As he took an eager gulp from his glass, he decided that Hank ought to tell his mother what he had been doing. He rationalized his cowardice by telling himself that, after all, it was Hank’s headache, not his.
He wondered idly what sort of tripe Hank had written. Some sort of adventure story, he supposed, which would film well. He must ask him.
Hank drifted silently in through the back door and deposited a pile of school-books on the kitchen table and a fair amount of snow on the kitchen floor from his moccasins. He quickly got a corn broom, went out to the back porch again and brushed his footwear clean; then he used the same broom to sweep the snow from the kitchen floor into a safe hiding-place under a scatter rug. No point in drawing fire, he argued, as he put the broom back into the closet.
As he took up his school-books again and moved them into his bedroom, he wondered if his father had told his mother about his leaving school. Boyd had not promised to do this, though he had said he would go to see the principal to straighten out the question of his leaving. This promised visit to the school, mused Hank, would be his father’s first since he had graduated from it twenty-five years earlier. He had had to ask Hank the name of the principal and what courses he had been taking, since he had never bothered to inquire about these before. So much for parental interest in education, Hank muttered.
He went to the hall table, where the postman usually deposited any mail, in the hope that there might be a letter for him, though most of his mail came via Isobel. He was agreeably surprised to find one from a friend who had joined the Mounties a couple of years previously. It was full of amusing anecdotes about his life as a policeman. For the first time, Hank did not feel a pang of envy at his friend’s being already at work; he felt he was doing better than any young policeman could hope to do.
Olga heard him singing in the bathroom and shouted that supper would be ready in a few minutes.
“Put a clean shirt on and comb your hair,” she called. “Somebody’s coming this evening from the Advent to see your father.”
Hank stopped singing in mid-bar. Almost certainly, they’d be coming to see him, too. Jeeze, the balloon was about to go up!
“D’yer hear me, Hank?”
“Yeah, Ma.” And he began to hum a funeral march.
The terrible bitterness against his parents that had led to his writing a book meant to shock them had faded into indifference; yet there lingered in him an understandable vindictiveness. He knew he would be happy if, in some way, it taught his mother a salutary lesson, but he could still quail, like a little boy, in anticipation of the violence of her wrath.
At dinner, the hastily prepared steak was tough, and Boyd complained about it. Next time Olga bought steak, he said, he would cook it.
Olga Stych was immediately biting about men who dressed up in aprons and fancy hats, and thought they could cook over a smelly barbecue.
“I suppose all the months I was up North you reckoned I had a chef along with me,” snarled Boyd.
Hank hastily finished the store-bought cake which followed the steak, and went to his room. He thought he might as well look over his skiing equipment, instead of listening to his parents snapping at each other. If his mother was already as irritated as she sounded, he decided that the evening would be full of squalls.
He sat down on his bed while he threaded new laces into his boots, and then paused, one lace suspended in his hand, as he wondered suddenly why the wire service had not given the Advent any news about him. Then he realized that any such news would be about “Ben MacLean” and that they would not connect it with him. He chuckled to himself. Probably the paper didn’t even have wire service, and if it did, he’d bet a dime that anything which had come in about the book’s author had simply been buried in the chaos then reigning in the newspaper office.
The Advent had survived for years with a staff of four, plus occasional help from the owner’s wife with the reporting of weddings and similar social occasions. Its circulation had grown enormously as immigrants flooded into Tollemarche, and it had expanded into the shops which flanked it on either side. Now, new offices were being built for it on the other side of the road, but they were not quite ready, and meantime, the new publisher from the East and his editors functioned in an atmosphere of such utter confusion that it is doubtful if an efficiency expert could even have fought his way in through the door. Donny O’Brien, the ancient typesetter inherited from the original Advent, swore each day that it was only by the grace of God that the paper ever got launched in the taxi which delivered it to the newspaper boys.
Only the queen of the social columns, recruited a couple of years previously from Calgary, sat calmly at her desk, her silver-tipped fingers delicately feeling the pulse of the city’s social life. Other editors might make a slip, but let her so much as spell a name wrong and her telephone would blare, and some outraged lady would correct her with withering sarcasm.
She was delighted when the story of Hank fell into her lap; an interview with his mother would fill half a column nicely. Her pleasure was, however, short lived. Like all good stories unearthed by such lady editors, it was snatched away from her, and, barring wars and acts of God, as Donny O’Brien reported to Mr. Pascall, the bookseller, it would be a front-page headline on Monday. It was, therefore, no quiet lady columnist to whom Mrs. Stych opened the door that evening, but an eager male reporter keen on a front-page story.
He shot through the door almost as soon as it was opened, closely followed by a small, bald-headed individual carrying what looked like a suitcase.
“Hank Stych!” he hailed a startled Boyd, who had half risen from an easy chair, scattering the papers on which he had been working. He wrung Boyd’s hand. “Say, this is great for Tollemarche – really put us on the map.” Then, turning to his companion, he said: “Pose him against these drapes, Tom.”
Tom hastily opened his case, took out a tripod and set his camera up in the middle of the lounge, while Mrs. Stych watched, open-mouthed. Neither visitor had taken the slightest notice of her.
The reporter was saying to Boyd: “Say, let’s have a picture with you reading the manuscript.”
Mrs. Stych felt a sudden constriction in her stomach.
The reporter consulted his notes. “We hafta have a picture of a Mr. Boyd Stych as well.”
Tom nodded agreement, and went on rapidly assembling his camera.
Boyd found his voice. “I’m Boyd Stych.”
The reporter looked up quickly, took in the fact that Boyd’s Edwardian Days beard was streaked with grey, and said: “Say, I am sorry. I sure thought there was a writer hidden behind that beard of yours.”
Boyd hastily bent down to rescue his papers from being trampled, “The beard is for Edwardian Days,” he said primly.
“Oh, sure, it’s a beaut. All ready for tomorrow, eh? You just might win the prize for the best one, at that,” the reporter replied, fingering his own scanty side whiskers.
Mrs. Stych listened to this conversation with slowly growing horror. The cold feeling she had experienced that morning crept over her; she remembered the library book, and, with a feeling of panic, recollected Hank’s trip to New York. Behind them, she envisaged the faces of the Committee for the Preservation of Morals, as she had last seen them, glistening with almost sadistic anticipation of the crushing of the young author and of giving Mr. Pascall and the cigar-store merchants their proper comeuppances.
“I think I’m going to vomit,” she muttered to no one in particular, and sat down with a plop on a new imitation Italian chair, which received her with a reedy groan.
Boyd was calling up the stairs for Hank to come down, and she watched silently, as if at the movies, while he emerged from his ground-floor bedroom, walked past her without looking at her, and held out his hand to the reporter, who winced as he felt its grip.
“Hi,” said the reporter, wondering if his hand would ever recover.
“Hi,” said Hank. He stared with some scorn at his would-be interviewer
s, who were some inches shorter than he was. He seemed to fill the room with his contempt for the people present.
“Say, that sure was some book you wrote,” remarked the reporter, to fill the silence. “Haven’t read it myself yet, but I’ll get around to it – I sure will.”
Hank’s expression was cynical, as he gestured to the man to be seated.
Mrs. Stych was thankful for the chair under her, as she felt the colour drain from her face. The lounge rocked in front of her. How could he write such things? she wondered dumbly; how could he know so much about sex, so much about sin? Sin was sex; pride, avarice, gluttony had no place as far as her life was concerned. Only sex was really wrong, only fallen women really burned.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hank could see her stricken face. He felt no pity. When had she ever shown him pity? This was really going to rock her and it would do her good.
“Yes,” he told the reporter, “it is called The Cheaper Sex.” In response to a further query, he added irritably: “Sure it’s about sex – what else would it be about with a title like that?”
The reporter said soothingly that their reviewer, Professor Shrimp, had given it a lotta praise, and the review would probably be in the arts section, next to the film shows, on Monday.
Mrs. Stych whimpered softly and the reporter glanced at her curiously. Queer old bag. What did she think of it?
Mentally, Mrs. Stych felt as if she were writhing in her death agonies. The Subcommittee appointed by the Morals girls! How could she face it? And worse, how was she going to face the whole organization when it met? Some of the Morals group were also Queen Bees, some were Daughters of Scotland and strict Presbyterians; the United Church itself – how could she attend it now? It would be all over town that her son wrote pornography. She would never, never, she cried inwardly, as she clutched her handkerchief to her mouth, be able to face the girls again.
Boyd was surprised at the name of his son’s book, but, unlike his wife, he had not read any of it, and he supposed that Hank had deliberately chosen a titillating title to help sales. He, therefore, continued a subdued conversation with the photographer, not feeling it in the least necessary to introduce his wife to either visitor.
The reporter snapped a rubber band over his notebook, told Hank he would have rung him about the details of the book but he had not been able to get through. Hank said that was O.K., and the photographer surged forward. The photographs were taken, while Mrs. Stych leaned back in her chair, her eyes closed, and chewed her handkerchief savagely; and the camera was quickly returned to its case.
“Must be proud of Hank and Boyd,” said the reporter, pausing on his way to the front door to speak to Mrs. Stych for the first time.
Mrs. Stych opened her eyes slowly and looked at him as if he had gone mad. Then, with a great effort, she managed to nod her head in vague agreement.
Proud? Mrs. Stych wrung her hands behind the reporter’s back, and wished passionately that she could run home to Mother on the pig farm; she longed suddenly for the smell of hens and milk, for a place where nobody had to keep up appearances or be other than what they were. Why had she ever come to town to get herself an education? Why had she married a dirty type like Boyd, to spawn a boy like Hank, who had never been anything but a damned nuisance to her?
She glared at Hank as he stood by the front door ready to open it for the paper’s representatives, and tried not to scream while these gentlemen put on their boots again.
In twenty seconds more they were gone, to the sound of spinning wheels on the ice and grinding gears. And she was left with the shattered remains of all that she had found dear in her life, and two extraordinarily sheepish-looking men.
She suddenly regained the initiative of which shock had left her temporarily bereft, and shot from her chair like a well-punted football. Arms akimbo, her face still white under her heavy makeup, she snarled: “Will one of your please explain what’s been going on behind my back?”
The silence was painful.
She rounded on Hank and screamed: “You great, dirty slob – wotcha done?”
CHAPTER 15
When Boyd was a child of eight, he and his father had had to sit out a tornado while visiting a German friend who had settled in Kansas. Boyd was reminded of the howling noise of that fearful storm by his wife’s tantrum.
He and Hank were upbraided, reviled and screamed at, until, without uttering a word in retaliation, Hank took his jacket out of the hall alcove and strode silently out of the front door, followed by a shriek from his mother that he was as disgusting as his father; like father, like son.
Gone to his widow, ruminated Boyd enviously, and wished he had a friendly widow, too.
It had taken him only a few moments to discover, from his wife’s tirade, that Hank’s book was not quite so innocent as he had imagined; however, any book that made so much money was a good book, in his opinion, and he had defended Hank hotly.
Hank had made no attempt to defend himself. He had stood quietly swaying himself on his heels, an almost derisive expression in the curl of his lips as he smoked a cigarette, his very silence provoking her to further abuse.
He used to do that when he was small, remembered Boyd; it had been unnerving, wondering what he was thinking about while you shouted at him. He had never cried when he was struck, and Boyd felt with a desolate pang that probably the boy was wiser and braver than he was. It was only too apparent, as Olga tore into him about the disgrace she would suffer, that like a hippie, he cared nothing for the kind of life his parents led; he did not share their values or ambitions. His quiet retreat through the front door had somehow emphasized his scorn.
The crack about his being disgusting, like his father, had hurt Boyd. It was apparent from his wife’s continuing rampage that much pent-up animosity against her husband was coming out, and the crash of a glass ornament warned him that there was probably more to come.
He knew that she had not enjoyed his homecoming or the renewal of a sexual life; throughout their married life he had been at home for only a few weeks at a time, and she had been free to make her life as she chose. She had chosen, he reflected aggrievedly, to ignore him as far as possible.
The directorship, for which he had struggled for years, represented to her only a house in Vanier Heights. Didn’t she care a damn about anything except social success? Didn’t he or Hank matter to her at all? He stroked his beard and then scratched irritably through it. He knew the answers to his questions very well; all too many men were relegated to the position of drone – and they resented it; they showed their resentment all too often by despising women and taking the attitude that such inept creatures should be allowed to play, while men ran the world and did anything in it which was worth doing. He had taken this attitude himself, but was finding it very uncomfortable to maintain, after his long years of quiet in the bush, untroubled by anything worse than wind or weather. He laughed ruefully, and his wife whipped round at him.
“You laughing at me?” she demanded belligerently.
He looked up at her, as she swooped towards him like a sparrow hawk. Her face was distorted with rage, a horrible clown’s face painted red and white, her body a red tub supported by nyloned legs.
He jumped up, and shouted at her sharply: “Oh, shut up!”
“I won’t!” she yelled.
He slapped her soundly across the face twice.
She shrieked at the sting of the blows, which left a red mark down one side of her face. Then she was silent, staring at him with horrified eyes. He had never struck her before. The horror gave way slowly to self-pity, the blue eyes filled with tears and she began to weep, the tears making runnels down her heavy makeup.
“For Pete’s sake!” he muttered moodily, and shoved his hands in his pockets and went to stare into the empty fireplace.
“You don’t understand,” she sobbed. “You never did understand anything.” She fumbled feverishly in a fancy box on the table for a paper handkerchief. “How am I going t
o face the girls at the ball tomorrow? It’s all right for a man; men are used to smutty books and vulgar jokes – women don’t go for things like that.”
She collapsed on the chesterfield, and tried to bury her face in one of the stony little cushions that decorated it.
Boyd frowned down on her. “Don’t you tell me that! Bet that Pascall sells more of Hank’s book to women than he ever will to men.”
He hoped that he was right in this belief. For the first time, he considered seriously his own situation with regard to his son’s career, both present and future, and he felt uneasy. He could visualise the sniggers of his subordinates. A new director, responsible for a large section of the company’s business for the first time, was not in a particularly enviable position; there were men equally as bright and considerably younger, poised ready to pull the mat from under him as soon as they saw an opportunity; Hank could be their chance. He picked up the piece of ornamental driftwood from the mantelpiece and tried to stand it upside down, while he considered this, and his wife’s sobs slowly diminished. He felt miserably lonely.
He became aware that Olga was quiet at last, exhausted beyond words. He turned and looked down at her.
Her face was still turned into the cushion, her dress twisted tightly round her generous curves, the skirt hitched up and exposing her plump, well-shaped legs. He smiled suddenly at her tiny feet encased in shiny, high-heeled pumps. Olga had always loved clothes, and he wondered for whose benefit she dressed; probably for that godforsaken bunch of old hags, the girls. His face clouded again at the thought. This was not the way he had hoped life would be when he had married her. He had believed that a country girl like her would find him wonderful, a college man with great ambitions. Their life was going to be different from those of the married couples around them, he had promised himself.
He wanted badly to creep into her arms and be told he had done marvellously well, that she had put on her red dress and her new pumps specially for him, for his seduction. His loneliness, far worse than anything suffered in the empty north country, overwhelmed him and became intolerable.
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