Sunday Best Read online

  SUNDAY BEST

  by Edward O. Phillips

  Geoffry Chadwick

  Book 3

  ReQueered Tales

  Los Angeles • Toronto

  2020

  Sunday Best

  by Edward O. Phillips

  Copyright © 1986 by Edward O. Phillips.

  Preface to 2020 edition: copyright © 2020 by .

  Cover design: Dawné Dominique, DusktilDawn Designs.

  First Canadian edition: 1990

  This edition: ReQueered Tales, July 2020

  ReQueered Tales ebook version 1.40

  Kindle edition ASIN:

  Epub edition ISBN-13: 978-1-951092-27-6

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  Selected Works By EDWARD O. PHILLIPS

  THE GEOFFRY CHADWICK NOVELS

  Sunday’s Child (1981)

  Buried on Sunday (1986)

  Sunday Best (1990)

  Working on Sunday (1998)

  A Voyage on Sunday (2004)

  A Month of Sundays (2012)

  OTHER NOVELS

  Where There’s a Will (UK: Death is Relative) (1984)

  The Landlady’s Niece (1992)

  The Mice Will Play (1996)

  Hope Spring’s Eternal (1998)

  No Early Birds (2001)

  Queen’s Court (2007)

  EDWARD O. PHILLIPS

  EDWARD O. PHILLIPS’ first novel Sunday's Child was published to extraordinary acclaim in 1981. It was followed by Where There's A Will, Buried on Sunday, and Hope Springs Eternal. His short stories have appeared in many Canadian magazines, and one, “Matthew and Chauncey”, was produced as a French Canadian television film.

  Born in 1931, Phillips has lived most of his life in Montreal. His educational credits boast a law degree from the University of Montreal, a Master’s degree in teaching from Harvard, and a second Master’s degree in English Literature from Boston University. For several years, Edward was a teacher, but later devoted all of his time to writing. He passed away on 30 May, 2020.

  SUNDAY BEST

  Edward O. Phillips’ new novel Sunday Best is a lively comedy of manners – bad manners – with just a hint of crime.

  Geoffry Chadwick is back and this time Edward O. Phillips’ reluctant hero and social observer is going to a wedding – or maybe not.

  Geoffry’s niece, Jennifer, is about to marry Douglas, son of a prominent – or at very least notorious – Montreal socialite, Lois Fullerton. Lois is a wealthy widow with an impressive list of discarded lovers and it looks like she’s decided Geoffry will be her next conquest. But after meeting Lois on several occasions, Chadwick discovers he is being followed. Soon a nasty knife wound – to the front tire of his car – and a nasty note thicken the plot. Has Lois masterminded a trap? Who is her suspicious, swarthy, and sexy chauffeur? And why is the bridegroom more interested in his future brother-in-law than in his future bride?

  SUNDAY BEST

  by Edward O. Phillips

  Foreword

  some text

  —An Expert

  January, 2020

  A fine expert bio

  For K.S.W.

  “Experience, though noon auctoritee

  Were in this world, is right ynogh for me

  To speke of wo that is in marriage.”

  Chaucer,

  “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,”

  The Canterbury Tales

  1.

  IHAVE ALWAYS DETESTED SHOPPING MALLS. Even though the underground plaza has been hailed by city planners as the solution to life in a cold climate, these subterranean caves of commerce are at their worst in winter. The dry, overheated air imposes two choices: either one continues to wear the heavy overcoat imposed by the cold and suffocates, or else one drapes the garment over an arm, as cumbersome carapace. Should one also be carrying an attaché case, as I frequently do, then both hands are occupied, hardly an asset when upending merchandise to check out the price.

  I never enter an underground mall without thinking enviously of that Indian deity, Shiva perhaps, who sports at least three pairs of arms. I could tackle any shopping plaza with six hands: one for the overcoat, one for the briefcase, two for manipulating the merchandise, with two still free for a little discreet shoplifting, should the occasion arise. The big drawback, of course, would be trying to keep track of six gloves, when I am sorely pressed hanging on to two. I know it must be January because I have already lost my December gloves.

  However, one does not really need free hands in most mall boutiques. The salesperson, often the owner, is so greedy to make a sale that he is making a lunge before you are fully through the door. With face fixed in a barracuda smile, the clerk, male or female, asks the same, predictable question, “Can I help you, sir?” as if I were having some sort of seizure. Just as predictably I fasten my eyes on a point above his right shoulder and reply, “No thanks, just browsing.”

  The question might legitimately be asked as to why I found myself in one of these underground emporiums at half past five on a Friday afternoon in mid-January. I was on my way to the liquor store. My bar was out of scotch, and there remained enough vodka for one strong, two weak, drinks. I discount those other things like brandy and sherry and Campari, which I keep only for other people. Still, there was a time when I drank Campari, along with equal parts of red vermouth and gin, in a lethal concoction known as a Negroni, a mind-altering liquid that brought on some bizarre behaviour. Adieu, Ten Commandments. But that was then. Now, whatever I drink is well diluted with water.

  I made my way across the travertine floor, ignoring the hand-lettered signs in boutique windows offering reductions of up to 50 percent. Experience has taught me that any merchandise I might want to purchase has slipped through the sale, or is reduced a scant 10 percent. Furthermore, I have reached the age when one begins to shed possessions, not acquire them. I remembered, not without some amusement, when underground shopping malls were still a novelty and young gay blades cruised in them. But AIDS, age, and apathy have put an end to that formerly energizing pastime, for me at least. Especially age. A curious thing happens to people sometime around fifty-five. They become sexually invisible. Young and attractive men look at you, but there is no recognition in their glance, no more of that brief but knowing eye contact that generates its own electricity. Even young women, far more liberated today than when I was a young man, glance at me and then away, as if they understood I have scaled my walls, slain my dragons, made my treaties, and retired from the battlefield.

  I entered the liquor store and made my way to the rear, where the scotch was secreted as if contraband. The readily accessible shelves near the cashier’s counter feature local wines with terrifying names like Cold Duck, Snowdrop (Perce-Neige), Vat of Patriots (Cuvée des Patriotes), or White Orpheus (Orphée Blanc), nothing you would ever want to drink, not even during the biannual liquor board strike, when Saturday morning means driving to Ontario to stock up. I collected forty ounces of scotch, forty of vodka, and took them to the cashier. I was about to leave the mall, so I buttoned on my overcoat before paying. The spotty young man who took my money slid the two bottles into a large paper bag.

  “May I have a shopping bag, please?”
/>   He looked crestfallen. “The manager says we can only give shopping bags to customers who buy three bottles or more.”

  “You mean to say that if I buy three six-dollar bottles of wine I get a shopping bag, but not with two twenty-five-dollar bottles of liquor?”

  I could see what I suspected to be a limited intelligence grappling with the subtleties of my argument. What the hell! The cashier was not at fault, but the tight-assed manager, with whom I had recently jousted over a grown-up bottle of wine whose cork had disintegrated.

  At the end of the counter stood rows of those dollhouse-sized bottles of liquor served on airplanes. I reached for a teeny-weeny Cointreau, which would get lost in a fruit salad, and set it down beside my scotch and vodka.

  “You did say three bottles?”

  Cornered, the young man capitulated and slid my purchases into a white plastic bag emblazoned with the words “Sélection, Acceuil, Qualité.”

  My liquor in one hand, my briefcase in the other, I headed for the door leading into the street. Already anticipating that first cold refreshing blast of carbon monoxide, I heard a voice call my name.

  “Geoffry? Geoffry Chadwick! Halt!”

  I am not yet old enough to plead deafness, and I turned to see Audrey Crawford in full sail skimming over the travertine in a billow of natural mink. Even before she coasted to a stop in front of me I knew she would comment on the liquor I was carrying. Many Canadians still think drinking is the stuff of comedy.

  “We’ve been doing a bit of shopping?”

  “Just picked up a little something for dinner.”

  She laughed without merriment, laughter meant to convey that she came in peace. “You’re looking well, Geoffry. We survived Christmas, I see.”

  “We did.” Of late, Audrey Crawford (Audrey McMaster when I first knew her) has taken to using the royal we, like one of those grimly cheerful nurses who tell quadriplegics that we are going to wash our face and hands. “It’s an exhausting time. So terribly compressed. All those people we have to see in the space of a week. Well, it’s done for another year. Let me buy you a drink. I just had my hair done.”

  This was all too evident. A blonde in her youth, Audrey Crawford had tried to maintain the status quo by chemical means, with limited success.

  “I’d love to,” I fibbed, “but I have a dinner date.”

  Years ago, during out first year at university, Audrey and I once spent what used to be called a dirty weekend. Her father was in Europe, and her mother had left town for a few days. We had to take advantage of the empty house. There was no passion and very little pleasure. My principal satisfaction came from knowing that I was finally doing what all boys were supposed to do – lay girls. (When I grew to know myself better, I took a cue from Alexander Pope and decided that “The proper study of mankind is man.”) Audrey’s real motive for going “all the way” under the parental roof was to shaft Mummy. A messy divorce subsequently revealed to her that Mummy had been doing precisely the same thing in Toronto.

  Audrey married well, meaning money. I sometimes wondered whether her trip down the aisle to marry Hartland Crawford had been occasioned by love or the gravitational pull one blue-chip portfolio feels for another. In any case, Audrey has never relinquished a proprietary air towards me. It was almost as though having once been the cause of a few tame orgasms, she now owned a block of stock in Geoffry Chadwick, Inc.

  Over the years Audrey Crawford had become a close friend of my sister, Mildred, now living in Toronto. This tenuous connection, rather than our grand amour, kept us linked for the past three decades.

  “Sorry you don’t have time for a drink. I thought we’d toast the good news.”

  “Good news?” Beneath my buttoned overcoat and knotted scarf I was beginning to experience hot flashes, which I hoped were a result of the central heating.

  “Wedding bells, of course. Another June bride. You must be pleased.”

  “For whom?”

  “Oh, Geoffry, stop being such an old stick. She is your niece, after all.”

  “My niece?”

  “Yes, dearest, your niece. Jennifer. She is being married in June. Have you forgotten?”

  “To be perfectly candid, no. I never knew.”

  “You’re having me on.”

  “Indeed not.” I remembered that Mother had telephoned the office this morning, but I was with a client. When I called back the line was busy. “Now, do you want to tell me, or shall I go home and call Mildred?”

  “You’ve got to be pulling my leg.”

  A quick sigh of impatience caused a blast of body heat to escape from under my collar. “I’m not pulling your leg, or any other part of your anatomy. Now, are you going to tell me or not?”

  Audrey Crawford gave her heavily lacquered curls a slight toss. “Well, Jennifer is to marry Douglas Fullerton, in June. Because the Fullerton boy is from Westmount, and since your mother does not like to travel, the wedding will be held right here, at the church of St. Luke the Apostle.”

  “I guess it beats holding the ceremony on a sand bar at low tide, with guests throwing handfuls of brown rice. Thanks for telling me. Now off I go, to pencil it in on my calendar and to brush up my Sunday best. I may have to get the tailor to let it out an inch or so around the waist.”

  “I hope your Sunday best is a morning coat.”

  “How so?”

  “You’re to give the bride away.”

  “Am I, now. ‘Well, well, well,’ said the old oaken bucket. Is there anything else you think I should know at the moment?”

  “I really find it extraordinary Mildred hasn’t spoken to you.”

  “She will, in her own good time. And now, my dear Audrey, before I melt away completely, like the Wicked Witch of Westmount, I must go. We will waltz at the wedding.”

  I exposed my teeth in what could have passed for a smile, and left. By now tiny trickles of perspiration were running down my back, and once outside I felt instantly chilled. As my car was at the garage, I gestured awkwardly with my briefcase and managed to flag down a cab. I suddenly felt in a great hurry for that first drink.

  WHEN I WAS A SMALL BOY, certain friends of my parents still draped the parlour furniture in dust covers whenever they went away. Summer rooms looked haunted, especially at twilight, with the outlines of chairs and sofas still visible beneath spectral sheets.

  My own apartment had that same spooky appearance. Some decorating, long overdue, was in progress, with the result that all my living-room furniture had been pushed together in the middle of the floor and covered in drop cloths. The effect was unsettling. I felt a little bit like the child in that Ravel opera who finds himself confronted by objects he has once abused, now suddenly alive: an armchair, a grandfather clock, a teapot. I would not have been in the least surprised had the Charles Eames chair leaped out from under its protective covering and chased me around the room.

  I switched on the lights; illusion gave way to the reality of a large room being refurbished. At least the painter was gone. A small, reedy man, his life is a sitcom, although I don’t much feel like watching a sitcom at eight in the morning. When he arrives, the light still twinkling on my coffee machine, I feel in all civility that I should offer him a cup. He adds three spoonfuls of sugar and I marvel at his metabolism. He sighs a deep sigh, then tells me about his pregnant wife, his seven children, and how he has trouble making ends meet. I once suggested he might be well advised to buy a television set, implying he should spend less time fooling around. Ignoring my ham-fisted irony, he replied that he already owned one, and a VCR as well. He will be gone next week, well tipped, and I will breathe a huge sigh of relief.

  I poured myself a scotch and water, which I carried into the bedroom, much compressed by occasional tables, lamps, and objets d’art in temporary storage from the rest of the apartment. Mother’s line was still busy; quite obviously she was having a high old time telling the world about her granddaughter’s impending wedding. I toyed with the idea of calling my s
ister and listening with the smug confidence that springs from being told at length about something you already know. My hand was reaching for the receiver when I pulled it back. If, as Audrey Crawford had just informed me, I was to be conscripted into the wedding, then I was not about to scamper up to the commanding officer and volunteer.

  I am certainly not the first to have observed that nobody brings out your shortcomings more quickly than a member of your own family. My sister, Mildred, shines as a striking example of this truism. Somewhere, in the recesses of her mind, she has a book, a giant volume with embossed cover set with precious stones, of the sort once chained to a lectern in a medieval library. Inside, on illuminated and rubricated pages, are set out rules governing the conduct of one member of a family towards another. The underlying principles are those of duty and impingement. Put simply, Mildred believes that a member of any family can ask another member of that family to perform difficult and disagreeable tasks merely because they are related. It is a principle I have never endorsed.

  To be sure, I was truly sorry when her husband died unexpectedly last year. The sudden void left by the abrupt death of someone who has been part of your landscape for many years is, if nothing else, a mute reminder of your own mutability. Bruce was two years younger than I, a confirmed hypochondriac, and firmly convinced that if he did not drink and ate right and did not smoke and exercised regularly and did not stay up late and took vitamins, then he would live to be ninety. Nobody, least of all Bruce himself, expected he would have a massive stroke while riding his exercycle.