Strange Fugitive

by Morley Callaghan

  She knew all about the yard, and the men in the gang, and Hohnsburger the superintendent.

  Coming home from the yard at half-past five o’clock Harry smelled a stew cooking as he climbed the stair of the duplex house, a dish he liked, and Vera cooked it with small round new potatoes, oodles of onions, peppers, spices.

  “Stew eh, Vera,” he said, going into the kitchen. When she kissed him like that, closing her eyes, he felt that he had not known her very long and watched her move around the kitchen. He sat down on a kitchen chair. She bent over the sink and he mechanically shifted his gaze, aware, in a practical way, of looking closely at someone familiar to him, a waste of time over a curiosity that should have been satisfied long ago, but thinking suddenly of girls getting on a streetcar and his constant curiosity about the shape of legs, he was satisfied to go on watching Vera bending over the sink. She was trim, and deliberate.

  “Did the paper come?” he said, getting up and taking off his coat.

  “Yes, it did,” she said. “Hang up your coat, Harry.”

  “My coat’s all right. I’ll be putting it on right after supper.”

  “Well, there’s no harm in hanging it up.”

  “All right, I’ll hang it up,” he said, carefully avoiding argument, for there was no reason why he shouldn’t hang it on the hall rack.

  “Now for the stew, eh.”

  “It’s a dandy stew tonight,” she said, filling his plate.

  “That’s the stuff, Vera.”

  “How’d things go today? Have any trouble with Hohnsburger?”

  “No, didn’t bang into him. That guy’s a real ham. Don’t ask me why. He’s just a ham.”

  He answered her irritably, determined not to go on talking about the yard, yet expecting her to persist, but she went on eating. The evening paper was on a corner of the table and he glanced at the headlines.

  “Harry.”

  “What?”

  “What would you think if I became a Catholic?”

  “Holy smoke.” He stopped eating, looking at her earnestly. She smiled, then was serious. He let his glance wander around the room. On a cupboard was a book. He could make out the name of the author, Philip Gibbs, the man who wrote the unknown-soldier story, and who must have been a good writer because the government had so many writers to choose from.

  “That’s a queer notion,” he said.

  “I’ve often thought about it.” Her eyes got moist thinking about it. “I don’t know why, but I know I’ll feel happier if I’m a Catholic.”

  “Who do you know that’s a Catholic?”

  “I knew a couple of girls before they got married. Now they’ve sent their kids to a convent for schooling. If I ever had a girl I’d love to have her educated in a convent.”

  “Well, suit yourself,” he said broad-mindedly, “only don’t try and rope me in on it.”

  “Let’s go down to the lake and sit on a bench by the water,” she said suddenly.

  “I hadn’t thought of the lake, Vera.”

  “I was thinking this afternoon how we used to go down through the park and watch the lights on the lake when it got dark.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, let’s do it tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes tonight, go early, and watch the sun go down on the water.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it, Vera. I wanted to go over to the ballpark and watch the practice.”

  “Aw, no.”

  “Gol darn it, I had looked forward to it.”

  She put up her elbow on the table, chin in her hand and said: “All right, go on over to the ballpark.”

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll go along with you.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Don’t be silly, don’t you see I’m saying I’ll go with you.”

  “Well, you certainly won’t now.”

  “I will, I tell you, and please, I ask you, in heaven’s name, don’t be so contrary.”

  She got up, shrugging her shoulders, and shaped her lips for whistling, to show a lack of concern. He watched her going out of the room. She never could whistle. He got up to rush after her, angry words coming impulsively. He stood still, ashamed to think such an unimportant conversation should enrage him.

  “I think I’ll go over to the ballpark and watch the boys practice,” he said.

  “All right.”

  He found his finger-glove in the pantry and inspected it critically, slapping the palm a few times, then spitting on it, to soften the leather. “Vera won’t really become a Catholic,” he thought. “She gets worked up about things, but she’ll get over it all right.” He jumped over the back fence to take the shortcut across the vacant lot. Stan Farrel, the lawyer who lived on the ground floor, waved from the window while he was jumping the fence. Harry heard the crack of the bat against the ball, and a whoop and shout.

  In the park he leaned against the rail watching the manager hit grounders to infielders. The stocky little manager in a red sweater-coat standing restively at the home-plate, nodded to the first baseman who waited on his toes. “On the hop,” the manager yelled, swinging, the ball bounding down to the third baseman who, coming in quickly, scooped it up neatly, pegging hard across the diamond. “Atta boy, you’re there kid,” Harry yelled to the third baseman. Harry had played in this league before he had got married and was still fond of the game. Now he liked the way it took his mind off his work. Sometimes he went into the outfield and chased flies with the players. The practice was too serious tonight and he did not get into it at all.

  The practice over, he went into the dressing room and talked with some of the players. He watched a fellow stretched out on his belly getting a rub down. He smelled the liniment, and thought maybe the fellow had a charley horse. Most players undressed slowly, singing and telling stories. They talked loudly and happily. Harry picked up a fellow’s ball-shoes and whacked them on the floor, knocking the mud out of the spikes.

  “Much obliged. You’re a good guy,” the fellow grinned.

  “That’s all right.”

  He left the dressing room with Sid Dodds and Curly Spencer and Charlie Duggan. They leaned against the fence, standing on the sidewalk, smoking. It was not quite dark but street lights were lit. Two girls sauntered down the street, slowing up under the street lights, and one grinned at Charlie Duggan.

  Harry watched the fellows catch up to the girls and everything seemed to go nice and easy. He felt discontented, anxious for some interesting experience, and suddenly decided to go and see Julie Roberts.

  4

  He had met Julie at a time when too many evenings with Vera seemed dull, and he felt he ought to get interested in another woman. Julie astonished him, she suggested so much experience, a war widow who had been to France and lived for two years in Paris. Some of her best stories were about the voyage home. He met her in the book and novelty shop she had opened uptown, close to the good conservative district. He read a great many detective stories, and one night, with Jimmie Nash, he went into Julie’s shop and looked over the mystery stories, while Jimmie talked to her about other books. Harry thought she had an excellent variety of mystery stories on the shelves, and, reading a synopsis, he happened to glance at her, and was embarrassed. She was smiling at him. She was about thirty-five years old, a serious woman with a round face and soft eyes. She stood up and he was disappointed, then astonished and interested in the size of her, the width of her shoulders and her strong legs. He stared rudely and she smiled at him and he felt that his thoughts were amusing her. Afterward Jimmie explained that she was a fine woman to know, if she liked you, and he made up his mind to get all his mystery stories from her library. He didn’t expect her to be really interested in him because he was uncomfortable in the arty shop, and he told Jimmie that she was probably a damn sight too sophisticated for him. One evening she good-naturedly told him he was a husky brute, and talked for half an hour. He asked if he could call on her some night and at once felt very
nervous when she agreed. She encouraged him to talk of the lumber business, but he insisted she was laughing at him. Several times, visiting her in the evenings, he talked of Vera, and after one of these conversations, when he had decided he never could be as happy as he had been in the old days with Vera, on the way home he thought entirely of Julie. She was older and when he tried to make love she afterward smiled, as if capable of a great deal more than the surface emotion suggested. She understood that it was impracticable for him to take her out to shows, so they often took long walks up north at the city limits, and always he had the feeling of having made an astonishing discovery.

  He refused to think he was definitely trying to replace a feeling he had had once for Vera, and when she irritated him, he avoided any direct comparison with Julie. Instead he talked of an old friend of Vera’s, who had interested him, Grace Leon ard, who had gone away to Virginia. He told Vera that Grace was beautiful, though rather slender, and the most sympathetic woman he had ever met. But he never mentioned Julie to her because he didn’t want the comparison, even for himself.

  He went up to Julie’s shop, after the ball practice, and didn’t bother looking at the pattern of coloured glass bowls in the window, or the new flagstones in the path to the door. He opened the door and a bell tinkled. Julie was at the back of the shop, bending over the desk, getting ready to close for the evening. She was hardly surprised, and he was irritated. There was too much composure suggested in her heavy face and ample body. She was casually cheerful, taking it for granted, while she put on her coat, that he would walk home with her. “I wonder if she gets other people the way she gets me,” he thought, aware that he was attracted by the suggestion of rich experience made the most of by her big body, a husband dead, two years in Europe, and all her stories about the voyage home, and the three or four languages she spoke fluently.

  He held her plump arm while they walked four blocks to her cottage. She asked too politely for his wife, as though Vera’s health was important to her. He didn’t answer abruptly because she was deliberately teasing him. There was no light in the cottage so she went in ahead, telling him to go into the back room and stretch out on the couch, while she went upstairs, to change her dress. On the couch he closed his eyes. He didn’t want to look at the funny pictures on the wall, the gold wallpaper, the grand piano. She came into the room wearing a blue dress with a wide skirt and long sleeves, her Russian peasant dress she called it, and began to light the four red candles on the desk by the couch. She took a pack of cards from a drawer and flipping them neatly across the desk, arranged them for solitaire. Usually, when she wanted to talk, she sat at the desk with the cards. He stretched himself on the couch.

  “Why did you come along tonight?” She seemed mainly interested in the cards.

  “Just to be with you a while, Julie.”

  “A quarrel with the wife, I dare say” She smiled at the cards.

  He shrugged his shoulders and stared at her pale face and heavy red lips. “Come on over on the couch here,” he said suddenly, but she paid no attention to him, smiling to herself. He was eager to put his arms around her, restless because he knew there would be a number of movements and motions before she consented. She swept the cards into a pile, starting over again, pausing to quote a few lines of poetry, and turning apologetically to say, “Milton, son.” He crossed his legs on the couch, and thought vaguely that he loved her because he liked watching her. Sometimes he watched a pretty girl. Julie was not pretty, a big slow woman, but he loved the lines of her face, and had the feeling of a small boy conscious of the presence of a bold grown woman.

  He got up quickly, put his hands on her shoulders, and jerked her over to the couch. She fell awkwardly over his hip and was quite heavy but he liked it. She lay there laughing. “What a big tough boy you are,” she said. She made herself more comfortable and he put his hand on her forehead. “Let’s be serious,” she said.

  “No, kiss me.”

  “Listen, do you believe in God?”

  “Cut it out.”

  “No, I want to get a rather natural point of view. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think about it.”

  “I don’t want to, it’s too peaceful,” he said, noticing a soft fold of flesh under her chin. “It isn’t worth a kiss.”

  “I’m not suggesting that, but these nice discussions can be had only now and then.” She told him she had had an operation for appendicitis, and just before the anaesthetic, had said to herself “There’s no God.” After coming out of it the same thought had astonished her. So they talked about God and a world where there was smallpox and crime and little girls who never had a chance. He held onto her plump arm, and she insisted all theological systems were absolutely impracticable. “God knows, for example, that a man born a cripple in this world will suffer terribly, why is it?”

  “I don’t know, Julie, for the love of Mike.”

  “But what do you think?”

  “Because of original sin, I guess.”

  “It doesn’t appeal to me.”

  “Me either.”

  So they kissed and he was happier. She looked at her wristwatch and said: “Augustus is coming here tonight, but if you want to stay I needn’t let him in.” Her guarded eagerness was uncomfortable. The lack of passion in the words was more embarrassing than if she had jumped up and taken hold of him tightly. She got up slowly and sat down again at the desk, fumbling with cards. He watched the flame at the tip of the red candle, and her plump fingers shuffling cards. Her leg moved under the dress and he looked up startled, but she was simply crossing her ankles.

  “I think I’ll go home all right,” he said.

  “You’re really not too reckless.”

  “Let’s not argue, Julie. Have a heart.”

  “All right, do you know I’m thinking of getting married?”

  “Not to the little guy Augustus, the guy with the violin?”

  “He’s a dear boy. He’ll be along any moment now. You should tell me when you intend to come here.”

  He was angry to think of her marrying the long-haired boy, chinless and pale-eyed, but was surprised to hear himself say: “Don’t marry that little guy, Julie.”

  “I’m going to.”

  He was sorry for himself. He stood behind her, looking at the white part in her black hair. For a moment he thought of trying to explain there was something about her he couldn’t afford to lose, but such words would suggest he took Augustus seriously. Instead he said: “I’ll break that little guy’s violin over his ear.”

  Someone rapped at the front door.

  “That’s Augustus,” she said pleasantly, without getting up. “Well—”

  “No, I got to go, Julie.”

  “Come up tomorrow night,” she said nervously.

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself, then, you big sweet-tempered boy.”

  He followed her to the door and passed Augustus coming in. Augustus bowed and said good evening very politely in a squeaky voice. He had two thick books under his arm. Harry grinned at him and Augustus stroked his cheek.

  Augustus usually made him feel good-humoured. Walking along the street he laughed to himself. He always thought of Augustus by way of the picture Julie had shown him, taken in winter, a coon-skin hat pulled down over his ears and a kind of dog-skin coat. “God help Augustus,” he thought, wondering what he was doing back in the room with Julie.

  He walked through Queen’s Park, walking very slowly. It was dark but there was a bright moon and the thick trunks of the tall trees were stark against the sky. Benches were in the shadows of the tree trunks, and in the dark he walked too close to one and heard a discreet cough. He turned on to the path again. A match was lit near a flower bed and low bushes along the main path, and he remembered he had sat on that bench with Grace Leonard the only time he had ever been alone with her. They were on the bench an hour and a half talking of trivial matters till nearly midnight. A policeman on a bicycle co
ming through the park had seen him light a cigarette and had come over to say that if they were respectable people they would go home at once, and leaning against his wheel, he had watched Grace suspiciously, as they moved away. He felt sad, thinking how Grace had gone away, and he half closed his eyes, walking in the shadow of a university building, to remember all the lines of her face that had become vague, but almost too beautiful, he was sure. He was walking on cement now by Gothic Hart House and, going down a short flight of steps, heard only the sound of his own footsteps, and had the uneasy, pleasant feeling of being alone. He began to think of good times he might have had with Grace. Her face, from one angle, was beautiful but at another, the features were a little too heavy. His feeling for her, now only a memory, had nothing whatever to do with Julie Roberts. He giggled to himself. Supposing he should grab Julie by the hips and simply lift her up, sending her sprawling on the couch, anything to disturb her confidence in herself, so he could measure her definitely. He followed the road south in the shadows, then watched the rays of white light from the searchlight in front of the parliament buildings, lighting up the white stone of the new wing. Out of the park, he got a streetcar going west. He got off at the corner near home. He was fairly happy, and even looked forward to seeing Vera and talking with her. He looked into the window of the Italian fruit-store near the corner, the light in the window shining on pyramids of oranges, plums and rosy apples. He went into the store and bought a bag of plums.

  5

  The Farrels came up next night at half-past eight. Vera respected Farrel because he was a professional man, a young lawyer with good prospects but making small money actually. Recently she had talked a good deal of a quarrel the Farrels were having over two dogs. It was rather a friendly quarrel, though sometimes it developed till they shouted loudly and were heard upstairs. Stan Farrel had an English bulldog, and his wife, a bad-tempered Pekinese. Stan paid a lot of money for his bitch. The two dogs quarrelled, so he tried to persuade his wife to get rid of the Pekinese, and when she refused, threatened to let his bitch tear up the little beast next time there was trouble. Stan was nasty to the Pekinese whenever possible, and once tried to coax Harry to take it away and drown it. Mrs. Farrel, hearing of it, insisted she would get even. The bitch was in heat and Stan kept it carefully in the backyard. One morning, after Stan had gone to work, Mrs. Farrel let the bitch out in the backyard. There was a litter of mongrel pups and Stan felt badly because he couldn’t quite explain it. He talked of getting rid of the bulldog, but decided to keep it and offered the pick of the litter to Harry, who sympathized, though he didn’t want a dog. Three nights ago the Trotters had been downstairs for some bridge, now the Farrels were coming up for a few talky easygoing hours. Mrs. Farrel and Vera, talking eagerly, went into the sunroom. Stan, slapping his hands, swaggered half the length of the room.