“Hullo George, this is Caroline. Caroline Hall, and if you say you’ve forgotten me, I’ll hate you.”
“For God’s sake, where are you now?”
“I got off a ship yesterday and I’ve just found a room for a few days.” She gave me the name of a tourist home near where I lived. “I’ve simply got to see you, George. Can you come over now?”
I had a script to re-write, it was a long time since I had even thought of Caroline, and I hesitated.
“I’m just back from Paris,” she said, “and I’ve got to have help. I was the last person to see poor Norah and I’ve got –”
“What do you mean, the last person to see Norah? You mean Norah Blackwell? Is she –”
“Hasn’t anybody told you?”
I remembered the night when Norah had used almost the same words about Caroline’s marriage.
“Are you telling me she’s dead?”
Caroline’s voice was warm with pity when she said: “She was run over in a Paris street a month ago and I’ve brought her baby home. She’s an adorable baby girl and I have her here now.”
These telephone conversations in my life! “Is the child Jerome’s?”
“What difference does it make whose it is? I’m taking her to Harry and I’m afraid to go all by myself. I just can’t face that little lost soul all by myself, and you’ve just got to come and help me.”
After this I knew I would do no more work the rest of the night, so I said “All right,” hung up and went out. A spring sunset had sent a flush of clouds over the roofs and on a corner I saw an old Jewish man, poorly dressed but serene, staring up at the clouds sailing over the mountain. Five minutes later I rang the doorbell in Caroline’s lodging house.
She looked older, and with brown eyes gentler even than I remembered them, she kissed me like a sister. The passion we once had shared might have been felt by two different people: we had become friends who knew each other’s loneliness and still were fond.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “The baby’s asleep and I want to talk to you.”
We strolled westward through the gray streets to the university campus, where we ended like a pair of students on the stone steps looking down the avenue of elms to the first lights shining in the city.
“Is Jim with you?”
She shook her head and smiled.
“Are you still married to him?”
“Technically. Norah said she’d told you I was pregnant when I went away. But there wasn’t a child. I had a miscarriage in Paris.”
“I thought you’d gone to New York?”
“We went there first, but since then we’ve been almost everywhere.”
“Where is Jim now?”
“I don’t know,” she said simply.
“Did you know he was in the Party when you married him?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know what being in the Party means.” Another smile. “It’s all over between us, of course. With them, the Party’s everything. I’m going west to someplace where nobody knows me and find a job. I’m still fairly young, and I miss that baby almost as much as if the poor thing had never been born. I want to meet some nice man and have another.”
We smoked in the twilight while the city lights grew sharper.
“Well George, I suppose you know Jerome’s in Spain. Norah tried to follow after him, but she couldn’t. We kept running into them separately in various places.”
“In other words, they’ve not been living together?”
“Does it matter? Jerome’s in the Spanish War and that’s everything with him. Jim met him in Madrid, but when he talked about him – which was precious little – there was a tone in his voice that gave me the creeps. Those people aren’t human, George. I don’t know whether Jerome knows or cares, but he’s in danger, and I don’t mean just from the fascists.”
“Is this child you’ve got Jerome’s?” I asked her again.
Again Caroline smiled. “I don’t know. Does it matter? She’s an adorable baby.”
“Did Jerome abandon Norah, too?”
“Well, he never expected she’d follow him to Europe. She was a member of the Party. He wasn’t, incidentally. I think for a time he intended to join, but he never did. But Norah was in deep and they got her a job in a crèche for Spanish refugee children in Paris.”
“Did she commit suicide?”
Caroline sighed: “The French police called it an accident. But earlier that year she’d had to take shock treatments. It must be terrible to have been Norah. Don’t judge her, George.”
“It doesn’t make much sense to judge a lunatic.”
“Don’t use that word, either. She was just – oh, why talk? Things were too much for her. If she’d had any luck, maybe this trouble wouldn’t have come out. If Jerome had married her –”
“He’d never have done that,” I said.
“I think she knew it all along.” Her brown eyes looked into mine. “Does any of this matter? The poor girl isn’t here any more, and she tried so hard and she was so nice.”
I stared down the avenue to the city and after a while I asked her if she knew why Jerome had gone back to Spain.
“I never did understand that man, but what else could he do? Maybe he went back for the same reason that Norah walked out into the traffic of the Rue de Rivoli. I’m so lucky not being brainy like you people. I just go on from day to day. I kept telling Norah to throw it up and go home to Harry, and she did come home for a while. Last year I think. But she couldn’t stand it.”
“Did she see Harry when she was back?”
“Certainly she did. Poor little Harry wanted her to go back to him as though nothing had happened, but when she saw him he was repulsive to her and she wouldn’t even stay in his flat. I think the Party told her to go back to Paris.”
“I see.”
Caroline rose and smoothed down her flannel skirt. “Now,” she said briskly, “you and I have a job and the sooner we do it the better. We’re taking that baby to Harry.”
I looked at her incredulously. “Are you suggesting that the child is his?”
“I think the baby will be very good for Harry now. I love the little thing and I’d gladly look after her if he refuses, but I think she’ll be wonderful for Harry.”
“I thought babies were supposed to need mothers?”
“But that’s just the point. Harry’s a motherly type.”
“Why do you want me to go along with you in this?”
She gave me one of those mysterious female smiles which women interpret better than men.
“Well, Harry always liked you, and if you come along I just think everything will work out better.”
“Just what gives you that idea?”
“But George, isn’t it obvious? If he thinks you take it for granted the baby’s his, then he’ll think others take it for granted too, and everything will seem much easier and more natural for Harry.”
We walked back to her lodgings and found the child asleep in the middle of a huge brass bed. While Caroline picked the baby up and made cooing sounds at it, I listened to the soft rumble of distant traffic and smelled the smell of downtown Montreal in a warm night.
“She’s such a darling,” Caroline said. “Hold her, George. Isn’t she a love?” She rubbed the baby’s cheeks with the backs of her fingers and the baby made some smilingly gurgling noises for which Caroline praised her. “She’s going to be a raving beauty when she grows up.”
“In that case, how can you believe that Harry will think he’s the father?”
Caroline smiled at me mischievously.
“Harry may be dumb, but he can’t be that dumb,” I said.
“George, you’re being much too clever for all of us. Just you wait and see.” Another mischievous smile. “Now let’s go.”
So we walked out into the night, the baby in Caroline’s arms and I beside her as though I were the father. I hailed a cab and on the short run to those familiar lodgings, Caroline kept up a stream of
endearments to the baby while I looked out the window at passersby. The cab stopped, I paid the fare and we went up the steps.
“How do you know he’s in?” I said.
“I called to make sure and the minute I heard his voice I hung up. He’d think I was French and that I knew from the English voice I’d got the wrong number.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s in now.”
“We’ll soon find out. I didn’t tell him it was me because I didn’t think he ought to have time to think before he sees the baby. Harry’s so sweet.”
“So are you.”
“I’m not sure I liked the tone you said that in.”
“I suppose Harry knows Norah’s dead?”
“Oh yes, he knows that. All her old friends here know that.”
Soon we were in the apartment I remembered so well and it was unchanged. The cheap prints were still on the walls, the floors were as spotless as ever and the old photograph of Norah in her nurse’s cap stood on the table.
At first Harry seemed amiably glad to see us, confused but no more so than usual, and oblivious of the presence of the baby.
“It’s been a long time,” he said.
“Hasn’t it?” said Caroline.
Harry’s pear-shaped body and oversized head, his short little legs and shopworn hair were familiar enough, but his eyes had changed.
“I’ve kept the place pretty nice, don’t you think?” he said. “Norah would like it, I think.”
“Of course she would,” said Caroline. “Norah’d be proud of you.” She sat down with the baby on her knees, and it occurred to me that Harry assumed it was hers, even that I might be its father. I lit a cigarette, the idea coming to me that this was one of the most bizarre situations I had ever found myself in.
“Harry,” said Caroline, “I don’t know how to begin.” But as I looked at her I thought she knew exactly how to begin and was doing it. “Did Norah write that she and I saw a lot of one another in Paris?”
“Oh yes, she wrote all the time. She never missed a week writing me.”
“She loved your letters so much, Harry. And when the baby came she wanted you there so much.”
Harry’s underlip trembled, his adam’s apple went up and down, but he managed to swallow and speak: “But of course she had to stay because she had all that nursing to do in Paris.”
“She was wonderful in Paris. You’d have been proud of her.”
“Yes, she was certainly wonderful. We used to have such good times. You know, the way we always understood each other without talking, kind of, we had some good times.”
He and Caroline exchanged glances and slowly a new expression emerged on Harry’s cheese-shaped face. He looked at me and I managed to nod and smile, and he muttered, “Gee I’m glad to see you again, George.” Then his face turned pink and I wondered if he was going to cry, but before he could make up his mind what to do, Caroline rose and laid the baby on the couch and put her little finger between its lips while the baby smiled and wriggled its toes.
“Harry, isn’t she a darling, and aren’t you lucky!”
Then she looked straight into his eyes, he looked straight back, and they stood still. There followed a quick sob and an expression on his face quite indescribable and again I wondered if he was going to cry. But instead he grinned like an idiot and went down on his knees to play with the baby.
“She’s Norah’s image,” he said, “isn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Caroline critically, “but there’s some of you in her, too. Look at her nose. Your nose isn’t too terrific in a man, if you don’t mind my saying so, but for a girl your nose would be just about perfect. It won’t be this ski-jump I’ve got to carry around with me. Isn’t it a pretty nose for a girl?”
“Gosh, yes!”
I stared down at the baby, and to me she was not Norah’s image and she did not have Harry’s nose. To me she was just an infant with pink cheeks and plump limbs fully aware that she was being appreciated. I puffed on my cigarette and stepped back.
“Norah and I –” Harry began. Then he stopped, uttered a little choking cry, picked up the baby and carried her to the open window. I saw the muscles of his back straining, his suit wrinkling, as he clasped the baby to his chest and rocked it making strange sounds.
“Norah and I had so many wonderful times together,” he whispered in that choked voice. “You’ll never know, you’ll never know. She was so happy the night she told me she was –”
“Yes, that’s what she said to me in Paris. She was so happy when she knew the baby was coming and that you knew.”
“I’m going to call her Joan,” Harry said, still staring blindly out the window with the infant in his arms. “Joan! Don’t you think Norah would like that?”
“I know she would.”
He turned and laid the baby on the couch and began playing with her, and the child liked him.
“She’s laughing!” Harry looked up with an astonishment of happiness on his face. “Don’t you hear her laughing?”
“She knows her father,” said Caroline.
“Gosh, how can a baby know that?”
“I brought her to you the moment I could, Harry. You see, after Norah – well, after she had that accident, it was lucky I was in Paris then. It was luckier still I was just going to leave, for I was able to bring her to you.”
I sat frozen at what I was witness to.
“You’ll have to learn a lot about caring for babies, Harry,” Caroline said sharply. “But there are books and nurseries and things, and I’ll be around for a week or two to show you.”
“I’ll learn,” Harry said. “Just watch me learn.”
“Of course you will, but don’t go around boasting about being able to take care of babies better than women can.”
“I’ll learn. You watch and see. I’ll bring her up just the way Norah would have liked it.”
He was full of pride. Or was it pride? No. For in that instant I saw his eyes and knew he was not fooling himself or even trying to fool us. Suddenly he had found a reason for living, something to cling to in a life which had become meaningless and horrible, and it was as simple as that. He had recovered a continuance with the only thing that had ever mattered to him, and glancing at Caroline’s wise smile I wondered how I could possibly have under-rated her intelligence.
“I’ve got my job back,” Harry said. “I didn’t tell you, but I got it.”
“In the radio shop? But that’s wonderful!”
“From now on things are going to be fine,” he said. “I’ve just got to succeed from now on.”
“And you will. You’ll make Norah and everyone else very proud of you. She’s watching you, you know.”
Again I stared at Caroline in astonishment.
“Yes,” she went on, “before she died Norah became religious again and she knew there’s an after-life.”
I knew that Caroline did not believe a word of this, but Harry believed it. His eyes shone. His pathetically shaped body straightened and he nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
Soon after we left him, as we walked back to her lodgings, I said: “Does Jerome know about this baby?”
“Of course.”
“Is it his?”
“Honestly I don’t know, but I don’t think there’s much likelihood. He’d be much happier if it were.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well George, I suppose I might as well tell you. When Norah went to England on the ship with him, of course she thought that would settle things and they’d be together. Jerome was kind to her, but no – he wouldn’t do that. She must have made life hell for him. She had breakdowns and everything like that. She threw scenes. But when he went to Spain she became sort of awfully calm and she just slept with everyone who wanted her. This baby could have had any one of several dozen fathers. Norah’d been faithful to Harry until this thing with Jerome, you see. It had been building up inside of her all the time and once she started she just went
hog wild. They often do that, you know.”
“Who often does that?”
“People who are sick like that. One part of their mind is pure and the other – you see, they don’t know who they are any more. Poor Jerome, it was awful for him. He blames himself for destroying her.”
“She’d have destroyed herself anyway.”
“I suppose so. Actually if anyone’s to blame in this it’s Harry, for he never satisfied her. Could you imagine Harry satisfying a woman like Norah? He’s such a nice little man, but – well, I hope for everyone’s sake that his next wife’s not over-sexed. I’m sure he’ll marry again.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Oh, men always seem able to find wives if they want them badly enough.”
We said good-night and I walked homeward in the warm air, but when I reached my door I was too restless to go in and walked up the slope of the mountain until I found myself among the trees. A couple passed hand in hand talking quietly in French, starlight filtered down through the trees and the city shimmered far below. I sat on a granite boulder for half an hour feeling myself involved, and, thinking about Jerome, I knew why I was no longer shocked by his behavior. He, too, had become involved. As Caroline had, as all of us did if we lived long enough. I wondered if I would ever see Caroline again, and something told me I never would. Nor did I.
Nor, for that matter, did I see Harry Blackwell again for many years. He and his newly-found baby disappeared into the ocean of Montreal and soon I forgot all about them. But one day in the first year after the war I happened to be walking down a sidestreet between Sherbrooke and St. Catherine – my orbit in Montreal had narrowed to the city’s heart – and suddenly I saw his name on the front of a store fluorescently lit, remodelled and extremely modern. I looked in through the window and saw Harry himself, quite bald and as absurdly pear-shaped as ever, but well-dressed and with a new manner. He was talking to a tall woman in a black Persian lamb coat, and she looked the kind of woman who would only talk to the owner or the manager. That afternoon I called up a man I knew in a St. James Street insurance office and asked him if he knew anything about Harry’s business. He told me that Blackwell’s Radios and Record Players was not only doing exceedingly well, but that it had captured a sizable piece of the carriage trade business in his field, and that Harry himself had become a prosperous man.
Watch that Ends the Night Page 36
