by Tom Moore
The meal wasn’t half bad! Gib and I and Billy Crotty sat in that old house on Aldershot Hill and ate our first meal together—burgers and Coke. Through the kitchen window we could look from the table and see Memorial University’s new campus. Buildings larger than I had ever seen glinted in a peculiar pinkish brown stone. There were only six buildings and a few residences, but it was Nineveh to me, the hanging gardens of Babylon, or Cheops’s great pyramid. If you had asked me that day what was the only man-made object that can be seen from space, I would have said Memorial University. I was a real North American now. Curlew was miles behind all this. 1969, come on. And the ’70s, too! Let her rip!
“Another burger, Felix?” Billy asked.
“Why not,” I answered royally. “Let her go for the gullies!”
“What?” Gib asked.
“Just an expression,” said I. “Just a foolish expression from back home.”
“Registration starts this afternoon and classes tomorrow morning,” Gib said. “I’m going to do economics.”
“What about you, Felix?” Billy asked.
“Education or pre-law,” I said.
“Education is slack,” said Gib. “Guys do education who can’t get into engineering or economics.”
“My mother was a teacher, and my stepmom.”
“What happened to your mother?” Gib asked.
“She died when I was five. Tuberculosis, I think.”
Billy asked, “What was her name?”
“Mary.”
“A schoolteacher, just like Alice,” he said.
“Who’s Alice?” Gib asked.
“Just a friend,” Billy said.
6
Memorial
Memorial University was supposed to be a memorial to Newfoundland’s war dead. God knows we have enough of them. But Father said it was Joey’s memorial to himself.
In fairness, Joey believed in it: “Education is the answer! Education! Education will raise Newfoundland up from the mire! The mire of ignorance and defeat! No more second-class Canadians! Education!”
So Joey built his university. The largest one in Newfoundland. The only one. The little college on Parade Street had technically been a university since 1949, but it was cramped and overcrowded. To replace it, Joey had spent millions of scarce dollars to level trees and gouge out foundations on an old farm. He made millionaires of his friends and supporters in the construction trades, and put thousands of people to work. A huge celebratory opening was held. Eleanor Roosevelt presented the keys of the new institution to newspaper magnate Lord Thompson of Fleet, the new chancellor.
Joey then persuaded Lord Taylor of Harlow, a Labour Peer, to come over from England to serve as its first president. A fine house was built for him on the shore of nearby Long Pond. Everyone observed that it was good. Especially Joey. He expounded and pontificated on the magnificence and beneficence of the new university. Professors were hired from all over the world. Half the English Department was from South Africa. Chemists came from India. Then they waited for the students to appear.
But the students didn’t come. Young rural Newfoundlanders were used to a life of fishing and building houses and raising families in their home communities. Illiteracy rates were high, and dropouts were rampant. Many of those who did finish school lacked the funds to come to a strange city and pay for rent, books, and tuition at a strange institution. Their only familiar institutions were the Waterford Hospital, the Sanatorium, and Her Majesty’s Penitentiary. All to be avoided if possible.
Never one to falter, Joey paid them to come. He offered free tuition and a salary to any Newfoundlander who attended his university, or as some called it, Memorial University. He built residences on campus to house them. His crony John C. Doyle paid for one, which Joey named Doyle House.
So, in 1968, Gib and I stood on Elizabeth Avenue, named for our venerable queen, and looked up at the steps of the Arts and Administration Building. Three flags waved smartly over our heads as we walked toward them, past a uniformed security guard making sure no cars parked in front of Joey’s monument to learning. Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon in 1969 was anticlimactic to this!
Up those four huge concrete steps we went. A silver doorbell perched on the wall, and I wondered who would appear if I pushed it. But instead, I pushed at one of the five large glass doors in the entrance . . . and it opened to me. Me! Just as much as it opened to Gib, or to any other human being in God’s creation. I was a university student. That’s what Joey Smallwood did for me, but I knew I could never share it with Father, who would only grind his teeth and spit, “The little bastard!”
Inside the glass doors was another row of five more glass doors leading to more steps of faux marble, twenty feet wide, with two aluminum rails on each side. The rails were capped with a honey-coloured hardwood and led to a landing at the top, a large foyer of warm, golden oak. Directly before us was the huge Little Theatre, named after one of Joey’s predecessors. On the right at the top of the marble-like stairs was an information window with a lady trying to answer everyone’s questions. Off to the left and right were two huge wooden doors that led to the offices down either hall.
The place teemed with students hurrying about with registration sheets and questions:
“Where’s the registrar’s office?”
“Got your book list?”
“Where’s the bookstore?”
“You doin’ chem?”
“No, you?”
“Oh, yeah, ’cause . . .”
We were all herded up the stairs, and someone with a megaphone shouted, “Everyone doing engineering come this way!” The future builders and designers were then led away down one of the wings to the world of engineering.
“Everyone doing economics, this way!” I caught a glimpse of Gib talking to a pretty girl and marching off with other young economists. French. Science. Soon there were very few categories left. Probably basket weaving and education. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was not attracted to any of the other faculties. A group of about fifty of us shifted around looking at our feet and waiting for insight or revelation. “Education!” the megaphone man shouted. We had waited till the last minute before jumping, like people aboard a sinking ship. “Education, this way,” he shouted again. I jumped.
The second most important building on campus was the Thompson Student Centre, where we all met to eat lunch or drink coffee. Just opened by Lord Taylor that May, it housed the student union, the student newspaper known as the Muse, Camera MUN, and many other offices. But we participated in none of those except the Spanish Café. There you could buy a cheap lunch, soup, sandwich, or a cola.
I was sitting on the steps, just inside the door, one day with Tammy Fagan and Victoria Spaulding. Tammy was chewing gum, and Victoria was eating her lunch.
“Got this gorgeous professor for math,” Tammy chewed.
“Frank Melon?” Victoria asked.
“Yeah! You got him, too?”
“He’s American, from Wisconsin. Married.”
“I don’t want to marry him, I just want to drool,” Tammy said.
“Then lose the gum. Or move away from me,” Victoria said, and covered her lunch.
“You got him, Felix?” she chewed at me.
“I don’t take math.”
“Everyone takes math. You need it to graduate.”
“No,” I said, “you can do the Humanities II option and replace math with a science. I’m doing geography instead.”
“Hardly a science,” Victoria observed as she wiped her lips with a little napkin.
On the wall above our heads were hundreds of flyers advertising apartments for rent, books for sale, roommates wanted, meditation groups, and so on. They were stapled or pinned to the cork bulletin boards that ran down the wall along the two level
s of stairs. We sat on the stairs like pigeons on ledges as hundreds of other students went by.
“Our professor is from India,” Victoria said. “First class she tells us the exam is based a hundred per cent on the text and not on her lectures. Big mistake. Hardly anyone goes to class anymore.”
“Hey, Felix!” It was Gib. He had a black knapsack slung over his back and wore a smart grey and red tracksuit. He was looking at Victoria.
“Gib, this is my friend Tammy.” He did not break his gaze. “And this is Victoria. Girls, meet my roommate, Gib.”
“Where are you from?” he asked Victoria.
“Curlew,” she said. “Do you know where that is?
“Everyone knows Curlew is in Conception Bay,” said the geographically correct Gib.
“Yes, it is.” She smiled.
“I’m going down to the café for coffee. Like to join me?” He was not talking to me or Fagan.
“I’ve got a class now, but some other time would be good.” They walked off together down the steps.
“Make ya puke!” Fagan observed.
“Different class of folks,” I said.
“What class is that?”
“The looks and confidence class.”
“Yeah,” she sighed, and leaned against my arm. “Looks and confidence. Well, Felix, at least I got one of them.”
She was right, of course. Then something funny occurred to me. “Which one you think you got, Fagan?”
She looked up at me from the stair below, suddenly serious. “You know which one! You see how bold and forward I am. You know which one, don’t you?” Her eyes asked me to differ.
“If you got rid of that gum and dressed like Victoria, you’d have the other one, too,” I half lied. She had the slim build all the girls wanted, and she was starting to fill out in the right places. A nice hairdo or even a shampoo would help.
She looked off into the middle distance down over the stairs where Gib had led Victoria. Then she drifted off without a word.
At the supper . . . er . . . dinner table that evening, Gib was all questions. “So, who is she?”
“Who is who?” Billy asked over a baked ham with pineapple slices.
“Yeah, who, Gib?” I asked.
“You know damn well who, that Victoria girl, from Curlew.”
“Curlew? Where’s that, Gib?” I asked.
“It’s in Concep—you know! You live there!”
“So now you know where it is, too.”
“What’s her last name?”
“Let me think. Pass the ham.”
“That’s a funny last name,” our host remarked.
“Some more ham . . .” I indicated.
“Oh, here.” He passed the whole plate. “Her name?”
“It’s a kind of sports equipment name. I can’t remember exactly.”
“Cooper?”
“No.”
“Winnwell?”
“No.”
“Tea or coffee?” Billy asked.
“No,” said Gib, and then to me: “Is she dating anyone?”
“Tea for me, please,” I said.
“Jeez, Felix, you live in this little dive with a hundred people. There’s probably only ten family names there.”
“Careful, Gib. That kind of insult can affect a guy’s memory.”
He laid down his fork, got up from the table, and went upstairs to his room, slamming the door.
“Boy! He’s upset,” said Billy as he poured my tea. Then he sat back and sipped on his Dominion.
When I eventually went upstairs, I said to Gib, “I just remembered, it’s Spaulding.”
“Spaulding?” Gib echoed. He sat up on the bed, all smiles.
Victoria and Gib were soon an item on campus. They came to the café together and walked the corridors to class together. He’d wait outside her class if he finished early, and vice versa if she did. They ate lunch together, usually in the café, away from us on the steps. If we joined them, we were greeted pleasantly, as you would greet people you knew from a distant country. Before long, they were holding hands.
We pigeons were sitting on the steps one day when I saw two guys stop to size up a girl. You know the way it happens—first the physical jolt as the pupils dilate and the breath is forcibly inhaled, expanding the chest, then the cheetah-like freeze and subtle nudge to his buddy, who is also in the freeze. The whole thing happens in a second, and you’ll miss it if you’re not watching. On this day, I looked down the steps to see who had caused the stalking freeze. I looked and I saw a girl who was vaguely familiar:
The gum was gone and the lipstick on.
The shirt was bright and the skirt was tight.
She showed a bit of leg, and the two top buttons were open on her blouse, which was more of a man’s shirt. Her hair was washed and cut in a short, saucy flip around her nape. She came up the steps like it was a runway for Versace, one firm step at a time, each step making her hips sway in a fetching manner. She wasn’t what you’d call a beauty; she looked more like what you’d call, well, a whore. She mounted the steps and stood over me.
“I took your advice.”
“What advice? And who are you?”
“It’s Fagan,” someone said.
“I know that,” I said. “What happened to you?”
“Buy me a coffee and I’ll tell you.”
I left my buddies on the step and was dragged down to the Spanish Café by a leggy, sluttish version of my old put-down queen, Tammy Fagan.
“I’m not Fagan anymore,” she informed me over a black coffee.
“Who are you now?”
“I’m Tammy, just Tammy, and you created me.”
I looked at the spot of lipstick on her tooth. “I certainly did not . . . create you. I just meant for you to . . .”
“That’s not important. Whatever you said made me realize that with a costume change I could join the looks and confidence class. I’m sick of dragging my ass around here in dirty jeans and last century’s hairdo. Invisible! While the likes of Victoria Spaulding have all the fun.”
She had put her hand on my arm. We were sitting quite close together on the same side of the booth. Gib and Victoria came in and stood at the opposite end of the café.
“They mustn’t have recognized us,” I said.
“Or they just wanted to be alone.”
“Isn’t it sick the way they schmooze around with each other all the time?”
“I think it’s sweet,” she said, and squeezed my arm.
The top two buttons on her blouse were like two sideways eyes staring at me. The opening they provided suggested rather than showed, for Fagan still had some growing to do. I pulled my arm back slowly.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Look around you, Felix. Any guy in this room would change places with you right now.”
A silence pervaded our booth as we sipped our coffee.
“Hi, Felix!” It was Gib and Victoria. “Hey, Tammy! Lookin’ good!” Gib gleamed two rows of pearly whites at her. Victoria did not speak to either of us as they walked out.
“See? There’s a difference right there,” she said. Her hand was back on my arm. “I want you and me to be . . . to be closer,” she said.
“Why me, Fagan? I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this new you.”
“Not Fagan. My name is Tammy. And it’s you because. . . . Well, I can’t be going around alone. It’ll look like no one wants to be with me. People trust you; they want to tell you their secrets. Besides, you’re not ugly, and you’re smart. Smartest kid back in school, except for Monk. Right? Bound for glory!”
So I became one of Tammy’s accessories. Worn, usually on her arm as par
t of her new allurement, until she could catch a bigger fish, and then she could toss me back into the pond.
One night, I came home and Billy had been drinking. Perhaps it was the beer, but he appeared more animated than before, and he started talking about his departed Alice.
“She and I were married for seven years. Her family never liked me. I had no education. Just back from the war, the navy. Say, you want to hear this?” He looked at me.
“Sure.” I had no place to go.
He tapped the ashes into the ashtray with keen attention.
“I never spoke about this in years, and I’m telling you the whole story.”
“I don’t mind.”
“There was a time when I talked about nothing else. Everyone I knew, when they’d come in here, I’d regale them about me and Alice. Finally they stopped coming. Sometimes I’d try to talk about other things, but Alice was the only thing on my mind.”
“Why did she leave?”
“That’s the question! That’s the question I spent years thinking about. She never really said. In my mind, everything was all right between us. She was an educated woman, a schoolteacher.
“Still, she seemed happy here at home. She was a marvellous cook. There was just the two of us . . .” His red eyes became conspiratorial, and he leaned his large head toward me. He had a thick head of hair, reddish with grey.
“She couldn’t have any children,” he almost whispered. Then proceeded in his normal voice. It was a pleasant voice, somewhat deep and base, with an occasional lilt when he smiled at an irony or a fond memory. There was also an occasional break in his voice as his pipes faltered.
“Those were the happiest days of my life. She was so full of life and so pretty. I used to take her down to the American base for a dance, and I’d say to her, ‘Alice, how does it feel to be the prettiest woman in the room?’
“There’d be officers there, too, with their wives, but none could compare to Alice.”
“You loved her very much,” I heard myself say.
This talk of love appeared to jolt Billy from his reverie. He took another slug from his Dominion bottle. “I suppose I did. Maybe I should have told her more. . . . We weren’t big on affection in the Royal Navy. But I remember when I married her I told her I would never be with another woman, and I never was. I had it made. I had Alice and this big house. I was making good money at construction work.”