“I don’t care she only got old boots and dishwater in the pot, eh? Me, I’m gonna lick my plate clean.” Emil is only sixteen. David tries to look out for the kid. After what happened in Regina, he feels it is the least he can do. He’s learned the terrible things that could happen to a friend when you aren’t there to watch his back.
“Hope there’ll be some left,” says David. He can see a number of men waiting by the door.
“What that smell?” says Emil as they get nearer.
“Food,” David says. “Cooking.”
They nod to men as they stand in line, most of them like him and Emil, too hungry for conversation. The line moves pretty quickly and soon they are in the garage. A young skinny boy with jug ears hands them each a tin bowl and a spoon. There is a big black Majestic wood cookstove by the wall and a pile of wood next to that. It is warm in the garage, from the bodies and the stove. Steam rises off some of the men, and with it the smell of unwashed, road-cured flesh. The only good thing about the bone-cracking cold is that it keeps them from smelling each other too much.
Emil nudges him and points with his chin over to the corner. A girl sits there, holding her bowl up to her face and shovelling in the food. Her hair is matted and her face smudged and dirty. She senses their eyes on her and glares at them until they turn away. He hasn’t seen many girls on the road, and the few who travel on the rails are hard as hellfire, usually running away from something even worse than life in the hobo jungles.
He and Emil hold their bowls out and a smiling woman with red cheeks fills them up with porridge mixed with peas and beans and raisins. It looks like crap and doesn’t smell much better and he could eat a dozen bowls. They get cups of tea laced with sugar and a slice of stale bread and sit on the makeshift benches to eat.
“Don’t eat so fast, kid,” he says when Emil begins wolfing it down. “You’ll give yourself cramps.”
“I tell my hand go slow but my stomach makes the rules,” says Emil between gulps.
When he’s finished, David approaches the woman.
“You want some more, son? I can let you have a little more,” she says.
“You save it for the next guy, ma’am. Just wanted to know if there’s anything I can do to repay you. Maybe you need some wood split or something?”
“Why, aren’t you a sweet thing? That’d be a great help. Jimmy,” she calls to the boy, “can you show this nice young man to the wood pile? He’s gonna split some kindling for us.”
The boy takes him around the back of the garage and he gets to work.
“You’d be surprised,” the boy says. “Don’t nobody ever offer to help. I guess they’re mostly down so far they just ain’t looking up no more.”
“Well, that far gone I’m not. Yet,” he says.
When he’s done he goes back into the garage and gets another cup of tea. The woman has made the leftover tacky porridge into patties, fried them up in grease and is handing them out.
“Here, son. You have one. You earned it. And take this too. Write your mama. I know she’s worrying about you.” The woman hands him a piece of paper, a pencil stub and an envelope with a stamp already on it.
“I’m grateful,” David says. He sits down next to Emil, who is scribbling out a letter of his own, back to his family in Shawinigan.
“She give them to us all, eh?” says Emil. “Nice lady, that one.”
David sits on a bench and pulls a tattered notebook out of his pack. He thumbs through it, wondering what he can say to send back home. The notebook has one blank page left, which means it’s nearly time. David has a ritual. When a notebook is finished he burns it. He can’t go hauling around a sack full of heavy books with him. And he can’t send the books home with his letters when he gets the chance to write them, because some of the things he writes down he doesn’t want his father reading.
And some things he can’t bear to write down at all. Like the Regina riot. At least not yet. Maybe never.
But the pages are filled with words and thoughts and those secrets that he’s able to face, knowing they are safe, knowing they’ll be consecrated in fire. Then he burns them and sends them up to the sky, like the Cree back home who burn tobacco to take their prayers to K’itchi Manitou.
He picks up the pencil and begins to write in his journal. He writes about Emil and the porridge and the girl in the corner with the fury in her face. He writes about not knowing where he’s going next, and how he’s travelling away from things, not toward them. In writing that, it occurs to him that maybe he’ll go to Toronto. Maybe he’ll stop in and see the family his friend talked about so much.
He closes the notebook, takes it over to the wood stove and drops it in. Then he goes back to the bench and writes a letter home.
21
October 1936
It was a fine night, cool and crisp as fresh-washed linen, and who cared about anything except that it was clear and starry and night and Saturday. Harry had called for Irene and she had put on her new yellow dress that made her brown eyes look hazel. He had taken her first to the Casino Burlesque at Queen and Bay. They had seen “Twinkle Toes” Yvette in her famous and original muff dance and Gertie Beck and Lorrie La Mont, who came all the way from Paris, and it was grand and exciting.
Harry had been in such a good mood then that he had decided they must go to the Club Esquire, where they watched Mademoiselle Corrine, billed as the famous daughter of Eve, perform the exotic apple dance, and they had drunk gin and tonic with lime slices.
“No more for me,” said Irene when Harry ordered a third round.
“Oh, come on, don’t be a party pooper.”
And so she had a third drink and a fourth, even though she had vowed, after what had happened to her father, never to have more than one drink in an evening, ever. But tonight was different. Wasn’t it different?
They were celebrating. Harry’s father had just announced that the next buying trip would be taken by Harry alone. He told her about the trip to Afghanistan and all the things he’d see: the souks and carpet merchants, the date trees and wild dogs, the high craggy mountains and outlaw bands who always wore great knives tucked in their sashes and knew the best weavers, for a price. He talked about what this meant for his future, and there were so many questions Irene wanted to ask.
“I’m going to take over the business soon. And you know what that means,” Harry said, squeezing her hand. “I’m finally going to prove to the old man I can handle responsibility and settle down. He’s never respected me, I know that. Thought I was wasting my time in England. But he’ll see. This trip will show him what I can do.”
It was nearly midnight when they left the club, trying to decide where to go next. Down the street several men huddled around a fire burning in an old oil drum. Their clothes were thin and torn, and one had newspaper tied around his shoeless feet with string. As the men passed a bottle back and forth, Irene thought about the money Harry had spent that night and how half of it would probably have paid their rent for a month. Their lean and hungry faces made her feel spoiled, but Harry ignored them completely. He leaned up against a lamppost and pulled Irene to him and she fell into him like there was nothing in the world to keep them apart. Her head was full of bubbles from the gin and tonics and maybe she had drunk too many of them but she didn’t care. Nothing mattered except Harry and his hands holding hers, pressing down at the sides of their bodies so she had no choice but to be pressed up against him and feel him underneath the sophisticated twill suit, hard and demanding.
When they were together and Harry was happy like this, nothing could shake her confidence, but when he was gone there were so many doubts. Which she would not think about now, she wouldn’t, and why couldn’t she keep her mother’s voice out of her head, not let it slither in at unwanted times like this? “Who does he think he is, Mr. High and Mighty? Coming and going when it suits him. Don’t be a fool, Irene. Don’t be a fool, a fool, a fool …”
Only one way to block out her mother’s voice.
Irene wanted Harry to kiss her, right now, here on the street and she didn’t care how it looked or who saw. She didn’t care about the homeless men looking on, so silent and dark down the street. Her face was turned to his and the lamplight shone on it. She thought of movie scenes, of Loretta Young with her face lit from above as if by a holy light. She tilted her head without opening her eyes, and it felt as though the world was tilting too, but she wouldn’t open her eyes. She opened her lips instead, and her tongue darted out to wet her lips.
“You look tired, Irene.”
“Oh, but I’m not tired. I feel like I could stay out all night long and would too, for half a reason.” She giggled, for her words might be a little slurred, but wasn’t that what a sophisticated man like Harry wanted? Not the syrupy Loretta Young but Carole Lombard, who knew how to take a joke and could hold her liquor and her man.
“Maybe I should take you home,” he said. He looked over her shoulder down the street, then glanced at his watch.
“I could stay out all night with you, Harry,” she said and pressed herself up against him with no thought at all for her reputation.
“A most tempting suggestion, I must say.” His lips on hers, but so quickly gone, just a peck when she wanted a bushel.
“But you don’t want to go, do you? You don’t want me to go?” What was he looking at behind her? She twisted round and saw a man she’d seen in the club, that friend of Harry’s, the one from England, the one with the foolish name, Gee Whiz. But his name couldn’t be Gee Whiz. No, wait, his name was Warwick Gee.
“Isn’t that your friend?” she said. She hadn’t liked him, that man who came by their table with a giggling fool of a girl in a dress that looked like she’d been dipped in raspberry sauce and lipstick smeared on her front teeth.
“What friend? Where?”
“There, Harry. Yikes.”
The man waved and started toward them. The girl hung on his arm. As they wove past the group of homeless men, one of them put his hand out, asking for money, but Warwick Gee was oblivious and the man spat at his feet.
“Oh, yes. That’s Warry, all right. I wonder what he wants.” Harry took his hands from her and put them in his pockets.
The laughter from the other couple could be heard up and down the street as the girl wobbled and tripped and Warry Gee hauled her back to her feet, both of them braying like drunken donkeys. Irene would never laugh like that or stumble because she was drunk; the happy bright gin and tonic bubbles began to burst in her head and she found her mood shifting to sullenness.
“What on earth are you pouting for, Irene? You’re not going to spoil tonight, are you? I don’t know why this happens with you so often, I really don’t. You have this extraordinary propensity for going all drab at the end of an evening. Do you know that? Makes me wonder sometimes, I must say.”
Harry waved back at Warry Gee, and then gestured to them to wait.
“Harry, I don’t want to stay out here on the street. Can’t we go somewhere?”
“Perhaps it’s best if I just get you a cab home,” he said, looking bored. People came out of the club now, bejewelled women in beautiful clothes and perfectly marcelled curls. Irene reached up and patted her bangs, making sure they lay flat.
There was some secret she must learn, some word, some spell that if said just right would keep him with her, would make him love her. No, not love her, but love her more (didn’t he put his arm around her in the restaurant and say she was his favourite girl, that there was nowhere else he wanted to be in all the world than right there by her side?).
She stepped back and looked at him coyly. “Fine, Harry, put me in a cab. Pity, though. I thought tonight might be the night.” What brazen girl had possessed her?
Harry’s cigarette dangled from his lip, just like Clark Gable’s, and his eye squinted against the smoke.
“Now, Irene, what sort of night were you thinking this might be?”
“You said you want us to be real lovers. You want that, don’t you?”
“Come here,” he said, and she went to him, with her chin out defiantly. He raised a hand and stroked the side of her face, sending a shiver down to her toes. He chuckled and ran his thumb over her lower lip. She opened her mouth and let her tongue touch the fleshy pad. “And what’s brought this on, all of a sudden?”
“I’ve given it a lot of thought. What with you going away and all … Won’t you miss me?”
“Sure. Sure I will. ‘Course I will.” And she saw that his face was flushed and his words slurred a little too, so that she didn’t feel so bad about having drunk just a smidgen too much.
“Come here,” he said again, his voice hoarse, and he held his arms tight around her, one hand straying down to her buttock. At that moment Irene didn’t care about her mother, or about the men watching from down the block. His tongue was in her mouth, just the way she liked it, demanding. This time she was giving in, giving over, giving anything he wanted.
He pushed her back with a strange look in his face.
“Harry?”
“Get in the car,” he said.
He had her by the elbow and steered her to his Packard. Once she was inside he leaned over and kissed her again, his hand on her breast.
“I’ll be right back,” he said and closed the door.
Inside the car everything was still and quiet. Irene watched him walk down the street toward Warwick Gee and that distasteful girl. She watched him lean toward Warwick Gee and say something to him and watched Warwick Gee grin and look at the car and punch Harry in the shoulder.
What am I doing? Irene thought What in the name of God am I doing? And she felt a little sick to her stomach and part of her wanted to get out of the car and run away home to her bed with its clean white sheets. But she couldn’t do that, not now, not after she’d said what she’d said. There was a name for girls who behaved like that and it was one thing to be a sophisticated worldly girl who was not afraid to make love to the man she loved, but another thing entirely to promise a man something and then run home to mother.
Harry walked past her, holding up a finger to her as he did. “Be right back. Don’t you move,” he said and he disappeared back inside the club.
You’ve made your bed now, my girl. She wanted to cry and began to shiver.
Just as she thought she’d lose her nerve, Harry reappeared carrying a bag under his arm. He looked up and down the street and then he got in the car and with him came the smell of cigarettes and gin and the sticky scent of that dreadful girl’s musky perfume.
He leaned across the seat and kissed her. He looked so beautiful and young and she smiled back and felt safe again, safe with him.
“Hold this,” he said, handing her the bag. “Thought we should make this a real celebration.”
And she could feel it was a bottle and thought it might be champagne, but no, it was a bottle of gin, and she guessed that was all right too.
“Where are we going?” And she hoped he’d say the new Park Plaza up on Bloor Street, or maybe even the King Edward, where she fancied the beds were big and soft and covered in satin sheets and the bathroom taps were made of real brass and the walls were covered in damask silk.
“Oh, there’s a little place I know,” he said and winked at her.
The Excelsior was a discreet establishment, pleasant enough, but low key, with nothing about its façade or lobby to draw attention to itself.
They signed in at the desk (large and high and dark, as Irene imagined the desk in a police station to be) as Mr. and Mrs. Carter, and Irene kept her gloves on. The desk clerk looked as though they had woken him and was none too pleased, his greyish mouth pulled down at the corners. She was sure they weren’t fooling him for one single minute, this old man with a cataract in one eye, which Irene suspected did nothing to hamper his vision.
“No baggage?” he said.
“It’s in the car. We’ll bring it up later,” said Harry.
“I see,” said the man, and Irene was sure he did. The
only thing she was grateful for was that if he had seen Harry before, he made no sign.
As they walked across the clean but worn blue carpet Irene took Harry’s arm and he reached down and patted her hand. They pressed the button for the elevator and stood watching the arrow move from the sixth floor to the fifth to the fourth. Irene wanted to be laughing and listening to Harry say pretty things to her.
When the elevator came Harry said, “Sixth floor, please” to the antiquity in a uniform operating the controls.
“Yes, sir,” replied the man, and the machine cranked and wheezed its way upward.
They rode in silence, although he put his arm around her. She felt the weight of him against her as he balanced.
He unlocked the door of the room and held it open for her. Shouldn’t he be carrying her? No, that was stupid. They were not married.
There was a double bed with an iron headboard. There was a white cover on the bed and in the middle a heart-shaped pillow with pink embroidered flowers. To the right of the bed stood a nightstand with an ice bucket and two glasses wrapped in paper, and a black telephone. Over the small chest of drawers was an oval mirror in an imitation gold frame. The wallpaper must have been pretty once, with cabbage roses, faded now to greyish pink. This was not the room she had dreamed of, but she had known it wouldn’t be from the second he had said “a little place I know.” It didn’t seem to matter how much she steeled herself against disappointment, though, for there it was like a small brown toad that had hopped up onto the windowsill.
Harry went to the nightstand before taking off his coat, unwrapped the glasses and poured them both a shot of gin. She didn’t like straight gin, thought that only the worst kind of people drank straight gin, without even an olive to make it think it was a martini, but still, she took the glass from him and raised it to her lips.
The Stubborn Season Page 24
