The Latchkey Kid

by Helen Forrester

  He took a hesitant step towards the chesterfield. She did not move, though she must have heard him, so he sat down tentatively beside her. She whimpered and wriggled further into the chesterfield’s cushiony depths. If he was to get anywhere, he told himself reluctantly, he would have to do the comforting.

  “What are you going to wear tomorrow night?” he asked, with a burst of sheer genius.

  She slowly looked round at him, her eyes wide with surprise and doubt, the wretched book forgotten. “Oh, Boyd,” she breathed, “just wait till you see it!”

  He half turned and put his arm round her recumbent form.

  “Is it real pretty?”

  “Yeah,” she sighed, still eyeing him distrustfully, “it’s real nice.”

  Boyd began to feel better and not a little smug. It was just like the books said – all a man needed was a good technique. He let his hand wander a little, and got it petulantly pushed away as she heaved herself out of the clutches of the chesterfield’s upholstery, and sat up on the edge of it. Her face was still sulky and she still sniffed occasionally as she put her feet to the ground.

  Patiently, he tried another tack: “Like a snack?” he asked.

  Something of the sulkiness vanished and she wiggled her feet down more firmly into her shoes. There was a suggestion of enthusiasm in her voice when she replied: “Yeah. I would.”

  She rose and tottered, like a child still uncertain of its balance, to the refrigerator and swung open its massive door. Merely viewing its contents made her feel better. A barbecued chicken and a ham, both provided ready to serve by the local supermarket, made her mouth water. She opened the small freezer at the top, and four different types of ice cream, some frozen cream cakes and some ready-to-bake cookie mixes promised further consolation.

  Boyd followed her out and, without being told, put some coffee on to percolate. He also got out rye bread and mustard. She always wanted the same things after a fight – ham on rye with mustard, followed by vanilla ice cream with walnut topping, a large slab of cake and coffee. Well topped up with these, thought Boyd as he hunted for the bread knife, she would be in a much more amicable mood, and then he might get somewhere with her.

  CHAPTER 16

  Hank breathed with relief the icy, sweet air outside his parents’ house. The night was beautiful, with a clean-swept sky filled with newly polished stars. Low on the skyline, just above the housetops, a red glow marked the reflection of neon signs in the centre of the city and he could hear the steady roar of traffic crossing the old river bridge towards it. The road in which he stood was, however, deserted, its avenue of leafless trees eerily quiet under the high street lamps. His mother’s voice came faintly to him through the double doors of the house. He pitied his father, though he knew him to be physically and mentally tough and well able to take care of himself.

  He stood shivering on the step, uncertain what to do. He smiled wryly to himself. The Cheaper Sex had already done very well what he had originally intended it to do – draw his parents’ attention to his existence. It was obvious that during the next few weeks they were going to waste a lot of their valuable time thinking about him. But now he was older he did not care very much whether they were interested or not. He was far more concerned with consolidating his new-born reputation as a writer by producing another book of equal merit as fast as he could. He knew that, like a canoeist, he must ride the current while he could, finding a way through the rapids of life and somehow transforming his experiences into a story that rang with the honesty of his first book. Standing in the cold in front of the house, he realized suddenly that this was his ambition, to mirror life truly, so that people laughed when they saw their own image through his eyes.

  His ears were getting numb, warning of frostbite, and he clapped his hands over them. He could not go far without mittens or earmuffs. His first idea on coming out had been to go and see Isobel and Dorothy, and then he had been overcome by unaccustomed shyness. Now he decided he would go and get the car out and possibly call on his old friend, Ian MacDonald, now in his second year at the university; it seemed a long time since they had so light-heartedly rebuilt his jalopy in Isobel’s garage.

  He stuffed his hands into his pockets and, to keep himself warm, jogged the short distance to the garage.

  The curtains had not been drawn over the back windows of Isobel’s house, and he stood looking into the lighted rooms for a moment before unlocking the garage door. He chuckled as he saw Dorothy in her bedroom carefully pressing her hair to a fashionable straightness, on the ironing board with the electric iron; her contortions in an effort to reach up as far as possible were as complex as those of a cat trying to reach its middle back. Two students were seated in the kitchen, drinking coffee and laughing over some joke. He waited, hoping to see Isobel, but she must have been in the front part of the house. Finally, he unlocked the garage and went in.

  The white Triumph, its hood up, awaited his command; the gas stove in the corner roared in its usual muffled fashion. The typewriter on the desk seemed to float like an iceberg in a sea of paper, but he felt too tired to work. He opened the doors of the garage and then got into the car preparatory to backing it out. He sat for a moment, however, slumped in the driver’s seat with the ignition key in his hand and no lights switched on, while he went over his mother’s bitter words.

  His fatigue was overwhelming. He told himself ruefully that too much had happened to him in the previous few weeks. He felt as if he had been blasted, in that time, right out of boyhood into manhood, as if he had been called up for the army and sent to war. And he had not done badly, he felt, especially as he had had to manage in New York without a lawyer or an agent to help him. “You had nothing to lose but your chains,” he muttered and laughed a little.

  What should he do in the immediate future? he asked himself.

  Home was becoming untenable, but he dismissed the idea of taking an apartment on his own; living with his mother had been lonely enough. He toyed with the idea of going to stay with Grandmother Palichuk and his uncle, then realized that, once they understood the tenor of his writings, they would try to persuade him not to produce another book. And the new book was growing healthily; soon he would like Isobel to read it, and confirm his opinion that it was as good as his first one, or better.

  Isobel! He swung the key ring fretfully round on his finger. Hell! Isobel was going home to that weirdo place in the U.K. from which she came. It struck him suddenly that he did not know how he was going to live without her. He stared blankly through the windshield at his piled-up desk. He knew that even if he had been able to finish his first book, he would never have had the courage to submit it to a publisher; the only other person to whom he might have turned for advice, Mr. Dixon, the English teacher, would never have condoned its content. Captain Dawson was gone, and now Isobel was going. He heaved his huge shoulders against the seat back as he considered, rather hopelessly, the emptiness of his life in the near future.

  He told himself not to be a fool. He had friends like John MacDonald, Ian’s cousin, who was still plodding through high school, and Ian himself, of course; and there was Brett Hill, who had left school to become a flower child and now lived in comfortable squalor in a hut by the river, spending most of his life in a haze of marihuana. The majority of the boys with whom he had gone through school had left last year, and had been either at work or in university for some months past. He had got left behind to do this crazy Grade 12 again, left in a limbo of those really too old for school, too unqualified for work.

  God, what a world!

  Well, he did not have John’s sticking power or Brett’s enjoyment of drugs. What he wanted was to work amongst men, strong-minded men who knew where they were going, like his publishers in New York. My, they were tough, but so had he managed to be. All he needed was experience, he decided, and to get out of this goddam town, away from nagging schoolmarms, hysterical mothers and browbeaten fathers. He could try getting a job with a newspaper or magazine in
Toronto or, maybe, Montreal – his French could be worse. He could afford to start at the bottom and do anything, just anything to enable him to be an adult.

  Tomorrow he would go into action. And tomorrow he was certainly going to attend the ball with Isobel. His first intention had been simply to spite his mother by showing her that he could circulate alone in her world; now he wanted to give Isobel a good time. It would give him, he realized, great satisfaction to show her off in that old cats’ paradise. Do her good to have a whirl for once; being Peter Dawson’s wife must have been pretty boring and being a widow must be even worse.

  As he turned on the car lights, the side door of the garage opened and Isobel entered carrying a table lamp.

  He rolled down the car window, and she said, with surprise: “Hello, I didn’t expect to find you here.” Then she lifted the lamp to give him a better view of it. “Do you think this would give you a better working light?”

  “It’ll do just fine,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

  She put the lamp down on the desk, after carefully clearing a space amongst the papers. She wrapped her cardigan closely round her; she was shivering. “Gosh, it’s cold in here.”

  Her voice quavered with the chill, and he opened the car door. “Get in,” he said. “You’ll freeze.”

  “It’s O.K. Just came with the lamp. I must go back to the house,”

  “Aw, come on,” he wheedled, “stay a minute. I wanna ask you sumpin’.” He looked so like a small boy asking a favour that she complied, easing herself round the car to the opposite side and climbing in, her teeth chattering. He leaned over her and shut the door and rolled up the window. She looked very small and frail beside his huge bulk, and he heaved a rug from the back of the car and cautiously tucked it round her, then turned on the car heater and the headlights.

  “That better?” he asked.

  Her smile was impish above the plaid blanket as she nodded.

  They were very close together in the tiny car, and Hank found himself unexpectedly scared. He was not sure what kind of behaviour she would expect from him, and hastily advised himself to play it cool, even if she was insulted because he made no advances to her. For her part, Isobel had been used, like most English women, to working in close proximity to men, and had crawled in beside him with as much thought as if he were a child of ten. Now, with the warmth of his body slowly penetrating the blanket, and his face half turned towards her so that he could see her, she was not so sure of herself. His face, in the faint light penetrating the interior of the car from the garage’s ceiling light, looked sad, like the faces of Red Indians who hung about the centre of the town; they, too, had a Mongolian cast of feature, and the hardness of their lives gave them an air of grim melancholy. Her eyes moved compassionately over his face; he had their quiet dignity, too, she ruminated, in spite of his hunched-up carriage.

  His heart was beating like a tomtom, but he asked her with a grin: “What you thinking about?”

  The golden eyelashes immediately came down to veil her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was her usual quiet, distant self. “Tomorrow’s dinner,” she said flippantly.

  “You’re having it with me,” he reminded her.

  Her eyes twinkled. “So I am,” she said. “That will be very nice – though I don’t know what my in-laws will think of me, gallivanting round the town.”

  “Let ’em rot,” said Hank with heat. “You can’t stay locked up all your life.” Then, to change the subject, he asked: “What do you think of my beard?” He fingered the wild scrub which, like most Tollemarche men, he had been nursing along for the past ten days.

  “It looks ghastly,” said Isobel frankly. “Perhaps the barber, when he does your hair for the ball, could trim it into some sort of naval shape – show him the picture I gave you of the man you are supposed to be. I think, if you add an artificial moustache, it would help.”

  Hank felt deflated. He was proud of the amount of beard he had been able to cultivate in so short a time. Isobel sensed this, and said comfortingly: “I am sure the barber could make a beautiful job out of it.”

  He sighed with mock resignation: “O.K., I’ll go see him. I have to have an English-style haircut anyway.”

  Her eager face with its small, pointed chin was turned up towards him. Could a widow woman be so innocent as to expect him to be unmoved when she was so close to him that he could smell her perfume? he wondered. Sure, he was scared of her, but that was because he did not want to offend her; it did not stop him wanting to kiss her.

  His sudden silence bothered Isobel. She asked: “What did you want to ask me?”

  “Waal, I wanted to ask you sumpin’ – and, oh yeah, I wanted to tell you sumpin’, too.” His Canadian accent sounded to her almost like a Midwest American accent, and yet it had small nuances of sound that made it different. Although Alberta was too young to have acquired an accent of its own, its beginnings could be detected among those born in the province – a certain harshness of voice, a certain slowness of articulation not unpleasant to the ear, which mirrored the calm doggedness of people used to living in a climate which would daunt the bravest at times.

  “You did?” Isobel’s voice was gently encouraging.

  “Yeah, the Advent sent a man tonight to see me – and Ma nearly hit the roof.” He chuckled. “She’d read a bit of my book somewhere, when she didn’t know I had written it – and she sure was mad at me!”

  He produced two crumpled cigarettes out of the change pocket in the front of his jeans, and handed her one. He leaned over her and lit it with a lighter retrieved from the same pocket. For a moment after the cigarette was alight he held the flaming lighter still before her face, examining her with doubting, narrowed black eyes. She regarded him steadily through the flame, her expression anticipatory, waiting to hear what he had to say. Her calmness irritated him, and he snapped the lighter shut and slumped back into his seat again.

  A little sulkily, he went on: “When we go to the Pre-Edwardian Supper tomorrow, you know its O.K. to wear your costume? People wander round town all week in bustles and fancy waistcoats – and they will all next week.”

  “Thanks, I intended to do so. The town really looked Edwardian when I was down there this morning – all trailing skirts, bonnets and beards.” She stopped and then said shyly: “Are you quite sure you want to take me? I – I – er – I’m a bit older than you are, you know.”

  “Waddya mean? What’s age got to do with it? I’ve asked you, haven’t I?” The black brows knitted together, and Isobel was amused to see something of Mrs. Stych’s well-known hot temper flash out of his eyes. “I want you!” he added passionately.

  She was pleased, and said: “Well, thank you. I would enjoy it very much. My brother-in-law expects to be at the ball – he was a bit shaken when I said I thought I would be going – he wasn’t very keen about it.” She hesitated and twirled the wedding ring on her finger. “You know, this will be the first time I have been anywhere, except to work, since – since Peter was killed.” Her voice failed her.

  A twinge of jealousy ripped through him, but he managed to address her very gently while he stared through the windshield, his whole body tensed as he hoped that she would not change her mind.

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot that – I guess you haven’t. If you feel you shouldn’t come, it’s O.K. by me.” He turned towards her and said earnestly: “I can understand about it.” Inside, he was promising himself furiously that if the old biddies at the ball said anything to hurt her, he’d kill them, just kill them.

  Her gratitude showed in her face. “Thank you, Hank, you’re a dear. I do want to come.” She stopped, feeling that this was a turning-point in her widowhood, a modest launching into a new life, a point which had to be reached sooner or later. She had not expected that the invitation to the ball would include dinner with Hank, but she told herself firmly that Peter had no need to be jealous, and then added, with sudden insight, that whatever feelings she might have for Hank were immaterial,
since she was so much older than he was. That Hank might have any feeling other than gratitude to her did not suggest itself to her.

  In the quietness that followed, Hank wondered how she could possibly look so beautiful when she had no makeup on and her hair was scraped back in an unfashionable ponytail. “You must get pretty lonely,” he said suddenly.

  She jumped, and recollected that she should have returned to the house long before. She smiled at him. “Sometimes I do, though Dorothy has been so good and helpful since she has been here.”

  “Well,” he said determinedly, “we’ll have fun tomorrow – it’s a promise.”

  “Fine,” she replied, as she started to open the door. “By the way, what time shall I be ready?”

  To have his convenience considered by a woman was a shock to him. He managed, however, to say quite casually: “I’ll pick you up about seven. O.K.?”

  “Yes, I’ll be ready. Bye-bye.” She slipped out of the car, closed the door carefully, and, with a wave of her hand, left him.

  Only when she had gone did he remember that she had made no comment about his mother’s behaviour, and this seemed to put the occurrences of the early part of the evening into better perspective for him; they were really not worth talking about.

  Dreamily, he switched on the ignition and backed out of the garage. An indignant hoot warned him that he had nearly hit another car moving down the back lane, and this brought him back to reality. His fatigue and depression had almost vanished, and he drove off happily in search of a barbershop, outside the town itself, which would probably still be open.

  CHAPTER 17

  The sky was overcast and the wind moaned softly through the bungalow-lined streets, as Hank brought the Triumph round to Isobel’s front door at seven o’clock the following evening. He remembered, from a lesson he had had at school called “Making the Best of Oneself”, that it was bad manners to toot his horn to call a girl from her house, so he squeezed himself carefully out of the driver’s seat, giving a sharp yelp when he caught his fingers on a collection of brooches pinned to a wide ribbon strung over one shoulder of his evening suit and tied at his side, and went up the wooden steps to ring the doorbell. He had not bothered to wear an overcoat, despite the cold weather, but he did have overshoes on, and they stuck out quaintly from under his immaculately pressed black trousers. In his hand he held a florist’s box, and while he waited for the door to be answered, he pressed more firmly to his upper lip a grey moustache of generous size.