The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan

by Callaghan, Morley; Atwood, Margaret;

  Laughing and joking they would brush him off and get away from him and he would show no resentment.

  That day Mollie was sitting with a lawyer friend named Jay Scott, who had been devoted to her for a long time. He had a calm intelligent face and a little gray in his thick black hair. When Harry passed their table she said quietly, “Hello, Harry.”

  “Oh, hello,” he said with a quick smile, as if a stranger had surprised him by speaking, and he sat down by himself in the chair by the window. A little flush, starting low on her neck, rose to her cheeks, then her whole face burned. Her friend was watching her as she tried to conceal her embarrassment, and couldn’t; she couldn’t get used to being slighted. She had known Harry, coming in, would rebuff her. The others, the old crowd, watching, knew he had deliberately humiliated her. It didn’t help his case at all with them, and she was aware of this too. Today at least she had had an excuse for not coming there. It was the day in the month when her father and mother came to her place for dinner, yet she had had to come, waiting, wearing the dress, the hat, the little touch of perfume Harry liked, yet knowing she would suffer when he passed her by.

  “Why doesn’t old Harry go to Europe or South America?” Jay Scott asked idly.

  “Because he hasn’t got the sense. Because he’s too pigheaded,” she said, contemptuously, and she looked over at Harry sitting in lonely dignity. “He’ll sit there,” she said scornfully, “till someone sits down with him, then he’ll work his way round to explaining what a coward Scotty Bowman was from the beginning.”

  Still watching Harry, she tried to control her resentment. Alone and indifferent to her presence he waited for someone to sit down and talk to him; somehow it made her remember the slap on the face he had given her and her mouth tightened and her eyes hardened. It’s just as important to him to come here and try and humiliate me, she thought, as it is for him to go on talking about Scotty’s cowardice, and she wondered if his twisted pride had made him hate her because everything had turned out as she had predicted, only more cruelly for him.

  “I have to run, Jay,” she said, her hand going out to his arm. “Dinner with my people, you know. No, you stay here. I’m late.” She stood up in full view of Harry as Jay helped her with her coat, then hurrying out with a pleasant bright smile for everyone who nodded to her, she believed Harry was following her with his eyes.

  Outside, the cold wind hit her flushed face as she ran toward a taxi, worrying now about her father and mother getting to the apartment before she did and waiting to ask what had delayed her. It put her into a very bad temper. At her place she ran up the stairs, hung up her coat and went into the kitchen. For these monthly dinners she had a caterer provide a maid who cooked the dinner and waited on table. Fussing around in the kitchen she scolded the maid for having put the rolls in the oven too soon. She tasted the soup. She scolded the maid again for having forgotten to warm the plates. But when she heard her father and mother coming up the stairs she rushed to the door, looking untroubled and happy. “Hello, hello,” she called cheerfully. Her mother in a mink coat, three years out of style, was leading the way, her thin nervous face with the lonely eyes flushed from the climbing, pride and affection in her smile, and behind her was the judge in his black Homburg hat and dark-blue double-breasted coat, and clipped gray mustache, his big nose looking bigger because it was red from the cold. He had never been a brilliant lawyer, but he had a remarkable sense of responsibility and it had got into his manner. She fluttered around them taking their coats and chattering. She brought them a drink. “You’ve got everything so nice, everything so nice,” her mother said, sipping her Scotch and soda. The judge was in a jovial mood. Last night he had made a speech to an educational association on the failure of the schools to teach history properly. “I really think I said some good things,” he said. “Remember how I used to drum your history into you, Mollie?” “That’s a fact, Mollie,” her mother said, her long thin hand with the big diamond ring going out to her husband’s arm. That’s my own gesture, Mollie thought, remembering how she had often turned to Harry, her hand going out to his arm. Then the conversation, intimate, easy, lazy and dull, with dinner finished, began to get on her nerves. She said idly, “I saw Harry Lane today.”

  “You did?” her father asked. “Well, there’s a man who must be bent on his own destruction. I hear he’s going around town telling the wildest cock-and-bull stories about that dead bank manager framing him.”

  “If you saw Harry Lane,” her mother said, “I hope you didn’t let him work on your sympathy.”

  “I said I saw him. I wasn’t talking to him.”

  “You’re well rid of that young man, my dear.”

  “We shouldn’t be surprised that he turned out to be a bit of a bounder,” her father said gravely. “I used to be uneasy about his father. Those grandiose schemes of his. Those companies he floated and the money he threw around. He was an unstabilizing influence. It’s the promoter’s temperament and I distrust it.”

  “And his mother was a bit showy too, don’t you think, James?”

  “A good-looking woman, but yes,” the judge said, meditating. “Showy. That’s a good homely word for it.”

  “How was she showy?” Mollie asked, a little edge in her voice.

  “Well, take the matter of the decoration of a house, or clothes one wears. People of real taste like quiet soft colors, neutral shades, don’t they? Nothing about her was ever subdued, was it?”

  “What has that to do with Harry now?”

  “Your mother is merely saying, Mollie, that these little things in a family shape a boy’s attitude to life.”

  “I don’t believe it. Oh, it’s absurd,” Mollie said vehemently. “Let’s drop the matter.” Smiling indulgently her father said, “I’d be glad to.” But now, in her own mind, she couldn’t, feeling that she and her own family had been put in a light that mocked her own unhappiness. They were at home with her, she had always been at ease in the family silences, at ease, too, with the sudden comfortable opinions, but now she seemed to have drawn away. All her life her father had been kind and gentle with her, but afraid to show any warm affection, and the orderliness of his thinking even now, sitting there gossiping, began to irritate her. She’d always admired her mother’s nervous energy, and her active social life, but now, watching the changing expressions on her sensible face, she was troubled by the loneliness in her eyes, some untouched secret in her heart. She felt disloyal, then full of affection for them. Finally her mother yawned, then laughed; the judge said he had to sit on the bench in the morning and he always liked to feel fresh, and she got them their coats and kissed them and they left.

  Feeling upset she stood by the door, frowning; then sighing, she went into her own bedroom and kicked off her shoes. She looked around for her slippers, then jerked at the clothes-closet door. It swung back sharply against her big toe. The pain made her limp around on one stockinged foot, tears in her eyes. “Oh, damn you, Harry Lane,” she said, and suddenly and savagely she kicked at the door, then moaned with the pain. Crying softly she limped over to the bed and held her foot in both hands.

  When she got into bed she lay listening for sounds on the street, listening really for the sound of the front door opening, then Harry’s step on the stairs; she would let him in, then get back into bed and he would sit on the bed and tell her that he had felt lonely in Dorfman’s watching her leave without him and as the hours had passed he had realized that it was her love for him that had prompted her to try to accept the reality of his disgrace while still needing him. He seemed to be there in the dark, sitting on the bed beside her while they talked intelligently. She told him that she knew his careless impulsive wildly optimistic nature had got the better of him in dealing with Scotty. Agreeing, he told her he hadn’t realized how he had been leading Scotty on; he had felt so sure of the huge profit that he had thought nothing of letting Scotty feel he was entitled to some of the shares. Oh, Harry, you have that extravagant nature, all your plea
sures, your kisses are extravagant. Well, they are. She heard herself say these things, she heard him answer, then she began to toss and turn in the bed with the ache in her heart, her body warm and open to him as never before, if he could only be there.

  The most extravagant thing of all is his foolish courage in trying to confront people without shame, she thought, and then she sat up suddenly as though hearing him crying out, “I’m a fool, stop me from going on like this.” It was so real she turned on the light and got out of bed very worried, and walked into the other room in her nightdress, still limping a little, the nightdress falling off one shoulder, and she looked ardent and shameless. That side of her nature that Harry had called flighty, which had spoiled her evening with her parents and made her feel like a stranger to them, was out of hand now and with all her heart she wanted to get dressed in a hurry and go out and find Harry and tell him she believed in the goodness of his nature; all the facts were unimportant and should never have counted with her. Going over to the window she looked out. It had started to snow again. The wind drove hard sleet against the windowpane. Suddenly she shivered and there were little goose pimples on her bare shoulders, and she began to rub them. The draught from the window, chilling her, seemed to get into her thoughts and calm her and touch her common sense, that secret steady side of her, which gave her all her pride, and she felt herself drawing back in anguish from the shame of going after someone who had rejected her. Whether she was there in her nightdress, or in her fur coat on the street, he didn’t want her, she thought. Her face, her hair, the shape of her, her voice, her laugh meant nothing to him; he had rejected everything she was; her honesty, her breeding, her intelligence, her people, and he tried to make this humiliatingly clear every time she spoke to him. Then her fierce pride suddenly revolted. “Oh, you fool, Harry,” she whispered fiercely. “Whatever there’s left of you to ruin you’ll do it, and I won’t mind. I won’t mind at all. It’s you who’ll get really slapped.” The sleet drove hard at the window but she kept looking out, her firm jaw set and her eyes angry, wondering where he was at that hour.

  ✧ VII ✧

  He was in the Press Club in the hotel, sitting by himself at a corner table instead of standing at the bar with old newspaper friends as he used to do. Engrossed in his news magazine he paid no attention to the others, yet secretly he waited for a newspaperman to come over out of curiosity and get interested in his story; a newspaperman, he had told himself, would be the best of advocates. But they left him alone, and he hardly touched his drink. He was afraid if he started drinking he would go to the bar and start bothering someone with the truth and touch that vague resentment that so exasperated him. He wanted someone else to mention Scotty, the interest to come from someone else, and he looked over at the bar and put down his magazine, wondering at the powerful and baffling advantage Scotty had over him. Then he concentrated on Scotty, not as he had been in the courtroom, taking advantage of him ruthlessly, but as he had been a few months ago, smiling warmly with his air of fine integrity. That was it; he was up against Scotty’s monumental reputation for integrity. Again and again the word integrity had come up in the courtroom, but always about Scotty who had built it up as fundamental public asset with great prudence. Until now he had never wondered if anyone had even thought of him as having integrity, and again he would look over at the bar where the newspapermen talked noisily and forgot that his own integrity had been a private thing of feeling and imagination. The truth seemed to be that he had nothing to put against Scotty’s overpowering business reputation; it didn’t matter that he, himself, had never cheated anybody and didn’t lie. The fact was that no one had ever called him prudent; he was careless with money and lived from day to day like a lily of the field. Everything that was good in his nature suddenly seemed to be bad and he wondered if he had all the qualities that could corrupt a solid prudent man. Suddenly he felt self-conscious sitting alone and got up and went out, and walked east against the wind, his head down, and his collar up. It was snowing, the wind was damp and raw, the snow was wet and turning to heavy sleet.

  A priest was coming toward him, the wind flopping his black coat and black soutane around his legs, his nose a little pinched and blue from the cold. He smiled faintly at the priest. It was a city of churches and monasteries and ringing bells, and there were hundreds of priests on the streets. He had called them the Black Hawks and had never bothered smiling at them. Yet a priest on the street reminded him that there was always someone who would regard it as a sacred obligation to listen to him and see the justice of his case. In a confessional a priest would believe every word he said and give him absolution. But he didn’t want to be forgiven; he wanted to be told he deserved a little justice.

  He turned the corner to go into the Tahiti Inn, a smoke-filled small place with a gleaming bar. He sat beside a girl called Annie Laurie. He had often seen her around and sometimes he had talked to her. She was a dark soft-eyed girl with golden skin, a gentle manner, and she had slim legs, good shoulders and large breasts, and looked as if she took a size twelve from the hips down and a sixteen from the waist up. She never wore a hat. Sometimes she worked and sometimes she didn’t. She fell in love and men fell briefly in love with her. She followed her heart, though she was shrewd and expensive. She had no reputation and it didn’t worry her at all, for everyone conceded she was a very unlucky girl. A boy she had been engaged to had been killed in a motorcycle accident; the man she finally married, a naval officer, had gone down with his ship in the war. She was always there in the well-known places and often someone from out of town was introduced to her and fell in love with her, but was afraid to stay with her too long because of the jinx on her.

  Leaning close to him, her hand on his arm, she said suddenly, “Harry, I used to go into Scotty’s bank. When I had any money I kept it there. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to Scotty, and you know, Harry, I never could see you letting him down.”

  “You couldn’t?” he said, startled, then smiling suspiciously. “You don’t know me any better than you knew Scotty.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said calmly. “I know something about men. Everybody liked Scotty. He had that smiling straightforward businessman’s air. But who do you know who ever could say what went on behind those steady blue eyes of his? Not me. Never. Oh, we used to laugh and kid each other. But, as a matter of fact, I don’t think Scotty believed in getting himself into a position where he’d be the one left standing on the barricades. On the other hand,” she said smiling, “I knew a lot about you the first time I talked to you. Tell me what really happened, will you?”

  “You’re sure you want to know?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He told her the whole story, and when he had finished, the belief in her eyes and the way she leaned over and kissed him gently, upset him. He was surprised. In his gratitude he could not speak for a while. He had come upon her too quickly and easily. He wanted to go on sitting there beside her, then he grew afraid someone would come in and take her away from him, so he asked her where she lived and if he could go home with her. “Sure. Come on,” she said.

  Outside they couldn’t get a taxi. There was a hard driving sleet, the taxis were all moving slowly. It was bitter cold, and they shuffled on the corner, their heads buried in their coat collars. “We might as well walk,” she said. “It’s only ten minutes away as the crow flies. The only trouble is a crow couldn’t fly in this weather. Why don’t we all live in Cuba?” “And play the tuba,” he said laughing, as they started along Dorchester past the old limestone houses and along by the board fences where there was only a narrow path through the snow. She led the way, her head down against the wind, and he followed five feet behind, and neither could hear half the other said, their words coming from their mouths buried in their collars, carried away on the wind.

  She had a small ground-floor apartment, a very clean place in the new building opposite the monastery. At first he felt a little shy with her and very respectful, waiting for h
er to mention Scotty Bowman again, and then he saw it wasn’t necessary. For her the whole matter had been settled, and he smiled, the look in his eyes making her wonder; then she said she was going to make some spaghetti. Following her around the little kitchen he got in her way till they sat down together. She ate with a wonderful appetite. She was bright and intelligent and she didn’t try to be at all seductive. “I’m really very refined, you know, Harry,” she said grandly. “My father was a school superintendent, and I spent two years in a convent.” While they were talking and laughing the phone rang three times and she answered it impatiently and returned to him grumbling. Suddenly he became aware that he was very happy sitting with her in her kitchen.

  “I like being here with you,” he said, smiling.

  “I always admired you, Harry, so I’m really the lucky one.”

  “Lucky? I thought you were supposed to be unlucky.”

  “I am, but I make the best of it now. It’s easy too, when you get the hang of it. You just don’t care.”

  “But you look happy, Annie Laurie.”

  “Why not? I’ve been happy enough since I stopped using my head. I play strictly by ear now. All the trouble comes for people who are bent on using their heads. They look for angels in people, they always expect people to be better than they are and they have their little schemes. Not me, I don’t care. But when there’s any good in anybody, don’t worry, I can feel it.”

  “You’re wonderful.”

  “No, I’m just me, now. Let’s go in and listen to a little music.”

  She sat in the big soft chair by the steaming rad and it got late and he kept trying to entertain her so he wouldn’t have to go home. Finally she yawned and laughed and curled herself up in the chair. With her dress slipping up over her knee, she fell asleep, her mouth open a little and her chest rising and falling. She had a pretty mouth. Then her shoe, which she had undone, fell off her foot, but she didn’t waken. Picking up the shoe he went over and stood beside her, looking at her hand hanging near the floor. For the first time in a month he had been with someone who made him feel he was himself and nothing in him was spoiled, so he looked at her for a long time. He didn’t want to go home. But he kissed her gently and went out without waking her.