Larry’s Party. Carol Shields

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      “We were going to wait and get married in June. But then – this happened – so here we are. March.”

      He could see he had lost Dr. Edwards’ interest, and certainly the opportunity to offer comforting remarks about Mrs. Edwards’ problems.

      “Well,” Dr. Edwards said. He spoke briskly now, more like a sportscaster than a sociology teacher. “Time we got back on the coach or we’ll be left behind.”

      “We’ve been going together for over a year,” Larry explained. He hung on to his beer glass. “We’d already talked about marriage. We’d already made up our minds, so this didn’t make any real difference.”

      Dr. Edwards’ face had pulled into a frown. He put his hand on Larry’s shoulder, bearing down heavily with his fingertips. “About my wife?” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you regarded what I said as confidential.”

      “Why?” Dorrie yelled at Larry. “Why would you go and tell that old professor jerk about us?”

      They were in Devon, in the town of Barnstable, the King’s Inn. Their room was at the front of the hotel overlooking a street of busy shops.

      “I don’t know,” Larry said.

      “We fucking decided we weren’t going to tell anyone. And don’t tell me not to say fuck. I’ll say fuck all I fucking want.”

      “It just came out. We were talking, and it slipped out.”

      “My mother doesn’t even know. My own mother. And you had to go and tell that jerk. Did you honestly think he wasn’t going to tell that snot of a wife? My ‘condition’ she said to me, I shouldn’t be having a beer in my ‘condition.’ And now the whole bus is going to know. I’ll bet you anything they already do.”

      “What does it matter?”

      “We’re on our honeymoon, that’s why it matters. We’re the lovey-dovey honeymooners, for God’s sake, only now the little bride person is pregnant.”

      “No one even thinks like that anymore.”

      “Oh yeah? What about your mother and father? They think like that.”

      “How do you know what they think?”

      “They think no one’s good enough for their precious little Larry, that’s what they think. Especially girls dumb enough to go and get themselves preggo.”

      “They’ll get used to it.”

      “Like it’s my fault. Like you didn’t have one little thing to do with it, right?” She sank down on the bed, moaning, her head rolling back and forth. “I can just see your dad looking at me. That look of his, oh boy. Like don’t I have any brains? Like why wasn’t I on the pill?”

      “We’ll tell them as soon as we get back. It’ll take them a day or two, that’s all. Then they’ll get used to it.”

      She turned and gave him a shrewd look. “What about you? When are you going to get used to it?”

      “I am used to it.”

      “Oh yeah, sure. I’m like sitting there on the bus, day after day, thinking up names. Girls’ names. Boys’ names. That’s what’s in my head. I like Victoria for a girl. For a boy I like Troy. Those kinds of thoughts. And you’re jumping up and down looking at bushes. Writing them down. That’s all you care about. Goddamn fucking bushes.”

      He pulled her close to him, rocking her back and forth, patting her hair.

      Startled, he recognized that pat, its cruel economy and monumental detachment. It was the sign of someone who was distracted, weary. A husband’s pat. He’d seen his father touch his mother in exactly the same way when she fell into one of her blue days. Only patting wasn’t really the same thing as touching. Patting a person was like going on automatic pilot, you just reached out and did it. There, there. Looking covertly at his watch. Almost dinnertime. Pat, stroke, pat.

      It calmed her. She collapsed against him. They lay back on the bed, hanging on to each other limply and not saying anything. In ten minutes it would be time to go down to the dining room. He was ravenous.

      A single day remained – and one more major historical site to take in: Hampton Court.

      “This palace is unrivaled,” Arthur said, gathering his charges in a tight circle around him, “for its high state of preservation.” He pointed out Anne Boleyn’s Gateway, the Astronomical Clock (electrified two years ago), the Great Hall, the Fountain Court, the Chapel Royal with its intricately carved roof. “Note the quality of the workmanship,” he said. “What you behold is a monument to the finest artists and artisans in the land.”

      The members of the tour group had taken up a collection, and the evening before they’d presented Arthur with a set of silver cufflinks. He had blinked when he opened the jeweler’s box, blinked and looked up into their waiting faces. “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” one of the Australians sang out, trying to get a round going. The man’s name was Brian. He was large, kindly, and elegantly bald. It was he who had taken up the collection for Arthur and passed around a thank-you card for everyone to sign. But he launched the song in a faltering key that no one could follow.

      Surprisingly, it was Dorrie who moved forward and picked up the melody, drawing in the others with her strong, clear voice. She came from a musical family; her father sang baritone with the Police Chorale; her mother, after a few drinks, belted out a torchy rendition of “You Light Up My Life.” And Dorrie’s voice, despite her size, a mere one hundred pounds, was true and forceful.

      For he’s a jolly good fellow

      Which nobody can deny.

      At that moment Larry loved her terribly. His helpless Dorrie. He froze the frame in his mind. This was something he needed to remember. The upward tilt of her chin as she risked a minor feat of descant on the final words. The way her hands curled inside her raincoat pockets, plunging straight forward into a second chorus, as though she’d been anointed, for a brief second or two, Miss Harmony of Sunbrite Tours.

      Mrs. Edwards had wondered aloud about the appropriateness of cufflinks for Arthur. “He doesn’t look like a man who is particularly intimate with French cuffs,” she whispered to her husband and to Larry and Dorrie. But this morning, following Arthur into Hampton Court gardens, Larry glimpsed a flash of silver at Arthur’s wrist. “Before you,” Arthur said, pointing, “is the oldest surviving hedge maze in England.”

      A what? Larry had never heard of a hedge maze.

      “We’ve got three-quarters of an hour,” Arthur announced in his jolly voice. “If you get lost, just give us a shout and we’ll come and rescue you.”

      Later, Larry memorized the formula for getting through the maze. He could recite it easily for anyone who cared to listen. Turn left as you enter the maze, then right, right again, then left, left, left and yet another left. That brings you to the centre. To get out, you unwind, turning right, then three more rights, then a left at the next two turnings, and you’re home free.

      But on the day he first visited the Hampton Court maze, March 24, 1978, a young, untraveled СКАЧАТЬ