by John Bemrose
“Ho-ho,” Alf said with enthusiasm, “he really ran into it that time.”
“Patterson didn’t give Clarkson his block,” Prince said with disapproval. “He’d have been away.” Alf realized Prince was pulling for the Argos and adjusted his comments accordingly, for in truth he hardly cared who won. Half an hour went by. Sitting with his knees up, the executive picked absently at a corn. The ball-carrier dodged under the uprights, raising both arms.
“Yes!” Prince cried, with a shocking fierceness. There was a huge fund of energy in the man, of willpower. He wasn’t just watching the game, he was trying to make things turn out the way he wanted.
Alf looked around the room. Prince’s suitcase lay on the far bed, like a giant clam opened to reveal a mass of neatly packed clothes. There was a shiny gold package in it, beside the rolled socks: like a gold brick, with a frilly bow.
On the shag carpet, just past the TV and inside the closet door, sat another suitcase: small, square, powder blue. A woman’s, Alf realized, a makeup case. Did Prince have his wife with him, or — what was her name — Sharon? Shirley? Those long legs. He looked at the closed bathroom door and bleakness went through him like a cold wind. He sipped his Scotch and stared at the far wall, where a painting of sailboats hung: vague impressions in yellow and pink, leaning in the curve of a tropical bay. Prince roared his approval at a play. Alf had the feeling he’d been here before, exactly like this: waiting for someone who scarcely knew he was there. He wondered if Shirley, or his wife, whoever she was, was waiting too, behind the closed bathroom door, maybe, or downstairs in the bar with its neon palm in the window.
It was almost an hour before the game finished and Prince got up with a tired groan to turn off the TV. “Guess I owe the kid ten bucks,” he said, and he flashed Alf a brilliant smile. There was something so open, so boyishly charming in it — it was the thought, it seemed, of his son — that Alf instantly felt better.
His ankles cracking, Prince padded over to the closet and reached inside a hanging suit jacket. As Alf watched, the executive looked down and discovered the makeup case. His bare foot nudged it discreetly out of sight. Then he sat on the edge of the farther bed, facing Alf. In his hands was a small spiral notebook and a fountain pen, which he pulled apart, fitting the cap over the other end with surgical fastidiousness.
“Okay, tell me what you got.”
Alf had tried to imagine this moment. He was still not sure what he would say.
He chose his words carefully, frowning at the rug that looked like turquoise grass that had lain uncut for weeks. “I don’t think you’ve got a thing to worry about. This union — Doyle’s not going anywhere. There’s only a small band that’s interested — and they tend to be people no one would follow. Malcontents, I’d call them. They’re a pretty sad lot.”
The word “malcontents” pleased him. He had been saving it.
“Who are they?” Prince said flatly.
Alf rubbed his shoe on the turquoise grass.
“I mean,” and he cleared his throat as he prepared his lie. “Their own leader, this Doyle fellow, told me he wasn’t at all pleased at the prospects.”
“They may be malcontents,” Prince said, “but that’s how it usually starts, with malcontentism.” He delivered the word with cheerless irony.
“I went to a meeting,” Alf said.
“Where? Whose house?”
Prince made a sharp stroke in his notebook.
“Not a house, not anybody’s house,” Alf said. “It was, ah, out in the country. By the river. They had a fire,” he added, absurdly. He was describing a meeting he’d been to in the fall of ’48, when they were just starting the union. They had roasted wieners, and it had been a happy time, an exuberant time, a time beyond Prince’s reach.
Prince looked at him with bemusement. Alf felt his lie was obvious.
“All right,” Prince said. “A fire. Who was there?”
“Only a few. Doyle. A few others.”
“How many?”
Alf shrugged. “Half a dozen or so.”
“You didn’t count?”
“Six,” Alf said, “not including myself.”
The tip of the pen made a small mark in the notebook.
“So who were they?”
“You have to understand,” Alf said, “some of these people I’ve known for years. They may be misguided, but they’re —”
“This will be confidential.”
“It’s not that. I’ve grown up with these people —”
For a few seconds Prince’s eyes met his: they seemed to contain no emotion at all, just a long, chilling evaluation. Alf might have been a post, or a piece of paper. Then the executive began to speak. He was all concerned seriousness now, confiding and almost gentle. “Alf. You’ve been picked out as one of the people who has a future in this company. But if you’re going to succeed, you’re going to have make up your mind about which side you’re on.”
“I’m with you,” Alf said.
“Once we have confidence in someone — well, the possibilities of moving up in Intertex are excellent. We pride ourselves on being a meritocracy. There are executives in this company who began as office boys, as ordinary workers. We gave them a chance, and well, they knew what to make of it.” Prince paused, letting Alf take that in. When he spoke again, it was on a whole new level of intimacy. He seemed, almost, to be confessing. He seemed weary, and more human. “Look, I sympathize with what concerns you. You’re loyal to these people, and that’s a fine thing. I’m loyal myself. I mean, hell, I came from a poor family. My father worked in a mattress factory all his life. Never made foreman, though he deserved to. And there were seven of us to feed, including my mother, God rest her. I know what it’s like, Alf. I know what it’s like to wear hand-me-downs and sleep under an old overcoat because there aren’t enough blankets. I have every sympathy for the working man. But the only way the working man’s going to be taken care of, the only way things are going to improve for him, is if the company he works for does well. That’s the only place the wealth is gonna come from. It doesn’t come from the sky. It doesn’t come from good intentions …”
Prince took a sip of his drink, frowned at the floor before going on. “Textiles isn’t steel. It isn’t General Motors. The margins aren’t big, the competition is ferocious, every penny counts. Every quarter-penny counts. We can be good guys, and sign a nice fat contract, and three, five years from now, we wake up and realize we can’t compete any more because we’ve been too generous — I put that word in quotes — in fact we’ve priced ourselves right out of the market. So, the company goes under, and where’s your working man then?”
Prince leaned forward. “I don’t wanna hurt these people, Alf. They’re my people too. I haven’t forgotten that. And I’ll do everything I can to avoid hurting them. But better a little blood now than a lot of red ink down the line …”
The silence lasted for several seconds. Now Alf felt patronized — he knew these arguments, and had even used some of them himself. But at the same time he felt he needed to be reminded of them. He’d slipped back from a point of understanding he’d reached before. He looked at the sailboats on the wall, he looked at the carpet. All right, he thought.
“If I give you their names,” he said, “what will you do with them?”
“Bring them over to G.O., one by one. Give them a good scare, frankly. Tell them we know what they’re up to and imply — this is not something we can come out and say, in any case — that they better get back on the straight and narrow or risk losing their jobs.”
“So you won’t fire them —”
“I find that’s rarely a good tactic. As far as it lies within my power, no.”
“As far as it lies within your power.”
“I’m not here to split hairs with you, Alf.”
Alf got up and turned to the window, parting the curtains a little. Across the highway, the spotlit image of a beautiful blonde gazed from a billboard. She was expelling s
moke from her cigarette, her heavily lidded eyes smiling with a carnal suggestiveness over the frail thrust of headlights.
“Woody Marr,” he said, turning back to Prince.
Prince hesitated, then wrote.
Alf experienced a strange, plummeting absence. It was like being at a memorial service. All that is read out is a name, and yet somehow the whole life is there, its dark parade.
“Next.”
Alf said nothing. He was staring at the bed with its flowered spread: its rumpled pattern of twining brown vegetation, huge pink flowers — a nightmare jungle repeated in a million rented rooms like this.
“I have to go,” he said.
Prince’s grin flashed.
“You’ve only given me one name.”
“I shouldn’t have. I’m not on the union side, but this is — I know these people.”
“Alf, as I’ve said —”
“When I’m foreman — then I’m on your side. But I can’t do it this way.”
“So you’re putting the gears to me.”
“This has nothing to do with you. It’s them —”
The blue eyes had fixed him with a disbelieving smile. Oh come on, they said. You and I know what’s going on here. I can’t believe you’d be such a fool …
Outside, the pool lights had been turned off. Above, along the rails of the balconies, a heaven of small white lights had come on, twinkling around the courtyard.
The next day he watched Woody climb the stairs to the knitting room with a start of dread and relief. Relief that he was still here, and dread that he, Alf, had hung the other man’s life over an abyss. All that morning he kept glancing over at the knitter. The powerful little man with the straight back and the pug’s face moved quickly around his machines, tying up threads or replacing bobbins with brusque, angry gestures, just as he always did: a man perpetually pissed off and apparently liking it that way. Just before noon Alf walked down the aisle to Woody’s stand.
“So how’s old number eleven going?” Alf had fixed the machine two days earlier.
“Hey, buddy,” Woody said, his ugly face lighting up. He had never called Alf buddy before: evidently he suspected nothing. “She’s goin’ like the hoor from hell.”
That afternoon when Alf took his break on the fire escape, Woody sat where he had rarely sat before, beside him. There was something deliberate, almost ceremonial, about the way the knitter poured coffee into his Thermos cup, his breathing coming with a slow, laboured huffing. He sat erect, his back not touching the warm brick, and put one big, scarred hand on his knee. Then he raised his cup in a way that seemed extraordinarily dignified, like a stout Japanese warrior.
Along the balcony the other knitters smoked, talked, drank coffee or tea as they gazed out through the bars of the railing, over the deep millyard. Through a distant gap between buildings, golden-rod gilded the face of the dyke that hid most of the Shade.
“Best season of the year,” Woody growled. His blunt face had lifted, scowling to the sun: even his praise was defiant.
“My old man used to go deer hunting,” Woody said, “up on Manitoulin with the Indians. Had a bit of Indian blood himself.”
Alf didn’t suppose Woody could actually remember his father, who had been killed in the Great War. He kept silent. He didn’t want to encourage Woody, didn’t want to know any more about him. Yet Woody was determined to talk. He told Alf about Manitoulin Island: a hunt camp on an inland lake, a story about his father’s prowess with a rifle. “Went up there myself a few times. They remembered him in Wicky.”
Six floors below, a cart rumbled across the asphalt floor of the yard. Woody took out a package of Craven A’s and offered them to Alf, who felt compelled to pluck one out, though he had stayed away from cigarettes for ten years now. He bent to the flame dancing in the chapel of Woody’s hands and dragged smoke into his lungs, sitting back to expel it with the sense it no longer mattered what he did, watching the smoke’s pale body twist and disintegrate on the blue air.
Three days later Alf crossed Willard to the flat-topped building that held General Office. May Watson’s chair was empty, which was just as well: he didn’t have an appointment. He went swiftly up the stairs and down the carpeted hall, past the boardroom where he’d had his first meeting with Prince, searching for Prince’s office. But his name appeared on none of the brass nameplates marking the doors. Just as he was about to retreat, he heard a toilet flush. A few seconds later, Judy Stackhouse, Prince’s secretary, stepped into the hall, smiling warmly as she saw him.
He stood behind her in her office as she leaned into an inner room. The brief factual rumble of Prince’s voice answered her. “Send him in.”
Prince was standing with his back to him — pointedly, Alf thought — looking out the window behind his desk, one hand in the pocket of his trousers as he surveyed a thicket of reddening sumacs. Without turning he told Alf to sit. Alf slipped warily into an armchair covered in green leather. On Prince’s blotter was a paper napkin and a half-eaten Digestive biscuit.
Prince took his own chair. “So,” he said, dusting at some invisible particles at the edge of his blotter. When he finally looked at Alf, his face was void of expression, as if Alf were no longer worth even the minimal trouble of courtesy.
“I think we’ve got off on the wrong foot somehow,” Alf said, his voice suddenly parched, breaking. “Somehow you’ve ended up teed off with me, and maybe I’m a bit teed off myself. But the thing is, I’m loyal to this place —”
“You have the names then.”
Prince cleared another particle: the last few grains of the time he had to spare. One more sweep and all his patience would be gone.
“Well, no. That’s not why I —”
“Then why are you here?”
“I — I thought we might start over, you and me.”
“And how would you propose that we do that, you and I?”
“I want to bury the hatchet. It’s just that —”
“I hadn’t realized the hatchet was out.”
Alf stared back at the man regarding him, it seemed, with utter frankness. Had he misjudged something? Was Prince offering more leeway than he’d imagined? Encouraged, he went on: “The thing is, that name I gave you, I’ve had it on my conscience. I’d just like to say: he’s a good man, a good worker, and I’d hate to feel I’d put him in danger in any way. Especially since, like I said, this union business is going nowhere.”
Prince swept once more at his blotter. “I know you like to tell yourself that, Alf. But it’s actually not the case. We have evidence that it is going somewhere. Those names you have are critical.”
Alf looked away. He had a cutting sense of letting the side down. What was the matter with him? And yet, his chance still lay before him. He was still in Prince’s motel room. All he had to do was say a few names, and he would be back, instantly, in Prince’s good graces. He would resume his progress along the upwards-climbing road, the road that led, by degrees, out of the world of sore backs and time clocks. He stared at the rich wood of Prince’s desk.
“Alf, I fear you may be a little sentimental for this business.”
Prince’s voice seemed to arrive across a great distance, as his father’s once had, calling him out of a daydream.
“Business, Alf: it’s war, really. I mean, it’s played within the law, more or less, and people try to be gentlemen about it, even buddies. And that’s all necessary — oil for the wheels. But to be frank, it takes a certain bloody-mindedness. You can’t worry about other people too much.” The cajoling drone of Prince’s voice went on. Remotely, Alf heard separate words and phrases, floating sedately by on its tide. He stared past the smooth head in front of him, into the jungle of sumacs behind the office. What he saw was a wine cellar in France. In September of 1944 he had killed a German soldier who had ambushed him. The fellow had leapt over some barrels and Alf had whirled just in time to take his weight on the barrel of his gun and fire. A few moments later one of Alf’s mates had
flung back a door and light had flooded the body at his feet. It was a boy, not more than fourteen or fifteen. Above his grey army uniform the startled eyes had already fixed on nothing. His mouth was open in a small, rabbity smile, as though he’d intended only a joke. In his hand was a broken wine bottle. Feeling light-headed, he left immediately. In the outer office, Judy Stackhouse looked up brightly. “Alf — are you all right, Alf?” She stood as he leaned for a moment, planting his hand on the edge of her desk. “Would you like a cookie?” Smiling hopefully, Judy nudged the package of Digestives towards him, across her scarlet blotter.
14
SMILEY PHONED. Did Joe want to go hunting?
“Come over to my place,” his friend said, and hung up.
For weeks Joe had avoided Smiley’s house because he was avoiding Smiley’s sister. He had told Sandy they could still be friends, but seeing her was painful: painful to have his guilt aroused by the way she clung to him still, by the way she looked at him, as if there were a debt he owed her, though of course she never said what it was. She gave the impression she was willing to go on waiting, patiently, willing to do whatever it was he wanted, even if it was going to be years before he asked her. One morning he had walked to school, knowing she was following a block behind. He had refused to turn and wait for her. Then at the rail overpass he had looked back, in remorse, to discover she was no longer there.
He followed the path along the top of the dyke, with its view over the Island yards, where people were raking leaves towards spindling fires. The smoke rolled across the dyke, flattening over the dark water of the Atta.
Sandy’s father was kneeling on the back porch, prodding with a screwdriver at a small electric motor. His round face with its shiny cheeks glanced up at Joe.
“Joe,” he said flatly, looking back to his work. Almost casually, a judgment had fallen.
Joe lingered, watching, held by the hope of reprieve: held by the chance Charlie Richards would say something that would allow them to go on as before.
