The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan

by Callaghan, Morley; Atwood, Margaret;

  As she sat down in the chair by the window, knowing she had said the right thing to hurt Uncle Alec, the truth seemed to come tumbling at her, making her strangely happy. What had been true of her own father had been true of Uncle Alec and he knew it; he hadn’t been a hypocrite with her mother, in her presence he had to be gracious and warm and available; he couldn’t help it; he loved what was beautiful, it was the wisdom he had tried to cultivate in her, too, and when he was with her mother he felt compelled to respond to something beautiful in her nature, even if it left him feeling angry afterward.

  She got up, slipped off the dressing gown she had been wearing and picked up the fluffy dress and put it on. With her cheeks burning she watched herself in the mirror as she walked the length of the room trying to look as her mother had looked yesterday when she swept into the shop.

  A BOY GROWS OLDER

  In the bedroom Mrs. Sloane sat down and folded her hands tight in her lap, swallowed hard, and said to her husband, “I’ve got something to tell you about Jim.”

  Holding the shoe he had just taken off in his hand, he said, “Were you talking to him today?”

  “He’s coming here for money. I’ve been giving a bit to him from time to time. I know I shouldn’t, but he’s got me completely distracted.”

  “He knows we’ve got no money to lend,” he said, and as he got up and walked around excitedly with one shoe on she knew he was thinking of their little bit of money disappearing day by day. “He knows we’ve only got our pension,” he said. He had worked hard all his life and they had both denied themselves many little comforts and now she could see a look of terror coming into his eyes that she had seen for the first time the day he had to quit work and they had thought they would hardly be able to live. “Why, what’ll happen to us?” he said, turning on her suddenly. “Where does he think we get it?”

  She only sighed and shook her head, for she had been asking Jim that question for months, yet every time he got behind in his insurance collections he came around, scared, and got a little more money from her.

  “There’s no use giving me a setting out,” she said. “He’ll never believe we won’t give it to him till you tell him. If he understands we’re through helping him maybe he’ll get some sense.”

  As they sat there solemnly looking at each other and waiting for Jim, she had her old dressing gown wrapped around her and he was sitting on the bed with his white hair mussed from rubbing his hands through it. They took turns blurting things out, questions they never tried to answer, questions that worried them more and more and drew them closer together. When they heard Jim come in and call from the living room, she said, “Remember, I’m going to tell him I told you. I’ve done all I can. It’s up to you now.”

  Jim was waiting for her, walking up and down with his hat on and his white scarf hanging out as if the wind had blown it free from his overcoat while he hurried along the street. He looked very unhappy but he tried to smile at his mother. His face was so good-natured it was almost weak.

  “What is it this time?” she asked.

  “Oh,” he said, sitting down and starting to rub his shoe on the carpet like an embarrassed small boy, “the same thing, I guess.”

  “More money again, you mean,” she said.

  “I guess that’s it.”

  “In God’s name, what for this time?”

  “The same thing — I’m behind in my collections.”

  She had intended to shrug and say coolly, “Speak to your father,” but instead she found herself walking up and down in front of him, wheeling on him and whispering savagely, “You’d take the last cent from us, and then what do you think is going to happen? Who are you going to run to then?” But he got up and took her arm and muttered, “I’ll never ask you again — I promise — but I’ve got to have it. I’ll give every cent back to you — I promise. I wouldn’t ask you if there was a chance of getting it any place else.” He felt sure of her. “I’ll lose my job,” he said.

  “Maybe it would teach you to have some respect for yourself,” she said, and then she added calmly, “I’ve told your father.”

  “You told him after all?” he said, terribly hurt. “You promised not to.”

  “I’m through,” she said.

  He started to work himself up into a temper which didn’t fool her at all because he always did it when he was trying to abuse her.

  “You’re mean,” he said. “Plain mean.” His words had no real anger and she smiled grimly. When he saw her smile he stopped and said helplessly, “Please, Mom, please —” But she said firmly, “Speak to your father. It’s his money.”

  “Mom, just this once more,” he pleaded, and when she saw how he dreaded facing his father she was puzzled because he had never been afraid of him, they had never shouted at each other. “I’ve got to do it, I’ve got to do it,” he kept saying to himself as he walked up and down, and then he turned to her, white-faced, and said, “Well, I’ve got to ask him, I can’t help it,” and he went into the bedroom with her following.

  His father had gotten into bed and was reading and he could just see the crown of his white head rising over the edge of the newspaper. When Jim went into the room he stood under the light on the wall. That was where he always stood when he was in trouble. Years ago, when he had been caught in a petty theft at school he had stood there; when he had started to work he used to come in late at night and stand under the light and tell them what had happened during the day, and it was where he had stood the night when he was eighteen and had told them he was going to get married. He was tilting back and forth on his heels, waiting for his father to look over at him, but when the paper wasn’t lowered, he said at last in a mild, friendly tone, “Dad, could you loan me some money?”

  His father put down his paper, folded it, shoved it under his arm and took off his glasses and said, “What do you do with your money, son?”

  As his father stared at him steadily, a silly half-ashamed grin was on Jim’s face. “I don’t know, honestly I don’t,” he said shaking his head.

  “Well, tell me what you think you do with it. You must remember something.”

  “Salesmen and collectors are pretty much alike,” Jim said. “They hang around together and it just slips through their fingers and then they’re short at the end of the week.”

  “Then a man like you shouldn’t have such a job.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Jim mumbled.

  “Why don’t you hunt for another job?”

  “I will — I’ll try hard,” he said eagerly.

  “How much do you need this time?”

  “It’s a lot, I’ve got to cover a whole week’s collections,” Jim said, his head down, his voice faint.

  “All that?” his father said, and Mrs. Sloane knew by the way he swung his head toward her, startled that he was thinking of the money he had saved for himself for his personal expenses such as tobacco, newspapers, a trip to the movies and clothes for himself. As he swung the bedclothes off, his face was flushed a vivid red against his white hair and he kept on staring at Jim. Mrs. Sloane knew he had a bad temper and she grew afraid.

  Jim, watching his father coming toward him in his bare feet, muttered hastily, “I guess you haven’t got it. I guess I’ll go.”

  “Wait,” his father called, making it clear he was not going to challenge him. “I didn’t say I didn’t have it.” He spoke as if Jim ought to understand they had always been close together. He was going over to his coat hanging on the closet door. When Mrs. Sloane saw how he fumbled in his pocket for his check book and how his hand trembled as he jerked his pen out of his vest pocket, she knew he was scared of something. She thought he was scared of Jim: she resented it so much she turned to abuse Jim herself.

  But she said nothing to Jim because she had never seen him look so hurt as he did standing there waiting and watching his father as if at last he understood everything his father felt, and he said in a whisper, “What are you scared of?”

 
“Nothing,” his father said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Maybe I was thinking it might be worse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Supposing I didn’t give it to you?” his father said.

  And while they kept looking at each other, Jim felt the fear in his father that came from knowing how weak he was, a fear that tomorrow or in a year something was apt to happen that would break him and jail him. He turned to his mother, begging her with his eyes to tell him what to do or say that would drive that scared look from his father’s eyes. For the first time he seemed aware of their feeling for him. She nodded her head: she wanted to tell him she believed in him, but she was puzzled herself.

  His father was writing the check on the top of the dresser. He wrote very carefully, and when he was finished he handed the check to Jim, saying only, “Here you are, son.”

  Looking at the check as if it were very hard for him to take it, Jim said in such a low voice he could hardly hear him, “I guess I’ve got to take it, but I’ll pay you back. I wish you’d believe I’ll pay you back. I don’t want to take it if you won’t believe it.”

  “All right, son.”

  “Well, thanks, thanks . . .” he said.

  But at the door he stood for a while with his head down, waiting, as if he couldn’t bear to leave them till he was sure they had some faith left in him. He was so grave it made him look years older.

  When he had gone his father waited a while for her to abuse him scornfully for not being firm with him, and then when she didn’t speak, but stood there looking at the door, he got into bed and pulled the covers over him. After a few moments she went over and got into bed too. But she couldn’t lie down. She sat up stiffly, staring down at her husband’s face. His head rolled away from her and his eyes were closed.

  “I’m glad you gave it to him,” she said.

  He opened his eyes and said simply, “He’s getting older. He was a little different. Didn’t you notice it? It made me feel we hadn’t been wrong helping him this far.”

  As she lay down beside him and reached to turn out the light, her hand trembled. She lay very still. Then she turned and put her arm around him, and they lay there together in the dark.

  THE MAN WITH THE COAT

  ✧ I ✧

  That winter day in the corridor outside the courtroom where J. C. (Scotty) Bowman, the bank manager, was to be tried for fraud there was a gathering of people who would not have come together at any other time. It wasn’t a big crowd but they had come from shops, brokerage offices and saloons, their own private homes, and even Chinese laundries. The corridor was wet and dirty with little pools of water from their wet overshoes. After the all-night heavy snowfall it had turned mild and the sun had come out and the melting snow had flooded the streets. Everybody had got wet from spray from passing taxis. They had all come there because Scotty Bowman was a well-known man, and his friend, Harry Lane, the public-relations director of the Sweetman Distillery, to whom he had loaned the fifteen thousand, was even better known in the city.

  Harry Lane, of an old family that had lost its money, had been a flier in the Battle of Britain. When he had come home and had taken the distillery job at thirteen thousand a year, his picture had often appeared in the papers as the organizer of golf tournaments for Sweetman Cups and as the speaker at sport banquets and service-club luncheons. He knew everybody.

  The branch of the bank where Scotty had been manager was near Stanley on St. Catherine, right in the metropolitan section of the city which was that neighborhood below Sherbrooke at the foot of the mountain, the district of the big hotels, department stores, railroad stations and restaurants, nightclubs, brothels and bookie joints. In this neighborhood Scotty had had a splendid reputation among the storekeepers and businessmen. Many shiftless and rootless neighborhood characters also used his bank because they liked and trusted him. Through Harry Lane he had also met at Dorfman’s some celebrated sporting and theatrical people of rich taste and easy money.

  In the corridor the troubled and wondering shopkeepers and small businessmen stood in little groups, all wearing their good suits out of respect for Scotty whose integrity they had always admired. Near the courtroom door the two tall neat clean-looking bond salesmen, friends of Harry Lane’s, looked around at the others with some amusement. “Look at those two Chinamen. Notice anything funny about them?” the taller one said. “You mean they look alike?” “No, not that. Neither one is wearing a hat that seems to fit him properly. Look.” The two Chinese had done business with Scotty’s bank and had often invited him to Chinese banquets; two years ago Scotty had received a decoration from Chiang Kaishek.

  The two matrons from Westmount, walking up and down in their mink coats, gossiped in English accents that did not come from England. “Of course you know Harry’s mother died without leaving him a cent.” “Well, he certainly seems to have left this bank manager flat on his back without a cent.” “I must say I was astonished when he took that job with Sweetman’s.” “That pushing Mrs. Sweetman. She’ll do a little squirming over this kind of publicity.”

  The corridor began to smell of wet fur and rubber and there was a lot of coughing. The weather had been bad all week. A mild flu epidemic, an influenza that started with a head cold and coughing, was prevalent. Coming along the corridor was the newspaperman they called The Young Lion, because he was determined to outwrite, outdrink and outsmart all his older colleagues, and his grin widened as he recognized some older men he respected. A few paces behind him was Lonesome Harry, the saloonkeeper, and when he caught up he said, “I wasn’t sure whether any of the boys would bother coming. Geez, there’s Eddie.” His camel-hair coat was expensive, but neither the coat nor his expensive suit nor his new hat seemed to belong to him. He made his way toward big Eddie Adams, the rich fight promoter who was talking to Haggerty, the sporting editor of the Sun, and Ted Ogilvie, a friend of Harry Lane’s from college days.

  In the hum of conversation there was a loud burst of laughter. “Less noise there, less noise,” the gray-haired policeman at the door shouted belligerently. The laughter came only from the members of the sporting fraternity. The sedate little businessmen, still surprised that they were there, and still troubled and wondering, didn’t feel like laughing. Those who did laugh, because it was their style, secretly felt the same kind of wonder that Scotty Bowman and Harry Lane should end their friendship in a courtroom. “Come here, Mike,” Haggerty called to the tailor, Mike Kon, who had a shop on St. Catherine near Bleury. He was an old middle-weight fighter and Scotty had arranged for the loan that had started him in business. Standing off by himself dejectedly, Mike the Scholar had his hands buried in the pockets of his special black lightweight winter overcoat. He was thirty-five and he had a broken nose. “Don’t be a brooder, Mike,” Eddie Adams kidded him. “Why do guys who read books turn into brooders?” Joining them Mike said wanly, “For me this is no joke. Scotty was my friend.”

  “You say ‘was.’ Are they hanging the guy?”

  “I mean is. Not was.”

  “We’re all friends. These things only happen among friends. What’s the point of having friends if you can’t get them into trouble?”

  “But Scotty loses his job anyway,” Mike said earnestly. “He loses his pension and he has a wife and children. I know what that means.”

  “The case hasn’t been tried yet,” Ted Ogilvie said hopefully. “Harry may be able to put Scotty in a very good light. It’s a gift with Harry.”

  “I hope so,” Mike said. “This thing is all wrong, you know. Something is very wrong. Never in his life did Scotty get out of line and Harry Lane is, well, everybody likes Harry. I keep asking myself why this should be.”

  The policeman suddenly opened the door and they all began to file into the big high-ceilinged paneled courtroom. Two spectators had been let in ahead of the others: Mrs. Bowman and a gray-haired man, a family friend, had been allowed to enter with the lawyers from the side door. She was
a plump motherly white-haired woman in a brown hat and a brown cloth coat with a little fur on the collar. As the benches began to fill around her, her neck and back grew rigid. The Chinese sat in one row and the shopkeepers who knew each other kept together in another row. They all seemed to know where they belonged. No one got out of place, and bright sunlight came through the high western window.

  At the crowded press table Entwhistle, the dignified bald little court reporter for the Sun, couldn’t find a suitable seat. “How can I work with someone sitting in my lap,” he protested loudly. Then Mollie Morris, Judge Morris’ daughter, who did a column for the Sun came in and everybody turned. She was Harry Lane’s girl. No one had believed she would come and sit at the press table, but she came hurrying in with her fur coat open, her heavy goloshes making a flapping swishing sound, her high-cheekboned face with the bright brown eyes flushed from hurrying.

  The noise subsided as Scotty Bowman was led to the dock. In the last two months Scotty had got older. He looked like the family man he was, with a plump wife and two children. He had lost weight. His hair had been quite gray anyway, for he was fifty-eight, but he had been plump and jolly, not stooping a little as he did now approaching the dock. In one quick furtive glance he took in all the spectators till he found his wife. In the bank, or at the ball game, or the fights, or sitting in Dorfman’s, feeling so pleased to be there with more celebrated personalities who led expensive and glamorous lives, he had always met a man’s eyes. All his integrity had seemed to shine in his candid blue eyes. He fumbled at his collar, then turned to the window and blinked at the shaft of sunlight that just reached the dock; then he lowered his head and his face became so pale his lawyer, Roger Ouimet, stood up and went over to speak to him. Scotty lifted his head as if the lawyer’s consoling smile had given him some dignity, and then he smiled too.

  When Judge Montpetit came in everybody stood up, although some of them couldn’t see him at first, for he was only five-feet-four. His white plume rose above the heads of the lawyers and the clerks as he mounted the steps to his chair. He had a big head and heavy features. He glanced anxiously at the open window. He was afraid he was catching a cold and had taken a mixture of lemon juice and baking soda before leaving the house. His hearing was not good and the courtroom acoustics were bad and, as always, he looked up resentfully at the high ceiling. While the jury was being selected he fumbled with papers, read them, wrote on many notepads, leaning well over to the left, then folded his hands and waited.