All the lost things of her life would fill her thoughts on those nights when it snowed and she sat by the window wondering if McAlpine had really gone back to his hotel after leaving her, and if he would dream of having her in the bed beside him. Or if, instead, he would be meeting Foley somewhere, more likely than not in that awful Chalet Restaurant, which was open all night, where he would sit around in the company of alcoholics who wanted to get rid of their women. Or maybe they would tease him about having been with her. She would be talked about. How unbearable it was to be talked about! But how much more unbearable that he should persist in having a place in his life where she could not enter, a low-brow drinking place for men which represented, no doubt, a taste he had picked up in the war. She longed to sweep it out of his life, but as yet she couldn’t; and yet any fool could see that she and her friends could do more for him in one hour than such a low-brow crew could do in six years. In her own bed, watching the shadowed corners of the room, she would twist and turn and assure herself that the only thing wrong with her was that she didn’t have enough to do. She could join a dramatic group, she could study interior decorating, or found a political study club, and yet really be working for Jim. And even now in the taxicab, why couldn’t he see that she only wanted to help him in the smallest details of his life, and that if she couldn’t she was lonely and that her cool Carver style only concealed her loneliness? She longed to feel his arm come around her.
“I’m hungry,” she said in that hearty clear tone she couldn’t help using. “I’d like some seafood. I know a place on Dorchester. No décor, Jim, but it serves the best lobster Thermidor in town.”
It turned out to be a barren little room. A draft came from the swinging doors every time they were opened, and they had to eat with their coats on. And the lobster Thermidor wasn’t remarkable, either.
“Nothing is right for us these days, eh, Jim?” Catherine asked pointedly. But McAlpine laughed. In such weather nothing was right for anybody, he said; and with that remark he fled from intimacy with her, and she knew it and frowned and watched his eyes. There were no tablecloths on the tables. The cutlery was like kitchenware. But the cheque would be solid and substantial, and he would resent it, thinking of his bill at the Ritz.
“Jim, what is it?”
“What?”
“I don’t know. You’re not really with me, are you? Where were you at the hockey game?”
“Sitting beside you,” he said, trying to laugh.
“No. Your thoughts. In your thoughts where were you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I can tell by your eyes. I can always tell, Jim. They’re always looking over my shoulder, and you’re not really listening.”
“Oh, come now! That’s nonsense.”
“Well, right now, for example.”
“I was thinking of a horse.”
“A horse? Whose horse?”
“Wolgast’s,” he said, with a little smile. “Wolgast’s white horse.”
“Wolgast? That mug. Is he your bookie now?”
“No. But there was a white horse once he wanted to own.”
“If he owned a horse it would soon be ruled off the track. Every race would be fixed.”
“No, it wasn’t a race horse. Just a white horse that took him places.”
“Who cares where Wolgast goes?”
“I mean it had just struck me that there’s a white horse for everybody. Call it possessions – security – a dream… There’s such a horse for your father – one for me – the guy, the girl next door.”
“So?”
“So, it’s bad if someone takes your horse.”
“And that’s why they used to shoot horse thieves,” she said lightly. “You’re downright strange tonight, Jim.”
“The chances are,” he said half seriously, feeling his way, “I might always seem like a stranger to you, Catherine.”
“And you and I might never really meet,” she said quietly. And she remembered that night at the Murdock party when he had said they could always be good comrades; a fine intellectual friendship; the pain she had felt at those humiliating words! And now, whether he complained about the lobster Thermidor or the icy draft from the door, he tried to withdraw from her still further. She ached with desire to possess his secret so she could deal with it – so she could struggle fiercely against whoever it was that had taken him from her. But not to know who was defeating her was to be shut out of his life completely and to have the emptiness in her mind and heart deepened and the intolerable anguish made more intolerable because she had to hide it.
Going out, they crossed the road, ploughing through the snow, wheeling helplessly against the mountain wind and waving at taxis sweeping by. The wind moaning and the air heavy with unbearable cold forced them to hang on to each other, weaving along the sidewalk. It was twenty below. McAlpine never wore heavy underwear, and Catherine had on her nylon stockings; they huddled together and became one form. And while they held on to each other for warmth the tension between them became a vast unbearable irritation, and finally Catherine suggested that they duck into the old Ford Hotel. They hurried into the warmth of the lobby and smiled with relief at being able to let go of each other.
They waited by the door, watching for a taxi bringing passengers to the hotel. It was really no trouble at all. In five minutes they were at the Château. Catherine insisted he come in and get a hat. Her father appeared in a blue polka-dot dressing gown and chuckled and produced a black Homburg of his own. It was the right size, too. He said, “The men in the black Homburgs can all wear each other’s hat. Keep it, my boy.” They had a few stirrup cups because it was so cold out. McAlpine had four stiff drinks from a bottle of Dewar’s, two for each block on the way to the hotel. He left wearing Mr. Carver’s hat.
On the street he felt warm and exhilarated. But he was afraid he might go down Crescent Street and humiliate himself if Peggy had company, so he entered the Ritz lobby and telephoned the Chalet and asked if Foley was there. Of course Foley was there, and he explained to him that he didn’t want to see Wolgast, and Foley offered to meet him in the Chicken Coop on St. Catherines and have some coffee.
It was extraordinary how warm and exhilarated he felt in the cold air on the way down to St. Catherine. And there was Foley waiting in the Chicken Coop with Commander Stevens, and they seemed to be exhilarated, too. They sat down and ordered chicken pies, and a coffee for McAlpine, who was grinning brightly.
“You didn’t notice my new hat,” he said. The restaurant warmth had hit him; it was the warmth and not Mr. Carver’s excellent whisky, he was sure, and he said, “Excuse me,” and got up to go downstairs to the washroom. The stairs were steep, yet he didn’t fall. It was incredible how easily he got down the stairs and locked himself in the washroom. But he couldn’t vomit; he could only sit there in deep meditation. Someone shook the door angrily. Finally he opened the door and stepped out and bowed to a pale-faced stranger supported by a powerful sailor who eased him gently into the chamber and glared at McAlpine.
McAlpine looked at the flight of stairs and knew he could never climb them, and so he leaned against the wash basin and waited and smiled thinly at the hostile sailor.
In five minutes Foley came hurrying down the stairs. “What’s the matter, Jim? The waiter brought our chicken pies,”
“I still think I should go in there,” McAlpine said, nodding at the privy.
“Then go in,” Foley said, and he rattled the handle of the door.
“Just a minute, friend,” said the sailor, the companion of the pale-faced incumbent. “Someone’s in there.”
“Well, my friend here has to go in there.” Foley said, shaking the door irritably.
“Well, I’ve got a friend in there.”
“My friend’s not going to stand around here all night,” Foley said angrily. “Tell you friend to get the hell out.”
“Tell your friend to take his time,” the sailor said.
“T
he hell you say! Your friend’s certainly taking his time.”
Foley and the sailor bristled and glared and elbowed each other belligerently. Foley wanted to fight. But McAlpine tugged weakly at his arm.
“I’ve been in there, Chuck,” he whispered. “It didn’t do any good. I’m just waiting here till I can climb the stairs. Don’t let your chicken pie get cold.”
“If you’re all right, Jim.”
“My respects to the Commander. His pie will be cold, too.”
“I’ll give you about five minutes,” Foley said, and he hurried up the stairs.
McAlpine waited until the pale man had come out and had been assisted up the stairs by his own devoted friend. Alone at the foot of the stairs he looked up longingly. It was the steepest flight of stairs he had ever seen. If only he could climb those stairs, everything would be all right. Peggy would not get into trouble. She would quit her wandering. She would turn to him.
And while he reached out for the banister and put his foot on the first step, looking up and concentrating, he had a moment of beautiful clarity. Since he had talked to Wolgast he had been confused in his thinking. It was not a matter of reasoning with Peggy or frightening her. That wouldn’t save her. If she was indifferent to the opinion of Wolgast or Wagstaffe and the fact that the whole town was turning against her, nevertheless she was not indifferent to him, James McAlpine. And how did he know she was not indifferent? The hours he spent in the room on Crescent Street were becoming a part of her life. Each day in his secret struggle with her, he was making gains so imperceptible and subtle that he himself had underestimated them. The main thing was to be always in that room when she came home from work. He began to climb the stairs. His head raised, his eyes fixed fanatically on the top step, he climbed with a slow, heavy, powerful determination, as if he were on his way to her room.
TWENTY-TWO
In the room he had worked out a scheme for the subtle penetration of her imagination. At night he would leave his notes on the bureau, and these notes would be in a kind of shorthand. He left them there deliberately, as a bait for her curiosity. Each day when he returned to the room he looked at the notes, and one day he found she had scribbled in a margin, “What on earth does this mean?” In his joy he cried out, “I knew it would work!” When she came home he was there to explain it to her. In the argument that followed his eyes glowed, he spoke out of his heart, and though it was supposed to be a rational discussion it was really his argument of love.
When she came in next day she was ready to take up the argument before she took off her overalls. She relied only on her own insights. She would take nothing for granted. It was wonderful and exasperating. He would find himself thinking. If Henry Jackson really wanted to write plays, how stimulating it must have been for him, talking over his ideas with her! One was compelled to look at everything freshly.
She was always broke and therefore willing to let him walk her down to the cafeteria where he could buy her something to eat. A little way along St. Catherine was an art shop, its window bright with large Matisse prints. The window ledge coated with snow and the corners glazed with ice made it look like a big white picture frame holding the light on a warm gaily coloured print of a ripe pumpkin on a fence. The blotch of gay warm colour was fantastic on the winter street. It made them laugh. They linked arms and laughed, and wisps of snow drifted across their faces. The gay colours and the bold design delighted them. There was a painter! she said. But of course! He had always had a passion for Matisse: couldn’t he buy her some prints and hang them in the room? Certainly he could, she said; he didn’t have to coax her. Now he saw how he would open her mind again to harmonies and rhythms that were in her own tradition and foreign to St. Antoine and keep her moving further and further away in her imagination from St. Antoine, in the true direction for her nature, toward what was light and gay and bold.
It would be so easy to do, he reflected one night when they were taking a ride in a barouche along Sherbrooke Street. They were huddled under the old buffalo robe, the sleigh bells jangled, her knees pressed against his, and the severe cold made their faces burn. She teased the beery old driver. Her teasing had affection in it, and the driver knew it and chuckled. That warm affection would touch McAlpine when she grabbed his arm to attract his attention to someone passing. This affection for little moments and casual people made him jealous; he wanted it for himself. He tried to get it with extraordinary eloquence, talking about Paris and New York, and she responded so warmly he longed to be in those cities with her. Oh, the fun he could have opening up those cities to her! he said. They talked of Baudelaire and Villon, and his ears nearly froze. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t feel the cold. She only had on that light belted coat.
They drove out to the east end, and she agreed to have something to eat at Chez Pierre. She had an enormous steak which she ate with enthusiasm, and he tried to assume the role he had always found so successful in the past with young girls. He got her talking about herself, and he bought a bottle of champagne; he tried unobtrusively to make her believe he could understand the dreams of her youth far better than anyone her own age, but despite all the eating and drinking and talking he was convinced that the tenderness and affection he evoked in her meant no more than response to the fur-capped sleigh driver with little icicles from his running nose forming on his big moustache.
But the Matisse prints could be like strands in a web he would cunningly weave around her. She would be living in a room he would change a little every day. What gripped her imagination would change as the tone of the room changed.
He bought four Matisse prints for twenty-six dollars – which he couldn’t afford – and that afternoon he met Foley for a drink before dinner in the M. and A.A. Club on Peel Street. They were joined by the garrulous navy man, Commander Stevens, who was indeed very navy. The whole country had betrayed him. He got drunk and told him he had lost sixteen ships in a convoy. The politicians had betrayed him. A Jewish tailor had betrayed him. A shirtmaker had betrayed him. He showed them his shirt. And McAlpine wanted to get away and go over to Crescent Street. At last, with his prints in a big manila envelope, he left the club and started down Peel Street with a brisk military stride. He had on Mr. Carver’s black Homburg. It was dark out, the street lights were lit, and there was no wind. The temperature had risen rapidly; it was now twenty above. The weatherman had said he could foresee the end of the cold snap, but snow clouds were moving down from the Laurentians.
Coming down the hill he approached the liquor store. A group of people were waiting around the entrance. A Negress who stood there with another Negress watched him coming down the street; she stepped out and touched his arm. “Excuse me, mister,” she said.
“Me?” he asked in surprise.
“I’ve seen you down at the St. Antoine,” she said abruptly. She had on a muskrat coat and a golden toque; she was fat and heavy; she had aged too soon, and her face was no longer attractive. Though her gesture was humble and timid, her face in the street light was full of dogged resolution. “I’m the trumpet player’s wife,” she said.
“Oh! Oh, I see,” he said, becoming too elaborately polite. He was shocked to think she had stopped him on the street. He looked around, expecting people standing on the hotel entrances steps across the road to be watching him. He felt a chill. He had feared that Wolgast’s visit to the room meant that he and Peggy would be dragged into the open when they were not ready. And now it was happening in the open street. This coloured woman believed she had a right to stop him. “What is it?” he asked.
“It’s about that little girl, mister,” she said. “I know you’ll excuse me. I know you’re with her.”
“Oh, you mean Miss Sanderson,” he said vaguely.
“I speak to you, mister,” she said, “because you’re her man.”
“Oh, no!” he said.
“It’s what I hear, mister. So you’ll know how I feel. No. Listen,” she said, growing sullen, her tone bitter as McAlpine
twisted away awkwardly. “Ain’t you got no pride, mister? Can’t you keep your woman away from my man? You could do it easy. I’d do it the hard way; but, hard or easy, I’d make it stick. Only you could do it easy, mister, and leave me something, leave me with something. I want to get rough, but right now I can’t do it. I want to get wild and smash things up, but I can’t do it. Only maybe I get liquored up like you or anybody else and I find I can do it,” she said grimly.
He was appalled that he and someone he loved could have become so important in the alien life of this stranger with the big soft sullen black face. “Of course, of course,” he muttered stupidly. But the sound of his own voice broke the strangeness of the encounter. She was only an aging woman who was troubled and poor; he wanted to comfort her. “You exaggerate, I’m sure,” he said, touching her arm. “Take it easy. Your husband really means nothing to Miss Sanderson. It’s just a friendship. It will only last a little while. I know it for a fact. In a little while you’ll never be seeing her again. Don’t worry, Mrs. Wilson.” Raising his hat, he bowed stiffly; he fled before the misery of her married life could tumble down on him. He wanted to look back, but he knew she was there watching him, with no faith in what he had said. On his way to Crescent Street, he began to upbraid Peggy. He accused her of seeking trouble; he called her names. He kept it up until he got to the room.
The Loved and the Lost Page 19
