The Loved and the Lost

by Morley Callaghan

  “Well, how about coming down to my place for a drink?” Wolgast said, taking McAlpine by the arm.

  “I’ve a little work to do before dinner,” McAlpine said. “I’m going to the hockey game tonight.”

  “I’ll take a night off myself sometime and go with you,” Wolgast said. “Maybe you’ll be around later tonight with Foley, eh?”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “I’ll look for you. So long.”

  “So long.”

  He patted McAlpine on the shoulder, and went on his way down Peel, loafing along like a slow amiable man and leaving McAlpine on the corner still shaken by the power of the ominous anger he had felt in him.

  Wheeling sideways from the wind, McAlpine grabbed at his hat and hurried away, wanting to get to Peggy before Wolgast could do anything about her. But he didn’t know where she was. When he got to his hotel room he paced up and down. He couldn’t go to the hockey game with Catherine until he spoke to Peggy, even though he knew there was no use speaking to her. Glancing at his watch, he saw he would not have time to go out and eat. He stood at the window looking along Sherbrooke toward Catherine’s apartment house. And at last he picked up the telephone. Peggy was at home. “Maybe this won’t impress you much,” he said, and he told her about the conversation he had had with Wolgast.

  “Oh,” she said. He had to keep talking. “Oh, I understand,” she said finally. “Well, you can tell Wolgast something for me. He has a public license in that joint of his. Any time I go around there and behave quietly and the people with me also know how to behave, he has to serve me. You tell that to old Colonel Wolgast, or better still I’ll make it clear to him myself.”

  “But Peggy, don’t— Oh, hell, nothing I can say will make any difference, will it?”

  “No, but thanks, Jim. Thanks anyway.” And she hung up.

  TWENTY

  At the Forum the sustained roaring echoing along the streets compelled Catherine to take his arm and go plunging into the cavernous corridors and up the flights of stairs, half running with the other late stragglers. The fact that he had been late and had come offering apologies had made her feel important to him. All week she had been wanting him to ask her to forgive him for some breach in their intimacy which she couldn’t define; now she liked the way they were rushing up the stairs together. A fine blue homespun woollen scarf embroidered in pink and yellow trailed over the shoulder of her beaver coat. “Hey, not so fast! I’m out of breath,” she gasped.

  “Where were you this afternoon, Jim?” she asked, reaching for his hand at the turn.

  “Well,” he said, hesitating, “what time?”

  “About four o’clock, when I phoned.” They began to ascend the second flight of stairs.

  “Oh, I must have been downstairs having a drink,” he lied.

  That it should be necessary to lie shocked him and made him realize how false his relationship with her had become. And soon she would learn of his relationship with Peggy. Wolgast had walked in on him; it meant that word about him and Peggy had probably already got around, and soon Catherine would hear of it. Everybody would know about it. It was happening too soon. He and Peggy were not yet ready; they couldn’t as yet be truly together. They would be dragged into the open while everyone was against them. If word did get around to the Carvers and they rejected him and he lost his job, well, he could take it. If it had to happen – to hell with them – let it happen. He had made his choice. It would be all right if he had Peggy. As yet, though, he didn’t have her. Maybe he would never be able to count on her love. If that were so and he lost the Carvers and his job, and with his university post gone, too, he would be left with nothing. His life would be ruined. It frightened him, and his head began to sweat.

  Their seats opposite the Ranger blue line were in the centre of the section, and they had a little luck; as they started along the row, mumbling apologies, the Canadiens threatened the Ranger goal, everybody stood up and they got to their seats between a stout florid French Canadian in a brown overcoat who was eating a bag of peanuts and a short French Canadian priest with a pale bony face. The roaring came like waves rising, falling, breaking, and always in motion. “Oh, that Richard!” Catherine screamed, pounding McAlpine’s shoulder. “Who says he isn’t the best right winger in the business? Look at him go!” Then the play shifted to the Canadiens end, the lines were changed and the roaring subsided, with the background of gigantic humming always there. Behind them, three rows up, a fight broke out. A fair-haired boy in a leather jacket started swinging wildly at a prosperous-looking middle-aged man in a hard hat. They couldn’t reach each other and flailed the air. So the fair boy grabbed the brim of the prosperous citizen’s hard hat and jerked it down over his eyes. Everybody laughed.

  McAlpine remained standing, apparently waiting for the fight to break out again, but really gazing at the rows of grinning, exuberant faces. They would all be with Malone. They would all agree that Wolgast, too, no matter what he was, had really spoken for them.

  They were fairly prosperous people, for the very poor didn’t have the money to go to hockey games. Some of the men wore fur caps and coonskin coats; others, pink-faced and freshly shaven, wore hard hats; but most of them had on snap-brimmed fedoras. The women in their fur coats huddled happily together with their men, row on row, the rich men looking like rich men, and doctors and lawyers with their wives, and the merchants and the salaried workers and the prosperous union men. They came from all the districts around the mountain; they came from wealthy Westmount and solid respectable French Outremont and from the Jewish shops along St. Catherine, and of course a few Negroes from St. Antoine would be in the cheap seats. There they were, citizens of the second biggest French-speaking city in the world, their faces rising row on row, French faces, American faces, Canadian faces, Jewish faces, all yelling in a grand chorus; they had found a way of sitting together, yelling together, living together, too, and though Milton Rogers could shrug and say, “Our society stinks,” even he had his place in this House of All Nations, such as the one they had in Paris, and liked it. And Wolgast! Wolgast, their bouncer, would whisper as he grabbed Peggy to throw her out, “You goddamned amateur. Don’t give me that tenderness and goodness routine. Our cheapest whores have lost of that stuff to throw around, too.”

  “Look! Look!” Catherine screamed, tugging at his arm. The sea of faces rose around him, and it was rising around Peggy, too; the waves washed over both of them.

  “Hey, you in the hat! Sit down, you bum,” somebody shouted at him.

  “Sit down or go home!”

  “Jim, Jim,” Catherine said. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Hit him on the head! Sit down! You’re a better door than a window!”

  “Hey, you! Get out of the way!”

  “For heaven’s sake, Jim,” Catherine called, grabbing at his arm. As he sat down she screamed, “Oh, look, look, look!”

  A beautiful passing play had been set in motion by the Canadien goalie. Blocking a shot, he passed the puck to a defenceman on the right who sent a long pass across the ice to a forward who raced up into position, circled and feinted his check out of position, then shot another long pass forward across the ice to a wing coming up fast from behind the blue line. The wing trapped it neatly, swerved in on the defence, shifted to the right, then back-handed a pass to the trailing Canadiens centre coming in fast on the defence, now split wide open. He faked his shot to the lower right corner; the goalie sprawled for it, did the splits, and the centre calmly lifted the puck over his prone body.

  “They score! They score!” Catherine cried ecstatically. “Oh, it was beautiful, Jim, wasn’t it? What a pretty pattern! It’s just like the ballet, isn’t it?”

  In the din his answer couldn’t be heard. The florid man with the bag of peanuts sitting beside McAlpine, leaping to his feet, emptied the bag on McAlpine’s coat, then slapped him on the back and hugged him, and the French Canadian priest, both hands raised in rapture, burst into eloquent Fren
ch. Everybody was filled with a fine laughing happiness. But McAlpine, staring at the ice in a dream, thought, “Yes, Catherine’s right. A beautiful pattern. Anything that breaks the pattern is bad. And Peggy breaks up the pattern.”

  The siren sounded, and they crowded out into the crush of people seeking hot dogs and coffee. Soon they were all jammed together, shoulder to shoulder, swaying back and forth, unable to get near the coffee counter. Catherine saw two of her Junior League friends and she called to them. McAlpine found himself thrust chest to chest against the thin bony-faced French Canadian priest who had been sitting near him. The priest, who came only up to his shoulder, wore his hat square on the top of his head. His elbow was digging hard into McAlpine’s ribs.

  “Nice game,” he said politely with a slight accent.

  “Not bad.”

  “But the way the game is played these days, I don’t like it. No?”

  “It’s skate, skate, skate,” McAlpine agreed. “A long pass, and skate into position.”

  “Like watching moves on a checkerboard. No?”

  “That’s true,” McAlpine said. The priest had a homely, intelligent face. Surely he was the one man who at least would have a professional interest in an amateur like Peggy. It would be good to talk to him and get his professional understanding and not feel so completely alone. But no! In the end he would line up with his flock and Wolgast. “When I was a kid they had those beautiful short passing combination plays. It used to look wonderful.”

  “It’s a different game today,” the priest agreed. “It’s still all combination. But some of them can’t hold on to the puck.”

  “That Richard can at least do that.”

  “From the blue line in. Yes.”

  “With great drive,” McAlpine said. He was certain the priest would be against them, too. Sure! Get her into a confessional with him: “I confess to the Almighty God and to thee, father. I confess to having no sense of discrimination. I confess to not keeping my love for the right ones. I confess to bringing out the worst in people and turning one man against another. Why do I bring no peace to anybody, father?”…“My dear child, it’s complicated. You must not be a nuisance. Guard yourself against the opinion that those who stand for law and order are always at war with those who stand for – well, this uncontrolled tenderness and goodness of yours. Examine it carefully, my dear child, in the light of the greater harmony. St. Augustine would say—”

  “It’s the coldest night of the year,” the priest said vaguely, feeling he no longer had McAlpine’s interest.

  “How cold can it get around here?” McAlpine asked. And then the siren sounded, ending the intermission, and Catherine, who had been pushed four feet away from him, called, “This way Jim,” and they went back to their seats.

  In the corner to the left of the Canadiens goal a Ranger forward was blocked out and held against the boards by a Canadiens defenceman, who cleared the puck up the ice. The Ranger forward, skating past the defenceman, turned and slashed at him, breaking the stick across his shoulder. The official didn’t see it. The play was at the other end of the ice. The defenceman who had been slashed spun around crazily on his skates, dropped to his knees, and circled around holding his neck. The crowd screamed. The other Canadiens defenceman, dropping his stick and gloves, charged at the Ranger forward and started swinging. The Ranger forward backed away, his stick up, trying to protect himself. The official, stopping the play, made frantic motions at the fist-swinging defence man, waving him off the ice. Another Ranger forward came out of nowhere and dived at the defence man and tackled him; then all the players converged on one another, each one picking an opponent in the widening huddle, fists swinging, gloves and sticks littering the ice. Some of the players fenced with their sticks. The crowd howled in glee. The referee finally separated the players and handed out penalties. He gave a major penalty to the Canadiens defence-man who had first dropped his stick to attack the Ranger forward who had really precipitated the brawl; he gave a minor to the Ranger who had dived at this defenceman and tackled him. And the forward who had broken his stick over the defence-man’s shoulder, the instigator, the real culprit, was permitted to escape. He skated around lazily, an indifferent innocent.

  “What about him?” the priest asked Catherine as he pointed at the Ranger. “Yes, what about him? Look at the fake innocence,” Catherine cried. She thrust out her arm accusingly. Ten thousand others stood up, pointed and screamed indignantly, “Hey, what about him? Why don’t you give him a penalty?” The Ranger skated nonchalantly to the bench to get a new stick. His air of innocence was infuriating, yet the referee, the blind fool, was deceived by it. The players on the Canadiens bench, all standing up, slapped their sticks on the boards, screamed at the referee, and pointed. The referee, his hands on his hips, went right on ignoring the angry booing. He proposed to face off the puck.

  “Boo-boo-boo-boo!” Catherine yelled, her handsome face twisted, her eyes glazed with indignation. “He’s letting him go scot-free. The one who started the whole thing.”

  The stout French Canadiens, who had been standing up shouting imprecations in bewilderingly rapid French, suddenly broke into English. Twelve thousand people were also screaming, but by shifting to English he imagined he would get the referee to listen to him. His jaw trembled, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, he was ready to weep; then his face became red and swollen, and he cried out passionately, “Blind man! Idiot! All night you are a blind man! A thief, a cheat! You’re despicable – go on back home, go out and die! I spit on you!” He cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a gigantic moan.

  The ice was now a small white space at the bottom of a great black pit where sacrificial figures writhed, and on the vast slopes of the pit a maniacal white-faced mob shrieked at the one with the innocent air who had broken the rules, and the one who tolerated the offence. It was a yapping frenzied roaring. Short and choppy above the sound of horns, whistles, and bells, the stout French Canadian pounded McAlpine’s shoulder; he jumped up on his own seat, he reached down and tore off his rubbers and hurled them at the ice. A shower of rubbers came from all sections of the arena and littered the ice as the players ducked and backed away. Hats sailed in wide arcs above the ice and floated down.

  “They’ve all gone crazy,” McAlpine muttered to Catherine. “Just a crazy howling mob.” Their fury shocked him. Only a few moments ago he had imagined himself and Peggy facing the hostility of these people. Aside from the rule book, that player was guilty, he thought. I’m sure Peggy’s innocent. That’s the difference.

  Someone in the row behind grabbed at McAlpine’s hat and sent it sailing over the ice. His hands went up to his bare head and he whirled around belligerently.

  “Jim, Jim, what’s the matter with you?” Catherine cried, and she laughed.

  “What’s the matter with me?” he asked indignantly.

  “Nobody’s got anything against you, Jim. They way you’re going on you’d think you were rooting for the visiting team. Aren’t you with us?”

  “What? Why do you say that?”

  “Why quarrel with the home crowd?”

  “I’m not,” he muttered. “It was my hat. What am I going to do for a hat?”

  “Oh, what’s a hat at a time like this? Maybe you can get it afterwards. Ah, look,” she cried, pointing at the referee, who was skating toward the Ranger bench to have a conversation with the coach. “Now we’ll see.” The coach beckoned to the fugitive, who came over to the bench, and the referee, tapping him on the shoulder, raising his arm dramatically, pointed to the penalty bench. But only a two-minute penalty, mind you! Oh, the fantastic ineptitude of the authorities! The pitiful mockery of justice! But everybody was pacified, and the boys with the snow ploughs came out to clean the debris from the ice.

  The game was played out with the Canadiens keeping their lead and winning by two goals. McAlpine made little jokes about recovering his hat. On the way out he agreed with Catherine he would have no chance of finding the hat a
nd he might as well forget about it. They had the good luck to get a taxi at the stand across the street.

  In the taxi, with the excitement of the game all gone, they were really facing each other for the first time since McAlpine had acknowledged to himself the falseness of their relationship. Now he accepted with relief the fact that he might soon be revealed to her in a fantastic light. Well, to hell with them all!

  TWENTY-ONE

  Sitting beside McAlpine, she felt their separation in his silence. Even if she talked about each step he would take in his career and dazzled him with predictions of success, it would not bring him back to her. Something had happened. Something he concealed from her. What had really happened to him? Who had been taking him so steadily away from her? He had been taken, because it seemed to her he had found nothing wrong with her. And nothing was the matter with her. When she woke up in the morning everything was in its place – her clothes, her food, her furniture, the maid’s soft respectful voice, and the telephone calls coming from her friends. When she attended a Junior League meeting and spoke in her firm cultivated voice, she knew by the envious faces of her friends that there was nothing much the matter with her. Her sense of style, the way she wore her clothes, her laugh, the way McAlpine in the beginning had shown his eagerness to have her love – it all added up to the same thing. Night after night now, when she left him she would undress and sit by her window looking out at the street; and she would know someone was taking him from her.

  She would be alone in her room. It would snow. And she would sit by the window wondering where McAlpine had gone and with whom, and then she would be reminded of one lost thing after another. She would remember how, when she was a little girl, her mother had wanted her to study ballet and she had refused, and ten years later when she had wanted to be a ballet dancer they had told her she had lost her opportunity; she was a little too old. One lost triumph after another, all trivial and irrelevant, would float in her mind; the time when she had bought a brown suit for a tea party and three other girls at the party had worn brown suits and so, of course, no one could notice hers; and the boys she had once quarrelled with, whose affections she had lost; and her mother, who had died young.