Clara Callan

by Richard B. Wright

  When we came out into the warm grey afternoon, I was afraid I would miss the train, but I didn’t. Frank had studied the schedule and knew exactly when it would arrive. We were there in plenty of time and by then it had started to rain. In the car he kissed me many times and I felt a little flushed and breathless and my tooth (damnable tooth) was beginning to throb again. I watched the rain beating on the platform while Frank embraced me and called me his darling. “Oh, my darling Clara,” he said. “I am so glad I’ve met you.”

  I don’t know what to make of it all. Should I try to make anything of it? Frank is a married man with a family. Yet I feel so wonderfully happy and reckless with my life at the moment. Yes, it is reckless of me. I know that, and all the way home as I looked out the train window at the rain slanting across the freshly seeded fields, I thought about my recklessness. I won’t see Frank next weekend because the family opens up the cottage on Victoria Day weekend. It’s up in Muskoka and it’s a family tradition and so he can’t possibly get out of it. What shall I do next Saturday?

  305 King Street East

  Toronto

  My dear Clara,

  How wonderful it was being with you last Saturday! And how I miss you now as I sit in my office. Everyone has left and now and then I get up and stand by the window. How I wish I could just get in my car and drive up to see you! It’s such a beautiful evening and I just heard the bells from the Anglican cathedral down the street. This has all made me feel so lonely for you, Clara. Do you miss me too a little bit?

  Wasn’t last Saturday fun? Going to the movies like that with all those children. I wonder what people I know would think of such a day. Not much, I imagine, and yet I so thoroughly enjoyed it. What I especially liked, however, was our walk by that little stream and the smell of lilacs and your hand in mine. And our kisses at the Uxbridge railway station. Let me tell you, my dear, that you have made a lonely man very happy, and I do look forward so much to seeing you again. You are quite a wonderful woman and you don’t even realize it, and I want to shower your face with kisses and hold you close to my heart. I don’t care if that sounds corny, it’s how I feel and you must believe it. I am so glad I found the courage to speak to you that day outside Loew’s. Of course, I know how complicated all this can be, but surely it’s worth it. Don’t you think it will be worth this bit of happiness that has come into our lives?

  Well, I must be getting on home soon, and so I had better close. I shall miss you this coming weekend, but as I told you, it just can’t be helped. We’ve been opening up the cottages on Victoria Day weekend since I was a very small child, believe it or not. There are now actually three cottages on the property, my brothers and I and our families each have one (I was left my parents’ — the original). So there will be a lot of people up there. We are a kind of clan and there will be a good deal of talking and drinking as we open up our summer places. By Monday night, we will have had enough of one another and some of us probably won’t be talking to others for a while. It’s a tribal weekend and can’t be avoided. But please remember that I shall be thinking of you while I am up there. Can we meet at Uxbridge station again on the twenty-ninth? We’ll go for another drive and perhaps try another town. Please write me here at the office and mark your letter personal. I wish you would think about having a telephone installed. Would it not be much simpler to pick up a telephone and talk to each other? But never mind that now. Do please think of me and write.

  Fondly, Frank

  Saturday, May 22 (3:00 a.m.)

  Awakened again by this cursed tooth. Three o’clock! By now a familiar hour. A dead hour. The hour of the dead. About ten years ago the band at the skating rink used to play a pretty little song on Saturday nights. “It’s three o’clock in the morning.” A lover’s song, lamenting the end of an evening together. But three o’clock in the morning is also a time for death. I once read in a magazine that more people die at three o’clock in the morning than at any other time. In hospital wards and cottage bedrooms, old men and women are now clutching rosary beads and praying for deliverance. According to that magazine, it has something to do with the blood pressure sinking in the middle of the night and the body’s defences surrendering. But perhaps it is just the sheer bleakness of the hour which dismays the spirit and discourages the sick. One often awakens and hears across the fence that old Mrs. Somebody “passed away in the night.”

  Whitfield, Ontario

  Sunday, May 23, 1937

  Dear Frank,

  I am writing this on my veranda. It is just after two o’clock on a perfectly lovely spring afternoon, and I am wondering what you are doing at this very moment. Are you out on your lake in a canoe (please be careful), or are you surrounded by family and relatives after lunch? Cold chicken and potato salad? By two o’clock the meal is over and the women are cleaning up. You and your brothers are smoking out on a lawn overlooking the lake, sitting in those uncomfortable chairs that have been in the boathouse all winter. The children have dusted them; it was one of their chores this weekend. You and your brothers are making plans for the summer. You are listening as your brothers talk, but not really listening because you are thinking of me. Isn’t it foolish of me to imagine that you might be? Oh, what do I know about your cottage weekends anyway?

  I only know that I miss you here and now. This very minute. As I sit on my veranda and listen to the leaves stirring. Watch the sunlight spilling across the grass, hear an automobile clattering by raising dust. What I wouldn’t give to see you drive up right now and take me away to some town where we could walk along the streets arm in arm. Go into the Chinese restaurant for a cup of tea. No one would know us. We would be just another couple passing through their town. We could stroll by the river (my little town has a river), and lean against the railing of the bridge and look down at the water passing beneath us. We could tell one another what we like to do best on rainy afternoons or winter nights.

  Oh, Frank, I am not at all certain whether I am happy or miserable by all that’s happened in the past six weeks. It was six weeks ago yesterday when we met. I don’t expect you will remember that. I have the notion that men don’t pay much attention to such things, or do they? I don’t know much about men, as I’m sure you have gathered by now. So am I happy or miserable? Both, I suppose. It’s an impossible arrangement as you well know, and yet I am glad I am in the middle of it. At least I think I’m glad. I will see you next Saturday, won’t I? Please don’t disappoint me by saying that you won’t be there. By writing on company stationery to tell me that upon sober reflection, after a weekend at the cottage, surrounded by family and friends, etc., etc., you have decided that this is all too complicated and a terrible mistake. I am sure it is, but perhaps we have to make terrible mistakes to truly live. There, I have split an infinitive. See what you have made me do. A schoolteacher splitting an infinitive! Let me say again how much I miss you on this perfect afternoon. This lovely, lovely afternoon. Please be at the train station next Saturday.

  Fondly, Clara

  Sunday, May 23

  Wrote Frank, but it is a foolish letter. Too overwrought. Too presumptuous. I sound like a lovesick schoolgirl. I won’t mail it. Marion came by as I was writing. She looks much better than she did last winter and seems her cheerful self again. Went on and on about how she and her aunt enjoyed Nora’s program and could I possibly get an autographed picture of Nora for her aunt? Listening to Marion, I wondered if she ever had sexual feelings. She surely must have had. It’s a pity she has never met a man. Under those severely cut dark bangs, her face is quite lovely. Limpid brown eyes and beautiful skin that darkens a little each summer. I have often wondered if she didn’t have some Mediterranean or Celtic blood in her. It is her lameness though that has kept them away and she has resigned herself to this. After she left, I wrote Nora.

  Whitfield, Ontario

  Sunday, May 23, 1937

  Dear Nora,

  It’s probably time that I dropped you a note. It’s a perfectly lovely Sunday aft
ernoon and I’m writing this on the veranda. Marion Webb has just left after her “little visit.” Poor Marion! She is just the same as you probably remember her. Older, of course, like the rest of us, with a touch of grey in her hair now. Still in love with Rudy Vallee and one of your biggest fans, as I’m sure you gathered last Christmas. Marion virtually lives in your mythical Meadowvale. “Do you think Alice will really marry Dr. Harper? Oh, I hope so, Clara, but I keep thinking something will come along to ruin it. They seem made for one another. He’s such a nice man. And a doctor too. But do you know what? I think Effie is jealous of Alice. I wouldn’t put anything past Effie.”

  You may tell Evelyn, for me, that she is a sorceress bewitching the women of America (and Canada) with these tales of thwarted love and mysterious happenings.

  How are you and your announcer getting on these days? Is there any chance that he will leave his wife (speaking of “real-life dramas”), or is it all hopeless? Or does it matter? I suppose in the circumstances, you just carry on from day to day. In that sense, you are lucky to live in a place like New York. You can imagine the fuss there would be in this village if I had a lover! Yet I sometimes think it would be bracing to shock them all with some kind of amorous adventure. Many here, of course, believe that my only adventures are in my head. But we probably all need someone in our lives, don’t we? It’s easy to grow stale, become mere creatures with undernourished hearts. They say that love nourishes the heart. Well, I am going on, aren’t I? It must be this spring weather. You have to admit that this has been a glorious spring. I just hope that you and Mr. Cunningham are happy. Maybe one day I too will find someone. You never know. Do take care of yourself.

  Clara

  P.S. Have you and Evelyn decided on a firm date for your visit this summer en route to the quintuplets?

  Tuesday, May 25

  Milton went off to Toronto to attend a conference, and so I had to deal with the senior forms as well as my own. I set various tasks but some of the girls (Jean Patterson and company) were disruptive. A good deal of whispering and note passing, most of it concerning Ella Myles who sits by herself at the back of the Senior Fourth row. She used to be right in front of me when I taught her. It was clear that Patterson and her friends were making fun of the girl, and dear God, it isn’t hard to ridicule her. Ella now smears her mouth with lip rouge and wears a horrible pink sweater that shows her breasts. How can her mother dress her like this? Thin bare legs in soiled ankle socks. She even wears cheap perfume. She looks like a little tart, and the other girls kept glancing back at her and whispering. It got on my nerves. Then, just before lunch, Ella had had enough and swore at them. Uttered that ugly word right there in the classroom. Even the boys were startled. I had to say something, and so I told her to stay after school. But then she hardly listened to me. Slumped in the desk she stared out the window while I talked. I told her this was her entrance year and she was clever enough to do well. She could go on to the collegiate in Linden and get a job and make something of herself. Mere words in the wind. After she left, I stood at the window and watched her saunter across the schoolyard towards Martin Kray who was leaning against a tree smoking a cigarette. Watched him take her hand, a clumsy gallant, and off they walked together. Soon they will be down along the township road, looking for a meadow to lie in, hoping the rain will hold off for a few hours. It left me a little heartsick, and then I remembered that it was two years ago on this date that the tramp raped me. I hadn’t thought of him for weeks, but now he is here again, poisoning my day.

  305 King Street East

  Toronto, Ontario

  Tuesday

  Dearest Clara,

  I am a little disappointed in you, my dear. I thought there might be a letter waiting for me this morning. I asked Miss Haines to check both deliveries carefully, but nothing. Ah well! Perhaps you had other things to do over the weekend, and in any case, I forgive you. My dear, I have missed you so much this past week. I have been thinking about you all the time. Yes, even up at the cottage while everything and everybody buzzed around me, I was thinking of you.

  I can hardly wait until Saturday to see you. It’s just a few dozen hours away. That is how I am looking at it and that way it doesn’t seem so long. I hope this reaches you by Friday, so you can see how very much I miss you. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to have a telephone installed? I am thinking of how grand it would be to pick up the telephone and hear your voice. I hope you’ll think about it. Till Saturday then.

  Fondly, Frank

  Wednesday, May 26

  I have finally made arrangements with a Dr. Watts in Linden. Mrs. Bryden gave me his name and says he is reliable and inexpensive. I am to see him next Wednesday at five o’clock and that time will work well because Mr. Bryden drives to Linden every Wednesday for his service club supper and I can go along with him. What a mistake I made in selling Father’s car! I could have learned how to operate it, and had much more freedom of movement. It will be such a relief to have these teeth fixed, but I hope he doesn’t have to pull any. I don’t think I could bear that.

  Sunday, May 30

  Frank comes from an Irish Catholic family and so does his wife. I was interested in her “problems,” but Frank was reluctant to talk about them except to say that they no longer love one another; they merely “share a house.” Then he said, “We no longer sleep together, if you know what I mean.” Yes, he means they no longer have relations, though I didn’t say so. Poor Edith Quinlan. And now I am seeing her husband. I am “the other woman” that I have read about so many times in those magazines. I don’t want to think about Edith Quinlan, though I keep seeing her as one of those pretty, dark-haired Irishwomen whose looks begin to fade in middle age. I know she has dark hair because Frank said his eldest daughter Theresa “has dark hair just like her mother when she was twenty-one.” Frank likes dark-haired women. He has touched my hair several times and said how much he likes it. Yesterday he said he wished it were longer and he would like to see it “spilling across your bare shoulders.” Then he laughed and said I was blushing and that “it becomes you.”

  All this over dinner in another hotel dining room. We were seated at a corner table by an enormous rubber plant, the leaves speckled with dust and insect droppings. The sunlight came through the tall windows. Along a wall was a terrible painting of Indians welcoming a locomotive and the Fathers of Confederation in frock coats and top hats. A radio was playing sentimental music. I felt so happy being in that awful dining room. We were talking about religion. I’ve forgotten how the subject came up, but Frank told me he believes in God. I expected that, but it always interests me to hear this. How I envy Catholics their faith! It is so accommodating. Catholics commit sins and then expect to be forgiven. Frank was surprised to discover that I no longer believe in God. I said to him, “How I wish I could! It would make everything different.”

  He smiled. “Different in what way?”

  “Well,” I said. “Surely believing in God gives your life a purpose, some shape or direction. It seems to me that without God, we are just putting in time. And then time becomes so urgent, a source of anxiety because, of course, our time will eventually run out.”

  Oh, I went on about this. Perhaps I talked too much about God and Time, but I couldn’t help myself. I think about these subjects so much, and like most people who live alone, I overdo it when I have an audience. It felt peculiar to be talking about God and Time in the dining room of a small-town hotel at twelve thirty on a Saturday afternoon, looking up at that terrible mural and listening to “Blue Skies.” Frank told me that he could not imagine a life without God. For him, God was simply there. Doubting His existence was out of the question. How could a person not believe in God? I could see that I puzzled, maybe even disturbed him a little by all this. He smoked his pipe and looked grave. I asked him if seeing me didn’t make it difficult for him.

  “Will you not have to tell your priest about us when you go to confession?” I asked.

  Then Fr
ank said something wonderful. He said, “I suppose I will, but what has that got to do with my belief in God? To tell you the truth, I don’t think God really minds about us. Surely He has more important things to think about than two people who are trying to find a little happiness on this earth?”

  I liked that answer, but I sensed that Frank was growing uncomfortable with our conversation. I don’t believe Catholics think much about God. He is simply there and they accept that and get on with their lives. I wish I could do that.

  After dinner we went for a drive and then at the station, before we said goodbye, there were more kisses and we grew quite fervent. That is an old-fashioned word to describe our embraces, but it is the only one that comes to mind. His fervent kisses! I felt rushed and breathless beneath them, and a man on the platform was watching us, so after a while we stopped. Frank asked me what I thought of the idea of spending more time together. He said he could probably get away for a Saturday night and we could go some place. That will mean sleeping with him. I said I would think about it. We are to meet again next Saturday at the train station.

  Wednesday, June 2

  My first visit to Dr. Watts. What an ordeal! Several of my teeth need filling, but it looks as if I won’t lose any, thank goodness. Watts scolded me mercilessly as he prodded and drilled and tapped away. “Why on earth did you let these teeth get into such a state, Miss Callan?”

  I suffered in silence under his ministrations, but the drilling brought tears to my eyes. I’m sure I’ll hear that infernal instrument grinding away in my sleep tonight. And this will have to go on for another five or six weeks! Something to look forward to each Wednesday. Yet it must be done, and there is a certain grim satisfaction in getting on with it.