The Loved and the Lost Page 7

  Going into the café now wasn’t the slightest bit embarrassing.

  The foyer was done in pink, and a wide door opened into a crowded tavern. The ticket booth was there by the stairs which led up to the nightclub. Two well dressed white men were ahead of him; he got a ticket and followed them up the narrow stairs. At the top, a hard-faced headwaiter, a mulatto, asked him to show his ticket, then pointed to one of the little tables with the metallic chairs around the small dance floor. A six-piece Negro band was playing. McAlpine declined the table. At the rear of the club was a bar, all nickel and pink leather, and he knew he would not be conspicuous there. When the coloured bartender had given him a rye and water he began to look around.

  Among all the Negroes there were a few white people; the white girls were mainly dowdy gum chewers, but there were a few well dressed dreamy-eyed débutantes. Nobody was really drunk. Nobody was as hilarious as Foley’s friends had been at the Earbenders Club.

  There she was by herself at a little table in the far corner. It was so splendidly right that she should be there by herself, dressed with the disarming simplicity that made her so noticeable. Her hair, still parted in the middle, was done in a little braid at the back; she wore a plain blue skirt and a white blouse. She looked more than ever like a composed schoolgirl.

  A Negro boy, passing, stopped, made a joke with her, started on, then turned and had a serious conversation. He looked happy and went on his way. A pretty mulatto in a white evening dress, coming back from the ladies’ room, heard Peggy call to her. She hurried over, opened her purse, and took out some snapshots. They held them up to the light by turns, nodding seriously, and came to an important respectful agreement about the pictures. The girl became so absorbed in an explanation of one of them that she started to sit down, forgetting her friends at her own table. They called out to her. Laughing, she patted Peggy on the shoulder and left.

  The band stopped playing and the dancers began to drift off the floor. McAlpine waited to see who in the band would join Peggy. But a little old guy, brown and dapper, who ought to have been home in bed, came out of nowhere and shook hands with her elaborately. She must have made a joke, for he made a comical face and held his head with both hands; grinning to himself, he turned away and limped toward the stairs. He felt good; he felt spry and gay. At the stairs he turned and looked back at the band leader, Elton Wagstaffe, and clapped his hands for attention, and Wagstaffe smiled broadly. It was like watching people who were sure of one another visiting in their own neighbourhood.

  Wagstaffe was very black and had a high forehead: he was heavily handsome. When he was crossing the dance floor he did an odd thing. He saw Peggy smile at him, and he averted his eyes. He hesitated, dubious and embarrassed, and came over to her, as he had clearly wanted to do so before the doubt had entered his mind. He sat down and relaxed and made idle conversation. It was plain he knew in his heart that he and Peggy and the busboy and the girl in the white dress and the little old guy all belonged to the same gang. They were joined by the trumpet player, Wilson. He was well built, about five feet ten, with good even features, but he did not look very powerful because he was so well proportioned; he was neither fat nor slim. His skin was coffee-coloured, contrasting well with his light brown double-breasted suit. On his left wrist was a watch with a gold band.

  Neither man tried to get Peggy’s attention; both were quiet and at ease. Wilson turned to a Negro who was passing, at the same time putting his hand on Peggy’s, and the light, gentle, friendly touch said that the smile and greeting he offered to that friend did not separate them even momentarily. It occurred to McAlpine that neither Wagstaffe nor Wilson, so at ease with Peggy, could have gained that quiet, possessive intimacy by knowing her only in this café. If she were so friendly with them, wouldn’t she let them come to her room? And they, of course, would be charmed by her unspoiled freshness and want to possess it as he, himself, had wanted to possess it when he tried to kiss her. He fumbled for his cigarettes and waited nervously until the band had begun to assemble on the platform. Wagstaffe got up; Wilson, the trumpet player, patted Peggy’s hand. They left her. McAlpine approached her table.

  “Hello, Peggy,” he said, feeling like an intruder.

  “Oh, hello.” She was annoyed, but he looked so sheepish that she couldn’t help laughing.

  “What brought you down here, professor?”

  “Well, since you had mentioned the place…”

  “Oh,” she said, only half believing him. She was puzzled by his shyness and the fact that he was so plainly out of place.

  “Seems to me you’re following me around. What’s the idea?”

  “Why shouldn’t I come here?”

  “Because you don’t belong here. And you don’t belong in my life,” she said impatiently. “I don’t like being followed around.” But the way he moistened his lips, and his silent, awkward, patient stubbornness, began to bother her. “You’re a funny guy. I doubt if anything that ever happened in your life, Jim, justifies your being such a funny guy. Why don’t you go home?”

  “I thought I might walk home with you.”

  “I’m not leaving yet.”

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Go ahead,” she said, shrugging.

  It struck McAlpine, then, that the members of the band, handling their instruments, were watching him and Peggy. Every one of them was watching. Did they have to make up their minds about him and the girl before they could play? And were they reaching out to hold Peggy in the pattern of the place? If he made one little move to take her away would there be a sudden panic among them?

  His foolish thoughts made him smile, and he said, “I saw you talking to the band leader and the trumpet player. I wanted to come over and speak to them. Why don’t you call them over, next intermission? I’d like to meet them.”

  “Well, you’re not going to,” she said sharply.

  “Why not? I’ve no prejudices, you know that. Maybe we’d like each other. How about it?”

  “You’re not going to, I said.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because I know what you’re up to. I can feel it in my bones. I can feel you pulling at my coattails, yanking at me. I hate people pulling at my coattails. For heaven’s sake, why do you have to come down here like an old woman?”

  “But, Peggy—”

  “Oh, you and your hurt silly eyes! You know I’m right. Go away.”

  “Peggy,” he said gently. “Maybe you know how I feel better than I know myself. I’m out of my depth. I came down here because I hoped to see you. I’d like to know your friends. It’s a way of knowing you.”

  “Why do you want to know me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, don’t sound so mysterious.”

  “And Wilson and Wagstaffe looked like friendly guys. Come on, Peggy. Anyway, tell me about them.”

  “I think they’re the best in their line in the country,” she said mollified by his humble tone. “Elton’s from New York. Ronnie is from Memphis. They’re old friends of mine. Or at least they seem like old friends.”

  “It looked like that. Whom did you know first? Wilson?”

  “No. Wagstaffe.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “I came down here the first time with Milton Rogers. He’s a friend of Foley’s – a photographer. The next time, I came down here alone. It was a summer night, and I liked being here. I stayed late, and when I was outside and going up the street there was Mr. Wagstaffe walking beside me. He said he had seen me here. Well, we walked up the street together. When we got to Dorchester he said he felt like going bowling and would I come along.”

  Now she was smiling, and McAlpine nodded, encouraging her; he could see her standing on Dorchester Street with the friendly Negro who had walked up the street with her; he could see her expression when Wagstaffe asked her to bowl with him. She would have known that the Negro was waiting to have his companionship rejected simply because he was a Negro. It woul
d have been an important moment for her, and of course she would have smiled and gone with him.

  “So we went bowling,” she said, her face happy. “I bowl pretty well,” she added. “After we bowled he walked me home, and we sat in my place talking for an hour or so. I think there was more gentleness in him than I had ever felt in anyone, and I remember wondering how it was that walking up a street and bowling for half an hour could bring out such wonderful gentleness in a man. It was wonderful.”

  “Such moments are always wonderful,” he agreed.

  “Yes, aren’t they?” Her eyes were a little sad.

  McAlpine couldn’t bear to look at her. He sat with his elbows on the table, his hands folded and his head down, too moved to speak. He told himself that the hour or so she had spent with Wagstaffe in her room had been friendly and innocent and not a sensually corrupt first stirring of a novel lust. It was possible she had touched the band leader with her simplicity and candour as she had touched Foley and him too. He wanted to believe completely in her own pure feeling. This faith in her was the illumination he had been seeking since the first time he had met her; it offered him a glimpse of the way she wanted to live, of the kind of relationship she wanted to have with all people, no matter what kind of a sacrifice might be required of her.

  But it couldn’t persuade him that Wagstaffe, or Wilson, or their colleagues, would be content to accept only her gentle friendliness, asking nothing more of her. The utter impossibility of her attitude, its wilfulness, its lack of prudence, frightened him; but he knew that if he protested she would assume he was speaking out of the dull confinement of his own orderly university experience.

  “Well, that’s all there is to it,” she said lightly. “So now you can run along.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said now you can go home, Jim.”

  “But I still want to talk to you.”

  “Some other time then.”

  “But where?”

  “Well, I usually have breakfast in Honey Dew on Dominion Square at half past eight every morning,” she said dryly, for she couldn’t imagine him appearing at that hour to have breakfast with her.

  “I’ll see you then, Peggy.” He got up.

  “So long, Jim. Thanks for the drink.”

  “So long,” he said.

  On the way out he glanced at the band leader and the trumpet player. Wilson was eyeing him as he lifted his trumpet, his head swaying, the light catching the whites of his eyes and his pink knuckles. He looked like a sophisticated Negro who had worked in many cities and had known many white women who came to Negro cafés. McAlpine was sure that Peggy would bring out more than gentleness in him. That confident Negro would not be put off by the mere turning away of her head as he himself had been; not if his hand were on her breast. McAlpine detested him.

  Outside, it had begun to snow again, a reluctant continuation of the big fall, but without much wind, a thickening of the white blanket over the city. McAlpine stood at the doorway, hating to go; he felt a compulsion to wait, a bewildering sense of urgency that he should wait and not leave her alone in there. Finally he trudged up the street and through the subway underpass to Dorchester glowing with pink neon signs. At the corner he stood watching the snow ploughs. Two little ploughs like tanks scooted along the sidewalk, scraping it clean and pushing the snow to the side of the road where a big truck with a suction pipe sucked it in. The tanks darted around, the wind blew, and it was like watching an important military operation. Soon his shoulders were covered with snow. Then one of the tanks came charging at him and he had to jump out of the way, and the happy guy at the wheel shouted, “Go on home!” But he stood there, for the enchanting, peaceful pure whiteness of the snowbound city strengthened his faith in Peggy. And he didn’t even look up at that black barrier of the mountain. In the snowstorm he could hardly see it. He didn’t want to see it.

  NINE

  He had counted on sleeping late, but he awoke at seven as usual, with a violent headache. An icy wind from the window he had left open eighteen inches was billowing the curtains and freezing the room. Jumping out of bed, he slammed down the window and, trembling with the cold, crawled into bed and pulled the covers around his neck and waited for the warm bed and the sound of the piping radiator to take the chill out of his bones. Why did I give Peggy the impression I liked the winters? he asked himself. To hell with zero weather! I like the summer.

  But not beaches and summer cottages. When he had talked to Catherine about his family summer cottage and his boyhood he ought to have gone on and told her how he had found himself staying away from that Havelock beach. At sixteen he had refused to go any more to the summer cottage. He had withdrawn from that beach forever and had taken odd jobs instead, learning to like the sweltering heat of the city. In those hot months he also learned how to be alone. Catherine might not be able to understand it, but Peggy would agree it was important to be able to enjoy being alone. In the summer, with no one around whom he had to please or impress, he had found a happy summer loneliness which might puzzle Catherine, but which Peggy would understand. Yes, if Peggy could have been there with him in his apartment by the university! How easy it was to imagine her there, watching him as he got up late and went idly to the window to see if the day would be a scorcher, watching him as he went to the door to get the newspaper and waiting while he got his own breakfast and read the paper. She would walk with him in the sun’s glare when the heat from the hot pavement singed his ankles, and she would look so cool in her light summer dress that the corner barber, his friend, standing in front of his shop, would call out, “Jees, don’t she feel this heat at all?” And late at night when the apartment had cooled off and he stood by the open window getting ready to do some work, she would stand behind him listening to the night noises, and then the whole crowded restless city life would reach into the room to remind them they were together and no longer alone…

  But the rattle of the icy snow against the windowpane broke his reverie. It was winter. It was Montreal. And he was alone. He got out of bed and went to the window. The street below looked bleak. The temperature had dropped below zero. He could hear the squeaking of boots on the hard snow as pedestrians hurried along Sherbrooke, their heads down against the heavy wind. On such a morning a girl wearing only light rubbers and uncovered ankles could catch pneumonia. Even the poorest girl ought to have warm fleece-lined snow boots, he told himself.

  Going out for breakfast, he turned down toward Dominion Square and the Honey Dew Restaurant; after all, it would be just as convenient to have his breakfast there as any other place. His ears began to sting. He had to grab at his hat before it blew off. It was unbearably cold.

  The tidy little restaurant at that hour was almost deserted. At the table near the door was the old woman who was always there, an old woman with a benevolent motherly face who sat for hours in the morning and hours in the afternoon without even buying a cup of coffee. McAlpine could have described Peggy and asked if she had come in, but he had made the mistake once before of saying good morning to this woman. If you even looked at her, you were trapped, listening to the story of her kindly life. Her overflowing, possessive motherliness was oppressive. So he got his orange juice, cereal, bacon, and eggs, and listened to the soft, subdued, piped-in music. But it was hard to avoid the eyes of the motherly crone as he watched the door. And the longer he waited the more he thought about those snow boots, and the more he worried.

  A thin Englishwoman in a brown coat accompanied by two beautiful children, a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, both neatly dressed, came in; the mother, having seated the children near McAlpine, went up to the counter to place her order. These two English children had had an early appointment with the doctor. The little boy had in his hand one of the sticks a doctor uses to push down your tongue while he examines your throat. “Now open your mouth, that’s a good girl,” he said gravely to his solemn sister. When she had opened her mouth and he had pressed down her tongue, he
shook his head lugubriously. “You have a black mark on a tonsil way back there, Susie,” he said in his best doctor’s tone. “But not really?” Susie said. “Oh, yes, Susie, a big black mark!” he insisted. He was such a good little doctor that his sister was no longer certain they were only playing. Turning to McAlpine she asked anxiously, “But not really?” “Oh, no, Susie, not really,” McAlpine said gently.

  He had been asking himself why he should not go along to St. Catherine to Ogilvy’s, buy a pair of snow boots, and leave them at Peggy’s apartment. Now the motherly old woman smiled approvingly. “Everything is so real to a child, isn’t it?” she called. “I’m glad to see they’re well bundled up. Bitter weather, isn’t it?”

  But snow boots would cost ten or eleven dollars, and he owed his bill at the Ritz; he was running short of money. The fact that he couldn’t actually afford to buy the snow boots irritated him. To have to hesitate over such a trifling expenditure was intolerable. He folded his scarf around his neck, left the restaurant, and hurried up Peel and along St. Catherine to the department store with a fine brisk exuberant stride.

  In the shoe department, when the salesgirl asked him what size he wanted, he blushed and laughed, and the girl laughed. He inspected her foot. It was a nice little foot, too. He compared it in his mind with Peggy’s. He paid twelve dollars for the brown leather snow shoes and went out whistling on his way to Crescent Street.

  No one answered his knock on the basement door, and at the main entrance he had to ring three times before Mrs. Agnew, fumbling with the cords of her faded blue dressing gown, came to the door, her grey-streaked blonde hair falling over her eyes. “Yes, of course, you’re one of Miss Sanderson’s friends,” she said, and made him think Peggy had a regiment of assorted friends coming to the house. “I was sound asleep,” she explained, like an old friend. “Why don’t you step in out of the cold? I have a little congestion on the chest, you understand.”