Joshua Then and Now by Mordecai Richler Read Free Book Online Page B

workshop equipped to suit the most exacting professional, and his Grew 212 easily the most imposing boat on the water. His rock garden was floodlit at night. The croquet lawn could have served as the surface for a snooker table. The fattest goldfish in the Townships slumbered under the water lilies in his pond. Indoors, there was a cathedral ceiling, a billiards room, and a library. “Trimble’s Folly” Jane herself dubbed it, squelching any possible criticism from the others, and the first time Joshua had been invited there to dinner, Trimble had grasped his hand, indicated the bronzed young man scraping the dock, and said, “I want you to meet a future prime minister of Canada.”
    Charlie dipped his head, blushed, and said, “P-p-pleased to meet you, Mr. Sh-sh-shapiro.”
    Another day, seated with Joshua on the sun deck at one of his Sunday barbecues, Trimble observed, “You know, there’s only one thing wrong with all this. I earned the lolly to pay for all of it myself and that’s unforgivable, as far as this lot’s concerned,” he said, gesturing at his guests gathered at the bar. “Just like your marrying Pauline.”
    “Oh, really,” Joshua said tightly. “Why?”
    “Now come on there, old son,” Trimble said, and before Joshua could reply, he had darted off to fetch Jane’s beach robe.
    Jane had just emerged from the water, climbing onto the deck, deeply tanned, black hair clinging, nipples showing bold and hard though her bikini, everybody turning to watch as she bounced on one long leg, trying to shake the water out of her ear.
    “There you are, Mother,” Trimble said, enveloping her in the towel robe, and then he sat down beside Joshua again. “She has no idea how dishy she still is.”
    Trimble (on Jane’s insistence, Joshua suspected) entertained often, dutifully serving up thick steaks from his built-in brick barbecue, his smile forced, his Bermuda shorts biting into rolls of overlying fat. Although he himself liked nothing better than a bottle of Guinness at lunchtime, there was often champagne for the others. Lobster, hideously expensive, was not unusual. But then, driving to the post office at the cocktail hour, he might see eight cars parked in the Hickey driveway, among them Jane’s Volvo, or taking his Grew out for a spin in the evening, all the familiar boats collected at the McTeer dock, laughter washing across the water. He didn’t complain. He resolutely continued to court the country club set.
    Trimble, with his ordnance corps tie, his yachtsman’s cap, his brass-buttoned blazer, his British slang, was tolerated not only for Jane’s sake, or the even more opulent parties he threw in his Westmount mansion, but also because he seemed to be awfully good with money and helped the others untangle their tax and estate problems, often doubling the yield of their portfolios by enlisting them into a fund he managed, its membership limited to one hundred. Ironically, even as they condescended to him, it was evident to Joshua that he was more intelligent than any of them. It was also clear that he was a liar, an outrageous liar; not at all what he pretended to be.
    And now Joshua invited him to sit down, Trimble ordering a Glenlivet, straight up, no ice please, and setting right in to chat compulsively about Kevin. Kevin, he told Joshua, his manner mocking, had twice been Quebec amateur golf champion. He had once tried to acquire a PGA tour card but couldn’t qualify, poor sod. “You should have been there,” Trimble recited, his small eyes watchful, “the night he drove his MG up the clubhouse stairs and right into the bar.”
    “Yes. I’m sorry to have missed that.”
    “You know, we have something in common, old son. We’re both married to smashing girls. Does that worry you?”
    “Should it?”
    “I once returned from a trip to Zurich and found a bookmatch from Les Halles in Jane’s bag. I never eat there.”
    During the summer of ’73, their second summer on the lake,