The Latchkey Kid

by Helen Forrester

  “So what?”

  Isobel looked at Dorothy reprovingly. “It’s Hank’s business, Dorothy.”

  “Aw, don’t be hard on her, Isobel. She just don’t understand. Mind if I work in the garage today?”

  “Not at all, Hank. Go ahead.”

  “Thanks a lot. Seeya tonight, mebbe.”

  He must have worked for a long time in the garage. When Dorothy came home from town, however, he was digging over the vegetable patch, despite its half-frozen state and the gently falling snow.

  “You don’t have to do that, Hank,” she said, as she came through the back gate. “Isobel will get a man to do it in the spring.”

  “And what do you think I am, honey?” He had stopped digging and was leaning against the spade, waiting, as if the answer was important to him.

  Dorothy laughed. “Oh, Hank, you are an ass.”

  “Thanks,” he said dryly, his face taking on the blank expression it usually had when he was annoyed.

  Dorothy was puzzled and did not know what to say, so she smiled and then started up the path to the back door, when he called her back.

  “Say, Doll, I want to ask you something.”

  She walked uneasily back to him, her legs in their tight pants looking like those of a young colt. “Yes, Hank?”

  He weighed her up for a moment, his wide mouth compressed, and then asked: “D’ye think Isobel would come to a ball with me?”

  Dorothy decided she had better not laugh this time, though she wanted to, so she said cautiously: “I don’t know, Hank.” She wondered a little resentfully why he did not ask her to go, though she would have been scared if he actually had done so; she lacked a North American youngster’s experience with the opposite sex.

  “I mean, is she still in mourning? It’s well over four months now, and it’ll be five before the ball comes up.”

  Dorothy was thoughtful. “No,” she said at last. “She seems to be getting over it pretty well. She goes about a bit – English women are a bit different from Canadians, you know, Hank.” Then she added in a confiding tone: “Of course, she was not much with her husband really – and I think that helps – she isn’t reminded of him at every turn, like an ordinary widow would be.”

  “You’re right.” He rubbed the end of his nose with one grubby hand in a puzzled kind of way.

  “Why don’t you ask one of your girl friends?” Dorothy inquired, far too intrigued at this unexpected interest in Isobel to remember that she was supposed to be indoors starting to prepare supper.

  “Not suitable,” said Hank flatly. Then, feeling that perhaps he was being rather uncomplimentary to Dorothy, he added untruthfully: “I’d ask you, honey, only you’re too young for this one.”

  “Is it the Edwardian Ball?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, Hank, I’d love to go,” she implored.

  “Sorry, babe. You really are too young.”

  Dorothy felt crushed, and said bitterly: “Well, if I’m too young to go with you, I’m sure Isobel is too old.”

  This sensitive point made Hank feel as if he had been returned sharply to the schoolroom, but he said unrepentantly: “Nuts! She’s just old enough to have dignity.”

  “Well, no doubt she’d feel safe with you,” Dorothy said pointedly. “You’d better ask her.” And she flounced up to the house, her long black hair swinging rebelliously down her back from under her red woollen cap.

  Though rather demoralized by his conversation with Dorothy, he did ask Isobel. He came up to the house that evening, armed with the music box and the monkey. He had changed into a clean white shirt and a tie, and his dark pants just fitted him, though Dorothy wondered if they would stand the strain of his sitting down.

  Dorothy had already told Isobel of the conversation that afternoon, so she was prepared; but he found it difficult to get round to the real object of the visit. He presented the music box, which was received with every expression of pleasure by Isobel, and the monkey to Dorothy, who could not help laughing when she saw it, because it was so typical of a craze for stuffed animals amongst the girls she had met in Tollemarche.

  When finally he did broach the subject of the ball, Isobel refused to take his invitation seriously and said he should take someone his own age. Anyway, Tollemarche would be shocked if she went, she added wistfully.

  He caught the hint of wistfulness in her voice and made the most of it quickly.

  “For heaven’s sakes!” he exclaimed. “Why should you care what a lot of old tabbies think? Ma and Pop will be going. And for sure you can come – if you feel up to it?”

  He wondered suddenly if she had got any fun out of her marriage to Peter Dawson. He remembered him as a kindly man but not a very lively one.

  “Perhaps you ought to make up a party with your parents,” Isobel said dutifully.

  “Come off it,” he said, grinning suddenly. “You know I want to shake ’em. And I’d sure see you had a lovely time,” he went on with almost too much intensity in his voice, so that he feared he might have frightened her off.

  Dorothy looked at Hank with sudden interest. His eyes were on Isobel, who was staring at her hands, and Dorothy felt a wave of jealousy at Isobel’s Dresden china beauty and her look of compliant gentleness. She had taken it for granted that if Isobel accompanied Hank to the ball, it would be a kind of aunt and nephew relationship, but now she wondered.

  Isobel looked up and laughed herself, her nose wrinkling up like a child’s. She obviously had not noticed anything out of the ordinary, and Dorothy told herself not to be a fool, imagining things. Maybe it would do Isobel good to be dragged out by someone she would feel at home with, and a man of her own age would cause much more of a stir in the neighbourhood.

  “You should go, Isobel,” she said generously, swallowing her own disappointment at not being asked. “Dress up in ostrich feathers, or whatever Edwardians wore, and have some fun. It would help Hank out – and probably nobody would recognize you anyway.”

  Hank was not slow in taking his cue. “Sure. You can be disguised,” he said hopefully. “Lots of people go as well-known Edwardian characters – everybody wears Edwardian dress.”

  It took them an hour to convince her that it would be all right to go, that she would not be disloyal to Peter; but, finally, she agreed that she might as well indulge the boy.

  Dorothy had an inspiration as to who they could go as, and for the rest of the evening they amused themselves by digging through an old encyclopedia to find pictures from which to copy costumes.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Ladies of Scotland League was holding its fall tea in the auditorium of a large store on Tollemarche Avenue. The decorations committee had spent the morning spreading tables with brown, yellow and green linen cloths and pinning gold-sprayed autumn leaves to each corner of them. Branches of fir, complete with cones also sprayed with gold, had been laboriously pinned to the walls. Brown and white bunting swathed the edges of the small stage.

  A small table by the door had been spread with a green cloth embroidered with the insignia of the League, two thistles crossed above the initials L.S.L., and here, armed with white name cards and a bristling collection of pins, sat Mrs. MacPhail, a determined young newcomer from Hamilton, Ontario, who had managed to obtain the post of secretary because none of the older members felt like undertaking so much work. Her hat was an aggressively red felt, and she peered out from under its big brim like a shrew ready to attack. Beside her sat the treasurer, a formidable figure of some sixty years of age, in a pink gauze turban which did little to soften her high, bald forehead or her arrogant expression. She wore a matching crepe dress, which draped across her large bosom and red neck, and a mink stole was hung negligently over the back of her chair.

  Anybody who had hoped to get past these two ladies without paying her dues would have been squelched by a look; and the pile of dollars in front of the treasurer grew as the number of white name cards in front of Mrs. MacPhail diminished.

  At one
end of the hall, a long table, embellished with a lace tablecloth, had been laid with silver coffee-pots at one end and silver teapots at the other, a mass of flowered cups and saucers round each. In the middle of the table was a formal arrangement of chrysanthemums, flanked by white candles in silver holders. Two very old ladies presided over the tea and coffee pots; they were the oldest members of the League, having travelled out to Tollemarche district with their parents in covered wagons, before the town itself existed. They therefore received the doubtful honour of pouring out for some two hundred ladies, regardless of the fact that it was a very arduous and tiring task.

  Mrs. Josephine MacDonald, president of the Noble Order of Lady Queen Bees, was also vice-president of the League and stood with the president in the receiving line, just beyond the treasurer’s table. Mrs. MacDonald was a Calgarian by birth, and her husband had been moved north by his firm to run the huge refinery that was now the pride of Tollemarche. She regarded the Tollemarche ladies as being outside the pale, and had treated them with such blatant condescension that they had quailed, and had sought her goodwill by voting her hastily into offices in those organizations in which she had deigned to take an interest. Today the president, Mrs. Macpherson, in between gracefully shaking hands with each new arrival and presenting her to Mrs. MacDonald, decided that she was nothing but a vulgar upstart, and she trembled with suppressed irritation at having to stand in the same receiving line with her. Why, there had been Macphersons grinding flour in the Tollemarche district sixty years ago, and it had taken her years of hard infighting to reach her present exalted rank; now this woman was, after only twelve months’ residence, her vice-president. Mrs. Macpherson bit her blue lips with her artificial teeth and looked down her beaky nose at the bland, well-powdered face beside her. Hmm! Nothing but paint on a piece of lard.

  The piece of lard opened its lipsticked mouth in a thin smile at the next arrival, and Mrs. Macpherson hastily recollected her duties, her black, old-fashioned hat bobbing in unison with her white bun, as she spoke to Mrs. Frizzell. A nice girl, Donna Frizzell, real nice.

  “May I present Mrs. Frizzell,” said Mrs. Macpherson to Mrs. MacDonald.

  Mrs. Frizzell flashed a dazzling smile at Mrs. MacDonald, showing no sign of the resentment against the lady, which she shared with Mrs. Macpherson, while Mrs. MacDonald inclined her head slightly in acknowledgment.

  “We’ve already met,” they said in chorus, as they shook hands demurely.

  “Well, now, isn’t that just fine,” said Mrs. Macpherson, a note of acerbity in her voice.

  No other arrivals were awaiting attention, so Mrs. Frizzell paused to speak with Mrs. MacDonald, while Mrs. Macpherson checked with the treasurer that all was well in the finance department.

  “I didn’t know you were Scottish,” said Mrs. MacDonald, her bright smile looking rather fixed.

  “Not me,” said Mrs. Frizzell. “It’s Maxie that’s Scotch. His mother came from Glasgow.” She enjoyed the opportunity of impressing the president of the Lady Queen Bees. “He belongs to the Bonnie Scot Men’s Association. He did a real funny Address to the Pudding last Robbie Burns Night.”

  “Indeed,” said Mrs. MacDonald, delicately checking with one finger that her hat was still on straight. “He must be a charming person.”

  Mrs. Frizzell looked a bit doubtful, and then said yes, he was, especially when he got going. She became aware that her beige Sunday suit was looking a trifle out of fashion, compared with Mrs. MacDonald’s burnt-orange outfit, and this confused her still more. Everybody seemed to have bought a new dress for the occasion, and she had hardly finished paying for her suit.

  She searched for a new subject of conversation. “Will you be going to the Edwardian Ball?” she asked.

  “Naturally. Bobby expects to make up a party from the works and we shall come along for an hour or two.”

  Mrs. Frizzell wished mightily that she could infuse into her own voice just that inflection by which Mrs. MacDonald conveyed that she was doing Tollemarche a special favour by coming to the ball. She was dying to ask Mrs. MacDonald what she would be wearing, and then thought better of it. Probably the party would come in plain dinner dresses, just to show how far above such things they were.

  She shifted the rather heavy, though small, paper bag which she was carrying, and said: “I guess I’d better get some tea before all the cookies go. See you at the ball, if not before.”

  “Right-ho,” said Mrs. MacDonald unexpectedly. She had picked the word up from an English film shown on television and thought it charming.

  Mrs. Frizzell looked a little startled, and retired to the tea table with what she hoped was a stylish bow.

  “Afternoon, Donna,” said a small ancient voice behind her. “Coffee’s at the other end o’ the table.”

  Mrs. Frizzell, engrossed in thoughts of buying a new dress, as well as her costume for the ball, which was being made by a dressmaker and was as yet unpaid for, jumped and turned around.

  The old tea pourer, Donna’s one-time school-teacher, peered up at her through rimless glasses. “Yer getting nervy, Donna. Should go to bed earlier. Always told yer mother you never went to bed early enough.”

  Donna felt again like the girl who had been made to spit her gum into the wastepaper basket. Her depression deepened. Somehow this tea was not turning out to be the delightful social event she had hoped for, full of contented tittle-tattle and scornful criticism of all who were not Scottish and United Church. These Scotch women were tough and sure could make a person feel small.

  Mrs. Frizzell giggled nervously. “I’m too busy these days, Miss Angus. Can I have a cup of tea, please?”

  “Yer can,” said Miss Angus, lifting the heavy silver pot with a shaky hand and slopping some into a cup. “Sugar and cream’s there. Help yerself.”

  Mrs. Frizzell fumbled with handbag, parcel and gloves, and finally managed to pick up the teacup as well, and to serve herself with sugar.

  “Wottya got there?” asked the indomitable old voice.

  Donna’s face blenched a little under her makeup. She knew Miss Angus had never liked her much; in fact, it was doubtful if Miss Angus liked anyone very much. Donna remembered with sorrow the number of humiliations she had endured from her in school, and the thought of exposing the contents of the parcel she was carrying to such a merciless judge unnerved her.

  “Some books,” she finally murmured into her teacup, while she tried quietly to increase the distance between her and the tea pourer.

  “Books? Never knew you to read a book yer didna hafta.” Miss Angus sniffed. “Has Maxie taken to reading? Wottya bought?” Her voice rose commandingly. “Lemme see.”

  Other ladies standing nearby were beginning to take an amused interest in this interchange between the domineering retired school-teacher, who had ruled many of them when they were young, and Donna Frizzell, who could tear a character to pieces in three minutes with her sharp tongue.

  “You’re busy pouring now,” said Donna desperately. “I’ll show you after and explain about them.”

  “Explain?” The old busybody from the back streets of nineteenth-century Glasgow was immediately alert. “I got time now. Most people have had their first and aren’t ready for their second. Come on. Let’s have a look.” It was an order.

  Mrs. Frizzell clung to the paper bag.

  “Not now,” she protested. “I’ll explain to you about them later on.”

  She would never be allowed by Miss Angus to explain in front of the other women, she felt angrily. Miss Angus would have a field day, happy to emphasize her own high moral principles at the expense of an unloved member of a younger generation. The old devil! No wonder she had never got further than teaching in a one-roomed schoolhouse.

  She bent forward to return her teacup to the table. The paper bag slipped, she grabbed it and it tore open at the bottom, spilling its contents onto the empty teacups near Miss Angus and turning some of them over with an attention-drawing rattle.

  Severa
l more ladies looked round sharply at the tea table, as Mrs. Frizzell tried to snatch her purchases back. But Miss Angus slapped her wrist sharply with a teaspoon, as she picked up a paperback with her other hand and examined it closely. She looked paralyzed for a moment. The female depicted on the cover was stark naked.

  “Butterfield 8,” she read out in a clear, schoolmarm voice. She picked up another, while Donna watched like a terrified rabbit. “Striptease!” she exclaimed. “Love of an Ape Man!” She clawed for the one hardback in the collection and picked it up. “The Cheaper Sex by Ben MacLean.” Her face paled at the sight of the dust jacket on this one. “Donna Frizzell, I thought better of you!” she thundered.

  “But Miss Angus, the Society for …”

  “I want no explanations. Take this pornography off my tea table!”

  “Miss Angus, I …” began Mrs. Frizzell in anguish.

  Miss Angus bellowed like a slightly cracked version of Gabriel’s trumpet: “I said take them away, woman!”

  Some of the ladies looked appalled, and others giggled. Mrs. Frizzell snatched up her property, tried wildly to wrap the books in the remains of the paper bag, dropped one of them, picked it up and fled to the cloak-room at the back of the hall, followed by the titters and sniggers of not a few ladies who, knowing the reason for her purchase of the books, could well have rescued her from her predicament, but saw no reason to do so. There may be honour among thieves, but there did not appear to be anything similar among social climbers.

  In the cloak-room Mrs. Frizzell stood in a drift of used paper towels, like a panting snowshoe hare in a snowdrift. A slow tear ran down her cheek, smudging her green eye shadow. Added to her humiliation was the knowledge that some of her friends, who had seen the incident, could have helped her but did not do so. She put the books down on the vanity table and with trembling fingers opened her handbag to find her face powder. Hastily she dabbed around her eyes, trying to stop the green rivulents running down her face. Her car was parked at the side of the store, and she would have to walk through three or four departments before she reached the outside door.