Two Solitudes

by Hugh Maclennan

  “Your grandfather. I was wondering if he was a liar.”

  She chuckled softly and Paul added, “The kind of a liar I am myself.”

  Leaning on her elbow beside him, Heather bent and looked close at his face. His eyes were closed and his lips slightly parted. She wanted to touch his hair and find out how it felt, particularly where it was a shade lighter and softer on the top of his head. Already faint lines showed at the corners of his eyes. It was strange to have him so quiet now, after all the talking he had done in her studio. She guessed it was more natural for him to be silent than otherwise. All his strength seemed to be held in leash. There was a scar on his left thigh, another on his chest; when he rolled over on to his stomach another appeared on the lower part of his back. She traced it with her finger.

  “How did you get that?”

  “Hockey.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a good thing you stopped playing.”

  “That’s not why I stopped.”

  “Why did you?”

  “It took too much out of me.” He rolled over onto his back again. “After every game I was like a limp rag. And before every game I’d have to tighten myself up. You’re useless unless you start nervous.”

  “You love hockey, don’t you, Paul?”

  “I used to.” He shaded his eyes with his hands, his face wrinkling from the low-hanging sun. “Some winters I felt as if I lived in the Forum. I knew every scratch on the paint along the boards. There was one long gash near the south penalty box I used to touch before every game, and remember how it was made.”

  “How was it?”

  “Eddie Shore kicked his skate into it once when he was sore.”

  “Were you superstitious?”

  He looked at her from under nearly closed eyelids. “I was about hockey.”

  She touched the scar on his chest and then took her finger away quickly. “How did you happen to do it–play hockey like that, I mean?”

  “Because I needed the money.”

  “No–I mean, why hockey and not something else?”

  He thought a moment. “I guess it was the first professional game I ever saw. I was sixteen. Joliat, Morenz and Boucher were playing. After that I was willing to slave eight hours a day training just on the chance of being half as good as they were.” He reached up and stroked her hair. “But now I’m an old man, and at the best I was never even a quarter as good.”

  “Now you’re very, very serious.”

  “I know. Much too much so.”

  She grinned down at him, liking the rhythm of his moving fingers on her head, warm with the sense of him. Some men who seemed gentle enough were clumsy with their hands, but Paul, whose body looked hard, was tender even through his finger-tips.

  “I wonder if you’d like Daffy now,” she said. “She’s a natural blonde.”

  “What makes you think I like blondes?”

  “She’s tall and willowy, and she has skin like honey in the sun.” When he made no reply she added, “And her figure is luscious. It looks as if it would melt in a man’s arms.”

  “It must be a full-time job, being Daffy.”

  Heather laughed. “And she has a perfectly dreadful husband. I’m rather sorry for him, but not very much. Daphne says he rapes her.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Don’t be horrid!”

  “I meant, is it a physically possible thing to do? I’ve often wondered.”

  He sat up and they crouched on the sand looking at each other, the moment poised between them like a bubble, and then he jumped up and ran into the water, charging it so hard he tripped and went down with a splash. Heather watched him stroking out to deep water. He dove once and came up blowing, cruised a little, then crawled back and ran up the beach and dropped down on the warm earth beside her. She sat and looked at the rise and fall of his chest.

  “I wish I knew more about hockey,” she said. “Mother’s never thought it quite proper for me to go to the Forum. Alan used to take me sometimes. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful; not a single ugly movement on the ice.”

  “Morenz, Joliat, Gagnon, Jackson, Smith–the whole lot of them are about the best artists this country ever turned out.”

  “Hooley Smith sent a man into the boards almost on top of me once. Without thinking what I was doing I booed him for it.”

  “That shows you didn’t appreciate him. He did it beautifully and you never noticed.”

  She got up and walked to the car and he watched her as she returned with the sandwiches and beer. She put the bottles at the edge of the water, making them secure with small stones. Then she came back and stood over him. “Did you get into fights and get penalties?”

  “Not if I could help it.”

  “I wish I’d seen you play.”

  “Too late now. My hockey days are definitely over.”

  They ate the sandwiches and drank the beer while the long daylight of a northern summer evening moved almost imperceptibly to dusk. Heather changed, and when she came back dressed Paul went to put on his clothes. “The thing about Montreal I’ve always disliked most,” Heather said when he reappeared, “is the way you have to drive for hours to get into real country. I’d like to walk through an orchard on a night like this. I’d like to go up to that ridge behind Saint-Marc and look at the river. I’d like to go down to a seashore and listen to the waves break in the dark. I’d like most of all to stand on top of a real mountain, and look at farmhouses lying scattered in the valley below.”

  Paul put the empty bottles back in the car and then he followed her into the boathouse to make sure they had left it as they found it. “Come up here,” she called from the upper floor. When he joined her on the small porch that ran across the front, she said, “It isn’t very high, but it’s better than nothing.”

  They stood looking out over the lake, silent as a dark steel mirror before them. It smelled flat and reedy, but the lawn that ran back to the house was full of mysterious shadows in the half-light, and the smells could almost be forgotten. Land heat brooded over the water’s edge. In the west across the lake the coloured light still lingered and splashed a few tired clouds as the day forgot itself.

  “Not bad at all,” he said. He dropped on to a canvas swing and pulled her down beside him. “It’s a funny thing. Three days ago I didn’t think there was a thing in Canada I’d miss when I went to sea, except your grandfather. Now there’s something else. I believe I’m going to miss you.”

  She touched the hand that held her against his shoulder. “I wouldn’t be surprised but what I’d miss you, too.”

  After a moment he said, “Do you think we know anything about each other, really? I feel as though I’d known you a long time.”

  “Well, you have. You know I’m not afraid to put a worm on a fish-hook, for instance.”

  But he wouldn’t be teased. “When two people are alone, matter-of-fact things aren’t important.” He thought about his words. “That doesn’t make much sense. If I went home with you and met your family and your friends–all sorts of in-consequential things would matter then, and the important things about us would almost disappear.”

  “Would they? I don’t think so. But I do know what you mean.”

  He ruffled her hair over one ear. “Have you ever been in love?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve thought I was several times. First when I was fifteen, in Lausanne. But I always managed to get over it. So it probably wasn’t what other people mean when they talk about love.”

  He looked into the darkness that was gathering like a visible cloud over the lake. Frogs croaked in the distance, and the beat of crickets and katydids in the foliage around the house was rhythmical and persistent.

  “Don’t be in love with anyone, Heather.”

  She stirred against him, but he held her still. “Never?”

  “They’ll only spoil it for you. It makes you helpless, and then they get you every time.”

>   “Who’s they?”

  “Sorry. That’s a habit. In my street we grew up talking about ‘they.’”

  She sat so still she seemed hardly to breathe, looking into the dark nothingness over the lake. Far out on Dorval Island a few lights winked through the trees. She was twenty-three and only one man she had ever met had been able to touch her, to reach through her mind to the person within herself. It took only a moment to happen; after that it was a fact; there it was, and nothing he could say now would change it.

  A mosquito settled on the soft skin of her lower arm and she brushed it off. Paul felt one on his left ear. He loosened his arm from about her shoulder, took a package of cigarettes from the pocket of his jacket where it was thrown over a chair, and lit one for her, then one for himself. As the match flared in the darkness she saw his eyes large and brown; then it was dark again, with two small glowing points of light rising and falling on the ends of the cigarettes.

  “Have you known a lot of girls, Paul?”

  He waited before he spoke. “I’ve known one woman,” he said quietly. “Though she never really grew up at all. She was so natural with all men she made it hard for me to be natural with any other woman.”

  “Do you know her still?”

  “She’s my mother.”

  As the cigarettes burned out, more mosquitoes came at them, attacking out of the darkness loud and sudden in their ears. Paul made batting motions with his hands, and Heather got to her feet. “Perhaps we’d better go,” she said. “They’ve got an army on their side.”

  He followed her into the boathouse, closing and barring the door behind them, and then they stood still in profound darkness. “Where are you?” he said. “Wait until I light a match.”

  “I’m right here.”

  He stepped forward and came against her. Then she was in his arms, her face straining up to his, her lips soft under his own. Everything else was blotted out. He had never known this before, this sense of life in a girl, the essence of life stirring under him in a darkness so deep there was nothing else there, except her rich, generous self a part of him.

  His mind groped out of the darkness like a diver struggling to the surface. She moved away and he began to hunt through his pockets for a packet of matches. When he found it he struck one, and her face leaped out of the darkness, blurred in the half light. She was leaning against the wall, her hands behind her, wonder in her eyes. The match burned his fingers and he dropped it, set his heel on the glowing coal and the place was black again.

  “Heather–don’t! I…it’s the one thing I’m afraid of.”

  “Why, Paul?”

  “Why? My God–don’t underrate yourself.”

  Her voice seemed far away. “I’m not afraid. Not now.”

  He tore off another match, but he didn’t light it. “Next week I’m going away. We may never see each other again. Let’s remember that.”

  Silence filled the darkness, and then she said softly, “You’ve known other girls, haven’t you?”

  “Not many.” He sounded absurdly annoyed. “Not as many as you think, probably.”

  “When you kissed me–I knew.”

  “Did you mind?”

  “No. No, of course not.”

  He lit another match and held it high and she went ahead of him down the stairs. He lit another, and the dim outline of the canoes sprawled like mammal-fish in the damp, stuffy air. When they opened the door and stepped on to the lawn the night air seemed almost bright compared to the nothingness inside the boathouse. They stood still, side by side, looking up to a sky swimming with stars.

  “I’ll hate it when you go away,” she said.

  He took her hand. It seemed small and soft in his own, but she pulled it loose and stepped away from him.

  “You’re the only person in the world who doesn’t make me feel alone,” she said. Her senses seemed to bruise themselves against his silence. “You don’t have to be a French-Canadian to be born in a strait-jacket. Every girl’s born in one, unless you’re a girl like Daffy.”

  She started walking over the turf toward the car. Though he made no sound, she knew he was close behind. “I’m such a damned little fool!” she said.

  His hand was on her waist and he drew her to him gently. “We don’t have to pretend with each other, Heather. I’ve worn out a lot of shoes looking for jobs in the past year. I don’t have to remind you of that.”

  “It’s not fair. It’s not fair!”

  “Facts and fairness have nothing to do with each other. If it weren’t for all the doors that have closed in my face, I’d be able to say a lot of things to you now…that I can’t.”

  Impatience dropped from her as she felt the strength and the support of his arms. The dark was a wall between them. What was love anyway, but a knowledge that you were not alone, with desire added? And there was no doubt about the desire. Paul knew he would wake up for months thinking about her, remembering her fresh resiliency.

  They walked on to the car, gravel crunching under their feet as they turned into the drive.

  “How long will you be at sea?” she said.

  “A year. Perhaps two or three. I don’t know.”

  “Anything could happen in that time.”

  “Anything–to both of us.” He looked up and saw the long arm of the Dipper overhead, reaching toward the city. There was a flaring haze on the sky in the direction it pointed, city lights shining into moist air.

  On the road back to town she drove as fast as the curves would allow. Trees lurched past with long swishing sighs, and beyond them starlight was reflected feebly in the water. When they turned from the lakeshore into Montreal West the road was straighter, and when they passed through Westmount they could see a bowling green soft and glowing under spotlights, its lawn as smooth as a billiard cloth. The lights gleamed on the bald heads of elderly, flanneled men and the bowls rolled slumbrously forward over the grass. It was quaint and dignified and very English.

  In a moment it was behind them and the gigantic Sulpician seminary was on their left, with hundreds of incipient priests locked behind its elm trees and stone walls. Then Guy Street, rich Protestant churches, McGill campus, and the great electric cross blazing on the butt of Mount Royal. Finally they reached the shabby, rundown street where he lived. On the entire run from Dorval they had spoken not a word.

  Paul got out of the car when it stopped and closed the door. Then he walked around to stand at the door on her side. He took one small hand from the wheel and held it in both his own. “Will you write to me sometimes? I’ll want to know how you are, and what you’re doing.”

  “There won’t be much to tell.”

  “Don’t say things like that. It’s you–not the things you do.” He looked at her hand a moment, then he kissed it. “You can always reach me through the shipping company in Halifax.”

  She put her hand back on the wheel and released the clutch. “Have fun, darling,” she said. “And take care of yourself.”

  As the car moved off she could see him in the rear-view mirror, standing there in the street looking after her. She turned the corner and lost sight of him. Her mind was suddenly blank with exhaustion, and she was conscious of nothing but her lips. They felt tired as her mind was tired, almost bruised from his, but exultantly alive.

  When she had put the car in the garage and entered the house she saw Daphne reading under a lamp in the library. She stopped at the door and looked in.

  “Well!” her sister said. “Mummy’s been worried to death. She’s been calling everybody in town to find out where you were.” She stared at Heather and then she smiled broadly. “Who was he?”

  Heather looked at her sister as though she had never seen her before and went upstairs.

  THIRTY-NINE

  A week later Paul stood on the deck of the Liverpool Battalion and watched the docks of Halifax slip by as the vessel headed out to sea. With the ship under way, he had nothing to do. While they were waiting for the pilot to come aboard they had
made the decks clean, battened the hatches and coiled every rope in its place.

  The old town looked rich with a picturesque and individual shabbiness as they passed down the harbour. Each of the docks had its own smell; fishmeal from one, the dusty smell of feed from another, the stink of dried cod from a third, the mixed smell of brine and bilges and seaweed from all of them. The strong, raw odours were all new to him, different from any smells on inland water. As he looked up at the Citadel above the town he saw the Jack flutter on the signal mast and come slowly down on its halyard, waving gently in the evening breeze. He could hear the faint and random blasts of motor horns in the lower streets; Halifax going on with its routine independent of the coming and going of ships.

  They passed between the terminal docks and the quiet bowl of George’s Island, and then the outer harbour came into view, the plane of water spreading far away to the point where the sea and sky met in a soft shade of mauve, mysterious, cool, infinite. Behind the town the sun had set in flames half an hour ago, and now the sky was yellow as a daffodil and shining. A single shredded cloud ribbed with crimson sailed aloofly out of its yellow pool toward the sea.

  A strange feeling of mingled excitement and resignation filled Paul as he watched the sunset, the sky, the harbour and the town. He let the sensations fall into his mind like rain. How long would it be? How many ships would he travel on before he came back again? The strangeness of everything made him feel numb.

  A group of deckhands was standing forward in the waist of the ship. They all had the unconscious, reaction-soaked appearance of men who knew the rules so well they never thought about them. He knew they were sizing him up.

  Tomorrow it would be all right, he would have no trouble with them, for he knew what they were like. He understood how to get along with men like that, to kill the difference between himself and them. He had been doing it all his life, and it was not so hard as it seemed.

  The ship passed the breakwater, then slid past the park on the toe of the town, past the lighthouse on Meagher’s Beach where the beam was already circling. The bluff of York Redoubt, shaggy with trees, loomed on the starboard beam, and then the shoreline dropped lower toward tawny rocks where groundswells broke perpetually with hoarse, intermittent surges. This was Yardley’s home, Paul thought, Nova Scotia–where one-quarter of Heather had originated. It was as old as Quebec, but it seemed infinitely younger, without the Quebec sadness and the solemnity of the Catholic parishes. Nova Scotia was sea-washed and rain-washed, cooled by fog, thrust so far away from the continent into the ocean that it seemed a separate country.