The Latchkey Kid

by Helen Forrester

  The editor asked for Mr. Henry Stych. Mrs. Stych faltered for a moment and then realized that she meant Hank.

  She said gaily: “The story isn’t about Hank – it’s about my husband, Boyd.”

  The editor knew nothing of the story of Boyd’s promotion, about to be featured in the financial section, and she said firmly that it was Henry she wanted.

  Mrs. Stych did not want to offend the queen of the social columns by arguing with her, so when that lady went on to inquire when the newspaper could send a photographer, Mrs. Stych said in her most gracious tone of voice that the whole family would be at home that evening any time after six.

  She rang off, happy that the Advent was taking such an interest in Boyd’s directorship, finished her coffee and went to take her morning shower. It was only then, with the water trickling down her plump back, that an uncomfortably cold premonition seemed to trickle down, too. Had the Editor really meant Hank, and, if so, what had Hank been up to?

  She pulled herself up firmly. If Hank had done something particularly dreadful, either Donna Frizzell or some other nosey parker would have been on her doorstep by now to tell her about it. It must be about Boyd.

  As requested by Mrs. Johnson of the Committee for the Preservation of Morals, she drove out to the library, with the intention of asking the chief librarian for information about Ben MacLean, but when she arrived he had gone out for morning coffee. His languid part-time assistant could not have cared less about books or authors, local or other; she supposed that there was a copy of the book in the new-fiction section.

  Mrs. Stych sailed majestically to the bookcase indicated, and found the offending volume almost immediately. She had not looked at Mrs. Frizzell’s copy, so this was her first glimpse of it. Before picking it out, she looked over her shoulder to make sure that no one was looking at her. There was only one person nearby, an elderly gentleman immersed in back copies of the Edmonton Journal, so she slipped the book out.

  The sultry female depicted on the front shocked her. What a position to lie in – it was indecent! No wonder Donna had been upset. She read the summary of the story and the gushing praise of the New York critics, quoted on the jacket. Finally she turned the book over and read the brief notes about the author; and her deep unease of earlier that morning returned, but she crushed it down.

  She read the first two pages, and felt a blush rise from her palpitating bosom up her neck to suffuse her face. For heaven’s sakes, did girls really do such things? Fancy the library allowing such a book on their shelves! She hastily returned it to its place, and in a state of some agitation went back to her car and sat there until she felt calm again.

  She started the car with a jerk and hit the bumper of the car in front. Flustered, she reversed, and the groceries she had bought en route fell off the back seat and flopped to the floor. Damn that book! With painful care she eased the car out of its parking place and into the flow of traffic.

  The cover said a high school boy. But what could a kid know about such goings-on as were chronicled in the pages she had read? What did a present-day high school boy know?

  It came to her as a shock that, although she had an excellent opportunity to be acquainted with high school children through her son, she did not know any of his friends. With a burst of self-pity, she mentally reviled Hank for never talking to her or telling her what he was going to do. He never brought his friends to the house and she had never known where he spent his spare time. What did he do, other than ride around in his jalopy and sometimes help out in the supermarket?

  As she manoeuvred the car through the traffic, the cold feeling which had menaced her earlier returned to plague her.

  She tried to brush aside memories of the eager, tiny child that Hank had been, a child who had adored his ugly, heavy-footed Ukrainian grandfather, a child who had screamed with rage at her when she had thrust him into the arms of an unknown babysitter or had forced him to play alone in the basement, until he became a silent, morose schoolboy. Meanwhile, she had pursued personal aggrandizement at his expense, a whisper of conscience hinted, until he had learned that he was nothing but a nuisance to her.

  The memories persisted, until she had worked herself into a peevish bout of self-pity, which was not improved by her discovery when she reached home that Hank had not shovelled the snow off the front walk before leaving for school. The snow would certainly invade the tops of her boots when she stepped out of the car, and she swore softly in Ruthenian as she retrieved the groceries from the floor of the car and turned to carry them into the house.

  She had just slammed the car door by hooking it with one foot, when Mrs. Frizzell, with a similar brown-paper bag of groceries, came round the nearest corner on foot, having been to the local store.

  “Mornin’, Olga,” she shouted as she scuttled towards her, a pair of rollers in the front of her hair sticking out like devil’s horns from under her woollen hat. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Library,” said Mrs. Stych shortly as she staggered through the snow towards her house.

  Mrs. Frizzell’s face brightened. “About the book?”

  “Yeah,” replied Mrs. Stych with an involuntary shudder. She suddenly recollected that she was now the wife of the director of a large company, and drew herself up with what she hoped was some dignity; but she only succeeded in looking more than ever like a pouter pigeon. “Librarian had gone to coffee.”

  “I’d like to know who wrote it,” said Mrs. Frizzell wistfully.

  Mrs. Stych put her nose in the air, and said: “We shall have the name in a day or two.”

  Mrs. Frizzell surveyed her neighbour speculatively. Olga seemed to be more patronizing than ever today. She was now looking round at both their houses distastefully, though the houses looked the same as usual, snow on the roofs, snow a foot deep over the yards, snow poised on every twig and leaf, a cloud from the central-heating chimney hovering calmly over each residence.

  Mrs. Stych had temporarily forgotten about Hank. “I’ll be glad to leave this house,” she said carefully.

  Mrs. Frizzell’s nose quivered as she caught the scent of change.

  “Leave it?”

  “Yeah. Probably next fall. We’re going to build in Vanier Heights.”

  The effect of this announcement on Mrs. Frizzell was all that Mrs. Stych could have desired. The bounce went out of her as if she had burst. Envy sprang into her hard little eyes and gleamed maliciously. She stood rooted to the sidewalk, her mind a whirl of dislike. Vanier Heights? She could have cried. Why hadn’t Maxie thought of building a new house there, the old stick in the mud?

  She took two or three large breaths over the top of her bag of groceries, while Mrs. Stych watched her stupefaction with complacency. She had, however, understimated Donna Frizzell’s powers of recovery. Between gritted teeth, Donna asked innocently: “Isn’t that a bit old-fashioned? We were thinking of buying a small estate outside the city, three or four acres, so that we could have a real nice ranch-type bungalow – and keep some riding horses.” The last was an inspired idea, a riding horse with an acreage to keep it on being quite a status symbol.

  Mrs. Stych licked her lips. “Oh, no!” she drawled, determined not to be outdone, as she moved towards her front door. “We wouldn’t like to be far from town – we like culture – and horses smell so.”

  Mrs. Frizzell reminded herself that murder was not civilized. Not trusting herself to speak, she right-wheeled and made for her own front door, which now looked hopelessly out of date and shabby. She would get to work on Maxie just as soon as his presence at home should coincide with hers; she had not seen him since returning from the tea, except when crawling wearily into bed.

  “Let him just show his face,” she muttered darkly.

  CHAPTER 13

  While his mother and Donna Frizzell sparred in front of their respective homes, Hank laboured in Isobel Dawson’s garage. The day was overcast and it was becoming difficult to see what he was typing, so, about noon, when imaginati
on began to fail him, he walked up to the house to inquire from Dorothy whether Isobel would mind if he had better lighting installed in the garage, provided he paid for it. The door was opened unexpectedly by Isobel herself. She was in a housedress and held a duster in her hand. She greeted Hank cheerily.

  Hank looked nonplussed, and than asked, rather foolishly: “Aren’t you at work?”

  “No. The boss went to Calgary and gave me the day off.” Hospitably, she opened the door wider. “You’d better come in, it’s cold out there.”

  He entered gratefully. A strong smell of floor polish pervaded the house and the kitchen was in chaos, its furniture piled in the middle and a vacuum cleaner cord snaking round it to a hidden plug.

  She apologized for the muddle and ushered him into the living-room. She gestured towards the chesterfield. “Sit down. What can I do for you?”

  He sat down, feeling somewhat shy in the midst of so much domestic activity, while she knelt and lit the gas fire. “Canadians are always cold in this house,” she remarked in explanation. “I don’t keep it so hot as they keep theirs.

  “Well?” she asked, as she got up off her knees.

  Pretty legs, thought Hank, as he explained about the lighting in the garage.

  Instead of giving the immediate agreement which he had expected, she said: “Let’s have some coffee. We’d better talk the whole thing over.”

  Though he was a little surprised, he smiled and said with alacrity that he could just use a cup of coffee, and he lounged after her as she bustled around the kitchen. She was unlike anybody else he had ever met and secretly he found her intriguing. Today, dressed like a housewife, she looked more human than usual, less distantly dignified. He wondered how he had found sufficient courage to ask her to the Edwardian Ball, and then remembered that it was her air of calm dignity which had made him anxious to take her, to impress his parents.

  “Where’s Dorothy?” he asked.

  “She’s gone for a skiing lesson – she wants to learn before going home.” She wondered idly if Hank was interested in Dorothy, and the idea made her feel a little forlorn.

  She lifted a cup and saucer in each hand, and he took one from her. His fingers touched hers and his heart gave a jolt, but she seemed perfectly in command of herself and had apparently felt nothing, so he told himself not to be a dope, and carried his coffee back to the chesterfield. He stirred it silently, as she settled herself in a rocking-chair opposite to him.

  When he looked up at her, he found her regarding him with a troubled frown over the rim of her coffee cup. It seemed to him that in her gentle gaze there was more than a hint of despair, and it grieved him.

  “The thing is,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation, “that I am going to sell this house.”

  Hank nearly dropped his cup, as his brand-new writing world splintered into pieces around him. “S-sell?” he stuttered.

  “Yes,” she replied, her voice trembling a little. “I’m going home.”

  Hank was thoroughly disquieted. He was still young enough to feel that the present was permanent. Shut up in her garage, his work approved of and praised by her, comforted by Captain Dawson’s and her advice,which had in all respects proved reliable, he had felt a safety and confidence unknown to him before. Even now that his father was aware of his activities, it would not be the same; only she knew the appalling effort he had made, only she had read the manuscript through and appreciated the clarity of his prose and the honesty of his outlook. He had expected that any change in his routine would have been of his own making, not hers.

  She was waiting for him to make some reply, and he said slowly: “I guess you must be homesick, now Captain Dawson isn’t here.”

  “Well, yes. He wasn’t here very much, as you know, but we were looking forward to the end of his army service and then we would have settled here.” She looked sober, and then added: “I might as well go home – there’s nothing to keep me here. My in-laws have other children, and it’s always easier in one’s own country.”

  “I guess your parents will be glad to see you,” he remarked.

  “They’re dead. They were killed in an accident just before I was married – Peter was my father’s friend.”

  “Peter must have been a lot older than you?” ventured Hank.

  She was not offended at the personal question, but her voice held a trace of surprise in it as she said: “Yes, he was. He was at school with my father. You see, Father was actually born in Alberta – his parents came here from Wales – but when he was a young man he went back on a visit, and fell in love with my mother and with Wales as well, and stayed there.” She smiled and ran her finger around the top of her coffee cup. “Father always kept in touch with Peter and he planned to come and see us when he got leave from France, where he was stationed. As it turned out, he only came for the funeral.”

  Hank was interested. He had heard of girls marrying a father substitute, but he had not met one before. He did not wish to make her unhappy by any further probing after such a flow of confidences, so he just asked her which city in England she came from, this being a question all immigrants were accustomed to.

  “I don’t come from England – I’m Welsh, from Caernarvon.”

  He failed to realize the difference and his blank expression made her smile. “Wales and the Welsh are quite different from England and the English,” she said. “Being Welsh is a bit like – well, like being a French Canadian. I’m going back to my old employers in London, though.”

  “I suppose I’d better find another garage,” he said rather hopelessly. Without asking if he could smoke, he quickly took out a cigarette and lit it, and then belatedly offered her one. She was amused at his blunder, but took one from him. He remembered to offer her a light.

  He put his coffee cup down on a pile of English magazines, got up and stretched himself. His T-shirt was too small for him and came out of the waist of his pants. The pants themselves were too tight and too short, exhibiting a generous stretch of hairy legs. Isobel stifled a strong desire to laugh.

  “I presume you’re dressed officially for school,” she said.

  He looked down at himself. “Yep.”

  “Does your mother know about the book yet?”

  “No!” he snapped. “Dad does.”

  Isobel asked cautiously: “Has he read it?”

  “Jeepers, no. He don’t even know what it’s called. Never even asked me.”

  He wandered towards the piano, and very gently turned the picture of Captain Dawson face down on the top of the instrument. “Goodbye, fella,” he muttered, but Isobel fortunately did not hear him.

  “Do you think he’ll mind that it is a rather controversial book?”

  Hank sat down on the piano stool and struck a chord. “It’s too late to mind,” he said. “He should have done a bit of minding years ago.”

  “I think you ought to tell your mother.” Isobel’s voice was almost imploring. “She has a right to know, before anybody else tells her.”

  Hank broke into the “Cornish Rhapsody”, playing with such savagery that the little room was flooded with the storm of it. For the first time, Isobel felt a little afraid of him, as all the suppressed fury of a rejected child came pouring out in the music. She sat quietly, however, until the music found its way into calmer waters and then came to an end.

  He spun round on the stool so that he could face her. “Not bad, eh?” he asked, some of the tension gone from his face.

  “You are very good,” she said, some of the nervousness receding from her. “Do you practise much?”

  “Most days. Used to practise in the school.” He grinned. “That left the evenings free to go out, except near exam times.” It dawned on him that he had not had a date for weeks, and his first one would be with her at the Edwardian Ball. Must be going senile, he decided.

  “Say,” he said, “you’d better tell me more precisely about what I am to wear at this ball. We gotta make a hit – let ’em know we’ve arrived.”r />
  Isobel’s face looked suddenly young and animated. “I’ll get the book with the picture in it. I think it’ll be fun. I haven’t been to a ball since I came to Canada.”

  Hank looked at her aghast. “Honey,” he said, without thinking, “it’s time you started to live it up a bit.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Boyd Stych, looking strangely civilized in a dark business suit and neatly clipped beard, was informed by his wife, when he came home, that the Advent was sending a photographer and a reporter to see him this evening, and he was not to litter up the lounge – she’d just tidied it.

  He grunted guardedly, as he heaved off his overshoes. Though he knew the press would be sending a photographer to take a picture of him for the financial pages of the newspaper, he suspected that their main interest was in Hank. It was not going to be possible to keep from Olga the information that her son had suddenly become quite a well-to-do youngster, though he had warned Hank on no account to tell her how much he had made out of his book. Boyd believed firmly that all women were incurably avaricious and was certain that, once Olga knew about the book, she would try to squeeze most of the proceeds of it out of Hank; and, to his credit, he was determined that this should not happen.

  He dropped his briefcase on the chesterfield, and Mrs. Stych snatched it up crossly and took it into his den, while he went to the refrigerator in search of ice cubes for a drink. Should he talk to her now, he wondered, or let Hank do it?

  “Where’s the rye?” he shouted.

  “In the bar in the basement – where else?” came the sharp reply.

  He went downstairs to the rumpus room and rummaged behind the tiny bar, and, after digging through a seemingly endless collection of empty pop bottles, came up with half a bottle of rye and some ginger ale. He felt he needed a drink – this could be quite a trying evening. Perhaps it was fortunate that he had no inkling of how trying it was going to be.