Two Solitudes

by Hugh Maclennan

  Her mother died when she was ten. After that her elder sister kept the house until she got married and moved to Worcester in Massachusetts. Then Kathleen kept house for her father and two brothers, working after school to clean and cook and mend for them. She left school when she was fifteen. Her elder brother had a job for a time in a carriage factory, but when he got married he moved with his wife to Hull to work in a match factory there. The younger brother wanted to be a professional hockey player and Kathleen was very proud of him. When he was twenty-five he broke his thigh and tore the cartilage of his right knee and had to hang up his skates for good. He stayed around Montreal for a time shifting from one unskilled job to another, and finally drifted away. When Kathleen last heard of him he was married and living in Oakland, California.

  Then she was alone with her father who was a barkeeper in a saloon in the financial district. Connors got Wednesdays off, and of course he never worked on Sunday. When the weather was good on his free days he would sit motionless on his balcony overhanging the narrow sidewalk and stare at the front of the house across the street. Every house in the block was exactly the same as every other house, and on fine days in summer all the balconies were crowded with families rocking back and forth, watching each other.

  As Kathleen grew into a young woman Connors took a baffled and uncomprehending pride in her. Often he cocked his eye under heavy brows and said, as though seeing her for the first time, “Holy Jesus, child! If you ain’t like a little blue flower!” And then he would add, “With looks like yours, you can marry the brewer himself.”

  Every day of the week except Saturday Connors drank four bottles of Molson’s ale and stayed sober, but on Saturdays he got drunk regularly on Irish whiskey. He took an obscure pride in the fact that he would touch no ale but Molson’s, and he boasted that he had once shaken hands with Mr. Molson himself. No one could be found who had seen him do it, but he stuck to his claim.

  Just before Kathleen’s eighteenth birthday Connors died of cirrhosis of the liver, leaving no debts and no assets but the furniture in their flat. For Kathleen, his death was the beginning of a freedom she enjoyed for three years. She had no fear of the city because it was the only place she knew; it was her real home. Having no status in it, she received the subtle compensation of being able to imagine she owned a share in all of it. She could look at Lord Strathcona’s mansion on Dorchester Street and think how wonderful it was that her city had a building exactly like a medieval castle; and not only that one, but many. They were just like pictures she had seen in a magazine.

  Although Kathleen had little education and no special training, she was never worried about how to earn a living. More than anything else she wanted to go on the stage, but there was no native theatre in Montreal or anywhere else in Canada, and she had no money to go down to the States and take her chances there. So she got a job selling tickets in a theatre where repertory companies from England and New York played regularly. After six months of standing in a booth so small she could hardly turn around in it, she gave up the theatre and took a job selling stationery and greeting cards in a department store. It was little better than selling tickets. For a time she worked as salesgirl and part-time mannequin in a wholesale dress firm, but the pay was poor and her employer expected her to go out with every cigar-chewing buyer who took a fancy to her.

  And then she found a job she really liked. For nearly two years she was a hat-check girl in one of the fashionable hotels. Besides looking after men’s hats, coats and sticks, she listened to their jokes, asked about their families, smiled at them indiscriminately, liked them all, and occasionally went to dine with one or another of them in places where their friends were unlikely to see them. She loved the compliments she received, the small presents they gave her, often with no strings attached, and the knowledge that she was something of a character in the hotel. Her one talent was in full use, and so she was completely satisfied, for Kathleen’s talent was merely to be herself: easy, natural, giving and accepting without question, never thinking beyond the moment.

  It was in the hotel that she met Athanase. He was handsome and vigorous, his hair was just beginning to turn grey, his wit was quick, and they responded to each other at once. She liked older men, especially the ones with no pretences, for they were more likely to be gentle, and they were always grateful to her for being what she was. It had never occurred to her that Athanase would ask her to marry him. Had he been an English-Canadian she would have refused him. She had seen enough of the English in the hotel to guess that their friends would give anyone like herself a very thin time if she married into their society. But she knew little of the French, and nothing whatever of the French in the country outside Montreal. It was only after she reached Saint-Marc that she learned how much tighter a French family unit can be than an English one, and how much stricter and more traditional French standards are than English ones.

  It was not so bad at first. There was the novelty of being mistress of a large house, of having servants, of being idle. Then Paul was born and he absorbed her. It was only after Paul became more independent that Saint-Marc began to bore her. And then the war broke out and things went wrong for Athanase in Ottawa and he aged overnight. Against his Norman stubbornness her Irish good nature had no chance.

  She put the brush down and stood still again, looking herself over with eyes that paid little attention to what they saw reflected in the long glass. When the telephone beside the bed began to ring she was startled. It was a moment before she moved to answer it, and then she sat naked on the edge of the bed and lifted the receiver. A man’s voice, low-pitched and quietly confident, came over the wire in response to her “Yes?”

  “Would you be gracious and have dinner with me tonight? We haven’t met, but we came up in the elevator together half an hour ago. I don’t enjoy eating alone. I hope you don’t either.”

  She smiled as she listened to his carefully chosen words, and glanced down at her naked thighs. “Just a minute,” she said.

  She set the receiver down and reached for her kimono and slippers. Then she picked up the instrument again and listened as the idle wire buzzed quietly between them. “Do you know who I am?” she said. “I’m not in the habit of–”

  “My dear lady,” he interrupted, “in this country people repeat formulas too often, don’t you think?”

  She recoiled from the receiver and looked at it. He must be one of the educated ones. The confident bass voice went on explaining why he was calling her and she listened to its tones rather than its words. It held a suggestion of enormous vigour, but at the same time it was controlled and surprisingly gentle. She remembered him as a man just under forty. “Your silence disappoints me,” he was saying.

  A slight frown lined her forehead as she tried to think what to do. “But I’d planned to go to the theatre tonight,” she said.

  “Definitely?” It was evident he was trying to repress the eagerness from his voice. It was a good sign; if he was eager and nervous he was certainly not the kind of man who hunted a girl with calculation and then despised her once he got what he wanted. She heard him laugh.

  “I’ll introduce myself,” he said. “I’m Dennis Morey. My home is Winnipeg and that’s where I happen to be going now. I’m just back from France.” The voice stopped, then added irrelevantly, “It was awfully cold at sea.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be unfriendly to anyone just back from the war.”

  “That’s grand!” The deep voice made a big thing out of “grand,” then lilted slightly as he said more softly, “What’s your name?”

  “Kathleen.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Why not let it go at that?”

  His voice became almost business-like. “Shall I call for you at your room, or in the lobby?”

  “I’ll be downstairs at seven-thirty.”

  She hung up the phone without waiting to hear him say anything more, and then she laughed quietly to herself. For nearly a minute she sat on t
he side of the bed. She was still smiling as she dressed and began to make up her face as she hadn’t dared in Saint-Marc. Excitement grew warm in her veins like alcohol. It was very sweet. It was life returning. It was water after a long thirst. Even though she was hungry, she took her time, and it was nearly a quarter to eight before she stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor. She could see Dennis Morey standing alone waiting at the end of the passage. As he walked quickly toward her he seemed a huge man, but she noticed that he was light on his feet.

  An hour and a half later they were finishing a large and very good dinner. They had eaten hors d’oeuvres, vichyssoise, broiled mackerel that came whole on a platter with the skin crackling crisp, then roast duck and after that French pastries. They had drunk sherry with the soup, and a light chablis with the fish, and a champagne with the fowl. Coffee sharp with chicory came in small aluminum drip-pots with straight wooden handles. When the waiter brought it, Dennis Morey ordered port to follow.

  He leaned back in his chair, easing out his Sam Browne belt another notch, and glanced at his watch. “Now,” he said, smiling across the table at Kathleen, “let’s talk.”

  She laughed at him. “What have you been doing for the past two hours, I’d like to know?” She lowered her head and the candlelight made the whiteness of her neck unbelievably soft.

  “You may not believe me,” he said, “but I’ve been totally silent for the last three years.”

  She raised her head and idly stretched out her hand to pick up her wine glass. Kathleen knew instinctively when no words were better than any she could think to say.

  “God! The way you move! I could sit here all night and watch you. There’s music in your body.”

  She knew what he meant. There was music in the way she felt as she listened to the sound of his voice defining the evening’s magic. When he stopped talking and just sat and watched her, she said, “What do you mean–silent for three years? Where have you been?”

  “In an army mess. Also in various trenches, holes, dugouts and cellars in the vicinity of Lens, Monchy and various other places I’d rather forget.”

  “Don’t officers talk in the mess?”

  “They do. They also play gramophones. When I get to hell there will be gramophones, and they will all be playing The Long, Long Trail.”

  “I thought you liked music?”

  “Your kind of music. I’d go a long way for that.” Then his face hardened. “I was too old for it. I’ve outgrown the dirty joke stage. And God, those puritans when they talked about women! No matter what they pretend, that’s what they are. I was too old for it.”

  “You don’t look very old.”

  He paid no attention to her words. “Then some of them who’d been with the British would get technical and talk like staff officers. We all got technical, but you could smell the way the staff did it a mile off.” He stopped. “Does this bore you? It certainly bores me.”

  “You’re a funny man. You’re not a bit like–”

  “Like what?”

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “I’d rather look at you. God, you’re lovely!”

  Warm and easy in his presence, she held his eyes across the table and they both smiled. He towered over the table even when he hunched his shoulders and leaned forward on his elbows, and his vitality seemed to fill the room. It made her realize how starved she had been for just such vital strength, but more than anything else she liked the way he was completely unconscious of everything else that passed in the restaurant. They were the last diners in the place and the waiters were impatient to be rid of them. From the corner of her eyes she could see the head-waiter standing motionless by the door. He looked as austere as a cardinal in the flickering shadows cast by the candlelight. But Morey was still talking.

  When he paused she looked into his intense eyes. Her husky voice was warm with friendliness as she said, “When are you going to tell me about your wife?”

  “How do you know I’m married?”

  “The same way you know I’m not a widow.”

  The wine waiter filled their glasses with more port. The glasses gleamed in the candlelight against the shadowed white cloth. Rubies, she thought. She was fascinated by the way they caught and held and transformed the light.

  “She’s a good woman,” he said. “She’s a good mother to three children. I’ve got two girls and a boy. In my own way–in my own way, I said–I’m loyal to her. In this country we may be stupid, but our Goddamned puritanism makes us loyal. Even me.”

  She saw his fingers tighten on the stem of his empty glass, and then the glass fell apart and lay in two pieces on the cloth. He went on as though nothing had happened. “When I joined up I thought the war might help. Or maybe I’d be killed. That’s what makes wars so popular, you know. The failures, the drunks, the washouts, the fellows running away from themselves, the ones that are plain bored…they’re the ones that mob the recruiting offices the first day of any war. The sober citizens come along later. It’s always been the same, and I tell you, it always will be. It’s a lot easier to die than to live.” He looked up with a twisted grin. “Though of course when the time comes to die you discover even that’s all balls.”

  He snubbed out the cigarette in his fingers and lit another one. “Well, the war’s over for me. Tonight’s my last breath of freedom. And you’re the one I found for it.”

  She made no sound or movement.

  “Ever been in Winnipeg?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “Winnipeg could have been one of the cities of the world. Some of the world’s best people live there. But of course, we’re puritans. So the place is just Winnipeg. God help us…why do people hate beauty in this country the way they do? As if I didn’t know the answer!”

  The waiter ghosted up to the table and silently removed the wreckage of the wine glass, knocked the ashes from the tray onto a plate, then replaced the emptied tray and ghosted back to the door again. Morey froze until the waiter was gone, then he hunched forward over the table again and spread the cloth smooth, his huge hands moving like a sculptor’s on clay.

  “Imagine a flat plain,” he said. “Not a narrow strip like you have here by the Saint Lawrence, but hundreds of miles of prairie stretching in every direction as far as the eye can see. Imagine it green. Imagine above it a sky so blue your eyes can hardly bear to look at it, and cumulus clouds pure white. Imagine the whole sky seeming to move.” He lifted his hands from the table and fixed his eyes on hers to hold them. “Like a great majestic bowl with the earth flat beneath it. Sky the giver, earth the accepter. Male and female…”

  She watched him as if mesmerized.

  “Now,” he said, “imagine a building made of grey granite, reinforced with steel smelted out of the best Lake Superior ore. Imagine the building slim and light as a sword in front, and long and light in profile. Imagine it six hundred feet high, towering off that flat plain, with set-backs like decks for gods to walk on and survey the earth. Imagine the sky blue and the white clouds moving past, so close to its pinnacle that you could stare up from the ground and see the slender profile of that building and think it was moving, too. Imagine it”–he jerked the words out one by one–“clean-angled, balanced, slender, light–mercilessly right. And new, by God…like the country that made it!”

  He stopped suddenly and silence fell between them until he broke it with a wan smile and a tired voice. “Maybe it’s just as well not to imagine it. Canadians would never permit such a building to exist.”

  “Why not? It sounds wonderful.”

  His large hand seemed to sweep her words aside. “Why not? My God! Just look at this town of yours! An imitation of every example of bad taste in the universe, and as dull and almost as dirty as Liverpool. And if I ever made a statement like that in one of your fashionable clubs here–God, they’d be pleased! After all, if Montreal looks even a little like Liverpool it must be British, and that’s exactly how they want it–the ones who build their monstro
us buildings.”

  The ideas were coming too fast for Kathleen. She couldn’t keep them connected, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter, for she understood perfectly how he felt. “You don’t like the British much, do you?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t like them. I do. But Canada isn’t England, and too many Canadians try to pretend it is. Generally they’re the rich ones, and they pay the money and make the choices. Does our western prairie look like anything in England, for God’s sake? Then why try to cover it with English architecture?” He shrugged his shoulders. “After a while they’ll get another idea. They’ll pretend we’re exactly the same as the States. And they’ll start to imitate ideas from down there. But is there anything in the States like the Saint Lawrence valley? For that matter, is there anything in the States like us–the collective us?”

  Kathleen was bewildered and she fell back on her smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “Has this anything to do with your wife?”

  “Not at all.” His voice dropped to a monotone. “And everything. She’s a good woman. Sorry. I’ve already said that, haven’t I? She likes roast beef and potatoes five times a week. She goes to church twice every Sunday. She belongs to the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire and does good works. She sends our three children to good schools on my army pay and sacrifices all her own comforts to do it. I’ve never once heard her complain about a thing. She thinks art and architecture are refined hobbies for me, but she doesn’t feel we can afford to buy paintings. She’s right. We never could. She bought a moose-head at an auction just before the war and hung it in the hall. She’s always hoped I’d settle down. She’s never done a single mean thing in her life or said an unkind word about anyone–even about me. She’s thirty-five and quite pretty. She hasn’t a grain of imagination, and no humour whatever, but she’s a good woman, and I’m not sneering when I say it.”

  He got to his feet abruptly and pulled out the table with a violent heave. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back to the hotel.”