C

anadian turned Parisian Mavis Gallant, renowned for her short fiction, also wrote two novels and a play. There were murmurs that she was working on a third novel at the time of her death in 2014, but we Gallant readers have only the two, the second, A Fairly Good Time, published in 1970. A tale of despondency, mettle and eccentricity as exhibited by two generations of women, the novel might have come off a complete downer in the hands of another author, but as delivered by Gallant, starting with the ironic title, it is as frequently funny—brutally funny—as it is sharply poignant.

Like her creator, protagonist Shirley (Norrington Higgins) Perrigny is a Canadian living in Paris, currently married to Phillipe, a journalist, who seems to have done a runner. Her first husband died on their honeymoon. She works as an interpreter (of sorts) in a department store, is terrified of her in-laws, keeps a messy house, reads compulsively, has very poor eyesight, saves a friend from suicide and from her mother in Canada receives letters describing bluebells and containing admonitions not “to cry whilst writing letters. The person receiving the letter is apt to take it as a reproach.”

It is Shirley’s mother who alerts her that Cat Castle, a woman “who has known you since before you were born” is also in Paris (as a tourist) and insists that Shirley “make an effort” to see her. There follows chapter three, composed of a single scene, wherein Shirley—or Shirl, as Mrs. Castle calls her—joins Mrs. Castle for Mrs. Castle’s third breakfast of the morning at the Pons Tearoom, a recommended tourist destination. When Shirley admits she didn’t realize the Pons Tearoom was “so famous,” Mrs. Castle, in disbelief, snarks: “Let’s hope it meets your standards.” Far from offending Shirley, the “sarcasm made the old woman familiar; her voice might have risen out of this morning’s letter,” penned by Shirley’s mother.

By meeting up both women are doing their duty: Shirley, at her mother’s behest; Mrs. Castle, as Shirley’s mother’s spy. Throughout the encounter, the generational divide is on full display. Mrs. Castle (as herself and as a stand-in for Shirley’s mother) are exemplars of the “tough it out” school, women who have learned not to privilege emotional pain and disappointment as a special condition worthy of discussion. Shirley Perrigny, who continuously expresses distress and befuddlement, is another breed.

Gallant structures the scene as two characters talking past each other while simultaneously laying in much of Shirley’s backstory and setting up a good chunk of what the reader can expect of Shirley, in terms of behavior, as the story continues and Mrs. Castle goes her own way.

Among the topics covered and situations disclosed: Shirley’s mother’s idiosyncrasies; Shirley’s two marriages; her pregnancy during her second honeymoon; her current husband Phillipe’s character and their marital relationship (“When we have a fight he never fights. He just listens and corrects my French sometimes and then he gives me a couple of phenobarb”); what her in-laws think of Shirley and she of them; Shirley’s particular brand of deep observation coupled with absentmindedness; the occasional flare of expatriate homesickness (Mrs. Castle’s “ugly prairie accent” brings “tears of pleasure” to Shirley’s eyes).

Mrs. Castle, we learn, is no Henry Jamesian character, embracing the continent and its ways. Proudly and sternly she announces to the tearoom waitress: “We are from Canada,” prepared to “turn the waitress to stone should she attempt to deny it.” Mrs. Castle has undertaken the European tour “in order to show her children back in Canada she did not need them” and takes notes she intends to record so that her family “can spend a Sunday listening” to her trip details and she won’t have to talk about it further. She thinks her sons have married “selfish little snobs” and her daughter Phyllis “hadn’t done all that well either.” She shows up at the tearoom in a “Salzburger cape and hat” and “butterfly spectacles” and armed with opinions—lots and lots of opinions.

The scene opens with Shirley’s announcement that she’s “just this second” remembered she’s supposed to have lunch at Phillipe’s mother’s, assuring herself aloud that at his mother’s house the missing, incommunicado Phillipe must be. We get our first hint of how Gallant will use Mrs. Castle in the scene when she bluntly responds to that husband-at-mother’s reveal: “Bad place for a man.”

Neither Shirley with her black coffee nor Mrs. Castle with her two eclairs stand on ceremony.

They talk about Shirley’s mother, Margaret, who, according to Mrs. Castle, “doesn’t believe in anything but reincarnation anymore,” used to “stare down” Shirley’s father when he tried to hold her hand in public, saying “‘Teddy, don’t be dirty,’” and currently suffers from cancer, Mrs. Castle believes, not “stomach flu.” When Shirley admits that she has confessed to her mother that she “thought she was messing up (her) marriage, doing all the wrong things,” Mrs. Castle replies: “You shouldn’t have mentioned that part about marriage.” According to Mrs. Castle, Margaret wouldn’t have appreciated hearing about that.

They talk about Shirley’s friend Renata who needed an abortion that Shirley helped to arrange. “From the word go, Shirl, what did it have to do with you?” responds Mrs. Castle, blaming Shirley’s heritage for her rescue tendencies. “Honest to God, any old bum your grandfather could pick up off the street he’d bring home.”

When Shirley admits she hasn’t told Phillipe about Renata but now thinks she’d “better tell him the truth before it gets any more complicated,” Mrs. Castle responds: “No point. If you start on a long-winded story like you keep doing with me, he’ll drop off to sleep . . . You don’t have to go through life saying any daft-sounding thing just because it happens to be true. Keep it plausible but mostly keep it short.”

In Shirley’s next “long-winded” story, she details the sad state of her relationship to Phillipe, both living separate lives, Shirley attending parties on her own. “Even when he’s here he won’t go anywhere if it’s a Saturday. But I think Saturday night is lonely just staying home. To tell you the truth, Philippe scares me.” Shirley is also “scared” to go to her mother-in-law’s, where she’s “nervous all the time” and feels “judged for things I don’t understand.”

“Why are you always in such a hurry to get married, I wonder?” Mrs. Castle muses aloud. “You seem to get married in a rush, then you rush the other way.” Initially (and silently) Shirley considers the “married in a rush” sentiment to hit “wide of the mark” because of the amount of paperwork that’s “needed for the marriage of a French citizen to a foreigner.” But then she pivots, answering: “I was in a rush to get married because I thought he was sent from heaven . . . I was twenty-five and all the men I knew were married or childish or neurotic or homosexual.”

Mrs. Castle abruptly brings the breakfast to a close by gifting Shirley a passed-down religious tract she discovered when “doing out the house before coming over here.” The Peep of Day came into Mrs. Castle’s possession because Shirley’s grandmother had “overlooked” her daughter Margaret and given the pamphlet instead to Mrs. Castle, whom she considered her goddaughter. Mrs. Castle, correcting the error, adds an additional inscription: “For Shirley Norrington, souvenir of a meeting in Paris, this book comes back to by rights.” Instantly Shirley starts reading.

When Shirley suggests they meet again, Mrs. Castle scotches the plan.

“There’s no real need, is there? I’ve had a good look at you and I know what to tell your mother. We’ve been here, at Pons, which I was desiring to see . . .”

“What are you going to say to Mother?”

“Nothing I couldn’t put on tape for others to hear. That you’re thin as a rail and you seem to know a lot of people. You’re about like you always were, to tell you the truth. Reading instead of listening. Life isn’t books. Did you know you were born feet first? If we see each other again sometime I’ll tell you a lot that might interest you.”

As Mrs. Castle heads off for her bus, Shirley remembers that she mistakenly left her apartment with no money. Might Mrs. Castle lend her a bit? She’ll bring the repayment tomorrow to Mrs. Castle’s hotel.

The chapter’s final lines belong to Mrs. Castle, Mrs. Castle’s “prairie voice” and Mrs. Castle’s credo.

“Now, that’s something I’d just never do . . . You’ve had your book, and you’ve had your breakfast, and that’s all I’m good for. Anyway, Shirl, your mother would be the first to remind you that a lady never needs anything. Never needs, never wants. Anyway, never asks.”

Anyway, never asks.

Crackerjack finish to a crackerjack scene.