A Population of One

by Constance Beresford-Howe

  After a long and inexplicable stop in the middle of a flat, wet limbo, we shoot on through a blue dusk blotted with fog. George MacKay’s head rolls a little. Too much to drink, of course. But in the novel, that would be all right. She would cure his loneliness. Not that in life She cured any such ills in her drunken old rip-snorter of a father, did She? What was that he told me — that when he was a kid his dad ran out on them? — now there’s a common bond for you. Makes us soul-mates. Or is it just that basically everybody’s father is a bastard? One of those archetypal situations.

  The train swings. We are crossing a bridge onto the island of Montreal. Suddenly a geometry of city light appears; neon signs flash, highway lamps of iceberg green form loops of light. The birds wake up smartly. I powder my nose and in the little square mirror pull at bits of my hair that look strangely distraught. Maybe Lou was right about my new Afro-style permanent. “You don’t look like yourself,” she complained, and was cross when I said “Good.”

  “Do-o-o-rval,” calls the conductor, swinging through the car.

  “Come on, Mr. MacKay,” says Pascal, giving him a not particularly gentle shove. “Your stop. Come on, wake up. Your wife will be at the station for you. Come on, Mr. MacKay, pull yourself together. And here’s your check. Lady, can you hold onto this for him? — I got to get the luggage up front. Thanks.”

  I shake him. Harder. His head finally snaps up. He gives me an offended look.

  “It’s your stop,” I say in self-defence.

  “Oh. Yuh. You going on to Central Station? ’Scuse me, get past. Nice talking to you. Lots of luck. Night.”

  Yawning horribly, he drags his briefcase clumsily past my knees and then hurries to push into the queue lining up as the Turbo hisses and slows. When the doors are unsealed, a cold gush of rain-wet air bursts into the stuffy carriage.

  “Wait —” I say. “You forgot —” But it’s too embarrassing to call after him. The line of people is shrinking fast; it disappears and he’s gone. He’s forgotten the bill for the drinks, and Pascal has reappeared to stand expectantly by. What can I do? I pay it. Novels, indeed. Goodbye, my hero.

  At my time of life, it’s odd to be facing a job interview for the first time. (Lady, where you been — in jail?) Uncomfortable business, to be offering yourself with a good prospect of being refused. Greg says academic appointments are getting scarce, and I have no experience. But I want this job so badly! Somehow, though, I have got to seem both keen and cool, a discouraging combination of challenges at the best of times. If only my love and respect for the humanist ideals would make me desirable at a glance to any faculty committee, instead of, as they do at the moment, painting an intense pallor under my freckles and clenching my stomach into a fist.

  In these circumstances, the only tactics I can muster are to look respectable and get there on time. To this end I’ve had the heather-coloured suit cleaned and pressed at the hotel, and a taxi has delivered me at Cartier College twenty minutes early, overdoing things a little.

  The rain has stopped, leaving a soft coolness in the air. Trees at home are getting green; here they’re still in bud. The sky is bright in pools that patch the broken pavement of the steeply rising road. I walk uphill past the college — a penitentiary-style affair of eight or nine storeys in pleated concrete, built, from the look of it, just last week, in the new mode without windows. What are they afraid might get in — or out — I wonder?

  But how attractive the old houses are on this street, with their tall, narrow windows, slatted, some of them, with folding indoor shutters. The dove-coloured mansard roofs shine in the sun. Turning the corner I find a charming crescent of terraced Edwardian houses wearing crowns of wrought-iron lace, their doors painted bright red, blue, orange, and green. Up the next street looms Mount Royal, a purple thicket of leafless trees; it forms a massive and mysterious backdrop to white blocks of high-rise apartments. I climb toward it, fascinated as the big Jacques Cartier cross comes into view. Last night at the hotel, when I couldn’t sleep, I kept getting up to look out at the ocean of city lights lapping frivolously against that dark island of silence. Even by day it looks aloof, alone. That mountain might almost have been put there by someone with a taste for Canadian symbolism.

  Time to turn back. I stroll down a block, turn along a curved street full of shabby rooming-houses; descend again — then discover I’m on a street completely new to me — I’ve made a wrong turn somewhere. And it’s already ten-thirty: I’ll be late. Serves me right, fiddling about with symbolism in broad daylight. Panic breaks out all over me like a series of little rockets bursting through my skin. I hurry back to take the opposite turn; then after another block I realize I’m climbing again toward the mountain. Oh, for Toronto with its no-nonsense grid-pattern, instead of these twisting, illogical streets! There’s no one around, either, to ask for directions. I hurry frantically to the next corner. There’s a taxi — I flag it in desperation. “Macnaughton Street — Cartier College,” I say, clutching the door-handle like a prayer.

  “Mais vous y êtes, madame,” says the driver. “Là-bas, là, vous voyez?” I don’t understand a word of this at first — it doesn’t even sound like French to me — but his poking gesture to the right reveals the grim grey profile of the college, sure enough, only fifty yards further down the street.

  By the time I reach the door of the penitentiary, I am twelve minutes late, perspiring heavily, and hot all over with guilt. “Excuse me,” I say to a passing girl, dressed like someone from another planet in black leather clothes. “Can you tell me where to find Dr. Benson-Clarke? Head of the English Department?”

  The girl looks at me blankly before shifting her gum to the other cheek. “No idea. I’m Science,” she says, and turns away. After I’ve approached two more students I finally learn that all the administrative offices are in a house farther down the street. By now I’m fifteen minutes late. It’s more than twenty before I whizz at last into a dignified stone mansion with broad bay windows and panelled walls. Breathless, I climb the scuffed grandeur of a carved walnut staircase to the floor where a lad in granny-glasses has promised I’ll find the Department of English offices.

  Through an open doorway I meet the truculent eyes of a fat old man, sunk amid crumpled tweeds, a pair of half-glasses on the extreme tip of a beaky nose. He is smoking a cigar that curdles the surrounding air. A fierce-looking bush of grey hair makes his big head look even bigger. His cheeks are bright pink and his aggressive stare very blue. He looks like an Englishman.

  “My name is Doyle, I’m looking for Dr. Benson-Clarke,” I say with what’s left of my breath.

  “A bizarre quest, young woman.”

  “Well I have — or maybe had — an appointment with him. I’m afraid I’m awfully late for it.”

  “Eh? What’s that ye say? Speak up!”

  I obey, feeling ridiculous. Yes, he’s English all right. Knows how to keep the natives down.

  “I’m terribly sorry.… I had some trouble finding this place. Are you —”

  His only reply is a grunt, but he makes an ungracious gesture toward a wooden armchair, so I move discreetly into the smog and sit down, trying not to cough. Then for the first time I notice someone sitting behind a desk at the back of the room — a not-quite-young man in a corduroy jacket of the same colour as his brown eyes. He is actually standing up politely and offering his hand.

  “Oh,” I say, relieved. “Dr. Clarke, I do apologize for being so late —”

  “I’m Bill Trueblood.… Is it Mrs. Doyle? Miss. How are you?

  This wicked old gentleman is Dr. Clarke.”

  The old man gives a snort. Either the cigar has got to him at last, or he is laughing. “Go and ask Molly to come back, will you, Bill? She’s gone to her office, I think.”

  While we’re left alone I try to get my wits together and appear serene. Neither attempt is very successful. My eyes water in the reek of smoke. The chair is hard. The old man closes his eyes and lets his head sink forward with the we
ight of its great Roman beak of nose. He is apparently lost in the contemplation of some Great Thought. Or, like my hero on the train, he may simply be in the toils of a formidable hangover. Eventually he rumbles, “For Age, with stealing steps / Hath clawed me with his clutch.” This effectively aborts a hopeful remark I’m about to make about the weather.

  A very long time seems to elapse before Trueblood (can that really be his name?) comes back, escorting a pretty, petite young woman with dark hair smoothed into a modish French knot. She is wearing a pleated skirt and cashmere sweater whose rose colour sets off a clear, pale complexion. The sight of it makes my own red face feel redder. She is carrying two cardboard containers of coffee, and offers me one with a pleasant smile.

  “Hello; I’m Molly Pratt. I teach CanLit.”

  CanLit. What a pity it sounds like a corporation.

  “Now, Miss Doyle,” says Clarke, sitting up in a great hurry like one of the more eccentric creatures in Alice in Wonderland, “there was no opening here for you at all, as I told you in my letter last February. But since then we’ve unexpectedly lost our man who teaches the nineteenth-century novel. That, I believe, is your field.”

  The coffee is so hot it scalds my tongue and I am glad when Molly Pratt remarks, “Yes, Sandy ran out on us, the fink. Went to Trinidad for the spring break and sent us a happy telegram to say he wouldn’t be back.”

  “Never mind all that,” growls the old man. “Miss Doyle, you got your doctorate five years ago — it would have been natural for you to go straight into the academic life. Why have you done no teaching?”

  “Well, you see my father died the spring I graduated” (… Yes, Gerald Wellesley Doyle fell down the Bloor Street subway stairs and broke his neck when drunk, if you want the truth) “and then my mother was very ill and there was no one to look after her.” (There was enough money. I filled up the spare time with Red Cross work. Of course the darling often said ‘It’s not right, Willy …’ but that long, long story trails after me even now like a paper shadow pinned to my heels. And you are the last person in the world I’d ever tell about it.)

  Clarke gives me a dissatisfied stare over his glasses, as if he somehow gets an echo of these defiant thoughts.

  “But you finished graduate school with great distinction, didn’t you,” says the brown-eyed man kindly. “And I think your letter said your thesis on Mrs. Gaskell was published?”

  “Yes. I was amazed to think anyone would print it, but they did.”

  What attractive eyes the man has. There are a few threads of silver in his curly brown hair. Comely hands, too, with nice long fingers and polished nails. His smile is easy and pleasant; you can see he is full of kindness. He wears no wedding ring; but of course that doesn’t mean —

  “With no teaching experience at all, do you think you could cope with a full-time appointment?” The old man looks gloomily at his cigar rather than at me. “The preparation alone would be a big job, at this late date. And the workload here is heavy. All of us teach the first-year survey course, Chaucer to Hardy. Then it was decided last year by a dread of deans that wasn’t enough, so we now all see a list of first-year students for regular counselling. That’s on top of the usual conference work with one’s own students preparing term papers and so on. Do you think you could manage all that?”

  “Oh yes, I’m sure I could.” I’m not, of course; but damned if I’d ever let him know it.

  “Ha-kapff,” says Clarke, obviously far from convinced. What an old rhino. It’s so obvious he hasn’t the least intention of hiring me that the others are embarrassed. Oh well, there must be other teaching jobs in Montreal. Private schools or whatever. I’ll look in the yellow pages when I get back to the hotel. For one thing, I like this island city. I want to stay here.

  “Unfortunately our salaries here are well below the C.A.U.T. average level,” says the young man, as if to console me. “That’s because, as you probably know, our grants from the province aren’t statutory — we never know from year to year what we’ll get. Or even if. However, there are lots of compensations. Montreal is one fringe benefit; it’s fun living here.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it is.”

  He gives me something that is almost a wink; it makes his face more agreeable than ever. Molly looks thoughtfully at her fingernails. The old man seems about to lapse into sleep again; but suddenly shifts himself with a pettish sort of flounce and points his cigar at me with such abruptness I give an involuntary jerk.

  “No need to keep you, Miss-er-Boyle. We’ll be writing to you after we’ve completed all our interviews. Thank you for coming along. Good day t’ye.” And without another word he shuffles his tweedy bulk and his cigar out of the room.

  “Good day,” I repeat obediently. I get up and find a place on the desk for my coffee container. It is still hot. So am I. The old bison. Why ask me to come here at all, when it’s so obvious he has no —

  I shake hands with the girl and with Bill Trueblood, who leaves my hand with a friendly little squeeze in it. Just the same, when I leave the building I have to grip my jaws tight and stare fiercely at the bright day in order not to cry.

  One of the things I’ve learned never to do is dream ahead about how things will be; they have such a nasty habit of letting you down. But there’s no harm in improving them afterward, now is there? So all the way home on the train I construct a big improvement on The Interview, and it comforts me quite a lot.

  “Can you be Dr. Doyle?” the big tweedy man asks, hurrying up to me in the lobby. “Please forgive me; I’m twenty seconds late — but you see we were watching for someone much older. It was tremendously good of you to come all this way to see us. Do come into my office, will you?” Before ushering me in, he squirts the room lavishly with air freshener. Then he pulls forward a chair, tucks a cushion at my back, and carefully places a footstool under my feet.

  I sit down gracefully and light a cigar. He shuffles papers on his desk with tremulous hands. He is very nervous, or perhaps just shy. Obviously this interview is very important to him.

  “Ah, Bill,” he says to the young man hovering in the background. “I would introduce you to this charming woman, but I’m not feeling that generous. Go away for half an hour, will you; then you and Molly may come in just to shake hands. What I’m planning to do is adjourn this meeting almost immediately and take the lady to lunch at the Faculty Club.”

  I puff the cigar nonchalantly and nod farewell to Trueblood.

  When we’re alone, Clarke tries to rub out an anxiety-frown. “Have to keep the youngsters in line, you know. Never trust anybody under thirty. Now I don’t know whether you’d be willing to accept the post we have to offer, Dr. Doyle … we’re just a small college, and you’re probably snowed under with better offers. But the appointment is yours if you’d do us the honour …”

  I wave the cigar to check any thought he might have of getting down on his knees.

  “Yes, actually I think I’ll take it. You can write me the details later. Unfortunately I must go now; I have a luncheon engagement. At the Mount Stephen Club, with Sir George MacKay. Good day to you.”

  Well, of course it’s childish; but say what you like, it helps. After a few days, this much-improved version of life’s first draft can even give me a laugh.

  In any case, I’ve almost forgotten the whole thing when two months later I receive a Special Delivery letter signed A. C. Benson-Clarke, D. Litt., offering me the post of Lecturer at Cartier College, on two-year probation, at a salary of $12,000 a year. I am so astonished and wildly excited that I immediately phone to tell my sister Lou.

  “You’re kidding, Will!”

  “Not very complimentary, are you?”

  “No, what I mean is of course it’s great — only they didn’t seem very interested when you went down there; or so you said.”

  “Well, somebody else probably let them down. After all, June’s half over. They must be a bit desperate.”

  “Oh, don’t keep running yourself down all th
e time. You won’t be coming to us for long, then. And you won’t want that Dale Avenue apartment you thought about. Oh, I hope you’ll like Montreal, but I don’t know … all this separatist bother … they say there are real terrorists in the ranks, trained in Cuba and all that. I’ve even heard the Mayor is a sympathizer. Some people think there’ll be shooting in the streets.… I do wish you could have found a job here instead.”

  “You trying to cheer me up or what? I can’t wait to get there. I’m going to call Greg right away and ask him to wind up this house sale as fast as he can.”

  “That shouldn’t take long. He said something last night about it — the deeds and things are being typed in the office now.”

  “Good. I’ll drive up to Montreal in a day or two and find myself an apartment. Buy furniture and all that.”

  “Lucky for you the house fetched such a good price. I suppose you’re still determined to store all Mum’s furniture.”

  “Oh, yes, I couldn’t … somehow — sell it.”

  “Well, no point arguing about it again, I suppose. And what will you do with all those books?”

  “Take them with me, of course.”

  “But Willy, there must be thousands of them. You’d better send them by freight.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. About the furniture, Lou, of course I want you to take Mother’s piano for Dougie. She’d have wanted him to have it.”

  “He won’t be three till November, you know. However —”

  “Or anything else, come to that, you feel like having as a memento …”

  “There’s nothing, thanks.” And I can almost feel Lou’s shiver at the other end of the wire. She spent so much time away at school she has none of the feeling for the house — or come to that, the family — that I have. We are totally different people. However, she now makes a sisterly effort to steer us away from the probability of a quarrel.