The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three

by Morley Callaghan

  But when he heard someone rapping on the door there was such a leaping shock of excitement in him he could hardly stand it. Every little shock was the same these days. He took one shock after another and thought he was rolling away from them, but they left him light-headed and weaker and almost drunk. “Come in,” he said.

  Mrs. Macillroy’s ten-year-old son was grinning brightly at him. “Mother says she forgot to give you a message,” he said. “A Miss Rowe phoned. She left her number and said you were to phone.”

  “Was that all?”

  “That’s all,” the boy said.

  An immense relief flooded through Dan and he wanted to hear Helen Rowe’s voice, he wanted to hear her talking to him in her warm and friendly way so that bit by bit he might feel again that he had some dignity. He had met her just two months ago. She knew he was out of work but she saw him nearly every night. She worked in a broker’s office. She was twenty-five. It was wonderful that she should spend so much time with him knowing he was without money and work and yet might want to marry her. And as one day followed another and all the days were the same for him she began to seem like something unbelievably bright and joyous in his life.

  But when he went to the phone he began to worry and he thought, “Why is she calling me? She never called like this before,” and then he waited and listened and heard her voice, and he closed his eyes and saw her face and she was saying, “Can you meet me early tonight, Dan, in about half an hour?”

  “Sure I can,” he said.

  “Meet me at the corner, will you?”

  “What’s bothering you, Helen?”

  “I’ve got to go home. My mother’s very sick.”

  “Where have you got to go?”

  “To New Hampshire.”

  “For how long?”

  “About three weeks,” she said.

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” he said. And while he sat there looking at the phone he grew more and more frightened that she was going away, for now it seemed that without her company and hope for him he could not live. As he put on his coat again and got ready to go out he began to think desperately, “I never really had a chance to be in love with her. I never got close enough to her. Where will I be in three weeks? I’ll have to get out of here. I may go to Detroit. Something’s got to happen. Something’s got to break and then it’s all gone and I’ve lost her. I may be dead by the time she comes back here if it goes on like this.”

  And his desperate anxiety so overwhelmed him as he walked along the street in the snow with his coat collar turned high that he knew he must try and possess her forever that night, he knew he must not let her go that night without taking her love forever, he knew he couldn’t stand it if she went away and he had never had a chance to make love to her. “This’ll be the only chance I’ll have,” he thought as his shoes swished through the wet snow and the flakes fell softy upon his face.

  She was waiting at the corner of the avenue where the wet snow had quickly disappeared under so many passing feet. She was standing under the street light smiling at him. Then she hurried towards him, a girl almost as tall as he was, in a brown coat and a little brown hat. Her face was wet and shining in the light. “Hello, Dan,” she said. “Isn’t it terrible that I’ve got to go home?”

  “Are you sure you’ve got to go, Helen? If you wait a little while maybe your mother’ll be all right.

  “I’m going in the morning,” she said. And then when they began to walk along the street in step she asked the same question that she asked every night, “Anything doing today, Dan? Anything in sight?”

  “No,” he said. “Nothing today.”

  “Let’s go into the Coffee Pot over there and have a cup of coffee and talk,” she said. “We can’t walk in the snow.”

  “What’s the matter with the snow?”

  “Nothing. I like the snow, but we’ll get our feet wet,” she said.

  So they crossed the road to the restaurant and when they were sitting in a little booth by themselves and drinking their coffee with her watching him thoughtfully he became impatient. He knew she was thinking of him looking for work that day. He didn’t want this kind of care and worry about him to be in her. He wanted to put out his hand and touch her, he wanted her eyes to grow soft in a different way, he wanted to see a flush and a shyness in her face; he tried to break the mood in her by saying, “We’ve only got a few hours before we go, Helen?”

  But she did not seem to understand. She said, “Won’t you have some kind of a big thick meat sandwich with your coffee, Dan?”

  “Why do I want a sandwich at this hour?”

  “Did you have your dinner?”

  “You mean a big hearty dinner?”

  “No, I mean something hot to eat.”

  “Sure I had something to eat,” he said irritably. He wanted to forget himself and the monotonous days of his life and his clothes and his hunger and the tightness that grew in him day after day. He wanted to forget and lose himself in the warmth and loveliness of her. But she was saying again, “Please do eat a sandwich?”

  “Will that end it if I do? Will you forget about it?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “All right. I’ll have a hot roast beef sandwich,” he said.

  When they had brought the sandwich he said softly, “Gee, it’s terrible to think you’re going away.”

  “I wish I weren’t going,” she said. Almost to herself she said as she watched him eating the sandwich hungrily, “How many days go by that you hardly eat anything?”

  “Not many, thank God.”

  “There must be very many when you’re hungry like you are now. I’ve never realized it before. How do you eat, Dan?”

  “Are you going to start talking about that again?”

  “I want to talk about it. I’m going away and I’d like to know. I’ve never been able to find out much from you.”

  “I’ll get along all right,” he said. And then he began to feel that they would never share the same eager longing for each other while they sat there. It no longer mattered now whether he ate or worked, there was only one thing left in the world to do, he wanted to make love to her before it ended. And he said boldly, “Helen, will you come to my place for awhile so we can be alone?”

  As his fear that she might refuse grew, he felt the softness of her eyes and he began to want her terribly. The hot coffee and the sandwich in him made him feel warm and eager. He took her by the arm and said, “Come on, Helen.”

  There was just one reluctant moment, and then she said simply, “All right, Dan.”

  On the way out she slipped the money for the food into his hand, and then she bought a package of cigarettes, and when he was buttoning his coat he found she had slipped the cigarettes into his pocket.

  In her silence as they went along the street he thought maybe there was love and desire for him and this notion so exalted him that he felt more sharply aware of everything on the street that winter night than ever before. At his place she went up the stairs quietly, going ahead of him and never once looking back, and she waited with her head lowered timidly while he opened the door.

  She looked around the room as if she had often wondered what it would be like, and then she sat down shyly on the bed.

  “I’m glad you felt you could come here,” he said nervously.

  “I didn’t mind coming tonight,” she said. “I can’t stay more than an hour, though.”

  He was pulling off his coat with his hands trembling erratically in his excitement, and then he began to take her coat off, too. Leaning forward, she looked at him and smiled and waited. As he put out his hand to touch her there was such a desperate eagerness in his face that she was startled. She began to feel as he put out his hand that he was touching everything he was missing in his life and all the love he could know.

  And bit by bit he felt that she no longer pitied him and that warmth and desire instead was growing in her, and he kissed her and she clung to him, and it was so marvell
ous to have her close to him like that when he had never really been sure that she loved him that he said, “Helen, I love you. I want to have you like this so you can’t be without me.”

  “I don’t want to be without you,” she said.

  “This is what’ll hold us together,” he said.

  And then the fear that she might go grew strong in him again, and he held her tighter, then he held her down and he began to cover her face and her neck with his kisses. He thought by the softness of her that she was willing and wouldn’t resist him now. Then he noticed that her body had begun to tremble, and he noticed too, while he bent over her, that she had begun to cry. He was really disgusted and he thought, “Gees, so that’s what she’s like. You think she’s willing and then she lets herself out by starting to cry,” and he said in a flat, lifeless voice, “Don’t bother crying. You don’t need to be afraid of me. I thought you felt different, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help it,” she said.

  “You don’t need to cry. What are you crying about?”

  “I was just thinking.”

  “Can’t you ever stop thinking?”

  “I just started and I couldn’t stop.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “I was thinking it was terrible for me to be going away for three weeks and spending all that money going up there with you needing it so bad here.”

  With her bright soft eyes she pleaded with him, and he knew then that it was now like it had been in the restaurant, that they were still thinking in different ways.

  “You’ve got to go,” he said.

  “I know it,” she said, “but look what you could do with that money, look how many meals it would buy.”

  They sat close beside each other, silent and feeling close together, and he could not bear to try and make love to her again.

  “I’ll have to go now,” she said.

  “I’ll go down to the corner with you.”

  They put on their coats and they went quietly down the stairs and nobody heard them as they went out to the street. It was still snowing.

  They hardly spoke at all on the way to the corner. They went down into the subway. When the train came he kissed her quickly and they parted and he stood there watching her running to get on the train and she hardly had a chance to look back.

  When he went back along the street alone he felt again that desperate anguish of possessing nothing in the world. “I let her go. I was a fool to let her go like that,” he thought. Everything began turning over and over in him rapidly and as he went along he grew confused. “I hold her forever and ever,” he thought. The traffic passed, the city rumbled with noise and he seemed to roll away from it as the snow fell, and then he rolled into it again, and he kept growing more confused. He felt he held it all in him, he felt all the joy of full possession, and he could never be alone again.

  Dates of Original Publication

  Two Fishermen, Canadian Accent: A Celebratin of Short Stories by Contemporary Canadian Writers, ed. Ralph Gustafsson, Penguin, 1944

  The Runaway, Esquire, September 1934

  Silk Stockings, The New Yorker, April 1932

  A Girl with Ambition, This Quarter, Paris, 1925-26

  Rocking Chair, The North American Review, December 1932

  A Wedding Dress, This Quarter, Spring 1927

  Three Lovers, Harper’s Bazaar, July 1934

  The Cheat’s Remorse, Esquire, October 1937

  It Must Be Different, Redbook, February 1936

  Poolroom, Scribner’s Magazine, October 1932

  The Bachelor’s Dilemma, Maclean’s, 1950

  Getting On in the World, American Mercury, May 1939

  The Novice, The Canadian Magazine, March 1930

  The Two Brothers, Esquire, December 1930

  Their Mother’s Purse, The New Yorker, September 1936

  Magic Hat, Redbook, December 1951

  Younger Brother, The New Yorker, May 1931

  This Man, My Father, Maclean’s, March 1937

  The Lucky Lady, The Lost and Found Stories, 1985

  A Couple of Million Dollars, The Lost and Found Stories, 1985

  The Blue Kimono, Harper’s Bazaar, May 1935

  With an Air of Dignity, Maclean’s, January 1948

  The Way It Ended, Canadian Home Journal, September 1953

  Lady in a Green Dress, Scribner’s Magazine, August 1930

  A Pair of Long Pants, Redbook, October 1936

  The Consuming Fire, Harper’s Bazaar, August 1936

  Father and Son, Harper’s Bazaar, June 1934

  It Had to Be Done, Harper’s Bazaar, September 1938

  The Homing Pigeon, Harper’s Bazaar, June 1935

  We Just Had to Be Alone, Maclean’s, March 1955

  The Insult, Weekend Magazine, 1955

  The Faithful Wife, T he New Yorker, December 1929

  A Separation, Scribner’s Magazine, November 1933

  Possession, Esquire, April 1935

  Questions for Discussion and Essays

  1.In her introduction to Volume Three, writer Anne Michaels points out that Morley Callaghan’s body of work possesses a rare integrity. How does Callaghan achieve that sense of honesty and integrity in his writing and how does it impact on the way we read his stories?

  2. How does Callaghan reveal motivation in his stories and how does he use descriptive detail to create the psychology of his characters?

  3. Marriage and familial relationships play an important role in a number of Callaghan’s stories. What is his view of marriage and family relationships and how does he use such relationships as the basis for creating dramatic narratives?

  4. Callaghan’s stories often leave a reader with the sense that objects are transformed into something more than themselves.

  Discuss his idea of “still life” objects and how he creates a sense of beauty and fascination for the reader while remaining a detached storyteller. What impact does Callaghan gain from refusing to editorialize about objects and their relationships to characters?

  5. As a writer, how does Callaghan use honesty as both a theme and a stylistic compass in telling his stories?

  Selected Related Reading

  Allen, Walter Ernest. The Short Story in English. Oxford University Press, 1981. (Contains a chapter on Morley Callaghan.)

  Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. Introduced by Malcolm Cowley. New Edition. Milestone Editions, 1960.

  Callaghan, Barry. Barrelhouse Kings. McArthur & Company, 1998.

  Callaghan, Morley. A Literary Life. Reflection and Reminiscences 1928–1990. Exile Editions, 2008.

  Conron, Brandon. Morley Callaghan. Twayne, 1966.

  Dennis, Richard. British Journal of Canadian Studies, 1999. (Contains an essay by Richard Dennis: “Morley Callaghan and the Moral Geography of Toronto.”)

  Farrell, James T. Studs Lonigan (A Trilogy). Pete Hamill (editor). Library of America, 1998.

  Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Margaret Cohen (editor). Norton Critical Editions, 1998.

  Hemingway, Ernest. The Complete Short Stories. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1998.

  Joyce, James. The Dubliners. Penguin, 1999.

  de Maupassant, Guy. The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, 1955. Artine Artinian (editor). Penguin, 1995.

  May, Charles Edward. The Short Story: The Reality Of Artifice. Twayne, 1995.

  O’Connor, Frank. The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story, with an introduction by Russell Banks. Melville House, 2011.

  Snider, Norman. “Why Morley Callaghan Still Matters,” Globe and Mail, 25 October, 2008.

  Walsh, William. A Manifold Voice: Studies in Commonwealth Literature. Chatto & Windus, 1971.

  White, Randall. Too Good to Be True: Toronto in the 1920s. Dundurn, 1993.

  Wilson, Edmund. O Canada: An American’s Notes on Canadian Culture. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, l964.

  Woodcock, George. “Callaghan’s Toronto: The Persona of a City.” Journal of Cana
dian Studies 7-2 (1972) 21-24.

  Of Interest on the Web

  www.MorleyCallaghan.ca

  – The official site of the Morley Callaghan Estate

  www.cbc.ca/rewind/sirius/2012/03/01/morley-callaghan/

  Rewind With Michael Enright: An Hour With Morley Callaghan. Thursday, March 1, 2012, CBC Radio One. This hour-long broadcast features conversations with Morley Callaghan and a splendid commentary.

  www2.athabascau.ca/cll/writers/english/writers/mcallaghan.php

  – Athabasca University site

  www.editoreric.com/greatlit/authors/Callaghan.html

  – The Greatest Authors of All Time site

  www.cbc.ca/lifeandtimes/callaghan.htm

  – Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) site

  Exile Online Resource

  www.ExileEditions.com has a section for the Exile Classics Series, with further resources for all the books in the series.

  Editor’s Endnotes

  Poets, starting with W.W.E. Ross in the 1930s, have always been interested in Morley Callaghan’s short stories, intrigued by how — using a language almost devoid of metaphor — he achieved certain poetic effects. In 1960, Margaret Avison, the great poet, recipient of the Griffin Award, reviewed Morley Callaghan’s Stories in The Canadian Forum.

  CALLAGHAN REVISITED

  Morley Callaghan’s stories are the work of an artist with no axe to grind, who makes no concessions to the market’s demands; a purity of artistic intention is everywhere unmis-takable in him. Callaghan uses words to convey a whole impression from swift details, so skillfully that his contemporaries are unaware of art (or artifice). For artifice is there all right. If you imagine that the words of these stories are simply the spoken language of everyday life, think of the rapid change in idiom over the past four decades, and look at the stories again. Has any sentence “dated” — or lost its imme-diacy? The words ar e plain talk, but not a resonance is per-mitted, not an overtone that localizes the effect. Verbal play has no place. Subjective shading is not invited. The story’s world, not the writer’s response to it, establishes its language, and in this way it is projected into independent life.