“Well, sweetie, this seems like a good time to say goodbye to Sunnybrook Farm,” said Billie, appearing in her smart little leather hat. “I’ll catch a cab at the bottom of the street; there are always lots down there. So clever of you to live downtown. By the way, Max sent you his love, and he’ll be in touch. Oh, is this for me? Thanks, doll. That reminds me, here’s a little thing I picked up for you – something nice and useless.” She thrust into my hands a small box labelled Nina Ricci and, on a waft of her own spicy scent, made an exit uncomplicated by any embraces.
Miserably I wondered why our afternoon had been such a total and disturbing failure. Knowing I was in the right about Santa Lucia did nothing to comfort me. Just the same, as I lifted out the perfume bottle to sniff its faint, sweet fragrance, I too began to laugh weakly. Sunnybrook Farm. My dear Billie. Let’s never really quarrel. Please, let’s never.
The kids dawdled listlessly over their supper, and I felt too fagged myself to urge them to eat. I had no appetite either. The cheesy smell of the casserole vaguely depressed me, for no reason that made any sense except that I associated it with Karen, Bonnie’s onetime roommate. Yes, that was it; the night I moved in to share their apartment, they were eating grilled-cheese sandwiches. There I stood at the door, loaded down with suitcases and typewriter, all wide-eyed and keen to begin my university education at last. I don’t know what I expected, exactly – a cloistered hush of young intellectuals deep in great thoughts or what – but it was rather a surprise to find the place full of people eating, smoking, arguing, and laughing.
“Come on in,” said Karen, with a wave of her cheese sandwich. “We’re just getting the term off to a good start. Dump your stuff in your room and come meet people.”
I did this very willingly, pausing only to smooth my hair briefly at the mirror. One swift glance around had already suggested to me that I should have spent more of Max’s clothes allowance on clothes, instead of saving up for a microscope. Not that anyone there was dressed up; but I’d been in Canada nearly a month by then – long enough to know the high price of those corduroy trousers, denim work-overalls, and casual blouses. It cost a lot of money to dress like the poor. Not to mention the fee for having one’s hair cut into layers or permed into a frizzled blonde curtain like Karen’s. When I edged shyly into the sitting-room, I was unhappily aware that my jeans were not the expensive pre-faded and tattered kind everybody else wore. Still, my new sneakers looked all right – or would when they got dirtier. At least I’d had the sense to get rid of my black lace-up oxfords. The standard school shoe all girls of my age wore in England were seen here only on old women with corns.
Bonnie thrust a can of beer into my hand and said buoyantly, “Happy days, Anne. Want something to eat? Hey, everybody, this is Anne Forrest, from London, England.”
“Is there any other London?” I wondered in my innocence. But there was no time to ask; Bonnie was rapidly reeling off names; faces were turning to me and people were saying “Hi,” to which I replied “Hi,” having already learned that “How do you do” was considered stuck-up, like the English accent I was trying to lose for the same reason.
“Well, what d’you think of Canada, eh?” asked a tall girl in tight imitation-leather trousers.
“Oh, it’s great. I mean literally. I can’t get over the huge size of everything … cars and motorways and all that. And these enormous high-rise buildings. Doesn’t it sometimes make you feel awfully dwarfed?”
“Not at all,” said the leather girl coolly, and I remembered too late that when Canadians ask what you think of their country, they don’t want an answer, they want a compliment.
“What courses you taking?” inquired a thin boy with a pipe that kept going out. He had dark hair and very blue eyes, but I hadn’t caught his name. Ross something, was it? “I’m in General Science. Heading for Botany; I’d like to take the honours course.”
“Ah. You’ll get old Prof. MacAvey, then. He’s really great, even if he does pinch girls’ asses. Can’t turn your back on him for a second, Karen says. Must liven up the lab a whole lot. We get no fun like that from the faculty at Osgoode Hall, believe me.” He winked at me in a friendly way and moved off, knitting his fingers through Karen’s.
Nobody else seemed to have any questions to ask me, and though I diffidently made a few approaches to various people, they always soon returned to their own group or their partner’s inchat, which was sometimes as baffling to me as a foreign language. Eventually I wandered along to the kitchen to look for a glass to drink my beer out of, but amid all the casual chaos of used crockery on the counters I could find nothing clean at all. The smell of grilled cheese made me vaguely hungry, and I opened the huge, humming fridge which was crammed with food; but just then Bonnie danced in, hand-linked to a handsome West Indian.
“Don’t bother with that leftover junk,” she said. “We’re sending out for Chinese. Here, dance with Charley; I’m going to the can.”
I did dance with Charley, it being easy and fun to copy his loose, happy gyrations. Later I danced with one or two others, including the leather girl, who, it suddenly occurred to me, might actually be a boy. Eventually the Chinese food arrived in a number of warm cardboard containers, and everybody sat on the floor or on the arms of chairs to eat. Conversations bubbled all around me, and I was happy to listen (in so far as I could follow it) to a long and vigorous argument about ESP and the occult generally.
“It may sound crazy to you,” Karen said, “but I know this girl got involved with a bunch of guys in one of the fraternities running séances, and one night she just stood up in the middle of it and started to scream and scream. They caught her running down St. George Street like some kind of crazy, and it was days before she came out of it. I mean, it can be freaky, that kind of thing; it scares me.”
“Aw, I know that kid; she was just having a bad trip.”
“No, you’re right, it can really blow your mind. One of the psych professors told a guy I know – you mess around with the subconscious and it can like trigger some kind of latent psychosis. No kidding, that chick spent a month after that locked up in Queen Street.”
“And couldn’t tell the difference from Vic College, I bet.”
There was laughter and several people began to talk at once. Just then a bat fluttered in through the open window and began to blunder clumsily against the walls and the ceiling. There was a general outcry from the girls. Various people flapped things at it to drive it out again, but these attempts only terrified it into swooping wildly around the room.
“Let me out of here,” shrieked Karen, clutching her perm.
“Don’t be dumb, they don’t get in your hair. That’s an old wives’ tale,” someone told her, but she disappeared, saying, “I believe it, I believe it.” Several other girls went out with her. A Japanese boy began to swat at the creature with a folded magazine.
“Oh, don’t, you’ll hurt it,” I protested. “Hold on a second – let it settle somewhere, and I’ll catch it.”
We waited a minute or two; then the bat lighted, clinging with its small claws to the top of the curtains. Having plucked off my shoes, I nipped up onto the sofa and with a vigorous swoop captured the beast. It struggled in my grasp, and its mouth stretched wide to let out a high, hissing little shriek of fear. Its agonized pulsing filled my hand. It tried to bite me with needle-sharp teeth.
“Look at that mean face, man,” somebody said, stepping back.
“No, they’re perfectly harmless. Better than that – they eat mosquitoes. Let me put it out quickly – I shouldn’t hold it like this, the tribe might reject it or something, for smelling of people.” One or two of them gave me an odd look at this, but nobody interfered when I leaned well out of the window and released the bat into the warm air that smelled of city dust and decaying leaves. It disappeared with a flick into the darkness. I wondered where it would go, and whether it would remember its invasion of another world; whether by some freak of taste it might have taken a fancy to
living in the light, and might try to come in again, welcome or no.
By then it was well after one in the morning, and people began to drift toward the door for home. Absently I returned any goodnights that came my way. Thinking about tomorrow’s nine-o’clock lecture in chemistry, and my pile of new textbooks, I hugged a delicious anticipation. Tomorrow the adventure would really start. The long, empty preamble of my childhood would be over at last.
When the three of us were left alone, I began to pick up some of the party débris, but they said, “Forget it, Anne; not your first night. Tomorrow we’ll work out a system, but tonight we’ll clean up. You go get some sleep.”
“Well, thanks … goodnight, then.”
But I was too wound up to sleep, even after unpacking all my books and other belongings. In the kitchen just down the hall, Bonnie and Karen clattered dishes and laughed. Outside in the sultry September air a late tram ground along its track; cars squealed at intersections; a TV movie blattered. The apartment was full of unfamiliar smells – fried rice, beer, toasted cheese, and a sweetish kind of smoke. I lay on my back and tried to doze, but the room seemed terribly hot, even with the window wide open. No wonder; hopping up, I discovered that the radiator was sizzling. The place was even hotter than the Don Mills apartment Max and Billie had just moved into. But she adored central heating, while I found it oppressive.
Suddenly I felt a qualm that could only be an absurd kind of homesickness. I wondered, not for the first time, why Max had been the first to suggest I find a room or share digs downtown instead of staying with them. “You won’t want to waste a couple of hours every day on buses,” he said. “Besides, it will be a hundred times more fun for you, being on your own,” added Billie. I agreed entirely with both of them, and yet … well, it was very late, and I was tired. Once more I tried to settle down, but the room was so unbearably stuffy that I finally got up and opened the door, hoping a little cooler air might find its way in. Back in bed, I turned on my side and curled up, only to find that the conversation of Karen and Bonnie in the kitchen was now too close for comfort. Especially since it was soon apparent they were talking about me.
“… bit of an oddball, for sure, eh?”
“Yeah. These Brits. I wonder whether it was a good idea after all.”
“I mean, that crazy braid. Somebody’s got to tell her, poor kid.”
“Charley told her he missed Trinidad, and she said, ‘How frightful for you.’ ”
“No – you’re kidding!” Under cover of their hilarious giggling, I closed the door quietly once more. Then, back in bed, I stared fiercely into the dark and made a number of resolutions. One was never to speak to either of them again. Another was to go at once to a hair-stylist and have my plait cut off, regardless of expense. Seconds later, of course, I reversed both decisions. This was much the nicest apartment I’d seen in the university area. Come to that, Karen and Bonnie were charmers, compared to some of the rock-jawed landladies I’d interviewed first. As for the hair, I would keep it just the way it was, and to hell with the whole lot of them.
But it was not so easy to accept the painful truth – that even in this country of aliens, I didn’t belong, and perhaps never would. I’d been so sure the lonely past was over, but it was not, and might never be. Like that stupid bat, I’d been liberated, but I might never be truly free; never really at home anywhere now. Two small, hot tears ran down my cheeks, and then I fell asleep.
Minutes later, as I scrubbed at the crusty remains of cheese in the casserole dish, my wedding ring caught painfully under its rolled edge. I gave it some four-letter advice, but instead of bringing relief, this only released a sudden, violent rage. Roughly drying my hands on my smock (which did not improve its charm), I tried to twist the gold band off. That ring no longer had the slightest relevance – wearing it was both tasteless and stupid. How could I ever have allowed myself to be lassoed into the thing in the first place? Now, though I tugged and swore, I couldn’t get it off. “I’ll send it to you in the mail, Edwina Graham, finger and all,” I thought vengefully. “Because if it hadn’t been for you …”
The word “pregnant” caused her face to bleach and seconds later flush to a dusky red.
“Oh, Ross,” she whimpered. Out came an initialled linen handkerchief with which she dabbed her eyes like someone cruelly and personally betrayed. “How … could you?”
“The usual way,” I almost said angrily, but bit my tongue. It was now my turn to sit in silent dejection and look at the carpet.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” she went on between dabs. “What a tragedy, Ross, just when you’re starting out at Fraser and Dawson’s … what a calamity. Your poor father, what ever would he have said?”
“Not much point wondering about that, is there, Mother? And please stop crying; that doesn’t help either.”
It seemed to buck her up to be bullied. She put the handkerchief away; but Ross began to pace up and down the room in a distraught sort of way, as if he might be the next to cry.
“Well, my boy,” she said after a pause, drawing up her large bosom like a defensive shield. “I suppose there’s only one … decent thing you can do, in the unfortunate circumstances. You’ll have to marry her.” The bland assumption that I was not there to be spoken to made me angrier than I’d ever been in my life before.
“Nobody has to do anything of the kind,” I said loudly.
“But Anne, what else can be done?” And her question was so well aimed, right at the centre of my vulnerability, where Billie had struck more openly, that I felt slightly sick.
“Nobody has to marry me,” I repeated fiercely, looking at Ross. But to my considerable surprise, a look of something like relief had come over his face.
“Anne, somebody might want to. Even insist.” He came and sat on the arm of my chair. Edwina at once averted her eyes as if witnessing an indecency. He didn’t touch me, but I could feel his legs trembling.
“It’s money that’s the chief problem,” he said, trying to sound mature and judicious; but all of us knew he was only waiting for her to settle that question too. “I could try to get a job for a year or two and finish my articles later, but –”
His mother fumbled out the handkerchief again. Money, after all, was just as tender an issue as morality, if not more so. “No, no, Ross; that’s quite out of the question. Your father – well, we did hope you’d wait till you were thirty to marry; that’s why Herbert left your inheritance in trust. But when it’s a question of your future like this, of course we’ll have to talk to the executor. Dear old Mr. Campbell I’m sure won’t raise any difficulties about making funds available now … enough, say, for the down payment on a house, and some kind of monthly living allowance.”
I could feel Ross trying to repress an attack of hiccups. He was subject to them when under stress. I sometimes wondered how he would manage in court. He still didn’t look at me or take my hand. My jaws ached from holding in tears.
“Well, that’s settled, then. I’ll phone Ian Campbell tomorrow.” Edwina put away the handkerchief once more.
“Yes; do that.” He looked as pale as his own ghost, but his voice was firm.
“Look, Mrs. Graham, I don’t want Ross to be pressured into –”
“Shut up, Anne.”
Edwina smoothed her bosom. “Well, I can’t say I’m delighted, with Ross just at the start of his career, but I suppose we must just make the best of it. After all, you’re not the first couple to … hm. I’ll get in touch with your … parents tomorrow, Anne, and we’ll arrange a very … quiet wedding as soon as possible. Luckily,” she added thoughtfully, “nearly everybody’s away for the summer just now.”
“Which will not prevent your friends from counting backwards the day I give birth,” I thought. “Not if your friends are anything like you.”
“I don’t see any need at all for marriage to come into this,” I remarked sulkily. Neither of them paid any attention to me. Edwina had now produced a number of sharp pencils and a block
of paper. It seemed to cheer them both up greatly to have things to write down and figures to add up. Under her direction, Ross trotted to and fro fetching things they seemed to think mattered, like insurance policies and a calendar. Both of them grew more and more chatty. Ross even laughed once. They appeared to have forgotten my existence – which was actually rather a relief to me.
“Now I think some time around the fifth. That leaves three Sundays to call the banns. The licence you can get right away; I think it’s fifty dollars.…”
I sat back in the armchair and drifted into a sort of half-doze. After all, it was a comfort to be in the hands of a woman as sure as Edwina that there was a Right Thing, and we were doing it. It was three years before I grew up enough to despise both of us for that.
After Cave Bears, we three dropped into sleep in our fireside nest of bedding. Hugh, full of baby Aspirin, breathed loudly through his mouth. Mao curled himself up behind my knees, purring. The day’s effort was over, and I gradually felt the approach of a slow, tidal peace. My fetus stretched drowsily in its water-bed. Together we listened sleepily to the muffled echoes of sound in an outer world – rumble of traffic, swish and gurgle of digestive tract, lubdub rhythm of heart-beat, hiss of burning wood. Pictures formed and melted behind my closed eyes. Seagulls. Ten-month-old Martha, her fat face rosy with sun under a little white hat, smacking a tidal pool with her toy shovel, to scatter its tiny crab population. Our Gaspé holiday.
Ross squatted beside a driftwood fire he’d built on a flat rock. Yams wrapped in foil roasted in the embers, and he was now building the fire up to a blaze before grilling the steaks. The wind off the dark-blue water tousled his hair. His nose was peeling with sunburn.
“I love you a hell of a lot,” I told him. His answering smile was shy. In his tattered denim shorts and checked shirt, he looked about six. I did wish beaches weren’t such hopeless, gritty places for making love, because this one was beautifully deserted. As it was, I would have to wait till we got back to the motel.
The Marriage Bed Page 12