It was strange and lovely to be back after nearly six years. My aunt said she could hardly recognize me, and I was certainly surprised by Quebec. When I had left it, the fortress had seemed vast and majestic. Now it seemed like a large toy edifice out of Disneyland. Where it had been awesome, I found, irreverently, that it looked made out of papier-mâché. And the giant battles between the faiths, in which I had once thought myself to be on the point of being crushed, and the deep schisms between the Canadiennes and the rest, were now reduced, with my new perspective, to parish-pump squabbling. Half ashamed, I found myself contemptuous of the screaming provincialism of the town, of the dowdy peasants who lived in it, and of the all-pervading fog of snobbery and petit bourgeoisie. No wonder, a child of all this, that I had been ill equipped for the great world outside! The marvel was that I had survived at all.
I was careful to keep these thoughts from my aunt, though 1 suspect that she was just as startled and perhaps shocked by the gloss that my “finishing” in Europe had achieved. She must have found me very much the town mouse, however gangling and simple I might feel inside, and she plied me with questions to discover how the gloss went, how much I had been sullied by the fast life I must have led. She would have fainted at the truth, and I was careful to say that, while there had been flirtations, I had returned unharmed and heart-whole from the scarlet cities across the water. No, there had not even been a temporary engagement. No lord, not even a commoner, I could truthfully say, had proposed to me, and I had left no boy-friend behind. I don’t think she believed this. She was complimentary about my looks. I had become “une belle fille.” It seemed that I had developed “beaucoup de tempérament”—a French euphemism for “sex appeal”—or at any rate the appearance of it, and it seemed incredible to her that at twenty-three there was no man in my life. She was horrified at my plans and painted a doomful picture of the dangers that awaited me on the road. America was full of gangsters. I would be knocked down on the highway and “ravagée.” Anyway it was unladylike to travel on a scooter. She hoped that I would be careful to ride sidesaddle. I explained that my Vespa was a most respectable machine and, when I went to Montreal and, thrilling with every mile, rode it back to the house, in my full regalia, she was slightly mollified, while commenting dubiously that I would “faire sensation.”
And then, on September the fifteenth, I drew a thousand dollars in American Express travelers’ checks from my small bank balance, scientifically packed my saddlebags with what I thought would be a minimum wardrobe, kissed Aunt Florence good-by, and set off down the Saint Lawrence on Route 2.
Route 2 from Quebec southward to Montreal could be one of the most beautiful roads in the world if it weren’t for the clutter of villas and bathing huts that have mushroomed along it since the war. It follows the great river exactly, clinging to the north bank, and I knew it well from bathing picnics as a child. But the Saint Lawrence Seaway had been opened since then, and the steady stream of big ships with their thudding engines and haunting sirens and whistles were a new thrill.
The Vespa hummed happily along at about forty. I had decided to stick to an average daily run of between a hundred and fifty and two hundred miles, or about six hours’ actual driving, but I had no intention of being bound by any schedule. I wanted to see everything. If there was an intriguing side road, I would go up it, and, if I came to a beautiful or interesting place, I would stop and look at it.
A good invention in Canada and the northern part of the States is the “picnic area”—clearings carved out of the forest or beside a lake or river, with plenty of isolated rough-hewn benches and tables tucked away among the trees for privacy. I proposed to use these for luncheon every day when it wasn’t raining, not buying expensive foods at stores, but making egg-and-bacon sandwiches on toast before I left each night’s motel. They, with fruit and a Thermos of coffee, would be my midday meal and I would make up each evening with a good dinner. I budgeted for a daily expenditure of fifteen dollars. Most motels cost eight dollars single, but there are state taxes added, so I made it nine plus coffee and a roll for breakfast. Gas would not be more than a dollar a day, and that left five for luncheon and dinner, an occasional drink, and the few cigarettes I smoked. I wanted to try and keep inside this. The Esso map and route I had, and the A.A.A. literature, listed countless sights to see after I had crossed the border—I would be going right through the Indian country of Fennimore Cooper, and then across some of the great battlefields of the American Revolution, for instance—and many of them cost around a dollar entrance fee. But I thought I would get by, and if on some days I didn’t, I would eat less on others.