Clara Callan

by Richard B. Wright

  Friday, April 19

  Marion came by this evening with Mildred Craig and her mother to decide on the music for the wedding. Mrs. C. favoured “The Holy City,” but her daughter wanted “Because.” Marion suggested “I Love You Truly.” When asked for my opinion, I said that any or all would wring dry the hearts of the wedding guests and therefore would be suitable. Wry little looks of bafflement from the Craigs and Marion’s usual benign acknowledgement of my strangeness. “Oh, shoot, Clara. You never take anything seriously.” Wrong, wrong, wrong, I felt like saying, but didn’t, of course. In the end I played and Marion sang all three ditties. The pretty little bride and Mum were won over by “I Love You Truly,” which Marion shrewdly sang last.

  Whitfield, Ontario

  Sunday, April 21, 1935

  Dear Nora,

  Sorry to have upset you with my last letter. Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone on like that about God and faith. You musn’t worry, Nora. I have no intention of laying the sharp edge of the paring knife against my wrists. It’s spring, for goodness’ sake. I am reconciled to my state; of course, I have to rethink the notion of time. If I no longer believe in immortality (heaven, if you like), then it follows that my time is finite. It will therefore end one day and so the question becomes, How may I best use what time is left to me? That’s what I must work on. I have to confess that when I last wrote to you, I was a little edgy and distraught. Perhaps I still am, but not as much. It’s just that I must learn how to live another way.

  Are you still appearing in those detective shows and hospital dramas? When will Miss Dowling’s saga of small-town life appear? Has your handsome announcer made his pass yet? Should I buy a radio or continue to play the piano? Answer to these questions will bring immense peace of mind.

  Clara

  Saturday, May 4

  The Accompanist at the Wedding. I was thinking of those five words as the title of a poem this afternoon. It was three o’clock and Marion was singing “I Love You Truly.” The lovely afternoon light was colouring Jesus and the Apostles on the church windows. I was thinking of a woman like myself who plays the piano for other women’s celebrations. There she is in her blue dress and white shoes at the piano. And will she be playing for Millie Craig’s daughter in twenty years? Will she be there again in say, 1955? A woman of fifty-two with thickened waist and ankles? With grey in her hair? I wonder.

  Monday, May 6

  The silver jubilee of King George and Queen Mary and all over the province there have been celebrations. Today we marched the children to the cenotaph and stood listening to the local MPP, a well-fed lawyer from Linden, talking about the greatness of the Royal Family and how privileged we all are to be a part of the British Empire, the “greatest family of countries the world has ever known.” The children holding their little Union Jacks listening respectfully to this windbag. No mention at all of the men without work who have no means to feed their families. Who each week have to endure the humiliation of Relief. The man’s sanctimonious blather made my blood boil. Cheered up, however, by a letter from Nora who seems to be enjoying life in the Great Republic.

  Tatham House

  138 East 38th Street

  New York

  April 29, 1935

  Dear Clara,

  I’m glad you’re feeling better about life in general, but I wish you wouldn’t be so descriptive. That bit about laying a paring knife against your wrists! I don’t particularly enjoy reading that kind of thing from my sister, even if you were just kidding. I still think you should talk to someone about religion, or maybe read some books on the subject. Going to church and believing in God have been an important part of your life, Clara. You can’t just cast things like that aside. We all need to believe in something. It’s only human nature.

  As for your sarcastic questions! Yes, I’m still doing some freelance work on shows. I’m still calling for Dr. Donaldson to do his rounds at the hospital. I’ve also been a patient of his (I was shot by a gangster boyfriend). It’s funny. For some reason producers hear my voice and see me not only as the helpful sister, but also as the tough dame who hangs around hoodlums. No, Les Cunningham has made no passes at me. In fact, I haven’t seen Les for a while, though he’s been chosen to announce our show and so I guess we’ll be working together. We go on the air in two weeks, by the way, so wish me luck. I’ve lost about six pounds over the last month and I’ve had my hair cut really short. I’ll bet you wouldn’t recognize me. But I’m saving the best news for last. I think I can now afford my own place and so I am moving next Saturday into a little apartment five streets from here. My new address will be 135 East Thirty-third Street. My very own place, Clara! No more sharing the bathroom with nine other girls!!! Hope all is well up in dear old Whitfield.

  Love, Nora

  Sunday, May 19

  Walked out to the cemetery this morning. Past the church where I could hear the voices of the congregation.

  Unto the hills around do I lift up

  My longing eyes,

  O whence for me shall my salvation come,

  From whence arise?

  From God the Lord doth come my certain aid,

  From God the Lord who heaven and earth hath made.

  One of Father’s favourites, and how many times did I stand beside him singing that hymn? Felt a little strange walking there on the empty street in my old brown coat, carrying the garden shears and trowel in a cloth bag. Saw myself as others might; as a woman in an old brown coat turning a bit odd in her middle years. I was glad to get beyond the village and out into the country with the sunlight on my face and the smell of the ploughed fields around me.

  Spent an hour or so tidying up the grave. I should really have planted something, geraniums perhaps. Yet the plain clipped grass seemed to suit Father best. His name and years are like fresh wounds in the grey stone. Stood listening to some crows across the fields near a woodlot. They were chasing a marauding hawk that was swooping and climbing to avoid them. All those dark birds against a blue sky.

  Friday, May 24

  Victoria Day with flags and bunting on storefronts and verandas. Warm and sunny and two busloads off to Linden for the parade. What a fuss people make over an old dead queen! At noon two tramps came to the kitchen door and asked if I wanted my summer wood split and piled. One fellow was about thirty, tall and thin in overalls with an old suit coat and cap. He had a wide comical mouth and was talkative and eager to please. The other was sixteen or so, a homely boy and simple-minded from the look of him. He had a short thick body and a walleye. I had misgivings, but I set them to work, watching from the kitchen window. To their credit they worked steadily all afternoon, the man splitting and the boy piling the wood in neat rows against the side of the shed. They finished about five o’clock and I took out some food to them: cold pork and mustard sandwiches, some tea and half an apple pie. They sat on the back stoop to eat. When they finished their meal, I gave them a package of sandwiches with the rest of the pie and a dollar. I was certainly pleased with the job they did. They had even raked up all the chips into a pile. Just as they were leaving, the Brydens pulled into their driveway. They had spent the day opening their summer cabin at Sparrow Lake. I think they were amused by the pride I took in my woodpile. I can’t help it. It was deeply satisfying to show them the neatly stacked cord of wood against the shed. We had supper together and later sat on their veranda listening to the firecrackers from the fairgrounds. Then some children came running along the street, laughing and holding sparklers. Tiny showers of light in the darkness.

  Saturday, May 25 (11:45 p.m.)

  A terrible thing has happened to me. This afternoon I was set upon by the two men who came by the house yesterday. They hurt me, or one of them did. I have filled the bathtub twice with hot water. But the kitchen stove has gone out and there is no more, and I am too tired to bother with it until morning. Yet I cannot sleep and must record what happened to me.

  This afternoon I went for a walk along the railway tracks. I have
done it countless times and usually I go no further than Henry Hill’s. I am afraid of his dog and seldom go past the place. Today, however, the old man and the dog were gone and so I walked as far as Trestle Bridge. I sat on the bridge for perhaps twenty minutes watching the fields turn dark and light under the passing clouds and then I started home. I hurried a bit because I was thinking again of the collie which is bad-tempered. I wanted to get past Henry’s before he and the dog returned, and I felt better when I did. Then as I came around the bend in the tracks, I saw two figures ahead. They were dark against the blue of the sky. One had his arms spread wide like a child walking on the top of a fence. From time to time the figure stumbled and fell between the tracks. Then I could see that it was the man and the boy who had split and piled my wood yesterday. As they came towards me, the man ignored the boy’s antics, walking quickly and looking down as though he were angry or harried. Each time the boy fell, he would run to catch up and try again to balance himself on the tracks.

  I don’t believe I felt any fear at the sight of them. I used to watch Father talking to such men through the screen door of the kitchen. Giving them a ten-cent piece or a bag of apples and sending them on their way. Such men nearly always defer to authority. They are used to being told what to do, and so I was not afraid at their approach. When I got within perhaps fifty yards, the man looked up and saw me and stopped. The boy stopped too and stood on the rail with his hand on the man’s shoulder. I walked steadily on. I could see now that the man was grinning with his wide comical mouth and he called out to me. “Hello there, Missus. How are you today? Do you remember Donny and me? We chopped that cord of wood for you yesterday, didn’t we, Donny?”

  The boy said nothing, just looked at me. There was only his vacant face with its terrible white eye. I wished them a good day, and then the man did an annoying thing. As I passed, he turned and began walking alongside me. As I quickened my pace, he did likewise, and all this time he was chattering. “Out for a stroll, are you, Missus? A little nature walk? Sure is a nice day for it. That’s what Donny and me are doing. Taking a stroll and listening to the birdies.” And on and on with this foolishness. The youth followed. The sole on one of his shoes had come loose and was flapping in the cinders between the tracks. I remember that flapping sound behind me. The tramp’s presumption was both irritating and bedevilling. That is how I felt at that point, irritated but not yet fearful, as the man walked along beside me with his chattering, grinning mouth, and the boy followed in his broken shoes.

  I kept thinking that it was all quite ridiculous, and finally I halted and told the man to stop his nonsense and get away from me. Then I may have made a mistake. I told him there were men working on the tracks by Trestle Bridge, and they would be along soon, and then he would find himself in serious trouble. The tramp could see I was lying and he may have sensed the beginning of my fear. Then he said something like this.

  “Now, Missus, you’re telling us a fib and nice ladies like you shouldn’t tell fibs. There are no men working on that bridge this afternoon. Section men don’t work on Saturday afternoons. Everybody gets a little holiday on Saturday afternoons, even section men. We know that, don’t we, Donny? Me and Donny live on the tracks, Missus. We been on railway tracks all over this country and in the United States of America too.”

  I had started forward again, but suddenly he sprang ahead of me and blocked my way. He was one of those loose-jointed men who are perhaps remembered in country towns for nothing more than step-dancing. I must have said something like, “What do you think you’re doing?” and then he said this. I remember these words.

  “You live alone, don’t you, Missus? No man around? Nobody to chop your wood or warm your little feet in bed. Oh my, what a shame!”

  His words unsettled me, and I’m sure it was then that I knew these men intended to harm me. Then the tramp said, “You’re a good-looking woman and I’ll bet you could use a good ____ing.” At that word I screamed, and I remember that at the edge of the pine woods, several small black-and-yellow birds rushed forth from the grass and rose into the air. The tramp seized my wrists. “Come along now, Missus. I just want to give you a little kiss. I haven’t had a kiss in donkey’s years.” Donkey’s years! Yes, he used that expression. And so began my struggle. He was all sharp and flinty, all bones and edges or so it seemed. I remember the sour tobacco stink from his mouth and the unwashed smell of his overalls. A reeking skeleton of a man with a wide mouth.

  We swayed in the grass by the side of the tracks. “Now, Missus, now, Missus, you’ll like it, you’ll see.” A kind of mad, skipping song over and over. So we shuffled around in the grass, and the tramp began to laugh and holding me at arm’s-length he twisted me around. He was singing a foolish song. “Have you every been into an Irishman’s shanty? Where money is scarce, but whisky’s a-plenty.” It was all this mad circling and through the turns I could see the boy sitting on the tracks, watching us. The tramp’s face had reddened with his exertions and he had somehow managed to remove his coat and fling it into the grass.

  Then I fell and he covered me with himself. There was something sharp against my cheek from one of his pockets. A pencil maybe or the stem of a pipe. The terrible stink of him and his hand was beneath my dress, tearing at my underclothes. Ripping them away from me. I was dizzy from all that turning and sick with the notion of what was happening. I said to the tramp, “You musn’t do this to me. You musn’t harm me like this.” But he was only desperate and obscene. “Oh yes, Missus. Yes, Missus. I want to ____ you so bad. I do. You’ll like it, Missus. You’ll like it.” His words were something like that. Then I thought this. A terrible thing is going to happen and I can do nothing about it. It will be an ordeal but I do not think they will kill me. They are not murdering men. They will run away as soon as this is over. My eyes were closed and I shuddered with the pain of his entrance into my body.

  Then the frantic thrusting inside me. I counted nine, ten, perhaps a dozen before he spent himself. And all the while I was thinking this. I was thinking how suddenly a life can become misshapen, divided brutally into before and after a dire event. So it must be with all who endure calamity: those who must remember the day of the motor car accident, the afternoon the child fell through the ice, the winter night’s blaze that awakened the dreamers.

  The tramp was now quiet. I could feel his racing heartbeat. He had shifted his weight and so my cheek no longer hurt. But my insides were burning and I wondered if I now had some unspeakable disease swimming within me. Or perhaps I had become impregnated. It is indeed something to worry about, for I believe I am about in the middle of my month. When I opened my eyes, he was standing over me, buttoning himself. He looked out of sorts now. Ill-tempered. He called to the youth. “Come over here and have some too. You’ll never have a better chance than this.” I watched him buckling the straps of his overalls and looking for the coat he had flung aside in the grass. How I longed to set that grass on fire! Consume all three of us in a sudden flaring burst of flame. A field of fiery grass that would scour everything and leave the earth blackened and cleansed.

  The tramp now seemed hurried and vexed with the boy. “Come on now, hurry it up! Get that thing out of your pants and give it to her. She’s never going to see anything like that again.”

  The boy had come across from the tracks and was looking down at me. Fumbling with his buttons. His member was grotesque. A huge red thing and I said to myself he will tear me apart with it. Then the boy fell to his knees between my legs and I closed my eyes, for I could not bear to look at that vacant, ruined face. Almost at once I felt him spilling himself across my legs. I could feel it pouring over me as he worked it out of himself with his own hands. And so I was spared that. The tramp was now laughing. Calling the boy a damn fool.

  They left then. The man scolding the boy as they went away. I heard his voice fading, and when I turned on my side, I could see his long legs moving through the grass and the boy’s too climbing to the railway tracks. I knelt and wat
ched them walking along the tracks towards Trestle Bridge. The boy was hurrying and at one point the man stopped to cuff him across the back of the head. Then he hurried on, the boy endeavouring to keep up, and then they disappeared around the bend in the tracks. I lay down again, for I felt sick to my stomach and I was bleeding. After a few minutes I cleaned myself again with my torn bloomers, and I wondered how I would get home. What I wanted to do was sit in a hot bath and clean myself properly. Yet that seemed like such an undertaking, such an impossibly complicated and far-off task, that I began to weep and beat the ground with the palms of my hands. I also kicked my feet. I had a little spell there lying in the grass. A tantrum such as an hysterical child might have. It left me panting and exhausted in the sunlight. From time to time I had to clean myself again and then I would wonder what to do if my insides were swimming in disease or if I were pregnant with the tramp’s child. I could not bear the idea of facing a doctor over in Linden. I would have to go down to Toronto and find someone to help me. But where would I look and what would I say to him? I could not bring myself to tell anyone about this. I got myself into another state thinking about all that, and then I thought how grateful I would be if only I could turn back time and now be walking home with a copy of the Herald, looking forward to my supper, dealing as we all do with the fuss and worries of everyday life. Grumbling about them. When what we should do, if we could only be reminded, is to be grateful for the small routine difficulties of our days and nights.