Two Solitudes

by Hugh Maclennan

  The general’s shoulders were still square, his back straight, his cheeks flushed. He looked like a much older brother of the major who advertises Army Club cigarettes in Piccadilly Circus. If he was a survival of a period his country would never see again, he clearly did not know it. Tonight he felt very comfortable. It was a fine June evening, the family was together, and he was pretty sure he was going to digest his dinner.

  “Let Heather play,” Daphne said.

  Janet’s voice broke in. “But Heather despises bridge!”

  As she turned to look at her younger daughter the silk-shaded lamps cast heavy shadows over Janet’s face. During the past years her features had become hawk-like. If she had not acquired an ease of manner, she had at least gained a self-confidence which took its place fairly well. Not a little of this self-confidence sprang from the knowledge that Daphne was in line for a title. She stood by the chesterfield, her eyes star-tlingly large with dark circles under them, skin stretched tightly over the bridge of her nose, tight also over the cheekbones. Her hair was neatly shingled, and lay in precise waves over her head, all of it steel grey.

  “Of course,” she said to Heather, “you can play if you want to. I’ve always said you could learn if you’d only watch what other people do.”

  McQueen cleared his throat. There was no particular reason why anyone should play bridge except that he had planned it. It disturbed him to hear his guests apparently talking at random, their words falling loose and going to waste. In front of the mantel General Methuen was saying to Noel Fletcher, “Take Airedales, now. There’s not a better dog in the world for catching bears. Down in New Brunswick…”

  But Fletcher was paying not the slightest attention to the general. His head, with hair ash-blond and not too recently trimmed, was balanced evenly on a pair of wide shoulders as straight as a soldier’s and as lithe as an athlete’s. He had the tapering body of a middleweight fighter, and a sort of shining cleanness that set him apart from everyone else. His eyes were a brittle blue; boyish at first glance, disconcertingly mature on further acquaintance. He had been to Harrow and Sandhurst and had served in the Flying Corps in the last war. His words came out in a cultivated drawl. He was known as a ruthlessly competent man of business, owning a controlling interest in a large aircraft factory in England. McQueen, who instinctively judged people by gauging what they wanted in life, was completely baffled by Fletcher. So far as he could tell, Fletcher was disinterested in everything.

  The general was still talking. “After all, Hitler may be extreme, but he’s not a fool.”

  Fletcher looked into the cold hearth. “He knows what he wants.”

  “But how’s he going to get it? The Boche has scuttled his own fleet. We’ll blockade ’em to death if he tries any monkey business.”

  “Oh, really?” Fletcher said. “You think fleets still matter?”

  “Damn it!” the general said. “They always have.”

  McQueen cleared his throat again, but nobody paid any attention to him. The three women were discussing Heather’s dress. Fletcher was surveying the general’s old face, which looked back at him with a certain dog-like anxiety.

  “In the next war,” Fletcher said, “the only thing a battleship will do is sink.”

  “You talk as if you took another war for granted,” McQueen said shortly.

  “Don’t you?” Fletcher said.

  Before McQueen could answer, the general began to snort. “Too many sound people in Britain to let anything like that develop.” His old face carried the expression of a man who had never found it necessary to be intelligent but who knew right from wrong without thinking about it. His eyes seemed to be telling Fletcher that he knew his England as well as anyone. “The British government,” he said emphatically, “is the best in the world, and that’s all there is to it. Over here we’ve always known that.”

  Fletcher tapped a cigarette on his left thumb nail, put it between his lips and lit it, tossing the match on to the hearth. McQueen followed the flight of the match with disapproval and a touch of anxiety. Another inch and it would have fallen on his rug, an oriental that had cost him fifteen hundred dollars. “Hitler knows the world’s ripe for picking,” Fletcher said.

  McQueen’s heavy jaw lifted. “What’s your evidence for that statement?”

  There was a moment of silence in the room before the Englishman answered. “It’s self-evident.”

  Heather settled down on the chesterfield. “You sound as if you were looking forward to a war,” she said.

  In spite of his motionless face muscles, there was a sudden interest reflected in Fletcher’s eyes as he looked down at Heather. “You’ve missed the point. Thanks to Hitler, we’re going to get a real airforce in England at last.”

  “But who wants an airforce?” Heather said sharply. “Or anything else in uniform, for that matter?”

  “You mustn’t mind Heather,” the general said. “She’s been a bit of a socialist ever since she went to college.” But as he spoke the old man looked at his granddaughter fondly.

  McQueen decided the conversation must be ended by force. He cupped his short fingers below Daphne’s elbow, touching as little of her skin as possible, and moved her toward the bridge table that had been set up in the far end of the room. “Here,” he said, pulling out a straight-backed Victorian chair. “We’ll leave the armchair for your grandfather.”

  Daphne slid away from his hand, moved to the other side of the table and sat down facing the room. “It’s so odd,” she said. “Really it is. I don’t suppose I’ll ever quite get used to it again.”

  “Get used to what?” Janet said.

  “Coming home and finding everything–well, just as it is, was and ever shall be.” She smiled at her husband as though her words were the key to a private knowledge they shared. “You’ll have to watch your step, Noel. No one over here gives the smallest damn whether you fly over Mount Everest or become an air marshal. Really they don’t.”

  The general marched over to the bridge table and sat in the armchair, and Janet followed him. Fletcher dropped on to the sofa beside Heather. After a look about the room, McQueen sat in the fourth place at the table with the cautious bend of a man who has never been convinced that a careless upholsterer might not have left a tack exposed on the seat of the chair. The general picked up a pack of cards and shuffled for the cut.

  “Noel still hunt?” he said to Daphne as he spread the pack on the table.

  Daphne appeared not to have heard the question. Her extended hand came over the table and she bent forward so that the barest outline of the division between her breasts was visible. Her face had assumed an expression of calculated innocence which annoyed McQueen intensely. He was not the fool these young people seemed to think. He knew perfectly well that Daphne was exposing herself deliberately to embarrass him, and he felt like spanking her.

  “Daphne,” Janet said. “Your grandfather has asked you a question.”

  “Yes, Grandfather.” Daphne’s voice came out with exaggerated briskness. “Noel hunts.”

  McQueen cut the high card and began to deal with elaborate care.

  “One thing I never could understand about the English,” the general said, as he patted each falling card into place. “Otter hunting. Stand around in the mud of a river bank for hours and nothing happens.” He picked up his hand. “True test of an Englishman if he hunts otters. Noel hunt otters?”

  Daphne looked at him brightly, her eyes isolated from them all. “He hunts everything with legs.”

  Conversation stopped at the bridge table as the bid was opened. On the chesterfield Heather was trying to talk to her brother-in-law and receiving no help. He offered her a cigarette, lit it, and then appeared to forget her presence. It made her feel acutely uncomfortable, as though she had just committed a blatant social error which Noel had decided to overlook but not forget. It was always like this when she was alone with him. At first she had thought it was her own shyness that made it difficult to know him
, but tonight she was reaching the sharp conclusion that he simply found her a bore.

  Daphne had met him three years ago when she had been presented at court. Two years ago Fletcher had come out to Montreal to marry her. There had been a quick round of parties, the wedding had taken place in the approved manner with herself a distracted and very busy maid of honour, and then they had departed. She had looked forward to their return, but now that they were back everything seemed different from what she had expected. Daphne had become a stranger, amused by her younger sister and satisfied with a knowledge Heather could not understand or guess.

  Now Heather made a desperate effort to find a subject of conversation that would interest Noel. She asked him about recent plays in London, about his factory, about the flat they had taken in St. John’s Wood, about the work which had brought him to North America. He answered each question with a monosyllable. Heather felt more gauche and awkward than she could remember having felt since her first formal party. She asked herself with inner desperation what was the matter with her. Noel talked easily enough to the men, even though he tended to use as few words as possible to express an idea. He must simply be wishing he were anywhere except having to sit beside her at McQueen’s dinner party. There was no use going on pestering him with questions. For several minutes she sat in silence beside his self-sufficiency, listening to the flick of the cards as a hand was played out at the table.

  When Noel did speak, Heather was startled. He made no movement, except to turn his head slowly and stare at her. His blue eyes took in her chestnut hair, the slightly tawny skin of her tanned arms, the full curves of her breasts under the lime-green chiffon. Then he said, “If you’d get away from this mausoleum of a city you live in…” He left the sentence unfinished, lit himself another cigarette and tossed the match away toward the hearth. This time it landed on the edge of McQueen’s rug.

  Heather watched its flight and waited for Noel to continue, but it appeared that he had finished all he intended to say. At least he had indicated a subject which seemed to interest him, and she took advantage of it.

  “I’ve often wondered what strangers think of Montreal,” she said. “When one knows it so well, it’s hard to think of it in comparison with famous cities one only visits.”

  “It’s priceless,” he said. “Kensington–1910.”

  Heather tossed the wave of brown hair off her forehead. She was about to defend the city when Fletcher forestalled her. In the same tone of voice, he said, “If you’d only give yourself a chance, you’d be damned good in bed.”

  Their eyes met and held. The trace of a smile touched Fletcher’s mouth and Heather’s first impulse was to believe she had not heard correctly. But he went on. “English women are hopeless. Now you Americans…”

  Neither of them spoke or moved. Then Heather rose and left him, moving over to the table and pretending an interest in the game. Daphne was dealing. The general was feeling fine. “Too bad your father isn’t here, Janet,” he said. “Wonderful, how he keeps up at his age.”

  “I invited the captain, of course,” McQueen said hastily. “He always refuses parties.”

  Daphne divided the cards smoothly. “The only time I’ve seen him since I came back he talked about his classes. It sounded too terribly weird for words. Whatever did he mean? I never got around to asking him.”

  Janet pursed her lips. “Your grandfather’s incurable. He left the farm and moved to Montreal in order to relax and not work so hard. And now he’s registered at the university for some course or other in the summer school!”

  “Can’t imagine myself doing a thing like that,” the general said. “I tried to reread Sir Walter Scott the other day and I found him damned heavy weather.”

  They began to bid and Heather leaned against her grandfather’s chair. She thought she caught an expression of amused irony in Daphne’s eyes, but she couldn’t be sure. Daphne had always been cool; now she was lacquered. It came over Heather in a wave that everyone she knew was sure of himself but her; they knew what to say and what to do and where they were going. She disagreed with nearly all their opinions, but it made no difference; she could never prove her disagreement. Growing up with Daphne she had always known herself to be less attractive, the plain sister of the most beautiful girl in town. Perhaps that was why she had been so grateful last week when Alan Farquhar had asked her to marry him. He had bristly red hair, round blue eyes, a raccoon coat and a blue Packard roadster with a fox-brush flying from the radiator. Her mother thoroughly approved of his family.

  Without turning around she was aware that Noel had risen from the chesterfield and was standing behind and to one side of her. What had she done or said to make him talk to her like that? If he had been anyone else but Daphne’s husband she could have laughed and teased him and forgotten it. After all, she wasn’t a child. But he was so different from anyone else she knew, so sure of himself.

  The hand was over and the general was intent upon talking about what might have happened if the cards had been played in a different manner. When the discussion had been settled to suit him, he began to deal. “Your father finally got his price on that farm of his in Saint-Marc, didn’t he, Janet?” he said.

  Janet had answered the same question several times in the past few weeks, but her father-in-law always forgot. Now she repeated that the farm had been sold. She twisted the rings on her fingers. “And a very good thing, too,” she added. “At his age–out there among all those French-Canadians. It’s always been embarrassing.”

  “Might easily have been the death of him.” The general cocked an eye at the ceiling, still holding most of the cards in the pack. “By the way, McQueen–what happened to that factory you built out there?”

  The factory had also been explained to the general several times. It was too bad, McQueen thought, how the old gentleman’s memory was going. “One of Rupert Irons’ subsidiaries took it over,” he said. “There are several factories in Saint-Marc now. My original idea was sound, but I was always disappointed in the place. Irons will probably make something of it, with the help of the Ottawa Agreements.”

  “It seems only yesterday,” the general said, “since they weren’t letting Rupert Irons into the clubs. Now he’s into everything.”

  “By the way, Huntly–” Daphne’s clipped words cut through the conversation. “Whatever happened to that Tallard family we used to know in Saint-Marc?”

  Heather moved away from her grandfather’s chair. She felt as if irrelevant objects were whizzing in all directions. McQueen seemed to have given up the bridge game for lost.

  “You know,” Daphne went on. “That funny old man who quarrelled with the priest and left the Catholics. He used to sit in the pew opposite us in St. David’s after they came to Montreal. It seemed so funny having a Catholic there.”

  “Athanase Tallard wasn’t a funny man, Daphne,” McQueen said. “His life was a tragedy.”

  “Good name, Tallard,” the general said. Suddenly he began to deal. “None better than those solid old French families. None better. I always insist on that when I hear Toronto people talking against them.” Then he stopped dealing with half the pack of cards still in his left hand.

  McQueen paused to see if he would continue, but the general had forgotten what he was doing. “That was a very sad affair,” McQueen said. “How was I to know our factory would involve him in a quarrel? Athanase Tallard must have stood between two stools all his life–like so many people these days. But I understand he returned to the Romans before he died. Very loyal of your father, Janet, to stay with him.”

  The general began to deal again, muttering between his teeth as he passed out cards to players who had lost all interest in them. “Too much talk about the way they’re leaving the Church. Don’t believe a word of it. I’ve lived in this province all my life and I know ’em. They all die with candles in their hands.”

  Heather went back to the chesterfield, hoping Fletcher wouldn’t follow her. The name of the Tallard fam
ily had started a train of ideas in her mind. Only last week Alan Farquhar had mentioned Paul Tallard. Alan had been on the university hockey team and had met him in the league. Paul had become a semi-professional during the winter, on a team made up of garage hands and factory workers who played hockey only at night for the money they could make. It was a tough outfit, Alan had said, and everyone talked about Paul because he was good. There was even talk of his making a club in one of the major leagues. Heather knew little about hockey, but it seemed poignant that a boy she had played with in childhood should now be living such a life. Every once in a while her grandfather mentioned Paul, and she supposed he still saw him, but she seldom saw Yardley herself except during holidays and special family occasions.

  The atmosphere of the room was stifling her. With a quick glance to be sure she was unobserved, she slipped out into the hall, then through the front door and across the street to the Methuen house. She smelled the loosened earth of flower beds and heard a sprayer tossing water onto McQueen’s lawn. The gravel of the drive beside the Methuen house was excitingly white under the moon, and it crunched beneath her slippers as she walked to the garage at the back. She got into her car and started the motor, backed out and turned, and let the car coast down the hill.

  On reaching the lower street she turned west, ran some blocks, and then took the long curving incline of Côte-des-Neiges. The tires whirred over the cobbles of the hill. She rushed into Westmount at sixty miles an hour, turned with a scream of tires and wound slowly up a terraced driveway to the crest of the mountain. At a terraced look-off she parked the car, shut off the lights and sat still. It was wonderful to be alone.

  At twenty-three Heather felt she had reached a crisis in her life. Though she had not been reared to consider herself a rich girl, she had been fully aware that a great deal of money was behind her. That, together with the social position of her family, made her feel isolated from all but a few members of her own generation. Her mother had followed the Methuen pattern strictly: Methuens avoided all ostentation; they never prided themselves on their money, but their pride of position was overweening; they despised extravagance wherever it was found and Heather’s allowances had always been kept fairly small. They lived within the tight cage of activities considered fitting for women in the Square Mile.