Two Solitudes

by Hugh Maclennan

  He felt something soft rub against his legs, and bent down to pick up his cat. It was a handsome tortoise-shell Persian. He laid the animal on the bed, turned on a light, and slowly began to undress. As he took off his tie he caught sight of himself in the mirror above the dressing table. Perhaps it was not too late after all? Janet was nearly fifty now. Something like excitement pervaded his blood, but the moment soon passed. It was ridiculous to think of marriage at his age, after rejecting the idea of it thirty years ago. It was even embarrassing. Besides, there was Heather. She was still unmarried; and it would be most unsettling to have someone like Heather as a step-daughter. He wouldn’t be surprised but what Janet had her hands full with that girl before long.

  He put on his pajamas and went into the bathroom, took a long time washing his hands and brushing his teeth and gargling carefully. Finally he shuffled back to the bedroom with his feet encased in a pair of stuffed slippers. He fell on his knees before the bed and murmured his prayers for more than five minutes. Then he rolled between the sheets and snapped off the light by a switch at the head of the bed. The cat leaped up and snuggled into the curve of his bent knees, purring loudly.

  Slowly McQueen’s thoughts grew more placid. It was just as he had said, no country had weathered the depression the way Canada had done. Difficult times had merely weeded out what was unsound and given the good plants room in which to grow. The country was sound through and through. In any kind of crisis there were always fifty ways of making a mistake and only one way of doing the right thing. Human affairs were so mysterious it was arrogant to lay down general rules for them. The deduction was obvious–it was the part of a prudent man to do nothing.

  After reminding himself that he must note this last thought in his card-index first thing in the morning, McQueen fell asleep. The two round forms, his own and the cat’s, lay tranquilly side by side, breathing evenly.

  THIRTY-THREE

  At the back of a small chapel in an old street near the centre of town, Paul watched Kathleen getting married again. Beside him stood a sexton in overalls. He had hay-fever and he sniffled constantly. He had been fixing a hinge on the chapel door and was still at the job when the priest called him to witness the ceremony. The door of the chapel remained ajar, and now the priest’s words were dimmed by the steady noise of traffic in the street. He was an old man and he sounded very tired. Toward the end his words were punctuated by repeated barks from the horn of a taxi caught in a traffic jam at the corner.

  Paul’s fists and his jaw were clenched tight. It was an airless, humid day, hot even in the chapel. He felt the sweat working out from the skin above his shoulder blades, making wet patches on the back of his shirt. In the dim light of the chapel his brown eyes were very large. Shadows lay under his cheekbones. His whole body was lithe and controlled as he stood with shoulders bent slightly forward, watching.

  He tried to fix his eyes on his mother’s back, but the candles winking on the altar beyond held his gaze, as candlelight always did. Beside her kneeled Henry Clayton, in process of becoming his stepfather. Paul looked at the man’s rounded shoulders. They were inert and strangely humble. And yet, for Clayton this moment was the end of a quest which had occupied and taxed all his ingenuity and intelligence for at least nine years. From now on he would have her, and could tell the world he had her. At fifty-two he could take her home, to his small house in a suburb of Pittsburgh. At fifty-two, the only real purpose Henry Clayton had ever known was accomplished.

  If loneliness is a man’s inability to share his feelings with another, Paul had never been as lonely in his life as he was now. The whole ceremony seemed shocking to him. The food being blessed was stale; indeed it had already been eaten. Alone at the back of the chapel, he tried to tell himself that this marriage made no difference to him, but it was not that simple. His mother was at the core of his life; she was interwoven tight in the maze of feelings that threatened to choke him unless he could communicate them.

  The priest raised his hand and made the sign of the cross. As his thin voice intoned the blessing another taxi horn barked outside. Clayton and Kathleen rose to their feet as man and wife. Clayton’s bulk surged up jerkily, as though his knees hurt him, and Kathleen flowed from one position to another easily, with the same old languid motions. Paul and the sexton followed them to the vestry to sign the register and the priest’s bony finger quivered as he held the page down for them. The sexton’s signature spilled out in childish letters on to the page. Some ink splashed off the nib of the pen and made a smear on the paper, then it widened and spread when a worn blotter was applied to it. Paul’s signature was small and neat, each letter spaced as though printed, yet containing evidence of a nervous tension no print could reproduce.

  Then Paul followed his mother and stepfather out to the street, they all got into Clayton’s car and drove back to his hotel. The wedding breakfast was eaten in the main restaurant of the Mount Royal. Next to them two men with obvious hangovers were eating tomato juice and oysters. Once Kathleen and Clayton touched hands across the table, then drew apart on a reflex when they saw that Paul had noticed the gesture.

  Paul ate in silence. He was as austere as a priest, sitting there with them at the small square table. Clayton took out a cream-coloured silk handkerchief and wiped his forehead and the bald patch on his skull. His heavy face was dissolved in sweat, and every time he smiled the moisture ran down through a network of canals to his collar. Beside him Kathleen looked tranquilly comfortable. Her rich skin bloomed in the heat like a gardenia. There was a loosening in the flesh under her eyes which gave her a puzzled, wounded expression when her face was in repose. And when she lowered her head, her chin doubled itself. Yet she was still a handsome woman, still endowed with the accepting look that caught weak men, lonely men, disappointed men, warming them and making them feel better and stronger than they had ever felt in their lives.

  “You’ll come to Pittsburgh and see us soon, won’t you?” The familiar husky voice was pleading as she spoke to Paul. His lids dropped for a second, but lifted immediately. She loved him. She always had. She had never deserted him. He had been the one to desert her. Clayton was saving her from a barren old age, and it was senseless of him to feel as he did about it. In his own way Clayton was a good man; the kind of jolly man Kathleen should have married when she was a young girl. He had been born a poor boy in Texas and had made his own way. He had worked on ranches and on railroads, and finally had got some sort of education and worked his way into business. Big, hearty, solid-stout, he had a laugh that filled the whole dining room. And he loved Kathleen. Looking at his mother, Paul loved her, too. He had regretted her sometimes. He had fought against the helplessness she often induced in him. Her white hand, soft as though it had never done a day’s housework in her life, touched Paul lightly on the wrist. She looked at her husband, pride in her eyes. “Paul works awfully hard, Henry. He’s always been such a good boy.”

  Clayton tucked his handkerchief into his breast pocket. In spite of the heat he was wearing a double-breasted worsted suit with a pencil stripe. Already the creases had wilted over his knees.

  “How did you make out in your exams, Paul? They’re tough stuff–exams. I was too old for them when I wrote mine and…”

  “All right, I think,” Paul said. “Not that exams make any difference, these days.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” Clayton said heartily. “What you young fellas need is confidence in the future.”

  The waiter came with ham and eggs, whipped covers off plates, and disappeared.

  “Henry is going to get you a good job in the States, Paul. We’ve talked it all over. A job with real money in it. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Paul picked up his knife and fork and cut off a slice of ham.

  “Why sure,” Clayton said. “Down home–with the new government–business is picking right up so it’ll be climbing flagpoles soon. Down in Pittsburgh not long ago they had an N.R.A. parade that took three hours to pass! When A
mericans feel that way about something there’s no stopping them.” He laughed and patted Paul on the shoulder jovially. “I know you people up here think we all shoot our mouths off, but just the same…You come down and see for yourself. I’ll get you a good job in no time.”

  “What kind of a job, Mr. Clayton?” Paul’s voice was ironical.

  Clayton grinned, and Paul would have felt sorry for him had there been any cause. The grin did not reach him, did not affect him, nor do the work it was supposed to do. But as Clayton didn’t know this, it was all right.

  “This is a swell country up here. It’s been good to me and I’ve got nothing against it. So far as I can see there’s no real difference between you and us. Only trouble is, things don’t move fast enough up here. You people don’t let yourselves get steamed up. Now down home, we’re changing all the time. That’s the American way, and”–the voice became confidential–“I’m telling you, whether the rest of the world likes it or not, it’s the way things have got to go from now on. When things with us begin to look up they don’t stop till they hit the ceiling.”

  Paul went on eating. He wondered how Clayton had managed to be successful in his business in Montreal. Perhaps just because he was so completely American, so much what Canadians fancied all Americans were, that people found it a welcome relief to deal with him? Five years ago Clayton had deliberately refused promotion because it would have removed him permanently to his home office. His wife was a strict Catholic and he had not even asked for a divorce. So, because Kathleen was in Montreal, Clayton had remained here most of the time while his wife stayed in Pittsburgh until her death six months ago.

  “They talk about the depression like it was the end of the world,” Clayton said. “Don’t you believe it. Now take me–I’ve been through plenty that were just as bad as this. Take the one we had back in 1907. Take the one in…”

  Clayton drifted off, safe on a wave of talk. Like so many men of the same age, he thought he could prove that the system by which he lived was good because it wallowed from one mess to another while he himself somehow managed to survive. Strained, worried, high blood pressure and stomach ulcers, but so what? And yet it was hard to imagine that Clayton had ever seriously worried about anything. Life to him was fun and business, and business consisted in making money and moving large objects from one place to another. Beyond production and profit he never thought an inch. He believed that the more mechanical equipment a man has at his disposal, the better and happier he is. No man could have too many gadgets, the world could never weary of working its life away producing labour-saving devices. As he talked, Kathleen admired him with her wonderful smile, the female’s eternal smile for the man who loves her. And when Clayton’s eyes rested on hers, Paul knew that her satisfaction was equally matched.

  Suddenly Paul remembered the lean aristocracy of his father. He thought of the old house in Saint-Marc and his jaw set rigidly. And yet, there was no cause for anger, or even for surprise. The kind of beauty his mother possessed had never demanded an answering beauty in men. She wanted only affection and admiration, naturalness and the frank opportunity to be herself, and of course the kind of animal vitality which apparently Clayton also possessed.

  The breakfast ended and they rose from the table in relief. Clayton picked up the check and examined it, then laid down a dollar bill as a tip for the waiter. They went out the screened, swinging doors, out of the dark warmth of the hotel into the humid heat of the street. Clayton’s sedan was parked across Metcalfe Street, the back seat and trunk so filled with luggage that the springs sagged under its weight. They crossed the street and Paul held the door open while his mother arranged herself on the right half of the front seat. Clayton went around to the other door, and after sliding under the wheel, pulled at his trouser-legs and wriggled in his suit to make himself comfortable. He pulled a cigar from his breast pocket, eyed it, lit it, eyed the grey ash forming on the end, shook his head in approval, and replaced it between his teeth.

  “Hell’s bells, what a day!” he said. “I met an Englishman yesterday and he said it was hotter here than in Singapore. I can believe it.” He wiped his forehead. “Well, we’ll be in cool little Old Orchard tonight. I can’t wait to wrap myself around one of those shore dinners.”

  Kathleen patted Paul’s hand as it gripped the door beside her. Clayton shot him a satisfied glance. “Don’t you worry, Paul,” he said. “I’ll look after your mother all right.”

  Paul said nothing. He stood watching them, wishing they would go, yet longing for a crazy second that his mother would step out of the car and tell him this was all a mistake and that the last nine years had never been. Clayton started the motor. It throbbed as all eight pistons danced back and forth under the cylinder head. Clayton tapped the wheel, smiling. “Give me one of these V-Eights any day of the week. Going out of Chicago last fall, along the dunes, I was making eighty-seven miles an hour, and what do you think? Another car passed me, and…”

  Kathleen turned to Paul, her smile fading out. He felt a lump choke in his throat as he met her eyes. They were filled with tears. He leaned through the open window and kissed her on the cheek, her skin soft and fragrant under his lips. Then the car began to move.

  “Forgive me, Paul!” He heard the choked whisper as he stood on the curb and watched the car move up to Sherbrooke Street, his mother’s hand waving from the window like a fragment of trailing white silk. The car stopped at the red light at the upper corner, then turned and disappeared.

  Forgive her! For nine years…for twenty-four years…for having conceived and borne him? He stood irresolute, running his hand through his hair. He had no place to go. It was not a new situation. The places he had to go were always temporary places: way-stations on the road through to somewhere else. He thought of some of them: school, hockey practices, games when the players’ entrance to the rink was dark under arc lamps on cold winter nights, the spectators lining up under the bright lights in front, and then the hundreds of tight moments before the game started with the teams poised in the arena ringed by the crowd; stores where he had worked delivering parcels in his mid-teens in the summer; the train that had taken him north to the construction gang that summer when he was eighteen; that other train with the black leather seats in the colonists’ car when he had gone west for the harvesting the year following, across Ontario and Manitoba to Saskatchewan. All those places to go, even the hockey, had been to get an education. They had provided the money for it. It was now, with exams over and a degree in his pocket, that he really had no place to go.

  He walked up the gradual rise of the street to Sherbrooke, then along toward his room on Durocher Street. The hot air was tropically sensual under the tall elms of the McGill campus. The background of Mount Royal staggered in the heat. He felt empty. But it is not emptiness that fills a man so full he is likely to burst unless a valve is turned.

  Paul’s thoughts gathered themselves. He had things to do and a lifetime would not be long enough to do them properly. He had seen a second-hand portable typewriter in a store on Craig Street the other day. At the time he had counted his money to see if he could afford it and decided he would have to get a job first. The Corona would have to wait, like everything else he wanted these days. Again, like guilt in the conscience, the sequence of the last few years renewed itself: doors closing in his face, the regretful smiles of older, well-established men; the knowledge eating into himself and into millions of others month by month and year by year that nobody wanted them, nobody could find a use for them.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  After the night of McQueen’s dinner party, Fletcher left Heather alone. Sometimes he was sullen in her presence, more often he ignored her. He spent hours in his room poring over papers and blueprints. There were entire days when he also ignored Daphne, a mode of behaviour which flustered Janet more than either of her daughters.

  About the middle of July he set out on a business trip to the American west coast which he announced would take about si
x weeks. On the day of his departure he was quite cheerful. Heather and Daphne both saw him off on the night train and when they returned, Janet was waiting for them with milk and biscuits. It was an old habit which she saw no reason to break. It was also a habit to talk about nothing that mattered to any of them as they ate.

  Heather was almost undressed when Daphne came into her room, holding up an old middy blouse she had worn at Brock. “Look,” she said. “I found it in the back of the cupboard in my room. Why on earth it was left there I can’t imagine. Isn’t it a scream? What a beastly little prig I must have been when I wore it.”

  Heather pulled a silk slip over her head. “Sometimes,” she said, “you were.”

  “Well,” Daphne said brightly, “I’m certainly not one now.” She tossed the middy blouse into a corner. “Remember Miss Davenant? How she used to pitch into me when I played Cleopatra?” She mimicked the voice of a hearty English-woman and sat with her legs apart as she did so. “‘Cleopatra is a woman of the world, Daphne. You must remember that she is a queen, not a debutante.’”