Strange Fugitive

by Morley Callaghan

  “A beautiful story of pioneer life,” Jimmie said.

  “Harry, that’s a rotten story,” Vera said. “Your own grandfather!”

  “Why is it?”

  “It isn’t the drinking part that matters, it’s the idea of the thing. You had no business telling it.”

  “But Mrs. Trotter,” Jimmie said, “most of us are of pioneer stock around here. We all have these pioneer stories, epics of the clearing of the land.”

  “It’s funny all right, but what good does it do telling it?”

  “You’re getting damn straight-laced suddenly. What’s the matter with you?” Harry said.

  “Don’t be silly, Harry.”

  “You spoilt the story.”

  “It wasn’t worth spoiling, silly.”

  “For heaven’s sake, stop telling me not to be silly.” He glared at her. She looked at him stubbornly, then glancing at Jimmie, who was pretending not to listen, her expression changed. She looked as if she might cry. Harry was uncomfortable. He knew Jimmie was uncomfortable. He had nothing more to say. He wanted to shout at Vera, but was ashamed. He bit his thumbnail and stared at her irritably.

  “How about a little walk, Harry?” Jimmie suggest mildly.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Harry said, getting up quickly. Jimmie said goodbye very pleasantly to Vera, but Harry didn’t look back.

  Going along the street Jimmie said: “Where are we heading for?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well, I don’t want to just walk, let’s go some place.”

  “Let’s go down to Angelina’s then. I want a drink.”

  4

  They took a Carlton car and transferred to Bay and got off at Queen. They walked over to Elizabeth, the street of Chinese merchants, chop-houses and dilapidated roughcast houses used for stores. Some cafés were of new tan brick, with electric signs. Chinese men sat on steps or stood in groups under street lights. No women were to be seen. They crossed over from Elizabeth Street by the Registry office, the new white stone building oddly out of place in the neighbourhood, and walked up Chestnut Street to Angelina’s, a brick house with a store front and big white letters on the plate glass, “Italian Restaurant.” It was dark and no lights were in the windows.

  They went around to the side door. Harry knocked gently. A square panel opened. A woman peered at them.

  “How’s Angelina?” Harry asked.

  “Jimmie Nash and Harry Trotter,” Jimmie said.

  The door opened and Angelina stood there smiling at them, a plump Italian woman with good features, not too fat. She had nice plump legs. Harry tried in an offhand, friendly way to put his arm around her waist, and she grinned, removing the arm seriously. In the front room there was no light. Along the hall they heard voices.

  “Many people upstairs?” Jimmie asked.

  “You boys don’t want to eat?”

  “No, just a drink.”

  “How are the tricks?” she said playfully.

  “Fine, how are they going with you, do you still love me?”

  “Sure, Mr. Trotter. Be nice boys now.”

  They passed Angelina’s father sitting at the cash register. A dining room was on the right along the hall. Many people eating noisily, but laughing quietly, glanced at them as they passed the dining-room door. They stood opposite the kitchen, while Angelina spoke to one of the chefs. She was proud of the chefs and the kitchen. The cooking was done publicly, only a rail between the hall and the kitchen. Two chefs, whiskered, plump, were roasting ducks, turkeys, chickens, legs of pork veal, or fried steaks. The cooking was a performance. A chef wiped a pan with a piece of garlic, and the steak on the hat pan sizzled. One chef smiled, acknowledging the rich odours.

  Angelina led the way upstairs to the front room.

  “Who’s upstairs, Angelina?” Jimmie said.

  “Nobody you know, Mr. Nash.”

  The front room was well lighted, the blinds drawn down, heavy curtains over the blinds. It was early, not many customers were at the round tables with white tablecloths. More people would come in after the shows. They sat down in a corner. Harry’s elbow brushed against a curtain, shifting from its position the blind that fitted snugly into the window frame.

  “Be careful please,” Angelina said, adjusting the blind so no light could be seen from the street.

  “A single Scotch,” Jimmie said.

  “A double Scotch,” Harry ordered.

  Harry heard girls laughing in the front room Angelina used for nice people who really wanted to drink in a bootlegger’s. “After all, Vera likes nice people,” he thought. She might even get to a point where she would give him a pain in the neck. He drank the double Scotch quickly. He thought vaguely of Chinamen standing on Elizabeth Street, wondering if it were true they had a peculiar way of making love to white girls. He thought of it nearly every time he walked up Elizabeth Street.

  He discussed the matter with Jimmie, and they got interested, and when they had exhausted the subject, they exchanged interesting opinions about lesbians. Then Jimmie told of an aunt who had greatly impressed him when he was very young, and whom he would like to know now he was older. She had gone away, to Mexico, people thought, and no one had heard from her since.

  Harry listened, his eyes closed, assembling interesting facts about his father that had occurred to him since he had been thinking of home in the old days in Maydale, before they had moved to the city. “I never got along very well with my old man,” he said. “I liked my mother better, but he was an interesting guy, though I couldn’t see it in those days.” His father had always worked too hard. He got into the habit of working hard when he was a boy on the farm and kept it up until two weeks before he died. He wasn’t very big, a thin man who always wore a coat too tight for him. After they moved into the city his father couldn’t get a job and had driven a coal wagon. The bags of coal were heavy, and he got thinner and very wiry, but he kept the job for six months. Sunday was his favourite day and early in the morning at about half-past six he got up and walked up the ravine to do some sketching. The city limits didn’t extend as far north in those days, and the ravine was a natural park. The sketches, as he remembered them, were awkward, the lines blurred from too much rubbing, but the old man kept at it and finally turned to painting.

  At this time he was a cutter in a suit and cloak factory and was saving up to pay off a mortgage on a house he had built. He had had such a hard time as a kid, he was afraid of being poor and so began to deny himself many comforts, walking to work every day, in the evenings working on the house. At first his wife tried to get him to rest but saw that he was happier going along his own way. He kept on painting, and the canvases got bigger, gradually covering the walls of the front room and dining room of the new house. He looked forward to having some of his pictures in the annual exhibition at the Art Gallery, and sent five good ones to the committee, who wrote a long letter about how remarkable it was such work should be done by a man with absolutely no training. It was a sincere letter and they suggested he should take some lessons that would only cost a few dollars. He absolutely refused to pay for any lessons. His wife cried a long time one evening because it was really his only pleasure in the world and she knew he had been very anxious to have his pictures on the walls of the Art Gallery. He went on painting and working, and walking, and working in the garden, even when not feeling well. He insisted it was taking every cent he had to put his son through high school and if he lost his job there would be years of poverty. At fifty-five he owned his house and had three-thousand dollars in the bank. Then he got pains in his legs one day. He stayed home from work but insisted on painting the front veranda. He got gangrene in his leg and died after two weeks in bed.

  “It was funny,” Harry said. “My mother died two years later. I was working at the time.”

  “Your old man was rather tremendous in his way.”

  “I guess he was but my mother was different.”

  Angelina was standing at the door and Ji
mmie beckoned to her, coaxing her to sit down at their table, but she shook her head sadly, waved her forefinger at him and grinned, showing her good teeth.

  “It’s funny the way you see your mother from a different angle years after, isn’t it?” Harry said.

  “I guess it is, I don’t know. My folks are still very much alive, and the old man has definite ideas about work.”

  “I mean I got an idea my mother was something like I am.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yeah, she was rather wonderful in her way. I can see how I used to like her, and never realized how much.”

  “A good way to feel, only go easy, or I’ll break into tears.”

  “It hasn’t anything to do with sentiment, Jimmie. Just something happens and for the first time you see your mother as a woman. I can see her quite plainly going around the house, and at night, getting into bed with the old man. I slept with my mother until I was nine years old.”

  “Well, that’s not so good.”

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “Simply, that being a great psychologist, I don’t approve of it.”

  “Stop the kiddin’ Jimmie, this is serious.”

  “And so am I serious. I’m trying to tell you you are too interested, it isn’t good for you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re really falling in love with your mother.”

  “Oh well, the only rotten thing about it is that I don’t remember what she looked like when she was younger.”

  “Sit there and think about it, old socks,” Jimmie said. Harry tilted back in the chair, frowning and disappointed, because Jimmie was so practical. Then he felt lonely and remembered how his mother had loved fall weather when trees were bare and the winds got cold. She was probably very good-looking when younger, he thought.

  “Here comes somebody I know,” Harry said.

  “Who?”

  “Bob, I think you’ve met him.”

  “Sure, met him one night when we were out with Farrel.”

  “He’s looking bad.”

  Bob and his friend, a fat man with a short neck, sat down at one of the tables. Bob was looking thin. He looked as if he had not had any sleep for a long time.

  “A double Scotch,” Harry said mechanically to Angelina. He watched her straight body moving out the door. It wasn’t likely she loved only her husband, Angelo. Young Italians were hot stuff, though old ones were no good. She was a beautiful bootlegger.

  He grinned at Bob who waved back. The fellow with him nodded graciously, a sot with something respectable about him.

  “Let’s go over and sit with Bob,” Harry said.

  “Why do you want to?”

  “I feel sorry for Bobbie.”

  “What’s the matter with him more than usual?”

  “Nothing more only he’s all shot. He’s getting worse. He’s got no friends now. Farrel’s breaking off with him. He seems just naturally sad. His wife goes looking for him a lot and tries to help him but he’s always tight and she can’t do nothing. The best thing he could do is to tell people she’s his wife and go and live with her.”

  “I never saw the guy he’s sitting with.”

  “Oh well, that doesn’t matter.”

  They went over and sat down at Bob’s table. Bob was a little embarrassed, wondering if Harry knew Farrel was leaving him, and if he knew he had been on a four-day drunk. They were introduced to Mr. Harris, who was in real estate. His collar was dirty. He needed at shave. He had a slight English accent and an asthmatic wheeze. They all had a single Scotch, and were about even so far, because Bob and Mr. Harris had had a few drinks before coming to Angelina’s. Harry was feeling good, everything clearing up for him, and he thought easily and clearly of Vera, who would be getting into bed. She had got on his nerves once too often. He was thinking of her and sore at himself for having to think of her. Day and night she was there forcing his attention. All around him. He looked at Mr. Harris who was staring ineffectually at the rim of his glass. The crown of his head was bald, a fringe of hair, a retreating line around the bald spot, a small mat of hair on his forehead.

  “Let’s switch to beer,” Mr. Harris said genially.

  “Suits me.”

  “Me too.”

  “Why not?”

  “Four bottles, Angelina.”

  The beer came. In the room was a hum of low talk. More people were coming in. An occasional loud laugh was followed by a sharp warning from Angelina. The beer on top of the Scotch made Harry feel like elaborating upon his thoughts. He felt himself becoming expansive. He was trying to avoid talking about his wife.

  “You all look so dumb,” Jimmie said.

  “Sure, I’m sad,” Harry said, feeling sorry for himself. He thought of something insulting to say to Jimmie. Jimmie was not married and was laughing up his sleeve. Jimmie was grinning happily and he was uneasy. Then he felt sorry for Mr. Harris who was trying to hold on to himself. Harry thought of himself as being neat, quick, dexterous. He began to talk bitterly about being married. He wanted to tell in detail a quarrel with his wife, but found it something he could not explain.

  “His grandfather happened to be a pioneer around here,” Jimmie explained.

  “My father was a squire,” Mr. Harris said importantly.

  “Thank God I don’t know anything about my grandfather,” Bob said.

  “Don’t take it so hard, Bob. Buck up, Bob.”

  “Cut that stuff, Jim.”

  “Furthermore, my father was a squire,” Mr. Harris explained.

  There was a disturbance at the door, Angelina preventing two Italian girls, bold strapping wenches, from entering the room. One of the girls pointed angrily at two girls sitting with two fellows at a table. Angelina was shaking her head resentfully and whispering to the girls, backing them away from the door. The girls stood at the door, watching sullenly.

  “They been cut out I guess,” Harry said, accurately measuring each word.

  “They’ll be thrown out,” Mr. Harris said.

  Harry watched the girls and Angelina, and listened vaguely to Mr. Harris whose father was a squire in the old country. When he got tired of the Italian girls he concentrated on the salt shaker in the centre of the table, a tall salt shaker, with a dinted silver top. He was not interested in what Mr. Harris was saying though he heard him quite plainly. “I’m all set to get going good,” he was thinking. He wouldn’t go home tonight, nor next morning. He would leave Vera absolutely alone a while. Later on he would try and fix things up with her, but at present they were getting in each other’s way. She agreed with him but made it clear he was wrong. “Me and me brother were not much good,” Mr. Harris was saying. “We came to this country fifteen years ago. Father gave us the money to come out. Father was a squire.” Harry winked at one of the Italian girls who was leaning against the door, trying to get her eye. She looked as if she would have lots of pep. He didn’t want to go home. He seemed to have lost his pep simply from hanging around the house. He had gone stale. He was out of his stride. Tonight he felt like having a good time just for a change. In a little while he’d suggest going to a dance hall. Jimmie would be willing, the most agreeable fellow he had ever met. Bob, of course, was agreeable, but in a very unsatisfactory way. Then he listened attentively to Mr. Harris, who was talking slowly, carefully. “Freddie, the brother, and myself ain’t been doing much since we came out here but drink, but we never forgot we came from a family of real importance. We sent letters home, fine letters that said we were doing well and were prosperous. That would make father feel first rate. He had faith in the Harris boys though they had been a bit wild at home. That’s what he always said in the letters.”

  “A decent sort, Mr. Harris.”

  “A fine old bloke. He wrote he was coming out to see how we were prospering. That put the wind up us, men, but we were the Harris boys and we wrote him to come. We hired a swell flat for all the time he was here.”

  Harry, sipping beer, caught a glimpse of Angel
ina’s head in the door. A lovely head, a lovely neck. Splendid legs. Maybe she’d go dancing. They had always been rather friendly. Two weeks ago he had pinched her and she had giggled. She had forgotten herself and giggled, for she was really a businesswoman. Splendid legs. Still, Vera had good legs.

  “It took all we had to fix up a flat but it was worth it, wasn’t it? There’s been nothing doing in real estate for a year, you see, and I’m missing the little there is anyway. The old man liked it though. He was proud of us and surprised and happy that the Harris boys had turned out first rate.”

  “Great idea, wasn’t it?” Jimmie insisted.

  “Wonderful,” Bob said.

  “Very interesting, Mr. Harris,” Harry agreed.

  Harry took a drink of beer and shook his head. He didn’t want any more beer. He wanted to get out of the place.

  More noise at the door. Angelina had taken the Italian girls by the arms and was attempting to push them downstairs. Angelina’s face was flushed. One of the Italian girls had caught the eye of a young fellow sitting with the girls, and smiling, was exhibiting her bust, her hand on the curve of her hip. Angelina was angry.

  “The wops are getting snotty,” Jimmie said.

  “Are they?”

  “Yeah, you were saying, Mr. Harris . . .”

  Harry, whispering to Jimmie, didn’t want to offend Mr. Harris, but he kept thinking of the dance hall. It would be better to pick up a girl there and not bother taking one along.

  “I wonder what time it is, Jimmie?” Harry said.

  “When the old man went home we were broke,” Mr. Harris went on. “That wasn’t so long ago either. And Freddie, me brother, went on a spree. Freddie was a bit of a nobleman in his way but he drank too much. He didn’t know the meaning of the word restraint, Mr. Nash. But there was something grand about him. Think of straightening up like that when father came out here. A Harris all right.”