A Population of One

by Constance Beresford-Howe

  “Willy, I am an idiot, and I owe you a humble apology.”

  Bill’s dark and curly head at the office door.

  “What on earth for?” I ask, trying not to blush. “Come on in — I’m not busy.”

  “Well, when I invited you to come and see Tartuffe this weekend, I forgot that Archie asked me to go up to Ste. Agathe for the E.T.U.L. meetings this Saturday. Asked — well — Emma and I have practically been chained to the oars.”

  He pulls up a chair, sighing. “I guess I just didn’t want to remember it, that’s why … anyhow, I’m terribly sorry. Could we make it some other time — maybe in a few weeks, if you’re free? The season’s just beginning.”

  “Yes, of course. Don’t worry about it. What’s the E.T.U.L. anyway?”

  “English Teachers at University Level. There might be a good paper or two, but mostly it’s horrible meetings about money, or panel discussions with topics like ‘Where Are Your Students At.’ And awful people in the chair urging us all to Interrelate and Rap.”

  “It sounds ghastly.”

  He leans forward to scrape out his pipe into my wastebasket, which gives me a chance to look at his clean profile and reflect how few men have straight, neat noses like his. How pleasing, too, is the line of his strong neck with the curls on the nape touching the collar of his turtle-necked sweater. I feel intensely awake. I almost wish he hadn’t dropped in, because the sight of him so soon after our dinner together is a reminder how far The Project still is from any kind of completion. Surely other people don’t find such matters so difficult to arrange, so slow to arrive at the point. They seem to do it all the time with the greatest ease. And speed. Perhaps I just have no talent. After all, if this meeting is so silly, he could surely manage somehow to get out of going to it?

  “And almost the worst thing,” he goes on, “is that I’ll have to drive up there with Emma. You wouldn’t believe what happens to that mild woman behind the wheel — presto, she becomes a speed maniac, all pointed fangs and glittering eyes. Archie says she ought to put a sign on her car that says Prepare To Meet Thy God.”

  “You don’t drive?”

  “No, I used to, but it gave me an ulcer. Have you been up north at all yet, Willy? You ought to go while the trees are still out — it’s really gorgeous from St. Sauveur on up; you can get there in no time on the Autoroute.”

  “Yes, I’ve been meaning to do that.… Maybe some Sunday you’d like to come along as guide.”

  (There; that was a mistake. No talent.) But he is smiling as he gets up to go.

  “I’d love that. We’ll arrange something soon. But meanwhile I’ve got to face my poetry class.… Fancy the Romantics at nine a.m. The trouble is there are days when I think Wordsworth is an ass. ‘We Poets in our youth begin in gladness / But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.’ Jesus!” I laugh as he swings open the door. “Sorry again about Saturday,” he adds. “And thanks for being so nice about it. Ciao, Willy.”

  I wave him good-bye with every appearance (I hope) of casual good cheer. Whatever happens next, or doesn’t happen, it’s vital to maintain some kind of dignity, and that can only be done by learning to be a good liar. What a queer and complicated business The Project is turning out to be, after all. I even wonder, a trifle uneasily, whether it might not be a good idea just to abandon it. But no. One of my father’s contributions to me was a hopeful nature.

  Late on Saturday night I sit in my dressing-gown correcting a pile of freshman essays. I’ve saved them for tonight because I’ve learned long ago how, on weekends, the nights as well as days stretch so out of their normal length that it takes all sorts of ingenuity to fill up the extra hours. I have, for instance, done all my Christmas shopping, though it’s still October. The cards are addressed in a neat pile and the presents are all wrapped and tied, even to Dougie’s enormous stuffed panda. Now I’m not displeased to find it can take up to half an hour to go through a single essay. This helps to reconcile me to deformities of grammar and spelling that would otherwise appal, though I am bored by their boredom with the Prioress, and sigh often as I read.

  Overhead mounts the shuffle and shriek of the usual Saturday-night party. I look often at the clock. If only it were three or four in the morning when the pop records at last mercifully fade and even the distant boom of the city outside is lulled. But now it is only eleven-thirty. Hours to go before I can hope to sleep.

  Just when I am thinking I might go and make myself a cup of cocoa, there is a loud whump in the kitchen. Startled, I put down my red ball-point. A loud, whining noise follows, like an engine in serious trouble. After some months in this building, I’m no longer surprised by any kind of noise; at least there can’t be anything ambiguous about this one — it’s obviously the fridge that has gone wrong. I now detect a distinct smell of burning and hurry out to the kitchen.

  There, after a moment of dithering hesitation, I pull out the plug of the fridge. The noise, of course, stops at once, but a smell of scorching rubber persists, even after I open a window. The room seems very hot. There is even a faint, bitter drift of smoke in the air.

  Back at my desk I try to carry on with the essays, but it’s impossible to concentrate. The smell of smoke is still acid enough to make my tired eyes smart. When I go back to the kitchen, the fridge still feels hot. At last I decide I’d better ask for help, or at least advice, and go out to the hall where the intercom phone hangs.

  “Mr. Mackenzie? It’s Miss Doyle, in 1204. I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but something seems to be wrong with my fridge. A minute ago it gave a bang, and there’s such a queer smell, I’m worried it may be leaking some kind of chemical … well, I hate to trouble you, but — yes; would you? Thanks so much.”

  Well, after all, it’s part of his job. Somebody really should look at the thing. Just the same, I wish it weren’t so late — nearly twelve now — and I wish still more that I were dressed. But there’s no time now to change — already his buzz sounds at the door.

  He looks as if he has dressed in a hurry — he wears no socks or shirt, only sandals, a tight-fitting sort of red jersey, and a pair of faded jeans. He surveys me with the familiar appraising half-smile, but he has a small tool-case in his hand and goes promptly enough into the kitchen where the fridge is still faintly reeking. He squats down to remove a panel and looks at the motor, whistling faintly through his teeth. Then he opens his bag and administers a few thumps and whacks here and there, in the casual, masterful way of men with machines. I go back to my desk and try to pin my mind to the essays.

  “The Prioress spills her food on her clothes, this showed she had very good table manners for those times,” I read sadly.

  “Not’ing much,” Mackenzie says at my elbow. He has come in so silently my pen has jerked across the page.

  “Oh! I didn’t hear you.”

  “My grandmother, she was pure Iroquois,” he says with pride. And from the tilt of his eyes this is obvious, now I’ve been told. It’s a queer heritage to find behind the Bravo Expos T-shirt, the day-old beard, and the soft little belly rolling over the band of his jeans. “I’m gon’ phone the company tomorrow, they come in a few days to fix her up.”

  “Oh, thanks very much. I’m sorry to have troubled you, but that smell did worry me a bit —”

  He takes out a cigarette packet and draws one out to offer me. I shake my head. Should I get some money and tip him? I stand up nervously. Perfectly at ease, he is lighting his cigarette in a leisurely way, and looking around the room.

  “You made the place look real smart,” he says genially, blowing out the first pungent smoke from his Gitane. “You like it ’ere all right?”

  (I don’t like you here, but —)

  “Oh yes, thanks. It’s just a bit noisy sometimes.” As if to encourage me, a shout of laughter sounds from upstairs. “Specially when I’m working,” I add, looking pointedly at my desk. He fails to take the hint.

  “Those girls from Air Canada,” he says indulgently.
>
  “They certainly like a lively time, whoever they are.”

  “You’re very quiet, eh?” he says, leaning one shoulder casually against the wall. “Schoolteacher? Yes, I thought so. You’re ’ere since three months now, but you don’t go to no parties, not even upstairs? Why don’ you go?”

  “I’m not keen on parties. Well, it was good of you to come down —”

  “But you’re young,” he says, adding with what sounds like amusement, “Mees Doyle. It’s no good to keep alone all the time, you know. Not for nobody, specially for good-looking woman. You know that. And I know that. Eh?”

  “Mr. Mackenzie, thank you for coming down.” There are times when I can imitate my mother’s frigid dignity quite effectively. The trouble is that this doesn’t seem to be one of them. His dark, insolent eyes are not a bit daunted; his half-smile never wavers. There is something animal about his extreme stillness and his steady contemplation of me. Something almost frightening, though he says nothing and does nothing. My throat is closed; I can’t speak.

  “You call me,” he says quietly at last. “Any time. You just call, and I come up. Only got to call.” The lips holding his cigarette are half-smiling.

  “Good night, Mr. Mackenzie,” I say stiffly.

  “Good night,” he replies with perfect good humour.

  To my relief he then picks up his toolbox and goes, padding off lightly in his soft-foot way. As soon as the door closes, I hook the chain. Then I open all the windows in the place to get rid of the powerful smell of his cigarette.

  With grim determination I sit down and complete the pile of essays. The room grows cold, but the rich Gitane smell persists for hours.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE LONG VACATION

  So many things scare me. Dogs. Schizophrenia. Lightning. Bugs. Infinity. Dreams. Knocking uninvited on anybody’s door. (Or even invited, come to that.) Not to mention people who scare me, Archie Clarke being high on that list. So when Molly tries to enroll me in a plan to swoop down on Archie’s house and give him a surprise party, I have no trouble at all in saying no.

  “Lord, Molly, I couldn’t do that. As it is, he’d like to grind me up for dogmeat. Besides, he’d hate a birthday party, don’t you think? He isn’t the kind of man who likes being surprised, is he? Or having birthdays, come to that.”

  “Oh, come on, Willy. He doesn’t dislike you — don’t be so silly. And the poor old lamb’s been so low lately, we’ve got to cheer him up somehow. It’s just going to be women — that’s the kind of surprise he’s got to like — Emma and Ruth, and you and me, and three or four other girls from Modern Languages and History who dote on him. Trust me; he’ll love it. We’re taking along a lot of food and his favourite booze and —”

  “Calling that man a lamb is like calling a bull a gentleman cow,” I grumble, to cover pleasure at her “you and me.” But I am already weakening, and of course she knows it.

  “Right after my last class I’m rushing off to buy a huge cake, and Ruthie’s home right now making pizzas, she does lovely ones. And Emma says she’ll organize the drinks — we’ll all chip in. And you bring the coffee, will you? We’ll meet at nineish.… His house is on Dorchester, not far from Guy. Tell you what, we’ll go together and I can show you the way. Pick you up at your place around eight-thirty, okay?”

  She whisks out in her long raincape before I can say, “No, it’s not,” and either by accident or on purpose the little fox keeps out of my reach all day. At eight-thirty she rings my bell and sweeps me downstairs, saying crisply, “Right. Off we go.” Meekly I trail in her wake carrying a large tin of coffee, a Thermos of cream, and a box of biscuits, plus many misgivings.

  “Just the same, Molly, it would be better if I didn’t —”

  “Time you two got over whatever it is. Stop fussing. He’ll purr like a pussycat, with ten good-looking women giving him a party. Turn right here. Now left. What a gorgeous night — look at all those stars.”

  (But I don’t like her mentioning the strain between Archie and me. That seems to make it official; depressing. Why does an intelligent girl like Molly do it?)

  The Porsche noses along the curve of Dorchester Boulevard, which now suddenly loses its impersonal, multi-lane character and becomes residential in a grand, turn-of-the-century manner. The big houses are of stone, with tall windows and dignified but extravagant architectural flourishes. Some have arched doorways with stonework fruit and flowers as decoration; some have miniature towers capped in slate; a few even have crenellations. Suddenly Molly gives a gasp.

  “For God’s sake, the whole block’s gone! Where’s Archie’s house? — wait, there it is. But what’s happened?”

  To be sure, we’ve just passed a large void where only a trace of stony litter on bare ground suggests that once a row of houses stood there. I turn and we cruise past the devastated area. Sitting alone on the edge of vacancy is a large brick house with a desolate but dogged air of survival. Only one of its windows is alight.

  “This must be one more of Drapeau’s Napoleonic schemes for the betterment of Montreal,” says Molly. “Got everything? Mind that cake-box.” We lock up the car, having at last found a place to park in a side-street. The night air is frosty enough to define our breath as we walk back along the boulevard. Molly’s small feet in red slippers move lightly on the dark pavement. A little group of women is waiting for us under a street lamp, and as we reach them, two or three others hurry to join us. There is considerable shuffling and giggling as we balance all our boxes and bags.

  “Sisters,” proclaims Molly, “the hour is at hand. Everybody with it? Come on, then.” And she marshals us into a cluster, hustling us up the path and into a group at the front door. I try to fade quietly into the back row, but she has my arm in a relentless grip, and I’m forced to stand with her in the front line. “ ‘Ginevra, I wish you were at Jericho,’ ” I think grimly. There is no reply to her brisk rap of the brass knocker. She gives it another series of bangs. There follows so long a pause that Ruth says in a deflated voice, “He must be out. What a party poop.”

  “He’s not,” says Molly. “I phoned him and then hung up.”

  Sure enough, after another minute, a bulky shadow can be seen looming inside the frosted glass of the door. “Ready now,” urges Molly.

  The door opens. Under tousled grey hair Archie’s face lowers at us. He has just time to mutter “Christ” before “Happy birthday, dear Archie” rises in a loud and ragged chorus. We all surge forward, me because I’m pushed from behind. He stares at us with such thunderous disapproval that I have to turn aside to hide a sharp attack of giggles.

  He is wearing a quilted dressing-gown that twenty years ago must have been quite regal with its satin lapels. Now, faded and torn, it looks as if mice might easily be nesting in it. His cracked and broken old bedroom-slippers are equally disgraceful. However, in some magnificent way he manages to rise above it all, and stands aside to let us in with an air of surly dignity.

  Noisily the group swirls about him to administer kisses and push gifts into his reluctant hands. Molly nips about switching on lights, her long red gown whirling. Ruthie hangs coats on an old-fashioned oak stand. Archie still stands rigid with disapproval, like some old emperor who has just detected a smell of drains.

  “Emma, come and set up bar in the dining-room. Who’s got the bottles? Ruth — music, please — the phonograph’s over there. Something dancey. Now Archie, you come and sit right here —” Her gaiety pushes everyone into action, even our reluctant host. Eventually he shuffles, like a cross but obedient old dog, into the place where she wants him to be. Just the same, I notice that her colour is rather high, and there is the hint of an edge to her voice.

  “Archie, for God’s sake where have all the houses gone?” she asks as Ruth lowers the needle on Scott Joplin.

  “New apartment house going up.”

  “What, right next to you here?”

  “Closer than that, Mrs. Pratt. I’ve had an offer for my house. It m
ight even be called a demand. Everybody else has sold. As you see.”

  “Oh well, after all, Archie, this is much too big a house for you now — I mean you’d be a hundred times better off in a nice little apartment …”

  I edge away to avoid the approach of Emma with a tray of drinks. Drifting along a hall papered in faded green flowers, I find myself eventually at the open door of a large kitchen. Old-fashioned cupboards built along two walls reach right to the ceiling. An ancient refrigerator is grinding its teeth in a corner and there’s a small sink piled with dirty crockery under one window. Timidly I fumble for the switch and illuminate a single depressed bulb hanging from a very dirty ceiling. The floor is carpeted in threadbare linoleum. The cupboard shelves, which I edge nearer to inspect in morbid fascination, are crammed with every kind of relevant and irrelevant flotsam — an old typewriter, empty wine-bottles, books, tin cans ancient and modern, a parcel from the laundry, bread, unopened mail, weed killer, a pair of shoes, several pot plants, an ebony figure of a naked girl, a large bag of wildly sprouting onions.… It is chaos, but of a somehow meaningful kind. For some reason it pleases me. I find it mysteriously congenial. Certainly I feel much more at home alone out here than in the Edwardian formality of the front rooms where all those women are chittering around Archie.

  One of the books is a first edition of Mary Barton. I am leafing through it when I get the impression someone is watching me. Rather nervously I look around. No one is there. Then by chance I glance up to meet the blue eyes of a Siamese cat draped on the top edge of the door. It opens its triangular mouth to utter a low, unearthly wail of protest.