The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Two Page 3

  Harcourt had to move slowly behind her, getting closer to his father all the time. He could feel the space that separated them narrowing. Once he looked up with a vague, side-long glance. But his father, red-faced and happy, was still reading the book, only now there was a meditative expression on his face, as if something in the book had stirred him and he intended to stay there reading for some time.

  Old Harcourt had lots of time to amuse himself, because he was on a pension after working hard all his life. He had sent John to the university and he was eager to have him distinguish himself. Every night when John came home, whether it was early or late, he used to go into his father’s and mother’s bedroom and turn on the light and talk to them about the interesting things that had happened to him during the day. They listened and shared this new world with him. They both sat up in their nightclothes and, while his mother asked all the questions, his father listened attentively with his head cocked on one side and a smile or a frown on his face. The memory of all this was in John now, and there was also a desperate longing and a pain within him growing harder to bear as he glanced fearfully at his father, but he thought stubbornly, “I can’t introduce him. It’ll be easier for everybody if he doesn’t see us. I’m not ashamed. But it will be easier. It’ll be more sensible. It’ll only embarrass him to see Grace.” By this time he knew he was ashamed, but he felt that his shame was justified, for Grace’s father had the smooth, confident manner of a man who had lived all his life among people who were rich and sure of themselves. Often, when he had been in Grace’s home talking politely to her mother, John had kept on thinking of the plainness of his own home and of his parents’ laughing, good-natured untidiness, and he resolved that he must make Grace’s people admire him.

  He looked up cautiously, for they were about eight feet away from his father, but at that moment his father, too, looked up and John’s glance shifted swiftly over the aisle, over the counters, seeing nothing. As his father’s blue, calm eyes stared steadily over the glasses, there was an instant when their glances might have met. Neither one could have been certain, yet John, as he turned away and began to talk to Grace hurriedly, knew surely that his father had seen him. He knew it by the steady calmness in his father’s blue eyes. John’s shame grew, and then humiliation sickened him as he waited and did nothing.

  His father turned away, going down the aisle, walking erectly in his shabby clothes, his shoulders very straight, never once looking back.

  His father would walk slowly along the street, he knew, with that meditative expression deepening and becoming grave.

  Young Harcourt stood beside Grace, brushing against her soft shoulder, and made faintly aware again of the delicate scent she used. There, so close beside him, she was holding within her everything he wanted to reach out for, only now he felt a sharp hostility that made him sullen and silent.

  “You were right, John,” she was drawling in her soft voice. “It does get unbearable in here on a hot day. Do let’s go now. Have you ever noticed that department stores after a time can make you really hate people?” But she smiled when she spoke, so he might see that she really hated no one.

  “You don’t like people, do you?” he said sharply.

  “People? What people? What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he went on irritably, “you don’t like the kind of people you bump into here, for example.”

  “Not especially. Who does? What’re you talking about?”

  “Anybody could see you don’t,” he said recklessly. “You don’t like simple, honest people, the kind of people you meet all over the city.” He blurted the words out as if he wanted to shake her, but he was longing to say, “You wouldn’t like my family. Why couldn’t I take you home to have dinner with them? You’d turn up your nose at them, because they’ve no pretensions. As soon as my father saw you, he knew you wouldn’t want to meet him. I could tell by the way he turned.”

  His father was on his way home now, he knew, and that evening at dinner they would meet. His mother and sister would talk rapidly, but his father would say nothing to him, or to anyone. There would only be Harcourt’s memory of the level look in the blue eyes, and the knowledge of his father’s pain as he walked away.

  Grace watched John’s gloomy face as they walked through the store, and she knew he was nursing some private rage, and so her own resentment and exasperation kept growing, and she said crisply, “You’re entitled to your moods on a hot afternoon, I suppose, but if I feel I don’t like it here, then I don’t like it. You wanted to go yourself. Who likes to spend very much time in a department store on a hot afternoon? I begin to hate every stupid person that bangs into me, everybody near me. What does that make me?”

  “It makes you a snob.”

  “So I’m a snob now?” she said angrily.

  “Certainly you’re a snob,” he said. They were at the door and going out to the street. As they walked in the sunlight, in the crowd moving slowly down the street, he was groping for words to describe the secret thoughts he had always had about her. “I’ve always known how you’d feel about people I like who didn’t fit into your private world,” he said.

  “You’re a very stupid person,” she said. Her face was flushed now, and it was hard for her to express her indignation, so she stared straight ahead as she walked along. They had never talked in this way, and now they were both quickly eager to hurt each other. With a flow of words, she started to argue with him, then she checked herself and said calmly, “Listen, John, I imagine you’re tired of my company. There’s no sense in having a drink together. I think I’d better leave you right here.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “Good afternoon.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  She started to go, she had gone two paces, but he reached out desperately and held her arm, and he was frightened, and pleading. “Please don’t go, Grace.”

  All the anger and irritation had left him; there was just a desperate anxiety in his voice as he pleaded, “Please forgive me. I’ve no right to talk to you like that. I don’t know why I’m so rude or what’s the matter. I’m ridiculous. I’m very, very ridiculous. Please, you must forgive me. Don’t leave me.”

  He had never talked to her so brokenly, and his sincerity, the depth of his feeling, began to stir her. While she listened, feeling all the yearning in him, they seemed to have been brought closer together by opposing each other than ever before, and she began to feel almost shy. “I don’t know what’s the matter. I suppose we’re both irritable. It must be the weather,” she said. “But I’m not angry, John.”

  He nodded his head miserably. He longed to tell her that he was sure she would have been charming to his father, but he had never felt so wretched in his life. He held her arm as if he must hold it or what he wanted most in the world would slip away from him, yet he kept thinking, as he would ever think, of his father walking away quietly with his head never turning.

  Day by Day

  Late afternoon sunlight tipped the end of the bench in the park where pretty young Mrs. Winslow was resting a moment before walking home. For hours she had wandered through the department stores, looking in all the shop windows, and had finally begun to feel a quiet contentment in her heart. Every afternoon when she went out, she tried to look gay, attractive, and carefree. Now, glancing idly at an old man who bobbed his head as he passed, she hoped she would never lose this contentment. Only a few slight changes in her life, she felt, would make her happy forever.

  She sat absolutely still on the bench and the sunlight no longer shone directly on the park. The sun was dipping out of sight behind the office buildings. Two well-dressed young men who were crossing by the bench turned their heads so they could see her, and one whispered something to the other and she knew they had looked at her with admiration. Mrs. Winslow became so delighted with her own peace of mind that she began to long for the few small things that ought to go with it. All of a sudden she felt like saying a prayer, but then
her heart became so humble in its eagerness that she could say nothing. Her silence and her wish really became more eloquent than any prayer she could make. Timidly at first, as though it were hard to get it clear, she began to ask God to make her husband content without any suspicion of her. She asked that she might never be permitted to do anything that might make John think he was losing her. If they could only go on living together as they had done two years ago, when they first got married, she would be satisfied. She was not complaining that their plans had failed, that bad fortune was always with them, or that her husband went from one job to another and the work was always less suited to him. “What is there about me that makes him feel so uneasy?” she asked. “If I say I’m going shopping he seems suspicious, and if I dress up and put on rouge it makes him jealous. I’d stay at home all the time and wouldn’t mind looking dowdy if I thought it would make him happy.” Then she said, in her quiet little prayer: “Just let us go on loving each other as we used to before we were married.”

  She leaned back on the bench, full of rich inner consolation. It was so nice to sit on the bench and close her eyes and pretend it was the time three years ago when she and John were going dancing, first driving out to a wayside inn that served a famous chicken dinner. There had been three such fine full years before they had got married; just closing her eyes, she could see the way he used to grin and wave his hand high over his head when he came to the door to see her. She sat there with her hands in her lap, having this very satisfactory dream, without noticing that it had become twilight and many people were passing. At last she looked up at the pale lights in the office buildings around the park, sighed deeply, and then, as though awakening, said: “Oh, my goodness, what time is it?” She got up and started to hurry home.

  Traffic was heavy on the streets; everybody was hurrying; but for a moment she stood on the pavement, a tall, inexpensively dressed but distinguished-looking woman whose thoughts were still so pleasing to her that she was radiant. She wished she were home so she could share her happiness; then she thought: “What’s got into me? John will be home waiting. I ought to be ashamed of myself.” She lived only a few blocks from the corner and she had a childish hope that somehow she might get home before her husband. When she got to the apartment, she was out of breath.

  As soon as she opened the door, she heard John moving in the kitchen, moving from the cupboard to the table putting down plates for the dinner that had not been prepared. He was a tall, thin young man with short-cropped, fair, curling hair, a lean boyish face, a small, fair moustache, and worried blue eyes. He was wearing a white shirt frayed at the sleeve and old grey, unpressed trousers. For the past two months, he had had a job, a temporary one he hoped, collecting installments for a publishing house, and his thin face looked tired. When his wife saw him, she suddenly felt ashamed of her sleek hair and red lips, and more ashamed of being late. “John, darling, sit down,” she said, hurrying to put on an apron. “I was out shopping and I’m late. I’m awfully sorry.” But she couldn’t quite take the expression of warm, secret contentment off her face.

  “You’d think you’d get tired being out all the time,” he grumbled as he sat down and crossed his long legs. She looked so flushed and out of breath and so neat and pretty, still glowing from hurrying and from the animation of her thoughts, he frowned and said: “You were shopping, Madge?”

  “Not really,” she laughed. “I didn’t bring anything home.”

  “You’re dressed up every afternoon as if you’d been some place.”

  “There’s no harm in window shopping if I don’t spend anything,” she said quickly.

  “Remind me that you ought to have something to spend.”

  “I never mention it.”

  “But you think it. You’re so patient about it. God knows, if I thought you were more contented, I might do better.”

  She was so surprised, she felt like crying.

  “Please don’t say I’m not contented, John, please don’t.”

  But as she watched him shift his body around on the chair, and then let his hands drop between his knees, she knew he hadn’t said yet what was in his mind, and what had been agitating him while he waited for her to come home. Like a sullen boy, he suddenly blurted out: “What kept you so late, Madge? Where were you?”

  “I was just around the stores,” she began, smiling. She paused and considered telling him how she had sat on the bench and thought about him, then she realized he would not believe her, so she added lamely: “I thought I’d walk home, but it took quite a long time.” She felt her face flushing.

  “Madge,” he said, watching her closely, “you’re lying. I know. Good God, you’re lying.” He jumped up, walked over to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and said: “What were you looking so excited about when you first came in? I noticed it.”

  “There was nothing; I was out of breath from hurrying,” she said.

  He began to clutch her shoulders as if desperately aware that he could not hold her, as if he felt that she belonged completely to the life they had lived before they were married. “You might as well tell me what you did, I know you’ve been lying,” he said. “You’re lying, lying.” His big hand was trembling as he took hold of her wrist, and she cried out: “Don’t hurt me, John. Don’t.”

  “Admit you’re lying.”

  “I was lying, John; but not really.’”

  “I’ve known it all along. Why don’t you get out?”

  “Let go my wrist. I’ve always loved you, John, I was just sitting on a bench in the park. I forgot all about the time. I got thinking and I sort of prayed everything would get better for both of us, and I sat there forgetting it was late. Can’t you see I’m telling the truth?”

  Dazed from his anger, he began to walk up and down the room. He muttered: “Sitting around on a bench having pipe dreams. You refuse to try and get used to things. You ought to have something to keep you home. You ought to have about six children. Anyway, I’m tired of it. It’s beginning to get on my nerves.”

  Without looking at her, as if he were ashamed, he snatched up his coat. She heard him slam the door. Rubbing her wrist, she sat down to wait for him. She felt he would return when he was tired out from walking, taking his great, long strides, and he’d be sorry he had hurt her. Tears were in her eyes as she looked around the mean little kitchen. She had such a strange feeling of guilt. White-faced and still, she tried to ask herself what it was that was slowly driving them apart day by day.

  Amuck in the Bush

  Gus Rapp, who worked in Howard’s lumberyard near the Spruceport dock on Georgian Bay, lived with his old man in a rough-cast cottage two doors along the road from the boss’s house. The road faced the yard and the bay. He had worked in the lumberyard as a laborer for five years, loafing a lot when the sun was hot. The boss didn’t fire him because he looked after his old man. Gus didn’t like the boss, Sid Walton, but liked watching Mrs. Walton, who often brought her husband a jug of iced tea on a hot day.

  One day Gus was unloading planks from a boxcar on the siding at the board platform near the general office. The sun was hot on the platform and burned through the boots of the men piling lumber.

  The lumberyard was on an inlet at the southern pier below the shipyard and the old tinned and weathered brown grain elevator. The inlet’s waterline at the lumberyard had gone back fifty feet, and smooth flat rock and small rocks baked in the sun. Piles of lumber with sloping tops were back from the shoreline. The low brick buildings of the milling plant were at the foot of the pier. On the water side of the plant sawdust was heaped up and packed down. Farther back from the lumberyard the long road, curving down from the station, followed the shoreline south beyond the town and the wooded picnic park, farther along skirting the bush at Little River, all the way to the rifle ranges.

  Gus Rapp, sweating a lot and chewing his mustache, could stand in the boxcar door, looking up the street to the station and over the town to the blue mountains, where a red sun always set
brilliantly.

  Gus was working in the boxcar, kneeling on the lumber close to the roof. The boxcar had a stuffy smell of damp fresh wood. He was on his knees swinging the eight-by-two planks loose, shoving them down to the door where they slid into the hands and close to the hips of two men, who trudged across the platform, piling the planks on two sawhorses. By craning his neck to one side Gus could see through the door the wide-brimmed straw hat, the strong neck, and the thick shoulders of Sid Walton, who kept telling the men to show a little life. Gus didn’t feel much like working. The planks slid down slowly. He wanted to lie flat on his belly and look out through a wide crack in the car to the milling plant, where little kids in bathing suits were jumping down from the roof into the sawdust.

  Walton yelled to get to work. Gus swore to himself. It was hot and he was sleepy and it would have been fine to sit with his back against the side of the car. Walton yelled and Gus yelled back. Sid told Gus to trade places with one of the men. Gus made sure where Walton stood on the platform and swung a plank loose, sliding it far down, swinging it in a wide curve. A man yelled and Walton ducked. Gus stood sullenly in the boxcar door, his brown arm wiping his brown face, his hair and forehead damp. He jumped down to the platform.

  “You damn hunkie,” Walton yelled, running at Gus. He picked up an axe handle and whacked him hard three times across the back. Gus went down on his knees and hollered but got up kicking out. He tried to pick up a plank but the men grabbed him. They held him and he yelled, “You big son of a bitch.” Sid was bigger than Gus and stood there laughing, legs wide apart, his big hands on his hips. Gus’s back hurt and he rubbed his shoulder.

  The boss said seriously, “All right, Rapp, you can clear out for good.”

  Gus picked up his coat and cursed some more on the way over to the time office. He left the yard and went down past the station, cutting across the tracks north of the water tower, intending to drink squirrel whiskey in Luke Horton’s flour-and-feed store at the end of Main Street. His brown sweater was tucked in at his belt, he carried his coat, and his overalls were rolled four inches above his heavy boots.