The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan

by Callaghan, Morley; Atwood, Margaret;

  He had her read aloud to him while he leaned back in the big chair in the living room, his eyes closed, and if she slurred a word, or dropped a G, or sounded nasal he would throw out his arms and shout, “No, no, no,” and tap his diaphragm.

  “From here. From here, understand, Georgie?” It astonished her that he could get so excited and show such intensity and be so concerned. She was never to use slang, she was to speak slowly and with dignity. When he showed that he was growing proud of her she wanted to please him, and then it became good fun and she became proud of herself. Next year, he said, if they could get the money together he wanted her to go to the university.

  His gentle patient concern began to touch every part of her life. In that neighborhood she knew few boys, but sometimes a young man who came into the store would notice her grave blue eyes. Her fair hair was drawn back into a bun on her neck and she dressed rather primly and wore no makeup, but he would take another look at her eyes and her beautiful figure and ask her out for an evening. But she would frighten him off with her tone and her conversation, and then wonder why he didn’t come back again. Uncle Alec would be there to console her. “That’s all right, my dear. Never hold yourself cheap. Never be easy. Always be out of their reach, a little beyond them, and later on, when the cheap ones have passed through their hands, they’ll remember you with respect and come back.”

  He insisted that she write faithfully to her mother. She would take great pains with the letter and then read it to Uncle Alec, who would smile happily if she had expressed herself with distinction, and she began to believe they were both sharing a desire to impress her mother. Sometimes she would ask for money for a dress or a pair of shoes. Her mother would answer and send the money and say that they were not to worry about the board money; one of these days she would come for a quick visit and pay in full. The letter would be written in a breezy, careless style with little punctuation and a lot of exclamation marks and many commonplace phrases.

  Once, Uncle Alec, himself, answered one of these letters to reassure Georgie’s mother. He was not worrying about the money, he said. He came into Georgie’s bedroom to read his letter while she curled up on the bed, and she was grateful that in the way he wrote he showed no hostility whatever to her mother. The whole tone of his letter was dignified and respectful and Georgie loved him for his generosity and for realizing how fond she was of her mother.

  That night she asked, “What do you think Mother really does in television, Uncle Alec?”

  “Does? Why don’t you ask her?”

  “I have asked her. I ask her all the time.”

  “And what does she say?”

  “She says she works with directors and producers, but what does that mean?”

  “She’s having her life, Georgie, just as you’ll have yours. All lives are different, and they should be completely different, shouldn’t they?”

  One day they got a letter from her mother in which she said she was coming for two days to see Georgie. “Well now, imagine,” Aunt Marge said with a cynical smile. “I suppose she’s worried about owing us money.” But Uncle Alec took his time before saying anything. “Ten months since you’ve seen your mother, eh, Georgie?” he said finally. “Well, she won’t know you. You’ve come a long way. You’re quite a little lady,” and he smiled to himself.

  In the afternoon, two days later, Georgie’s mother telephoned from the hotel where she had registered. She knew they had no room for her in the apartment. She was calling, she said, before she came up to the shop, to warn them she was counting on taking them back to the hotel for dinner.

  Georgie put on her new dark-blue dress. It was a severely modest dress with a high neckline, but when she turned slowly under the close inspection of Aunt Marge and Uncle Alec, they told her that her mother wouldn’t know her. For an hour, she waited at the window. It started to rain. It was time to close the store, though two men still browsed around, and Georgie got excited and fearful, and then with the rain falling hard a taxi stopped and her mother, in a mauve-colored straw hat and a squirrel cape, got out waving cheerfully to the driver and came running across the pavement to where she waited at the open door. “Why, Georgie, you dear soul, bless you,” she cried, and they threw their arms around each other.

  As her mother swept into the store the two men who were talking to Uncle Alec couldn’t help turning to stare at her. It was her stride, her warm laugh sounding loud in the quiet store and her light careless elegant easy movements. She looked much younger than thirty-six and as she walked the length of the store, her arm around Georgie’s waist, Georgie was very proud of her. They stopped to shake hands with Uncle Alec. On the way upstairs, Georgie felt a glow come over her whole being, and she enjoyed it when Aunt Marge, who had on her best brown dress, took on an apologetic manner in her mother’s presence as if she felt inadequate.

  Uncle Alec finally came upstairs and Georgie sat by herself and listened while they talked. It was a very polite and gracious conversation, and Georgie loved it when her mother, looking over at her, smiled. But she noticed things about her mother that she wouldn’t have noticed before; she used a lot of slang and sometimes swore lightheartedly, just for emphasis, and she had a lazy indulgent smile that made profound conversation difficult.

  Her hair was lighter than it used to be. She wore too much makeup. These impressions might have disturbed her if Uncle Alec himself hadn’t made them seem unimportant. Her mother joked with him and laughed and listened, making what was said between them seem so sympathetically right and intimate that Uncle Alec, very reluctantly at first, yet surely, began to lose his superior aloofness. He began to make graceful speeches, he played up to her and once he laughed boisterously and warmly. When Aunt Marge became silent, Georgie smiled at her shyly.

  When they had taken a taxi to the hotel and had had a fine meal in the big dining room, Uncle Alec wanted to pay for the dinner, but Georgie’s mother reminded him gently that they were her guests. Everything seemed to be within her mother’s reach, Georgie thought. They went up to her room and there she sat down at the desk and wrote a check for five hundred dollars, the amount she owed for ten months’ board. “How do you like that, Aunt Marge?” Georgie wanted to say, but it wasn’t necessary to say it. Aunt Marge, her eyes shining with vast satisfaction, made a silly embarrassing speech, and Uncle Alec had to say quickly that the money didn’t mean anything to him, Georgie had become a valuable part of his life. He so plainly meant it that Georgie smiled at her mother and felt at peace with everybody.

  It was arranged that Georgie would come down to the hotel next day and have lunch with her mother, and then they would go shopping. On the way home, Uncle Alec said to her, “I was proud of you, Georgie. Nice manners. A girl of some cultivation. It was showing, my dear, and your mother saw it.” Lying in her bed that night, Georgie heard the murmur of voices in the other bedroom and she knew they were talking about her mother, and she wondered if they felt as good as she did about the evening. Her mother did everything wrong, she thought, and yet with her careless ease and her little laugh she could put a glow on the evening.

  At noontime next day, Uncle Alec said to her, “We were in the way last night, Georgie. Have a good talk with your mother. Open up with her. Tell her all you’ve done and learned. Be yourself. Show her what you are interested in. A lot of water has gone under the bridge, Georgie.”

  “I’ve got so much to talk about,” she said. “Last night I just didn’t seem to get started, did I?” When she got to her mother’s hotel room she intended to have this conversation but her mother was wearing a gray tailored suit and it looked very elegant and she began to admire it.

  “It is nice, isn’t it, Georgie? Oh, darling, we just don’t look right together, do we? That little dress you have on makes you look like a novice in a convent. Do you want to look like that? Why, you don’t look like my daughter at all. Are you sure Uncle Alec doesn’t want you to wear horn-rimmed glasses?”

  “My eyes are quite good, Moth
er.”

  “I’m kidding you, honey.”

  “Yes, I suppose you are.”

  “I mean, you don’t have to dress like Aunt Marge, Georgie. Come here and sit down and let me fix your hair.” As she sat down, feeling awkward, she began to like the feel of her mother’s hand running through her hair as she talked. “Why do they want to make such a sedate little lady out of you, Georgie? You’re actually quite pretty, darling. You know what I’m going to do after lunch? I’m going to buy you the silliest gay dress, and you see that you wear it, too.”

  At lunch Georgie tried to find out what her mother was doing in television, but nothing was made very clear to her. She was doing executive work for a Mr. Henderson, a producer. She got away from Mr. Henderson, and talked gaily about Toronto and how Georgie would love it, but something was troubling her. “Georgie, you don’t know how quickly time passes for a woman,” she said finally, her eyes almost sad as she smiled. Her beautiful, generous, smiling mouth and the loneliness in her eyes seemed to Georgie to bring them very close together. “In a few years I’ll be old, Georgie. That’s the way it is. A woman wakes up and realizes she has suddenly fallen to pieces. In a year you’ll be older and in a year I’ll be so much older, and then we’re going to live together, darling.” She made Georgie feel a little sad and yet poetic, as she had felt when Uncle Alec had carried her away with his reading of one of Keats’ poems.

  She began to talk enthusiastically about Uncle Alec. “He’s been everything to me, simply everything,” she said, and she told how he worked with her and wanted her to have a good mind and about his consideration and patience. It all poured out of her. She used words Uncle Alec would have liked her to use, she showed off and laughed and wanted her mother to see she had a fine discriminating mind. Her mother nodded, listening thoughtfully, her elbow on the table, her chin cupped in her hand.

  “Tell me something, Georgie,” she said. “Is Alec, well, is he ever critical of me?”

  “He wouldn’t say anything about you. Why, that’s beneath him. His mind is too fine and generous.”

  “Well, maybe you jumped right into his heart. Why not? You’re an angel. And who knows, maybe angels talk like you do, darling. Your mother is light-headed and silly and anything very deep goes in one ear and right out the other, but I’ll always be willing to listen to you. Come on and we’ll do some shopping.”

  They loafed around the big stores and even the loafing made Georgie feel luxurious. The little things they encountered in idle moments became so diverting and so amusing. They bought a good brown-leather purse for Aunt Marge and an imported English pipe and a pound of tobacco for Uncle Alec. “Now for the dress,” her mother said. “It must be something crazy, almost with a touch of high fashion.” For an hour Georgie tried on dresses. They bought one of fluffy organdie in very pale mauve that billowed out like foam. It had two thin shoulder straps.

  Her mother, who was leaving on the early train, came back to the shop with her to say goodbye to Uncle Alec and Aunt Marge. When they arrived with their parcels, Uncle Alec was just closing the store. He suggested they all have dinner, but Georgie’s mother said she would eat on the train. Aunt Marge came down and they had a splendid time giving the presents. Uncle Alec and Aunt Marge were both surprised and touched.

  “I’ve got half an hour, Georgie,” her mother said, looking at her wristwatch. “Why don’t you put on your dress and show it to them? Go on, dear. Hurry.”

  “Yes, I’ll hurry,” Georgie said, wanting to please her mother. She went upstairs and put on the dress, and when she came down she was trembling a little and didn’t know why. Her mother was sitting on the edge of Uncle Alec’s big desk, one leg crossed over the other, Uncle Alec was leaning against the poetry section of the bookcase, having lighted his new pipe, and Aunt Marge was holding her purse.

  “Why bless you, Georgie, bless you, darling, a thousand times,” her mother cried. “Now just look at her. Isn’t she a picture?”

  “It looks — it looks very expensive,” Aunt Marge said.

  “How do you like it, Uncle Alec?” Georgie asked eagerly.

  There was a surprise in his eyes as he looked at her steadily, then he put down his pipe. “Yes, that’s a very pretty dress,” he said quietly. But the expression on his face was so unfamiliar it seemed to her that he had trouble recognizing her, and so she didn’t know whether he liked the dress.

  “Georgie dear,” her mother said gravely, “you’re going to be quite a looker. Yes, sir, quite a gal.” She laughed happily and threw up her arms as if she had just come upon her own daughter. “Oh, I’d like to see you dancing around, Georgie. You’re so young and beautiful I want to go away seeing you dancing and singing. Put on some records. Where are those records, Alec?”

  “I’ll do it,” Georgie said, running to the little music cubicle. She felt that she and her mother were sharing some kind of new happiness. She rifled through the records. She came dancing out of the cubicle, dancing in slow circles, her eyes on her mother who suddenly laughed — it was such a warm rich pleased careless laugh — and got up and put her arm around her and began to dance with her. While her mother held her so lightly and led her so easily, Georgie felt all the stiffness and shyness leaving her limbs; she wanted to whirl as her mother hummed; she started to sing and her mother sang with her while they danced, and they kept it up till they were both out of breath. Then they started to laugh, not knowing why they laughed so gaily.

  “You’ve got a nice little voice there, Georgie,” her mother said when she could get her breath. “Do you sing much?”

  “Not much popular stuff. Uncle Alec likes me to sing the concert pieces.”

  “Oh, nuts, Alec. Let her relax and be charming. Surely you can see she was born to be charming.”

  “It’s quite true,” he said.

  “What time is it? If I don’t get a taxi right at the door I won’t have time to pick up my bag at the hotel and make the train.”

  “There’s a taxi stand just twenty feet away. Come on,” Uncle Alec said.

  “Oh, you’re all wonderful. Bless you, bless you,” she cried. “Why didn’t I plan to stay longer? Why are things always like this — I have to go just when I’m feeling so happy. It’s always like this.” She was half laughing, half tearful in the excitement of rushing away. At the door, she threw her arms around Georgie and kissed her. Alec was already out on the street beckoning to a taxi. Georgie, standing at the door, watched them shake hands and she liked seeing them with their hands out to each other, and she wanted to cry.

  “Isn’t she lovely?” she asked, when her uncle came in.

  But he didn’t answer. He was breathing hard as if he had been running, and he walked back to the desk and sat where her mother had sat. Now he was watching Georgie as she came toward him. His pale steady eyes and the heavy lines in his forehead worried her; he sighed and pondered and did not try to hide his disappointment.

  “The dress must have cost a penny,” Aunt Marge said. “Just what did it cost, Georgie?”

  “I think it was almost a hundred dollars.”

  “Did she say where she got the money?”

  “I didn’t ask her,” Georgie said, hardly listening to her aunt as she watched Uncle Alec, whose eyes now were hard and bitter when he stared at her.

  “What’s the matter, Uncle Alec?”

  Ignoring her, he said to his wife, “She looked just like her, didn’t she? So very much like her.”

  “She certainly did. Just suddenly — there they are — two peas in a pod.”

  “But what’s the matter?” Georgie asked. “Isn’t it all right if —”

  “You won’t be like her, do you hear?” Uncle Alec said harshly. “Singing with her, looking like her. She’s no good.” He tried to control himself but couldn’t. He blurted out fiercely, “You won’t be like her. That strumpet! Never anything else but a strumpet. She killed my brother. She broke his heart, running off with that cheap actor two years ago. Now it’s a new one.
And there’s money there for a while. Georgie, Georgie . . .” As he came toward her, reaching out for her, his hand trembled. “Take off that dress.” She screamed and ran up the stairs and pulled the dress off frantically and tossed it in the corner, and she knew Uncle Alec hated her mother.

  She lay on the bed and wanted to cry, but couldn’t; her loneliness frightened her. A little later she heard Uncle Alec and his wife come upstairs. She heard them sitting down for dinner, but a chair was pushed back, then Alec came along the hall. “Georgie,” he called and he opened her door. “Georgie,” he said, “I’m very sorry.” He sounded so ashamed and apologetic that she looked up at him. “You see, Georgie,” he said gently, “I shouldn’t have said what I did, but maybe it’s better that it was said, because nothing should be hidden between you and me. Later on you’ll forgive me. Come on. We’ll have dinner.”

  He sounded like himself now, calm and patient, and she had the habit of trying to please him, so she got up and went with him to the dinner table. They respected her silence and the fact that she couldn’t touch her food. Once she raised her head intending to tell Uncle Alec that she understood why he had made himself her teacher and had worked with her so patiently; it wasn’t just loving concern; he had wanted to make her into someone so different from her mother that she would feel completely separated from her whenever they were together.

  But she couldn’t tell it to him; the painful beating of her heart made it all too complicated. Instead she found herself saying gravely, “You’re wrong about my father. He loved her till the day he died because he couldn’t help loving her, no matter what happened, because she’s like she is, and maybe that’s what you have against her.” Uncle Alec’s hurt troubled eyes forced her to stop and she mumbled, “Excuse me,” and hurried back to her room.