by Paula Fox
“Can’t anyone be happy?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he answered at once. “Yes … yes.” He reached out his hand as he often did when he read poetry. “We’ve been happy here. And you will be happy. I know that. Someone said that hope itself is a kind of happiness.” He hesitated a moment, then went on. “When I lash out at life, it’s because I’m so disappointed in myself.”
She was grateful for his words, even more grateful for the return of her affection for him. “It’s when you don’t think about happiness,” he said gently, “that it suddenly comes.” He smiles again and turned his attention back to his work.
“I am happy now,” she told herself as she went up the stairs to bed.
It was a gray morning. The rain began to fall just as Mr. Ames and Catherine finished their breakfast. “I have to call Mom today,” she said.
“They’re back, then?” he asked.
“They’re supposed to be,” she replied.
As she washed up the dishes, she looked through the window at the heavy rain, remembering how they had walked down the dirt road on a morning that seemed so long ago. Only a few days left! Yet she didn’t feel sad when she imagined herself back in New York, free to go out and wander around. She would go to the Museum of Natural History, to the great hall of the mastodons where she had spent so many hours as a child staring at the immense, motionless creatures in their amber-lit landscapes. She would be glad to be back in school, listening to Madame Soule talk passionately about the state of the world, about what could be done for whales and seals, for peace, things that were not about personal life but about life itself. When she thought now of the whole living, buzzing hive of girls, each one so different from the other, she felt a rush of eagerness to see them, which even included dangerous Harriet. And there was Philippe. She could visualize him walking toward her on Sherbrook Street, to the bookstore where they often met, so quick, so light on his feet. She was to telephone him tomorrow. He would be waiting for her call in the office of the lumber company in Trois Rivières, which had hired him for the summer. He had given her a piece of paper with a cartoon of himself in a woodsman’s outfit, a beard down to his knees, and the telephone number and date and time when she was to call. She always carried it with her, and she took it from her pocket now and looked at it. The paper was smudged from much handling. Her father walked up to stand next to her.
“Secret messages?” he asked. She put the paper away hurriedly.
“It’s nothing,” she said. Through the window, she saw a man in uniform walking over the rise to the house. He stepped across the railroad track just as Mrs. Landy appeared a few yards behind him. He paused and waited for her. They spoke together as though they knew each other.
“A soldier?” Catherine inquired of her father.
“That’s the Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman,” he answered. “Around here, they’d call him a RCMP.”
“Where’s his horse?”
“Obsolete,” said Mr. Ames.
“They’re both getting soaked.”
“They don’t mind weather like us sissies,” he said.
“I like rain,” she said defensively.
A moment or so later, Mrs. Landy entered the kitchen sighing out her usual, “Good day,” and adding, “RCMP to see you, Mr. Ames.” She took off her wet head scarf and wrung it out over the sink.
Mr. Ames, Catherine following him, went to the door.
The mountie was very young. His face was red as though he blushed perpetually, his eyes deep blue, the pale eyebrows above them the color of wheat. He announced himself to be Macbeth and gave a half salute.
Mr. Ames clapped him on the back and exclaimed, “Wonderful!”
Macbeth looked mildly surprised.
“Have some coffee with us, laddie,” offered Mr. Ames.
“I wouldn’t mind—with the rain and all,” Macbeth said shyly.
He stood woodenly in the parlor, staring at the floor, while Catherine tried to think of something interesting to say. Whatever he was looking at seemed to absorb him entirely. Mr. Ames returned with a tole tray and three cups of coffee.
“What can we do for you, Officer Macbeth?” he asked genially. “I hope that’s the proper way to speak to you. Where did you get that marvelous name?”
“It’s an old family name,” replied Macbeth stolidly. “There’s lots of Macbeths in these parts, cousins of mine and all. Well, thank you for the coffee.” He drank down the whole contents of the cup in one gulp. “What I’ve come to ask you is—have you noticed anybody walking around here with a rifle? There’s been a complaint back there in the hills along Ross Road. Barn windows have been shot out.”
“Ross Road?” inquired Mr. Ames blandly. “Would the Reverend Ross own that road?”
“Different family,” said Macbeth.
“We haven’t seen a soul,” Mr. Ames said definitely. “My daughter and I are visitors here. In fact, we’re returning to the States in a few days. Do sit down, Macbeth. Can I get you some more coffee? Would you like a bit of Lamb’s rum in it?”
Catherine shot a stricken glance at him. He hadn’t thrown out all the liquor.
“Thanks, no,” Macbeth said. “I took the pledge. I used to drink something terrible.”
“An honest answer,” Mr. Ames observed ponderously.
At least he hadn’t been drinking the rum, Catherine told herself. She would have known if he had, wouldn’t she? He was asking Macbeth if it was true that the woods were full of bootleggers and the barns full of illegal stills. Macbeth smiled at him and looked even younger. Catherine went off to the kitchen. The conversation was making her uneasy.
Mrs. Landy was wiping down the counter. “How’s Jackie?” Catherine asked. She could hear the rumble of her father’s voice, Macbeth’s clear, mild tones as he replied. Her father would be charming the mountie the way he did everyone—everyone except the Reverend Ross.
“Little Jackie’s just fine,” Mrs. Landy said.
“We drove to Lake Rossignol,” Catherine offered.
“That’s nice,” Mrs. Landy said, wiping the front of the stove. “It’s nice to go to a lake.”
Mrs. Landy could provide a new definition of what a conversation was, Catherine thought.
Her father called out an exuberant good-bye to Macbeth. She went back into the parlor. As she passed the kitchen table, she saw Mrs. Landy’s worn black pocketbook lying on it, open. To her surprise, she glimpsed a large, cellophane-wrapped cigar lying on a neatly folded pink tissue.
“Mrs. Landy smokes cigars,” she whispered to her father.
“Good night! How hearty of her! I’m relieved she has a vice,” he whispered back.
He looked very pleased with himself, she noticed. How quickly and easily he had lied. But what if he had been truthful? She could just see the scene in a Canadian courtroom—American visitors convicted of mindless hooliganism. The judge would be someone like Harriet Blacking, who always spoke about “those boors to the south of us,” and had once called the United States “the United Snakes.”
“You lie so fast,” she said, trying to speak impersonally, like a judge, but not succeeding. “You were too charming.”
“My trouble has always been that I’m too charming,” he said. “Never mind that. I’m not trying to set you an example. Don’t tell lies because I do. You have the choice, you know. Isn’t Macbeth a nice young fellow? Not the usual antagonistic upholder of the law. He looked at you with considerable interest. He doesn’t give a fig for barn windows. You’re the reason he bothered to stay so long.”
“He didn’t notice me,” she said.
“Don’t simper,” he said. “Why shouldn’t he notice you? The thing is—he’s coming back to drive us around this evening when he goes off duty.”
“Drive us around where?”
“A few places he thought would be interesting,” he replied evasively.
She didn’t press him; she was afraid of what he might tell her. If he intended to go to bootl
eggers, she understood that she couldn’t prevent him from doing so. The tenderness she knew he felt toward her did not alter a hardness of purpose in him where his own wish was concerned. She had not known that drinking could carry you out of reach of your own feelings for people. She hadn’t known anything about drinking. But she felt she must say something that would let him know what was on her mind.
“You didn’t tell me you kept the Lamb’s rum.”
“I’m not obliged to make reports to you,” he said flatly. “In any event, rum is not my drink. It’s for visitors.”
She didn’t look at him as she asked for the car keys so she could drive to Mackenzie to telephone her mother. She didn’t want to see his face.
“Say hello to her for me,” he said neutrally.
She wouldn’t.
The public telephone in the village was on the wall of a narrow lunchroom that smelled of ketchup and stale coffee. She felt sad and disheartened and disgruntled as she asked the operator to put through a collect call. The one waitress behind the counter handed a hamburger as thin as a wafer to a man in workclothes.
When she heard her mother’s eager voice accepting the charges, her spirits rose. “Oh! I’m so glad you’re home!” she exclaimed.
“What’s the matter? Is anything the matter?” her mother asked, her voice filled with alarm.
“No, no. I’m just glad to hear you,” Catherine said. “I was afraid you might have already started back to work, and that switchboard operator in your office wouldn’t have accepted the charges—” She broke off. Why was she having to explain everything? “I’m fine,” she said, “really great. How was your trip?”
“Marvelous. I’ve got so much to tell you and show you. We took hundreds of pictures. How was Toronto?”
“Toronto?” asked Catherine, her mind blank. Then she remembered. “Oh, Toronto. Pretty nice. Not as nice as here.”
“I’m so happy you’ll be home soon.”
“Yes,” agreed Catherine.
“Yes? Yes, what? Catherine, you sound—”
“I’m happy, too,” Catherine broke in hastily.
“Is he behaving himself?” her mother asked, her voice grim.
Would her mother ever stop prosecuting the case against her father? Did she want a chorus of ten thousand voices crying out that she had been the only injured party? Right now, her father was licking his chops, everything drained out of his head except for the thought of moonshine liquor. Her wayward parents!
But she realized, if only fleetingly, that it had been hard for her mother to let her spend this time with Mr. Ames. If she knew he had kept Catherine waiting for three weeks!
“Mom, he’s being really fine. He cooks terrific meals. We’ve been all over the place. I’m really okay. Mom?”
Driving back to the house, thinking of how she had calmed her mother’s self-serving fears, she felt exiled to a chilly place, far from those parents of hers.
Six
Catherine, washing supper dishes, saw a rabbit through the kitchen window. Suddenly it dropped down on all fours and fled. Macbeth walked out of the lingering sunlight and into the shadow of the peaked roof that nearly reached the railroad tracks. Even as she pronounced his name, she heard the door bang shut.
He came down the hall and into the kitchen, her father leading him. He looked like a child dressed up for an occasion, in a tight tweed jacket and a yellow necktie.
“Evening,” he said to her shyly. She nodded.
“Come into the parlor while my staff finishes up in here,” her father said jovially. She felt a flash of resentment. His joking was a part of their private conversation. In front of a stranger, the joke was stripped of affection. She heard only his words, and they seemed derisive and harsh.
She didn’t want to go anywhere with Macbeth. She had asked Mr. Ames if she could stay home. “I want you with us,” he had said. It wasn’t his words that prevented her from arguing it out with him. She had sensed uneasiness in his voice in the way he looked at her, as though he were afraid.
She had wanted to ask him about his writing that evening, although she hadn’t figured out how to bring it up. She knew it was a thorny subject.
Her mother had kept a copy of his first novel in a row of cookbooks on a kitchen shelf. Several years ago, Catherine had taken it off to her room. Her mother had found her reading it at her desk, her school books pushed aside.
“You’d better do your homework,” she commented.
Catherine didn’t answer. She rarely responded to her mother’s remarks about her father. She had held onto the book, not looking up. Her mother said, sharply, that he had written a second novel but it wasn’t any good. The first one was all right—but then his true character had caught up with him. Despite herself, Catherine couldn’t help asking what that was? Her mother looked confused, as though she hadn’t expected to have to explain what she meant. She picked up a jacket Catherine had dropped on the floor and began to fold it like a towel.
“He thinks being hopeless about life is romantic, deep,” her mother said. “That’s what’s wrong with his books.”
“Is he hopeless?” Catherine asked.
“It’s a pose.”
“Then you mean—he’s not really hopeless?” Catherine asked relentlessly.
Her mother dropped the jacket on a chair. “Oh—I don’t know,” she said agitatedly. “He baffled me so.…”
It was, Catherine had thought at the time, nearly the only kind thing her mother had ever said about her father.
The novel related the adventure of a young man who got a job as a cabin boy on a tramp steamer going to South America. She read it to hear her father’s voice. It was the first time since she had learned to read that she realized a real, living person had written a book.
She had spent months poking around in second-hand book stores. At last, in the basement of one of them, a place that smelled of dust and stale paper and decay, she found his second novel. It was just over one hundred pages long. It ended so abruptly, so mysteriously, it was as though the writer had dropped his manuscript and left town forever. The story began with a terrible accident. A man was hit by a train. He had walked a mile before he collapsed and died. The life in him had not recognized its time was up. Some earlier reader than Catherine had underlined a sentence on the last page: We want to keep on living even as we are ground to dust.
She found his travel books everywhere. In them were listed places to eat and stay, bits of history about castles and town halls and notable personalities, written in a tone of hard-boiled commercial cheerfulness, as though the main object of visiting other countries was to find good room service and good plumbing. “For arrivistes,” he had told her, “people who only want to know about the most expensive restaurants and hotels.”
She heard him now in the parlor. He was speaking in a loud, hearty voice; it had in it an insistence that everything was about to be wonderful.
“Get a jacket or something, Cath,” he called to her as she went down the hall to the stairs. “Macbeth says there’s a touch of autumn in the air.” Telling her to get something to keep herself warm was one of the few ways in which he behaved like a parent, she noted. Then she thought—autumn! They had only a few days left!
As Catherine joined them in the parlor, Macbeth was saying, “Please, Mr. Ames, call me Alistair.”
“Actually, I think of it as a privilege to call you Macbeth.”
“From the play by William Shakespeare,” Catherine said, with a touch of grimness.
“‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know,’” recited Macbeth in a schoolboy’s singsong voice.
“By God!” exclaimed Mr. Ames. “You’re a barrel of surprises, Macbeth!”
“I read it in school. We had to memorize bits,” said Macbeth modestly.
It was she who had been patronizing, she realized. Until that moment, she had thought her father’s obscure allusions had been a kind of showing off to himself, showing himself how much he knew th
at other people didn’t. But thinking back to the time they’d spent with Reverend Ross, with Mr. Conklin and Farmer Glimm, and, of course, with Mrs. Landy, she guessed that they hadn’t felt patronized at all. He didn’t think he was superior because of what he knew. She did. Ashamed, she went to him. He put his arm around her. “My dear,” he said, his voice surprised.
Macbeth drove a small English car. Catherine curled up in the back seat. There wasn’t enough room for her legs, so she had to squeeze herself up like an accordion. Mr. Ames didn’t stop talking for one moment. There was an undercurrent of excitement in his voice that must, Catherine imagined, make the little car glow like a coal as they drove through the countryside upon which night had now fallen.
Macbeth turned onto a dirt road. The car shuddered and bounced and clattered. A few hundred yards ahead of them, Catherine could see a cluster of dim lights. Macbeth parked. They sat in silence for a moment or two. “Interesting,” Mr. Ames said in a subdued voice. What on earth was he really thinking? she wondered.
“Well, you walk right over there to the barn,” Macbeth said. “Tell them Alistair sent you.”
“Not Macbeth?” asked Mr. Ames, already half out of the car.
“Oh, no,” Macbeth replied. “Don’t say my last name. They know who it is, but I only use Macbeth when it’s an official visit. When I have to close them down, do you see?”
“Strange distinction,” Mr. Ames commented, staring at Catherine. “Take note. It’s an example of the social contract.”
“Not really,” she muttered. He seemed not to have heard her. She watched him walk away, saw his shadow loom against the barn door.
“What’s in there?” she asked.
“It’s a fellow does a little bootlegging. A potato farmer who earns a bit of money that way.”