Smoke curling up from the cigarette on the ashtray at Jackson’s elbow made him blink his eyes; he kept on blinking at McAlpine. “Yeah, you get it all right,” he said.
Clenching his fists McAlpine felt his whole body tightening up, and he was afraid of the force of his own inexplicable hostility.
“I seem to bother Mr. Jackson,” he said to Foley.
“I think you have a point there, Jim,” Foley agreed. “Something about you bothers the guy.”
“Nothing about him bothers me,” Jackson said. “I was making an intellectual point – about his generation. Guys like him in colleges in his time chased around reading about the lost ones. All crap. If you’d ever get down and rub your face and hands in the mud—”
“The mud?”
“Yeah, the mud.” His little red beard wagged fiercely; his pale cheeks and his vehemence were comical. Foley smiled broadly and winked at Wolgast, who polished the bar and listened with a knowing grin, speculating on what McAlpine would do when sufficiently insulted.
A waiter entered and gave an order to Wolgast. “Who for?” he asked.
“Tom Loney,” the waiter said.
“Tell Loney to come and speak to me,” Wolgast said, still watching McAlpine. “I don’t mind carrying Loney on the cuff, but last night he insulted me. I don’t like to be insulted.”
“Say, Henry,” Foley said, with mock earnestness.
“What?”
“You’d better admit it.”
“Admit what?”
“You didn’t write the Shaw plays, Henry.”
“Leave Shaw out of this.”
“No Shaw then. Go on.”
“I don’t take professors seriously.”
“Neither did Shaw,” McAlpine said, smiling.
“Are you trying to needle me, McAlpine?”
“Take it easy, Henry,” Foley kidded him. “He’s only saying you didn’t write Saint Joan. Shaw did.”
“Don’t try and needle me about Shaw or Saint Joan. Your friend couldn’t even understand a girl like Joan.”
“‘A girl like Joan,’” McAlpine repeated, and then it struck him: Does he really mean I don’t understand a girl like Peggy? He quickened, and leaned forward, waiting to see what Jackson had meant. He waited jealously for Jackson to reveal that he, being close to Peggy, was aware that she, like Joan, lived and acted by her own secret intuitions. Joan had shattered her world, and Peggy shattered people, too. Not only Malone, but Mrs. Murdock; even Foley. She would shatter all the people who lived on the mountain and the people who prayed on the mountain. Joan had to die, he thought with a sharp pang, simply because she was what she was. And there had been terror in Peggy’s face as Malone’s hand reached out for her; she had sensed that there were many others like Malone, who would destroy her. His intent stare only puzzled Jackson, who glanced questioningly at Foley. It was plain he hadn’t intended the comparison, and McAlpine was relieved. He felt sorry for Jackson. “You’d rather talk nonsense about generations, wouldn’t you?” he asked in a bored tone.
“I see,” Henry Jackson said in a whisper. “I ought to sock you.”
“Don’t overmatch yourself, Henry,” Foley said.
“No,” Jackson whispered. “I won’t.” Turning to Foley he begged silently for some help, not because he was afraid but because he had been seeking a humiliation and now it had come.
The distress in his eyes worried McAlpine. “Look, Henry,” he said. “We’re not really talking about your generation or mine, are we?”
“No,” he whispered.
“Nor about Shaw.”
“No.”
“Nor any of that stuff.”
“I know.”
“So do I,” McAlpine said. “Have a drink with us, will you, Henry?”
“I don’t know why I insult you,” Jackson said. “I don’t feel good, and I got talking.”
“A drink for Henry,” McAlpine called, and Wolgast brought them drinks.
For the next few embarrassed moments Foley made it easier by switching the conversation to last night’s hockey game, and Henry Jackson was able to finish his drink, say he had an appointment, shake hands with elaborate politeness, and leave without a glance at Malone and Gagnon, who were coming toward the table. Malone disregarded McAlpine’s hostile aloofness. He had a twisted, cynical, understanding smile, and McAlpine hated him.
“Mr. McAlpine,” Wolgast said, “I want you to understand that Henry is not always a jerk. I heard him talking to Malone and Gagnon. He has his own little problem. It’s that girl of his. You know her.”
“I know her.”
“I think Henry is now on his way to break her neck.”
“Oh!”
“Yes. You see, Mr. McAlpine,” Wolgast said tolerantly, “the girl is a nigger lover. I knew it the other day. Saw her myself going along Dorchester with a jig.”
“That’s not news to Henry,” Foley protested.
“Mr. McAlpine, You’re a friend of Chuck’s and, so to speak, a friend of the house.” Wolgast glanced at Malone and Gagnon. “You see, Henry just had a fight with her and she called him a ‘white bastard.’”
“Very comical,” Gagnon said sourly. “Little Henry, so very proud of being tolerant and understanding.”
“If it’s so comical, why don’t you laugh?” Foley asked.
“I’m laughing.”
“I don’t hear you.”
“I don’t laugh out loud at myself.”
“Oh, Peggy and you – too?”
“I once toyed with the idea of going to bed with her, yes. A good dinner, much sympathetic intellectual discussion – I do it well. For her to call Henry a white bastard – well, it offends me,” he said angrily.
Gagnon was not one of those French Canadians who had a fanatical pride in race. He had lost his influence with prominent French Canadians after he had permitted his brilliant cartoons, always satirical about French Canadian life, to be printed in a New York magazine. His compatriots said he had mocked his own people for the edification of strangers who wanted to see them as Gagnon drew them. So his indignation astonished them all. “I know what she implies when she calls Henry a white bastard,” he went on scornfully. “The remark implies a sympathy with the oppressed. Racial sympathy! From her? As you say, ‘boloney.’ I fell for it. It seemed to be the way to her bed, I admit, but I talked about the low wages of the French Canadian industrial workers. Ah, that little toss of her head! My compatriots can look after themselves. She likes dark meat. We’re not dark meat,” he said, sounding vindictive. “Why didn’t Henry ask me to go with him? I could hold her while he booted her in the pants.”
“All you mean is that she brushed you off,” Foley said cynically. Then he turned to Wolgast. “Wolgast, why does a girl like that go for jigs?”
“Why? Well, I think I can tell you,” Wolgast said, his cigar ash falling on Malone’s shoulder.
The others leaned close to Wolgast with profound respect, and McAlpine waited, pale and desolate. He wanted to go; but to strut out with an air of offended dignity would be to cheapen her. Nothing they could say could destroy his faith in her, and it was like the night when he had been in the Café St. Antoine talking with Elton Wagstaffe and he had known he was called upon to be always with her, even while she was being viciously misunderstood.
“Go on, Wolgast,” he said quietly.
“Why does a girl like that become a nigger lover?” Wolgast began, with a beautiful expression of philosophical detachment. “To get at the main reason, as Gagnon says, you’ve got to know a little about the girl. But when you get to know her you’ll find she’s always wanted to be in the spotlight and has never been able to make the grade. What’s that big two-dollar word I’m looking for, Chuck?”
“‘Frustrated’?”
“Frustrated, that’s it. Who’s got a match?”
“Here,” Gagnon said, lighting his cigar.
“She’s the little girl who wants to sing when nobody will listen to her, the
piano player everybody walks out on. Hell, you guys have been around here, you’ve met some awful earbenders, haven’t you? Why, the poor guys will start saying anything just to get hold of somebody’s ear. A little attention, see? We all want this attention. I don’t think any of us get enough attention. And it makes those little girls I’m talking about get desperate. They’ll do any god-damned crazy thing to make them seem a little different. Well, the ones that go for the coons are showboating in a big way. Everybody turns and looks at them. Everybody talks about them. It’s like travelling with a brass band. You should agree with me, Mr. McAlpine. You’re a historian.”
“Better than that, he’s about the only white guy Peggy bothers seeing these days,” Malone said slyly.
“Oh, they went to college together,” Foley said, brushing him off.
“Just the same, now that Henry has gone, I will move in,” Malone said. “I will lay her.”
“You’re a fool,” McAlpine said.
“I want to know if McAlpine agrees with me,” Wolgast insisted. “I have just made a speech. I have asked his opinion. He’s a scholar.”
“Well, I don’t agree with you, Wolgast.” McAlpine longed to be able to throw a cloak of splendid protective words around her. “I think you all make one little mistake. If she were merely fascinated by Negroes – an exotic taste, yes – that would be a kind of perversion. But supposing she is interested in them only as human beings she has come to know and like – as she might be interested in you or me? If I were a Negro and I liked her it would hurt me to know that I couldn’t have her friendship because I was coloured. I know this, too,” he said, toying with his glass, “if I had some Negro friends and liked them as one human being likes another I think they’d get into the habit of talking frankly in my presence, and I’d hear them talking about little incidents of discrimination going on all over the country in restaurants and trains and hotels. A lot of them are porters and they have these stories of one humiliation after another. Well, if they were friends of mine and I liked and respected them I’d feel ashamed. As a human being, I’d be apologetic. I might sometimes feel contempt for my own race if I had any sense of justice. If I were young and ardent I’d feel guilty and perhaps overly sympathetic. What she’s doing around here may be imprudent and impossible. You might all agree that it’s simply an adventure. But with her I’m sure it’s a noble adventure.”
He had spoken with such dignity and good faith they were all embarrassed.
“He makes speeches like music,” Gagnon said finally. “Beautiful speeches in a pleasant tone. The right kind of music for Peggy. You follow me? There she is, lost in the dark underworld. Montreal’s Plutonian shore. Like Eurydice. Remember the lady? Remember? How did Eurydice die?”
“Bitten by a snake,” Foley said.
“And certainly our little Peggy has been badly bitten.”
“So McAlpine becomes her Orpheus.”
“Ah, yes, there you are. Her Orpheus.”
“Orpheus McAlpine!”
They were all alert, watching him. He called for a round of drinks, but when the drinks came and their attention was diverted he wondered why Jackson had resented him so much. He felt restless. “Sorry, Chuck,” he said, patting him on the shoulder, “I have an appointment,” and he left them. But he stopped just outside the door, waiting; and of course it came: the burst of derisive laughter.
A gust of wind sprayed snow from the roof onto his face and he had to take out his handkerchief and wipe his eyes. He strode up the street, looking up only once at the barrier of the mountain. It was there, of course; it was always there. On St. Catherine, where he slowed down, the moonlight glinted on the steeple of the stone church at the corner of Bishop, and the steeple was a white snow cone thrust against the night sky. All he could think of was that Peggy had got rid of Jackson. He remembered the intimate moments in her room and hoped she might have quarrelled with Jackson over him. That would explain why Jackson had been so resentful.
He turned up Crescent; he looked along the alley to see if there was a reflection of light on the back fence from her window. At that angle it was hard to decide. Going in, he tapped apprehensively on her door. At first there was no answer; and the door, for the first time, was locked. Again he tapped, and then she called, “Who is it?”
Sighing with relief, he said softly, “It’s Jim. It’s not late, Peggy.”
A light appeared at the crack under the door and it just touched the toes of his galoshes. She opened the door and stood there in a light blue silk kimono around her white nightgown. She had a black eye.
SEVENTEEN
“Your eye! What happened to your eye, Peggy?”
“It’s nothing. What do you want, Jim? I was in bed,” she said impatiently.
“What happened to your eye?” he asked, raising his voice as he pushed his way in and closed the door. She was in her bare feet, which were so surprisingly small that he couldn’t take his eyes off them. “You’re in your bare feet,” he said. “The floor’s cold. Where are your slippers?”
“Here.” She went to the bed and put them on. “You don’t have to worry about my eye,” she said, watching him take off his coat.
“Somebody should. What happened?”
“I was having a drink with Henry. And I had a little disagreement with him, and he got pretty sore. Well, he punched me.” Her eyes were bright, vindictive, and hard. “It was something I said to him,” she added tentatively, waiting for him to ask what she had said.
But he didn’t ask. Instead he put his hands gently on her head and turned her face to the light. “It’ll be all blue tomorrow,” he said. “It’s closing now. What did you do for it? I think I’d better put some cold compresses on it.”
He got a face cloth from her dresser and marched resolutely along the hall to the bathroom to soak the cloth in cold water. Against the bathroom window lay the shadow of an icicle. Opening the window he knocked it off and broke it into lumps which he wrapped up in the face cloth, and then he returned to the room where she waited, sitting cross-legged on the bed, smiling to herself.
“All right, put your head back on the pillow,” he said. And when she lay back he tried to tell her all the secrets of his heart in the way his fingers touched her cheeks, touching her with a gentle reverence that made her smile. He caressed her head and stroked her hair. All his motions were full of tender concern. And gradually the bruised and swollen eye emerged in a fantastic contrast with her other eye and her dainty fair head and tranquil body. The bruise was a mark of wildness on her; it was a glimpse of a strange mixture of peace and wildness, and his heart began to swell and he stared at the shadow under her chin and the shadow between her breasts. Then he trembled and looked again at the bruise and he put his hands on her head and he held her and kissed her. His right hand slid down boldly under her nightgown, and cupped her breast, and when she squirmed they were both lost in a pulling, tearing ecstasy, trying to hold each other in some embrace that eluded them.
He whispered, and she answered him in a savage whisper, neither hearing what the other said. Then her soft little body was convulsed. He couldn’t hold on to it, and she slid away from him and off the bed where she stood facing him, trembling.
“No! I say, no! Don’t, Jim. Don’t,” she said doggedly. She backed over against the dresser. On the wall behind her was the drawing he had done of her – “Peggy the Crimper.”
There were two red spots on her cheeks, his finger marks on her shoulder, and a flush mounted from her neck while she held her kimono tight across her breasts. He took a slow step toward her, his eyes on the clenched fist holding the kimono, waiting for the fingers to open, the arm to drop, the sudden agitated yielding. And his hand went out, thinking she needed only to feel the compulsion of his own desire in order to believe she had been persuaded against her will and so could do what she wanted to do.
“I love you, Peggy,” he whispered. “I’ve loved you all the time. I have to be with you, darling. Don’t fight aga
inst me. Let it be easy, darling.”
“Oh, stop it!” she cried, wheeling away in anger from his outstretched hand, and he thought she was going to hit him. “If I wanted to let you touch me I would. What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see I don’t want it?”
“Oh!” he said, feeling stupid. “I thought—” he began, stammering awkwardly.
“I don’t care what you thought.”
“I got it wrong. I can see I got it wrong,” he said. His humiliation blinded him to the meaning of her anger. He did not realize that his kindness and love had broken through the passive indifference she had shown that day when he had tried to kiss her, and that now she had to resist and struggle not only against him, but against herself. He knew he had hurt her, but he did not see that he had done it by arousing her own desire. He did not see that, if she yielded, she yielded also to him her view of her life and of herself. He was also too bewildered to realize that she was now afraid of his gentle concern and his passion, and that it tormented her more now than any pressure all the others could bring to bear against her.
“I apologize,” he said, feeling miserable.
“Oh, all right, all right,” she said grudgingly. “I like you. Like being with you. You’re sort of there to rely on. I do rely on you. You’re clumsy, but gentle. Only it doesn’t mean that…”
“I know,” he said. The little motions he made, fumbling with his tie, adjusting his coat, reminded him of his unattractive love making and he blushed. If only she weren’t watching him fumbling with his coat! Then there flashed into his mind a picture of Henry Jackson and the faces of Wolgast’s grinning clients; he heard their jeering laughter: “You see, you’re not dark meat.” And the cords in his throat tightened and his head began to sweat, but in his heart came one pathetic cry. Why couldn’t she be a virgin? Virginity would be so becoming to her.
“I talked to Henry Jackson,” he said, trying to smile.
“Oh!”
“He talked as if you were his girl.”
“Well—”
“As if you had been in love with him.”
“Henry has to feel someone is in love with him.”
The Loved and the Lost Page 15
