Watch that Ends the Night

by Hugh Maclennan

  “Complimented, hell! I talked too much. Look George – do you like that job of yours?”

  “No, but it’s a job.”

  “You talked a little, too. I heard you, and it’s given me ideas. You have a remarkable speaking voice. How would you like to work in radio?”

  “Me – radio!” I laughed.

  “You’re in a rut in that school and I don’t think it could ever be the right job for a man like you. I’m not implying you’re not doing good work, but you’re not the type. Only a few men are. I had a great schoolmaster once in Halifax, an absolutely wonderful man who went to the war at fiffty-two because he couldn’t stand the idea of his boys going into the line without him. He went through from the fall of 1915 to the end, and when it was over he returned to the job as fresh as ever. But the reason he was good was that he never stopped being a boy. He was very rare. You have stopped being a boy.”

  I laughed. “Dr. Bigbee hasn’t stopped being a boy. Does that make him a great schoolmaster?”

  “He’s supposed to be one, isn’t he?” Jerome grunted. “Anyway, what’s that got to do with you? You’re in the wrong line of work, George, and you must know it. The trouble with the capitalist system is that it harnesses everything to the profit motive. It regards a teacher as a kind of superior servant, and it won’t let him teach – not really. Listen, George, the way things are now there’s no future in teaching. Maybe later on when things change, but not now. And there’ll never be a future for a school like Waterloo. You’ve got something better to do with your life than teach the sons of the rich. Think it over. You understand a lot about politics and you have the right kind of voice. Somebody like you could do well in the cbc. Think it over. Keep your mind open and I’ll make a few inquiries.”

  After some small talk, Jerome and Catherine exchanged smiles and a little later they went upstairs to bed. My cot was in the living room of the cabin and I undressed before the fire and lay watching the shadows flicker among the rafters, and the big shadow of the Quebec heater bulging black and steady against the pine wall. I felt at once relaxed and wide awake and I lay thinking about what Jerome had told me and wondering if it was really possible that I might be more than a failure. Boards creaked overhead, there was a faint murmur of voices from Catherine and Jerome, then their door closed and silence fell. I lay happy and without jealousy and full of wonder, and suddenly I was asleep.

  The next morning I woke to creaking boards and moving feet and Sally’s excited voice crying “Look! Look! Look!”

  I sat up and looked out the window at a white world. Snow had fallen steadily all night and now the sun was struggling out of a gauze of mist and the lake was black ink against a white land. Sally pressed her little face to the cold window pane in an ecstasy of delight and the tonic air made me want to do everything at once. From the back of the cottage came the smell of frying bacon and Jerome’s voice singing as he cooked it.

  “You get out of here,” I said to Sally. “Get upstairs and get your clothes on so I can get mine on, too.”

  She rushed at me as though she wanted to make sure I loved her too, that everyone loved her in this lovely world, and we horsed around for a while until suddenly she stopped and said gravely, “Now I’m going upstairs and get dressed. I can get dressed, too.”

  Just after I had my clothes on, was shaved and ready to eat, Catherine appeared for the morning wearing heavy tweeds and the peaceful, inward look of a woman who has been well-loved the night before. I don’t believe I ever saw Catherine as happy and as well as I saw her that morning, and when she kissed my forehead and smiled she seemed so serene that I missed the point of what she said, and only thought about it months afterwards.

  “If only the world would leave us alone,” she said, and stared out at the white land and the ink-black lake. “If only it would leave us alone our days would be a paradise.”

  PART SIX

  CHAPTER I

  The following winter I was too engrossed in myself to think how deeply Catherine had meant that remark to me. Through her and Jerome my whole world had opened up; through them I was meeting people I had previously read about only in books. My weekends in town became series of mental explosions, and at school after the day’s work I used to sit up in bed for hours reading books about politics, history and the ideas which flamed in that peculiar time. Jerome seemed to know everyone in Montreal whose brain was alive, and most of them came from Europe or other parts of Canada. The old dynasty still ruled the city, as oblivious as mandarins to new faces and new ideas, but they were there: after a long, long time they were there at last and they were turning Montreal, in spite of itself, into a real world city. Coming back to Waterloo from those Montreal weekends was like stepping back into the colonial nineteenth century.

  Light can blind you more than darkness, and this sudden new light blinded me to signs that now would have been obvious to me.

  That winter, increasingly after New Year, the atmosphere in the Martell household changed. Several times I noticed Catherine withdrawing herself. Often she made sharp, cutting remarks that surprised me. At the same time I noticed that Jerome talked with increasing obsession and violence about the political situation. I assumed that this was the sole source of disagreement between him and Catherine, and indeed I think it was the primary one. Catherine would not, and could not, be interested in politics even to the extent that I am interested in them now. She believed that Jerome’s impetuosity caused him to be used by people unworthy of him, nor was she the only one who believed that. But this fixation of Jerome was real and sincere, and its very violence, oddly connected with his own violent history, undoubtedly had made him lonely with a wife who feared for him and for herself and for her daughter and dreaded where his impulsiveness might lead him. This was a time in which you were always meeting people who caught politics just as a person catches religion. It was probably the last time in this century when politics in our country will be evangelical, and if a man was once intensely religious, he was bound to be wide open to a mood like that of the Thirties. By why waste time explaining the pattern? It is obvious now, and dozens of books have been written about it. Less obvious have been some of the attendant passions that went along with this neo-religious faith. Passion has a way of spilling over into all aspects of the human mind and feelings. It is the most dangerous thing in the world whether it focuses itself on love, religion, reform, politics or art. Without it the world would die of dry rot. But though it creates it also destroys. Having seldom been its victim I have only pity for those who are, and I would be a hypocrite if I judged them by the standards you can safely apply to a man at peace with himself and his circumstances.

  But I was blind to all the signs, and meanwhile my ordinary routine went on. Week after week I endured the boredom of teaching boys who did not wish to learn, and in my spare time at Waterloo I made myself extremely unpopular by trying to foist on my older colleagues some of the new political theories I now regarded as gospel. Most of them had been out of England so long they had no notion of what the new England was like. Ponson still thought of England as the England he had known as a youth at the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee when she had the ships, she had the guns and she had the money, too. McNish thought only of getting back into the Navy and the Doctor, who read about one newspaper a month, cheerfully assumed that when the time came John Bull would teach the foreigners a badly needed lesson. Meanwhile the younger men, the socialists from the provincial universities, were selfishly pleased to see their social betters humiliated by the present Tory government. Waterloo in those days was a depressing place.

  The winter passed, a fateful winter for Catherine, Jerome and myself even though I did not realize it at the time, and finally on a Friday evening in early April I again found myself on the Montreal train accompanied by Shatwell. He was the only colleague with whom I felt easy. He was almost invariably cheerful in his languid way, and though he read the papers diligently, they never angered or depressed him. �
�I’ve always taken it for granted things were going from bad to worse, you understand,” was Shatwell’s perennial attitude toward everything, including himself.

  But on this particular evening Shatwell was so depressed he could hardly talk. I knew he was tired, and I assumed his depression was caused by one of those humiliating incidents which so often happened to junior masters in Waterloo. The Doctor was so busy being the Doctor that without realizing it he undermined the authority of his assistants. That morning Shatwell’s class had rioted, and Dr. Bigbee himself had exploded into the room to quell it. Now I was trying to cheer Shatwell up.

  “Old Bigbee deliberately creates all this confusion,” I said. “If it wasn’t for him our lives would be easy. Why worry about it?”

  Shatwell turned to me wearily. “George old boy, absolutely the last thing that ever worries me is that old bastard. I had his number the first time I ever met him. He’s simply an older version of my company commander in my A.S.C. days in India. A krait bit that chap and put him out of commission.”

  Shatwell then told me the real reason for his malaise. His widow, whose name was Mrs. Moffat, had been operated on by Dr. Rodgers in the Beamis Memorial for a non-malignant growth, and all week Shatwell had been telephoning the hospital for news of her.

  “Something quite fearful and drastic has obviously happened,” he said. “They say she’s distended, whatever that is, and isn’t comfortable, which coming from a nurse or a doctor bloody well means she’s bloody well in agony.”

  “But there’s bound to be some discomfort after an abdominal operation,” I said, quoting Jerome.

  Shatwell shook his head and stared miserably out the window. The train was bowling along through sodden fields under a dappled sky, and the sun, fiaring suddenly out of the west, illuminated standing pools of water and turned them to gold.

  “You see,” Shatwell explained, “everything I’ve ever touched has had such a way of turning out badly. It’s not as though poor Martha were strong, you understand. She’s quite petite, actually. She’s never had much luck, and she never asks for anything, and I rather fancy with these doctor chaps, if one doesn’t ask pretty firmly, it’s not likely to be given.”

  “They’re not like that at all.”

  “Your friend Martell may not be like that, but I’ve seen a thing or two, George. You see, one time when things had gone a little worse with me than usual, I was reduced to working as a hospital orderly. Bed pans, enemas, slops, cleaning up the messes they make – that sort of thing. A perfectly frightful job. But it taught me a thing or two, you understand. In hospitals they cover up for bad work just as we do in the school.”

  “But you have no evidence of bad work here.”

  “I’ve got rather a nose for that sort of thing, old boy.”

  A west-bound express crashed by, the air shock from each car slamming against the window, and when it was past Shatwell continued.

  “Martha’s so gentle and kind, you understand. We’ve had the jolliest times together. She doesn’t ask a thing of a chap, I mean to say, she never nags or tries to prod one into marrying her or any of that sort of thing. I mean to say, she just takes a chap like me and we have a jolly time. You can’t guess what that means to me, old boy. I haven’t had too much of that sort of thing in my life. Mum was rather a dear, but Dad was the military type, and the British military can be pretty bloody. He was always trying to keep Mum and me up to scratch, as he put it, and he might just as well have saved his time. Of course the only reason he did it was because he liked it. They’re all like that, those chaps, and most women nag one so. I had a wife once and she nagged.”

  “You never told me you were married, Randolph.”

  “What was the use? It didn’t work out at all and it was ages ago. She’s married to some engineer chap in India now. But poor little Martha, she just took me as I am, you understand. She never had children, poor thing.”

  “When did her husband die?”

  “I rather fancy about a dozen years ago. He was much older and I gather he was one of those chaps who gets married and sits. He was in some sort of trade. I don’t think he was much good, but I rather fancy he thought he was, or perhaps he thought he ought to be. He never had any appreciation. Poor Martha’s so appreciative of everything it quite wrings the heart.”

  I told Shatwell he was worrying unnecessarily, that people always recovered from operations these days, but he was not comforted.

  “If she were fond of somebody else instead of me,” he said, “I can’t help thinking she might have a better chance.”

  “Oh come on, Randolph. What’s that got to do with it?” He shook his head miserably. “There was a girl in Smyrna I brought a packet of bad luck to. And there was that consul’s daughter in Kuala Lumpur – but I told you about her. And there was the one in Calcutta who was married to that bloody gunner. And then there was the nicest one of them all in Brisbane – but I don’t expect I told you about her.”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “The fact is, old boy, I was too ashamed. You see, I went to the very best medico in the place, and he assured me, he positively staked his reputation on it, that I was a complete cure. But I wasn’t, you understand.”

  He looked at me with his soft calf’s eyes and I was sluggish in getting the point.

  “George old boy, if a chap gives a girl the clap, especially if he’s fond of her, there simply aren’t any words. So you understand my point about the doctors. Just because they tell you there’s nothing to worry about, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a packet.”

  When the train reached town, Shatwell jumped into a taxi and rushed to the Beamis Memorial. I checked my bags and took my time walking up the slope of the city to Jerome’s apartment.

  It was one of those delicious afternoons which sometimes happen in Montreal between the break-up and the opening of the leaves, robins calling in Dominion square while there was still a grit of leftover winter sand on the pavements. I stopped in a flower shop and bought tulips for Catherine, then walked leisurely upward and through the university campus where boys and girls were sauntering hand in hand, and all about me was the feeling that comes when windows are opened after a long winter. The sky was dappled and some of the clouds reminded me of the underwings of doves.

  Catherine’s living room window was open when I entered and Sally was playing on the floor.

  “Uncle George!” she cried, and rushed at me to be appreciated. I tousled her ash-blonde hair and rubbed her nose and she gurgled with pleasure, but when I asked her what she had been doing she turned grave and placed a finger on my lips.

  “Listen!” she commanded.

  I did so and heard the happy noise of a barrel organ, and going to the window we saw the wonderful old Italian who looked like Toscanini and had been playing his barrel organ around the town as long as I could remember. Toselli’s Serenade was making windows pop open all along the curve of that little half-moon street and people leaned out smiling, while over the roofs the cloud-cover was sliding off to the east with the sky around the sun shining like a field of daffodils, and Sally looked so happy I wished I were her father.

  The doorbell interrupted us, and while Sally clamored to be let out to play with the barrel-organ man, Catherine called downstairs and asked me to answer the bell.

  It was Jack Christopher, the other dinner guest, and he had come over from the hospital where he was a senior intern. He was, and still is, a handsome man in a punctilious way, tall and serious with lines like a pair of parentheses framing a shrewd, disciplined mouth. We were the same age but I thought of him as older than myself and I still do. He was one of Jerome’s various protégés. He came from an old Montreal family with some financial backing, and his people had wished him to go into business. But somewhere along the line, when he was hesitating between business and medicine, he had encountered Jerome and Jerome’s enthusiasm had fired him. Now he was hesitating between entering practice in internal medicine and doing specialized wor
k in endocrinology. It was typical of Jerome that he had advised him to try both for a while.

  “Mummy, can I go out and play with the barrel-organ man?”

  From upstairs came Catherine’s voice: “So long as you’re sure to put on your coat.”

  “I’ll put it on, Mummy.”

  I watched Sally go out the door and behind me the phone rang. Jack was nearest and he picked it up, and after half a minute and a few monosyllables he turned to me.

  “That was Jerome. He says he’s been held up but will be here in a few minutes. He tells us to get our own drinks. Do you want one?”

  I did, and after thinking it over Jack decided he wanted one too.

  “Has Jerome been busier than usual?” I asked him. Jack gave a slight shrug but made no comment. We sipped our drinks silently, after a while the barrel organ stopped playing and a little later Sally came in again. I asked her to get a vase for Catherine’s tulips but she preferred to play with Jack, so I got one myself and brought it into the living room with the tulips arranged. Jack was down on the floor with Sally looking as much at ease as an elder statesman playing with a child at election time and Sally was demanding to know why her father was not here.

  “I haven’t seen Daddy all week!” she said. “Not all week!”

  Then she ran upstairs to talk to her mother and Jack resumed his seat with an expressionless face.

  After a while he said in his abrupt way: “Out of the mouths of babes. I don’t like it.”

  “What don’t you like?”

  “Of course it’s none of my business what he does.”

  “What who does?”

  “Jerome, naturally. Tell me something – is he, or is he not, a communist?”

  “I don’t think he’s one.”

  “Are you one?”

  “No.”

  Jack made an impatient gesture: “But the whole lot of you talk like a pack of Reds all the time. Girls and boys together. That little O.R. nurse, that Blackwell girl – she’s a pal of yours too, isn’t she?”