Watch that Ends the Night

by Hugh Maclennan

  “Don’t go, George. Stay the night.”

  “I don’t belong here tonight, Jerome.”

  “Yes you do. You’ll always belong here.” A moment later he said quietly: “Look after Kate when I’m gone, will you?”

  I faced him: “She’s not my wife. She’s your wife. She doesn’t want me to look after her. She wants her husband to look after her. She wants her home.”

  For the first time that day his face became confused; he breathed noisily and I thought that at last I might have reached him. I was totally unprepared for what he said next.

  “I said ‘yes’ to Kate when it was her marrying time. If I hadn’t, she’d have disintegrated. Norah had this moronic husband and she thought she was going crazy. I said ‘yes’ to her and perhaps I gave her some respect as a woman. Perhaps I didn’t. It’s so easy to be correct. Perhaps I did wrong. Yes, I was disturbed. Yes, I feel guilty. Yes, yes, yes to all of that. But let me tell you something – everyone takes from somebody else and gives what he’s taken to another. What Kate took from you years ago she gave to me. What she took from me all these years – if I’m killed or if she’s through with me – she’ll give to some other man. And what I took from her” – he stopped and stared out over the lake.

  “What about yourself?”

  “I’ve written myself off.”

  “Why? Kate hasn’t written you off.”

  Staring over the lake, he said: “I’m tired.”

  I swallowed the last drops in my glass and rose, intending to say good-bye to Catherine, but he called me back.

  “Before you go, listen to this – I forgot to tell you earlier. In town I talked to Tom Storey about you. He’s with the cbc. He’s interested and I think he’ll make a job for you. Call him up tomorrow. It’s stupid for you to go on working in that school.”

  He reached for his wallet, took out a piece of paper with Storey’s telephone number and I slipped it into my pocket without even thinking about it, much less that this simple action was going to change my life.

  In the kitchen I found Catherine standing in front of some dish she was preparing, but her eyes were staring at the wall.

  “Is there a thing I can do?”

  She shook her head.

  “Let me take Sally back to town so you and Jerome can be alone?”

  Again she shook her head.

  “Jerome tells me he sails next Friday. I’ll be in town early next Friday. I’ll come out by bus and see you.”

  She did not turn around. She lifted her head in pride, but she looked fragile as I had never seen her look; she looked beaten.

  CHAPTER IV

  Driving down that evening from the Laurentian highlands with the sun behind me orange and red, the shadows deep on the road and presently the lights coming on, driving down through Saint-Jerome, Sainte-Rose, onto the island of Montreal and thence into the city itself, I saw virtually nothing around me. I had never before witnessed the break-up of a marriage, and something told me that this was what was happening here. It might be mended, it might grow again, but both of them felt inwardly that they had failed the other. I cursed Norah Blackwell for her part in it even though I knew in my heart it was not basic. Yet she sullied Jerome, she added that nasty touch of sordidness and equivocation to a situation I frankly could not understand. What he said about civilization and defending it was probably true, but I could not believe it was the whole truth. What he said about the fascists charming out evil like a cobra out of its hole sounded truer. But I was not like him and I could not know what his pressures were. I had not seen my mother murdered, I had not escaped in childhood down a forest river to the sea, I had not fought in the war and killed men hand to hand with a bayonet. Nor was I married to Catherine even though I wished that I were. Nor was I a brilliant professional man with revolutionary ideas which the established men in my profession dismissed. But that night as I drove back to Montreal I at least discovered this: that there is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and that the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them. Morality? Duty? It was easy to talk of these things once, but surely it is no accident that in our time the best of men hesitate inwardly before they utter these words? As Jerome said, “What is my duty?” Did not the generals who sent millions to their death in the war feel certain they understood their duty? The time was the 1930s. Everyone I knew remembered what had been done in the name of duty only a decade and a half ago.

  In the massed traffic I slowed to a crawl, and it was a long time before I reached Jack Christopher’s place and put his car into the garage. It was nine-thirty and one of those spring nights in Montreal which pull the heart out of you. After the long winter the air was alive with tiny life and billions of insects swarmed about the street lamps. Girls and boys sauntered arm in arm and the air was soft enough to corrupt a saint. I walked past a tavern, smelled its malty breath and went in for a beer, and when I came out it was dark. I walked some more and at ten-fifteen I was mounting the stairway of the musty lodging house I had known so well in my time with Caroline Hall. I rang the bell by the Blackwells’ door and Norah opened.

  “Come in, George,” she said.

  I had come there hating her. I had come remembering Catherine and prepared to say anything to make her leave Jerome alone. And now as I looked at her in that mean little apartment, her eyes enormous, her face with the inward expression of a woman who at last has known love, her voice gentle as it had always been, her body at once frail and strong, her whole being like a flower which had opened after a long frost – when I saw all this I knew how much wiser than I Catherine was, and how right she was to be terrified for Jerome. For Norah Blackwell really was lethally attractive, and I was attracted to her myself, and under the circumstances I hated myself for being so.

  I sat down and said: “I’ve been up north. I’ve just spent an afternoon with Catherine and Sally and an hour with Jerome.”

  “How is he?”

  That look on her face! Not even guarded but open, offering herself – to what?

  “Norah,” I said, “I came here to –” I hesitated and looked down at the floor. “I know why you came, George. You love Kate.”

  I felt a spasm of anger when I heard her use Jerome’s name for his wife, but it passed.

  “She’s a very wonderful woman, George. I know Jerome loves her. I’ve always known that. I’ve never wanted to hurt his love for her. All I want is his good. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  I looked at her and knew she was sincere, and I remembered what else Catherine had said about her, and my world rocked, for this was the first time – I had always been slow on the uptake – when I realized that under certain circumstances sincerity is the most dangerous thing in the world.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked her. “Jerome’s going to Spain, he says. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. The capitalists have turned us both out of the hospital. When Jerome learned what Dr. Rodgers did to me he resigned at once.”

  I searched her face for a sign of pride, but found none. Oh, but Catherine had been right about this girl! Norah – God help her – really didn’t know any better.

  “ You’re not thinking of going to Spain, are you?” I asked. She looked at me mournfully; she looked so sad and lost that despite my feelings about this situation I had to force myself to sit still and not to take her into my arms and comfort her. She was everyman’s daughter who might, given the circumstances, become everyman’s loved one. Catherine had known it; possibly she had known it immediately she had seen her.

  “No,” she said, “not now. But I’m a surgical nurse and they need nurses in Spain. I don’t think I can stand it here. But it’s for the Party to decide.”

  “For the Party, and not for Jerome?”

  “Oh George, how do I know?”

  “I wish
I could hate you.”

  “I know you do, but you can’t, any more than Harry can.” Harry! I had forgotten about him. “What’s he going to do?”

  “He’ll be all right, I think.”

  “Norah, how can you continue in this mess? You have Harry and he needs you. Catherine used to have Jerome and she needs him. Cut your losses, Norah. This situation is hopeless.”

  “Everything seems to be but one thing. The Revolution will come and then everything will be different. That’s why I can’t blame myself for Kate, George. You see, she doesn’t understand it any more than you do.”

  “Oh, to hell with that! She understands better than any of us.”

  “Don’t you believe in symbolism? I do. Oh, I don’t blame her, George. It’s not her fault. But she’s not well, and Jerome is so strong and can do anything. She’s a – a symbol of our sick civilization.”

  I was glad she said that, for it enabled me to become angry at last, and in that condition I left her.

  CHAPTER V

  The next Friday I asked Dr. Bigbee if I might leave Waterloo after morning classes and was somewhat chagrined by his response.

  “By all means, my dear Stewart. I’ll take your classes myself. I’ve been wondering lately whether you’ve been keeping them up to the mark.”

  I reached town by bus about three o’clock in the afternoon and took a taxi from the terminal to Jerome’s apartment, but just as I was about to mount the steps I hesitated. Suddenly it occurred to me that this was their last afternoon and what business had I to intrude? So I walked away and at the nearest phone booth I called the shipping company and learned that Jerome’s vessel was not due to sail until eight o’clock that evening. Then I walked the central city which rested me as it always does on a fine day neither too warm nor too cold.

  After fifteen minutes I remembered Tom Storey and the cbc, went into a phone booth and found him in his office; he told me to come around right away and as soon as I met him I liked him. He was a man only two years older than myself, but he had taken a Ph.D. in philosophy in Yale, and unable to find a teaching job he had ended with the cbc. In talking about the organization he insisted that its men had more leeway under the government than the broadcasters had in the States under the control of commercial advertisers. He also explained that they earned much less money. Then he took me into an empty studio, introduced me to the engineer on duty, put a script before me and asked me to study it, and ten minutes later I was in the middle of my first audition.

  When it was over, Storey smiled: “Now listen while I play it back and try not to be too startled at the sound of your own voice.”

  The disk revolved and when I heard my voice I was more than startled; I was incredulous.

  “Jerome told me I had a voice a little like Roosevelt’s,” I said. “I thought he was kidding.”

  Storey smiled. “He’s an amazing man. I’ve never known anyone like him for discovering a flair in a person the person doesn’t know he has. I met him as a patient when I didn’t have a job, and he told me I’d make a lousy philosopher but would be good in radio work. I don’t know whether the latter part of the statement is true, but anyway I’m in radio earning a living.”

  After thanking the engineer, Storey took me back to his office. Then, while the noise of St. Catherine Street traffic drummed through the open window, he talked.

  “Jerome tells me you have a history degree and a remarkable feeling for politics?” he began.

  I was about to disclaim the compliment, but all I said was: “At least I have a history degree.”

  Storey said: “As you know, the Americans have made a very big thing out of news commentaries over the air. For my taste most of their men exaggerate and are too hyperthyroid, but that needn’t concern us. We have a quieter public here and we don’t have to worry about the commercial sponsor.” He paused and looked out the window. “I’m not in a position to promise you anything definite now, but I have an idea I’d like you to consider. That audition was excellent and your voice is perfect for what I have in mind.”

  He outlined an idea that amazed me. There was a travel agency in town which wanted a courier to lead a summer tour to the Soviet Union and Storey asked me to take the job. There would be no salary, but there would be full expenses. I would be out of the country from June until Labor Day and only a handful of people would be on the tour. My duties would consist in taking care of tickets and baggage, and making arrangements from city to city.

  “Jerome tells me your French is perfect and that you have a smattering of German,” Storey said.

  “My French is passable, but smattering is a compliment to my German. I suppose I could order a beer, but that’s about all.”

  “It won’t matter. With French and English you’ll manage without trouble. Now this is why I want you to take this job.”

  It was Storey’s notion that I use the tour as a means of getting into radio as a commentator. He wanted me to go to Russia with an open mind, to observe what I saw and record what I thought, and he was sure a series of scripts would come out of it. If they were successful, the organization might then hire me on a permanent basis.

  “It’s a gamble like anything else,” he said, “but your way will be paid to Russia and you’ve got nothing to lose. How about it?”

  I protested that the whole thing sounded much too ambitious for an unknown person like me, but he cut me short.

  “This damned depression has made everyone our age think too small. I was just as bad before Jerome picked me up by the scruff of the neck and shook some sense into me.”

  I proposed as another objection my job at Waterloo, telling him that I would be unable to broadcast these trial scripts because I would not be in Montreal.

  “That won’t matter. When you come in over the weekends we can put them on wax. And anyhow, why not look at the bright side? If this idea works out, you’ll be able to leave Waterloo forever.”

  I left Tom Storey full of elation, but the moment I reached the street all I could think about was that this was Catherine’s last afternoon with Jerome and that I might never again see Jerome himself. I walked for a while and around six I stopped in a cafeteria for something to eat. Coming out at six-thirty I jumped into a cab and drove to their street just in time. Another cab was parked by the curb and the driver, his door open, was picking his teeth in the attitude of a waiting man. I paid off my own driver and got out and then the house door opened and the whole little family emerged. Sally was holding her father’s hand and Catherine was ahead of them, and the instant I saw her face I knew that an important change had happened. She was serene, pale and beautiful.

  “George!” Jerome called. “George, I’m so glad you’ve come. Everything is fine now, everything is fine. Get in and come down to the ship with us.”

  We drove down the long slope of the city toward the river, bumped over some railway tracks and got out in front of a huge shed surmounted by the twin funnels of a C.P.R. liner. We walked through the dock, and afterwards Catherine said she would never forget the sight of a pair of gulls perched high on one of the metal rafters. After talking with some officials, Jerome went up the gangplank with Sally on his shoulder and disappeared into the ship. Catherine and I were alone and she looked at me with this new, intense, pale calm.

  “I’m grateful for last week, George.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “We came close to each other again. Now it will be easier. Now no matter what happens …” A proud little smile: “I might have got sick, you know. I might have held him back by getting sick, but I didn’t. It was hard not to, but I didn’t.”

  “Are you tired now?”

  Another smile: “Frankly, I’m so exhausted I wouldn’t be surprised if I fainted, but I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time in spite of that.”

  “You’d better sit down on something, though.”

  There was an empty baggage truck, and as I had a folded newspaper in my pocket, I spread it out on the truck and
helped Catherine up. She sat like a little girl with dangling legs and wide gray eyes staring in surprise out the huge open gate of the shed toward the high white flank of the ship. The falls squealed on the fo’c’slehead, the last baggage went up the slide and was lowered into the hold, some late passengers made their adieus and went up the plank and disappeared. A chorus of happy voices rang bibulously through the shed and a twenty year old girl and a boy no older, covered with confetti and pursued by a gang of youths in morning coats and girls in bridesmaids’ dresses, rushed up the plank and disappeared.

  “Yes,” Catherine said quietly, “this week has at least saved something. It’s saved my soul. Please God it saves his, too.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  “Since he must go to Spain, then he must go. I’m not the first wife who’s seen her husband off to the wars and I won’t be the last.”

  Then we saw Jerome’s head and shoulders coming down the plank with Sally walking cautiously in front of him. They stepped out onto the dock and came up to us.

  “Well Kate, it’s time.”

  “Daddy says that if we go up to the bow he’ll come out and wave to us.”

  I rose to move away in order to preserve what remained of their privacy, but neither had eyes for me at that moment. She sat as she was with her whole soul in her pale, calm, eloquent face while he stood before her and looked into her. I never saw a pair of human beings look at each other as they did then. In their eyes was a hurt amazement that they were parting, an incredulity that, loving each other so much, they had made each other suffer. There was shock and pain, there was a terrible, almost despairing tenderness.

  “Kate,” he said hoarsely, “I don’t want to go.”

  With calm, pale pride she said: “I know, dear. But you must.” Suddenly the dock shook as the steamer’s horn roared, and the thunder of it broke the tension. Jerome stepped forward, Catherine melted into his arms as he lifted her off the baggage truck, then he set her down, turned to Sally and swept her off her feet, kissed her, set her down, and then in spite of his limp he ran fast up the plank and disappeared into the ship.