The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan: Volume One

by Morley Callaghan

  Afterwards, undressing slowly at home, Johnny said, “Simpson is such a bore, don’t you think so, Charles?”

  “I know, but the brandies were very good.” They never mentioned the fight at the bar.

  “It was so funny when you looked at him with that blue-eyed Danish stare of yours,” Johnny said, chuckling.

  “People think I expect them to do tricks like little animals when I look at them like that,” Charles explained.

  Naked, they sat on the edge of the bed, laughing at Simpson’s eagerness to buy them brandies, and they made so many witty sallies they tired themselves out and fell asleep.

  For two weeks they weren’t seen around the cafés. Charles was writing another book and Johnny was typing it for him. It was a literary two weeks for both of them. They talked about all the modern authors and Johnny suggested that not one of them since Henry James had half Charles’s perception or subtle delicacy. Actually Charles did write creditably enough and everything he did had three or four good paragraphs in it. The winter was coming on and when this literary work was finished they wanted to go south.

  No one ever knew how they got the money to go to the Riviera for the winter. No one knew how they were able to drink so much when they had only Johnny’s hundred dollars a month. At Nice, where Stan Mason was living, they were very cheerful and Mason, admiring their optimism because he thought they had no money, let them have a room in his apartment. They lived with him till the evening he put his ear against the thin wall and heard them snickering, sitting on the edge of the bed. They were talking about him and having a good laugh. Stan Mason was hurt because he had thought them bright boys and really liked them. He merely suggested next morning that they would have to move since he needed the space.

  The boys were mainly happy in Nice because they were looking forward to returning to Paris in April. The leaves would be on all the trees and people would be sitting outside on the terraces at the cafés. Everybody they met in Nice told them how beautiful it was in Paris in the early spring, so they counted upon having the happiest time they had ever had together. When they did leave Nice they owed many thousand francs for a hotel bill, payment of which they had avoided by tossing their bags out of the window at two o’clock in the morning. They even had a little extra money at the time, almost twenty dollars they had retrieved from an elderly English gentleman, who had suggested, after talking to them all one morning, he would pay well to see the boys make a “tableau” for him. The old fellow was enthusiastic about the “tableau” and the boys had something to amuse them for two weeks.

  They returned to Paris the first week in April. Now that April was here they had expected to have so much fun, but the weather was disagreeable and cold. This year the leaves were hardly on the trees and there was always rain in the dull skies. They assured each other that the dull days could not last because it was April and Paris was the loveliest city in the world in the early spring.

  Johnny’s father had been writing many irritable letters from England, where he was for a few months, and the boys decided it was an opportune time for Johnny to go and see him for a week. When he returned they would be together for the good days at the end of the month.

  People were not very interested in Charles while Johnny was away. They liked him better when he was with Johnny. All week he walked around on tiptoe or sat alone at the corner table in the café. The two boys together seemed well mannered and bright, but Charles, alone, looked rather insignificant. Without thinking much about it he knew the feeling people had for him and avoided company, waiting impatiently for the days to pass, worrying about Johnny. He said to Stan Mason late one night, “I hope Johnny has enough sense not to pick up with a girl over in England.”

  “Why worry? Do it yourself now.”

  “Oh I do, too, only I don’t take them as seriously as Johnny does. Not that I mind Johnny having a girl,” he said, “only I don’t want him to have a complicated affair with one.”

  The night Johnny returned to Paris they went around to all the bars and people smiling, said, “There go the two boys.” They were happy, nervously happy, and Charles was scratching his check with his nail. Later on they wanted to be entirely alone and left the café district and the crowds to walk down the narrow side streets to the Seine while Johnny, chuckling, related the disagreeable circumstances of his visit to his father. His father had contended that he was a wastrel who ought to be earning his own living, and Johnny had jeeringly pointed out that the old man had inherited his money without having to work for it. They were angry with each other, and the father had slapped Johnny, who retaliated by poking him in the jaw. That was the most amusing part of the story the boys talked about, walking along the left bank of the Seine opposite the Louvre. Casually Johnny told about the few affairs he had had with cheap women in London, and Charles understood that these affairs had not touched him at all. It was a warm clean evening, the beginning of the real spring days in April, and the boys were happy walking by the river in the moonlight, the polished water surface reflecting the red and white lights on the bridges.

  Near the end of the month Constance Foy, whom the boys had known at Nice, came to Paris, and they asked her to live with them. She was a simple-minded fat-faced girl with a boy’s body and short hair dyed red, who had hardly a franc left and was eager to live with anybody who would keep her. For a week the three of them were happy in the big studio. The boys were proud of their girl and took her around to all the bars, buying drinks for her, actually managing to do it on the hundred dollars a month. In the nighttime they were impartial and fair about Constance, who appeared to have all her enthusiasm for the one who, at the moment, was making love to her. But she said to Stan Mason one evening, “I don’t remember whether or not I ought to be there messing up that relationship.”

  “Aren’t the three of you having a good time?”

  “Good enough, but funny things are happening.”

  The boys were satisfied till Charles began to feel that Johnny was making love to Constance too seriously. It was disappointing, for he had never objected to having her in the studio, and now Johnny was so obvious in his appreciation of her. Charles, having this feeling, was not unable to touch her at all, and resented Johnny’s unabated eagerness for her. It was all the same to Constance.

  Before the end of the month the two boys were hardly speaking to each other, though always together at the cafés in the evening. It was too bad, for the days were bright and clear, the best of the April weather, and Paris was gay and lively. The boys were sad and hurt and sorry but determined to be fair with each other. The evening they were at the English bar, sitting at one of the table beer barrels, Charles had a hard time preventing himself crying. He was very much in love with Johnny and felt him slipping away. Johnny, his fingers over his mouth, sometimes shook his head but didn’t know what to say.

  Finally they left the bar to walk home. They were going down the short, quiet street leading to the Boulevard.

  “What are you going to do about Constance?” Charles said.

  “If it’s all the same to you I’ll have her to myself.”

  “But what are you going to do with her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’d let a little tart like that smash things,” Charles said, shaking his hand at Johnny.

  “Don’t you dare call her a tart.”

  “Please, Johnny, don’t strike me.”

  But Johnny who was nearly crying with rage swung his palm at Charles, hitting him across the face. Stan Mason had just turned the corner at the Boulevard, coming up to the bar to have a drink, and saw the two of them standing there.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “I begged him, I implored him not to hit me,” Charles said.

  “Oh, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him, what’ll I do?” Johnny said, tears running down his cheeks.

  They stood there crying and shaking their heads, but would not go home together. Finally Charles consented to go with Stan
to his hotel and Johnny went home to Constance.

  Charles stayed with Mason all week. He would not eat at all and didn’t care what he was drinking. The night Mason told him Johnny was going back to America, taking Constance with him, he shook his head helplessly and said, “How could he hit me, how could he hit me, and he knew I loved him so much.”

  “But what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How are you going to live?”

  “I’ll make enough to have a drink occasionally.”

  At the time he was having a glass of Scotch, his arm trembling so weakly he could hardly lift the glass.

  The day Johnny left Paris it rained and it was cold again, sitting at the café in the evening. There had been only one really good week in April. The boys always used to sit at the cafés without their hats on, their hair brushed nicely. This evening Charles had to go home and get his overcoat and the big black hat he had brought from America. Sitting alone at his table in the cool evening, his overcoat wrapped around him, and the black hat on, he did not look the same at all. It was the first time he had worn the hat in France.

  Very Special Shoes

  All winter eleven-year-old Mary Johnson had been dreaming of a pair of red leather shoes she had seen in a shoe-store window on the avenue one afternoon when she was out with her mother doing the shopping. Every Saturday she had been given twenty-five cents for doing the housework all by herself and the day had come at last when it added up to sixdollars, the price of the shoes. Moving around the house very quietly so she would not wake her mother who seemed to need a lot of sleep these days, Mary finished up the last of the dusting and hurried to the window and looked out: on such a day she had been afraid it might rain but the street was bright in the afternoon sunlight. Then she went quickly into the bedroom where her mother slept, with one light cover thrown half over her. “Mother, wake up,” she whispered excitedly.

  Mrs. Johnson, a handsome woman of fifty with a plump figure and a high color in her cheeks, was lying on her left side with her right arm hanging loosely over the side of the bed: her mouth was open a little, but she was breathing so softly Mary could hardly hear her. Every day now she seemed to need more sleep, a fact which worried Mary’s older sisters, Barbara and Helen, and was the subject of their long whispering conversations in their bedroom at night. It seemed to trouble Mr. Johnson too, for he had started taking long walks by himself and he came home with his breath smelling of whiskey. But to Mary her mother looked as lovely and as healthy as ever. “Mother,” she called again. She reached over and gave her shoulder a little shake, and then watched her mother’s face when she opened her eyes to see if she had remembered about the shoes.

  When her mother, still half-asleep, only murmured, “Bring me my purse, Mary, and we’ll have our little treat,” Mary was not disappointed. She gleefully kept her secret. She took the dime her mother gave her and went up to the store to get the two ice-cream cones, just as she did on other days, only it seemed that she could already see herself coming down the street in the red leather shoes: she seemed to pass herself on the street, wearing the outfit she had planned to wear with the shoes, a red hat and a blue dress. By the time she got back to the house she had eaten most of her own cone. It was always like that. But then she sat down at the end of the kitchen table to enjoy herself watching her mother eat her share of the ice cream. It was like watching a big eager girl. Mrs. Johnson sat down, spread her legs, and sighed with pleasure and licked the ice cream softly and smiled with satisfaction and her mouth looked beautiful. And then when she was finished and was wiping her fingers with her apron Mary blurted out, “Are we going to get my shoes now, Mother?”

  “Shoes. What shoes?” Mrs. Johnson asked.

  “The red leather shoes I’ve been saving for,” Mary said, looking puzzled. “The ones we saw in the window that we talked about.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see,” Mrs. Johnson, said slowly as if she had not thought of those particular shoes since that day months ago. “Why, Mary, have you been thinking of those shoes all this time?” Then, as Mary kept looking up at her she went on fretfully, “Why, I told you at the time, child, that your father was in debt and we couldn’t afford such shoes.”

  “I’ve got the six dollars saved, haven’t I? Today.”

  “Well, your father . . .”

  “It’s my six dollars, isn’t it?”

  “Mary, darling, listen. Those shoes are far too old for a little girl like you.”

  “I’m twelve next month. You know I am.”

  “Shoes like that are no good for running around, Mary. A pair of good serviceable shoes is what you need.”

  “I can wear them on Sunday.”

  “Look, Mary,” her mother tried to reason with her, “I know I said I’d get you a pair of shoes. But a good pair of shoes. Proper shoes. Your father is going to have a lot more expenses soon. Why, he’d drop dead if he found I’d paid six dollars for a pair of red leather shoes for you.”

  “You promised I could save the money,” Mary whispered. Then, when she saw that worried, unyielding expression on the mother’s face she knew she was not going to get the shoes; she turned away and ran into the bedroom and threw herself on the bed and pulled the pillow over her face and started to cry. Never in her life had she wanted anything as much as she wanted the red shoes. When she heard the sound of her mother moving pots and pans in the kitchen she felt that she had been cheated deliberately.

  It began to get dark and she was still crying, and then she heard her mother’s slow step coming toward the bedroom. “Mary, listen to me,” she said, her voice almost rough as she reached down and shook Mary. “Get up and wipe your face, do you hear?” She had her own hat and coat on. “We’re going to get those shoes right now,” she said.

  “You said I couldn’t get them.” Mary said.

  “Don’t argue with me,” her mother said. She sounded blunt and grim and somehow far away from Mary. “I want you to get them. I say you’re going to. Come on.”

  Mary got up and wiped her face, and on the way up to the store her mother’s grim silent determination made her feel lonely and guilty. They bought a pair of red leather shoes. As Mary walked up and down in them on the store carpet her mother watched her, unsmiling and resolute. Coming back home Mary longed for her mother to speak to her, but Mrs. Johnson, holding Mary’s hand tight, walked along, looking straight ahead.

  “Now if only your father doesn’t make a fuss,” Mrs. Johnson said when they were standing together in the hall, listening. From the living room came the sound of a rustled newspaper. Mr. Johnson, who worked in a publishing house, was home. In the last few months Mary had grown afraid of her father: she did not understand why he had become so moody and short-tempered. As her mother, standing there, hesitated nervously, Mary began to get scared. “Go on into the bedroom,” Mrs. Johnson whispered to her. She followed Mary and had her sit down on the bed and she knelt down and put the red shoes on Mary’s feet. It was a strangely solemn, secret little ceremony. Mrs. Johnson’s breathing was heavy and labored as she straightened up. “Now don’t you come in until I call you,” she warned Mary.

  But Mary tiptoed into the kitchen and her heart was pounding as she tried to listen. For a while she heard only the sound of her mother’s quiet voice, and then suddenly her father cried angrily, “Are you serious? Money for luxuries at a time like this?” His voice became explosive. “Are we going crazy? You’ll take them back, do you hear?” But her mother’s voice flowed on, the one quiet voice, slow and even. Then there was a long and strange silence. “Mary, come here,” her father suddenly called.

  “Come on and show your father your shoes, Mary,” her mother urged her.

  The new shoes squeaked as Mary went into the living room and they felt like heavy weights that might prevent her from fleeing from her father’s wrath. Her father was sitting at the little table by the light and Mary watched his face desperately to see if the big vein at the side of his head had s
tarted to swell. As he turned slowly to her and fumbled with his glasses a wild hope shone in Mary’s scared brown eyes.

  Her father did not seem to be looking at her shoes. With a kind of pain in his eyes he was looking steadily at her as if he had never really been aware of her before. “They’re fine shoes, aren’t they?” he asked.

  “Can I keep them? Can I really? Mary asked breathlessly.

  “Why, sure you can,” he said quietly.

  Shouting with joy Mary skipped out of the room and along the hall, for she had heard her sisters come in. “Look, Barbara, look, Helen,” she cried. Her two older sisters, who were stenographers, and a bit prim, were slightly scandalized. “Why, they’re far too old for you,” Barbara said. “Get out, get out,” Mary laughed. “Mother knows better than you do.” Then she went to the kitchen to help her mother with the dinner and watch her face steadily with a kind of rapt wonder, as if she was trying to understand the strange power her mother possessed that could make an angry man like her father suddenly gentle and quiet.

  Mary intended to wear the shoes to church that Sunday, but it rained, so she put them back in the box and decided to wait a week. But in the middle of the week her father told her that her mother was going to the hospital for an operation.

  “Is it for the pains in her legs?” Mary asked.

  “Well, you see, Mary, if everything comes off all right,” her father answered, “she may not have any pains at all.”

  It was to be an operation for cancer, and the doctor said the operation was successful. But Mrs. Johnson died under the anaesthetic. The two older sisters and Mr. Johnson kept repeating dumbly to the doctor, “But she looked all right. She looked fine.” Then they all went home. They seemed to huddle first in one room and then in another. They took turns trying to comfort Mary, but no one could console her.