The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three Page 15

  My father was looking up the avenue at the way the line of buildings cut like a cavern into the horizon. Certain it was making him feel humble, I said lightly, “Quite a city, eh? Makes you feel a little strange?”

  He seemed to be puzzled about something, then he said quietly, “No, it isn’t that it seems strange. It doesn’t seem half as strange as I thought it would.”

  I had counted on him being wide-eyed and wondering, and I said a bit tartly, “Well, I got a big kick out of it the first time I looked around.”

  “I mean it reminds me of London,” my father said. “It’s different of course, but it gives me some of the same feeling, maybe it’s just the big-city feeling London had.”

  I had forgotten that my father had been born in England and had come to Canada when he was twelve years old. Again, I felt cheated and didn’t know what to say to him.

  “I’d love to see Wall Street. Could we go there?” he asked.

  We took the subway downtown, and as we walked through the narrow streets of the financial district my father’s growing wonder and complete childish acceptance of everything I told him made me forgive him for not being so surprised in the first place. He began grabbing at my arm and pointing at things. Once he asked me the name of a big new building, and when I couldn’t tell him, he darted across the street, peering at the brass plate near the door, and came bouncing back through the traffic, with me standing there sure he’d be killed, to report briskly and made me feel helpless.

  But it was when we were down at the waterfront, looking across the river at the tugboats and the sunlight on Brooklyn, that we really began to feel closer together. My father had been sniffing the air, smiling to himself and peering in seamen’s taverns we passed as we walked along. Suddenly, he took an extra sniff, his face wrinkled up in a wide grin, and he stood still, crying out, “It smells like a fish market!” We were at Fulton Street and the smell of fish was very strong now. On the road, there were little bonfires of refuse. Grim, old, slow-moving seamen passed us on the sidewalk. “Yes, sir, it’s a fish market,” my father repeated.

  “Sure it’s a fish market, but what about it?”

  “I haven’t smelt anything like it in years.”

  “It’s just a stench to me. Let’s move along.”

  “Isn’t it lovely? It reminds me of Billingsgate in London,” he said. “When I was a boy I often used to go down to the fish market.” Turning, he got the smell of the fish market again, looked across the river, took a deep breath and was delighted.

  “Why didn’t you ever mention being a kid in London before?” I asked.

  “I must have forgotten it. It seems such a long time ago,” he said.

  I felt suddenly that I knew little or nothing about my father as we cut up through the lower East Side. But we began to share in the discovery of broken-down poolrooms; we liked the swarm of Italian, Chinese and Jewish faces that passed us. And it was not nearly as strange for my father, the man walking beside me in the good, freshly pressed blue serge suit and the hat on the back of his head, the postman from Windsor, as it was for me — foreign faces, bright colors, dirty streets, the odors of a seaport he had long ago forgotten, all had come alive for him down there by the waterfront. Again and again he said, “When I was a boy,” and the softness and innocence of his voice made me full of wonder, because I had grown up thinking him irritable and loud with excitement. “This is what he was like when he was a kid,” I was thinking. “Maybe he’s always had an easy mild way with him like this, and we haven’t known it. When he was a kid I would have liked him.” Feeling years older than my father I took his arm, but when we crossed the road I knew I was restless about something.

  “Are you tired?” I asked.

  “Me tired? I could walk miles.”

  “How about going into the lunch wagon there for a cup of coffee?”

  “Whatever you say,” he said, and we went into the lunch wagon that was on a corner near a garage.

  My father always ordered raisin pie with a cup of coffee, and I remembered how fond he had always been of it. While I watched him eat with his head down and his hat almost slipped off the back of his head, there remained in me that mixed-up feeling of being with a kid yet being with my own father.

  He was so hungry I knew he hadn’t had anything to eat on the train, but he looked up suddenly and said, “When I get back home I wish I could get some little thing to do.”

  Surprised, I said, “Why, you’ll be all right. You’ll have your pension and I’ll be able to help some now. It’s going to be different now because I’m in the money.”

  “But I’d like it better if I didn’t have to be a drag on somebody else. Why shouldn’t I be able to look after myself?”

  “All right. Maybe I’ll be able to set you up in something soon.”

  My father was looking at the man behind the counter, a little runt of a man whose face was half hidden behind the steam from the coffee boilers, and he whispered, “I’ll bet a dollar I’m twice as active as your friend there. Why couldn’t I open a place like this back home?”

  While my father went on watching the withered-faced man behind the counter rubbing a few cups with a towel, I began thinking again of his childhood in that other city, London, so far away from the lunch wagon. Then I heard him say quietly, “As long as I could make enough to give me the feeling I was working. It’s terrible to feel there’s nothing for you to do.” The way he spoke, the stillness I felt in him when he had finished, made me realize how frightened he had been growing day after day. While I had been sitting there dreaming of the beginning of my father’s life, he had been sitting beside me dreading the end of it. It made me unhappy. We went out and started to walk again.

  The street lights were lit when we got to Washington Square. My feet were tired, yet I did not want to get home because I knew I was not satisfied. I could not understand my restlessness. Before we went in we stood together looking up the avenue at the flow of lights in the twilight, and my father said, “It’s certainly nice here. It’s hard to imagine a nicer place.”

  It was dark in the apartment and we thought there was nobody there, but when we listened we heard the sound of heavy breathing. I turned on the light, and my mother, who had been sound asleep, sat up, startled, crying, “Joe, Joe,” feeling around on the bed for my father. “Where am I?” Then she stared at us, swallowing hard as she tried to smile. “I was frightened,” she said.

  We were both grinning at her, and maybe she felt we were sharing some secret, for she rubbed her eyes and said, “Look at the two of you. What have you been doing?”

  “Just walking,” I said.

  “I was down on Wall Street,” my father said. “I looked across the river and saw Brooklyn, and it was beautiful in the sunlight.”

  She felt something between us that aroused her and she said, “What were you talking about?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all,” I laughed.

  She was a terribly curious woman and she pleaded, “Please tell me,” but when I only shrugged she turned to my father and brightened and said, “I had such a good feeling before I fell asleep. I was thinking of the way we worried about the children, and all the times I tried to give Harry here a little good advice. It felt so good to be here with him and see how he was getting on.”

  “That’s right,” my father said energetically. “He can’t say we both didn’t give him good advice.”

  “Both of us?” she jeered at him. “Why, Thelma was always your pet. You were scared to open your mouth to Harry for fear he’d leave home, and it was only when you got mad that you shouted at him.”

  My father’s neck reddened in the old way as he prepared to become desperately apologetic, and my mother went on, laughing at him. “Son, can you ever remember your father quietly insisting that you pay attention to what he had to say?”

  I shook my head and said, “No, I can’t”

  But when I saw my father looking over at me with that baffled, helpless expression I cr
ied out, “For heaven’s sake, mother, leave him alone. Let’s not start running him into the ground while he’s here.”

  The loose skin around my mother’s throat was working up and down, and her eyes grew desolate. “I’m not trying to take the credit for your success,” she said. “You never used to speak to me like that. I guess you’ve grown away from me a little,” and she got up slowly to put on her hat and go out with us.

  “It’s nothing, I was tired,” I said, trying to soothe her, but my father, who had been sitting still, suddenly smiled at me.

  While he smiled like that I felt him walking beside me; I felt that mystery of having been close to the boyhood of a man who was now old and who was sitting beside me smiling at me. I had seen the innocence of his childhood restored to him for a little while. As I kept looking at him the restless excitement and wonder were growing in me. I had a great hunger to know of the things that had delighted him, the things he had hoped for when he was a kid far away in London and happy, before he ever thought of Canada or heard of Windsor — this man, my father, whom I had found walking down near the Fulton Street fish market.

  The Lucky Lady

  When Charlie Springer lost the third race, he looked so crushed and angry that Harriet, standing beside him at the rail, slipped her arm under his but he scowled and made her feel that everyone was unfairly against him.

  “It’s the hot day, Charlie,” she said. “Everything just drags along.”

  He muttered at the big fat man who had leaned against him. “I haven’t got room to move. I can’t see those beetles I bet on.”

  “Cheer up, Charlie. There’s always the right race.”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” and then he said irritably, “Don’t you ever wear anything but that white suit, Harriet?”

  “Why, you always said you liked this suit, Charlie.” And it was true. When she had first met him and had worn the suit, he said that it went so well with her blond hair and long legs he felt like a rich man walking along the street with her. “Only last night you said the suit still looked good, Charlie.”

  “What’s the matter with wanting you to look different sometimes?”

  “Because it’s unfair, Charlie.”

  “It was just a crack. Nothing looks right today,” he said.

  “I’ve got nothing else to wear,” she said, and wondered why the sun glinting on the gray in his hair made him look so much older than when he had come into Mr. Striker’s office to sell some oil stock, and had met her. “I’m broke and you know it, Charlie,” her mouth trembled, for she was ashamed to remind him again that she was broke, always broke from lending him money.

  She was so fond of him because from the beginning he had been able to make her feel valuable and he had come upon her, after years of shopping around as a salesman and small promoter, knowing at once he needed her, and all the borrowing from her had only been their recognition of his need of her. But his irritated glance had also touched a secret fear that all the giving on her part only made him feel she was forever committed to him.

  “Do you think I like looking shabby, Charlie?” she said. “I was to have a new dress for today. Remember? You promised to pay me back something so I could get the dress.”

  “I know I did, Harriet,” he said quickly, and he looked ashamed. “I know you are broke. I know it’s my fault. I know you have to get a dress. But I thought with a couple of sure things today I could make a killing. I guess I mentioned the suit because the dress is on my mind.”

  “I know I look shabby. I know it.”

  “Play along with me, baby. The trouble is you’re always on my mind.” It was just the right thing to say; it touched all her affection for him. “The first little windfall goes to you, Harriet,” he said, and he slipped his arm around her waist and abused the jockeys and the backstretch touts who gave him tips, and he sounded like himself and made her feel again that everything she wanted was within her reach.

  “I’m not betting the next race,” he said. “But in the fifth it’s got to be Black Pirate. I got it straight from Jonesy. The fifty we’ve got left goes on Black Pirate right on the nose.” Suddenly he turned to her, deeply reflective. “Are you feeling lucky, baby?”

  “Sure, I’m feeling lucky.”

  “Why not?” He was serious. “Nearly everything good that’s come my way has come though you, Harriet. That’s a fact. We need a break. If anybody can do it you can, Harriet. Here, you put the dough down and change our luck.” He handed her the bills. “The fifty on Black Pirate. Right on the nose. Then you’ll get yourself a whole new outfit.”

  “But if Black Pirate should miss?”

  “It’s not my day, baby, it’s yours.”

  “Yes. Why not, Charlie?” She laughed, and her hand went out to him affectionately, for his conviction that luck could come to him only through her moved her, made her feel again that he really knew how valuable she was in his life. “I’ll get moving now so I won’t have to line up.”

  “Take it easy. There’s still the fourth race.”

  “Here we go,” she said, and laughed and kissed the bills in her hand, then pressed the bills to his lips; she had a lovely glow as she left him.

  On her way to the wicket, when she was passing the club-house gate, she had to circle around a group of men, and then she bumped into a shabbily dressed old woman wearing a long gray out-of-season topcoat and a shapeless black felt hat, who had a newspaper-wrapped parcel under her arm. The little old woman had been standing there, mutely staring at the brilliant sunshine on the infield’s green grass, and at the horses and the stable ponies moving up the track to the starting post.

  “Oh, excuse me,” Harriet said, for in bumping her she had knocked the parcel to the ground, where the newspaper wrapping opened and showed a pair of battered old shoes. “I’m sorry,” Harriet said, and as she picked up the parcel she folded the paper carefully around the shoes.

  “It’s all right, Miss. Thanks,” the woman said, taking the parcel, and then as Harriet turned she heard her call, “Oh, Miss . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe you could tell me something,” the little old woman said nervously; and then she nodded and seemed to have made up her mind that Harriet had a good face. “It’s about this,” she said timidly and fumbled in her old handbag. “See,” and she handed Harriet a single slip from an office memo pad. “Can you make it out?”

  “Bright Star. The fourth race,” Harriet read aloud from the writing in the small pinched hand. “Why, it’s the fourth race coming up.”

  “And I was to hand this in at the wicket,” the woman said, looking frightened as she took a ten-dollar bill from the old handbag.

  “The ten on Bright Star?” Harriet asked dubiously, for it was plain the woman couldn’t afford to lose ten dollars. “I’ve a friend who knows, and on the way to the track I heard him say Bright Star couldn’t win a boat race.”

  “But Mr. Wilkie said—”

  “Who’s Mr. Wilkie?”

  “In the building. The office building where I clean. Mr. Wilkie worked late last night. Often he talks to me. He wrote this down and gave me the ten dollars and said to be sure and make a bet for myself, and I came here on my way to work.

  “Well, never look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say,” Harriet said, shrugging. “The wicket is right over there, and I’m on my way there. You can come with me but you’ll certainly have to hurry.”

  “Wouldn’t you do it for me, Miss? I feel safer standing right here,” she said and she handed Harriet the bill.

  “But you shouldn’t trust people like that,” Harriet said. She was reluctant to take the bill, for the woman’s tired wrinkled face told her how much the ten dollars meant to her. “Well, stay right here then. Don’t move. Oh, my goodness, the horses are on the track,” and she rushed to the wicket and got the money down just before post time, and then stood there a moment wondering if she shouldn’t also put down the fifty Charlie had given her to bet on Black Pirate in the next rac
e, but she was afraid he would abuse her for being a fool.

  The crowd roared as the horses broke from the post, but she couldn’t follow Bright Star; she didn’t know the horse or the number. All she could do was stand there and listen to the voice on the loudspeaker, “It’s Shoemaker, Ivy Green and Jackanapes. It’s Shoemaker and Ivy Green,” and think what a ten-to-one shot, a windfall like that, might do for a little old woman. It could make her feel her life had changed magically. Harriet closed her eyes and began to make a little prayer.

  When she opened her eyes the horses were on the far turn. “It’s Ivy Green by a half, and Dipsy Dipsy. Ivy Green and Dipsy Dipsy and on the outside, Bright Star.” Then, in the crowd’s roar as they hit the stretch, she couldn’t hear the voice, and the race was over, and she was watching the numbers go up on the tote board, and the man next to her cursed and said, “Goddamn Bright Star goes off at ten to one! It’s a boat race!” Harriet trembled, then she moved toward the wicket and was the first to hand in her ticket, and she got a hundred dollars.

  She made her way toward the clubhouse gate, and as soon as she saw the little old woman, rooted to the spot as if she had been afraid to move an inch, she began to laugh and wave, but the woman, watching blankly, didn’t see her until she was only a few feet away. “You won! You won! Imagine!” Harriet cried, waving the bills.

  “Did I?” she asked blankly. “How much did I win?”

  “A hundred dollars. Look.”

  “A hundred dollars,” she repeated with a frightened smile. “Oh, dear.”

  “Here, put it in your purse.”

  “Yes, Miss,” and she did, but the clasp on the old purse was so loose it worried Harriet. “Look,” she said, taking the woman’s arm, “you can’t carry that money in that purse. Where are you going?”