Read Online Joshua Then and Now by Mordecai Richler - Free Book Online

he hardly does anything else.”
    Joshua fixed drinks for both of them. Pauline boiled sweet corn for the children. “Gee, golly,” he said, once they dispersed, “my biggest fan in Bermuda. What does he take me for?”
    “He’s leaving in the morning. We might as well go.”
    “He’s your brother, you go. I’m going to stay here and watch the ball game with the kids.”
    “I can’t go without you.”
    “What is he, a year younger than you are?”
    “Fourteen months.”
    “Jesus, a man of his age dressing like Tom Sawyer. No, Peter Pan. He’s fucking pathetic.”
    “But he wasn’t, once.”
    That stung.
    “Did you buy him his boat?”
    “I lent him enough money for a down payment.”
    “And he’s in such dire need he turns up here in a seaplane?”
    “Returning here after all these years scared him. He had to make a splash. So he rented a plane.”
    “We are a stiff-necked people,” Joshua said, pouring himself another drink. “That’s what we come from. Yessiree. A stiff-necked people. You should have seen yourself out there on that tennis court. Watching was indecent.”
    Her cheeks burned.
    “I thought,” he said, rounding on her, “that I could do nothing to embarrass you. You yelled at me out there.”
    She stared at him, startled. Clearly, she didn’t even remember.
    “With the kids out there, O.K., never mind, but right in front of the Westmount Pre-menopausal Hot Pants and Bigots Bend-an-Elbow Club.”
    “I’m sorry. I apologize.”
    “Champers with Peter Pan,” he muttered. “And what’s all that crap about meeting with the Argos people and offshore funds?”
    “Another pipe dream, that’s what. Some of them probably got drunk on his boat, and when he turns up at Georgian Bay they won’t even remember that they invited him there.”
    “Does he really live off fishing trips?”
    “He lives off women, if you must know.”
    “Why, that’s reprehensible.”
    “Oh, you can be such a prick sometimes, darling.”
    “We are a stiff-necked people.”
    “They have reason to resent him, Josh, and if I don’t turn up tonight they are going to skewer him, and they will certainly gloat for the rest of the summer if
you
fail to show.”
    “I’m not going to that little fart of a club, with its commodore in commodities, to have them watching and waiting for me to do something.”
    “You don’t have to do anything. Whatever are you talking about? He’s no threat to you. He’s no threat to anybody any more. But don’t make it impossible for me. I don’t want to go there alone.”
    “Go, Tinkerbell. Enjoy. I really don’t mind.”
    “Take me, Josh.”
    “No.”
    When Pauline finally emerged from her dressing room, showered and scented, touched with just a hint of eye make-up, her honey-colored hair freed of its restraining bauble, his Pauline, looking achingly beautiful in a white linen shift calculated to enhance her tan, he was consumed with regret. “I don’t mind driving you,” he said ruefully.
    “I’ve already ordered a taxi,” she replied, her voice also subdued.
    He trailed after her onto the front lawn. “Stay. I’m beginning to feel horny.”
    “Stop it. Please, Josh,” and she ran into the oncoming taxi lights, gesturing for old Orville Moon to stop.
    Wizened, mottled old Moon, with his lizardy eyes and yellow teeth, did not care for Joshua. Once he had stopped him in the village post office and asked, “Will you be needing a hunting license this autumn?”
    “No.”
    “I figured.”
    Joshua lingered on the lawn for a while, watching the ancient, battered taxi clatter off into the night. Fallen apples, soft, rotting, were everywhere. The trees needed spraying and pruning. The lawn smelled sweetly of cut grass, decay, and Pauline’s perfume. She would have dabbed herself behind the ears, on the backs of her knees, and between her breasts. I married a whore.
    The children, sensing his filthy mood, retreated to the safety of their beds. Except for Alex,