He wasn’t prepared for the jolt of compulsion. He could picture himself pulling the cork, tilting it to his mouth. He could almost feel the friendly fire of it through his arms and legs, warming his belly. For a full ten seconds he stood with the bottle in his hand. It occurred to him that he could keep it, should keep it, use it in some preparation or other. Rubbing alcohol, perhaps, or herbal tinctures. Then, frightened, he wondered about pouring it down the sink, but didn’t trust himself to open it, to smell the fumes. Then he drew a deep breath and walked to the dustbin, raised the lid and tossed the bottle in. He immediately put the bin out into the alley, came back in and bolted the back door as though he were afraid the spirits in the bottle would be loosed and come knocking.
He laughed a little and mopped at his brow. It was a test, that was all, nothing more. He was fine. He had all the willpower in the world. Nothing to worry about. It wasn’t as though he was one of those gin-soaked wretches lying about in a gutter. He’d simply let a bad habit get out of hand under the pressures of the past few years. But he was not an alcoholic, certainly not. He had proved that, hadn’t he, quitting just like that? No dipsomaniac was capable of such self-will. He was a man of medicine himself, after all, and knew about such things. In fact, it was perfectly within reason to assume that after a period of some abstinence he would be able, once again, to drink like a gentleman.
The Borden’s truck pulled up out front and a man hopped out of the cab.
“Delivery,” he called.
“Yes, yes!” Douglas hurried out to meet him.
The shop had never looked better. The ice cream containers were all filled, and he had even served three sodas and a root-beer float to four boys coming home from Jarvis Collegiate. They were a little loud, and normally Douglas would have been annoyed by their raucous behaviour, but today nothing bothered him. The noise of the boys had attracted a group of girls passing by, who had come in and ordered sodas themselves, making a point of ignoring the boys. Shortly after, a man wanted hair tonic and another needed bicarbonate of soda. By the end of the day, Douglas had earned more than in the previous two weeks.
As he closed the shop he noticed Richard Rhodes, the butcher from across the street, coming toward him.
“MacNeil, say, you’ve been doing a bit of work ‘round the place I see.”
“It was time for a spring cleaning,” said Douglas, pleased that his efforts had been noticed.
“Looks good, man. I’ve been meaning to come over and tell you.” Rhodes shook his hand vigorously. He was a large man who suited his voice. He must have been athletic in his youth, but his girth had slipped into prosperous middle-age. He was bald, with a sparse but well-groomed ring of grey hair. “Thought for a while there you might go under. Glad to see things are turning round. Flurry of activity over there the past couple of days.” He winked.
Douglas’s mouth was dry. He did not like the idea that Rhodes had been watching his shop. Had he seen that girl enter his shop and not leave? Was Rhodes laughing at him? “Yes, well, I believe things are finally turning ‘round, don’t you?”
“Certainly hope you’re right, Douglas. I see little outward evidence of it, though. This is a neighbourhood in jeopardy, I fear. Should we lose any more ground, I can’t say what will become of this place. People are fools, MacNeil, fools. Whole damn country’s going to hell in a handbasket and do people wake up to the truth? No. Here’s what they do: they get rid of that idiot Bungling Bennett and put Cowardly King back in the prime minister’s seat. I say we have to stick together, don’t we? That’s the foundation for rebuilding this country, is it not? Men of sound judgment, responsible men like us?”
“I’m not so sure about that, Rhodes,” said Douglas. “Don’t know whether I agree with you about King. I say there may be some hope for the future. I believe we may have turned a corner.”
The two men stood side by side, surveying the street. Shops were closing for the evening. Normally Douglas found this time of day a bit dismal, faced only with the failure of his day and the unavoidable return to the dark, claustrophobic atmosphere of his family. But now he was filled with a combination of pride over his freshly laundered-and-pressed shop, Rhodes’s attention, and the festive air that lingered all over town.
“I’ve got to admit that King’s got one thing right. We must watch the Jews. Communists, most of them, and too powerful by far.”
“I can agree with you there,” said Douglas, although he had not read that the prime minister had said this. “They’ve gained far too much control of the financial picture. Too much control entirely.”
Rhodes put his arm around Douglas and clapped him on the chest with his other hand. It took Douglas off guard and he struggled a little.
“Yid bastards!” Rhodes hissed in his ear before letting him go. “MacNeil, I think you and I should have a drink together.”
Douglas studied Rhodes’s face, and there was nothing in the man’s expression to indicate he was being mocked, but Douglas knew very well that Rhodes was aware of his problems with drink. The whole street knew it—the whole neighbourhood, for that matter.
“Yessir, we’ll celebrate the unearthing of Scadding and Robertson from their entombment,” the butcher continued. “What say we head to the Winchester? I’m off to meet a friend there, a great guy. We often meet for a short one at the end of the day.”
Rhodes had only the slightest smile on his lips, and Douglas couldn’t tell whether the smile was cruel.
“No, no. I couldn’t,” Douglas said.
“Of course you can,” said Rhodes, still smiling that unreadable smile.
He looked up at Richard Rhodes, who had become both saviour and executioner. Water rushed into Douglas’s mouth and he fancied he could smell the heather-rich, peat-infused smoke of good whisky. He started to say that he could not go to the Winchester Bar, could not join his fellow businessman in a gentleman’s drink. He took a breath and his lips parted to say these things.
“Just one, then. Just one couldn’t do a man harm at the end of a day’s good work, now, could it?” And with those words it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. To have a drink at the end of the day like other men did. What could be the harm in that?
“Wife and kiddies waiting at home for you, eh?” said Rhodes, nudging Douglas in the ribs. “Need to get permission?”
Douglas felt the crust of something cruel beneath the surface of the words. He felt it very clearly, and he knew he should simply say he’d changed his mind and walk away from this man, who he suspected was not his friend at all.
“Certainly not. My wife doesn’t run my life.”
Rhodes held up his hands. “Just joking. Never occurred to me that a man such as yourself wouldn’t rule the roost. No offence, eh?”
There it was again, that tone, light as silk and lethal as venom.
“None taken.”
“Right, then, off we go.”
As they walked, Richard Rhodes began a short lecture on what was needed to effect the salvation of Canada and how a firm hand was required when dealing with the undesirables flooding onto Canadian shores. He spoke of the abolition of the provincial system in favour of one central government. Douglas listened with half an ear and wondered if Rhodes could possibly be a member of some fascist group, possibly the Christian Front. He agreed that the Jews were a blemish on the Canadian landscape, but the Christian Front were little more than thinly disguised Nazis.
Douglas wanted to form an opinion, but found he could not keep his mind on the conversation. With every step closer to the bar at the Winchester his entire being focused on one thing only: the lure, the song, the enchantment of whisky. It was all he could do to nod, to mutter the occasional grunt of agreement, to keep pace with Rhodes and not break into a headlong run.
They arrived at the red-bricked old hotel, passed the dining room and the ice cream parlour and entered the room at the back of the lobby. The walls were smoke-stained and the red-and-yellow paisley carpet was threadba
re. The radio near the bar was on and Cab Calloway sang something about a moocher named Minnie. Rhodes frowned.
“Mickey, for God’s sake, can’t you change the station?” he called out to the manager, who stood talking to a bellhop in the doorway.
“Customers like jazz, Mr. Rhodes, and to be honest, I do too, see,” said Mickey, and turned back to his conversation. Rhodes snorted.
“Ah, there he is. Jack!” called Rhodes, and he waved to a man at a corner table smoking a cigar and reading a paper. Douglas immediately noticed the bottle of whisky that stood in the centre of the table.
“I’ve brought a fellow to meet you. Douglas MacNeil, may I present Jack Tower.”
“Glad to meet you,” he said.
“A pleasure,” said Douglas as he tore his eyes away from the bottle and smiled.
“MacNeil owns the drug store across from my shop. Been doing some improvements to the place. A man with vision. You put in a soda fountain, didn’t you, MacNeil?”
“I did, yes, but that was some time ago.” A man with vision. He could be that, would be that.
“Oh yes, I believe Rhodes has mentioned you. Pull up a seat,” said Tower, who leaned back in his chair and regarded Douglas coolly. His eyes were the palest shade of blue, so pale they were nearly white, and their gaze made Douglas uncomfortable. What had Rhodes said about him?
Douglas looked at Tower’s demeanour, his good suit, his gold watch, and felt that all his own dilapidated insides were seeping out, like stuffing showing through a shoddy chesterfield. He wanted to fit in, to be approved of.
But most of all, he craved the taste of whisky in his mouth.
Rhodes spoke, as though reading his mind. “Wanted to bring MacNeil here along to help us celebrate. Mickey! Another glass here, man!”
The proprietor sent over a girl with two more glasses, a pitcher of water and a bowl of stale pretzels. As she minced away, Douglas noticed that Rhodes’s eyes followed her swaying rear.
“Whisky all right, MacNeil?” Tower held the bottle poised teasingly over the glass. He looked Douglas in the eye.
Many things went through Douglas’s mind. The faces of Irene and Margaret appeared, and he thought of his polished chrome soda fountain and newly filled ice cream tubs. The innocent purity of the pale green pistachio, the rosy cheerful strawberry, the pale sweet vanilla. He could see quite clearly the perverse pleasure these men, who were not his friends, were taking in his pain. Why are they doing this? And then he knew. They were doing it because they could and for no other reason. It was sport. And in the fit of his addiction, his anger twisted round on itself. Fuck you, he thought. I’ll have the goddamn drink. Fuck you. And it made no sense, and it made no difference that it made no sense.
“Yes, thank you,” he said, and he tried not to sound too eager, not to sound as though he wanted this drink more than he wanted his next breath. He watched the drink being poured, the way it settled silkily in the glass, the golden sheen of it as a ray of late-afternoon sun glinted through it like a blessing. Douglas heard a voice in his head, a calm and rational voice, telling him there was no reason in the world not to have this drink, which would ease his nerves. He would have the one, which would not turn into many, and then he would go home. What could be more normal?
“Here’s to the men of the mine,” said Rhodes, holding his glass high. “To the heroic efforts of the rescue crew and a better future for us all.”
“To the men in the mine,” said Tower.
“To a bright future,” said Douglas.
Ah, the sweet indescribable moment as the lover approaches the beloved. Every sense heightened, blocking out all other memories, all other faces, all other promises, all other desires. The smell of the Scottish moors rising from the cool, smooth glass. The colour of the whisky: honeyed ambrosia. The saliva in the mouth, the tremor in the fingertips. Douglas opened his lips, closed his eyes as though for a kiss.
The face of a girl with the bones of a lark rattling like a skeleton under the force of her cough and a terrible condemnation in her eyes rose up in front of him. He toasted her, downed the liquid and watched her fade away like a ghost.
Douglas didn’t guzzle the next drink but sipped the good bonnie barley bree like a gentleman, and it filled his limbs with its warm sweet smoke. Rhodes and Tower chatted along about the news of the day, the miners, of course, and less encouraging events. Tower worked at a bank, as a loans officer, although Douglas suspected the chances of anyone getting a loan from this lean, shark-eyed man were unlikely indeed.
“I quite agree with the action taken by Quebec,” Tower was saying, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his vest. “Ontario should follow suit, scrap the dole completely. That would teach the immigrants not to expect a free ride in this country.”
“People must be made to work for what they receive,” Douglas concurred, finishing his drink. He looked at the glass forlornly.
“Yes, but I understand that King’s thinking about closing the relief camps.” Rhodes refilled the three glasses.
“There is no decent leadership in this country,” said Tower.
Douglas saw that Rhodes was the follower here, merely parroting the opinions of his betters. Pleased with his insight, he poured another drink and offered the bottle to the other two. They refused, and Douglas saw a glance pass between them but he did not care, not at all. He would prove to them that he was not a common drunk. He would be both informed and intelligent, and he said that he was not at all sure he agreed with Tower on some of the more extreme aspects of his theory. With every drink he felt himself grow both more relaxed and more confident. His vision became loftier, his perspective more erudite. And then he reached that blessed place where he no longer saw any reason to share his opinions, cosseted as he was in his balmy, boozy bath.
He realized with some surprise that two hours had passed. Eight o’clock already and dark outside. He should go home. But why? The company here was far more convivial. It was good for a man to have stimulating conversation, good for the mind, for the soul, even. They were the community leaders, the merchants of standing, the literate, head and shoulders above the unwashed masses, who spilled like so much flotsam on Canada’s great shores. Douglas smiled, poured himself another glass and tried to keep his mind on the conversation.
“You must look at Hitler in the context of the situation,” Towers was now saying. “Conditions were pressed upon Germany after the Great War which were intended for one thing and one thing only: the humiliation of a people.”
Douglas put two fingers up under his nose and extended his right arm. “Sieg Heil,” he said and laughed, rather too loudly.
Neither Rhodes nor Tower joined him in this little joke.
“I hardly find Chancellor Hitler an object of ridicule,” said Tower, with his oily silver eyes.
“Oh, come on, Tower,” said Douglas. “Lighten up, pal, lighten up. Just a little joke.”
Rhodes cleared his throat and looked at his watch. “Perhaps it’s time to call it a night. I suppose I should be on my way. No use solving all the world’s problems in one night, eh?”
“You may be right, Richard,” said Tower. “I’ve an early meeting and some paperwork to do tonight.”
“Oh, don’t tell me you big shots are going to cash in your chips already? It’s early yet, shank of the evening. Come on, have another drink, on me.” Douglas picked up the bottle to pour another round.
“Not for me, thanks,” said Rhodes.
“Nor me. I know my limit,” said Tower, smiling that smile again, the one that Douglas would like to smear right off his face.
“One for the road,” insisted Douglas.
Rhodes laughed and slapped Douglas on the back. “Think maybe you’ve had enough already, MacNeil. Good fellow. Time to go.” He pushed back his chair and stood, as did Tower. Douglas felt he had no choice but to follow their example, but he didn’t like the implication, didn’t like it one bit. Stuck-up two-bit philosophers. Who did they think they were?
Tower pulled some bills out of his pocket, picked up the half-empty bottle and handed it and the money to the passing bar girl. “If you’ll allow me, gentlemen. Drinks on me tonight.”
“I can pay my share,” said Douglas, digging in his pockets. He swayed a little and put a hand on the table for balance.
“No need, MacNeil. Honour of the first meeting and all that. You can return the favour. Buy a round next time, eh?”
Where did they get off implying he couldn’t afford to pull his own weight? Well, fine then, let them pay if they were so hell-bent on being big men.
“Good night, MacNeil,” said Rhodes, extending his hand. “Delighted you could join us.”
“Been a great pleasure meeting you, MacNeil. I’m sure we’ll have more invigorating discussions in the future.”
Douglas shook their hands sullenly, told them he would say good night here, as he had to use the men’s room. He walked with dignity, he thought, to the back of the bar.
Standing at the urinal, Douglas told himself he was happy they were gone. The world was right again, all things had fallen back into their natural order. He was freed from the anxieties of the past few days, which now seemed like nothing more than a vague mirage. He washed his hands and ran his wet fingers over the thin rim of hair above each ear. Why, this was a nice place. There was no reason to rush home. If he wanted another drink, one for the road, why not have one? The past few days in the shop had been rather good. He’d treat himself. Yes, that’s what he’d do.
He went back and stood at the bar, ordered a double and started a conversation with a man named Howachuk, a Pole who’d been laid off from the Kingwell Glassworks three years ago. He was altogether a fine, fine fellow, and Douglas bought him a drink.
“To better times,” he said, raising his glass.
“Yeah, sure,” said the Pole, and downed his drink in one gulp.
When the bar closed, Douglas wobbled out into the street, happy as a dog with two tails. A light rain had begun to fall and the streets were shiny and the sidewalks glittered and the whole world looked like diamonds dancing in the lamplight. Douglas felt a song in his heart. In fact, he felt like doing a little of that old soft-shoe. He stepped off the curb, began to hum and did a little shuffle. He tipped a little, stumbled and, laughing, righted himself. Right foot and a little hop, arms outstretched, he sang:
The Stubborn Season Page 16