did seemed wrong. It worked out for the best. I can’t quarrel with that. But just because it worked out for the best doesn’t mean Pascal did what he did for good reasons. He did what he did to grab with both hands.”
“Suppose the Americans had lost the war,” Marie added. “What would have happened to Pascal then?”
“He would have come out ahead of the game, and convinced everyone everything was somebody else’s fault,” Georges replied at once.
He was probably right, even if that wasn’t the answer his mother had been looking for. Lucien sighed. The farmhouse wasn’t far now. “Quebec City had better watch out,” he said, and drove on.