'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-pere,' 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 Riviere-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.
S ylvia Enos stood in the kitchen of her flat, glaring at her only son. She had to look up to glare at him. When had George, Jr., become taller than she? Some time when she wasn't watching, surely. He looked unhappy now, twisting his cloth cap in his hands. 'But, Ma,' he said, 'it's the best chance I'll ever have!'
'Nonsense,' Sylvia told him. 'The best chance you'll ever have is to stay in school and get as much learning as you can.'
His face-achingly like his dead father's, though he couldn't raise a mustache and they were falling out of style anyhow-went closed and hard, suddenly a man's face, and a stubborn man's at that, not a boy's. 'I don't care anything about school. I hate it. And I'm no.. good in it anyhow.' He wouldn't say damn, not in front of his mother. Sylvia had done her best to raise him right.
'You don't want to go to sea at sixteen,' Sylvia said.
'Oh, yes, I do,' he said. 'There's nothing I want more.'
Till you meet a girl. Then you'll find something you want more. But Sylvia didn't say that. It wouldn't have helped. What she did say was, 'If you go to sea at sixteen, you'll be doing it the rest of your life.'
'What's wrong with that?' he asked. 'What else am I going to be doing the rest of my life?'
'That's why you go to school,' Sylvia said. 'To find out what else you could be doing.'
'But I don't want to do anything else,' George, Jr., said, exactly as his father might have. 'I just want to go down to T Wharf and out to sea, the way Pop did.'
All the reasons he wanted to go to sea were all the reasons Sylvia wanted him to stay home. 'Look what going to sea got your father in the end,' she said, fighting to hold back tears.
'That was the Navy, Ma.' Now George, Jr., just sounded impatient. 'I'm not going into the Navy. I just want to catch fish.'
'Do you think nothing can go wrong when you're out there in a fishing boat? If you do, you'd better think again, son. Plenty of boats go out from T Wharf and then don't come home again. Storms, fog, who knows why? But they don't. Even if they do come home, they don't always bring back everybody who set out. If you're tending a line or hauling in a net and a big wave comes by… Do you really want the crabs and the lobsters and the flatfish fighting over who gets a taste of you?'
Most fishermen had a horror of a watery death, and of the creatures they caught catching them. But her son only shrugged and answered, 'If I'm dead, what difference does it make?' He was sixteen. He didn't really think he could die. So many sailors had, but he wouldn't. Just listening to him, Sylvia could tell he was sure of it.
With a sigh, she asked, 'Well, what is this big chance you're talking about, son?'
'I ran into Fred Butcher the other day, Ma,' George, Jr., said.
'He's got fat the last few years, hasn't he?' Sylvia said.
George Jr., grinned. 'He sure has. But he's got rich the last few years, too. He doesn't put to sea any more, you know. He hires the men who do.'
'I know that.' Sylvia nodded. 'He's one of the lucky ones. There aren't very many, you know.' Butcher wasn't just lucky. He'd always driven himself like a dray horse, and he had a head for figures. Sylvia wished she could have said the same about her son. But, as he'd said himself, he didn't like school, and he'd never been an outstanding scholar.
'I don't care. I want to go to sea,' he said now. 'And Mr. Butcher, he said he'd take me on for the Cuttlefish. She's one of the new ones, Ma, one of the good ones. Diesel engine, electricity on board, a wireless set. A fishing run on a boat like that, it's almost like staying ashore, it's so comfy.'
Sylvia laughed in his face. He looked very offended. She didn't care. 'You tell me that after you've put to sea, and I'll take you seriously. Till then…' She shook her head and laughed some more.
