They went along a badly lighted corridor to a door at the end. “Here’s where I live, and I like it, sir,” she said, with a little bow. “Enter.”
It was a small plain room with a window looking out on a back fence. A ridge of snow was on the fence. The room, like a monastic cell, had only a few sticks of furniture, an iron bed, a little shelf with an oil cloth curtain on which she kept some dishes, a small electric heater for light cooking, two ladder-backed chairs, and a worn thin rug on a painted floor. On the bare walls were yellow moisture stains. The whole room was bare, but not with a monastic spotless bareness; it was hardly tidy. As she picked up a magazine from the bed and put it with some books on a little side table, she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “How do you like it?” she asked, her mouth twitching.
“It’s like a jail cell,” he said. He looked so shocked that she couldn’t help smiling broadly. Knowing that she must earn a decent salary, he resented the room; she didn’t belong there.
“Take off your coat if you want to,” she said. When she had removed her own coat and rubbers she lay down on the bed, crossed her legs at the ankles, watched him with amusement as he fumbled with his scarf, and waited for him to ask himself, What in the world am I doing in this hole in the wall?
Like a doctor attending a patient, he sat down by the bed, and then he felt so awkward he got up and began to walk round the room.
“Why don’t you offer me some grapes?”
“Why, of course.”
“There’s a plate there on the shelf.”
“Nice-looking grapes,” he said, putting them on the plate and passing them to her.
“All right now. Why are you here?” she asked. “What’s your interest in me?”
“I don’t know,” he said simply.
“Please come and sit down. You bother me walking around so restlessly.”
“All right.” He sat down on the bed beside her. “And why have you let me come?”
“I like you,” she said. “I think you’re essentially kind-hearted and generous. Some people wouldn’t take the time to find it out.”
“And when did you find out?”
“That I liked you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, something you said last night.”
“That I said? When?”
“Talking about the digest I had in my pocket.”
“What did I say?”
“It was what you didn’t say.”
“All right. What didn’t I say?”
“You didn’t say, ‘nigger.’ You said ‘Negro.’”
SIX
“I wasn’t watching what I said.”
“In that case, so much the better.”
“Then – well, it’s not just Negro writing?”
“Writing is supposed to be about something.”
“I meant – you have some Negro friends?”
“Would it surprise you?”
“Around here? Yes,” he admitted.
There weren’t many Negroes in Montreal, and those who were there lived between St. Antoine and the railroad tracks, with Mountain Street the base of a triangle, and the apex cutting east across Peel. They were mainly porters and redcaps and busboys and entertainers. In their own small neighbourhood they took in one another’s washing and had three nightclubs and the French liked them; but they couldn’t live in the good hotels or go into the select bars and knew it. There was never any trouble.
“How have you managed to do it?” he asked.
“Have you ever been down to St. Antoine?”
“No.”
“It’s the Negro section, and there are some Negro nightclubs down there. And some fine people too. Ever heard of Elton Wagstaffe? He’s a band leader. And a good trumpet player named Ronnie Wilson? Ever heard of him?”
“No. But I haven’t had much of a chance, have I?”
“I guess not. Well, they’re wonderful musicians, anyway.”
“I’ll go down and hear them sometime,” he said.
She lay on the bed, her hands clasped behind her head, and he bent down over her and looked into her hazel eyes. Candid, gentle, and friendly, they appraised him without any embarrassment. She was relaxed, and yet he felt himself being drawn close to her. Her blonde hair and pretty face on the pillow invited his caress. She had a voluptuous, suggestive appeal which drew him down to her. He wanted to kiss her and hold her against him, and felt sure she would let him do it. He bent down to kiss her on the mouth, but when his lips came close she turned her head away slowly. It was her only gesture of resistance. He could have kissed her on the neck; instead, he tried to meet her eyes, wondering if he had been rebuffed by the denial of her mouth. While she lay there motionless he put his hand gently on her breast, cupping it, and it was small, round and firm, and then he caressed her neck, and he showed his liking for women and his ease with them in his light gentle touch. She kept her head turned. It was her only rebuke. But it became more than enough for him; it was the most effective rebuke of passive indifference he could imagine and made him wonder why he had believed she would welcome his caresses. Then their eyes met and he drew back and smiled.
“My mistake,” he said.
“It’s all right,” she said. “No harm’s done.”
“None at all,” he said. “But I don’t want you to think—”
“Think what?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I mean I have the greatest respect for you,” he said. “That’s all.”
“There’s a sweet streak in you, Jim,” she said. “Why don’t you give it a chance to develop? It’s all cluttered up, but it gets the best of you sometimes, doesn’t it?”
Easily, like that, she restored a pleasant intimacy.
“I wish I had known you when we were both kids,” he said.
“Why?”
“It would have been fun.”
“I don’t know as it would, Jim. You were probably a strait-laced, ambitious boy. I don’t think you would have liked me. Oh, no! Of course not. Why, you wouldn’t have liked me at all.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“For the same reason you disapprove of me now.”
“I don’t disapprove of you, Peggy.”
“Oh, yes, you do. Yes, you’d have been just like my father. He didn’t like my having Negro friends either.”
“You mean when you were a child you had Negro friends?”
“Of course I did.”
“I don’t see how,” he said, bewildered a little. “Where did you come from, Peggy?”
“A town in Ontario on Georgian Bay.”
“A town with a lot of Negroes? I don’t know any such town.”
“Oh, there was just one family.” She smiled to herself, remembering. “A family of six kids living in a funny three-storied roughcast house, narrow and high with a sloping roof, stuck in the middle of a field. The house got no shade in the summertime, and it was windswept in the winter, and there were big blotches on the roughcast walls where the plaster had fallen off. It also leaned a little like the Tower of Pisa, and I used to imagine that a strong wind would blow it down. Well, my father was the Methodist minister in that town.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Is that supposed to make something clear?”
“No. No. Go on, Peggy.”
“I can see now that my father in those days was a sincere man. But he was very eloquent, and you could tell even then that he was going to get along. This Negro family belonged to his church. I used to see a lot of the kids. You see, their mother did our washing. My own mother had died. I never really knew her. One Negro kid and then another would come to the house, and in a way I grew up being used to them. My father never said anything about them being coloured. Since I was the minister’s daughter, nobody ever said anything to me either. I think now I was always impressed that those children had such a happy-go-lucky time even though they were very poor. I suppose even their poverty became attractive.”
“Maybe you were a lonely
kid,” he said.
“Well, my father was pretty busy. But we had a house-keeper. Mrs. Mason.”
“And she had to raise you?”
“The devil she did. I couldn’t stand her pious face.”
“So you kept to yourself a lot?”
“I suppose it was lonely in the house. But I was happy.”
“Lonely or not, I think you would be happy.”
“It’s true. I always remember something that happened when I was about twelve. One day I went berry-picking all by myself. I walked down the dusty road that followed the curve of the bay and then I cut into the bush and picked raspberries until the pail was full. I came out to the edge of the woods and sat down to rest and watch the whitecaps on the water. I was about a mile beyond the outskirts of town. Then I saw someone a little way out in the water swimming. It was the Negro boy Jock, who was about thirteen. I don’t know where he picked up that Scotch name. Before I could call to him he came walking in. He didn’t see me sitting there, and maybe he was tired – I don’t know; but he lay down on the sand in the sun and stretched out on his back, and he had no clothes on, Jim. I was scared. I turned to dart back into the bushes before he could see me. If he saw me I thought I’d die of shame, and I did turn back and lie down on the sand, hiding behind a big rotten stump. I watched him, and my own feeling puzzled me. I had never seen a naked boy. The strange feeling creeping over me so slowly was like a sharp stab; it hurt me. I wanted to cry. I had never seen anything so beautiful as that boy’s brown body lying there in the sunlight. His hands were behind his head and the sun glistened on his wet shoulders and legs. I was aware for the first time that beauty could be painful in a strange way…
“Well, I waited there, and Jock, having rested, got up and pulled on his worn blue overalls and his faded blue sweater with the short sleeves and a big floppy straw hat with the brim down. He started off along the beach in his bare feet. Jock was always in his bare feet. I was too shy to hurry after him. I was afraid he would know I had been watching him. So I let him get a good distance away. I wanted him to think I was coming out of the woods. With my berry pail I began to follow him, keeping well back for about five minutes. Then I yelled, ‘Jock!’ and he waited for me. He took my heavy pail of berries and we began to walk home together.
“It was like walking along the road with my own brother except that he seemed more wonderful and more important because I had the secret knowledge that he was beautiful. We walked along that dusty gravel road, and he wasn’t used to carrying the pail and it broke his stride a little. Jock was usually so sure-footed he could walk anywhere in his bare feet, but he stubbed his big toe on a sharp jutting stone. The nail began to bleed. He had no handkerchief, so we sat down in the ditch and I bandaged up his funny big toe with my handkerchief. From then on we carried the pail between us the mile to our house. Then he asked me to come over to his house and have some fun. It was his little sister Sophie’s birthday.
“I had never been to a party where I really had fun. In that town I got invited to all the nice little parties because I was the minister’s daughter, but I never really had fun. In that tumble-down old roughcast house there was no important furniture and nothing valuable that could be damaged, and we just chased one another around the house screaming happily, and we sang, and Mrs. Johnson, a huge woman doing her washing, would call out to us, ‘Take it easy and don’t hurt yourself.’
“We had an orchestra; not that there were any instruments, but each kid could imitate some instrument with his voice and his hands. I was the only one who couldn’t do anything. I felt ashamed. They were trying to show me how to have fun and were sorry for me, and I forgot about the time. It was almost dark when I got home, and my father asked me where I had been. ‘Over at the Johnsons’ place,’ I said. ‘The Johnsons’ place,’ he said, looking startled. I remember the way he put down his evening paper and pondered. My father had tufts of hair over his ears, but the top of his head was bald. He had a firm nose, and sensible eyes. ‘The Johnsons’ place,’ he repeated, and then apparently he solved some little problem because that’s all he said. Later that evening I heard him talking to our housekeeper. ‘They’re God’s children just like you and me, Mrs. Mason,’ he said in that tone that always impressed me.
“All that year I went to parties at the Johnson house, and I think I was happier than I had ever been in my life. That boy, Jock, who was my own age, or his older brother, or the little ones couldn’t have been nicer to me. When I was thirteen I wanted a birthday party of my own. Oh, I wanted to have such a fine party. My father was willing to indulge me. One night he took out his fountain pen, got a sheet of paper, sat down at his desk and put on his horn-rimmed glasses. ‘Now whom do you want to invite?’ he asked me. ‘The Johnsons,’ I said. ‘The Johnsons? Oh, dear, Peggy, no!’ And he looked really pained. ‘Yes, the Johnsons, all of them, even the little ones,’ I insisted. ‘If the Johnsons can’t come I don’t want to have anybody.’
“He tried to reason with me; he told me that at a party the guests should all be friends, and the Johnsons would not feel at ease and happy among the other children and, of course, one should never do anything to make people feel uncomfortable. I kept shaking my head stubbornly as he walked up and down. I think I made him feel angry and ashamed. I think he felt guilty, too. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me and said loudly that all the factors had to be considered; his usefulness to his flock as a whole had to be considered. He tried to shake it into me. It didn’t mean anything.
“Well, the little white girls and boys were invited to my party, and I sat in the living room holding my hands tight together, hating their clean white shiny faces and loving the Johnsons all the more. I hardly spoke to any of them. I remember I went out to the kitchen and took a napkin and filled it with sandwiches. I cut the cake in half and wrapped it up in another napkin, and I fled. In my nice new blue birthday dress I fled along the road for three blocks to that bare field where the roughcast house stood, bursting into the Johnsons’ place and yelling it was my birthday. They all grabbed me and slapped me thirteen times. They took the food, and we sat down on the floor and I was happy.
“It was getting dark when old Mrs. Mason came to the Johnsons’ house, and I hated her. I hated the toss of her head, the tilt of her nose, the disgust in her eyes, the way she grabbed me by the hand in front of the Johnson kids, who looked frightened. Mrs. Mason marched me along the road. I remember we never spoke to each other. I remember the angry, outraged scowl on her face as we hurried along the road in the dusk.
“All the children had gone home. My father’s respectability was offended. ‘I’m sorry about the Johnsons, Peggy. It’s a very complicated thing and hard to explain,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want you to go to their house any more. No more parties with the Johnsons, or I’ll whip you. Understand?’
“‘No more parties, even at their place?’ I asked.
“‘You’re thirteen years old now, Peggy. You’re a little lady now, not a child. I know you’ll remember to be a little lady now, darling. Won’t you?’
“‘I don’t want to be a little lady,’ I said.
“I cried that night. I hated myself for growing older. I knew that the Johnsons, the coloured Johnsons, all the Johnsons of the world, were never to be among the invited guests wherever I went.”
She smiled sadly, not noticing how intently McAlpine had listened, not noticing the light in his eyes. “No matter how long I live,” she said, “I think I’ll always remember the way that old roughcast house leaned against the sky at night.”
“Of course you will,” McAlpine said, and he had a strange desire. He wanted to make her laugh like a happy child, for so far he had only seen her smile. He wanted to hear her laughter, to see her eyes full of mirth. He wanted to be witty and gay and amuse her. He began to talk with enthusiasm about his colleagues at the university; he made gestures, acting out the roles, and thought he was being very funny, and she did smile broadly once or twice. It grew da
rk outside. Doors opened and closed. There was a smell of cooking and the sound of feet on the stairs.
But gradually she became completely indifferent; she kept glancing at the cheap alarm clock on the shelf. Finally he could no longer hear his own words, he could hear nothing but the ticking of the noisy, tinny alarm clock telling him she wanted him to go.
“I’ve got someone calling for me, Jim,” she said at last. “There’s no point in you being here.”
“No, I guess not.” But he sat there.
“I have to wash up a little,” she said, and she frowned.
“Well, all right,” he said, sighing. “I’ll go.” But even at the door he talked on monotonously. He wanted to defend the room.
It was six o’clock and dark out and still snowing. He walked reluctantly down the street, feeling disturbed by what she had told him. Yet she had only tried to show him why she had certain sympathies. Her own life could be blameless. But was there another side to her nature suggested by her actions? Blamelessness could be carried too far – it could have dreadful consequences. When he had tried to kiss her, she had been blameless; she had merely turned her head away. But it could have been taken as a coy gesture. It could have provoked him to grab her and kiss her and go ahead. Her passive rejection had been a powerful rebuke to him, but would it stop another man? And if it didn’t would she lie there unresisting?
In the drugstore at the corner of Peel and St. Catherine he called Foley, who unfortunately was having dinner with an executive from the New York head office and going on with him to the hockey game but said he would see McAlpine around midnight at the Chalet. When he came out of the drugstore it was snowing harder and getting colder.
SEVEN
At midnight McAlpine came down Mountain Street, his chin buried in his coat collar, and turned in at the Chalet Restaurant. A big man standing outside the door blocked his way – a big baldheaded man in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up who was smoking a cigar as if it were a hot summer evening. His arms folded, he appraised McAlpine carefully.
The Loved and the Lost Page 5
