Ancient Lineage and Other Stories Read online

  THE AUTHOR

  MORLEY CALLAGHAN was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1903. A graduate of the University of Toronto and Osgoode Law School, he was called to the bar in 1928, the same year that his first novel, Strange Fugitive, was published. Fiction commanded his attention, and he never practised law.

  While in university, Callaghan took a summer position at the Toronto Star when Ernest Hemingway was a reporter there. In April 1929, he travelled with his wife to Paris, where their literary circle of friends included Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Joyce. That Summer in Paris is his memoir of the time. The following autumn, Callaghan returned to Toronto.

  Callaghan was among the first writers in Canada to earn his livelihood exclusively from writing. In a career that spanned more than six decades, he published sixteen novels and more than a hundred shorter works of fiction. Usually set in the modern city, his fiction captures the drama of ordinary lives as people struggle against a background of often hostile social forces.

  Morley Callaghan died in Toronto, Ontario, in 1990.

  THE NEW CANADIAN LIBRARY

  General Editor: David Staines

  ADVISORY BOARD

  Alice Munro

  W.H. New

  Guy Vanderhaeghe

  Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of Morley Callaghan

  Afterword copyright © 2012 by William Kennedy

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Callaghan, Morley, 1903-1990

  Ancient lineage and other stories / Morley Callaghan.

  (New Canadian library)

  eISBN: 978-0-7710-1819-0

  I. Title. II. Series: New Canadian library

  PS8505.A43A52 2012 C813′.52 C2012-905252-3

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  McClelland & Stewart,

  a division of Random House of Canada Limited

  One Toronto Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5C 2V6

  www.mcclelland.com/NCL

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A Note on the Text

  A Girl with Ambition

  A Wedding Dress

  Last Spring They Came Over

  Amuck in the Bush

  A Country Passion

  Ancient Lineage

  A Regret for Youth

  A Predicament

  An Escapade

  Now That April’s Here

  The Faithful Wife

  The Chiseler

  The Red Hat

  Sister Bernadette

  A Sick Call

  An Old Quarrel

  Two Fishermen

  One Spring Night

  The Snob

  The Runaway

  The Blue Kimono

  Rigmarole

  All the Years of Her Life

  The Voyage Out

  An Enemy of the People

  Rendezvous

  The White Pony

  Getting On in the World

  Very Special Shoes

  A Cap for Steve

  Afterword

  Other Books by This Author

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  The text for the stories in this collection is Morley Callaghan: The Complete Stories (Exile Editions, 2005). The original publication date of each story follows the text.

  A GIRL WITH AMBITION

  After leaving school when she was sixteen, Mary Ross worked for two weeks with a cheap chorus line at the old La Plaza, quitting when her stepmother heard the girls were a lot of toughs. Mary was a neat, clean girl with short, fair curls and blue eyes, looking more than her age because she had very long legs, and knew it. She got another job as cashier in the shoe department of Eaton’s, after a row with her father and a slap on the ear from her stepmother.

  She was marking time in the store, of course, but it was good fun telling the girls about imaginary offers from big companies. The older salesgirls sniffed and said her hair was bleached. The salesmen liked fooling around her cage, telling jokes, but she refused to go out with them: she didn’t believe in running around with fellows working in the same department. Mary paid her mother six dollars a week for board and always tried to keep fifty cents out. Mrs. Ross managed to get the fifty cents, insisting every time that Mary would come to a bad end.

  Mary met Harry Brown when he was pushing a wagon on the second floor of the store, returning goods to the department. Every day he came over from the mail-order building, stopping longer than necessary in the shoe department, watching Mary in the cash cage out of the corner of his eye. Mary found out that he went to high school and worked in the store for the summer holidays. He hardly spoke to her, but once, when passing, he slipped a note written on wrapping paper under the cage wire. It was such a nice note that she wrote a long one the next morning and dropped it in his wagon when he passed. She liked him because he looked neat and had a serious face and wrote a fine letter with big words that were hard to read.

  In the morning and early afternoons they exchanged wise glances that held a secret. She imagined herself talking earnestly, about getting on. It was good having someone to talk to like that because the neighbors on her street were always teasing her about going on the stage. If she went to the butcher to get a pound of round steak cut thin, he saucily asked how was the village queen and actorine. The lady next door, who had a loud voice and was on bad terms with Mrs. Ross, often called her a hussy, saying she should be spanked for staying out so late at night, waking decent people when she came in.

  Mary liked to think that Harry Brown knew nothing of her home or street, for she looked up to him because he was going to be a lawyer. Harry admired her ambition but was shy. He thought she knew how to handle herself.

  In the letters she said she was his sweetheart but never suggested they meet after work. Her manner implied it was unimportant that she was working at the store. Harry, impressed, liked to tell his friends about her, showing off the letters, wanting them to see that a girl who had a lot of experience was in love with him. “She’s got some funny ways but I’ll bet no one gets near her,” he often said.

  They were together the first time the night she asked him to meet her downtown at 10:30. He was waiting at the corner and didn’t ask where she had been earlier in the evening. She was ten minutes late. Linking arms, they walked east along Queen Street. He was self-conscious. She was trying to be very practical, though pleased to have on her new blue suit with the short stylish coat.

  Opposite the cathedral at the corner of Church Street, she said, “I don’t want you to think I’m like the people you sometimes see me with, will you now?”

  “I think you are way ahead of the girls you eat with at noon hour.”

  “And look, I know a lot of boys, but they don’t mean nothing. See?”

  “Of course, you don’t need to fool around with tough guys, Mary. It won’t get you anywhere,” he said.

  “I can’t help knowing them, c
an I?”

  “I guess not.”

  “But I want you to know that they haven’t got anything on me,” she said, squeezing his arm.

  “Why do you bother with them?” he said, as if he knew the fellows she was talking about.

  “I go to parties, Harry. You got to do that if you’re going to get along. A girl needs a lot of experience.”

  They walked up Parliament Street and turned east, talking confidently as if many things had to be explained before they could be satisfied with each other. They came to a row of huge sewer pipes along the curb by the Don River bridge. The city was repairing the drainage. Red lights were about fifty feet apart on the pipes. Mary got up on a pipe and walked along, supporting herself with a hand on Harry’s shoulder, while they talked in a silly way, laughing. A night watchman came along and yelled at Mary, asking if she wanted to knock the lights over.

  “Oh, have an apple,” she yelled back at him.

  “You better get down,” said Harry, very dignified.

  “Let him chase me,” she said. “I’ll bet he’s got a wooden leg.” But she jumped down and held onto his arm.

  For a long time they stood on the bridge, looking beyond the row of short poplars lining the hill in the good district on the other side of the park. Mary asked Harry if he didn’t live over there, wanting to know if they could see his house from the bridge. They watched the lights on a streetcar moving slowly up the hill. She felt that he was going to kiss her. He was looking down at the slow-moving water wondering if she would like it if he quoted some poetry.

  “I think you are swell,” he said finally.

  “I’ll let you walk home with me,” she said.

  They retraced their steps until a few blocks away from her home. They stood near the police station in the shadow of the fire hall. He coaxed so she let him walk just one more block. In the light from the corner butcher store they talked for a few minutes. He started to kiss her. “The butcher will see us,” she said, but didn’t care, for Harry was respectable-looking and she wanted to be kissed. Harry wondered why she wouldn’t let him go to the door with her. She left him and walked ahead, turning to see if he was watching her. It was necessary she walk a hundred yards before Harry went away. She turned and walked home, one of a row of eight dirty frame houses jammed under one long caving roof.

  She talked a while with her father, but was really liking the way Harry had kissed her, and talked to her, and the very respectable way he had treated her all evening. She hoped he wouldn’t meet any boys who would say bad things about her.

  She might have been happy if Harry had worked on in the store. It was the end of August and his summer holidays were over. The last time he pushed his wicker wagon over to her cash cage, she said he was to remember she would always be a sincere friend and would write often. They could have seen each other for he wasn’t leaving the city, but they took it for granted they wouldn’t.

  Every week she wrote to him about offers and rehearsals that would have made a meeting awkward. She liked to think of him not because of being in love but because he seemed so respectable. Thinking of how he liked her made her feel a little better than the girls she knew.

  When she quit work to spend a few weeks up at Georgian Bay with a girlfriend, Hilda Heustis, who managed to have a good time without working, she forgot about Harry. Hilda had a party in a cottage on the beach and they came home the night after. It was cold and it rained all night. One of Hilda’s friends, a fat man with a limp, had chased her around the house and down to the beach, shouting and swearing, and into the bush, limping and groaning. She got back to the house all right. He was drunk. A man in pajamas from the cottage to the right came and thumped on the door, shouting that they were a pack of strumpets, hussies, and if they didn’t clear out he would have to call the police. He was shivering and looked very wet. Hilda, a little scared, said they ought to clear out next day.

  Mary returned to Toronto and her stepmother was waiting, very angry because Mary had quit her job. They had a big row. Mary left home, slamming the door. She went two blocks north to live with Hilda in a boarding house.

  It was hard to get a job and the landlady was nasty. She tried to get work in a soldiers’ company touring the province with a kind of musical comedy called Mademoiselle from Courcelette. But the manager, a nice young fellow with tired eyes, said she had the looks but he wanted a dancer. After that, every night Mary and Hilda practiced a step dance, waiting for the show to return.

  Mary’s father came over to the boarding house one night and coaxed her to come back home because she was really all he had in the world, and he didn’t want her to turn out to be a good-for-nothing. He rubbed his face in her hair. She noticed for the first time he was getting old and was afraid he was going to cry. She promised to live at home if her stepmother would mind her own business.

  Now and then she wrote to Harry, just to keep him thinking of her. His letters were sincere and free from slang. Often he wrote, “What is the use of trying to get on the stage?” She told herself he would be astonished if she were successful, and would look up to her. She would show him.

  Winter came and she had many good times. The gang at the east-end roller rink knew her and she got in free. There she met Wilfred Barnes, the son of a grocer four blocks east of the fire hall, who had a good business. Wilfred had a nice manner but she never thought of him in the way she thought of Harry. He got fresh with little encouragement. Sunday afternoons she used to meet him at the rink in Riverdale Park. Several times she saw Harry and a boyfriend walking through the park, and leaving her crowd, she would talk to him for a few minutes. He was shy and she was a little ashamed of her crowd that whistled and yelled while she was talking. These chance meetings got to mean a good deal, helping her to think about Harry during the week.

  In the early spring Mademoiselle from Courcelette returned to Toronto. Mary hurried to the man that had been nice to her and demonstrated the dance she had practiced all winter. He said she was a good kid and should do well, offering her a tryout at thirty dollars a week. Even her stepmother was pleased because it was a respectable company that a girl didn’t need to be ashamed of. Mary celebrated by going to a party with Wilfred and playing strip poker until four a.m. She was getting to like being with Wilfred.

  When it was clear she was going on the road with the company, she phoned Harry and asked him to meet her at the roller rink.

  She was late. Harry was trying to roller skate with another fellow, fair-haired, long-legged, wearing large glasses. They had never roller skated before but were trying to appear unconcerned and dignified. They looked very funny because everyone else on the floor was free and easy, willing to start a fight. Mary got her skates on but the old music box stopped and the electric sign under it flashed “Reverse.” The music started again. The skaters turned and went the opposite way. Harry and his friend skated off the floor. Mary followed them to a bench near the soft-drink stand.

  “What’s the hurry, Harry?” she yelled.

  He turned quickly, his skates slipping, and would have fallen, but his friend held his arm.

  “Look here, Mary, this is the damnedest place,” he said.

  His friend said roguishly, “Hello, I know you because Harry has told me a lot about you.”

  “Oh well, it’s not much of a place but I know the gang,” she said.

  “I guess we don’t have to stay here,” Harry said.

  “I’m not fussy, let’s go for a walk, the three of us,” she said.

  Harry was glad his friend was noticing her blue coat with the wide sleeves and the light brown fur.

  They left the rink and arm-in-arm the three walked up the street. Mary was eager to tell about Mademoiselle from Courcelette. The two boys were impressed and enthusiastic.

  “In some ways I don’t like to think of you being on the stage, but I’ll bet a dollar you get ahead,” Harry said.

  “Oh, baby, I’ll knock them dead in the hick towns.”

  “How d
o you think she’ll do, Chuck?” said Harry.

  The boy with the glasses could hardly say anything, he was so impressed.

  Mary talked seriously. She had her hand in Harry’s coat pocket and kept tapping her fingers. Harry gaily beat time as they walked. They felt that they should stay together after being away for a long time. When she said it would be foolish to think she would cut up like some girls in the business did, Harry left it to Chuck if a fellow couldn’t tell a mile away that she was a real good kid.

  The lighted clock in the tower of the fire hall could be seen when they turned the bend in the street. Then they could make out the hands on the clock. Mary, leaving them, said she had had a swell time, she didn’t know just why. Harry jerked her into the shadow of the side door of the police station and kissed her, squeezing her tight. Chuck leaned back against the wall, wondering what to do. An automobile horn hooted. Mary, laughing happily, showed the boys her contract and they shook their heads earnestly. They heard footfalls around the corner. “Give Chuck a kiss,” Harry said suddenly, generously. The boy with the glasses was so pleased he could hardly kiss her. A policeman appeared at the corner and said, “All right, Mary, your mother wants you. Beat it.”

  Mary said, “How’s your father?” After promising to write Harry, she ran up the street.

  The boys, pleased with themselves, walked home. “You want to hang on to her,” Chuck said.

  “I wonder why she is always nice to me just when she is going away,” Harry said.

  “Would you want her for your girl?”

  “I don’t know. Wouldn’t she be a knockout at the school dance? The old ladies would throw a fit.”

  Mary didn’t write to Harry and didn’t see him for a long time. After two weeks she was fired from the company. She wasn’t a good dancer.

  Many people had a good laugh and Mary stopped talking about her ambitions for a while. Though usually careful, she slipped into easy careless ways with Wilfred Barnes. She never thought of him as she thought of Harry, but he became important to her. Harry was like something she used to pray for when a little girl and never really expected to get.