The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan

by Callaghan, Morley; Atwood, Margaret;

  The sound of the phone ringing on the table beside him woke him up, and he grabbed it. “Hello, Harry,” the voice said. Suddenly he was wide awake and worried. It was Sweetman. “Have you seen the morning paper, Harry?”

  “No. What time is it?”

  “Around midnight. You won’t like the story, Harry. What in hell happened?”

  “What happened?” and then he started to curse Scotty.

  “I’m just over here at the Colony with my wife and some friends. If you’d like they can go on home and you run over here. I’d certainly like to hear your story.”

  “I’d certainly like to tell it,” he said, vehemently. “I’ll be there in twenty-five minutes.” When he put down the phone he stood in his bare feet for a few moments, smiling grimly. The enormous importance of those few words from a man who knew him. “I’d like to hear your story,” was wonderfully comforting to his pride.

  Outside it had stopped raining. On the short walk along Sherbrooke, he began to tell his story to Sweetman and grew wildly impatient. A taxi passed and he waved and jumped in and was at the Colony in two minutes. Most of the regular patrons knew him, and when he strode in brusquely, he didn’t even wonder if any of them had read the morning paper. “Hello, Harry, hello, Harry,” he heard the different voices calling to him, but he was looking for Sweetman. He saw him sitting at a little corner table by the window, wearing a jacket of the same cut and color as the one he, himself, had bought a month ago. “Sweetman must have liked that jacket of mine,” he thought, and he felt better.

  Sweetman was a slim and elegant cultivated Jew of forty who had gone to Oxford and who tried to preserve some of the English mannerisms; he wore his handkerchief in his sleeve, had a soft accent and got his clothes from a London tailor. Yet, somehow, he managed to sound like a remittance man. He had smooth, slightly sallow skin, a rather heavy British military mustache and a little black curling hair on the top of his head, and he played good tennis and golf. He had a handsome, hard, ambitious wife who wanted him to be a member of the Board of Governors at the university, and he kept giving them large donations without having any luck.

  “Sit down, Harry,” Sweetman said. “You wanted your rye, didn’t you, Harry?” and then he handed him the folded newspaper, and watched him while he read it, for as a businessman he felt involved himself and was worried.

  On page two was a simple factual report of the trial, with a quotation from Ouimet’s speech to the jury, and a quotation from the judge, expressing great sympathy for Scotty as he sentenced him so leniently. The name Harry Lane was mentioned only six times but it seemed to Harry to be all over the page, and his face began to burn and he scowled. “You see, Harry, it makes it sound as if you led that little bank manager right down the garden path,” Sweetman said. “It doesn’t sound like you at all. What in the world happened?”

  “I was framed,” Harry said, grimly, and he told about Scotty coming to his apartment and asking him for the sake of his wife and children not to mention the shares, and how Scotty had taken advantage of his friendship.

  Chatter and laughter coming from the other tables made him raise his voice a little, his blue eyes blazing, and yet he was apologetic that he had been taken in. “You’ve got to understand that Scotty had been a good man. Probably all his life. Then the itch suddenly got him. I was sorry for him. It’s terrible. All that integrity suddenly in ruins.”

  “It’s quite a story,” Sweetman said, reflecting. Then he took out his briar pipe, his pouch, and filled the bowl. “Put a little pressure on some of these nice fellows, and, well, there is such a thing as a gentleman, you know,” and he smiled. “Harry, it all sounds like you. You go around with your chin stuck out. Take it easy.” And he reached over and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “People soon forget a little unfavorable publicity.”

  “Oh, I can stand it.”

  “Water off a duck’s back, old boy.”

  “Just the same, Max old boy, I appreciate this.”

  “You’re a well-liked man, old boy.”

  “At least I hope I’ve got a few friends of my own.”

  “A well-liked man doesn’t have to do too much apologizing, Harry.” He lit his pipe; he took a few deep meditative puffs. “You’re indignant, of course. Just the same, if I were you, I wouldn’t start explaining the thing. Keep away from people for a few days. Let the important ones come to you, Harry. And they will. You’ve got a good story there. Glad I had the sense to call you,” and he got up.

  They went out together and stood on the sidewalk talking amiably until a taxi came along. “Can I give you a lift anywhere, Harry?” Sweetman asked. “Thanks, Max. I think I’d just as soon take a little walk.” “As you say, old boy,” Sweetman said, and he got into the taxi and Harry watched it pull away.

  He’s all right, he’s really all right, Harry thought, feeling ashamed of the amusement he used to get out of Sweetman’s affectations. He stood there pondering over the unexpected ease with which Sweetman had offered his faith in him; a man who had been a friend, an employer with whom he had never felt truly intimate; then he contrasted this faith and understanding of his nature with Mollie’s doubt and fear and it hurt him painfully. It was hard for him to believe that in their intimacy and desire there was no real knowledge of each other or that the deeper one went into knowledge of the other the less certainty there was. Why should Sweetman be more generous than she is? he thought.

  As he looked up the hill the life he had lived in the neighborhood seemed to be all around him, reassuring him. The trickling at the curb of the water from the melting snow flowing down the hill had a peaceful friendly sound. He looked at the rolled-up copy of the morning paper in his hand, then dropped it at the curb and watched it make a little dam in the slush. A pool formed around it, then the dammed-up water suddenly flowed over the paper.

  ✧ IV ✧

  In his heart he knew Mollie was waiting for him to phone; he knew the slap would torment her unless she believed it came from some wild struggle against his need of her and his need to be absolutely honest with her, and his shame that he hadn’t been. She would want him to need her more than any friend he had. That was like her. The next day, in his mind she had all her silken round firmness, but overnight she had lost her mystery for him and he didn’t need her at all.

  On the second day, at a quarter to five in the afternoon, his secretary came into his office and told him Mr. Sweetman wanted to see him. Sweetman was sitting at his desk, his head in both hands, reading the afternoon newspaper. It was an immense office. It had once been gloomily impressive but Mrs. Sweetman, who often came there, had redecorated it herself. The dark-oak paneling had been bleached, the ceiling done in pale green and the drapes were wine-colored with a thin gold pattern. On the wall behind the big mahogany desk was a painting of Mrs. Sweetman, looking very smooth, golden, intelligent and determined.

  “Have you seen this, Harry?” Sweetman said and he pushed the paper across the desk. “What is it, what’s up?” Harry said, sitting down. On the front page was the picture of Scotty Bowman. Scotty had killed himself in his jail cell. It said in the story that he was to have been taken away in the morning to begin his sentence. But last night he had cut his wrist with a razor blade and had lain down and covered himself with a blanket and bled to death. He had been convicted of fraud after letting Harry Lane have an unauthorized loan. There had been general sympathy for him but he had lost his job and his pension. He had a wife and two children.

  “God Almighty,” Harry whispered. His hand holding the paper began to tremble and he was ashen, and then was almost apologetic. “I knew — well, I knew the guy was tormented.”

  “My wife was downtown, saw the paper and phoned me,” Sweetman said uneasily. “This is a terrible thing, you know. The other day it didn’t worry me so much, but look how it’s snowballing.”

  “I know,” and he leaned back in the chair staring blankly at the shiny surface of the desk, and then he looked up, but all he could t
hink of was that he ought to have been nicer to Mrs. Sweetman who had counted on him getting her into the homes of those old families who remained grimly anti-Semitic.

  “Harry, old boy, I know this is an awful shock for you. Very poor show. Very poor show for a chap to flake out like that. Probably knew he couldn’t face his friends when he came out, couldn’t face you. I said I knew you didn’t take advantage of that man, didn’t I?”

  “It was decent of you to say so.”

  “Well, we know each other and all that kind of rot,” and he cleared his throat, fumbling for his pipe but he seemed to have forgotten where he had put it, so he leaned back in the chair and let his chin sink glumly on his chest. Neither one said anything for a long time. They seemed to be staring at the same point on the shiny desk and it held them raptly. Harry heard his own heart beating, then the loud ticking of the clock on the desk, then he became aware that Sweetman was rubbing the side of his nose and shifting around in the chair uncomfortably as he waited and yet dreaded to break the silence himself. “You’re in a poor frame of mind now, Harry,” he said uneasily. “Why don’t you go home and tomorrow—”

  “What do you think this is going to do, Max?”

  “I don’t know, Harry. You know the public. It’s your job to know the public. “

  “I do your public relations, Max. Are you thinking I might be an embarrassment?”

  “I don’t know, I really don’t,” he said awkwardly. “I know these things pass off. I said so.” But he drooped heavily in the chair. All his indecision and unhappiness was in his eyes and in the slump of his body.

  “What do you think I’d better do, Max?”

  “About what, Harry?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I know you’re a sensitive man, Harry. Right now, of course, I know you don’t want to appear in public places representing us or anybody,” and then half believing the Harry Lane he had known might be able to stand even this scandal he said hesitantly, “Or do you?”

  “That’s up to you, Max. “

  “Harry,” he said uneasily. “You know what I’d do? I’d take a two-month vacation. Yes, that’s it,” he added more confidently. “Take two months’ pay now. Go to Florida and let this stupid little bank manager be forgotten.” Again he waited, but the shock of Scotty’s death was still with Harry.

  Gradually a flush came on Harry’s face. “You know, Max,” he said angrily. “Nobody’s going to pin the disgrace of Scotty’s death on me. I’m not running away. I can stand this. You don’t think so. All right, have you thought of this? People are rather unpredictable and when they hear you thought it was good business to get rid of me till you saw whether you could afford to take me back — well, you know, loyalties among gentlemen are deeply respected.”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that, Harry. That’s damned unfair and you know it. I made the sensible suggestion. I’m not an insensitive man,” he muttered, but he was begging him with his eyes to go so he could sit with his head in his hands and wonder if everybody would say he had been no gentleman.

  “Well, I also am not an insensitive man,” Harry said, and he walked out and went to his own office, cleaned out his desk and looked around the office with his heart taking a sudden painful uneven beat; then he put on his overcoat and hat and got out before his secretary could come in and speak to him.

  Why all these blows to me? he wondered uneasily. In a few hours he had been asked to leave his job, and his faith in Mollie had gone. He had always had faith in his own life, yet now he wondered uneasily if somewhere he had pushed his luck too far and taken a little extra risk that was resented; yet all he had done was to try and interfere a little, out of compassion, with the course of justice and the punishment that should have come to Scotty.

  Then he remembered how ashamed Sweetman had looked and it suddenly cheered him up. “If I know the Sweetmans, they’ll be running after me in a week,” he thought. The shame of the thing had been too much for Scotty, the truth had got to him even in jail. All he had to defend himself with was the truth, he thought, but it could be a grimly satisfactory weapon.

  With his head high and his distinguished air he began to go up the hill and along Sherbrooke, and by the time he got to the Ritz he was acting beautifully. He called out cheerfully to the doorman, he stood talking with the hat-check girl, teasing her, and then he hurried down the stairs to the bar for his Manhattan.

  ✧ V ✧

  Trying stubbornly to get another job he talked to advertising executives and financial men on St. James Street. These men had always seemed to like him and he talked to them in his opulent manner without any sense of disgrace at all. Finally their uneasy embarrassment began to worry him. They didn’t mention Scotty, nor did he. All week he tried to cope with their apologetic reticence without mentioning Scotty. Then it seemed that these men were telling him they couldn’t feel free with him unless he discussed his case openly, so he began to say confidentially and quietly, “You know Scotty wanted some of those shares for himself. He knew me. Knew he’d get them. You see how he was working it? Do you see how it clears it all up? The irony of it is that he let people think I was taking advantage of him. My only mistake was in feeling sorry for the guy. But how could you help it?” It made them all the more uncomfortable. He couldn’t see he was offending their sense of justice by denouncing Scotty after he had had his day in court, with Scotty ruined and dead. But he felt the resentment of these businessmen. It troubled him and he felt compelled to explain the whole case to anyone who would listen. In the M.A.A. Club, where he had always come for his after-dinner drink, and where he had always felt at home among the college men in the paneled room with the tables and the little bar, he became aware that his friends were overly polite and uncomfortable when he sat down with them. To some he had talked about a job. When he sat down he tried to brush away their embarrassment with his old candid charm, saying, “You know the notion that I took advantage of Bowman is fantastic. The guy had me on a hook.” Only the barman listened to him with the sympathetic tolerance of all bartenders.

  One day at five he came downstairs to the Ritz bar, smiling and refusing, with a stubborn splendid courage, to be embarrassed, his cheeks tingling from the icy wind as he rubbed his hands together. “That’s the coldest corner in town out there,” he called cheerfully to the bartender. “I mean the windiest corner,” and he grinned at those who were at the bar, and he sat down beside his old friend Ted Ogilvie.

  “Didn’t see you at the fights last night, Ted,” he said.

  “Didn’t see you either, Harry.”

  “Johnny Bruno looked very good but he’ll never have a punch.”

  “Why does he need a punch when he’s one of Rosso’s boys? How do we know when they go into the tank for him?”

  “I don’t think the kid would believe anyone ever went into the tank for him. He’s a very honest boy,” and he hesitated. “Look Ted, what goes on? I talk to people. I tell them the facts about Scotty. I have to if I’m to get a job. What else can I do when the general impression is that I took advantage of the guy and broke his heart? I’m entitled to a little justice, you know. Yet people seem to be . . .well, half resentful. What is it?”

  “I don’t know, Harry,” Ted said slowly. He was a professionally unruffled man and his smile behind his tortoise-shell glasses meant nothing. He was feeling very cross. He didn’t get along with his wife, and that afternoon he had heard that she was asking his friends, “Don’t you notice a great change in Ted?” It was very effective. He had wondered why his friends were looking at him as if he were an alcoholic. It was all so obtuse. Now Harry sounded obtuse too. “Maybe it’s the fact that you’re here and Scotty’s six feet underground. That’s an advantage, isn’t it, in any league, Harry?”

  “But when the guy killed himself he really ran out on me, don’t you see?” and then he started to explain that Scotty was tormented; he wasn’t cut out to be a fraud. “But he was a coward about his trial. And he was a bigger coward to
die without clearing me.”

  “I don’t know, Harry,” Ted said, as he got up to go. “But with Scotty not here, as he was in court — well, who am I to say what people think? Take it easy, Harry. So long,” and Harry watched him resentfully as he stood at the door. Ted had put on his hat. It wasn’t the very light-gray hat he had given him. It was a brown felt hat. “Why isn’t he wearing that hat I gave him?” he thought uneasily.

  Then he turned to the man on the stool to the left, a gray-haired, gray-mustached man by the name of Wilf Tremblay, the personnel manager for one of the railroad companies, who called himself an economic adviser. Tremblay had been listening, and so had James, the bartender; they had been smiling at each other thoughtfully. “Well, these are the facts anyway, Tremblay,” Harry said.

  “Sure,” Tremblay said dryly. “But I’d like to hear what Bowman would say.”

  ✧ VI ✧

  For two days it snowed and in the railroad stations there were gaily dressed skiing parties entraining for the mountains, and automobiles with ski racks were always passing him on the street. Only a few weeks ago he had been wondering who would invite him to the Laurentians for skiing this year; only two months ago he had been putting off invitations from ambitious hostesses in big houses. Now he wasn’t being invited anywhere. Nor was he hearing from any of those people who had said they would keep him in mind for a decent job. But there was always Dorfman’s with its gleaming white tablecloths, polite waiters, and its warmth after the icy wind blowing down the hill.

  In Dorfman’s Harry had one very small advantage. Alfred Dorfman’s son, John, had been in his air squadron. When he lay dying in the hospital in England John had written some letters to his father about Harry’s kindness. So now, Alfred was Harry’s friend, and on his side no matter what he did.

  He came into Dorfman’s at the cocktail hour. He came in proudly as though he still had his good job and was bringing a little distinction to the place. The old crowd was there; Ogilvie, Haggerty, Eddie Adams the fight promoter, and even Mike Kon, the tailor; they were always there too in the evening after the dinner parties had gone home. But they had found out how to protect themselves if he tried to talk about Scotty Bowman.