The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three

by Morley Callaghan

  “What’s the matter, Peg?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why are you crying?”

  “I wasn’t really crying,” she said. She saw how disappointed he was, she felt that he had expected to find her still full of gladness, and she tried to explain. “I was sitting here thinking of the two of us and how everything might be. Then I was thinking just of you because I knew how bad you were feeling over Frank. I felt blue because it all seems to go against you. I was feeling sorry for Frank too.”

  “Why were you thinking of him now?” he asked irritably. “Why do we always have to think of him?”

  “It just seemed a shame. He looked like a fine fellow standing there yesterday.”

  “You often think of Frank?”

  “No I don’t, but I’ve always liked him.”

  “You’ve been feeling pretty bad about him, haven’t you?”

  “It’s you that’s been feeling bad and giving me the blues.”

  He couldn’t feel her compassion because of his own sharp, unreasonable jealousy. For nights he had hardly slept worrying about Frank, and now he wanted to be alone and free of him; he had been so sure he would find Peg full of gladness for her love of him. It was hard now to believe in that love that he had felt an hour ago in the field; it was so much more than he had ever expected from her. It was so much easier to remember how Frank had always laughed and teased her just as he did the town girls he was sure of. He felt crazy with worry and weariness, wanting to shout, “Frank spoiled everything in my life,” but he blurted out, “Maybe with Frank being away you’ve found out tonight how you really feel about him.”

  “It was you I was thinking of,” she whispered. “You were so fond of him and I could watch the pain growing in you. If they were hurting you they were hurting me. Please, Tom, don’t get crazy thoughts in your head.”

  “Tonight it was fine,” he said quietly, talking almost to himself. “It was all good tonight. But look how it’s spoiled now. It didn’t last in you at all. Everybody around here talks and worries about Frank and I’m tired, you hear, awfully tired of it. Peg, listen, he always seemed to me to have the inside track with you if he wanted it.”

  “Sh, sh, you’ll wake my father up.”

  “You know what I’m thinking, Peg? You wouldn’t bother with me if you could have him. I’ve often felt it.”

  He seemed to be going all to pieces there at the door, jerking his hand up and down. Then he turned quickly, hurrying away from her. “Tom, don’t go. Come back, just a minute.” She ran after him begging desperately, “You know I loved you more tonight than I ever did before,” but he was hurrying away, not hearing.

  He went to bed with the wind blowing much stronger, thinking, “It took her a long time to show much love for me. Frank always laughed at me because I was slow and fumbling with her. What got into her in the field, what made her show so much love?” He lay there holding on to his bitterness. His loneliness, the darkness and the sound of the wind began to distort all his thoughts and though he tried to be reasonable and said, “Maybe I was foolish with Peg,” he knew he would be afraid of Frank even if he married her. Gusts of wind sometimes hit the house and there was the sound of shingles torn from the roof spinning in the wind. He tortured himself thinking of Frank and the trouble that always pursued him. For a while he listened to the waves breaking on the shore, and then he began to torture himself deliberately with a picture of Peg and Frank living together: he saw them in a room by themselves loving each other and maybe laughing at him. Then he fell asleep.

  He woke up thinking he could hear someone moving outside on the veranda, and he sat up, listening, but he could not be sure because of the wind. There again was the sound of footsteps, and then, quite clearly, a firm tapping on the door. Opening the bedroom window he called out, “Who’s there?”

  “Let me in, Tom.”

  He could just see the side of his face in the darkness, leaning out from the veranda. “All right, Frank. I’m coming down,” Tom said, and he hurried downstairs and opened the door. Frank was waiting in his shirt and trousers. He was very wet, for now it was raining hard, and he was breathing so heavily he could hardly speak.

  “What happened, Frank? What did you do?”

  “Don’t light the light, Tom. It was easy. They were driving me in the car to jail. Old Chief Fowlis was sitting with me and he always liked me so it was pretty easy and I jumped out and went off across the fields.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Cross the lake.”

  “It’s too rough. It’ll take you all night.”

  “You take an oar, Tom.”

  When Frank came in and closed the door it was so fine at first to see him there, free, but that gladness went quickly, and Tom said uneasily, “Maybe you’re making a mistake, Frank. If you get away you’ll never be able to come back here and you’ll always be on the run, and anyway, if they catch you, they’ll double your sentence. It isn’t worth it. Three years would be a long time.”

  Frank began to laugh, and shooting out his hand, he slapped Tom on the shoulder. “Dear old Tom, always so cautious. What would a guy like me be doing in a jail for a year and a half?” he said. They were standing close together in the dark room with no light coming from the window and Frank’s laughter sounded arrogant. When Tom didn’t answer, Frank said anxiously, “What’s the matter, Tom?” as if Tom was the one person in the world he was sure of.

  “All right, Frank,” Tom said. “I’d go with you anyway. You know that. It doesn’t matter what I think. I’ll put something on. What are you going to do on the other side?”

  “Hide in the woods in the daytime and be off when night comes. Bring me some clothes. I’ll look around too. Have you got any money?”

  When they were ready they went down to the farm’s end, carrying a bundle of clothes, and at the water’s edge, though it was not so windy now, the lake looked like a restless heaving part of the immeasurable blackness overhead. They carried the rowboat down from its place at the clump of trees, and at the water, when it was tossed back by the first wave, Tom yelled, “It’ll take hours, Frank. Maybe you’d better wait,” but his words were blown away and Frank didn’t answer.

  Though they each pulled strongly at an oar it was very difficult getting past the point of land at the end of the farm. The wind swept around the point lashing the rain at their faces. It always seemed to blow harder at the point. Whenever they looked at the tip of land, the black shadow, measuring how far they had gone, it seemed that they had only been bobbing back to the shore, and if they rested a moment they quickly lost whatever they had gained. But they had expected this and they kept on pulling together with all their strength, their backs bending together till they were out on the channel where it suddenly was easier. As they turned and looked back at the shore, Frank yelled, “Good boy, Tom,” and they settled down to row steadily. They rowed perfectly together; they had been rowing on the lake in this way ever since they had been children. All their lives they might have been training for this one trip across the eight-mile lake.

  During those hours of hard and silent rowing the sound of the oarlocks and the water against the boat became so regular that Tom began to repeat to himself mechanically, “If he gets away he’ll never be back around her. The people who used to like him will never see him again. I’ll be alone. I’ll be alone. I’ll be alone.” It was such an easy thought to accept. Already he was used to never seeing Frank again, and he was contented; instead of feeling the desolation that such a notion might have brought to him, he was contented. He began to feel, too, that he was carrying Peg deep in his thoughts but that was very secret. An immense willingness came to him to help Frank; he offered to take both oars; there was a vast gentleness within him urging him to do even more than Frank expected.

  Then the hard work and the wind began to tire him, driving all the distorted night thoughts of hours ago out of his head, and soon everything that had happened earlier in the evening seemed
far away, as if it happened to someone else. “Frank’s never mentioned Peg,” he thought. “I’ve been thinking of nothing but myself for hours.” The dark blotch of the land was just ahead and they were in the shallow water, the long stretch of it, in the inlet where there was a beach, and now it was easy rowing with their oars sometimes pulling out the weeds. “We’re there,” Tom said. “I’ll stay on the beach with you for a while and then you can get going. Maybe you better take some of the food and eat it now. It’s stopped raining.”

  “I’ll eat something on the beach,” Frank said. He was resting his oars wearily as the boat pushed through the shallow water.

  As soon as they pulled the boat high up on the beach they did not even wait to take out the bundle, they were so very tired; they lay down on the sand listening anxiously for any noises that might come from the trees or from out over the water. They lay close together, their bodies heavy and tired, listening to each other breathing, too, somehow being glad that they could hear each other like this. To Tom it began to seem that he had always heard it like this, years ago when he had awakened in the night and had heard Frank sleeping beside him, or maybe after he and Frank had been fighting and they had rolled over and over together: there was that time too, years ago, when they had rowed across the lake for the first time, each at an oar and had lain maybe on this very spot to rest before going back. A bit wearily he raised himself on his arm and said, “Frank, you’re making a big mistake.”

  “Mistake? What do you mean?”

  “You ought to go back. You’ll be on the run God knows how long, you’ll never be really free and in the long run they may catch you. A year and a half now would be a little time compared with that. It would soon be over and everybody likes you around here.”

  “You’re talking like a fool, Tom. I got too many thoughts to bother me without listening to stuff like that.”

  “You ought to go back. You’ll never feel free this way. It’ll spoil your whole life.”

  “Shut up, Tom. If you want to talk like that, get into the boat and go back.”

  Staring out across the dark water, with his wet clothes hanging on him, Tom repeated with a kind of wretched doggedness, “Please, Frank, come back; you know I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it was best. You know how it makes me feel to have you cooped up in a rotten little jail, but I’m telling you to go back. I’ve always been willing to do almost anything for you . . .” He put out his hand and touched his brother’s shoulder, and at that moment with the wind blowing and the water lapping on the beach, his voice faltered, for he felt a great tenderness for his brother that he could not express. He felt helpless as he said, “Come on, Frank?”

  Sitting up quick, Frank said, “Do you really think I’d be such a damned fool as that . . . after coming this far? What’s on your mind?”

  “It’s just as I say, Frank.”

  “You’re getting yellow about it, that’s probably it,” Frank said. He was full of contempt. They were really shouting at each other because of the sound of the breaking waves. “I never thought you’d be so yellow, Tom. You’re scared of getting caught with your finger in it; you always were such a nice respectable guy. You’d take me back now because of what the neighbors might think, wouldn’t you? You’re a fool. Sit here and hold your head. I’m going.” He got up slowly and started along the beach, cutting in gradually to the trees.

  “Come back, Frank. Please come back,” Tom called. Frank’s light shirt was moving against the dark line of the trees, going farther and farther away. Tom was frightened, he felt desperate as he used to feel years ago when Frank was in a fight with a bigger boy and getting beaten, so he started to run after him, shouting, “Wait a minute.” He caught up and started pulling at Frank’s arm. Frank shook his arm free and they both kept walking along the beach in the darkness. “You’re not going, that’s settled. You’ve got to come back with me,” Tom said.

  “Who says so?”

  “I said so.”

  Without even turning his head Frank said, “Try and make me.”

  Pulling again at his arm Tom pleaded, “If it’s the last thing you ever do for me, do this, Frank. I won’t ever ask you to do another thing, and if you go back everything’ll straighten itself out.”

  Jerking his arm free, Frank started to run, running slowly and heavily with a lurching stride because his boots sank into the wet sand, and Tom lunged after him, and the two figures were bobbing up and down against the dark background of the trees, with Tom gaining steadily because he was not so tired nor had he run so far. Once Frank looked back, then he cut in sharply towards the trees. There was a little embankment with grass on the top between the line of trees and the sandy beach, and here Frank slipped in the mud, and Tom caught up to him, only Frank lashed out with his foot and caught Tom on the shoulder. Holding tight, though, and pulling, Tom dragged him by the leg back down the embankment, but there he could not hold him. Frank jumped up, ducked and swung both hands, hitting Tom heavily on the head. Then they clenched desperately and rolled over and over on the wet sand and closer to the line of the water till Frank’s hands came loose and he flailed away frantically at Tom’s head; he kept beating him wildly and when Tom would not move or let go, he suddenly quit, with Tom lying heavily on him and them both gasping for air. They lay there in this way sucking in the air. Then Frank’s breathing became a kind of sob. He couldn’t help it, he had run far earlier in the evening and he was weak, and without knowing why, he was crying with his face pressed in the sand.

  As he lay there, waiting, Tom was so miserable he wanted to die. He began to pray, “Oh, God, please don’t let him cry like that. Don’t let him make that noise,” because he, himself, couldn’t stand it there on the beach with the water lapping on the shore.

  When Frank’s strength began to come back he still kept quiet. There was no use moving; it was ended for him, there, with his face in the sand. Almost timidly, Tom said, “Come on back now, Frank.”

  “All right. I got to, I guess.”

  They went back along the beach with Frank lurching with Tom longing to put his arm around him and steady him, but after the way Frank had sobbed on the sand there was a shyness between them that was hard to break.

  At the boat Tom said, “You sit there. I’ll do the rowing. It’s not blowing hard now,” so Frank got into the boat and huddled there with his head thrown back on one arm, his mouth still open as if he would never get enough air.

  Tom began to row steadily. The wind was still strong but the water was much calmer now. Soon they were far out on the water. When he was tired Tom rested on his oars, his shoulders drooping over them, and he was looking over the water at one little path of light. The wind, scudding the clouds across the sky, had finally parted them. As the bright moonlight shone more fully on the dark water he remembered all the joy he had felt when the same light had shone on the field of buckwheat and Peg had belonged so surely to him. He could hear Peg calling, “Come back, I loved you more tonight than ever before,” but that was just a part of his and Peg’s world; it didn’t touch Frank.

  The oars were very heavy as he rowed, and they got heavier with each stroke, for it seemed that something was breaking inside him. “Frank, you’re not sore at me, are you? I wouldn’t want to do it if it weren’t for you. Can’t you see that? Why don’t you answer? Listen, Frank. You’re not sore, are you? If you really want to I’ll go back, I mean if you’re sore.” Huddled there, silent and unanswering, Frank’s eyes were wide open, staring up at the darkness of the night above. While he watched, Tom could still hear that desperate sob for freedom that had come from Frank back on the beach, and it brought such an ache in him that he looked around wildly. But he kept on going, one long slow stroke after another, always trying to talk softly to his brother.

  Their Mother’s Purse

  Hal went around to see his mother and father, and while he was talking with them and wondering if he could ask for a loan, his sister Mary, who was dressed to go out for the even
ing, came into the room and said, “Can you let me have a little something tonight, Mother?”

  She was borrowing money all the time now, and there was no excuse for her, because she was a stenographer. It was not the same for her as it was with their older brother, Stephen, who had three children, and could hardly live on his salary.

  “If you could possibly spare it . . .” Mary was saying in her low and pleasant voice as she pulled on her gloves. Her easy smile, her assurance that she would not be refused, made Hal feel resentful. He knew that if he asked for money he would appear uneasy and a little ashamed, and his father would put down his paper and stare at him and his mother would sigh and look dreadfully worried, as though he were the worst kind of spendthrift.

  Getting up to find her purse, their mother said, “I don’t mind lending it to you, Mary, though I can’t figure out what you do with your money.”

  “I don’t seem to be doing anything with it I didn’t use to do,” Mary said.

  “And I seem to do nothing these days but hand out money to the lot of you. I can’t think how you’ll get along when I’m dead.”

  “I don’t know what you’d all do if it weren’t for your mother’s purse,” their father said, but when he spoke he nodded his head at Hal, because he would rather make it appear that he was angry with Hal than risk offending Mary by speaking directly to her.

  “If anybody wants money, they’ll have to find my purse for me,” their mother said. “Try and find it, Mary, and bring it to me.”

  Hal had always thought of Mary as his young sister, but the inscrutable expression he saw on her face as she moved round the room picking up newspapers and looking on chairs made him realize how much more self-reliant, how much apart from them she had grown in the last few years. He saw that she had become a handsome woman. In her tailored suit and hat, she looked almost beautiful, and he was suddenly glad she was his sister.