The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Two

by Morley Callaghan

  “I feel it in my bones that you’ll impress them, Bill.”

  Early next morning he got up to take the seven-thirty train to the city. He would be home later in the evening, so he didn’t carry a club bag. He kissed her warmly and walked across the road to take the path across the field by the water tower. Upstairs she watched him from the front window, walking with his head down a little, his straw hat tilted far back on his head. The fox terrier was following him, trotting easily, his nose to the path. Bill’s legs looked very long, walking across the field. It was a dull morning and the sky was gray.

  Her eyes got moist, she was so proud of him; and sitting on the bed, she said: “I’m a silly, an old silly.”

  She told herself severely that she ought to be happy; there was no excuse for feeling lonely now, since she was practically alone in the house all the time from morning till night. Every day, though, he came home at noontime.

  Early in the afternoon she went down street to buy groceries. The main street was brick, the widest of any town in the county. It had been built in days when people believed the town would become the biggest railroad center on Georgian Bay, and the shipyard for the upper lakes. In those days not many people lived in the town and laborers for the shipyard were brought from the city. Now there were few trains and not many boats for the yard. But there was always the wide brick street. Coming out of Dorst’s butcher store Flora met Mrs. Fulton. The sky had cleared and sunlight was on the wide street. The butcher had thrown pails of water on the sidewalk in front of the store to cool the air.

  “On the way home, Mrs. Lawson?” Mrs. Fulton asked.

  “Yes, but I was thinking of seeing what’s on tonight at the nickel show.”

  “We can walk over there and down Pine Street home.”

  They passed the nickel show and saw the posters. Flora told Mrs. Fulton that Bill had gone to the city to see the head of Saint Michael’s College. All the way home Mrs. Fulton listened and Flora talked rapidly. Just why had he gone to the city, Mrs. Fulton asked, and twice Flora was ready to explain, but remembered it ought to be kept a secret.

  “It’s important. They want Bill to look up something for them in the town here,” she said, nodding her head vigorously. To mollify Mrs. Fulton, she added: “There’s lots of things, of course, the likes of us don’t understand at first sight, if you know what I mean.”

  “If it’s something that has to be kept in the dark . . .”

  “No, no, it ain’t that.”

  “It does sound as if I’m digging it out of you.”

  “I’m not minding it at all, Mrs. Fulton. Here we are home anyway.”

  For supper she had sliced oranges, brown bread, and a cup of tea. Recently she had got plump — not noticeably fat, but, with her dress off, her shoulders and back looked fat, and she had promised Bill to abstain from starchy foods and eat vegetables, fruit, and brown bread for a month.

  At seven o’clock she went downtown to the picture show to see the feature picture and part of the comic before the train came in. The Spanish feature picture was exciting and two bullfighters pleased her. She forgot that she was alone in the show. The comic was less interesting; her thoughts wandered, she closed her eyes and imagined she had followed Bill all afternoon. In the city station she was right behind him, getting off the train, and he looked around for a restaurant. Or maybe he had gone to a hotel because he was naturally neat and tidy and would prefer a good wash. Early in the afternoon he went up to the college. She imagined him standing between tall pillars, speaking to someone with a bald head. She opened her eyes suddenly, her hands moist and cold, nervous because she had no idea what Bill might say. If he were asked too many questions his thoughts might get twisted; then she smiled to herself, watching the comic again, for Bill was far too serious to be long without words.

  After the show she walked on Main Street. Most young fellows with good clothes walked along the street after it got dark. They walked sometimes four abreast when without girls. She went as far west as Findlay’s flour-and-feed store and down two blocks to the station. The nine-twenty-five was on time, and she hurried, cutting across the well-kept station lawn, hoping no one would see her. She was on the platform when Bill got off the train. He kissed her awkwardly, as though people were watching, and, without speaking, they crossed the tracks in front of the engine, the bell still clanging. Always when she crossed in front of an engine to take the path home she got a nervous thrill, imagining the engine might suddenly move forward the very moment she tripped on the track. On the path she said: “How’d it go, Bill?”

  “Not so good.”

  “As good as you expected?”

  “Nope.”

  Standing on the station platform in the light from the waiting room he had seemed tired and worried, and she decided not to ask questions until they got home. She tried now to see the expression on his face, but there was no moon and it was dark. It looked like rain. The air was heavy and the tall grass still. Her feet felt hot and she wondered what Bill would have thought if she had come down the path to meet him in her bare feet.

  She lit the lamp in the kitchen and drew two chairs up to the kitchen table. “Come on now, Bill, tell me about it.”

  Yawning, he stretched his legs, avoiding her eyes, his hands fumbling awkwardly in his pockets. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said.

  Her lips moved, staring at him. She turned away quickly. She looked at the lamp, then listened intently as though a noise outside had aroused her. “Is that the wind on the bushes, or does it sound like rain?” she said.

  “I don’t hear anything,” he said mildly.

  “It’s just the wind on the bushes.”

  “Now I hear the leaves rustling.”

  “Well, Bill, what turned up in the city?”

  “I told you nothing turned up.”

  “What did they say at the college?”

  “They didn’t say anything at the college.”

  “What’s the matter, Bill? You don’t need to get sore. Can’t you tell me whether you went to the college?”

  “All right, I guess I can. I’m a fool. I guess I’m a rube. I didn’t get to the college. There now, you know all about it.”

  He looked at her directly, to observe closely every line on her face, telling her that he didn’t go to the college. “Aw gee, that’s too bad, Bill,” she said, pulling out the table-drawer, her fingers groping for three spoons to fit together neatly so he wouldn’t see that she wanted to cry.

  Slowly, as though it had happened a long time ago, he told her about the day in the city. First he had got something to eat that had cost thirty-five cents. After a good wash, in a toilet adjoining a restaurant, he had inquired the way to Saint Michael’s College. On the city streets he walked for three-quarters of an hour, rehearsing the story he would tell. The first time it sounded impressive, but the third or fourth time it was so strangely muddled it hardly seemed to be his own story. By the time he arrived at the college he almost believed that he had no story to tell. The college was an old gray brick building, one side facing the car-tracks, the street at the front leading to Queen’s Park and other colleges. Walking slower, he turned in at the main gate. He turned, walking away, repeating the story to himself, and was halfway through it when two men in long black soutans and Roman collars came out of the main door, pacing up and down the cement walk in front of the building. He couldn’t help watching them because he knew he ought to approach them, explain himself, ask whom he ought to see. Distracted, he felt there was nothing on earth to say to anyone. He felt foolish, his lips were dry, and he muttered to himself some words about Saint Thomas Aquinas; then got the notion that the two men with Roman collars would have been tired walking long ago if they hadn’t been watching him. A church forms one wing of the college. The door was open and the pews looked very cool in the shadows inside the church. He entered by this door and sat down at the back of the church, sweating and uncomfortable. He mopped his head with his handkerchief and watched
the two teachers through the open door. They were out of sight and in the college; he left the church at once.

  At the street corner he was ashamed of himself and walked twice around the college, gradually convincing himself it would be a waste of time talking to anybody while he was so unhappy.

  In Queen’s Park he sat down for an hour until he felt better, and knew he ought to have finished his work at home entirely before talking about it to anybody. So he asked a fellow walking in the park the way to a decent library. The rest of the afternoon he spent in a reference library getting some excellent information, and was happy till the librarian in the reading room, to whom he indicated the kind of material he was seeking, told him he might be interested in an English magazine called The New Criterion. He enjoyed this magazine till he read a long review of a book about an early philosopher named Duns Scotus. The idiotic reviewer attempted to show that Duns Scotus was really more acceptable to the early Christian church than Saint Thomas Aquinas: obviously it was idiotic. He got into a rage and tossed the magazine across the table, jumped up, and hurried out of the reading room. He had half an hour before train-time, so he walked to the station.

  “So you see it was a bad afternoon all the way round,” Bill said.

  “It’s queer, downright queer,” she said, and added cheerfully: “The trouble was you simply got a bad feeling thinking too much about it.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Oh, that’s all right.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Shucks, Bill, let’s get something to eat.”

  “Not me, I’m tired. I’m going right upstairs to bed.”

  He left the kitchen. She heard him going upstairs, his feet moving slowly. She put her arms down on the table and was sorry for Bill and started to cry softly. She had a heavy feeling because he had told his story. It was over, nothing could possibly come of it. She cried quietly, then rubbed her eyes, and went upstairs to bed.

  4

  She thought that the trip to the city ought to have discouraged him, but he determinedly worked much harder. He was amused when she talked as if he needed sympathy.

  She got tired of going to the show alone and of walking down the street to talk to old Mrs. Lawson. Dolly and Curly Knox called on her one evening and asked her to get into the Ford with them and go down to Wasaga Beach. The three of them sat in the front seat and on the road beyond town Curly sang some new popular songs. Many cars were on the road to the beach. The bigger cars, passing them, left them trailing in a cloud of dust that angered Curly. Dolly laughed at him and he became good-humored again, and they all sang happily. At the beach they went to the dancing-pavilion, and Curly danced first with Flora and then with Dolly, sometimes bumping into young city fellows staying in the cottages on the shore, and admitting to Flora that he did it because they danced better than he did. Flora was happy until it was time to go home and girls got into cars with fellows so contentedly that she felt like a gooseberry, sitting beside Curly and Dolly all the long drive home in the moonlight. They talked out loud and laughed and sang; the shadows in the bushes and the moonlight on the narrow road pleased her, though she kept on feeling she ought to be in the back seat with Bill, who would pinch her leg, or tease Curly.

  At home Bill was still working upstairs. Instead of going up and talking to him, she sat alone in the dark in the front room. “He’s a fool,” she thought, trying to look out the front window. Outside the street was quiet. Then a car came along the road, going slowly, someone in the back seat playing a ukulele, and she wished she were sitting beside him encouraging him to strum loudly. Leaning forward, listening carefully, she heard the strumming faintly, the car a long way down the road; then she leaned back and giggled, thinking the ukulele player mightn’t be a man at all. “I ought to put a light in this room if I’m going to sit here,” she said aloud. But the thought of Bill approaching people timidly in the city and practically walking around in circles began to amuse her and she sat there. She indulged her fancy and had him go round and round in circles, the circles always getting bigger.

  She stroked her round knees softly, giggling in the dark.

  Straightening up to get her breath she whispered: “Just as though he had a bat in the belfry.”

  She went upstairs to the bedroom and began to undress quietly and slowly. On the bed, listening, she hoped Bill had heard her laughing and would come into the bedroom and complain angrily that she shouldn’t be in a house with serious people. Then she would stretch lazily on the bed and laugh out loud at him till she got a stitch in her side.

  Only one thin sheet covered her body and the bed felt good. Her legs were resting nicely, feet far apart so she would feel no warmth from any kind of a contact. If anyone got into bed with her, she would have to put her feet closer together to give him room. Suddenly afraid of her own thoughts, she muttered: “I feel crazy tonight,” but stubbornly permitted herself to enjoy delicious sensations from thoughts she knew ought not to be in her head. Before falling asleep she hoped Bill would not get into bed at all that night. Some time later she woke up quickly. Someone had opened the front door and was walking in the hall. Wide awake, she sat up. She was alone in the room, and knew she had heard Bill downstairs. He had gone for a long walk before going to bed.

  Two weeks later she told Bill it would ruin his health to be up half the night wandering around the streets. He shrugged his shoulders. “It will be a good deal better if you don’t bother about such things at all,” he said. Clinching his fists, he glared at her as though expecting stubborn resistance in an argument. “I got my work to do, you got yours; that’s about all we can say,” he said.

  “I’ll not care a snap of my fingers what you do from now on.”

  “All right, only don’t get sore. The main thing is, this is very serious with me.”

  “I was never so serious in all my life.”

  “Nor have I been so serious in all my life.”

  “Nor in all my days.”

  “Nor in all my days.”

  “Stop it; do you hear, Bill?”

  He laughed suddenly and got up from the table to go to work. “Don’t get rattled, Flora. Life’s too short.”

  In the afternoon she walked alone down by the pier near the grain elevator. The tin on the side of the elevator facing the water was brown and rusty. Boards on the pier were loose and through the wide cracks she saw the dark water underneath. Close to the pier the water was dark; pieces of paper, scum, small sticks bobbed against the posts. She was walking on the pier out beyond the elevator. An uncle of hers had once looked after the elevator, but in those days you couldn’t pass the open door without getting covered with grain dust. Now an old man sat on a stool, back from the edge of the pier. A boat hadn’t been in all summer. She sat down at the farthest solid section of the pier and broke off small pieces of wood from the rotten boards and tossed them into the water. Across the strip of water on the next pier some kids were swimming, one boy diving beautifully. The kids were shouting, swimming rapidly and diving, playing water tag. Flora looked out over the bay at the white clouds piled in the pattern of an old world in the blue sky. Then the strong sun warmed her neck and she held her hand over it. The bright sunlight glinted on the wave tips in the blue water. Her neck still tingled from the heat and she got up, walking back carefully along the pier.

  On the way home she passed the shipyard employment office and saw Pete Hastings talking to the man at the wicket. He waved his hand and caught up to her before she got to the street.

  “Say, Flora, they’re just telling me they’ll be getting a boat in the dry dock soon.”

  “They’re foolin’ you.”

  “No, go on and ask him yourself if you don’t believe it.”

  “But what’s it to you, Pete? You don’t want the work, surely?”

  “I wouldn’t mind it for a week, just for a change,” he said good-humoredly.

  They walked along the street together. He had no coat on and his dark-blue shirt wasn’t v
ery clean. He had on a wide belt and very thick boots, and his pants were all frayed at the cuffs. His face and neck were tanned and clean.

  “How’s Bill, the bright boy?” he asked genially.

  “Oh, forget your teasin’, Pete Hastings,” she giggled.

  They had an easy, unimportant conversation that lasted most of the way home; then, for a few moments, he walked beside her saying nothing. Finally he suggested that they take a walk some afternoon down along the bay by the vines where the kids played tree tag. She patted his arm and said it would be all right with her; then, when he turned away and left her, wondered why she had tolerated the suggestion and why she hadn’t been angry when he called Bill a “bright boy.” Standing on the sidewalk, watching Pete’s strong legs moving farther away, she urged herself to run after him, pound him on the back till he turned around abruptly; then, with her hands on her hips, or snapping her fingers under his nose, explain to him that he was merely a lump of clay compared with Bill. But she shrugged her shoulders and walked on home.

  After supper, when she was wondering if she ought to tell Bill that she had gone for a walk with Pete, he asked soberly if she had ever thought seriously of going to church.

  “We never go to church, Bill; you know that.”

  “I know it, and I’m not suggesting we ought to, either; only the thought of it fits in nicely with my work.” He said that he could hardly relate his scientific summaries to religion if he did not understand the religious feeling. He was tired and really worried.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Bill; I don’t know.”

  He wasn’t as clean and neat as he had been. She was eager to say that he should not work that evening, but should go to bed early. He would drop the corners of his mouth, frown sullenly, and say nothing the rest of the evening. The talk of religion disturbed her, because usually he was confident and sure of himself. Now he was groping toward an idea that eluded him, feeling his way along an unfamiliar path.

  “The trouble is,” he said, “it isn’t a feeling you can get by approaching the matter scientifically. It evidently had to get you unexpectedly, so I don’t know how to go about it.” He smiled, assuring her it was merely a simple inquiry for him, but she knew, suddenly, that in the last month he had gone far beyond her. He was sitting beside her, talking — a tall, thin man with red eyelids and three cuts under his chin from shaving — and he seemed so bewildered she wanted to cry.