A Population of One

by Constance Beresford-Howe

  “Nancy? She’s left me. Totally fed up. Can’t blame her. I don’t blame her. I guess she’s had it for keeps now, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and mean it. There is another silence. Our knees touch once more, but I don’t like to move away. It would be like hitting someone already defeated. Instead I sip my drink again. There can’t be any alcohol in the thing, surely; it tastes like an ice-cream soda.

  “You married? Or anything?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “No kidding.”

  “No kidding either,” I say, and laugh. He laughs too.

  “Hey, you got a great sense of humour, I like that,” he tells me in high approval. “Come on — it’s New Year’s Day — drink up. What’s it called you got there — a pink lady? God, honey, you’d be better off with straight gin, you know. Eh, Maurice — another round here. Yah, come on now, honey, you’re just one of these old-fashioned gals like to say no when all they mean is yes. Am I right or am I right?”

  Well, it hardly seems a point worth arguing. I finish up the pink dregs in my glass. A thick heat comes from the fire. I feel contented, almost sleepy.

  “What you think about good old Quebec independence, then? You gone activist yet?”

  “Not yet. There was a police cordon around our block the other day — something about a bomb in the mailbox. But they didn’t find anything in it after all.”

  “They will. Give ’em time. Ask me, I’d get the army down here from Ottawa and — Ah but the hell with them. Let’s talk about you, honey.”

  “Nothing to talk about.” I feel my face getting hot, and sip some of my new drink to cool it off.

  “Got a room here, have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look here, honey; no reason I have to rush back to town really — why don’t you and me have a nice little dinner together, eh? Get to know each other better, how about it?” With this, fearing, I suppose, that he might have been too subtle, he puts his hand on my knee.

  Nothing about this guileless invitation comes as a surprise or a shock. There’s nothing offensive about poor George MacKay, with his greying hair and muddled eyes. In fact, as I look at him, I think Well, why not? The Project has made no headway to speak of for months. And haven’t I in fact come up here with something of the sort in mind, tricking my conscience, or my mother’s, with all this guff about skiing? Just the same, I hesitate; old hangups never really die.

  “You know, honey, my wife says I’m dumb. But I’m not dumb enough to take a nice girl like you for a cheap pickup.” His voice is warm with something almost like affection; the mechanical, sad sexuality is for the moment gone. “Only we’re both alone and over twenty-one. Getting older every minute. You only live once, right?”

  Under the table his warm, fleshy hand rests on my thigh. The touch is pleasant. Quite pleasant. More so than most of his conversation, anyway. Poor old George. He calls me honey because he can’t remember my name. But who cares? Why worry about details? He’s kind. And lonely, like me. I swallow more of my pink lady, though when I turn my head there is a sudden, peculiar sliding inside my skull, as if my brain has come loose.

  “Now I want you to hold on here for just a second, honey,” says George, gesturing once more to the barman while he sorts through a handful of change. “You’ll have one more of these to put hair on your chest — yuk, I hope not — and I’m gonna make a quick phone call out there. Be back in just a sec.”

  He gives my hand a farewell pat and goes briskly out to the lobby. The barman sets down full glasses at our table, pausing just a fraction of a second to give me a swift glance from his experienced eyes. I take a large swallow of my drink to demonstrate that I am poised, in control, and perfectly sober.

  This turns out to be a very unwise move. The fire advances and recedes, the ceiling moves slightly lower. With extreme suddenness, I feel ill. Is it the prospect of actually, within the next couple of hours, completing The Project? Is it the thick hands and tongue of George MacKay? Does fornication have to be such a bore? Or is it just these pink ladies, damn their bland, deceptive ways? A minute later all these questions become purely rhetorical. I hurry out of the room, blundering twice against other tables. In the lobby I look around wildly for the Ladies. There it is. But on the way to it, the floor tilts slightly uphill in a very inconvenient way. Someone takes my arm. It is George MacKay, blue eyes protuberant with concern.

  “Where you going, honey? You all right?”

  “No — let — go away!” And I pull free, reaching the washroom just in the nick of time. Afterwards I sit dizzily for some time on the closed lid, tapping together my cold feet and hands, and thinking of nothing at all. I remember for no reason at all my mother’s lips, thin with distaste as she told me how Dad ordered two bushel-baskets of apples from the market, and the one marked with his girlfriend’s name came home by mistake. “Quite typical,” she said.

  Distantly I can hear people chatting and laughing as the bar fills up. The clash of plates and a disgusting smell of food filter in from the kitchen. Shortly I am wrenchingly ill again, and have to convalesce once more in my retreat before I can splash my face with cold water and collect my dignity to walk out into the lobby.

  Windburned skiers are milling about everywhere. There is no sign of George, to my unspeakable relief. The bar is full now. No doubt he’s found consolation already, if he really needed any. Furtively I creep upstairs to my room. After some fumbling with the key, I manage to lock myself in. Shivering, I lie down on the bed and pull the catalogne counterpane over me. The room gives a last heave like a heavy sea as I drop asleep. And I seem to hear my father’s voice say, as clear and fresh as if he stood beside me, “Come on, Willy girl, let’s be two horses laughing.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WINTER GAMES

  Like a clean white page, the opening of term presents itself at last. Yet another snowfall in the night has covered the city and left the air clear as glass. Incredibly, after all that hasn’t happened, I oversleep, and must rush directly to the classroom at ten to give my first lecture of the day. As soon as possible afterwards I hurry down the street to my office. I am so eager that it’s hard not to run. The sun dazzles on the fresh snow. Car exhausts sprout white tail-feathers in the bright cold that burns like pepper in my lungs.

  There is a surprising amount of activity on the walk and steps of the house — dozens of students with their clipboards are standing about chatting instead of moving off to class. Something almost like a crowd clogs the lobby, where more students are passing around copies of the campus news-sheet, and their babble of talk and laughter has an edge of excitement that puzzles me. When I spot Mike Armstrong’s blond head topping the others, I push my way toward him.

  “What’s going on here, Mike?”

  “Just a little demo,” he says, grinning.

  “Eh?”

  “Wait — yeah — here they come. Make way, you guys; let them through.”

  The crowd parts to admit a mini-procession of four or five youths, all in jeans, faces still red from the frigid air outside. They carry signs reading STUDENT PARITY — RIGHT NOT PRIVILEGE. It’s hard to be perfectly sure, so many of them have identical beards, but I think I recognize Harry Innis at the head of the parade. All the marchers are grinning self-consciously, but they move swiftly across the lobby and straight to the closed double doors of an ex-dining-room now used for faculty meetings. Without a pause they fling open the doors and march inside. There is a glimpse of bald, grey, and white heads turning as startled, angry, or incredulous faces snap round to confront the invaders. Then the doors close. A ragged little cheer goes up from the crowd.

  “But what is the point, really?” I ask Mike. “Are those signs going to convert them on the spot?”

  “Look, all the faculty brass is in there — every dean and governor in the place. They’ve been stalling and stalling us — now we stall them. Shit, I wish they’d open the doors and let us all in. But no, Harry wants to keep it all c
ivilized. No mobs, he says. Keep it cool. What a guy. Did you know the Principal threatened him —”

  “So all they’re doing is disrupting this meeting?”

  “Make ’em listen to us. It’s the only way.”

  “If they do listen — you really want to be on the Board of Governors? You’ve got to be kidding, Mike. You’d die of boredom at those meetings.”

  The thickening crowd sways around us. It is so noisy that nothing can be heard from behind the panelled doors. I should go straight upstairs to work; I want to see Bill (“I miss Montreal and you”) — but curiosity keeps me rooted there with all the others, while melting snow from our boots soaks the floor matting. Somewhere near the door the lame old Scotsman who is custodian of the building can be heard feebly and furiously shouting, “You yoongsters get the hell oot of it, I tell ye!”

  They do nothing of the sort. Indeed, more and more of them seem to be squeezing their way into the lobby.

  Suddenly there is a hush. The doors of the committee room open and a string of grim-mouthed elderly men dragging on overcoats begins to emerge.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Where’s Harry?”

  “Here they come!”

  “— busted it up, eh?”

  “Yeah, they got the message.”

  The students make way with polite alacrity for the old men as they come out. All around me are young faces brilliant with a malicious, mocking glee.

  “Bye-bye,” a long-haired girl calls cheerfully as bald Principal Fraser passes through. He turns to direct an icy glare at her, but makes no reply. Suddenly I see Archie Clarke on his way out with the rest. Unlike his colleagues, he looks hugely amused. He lifts his head and remarks in a resonant voice that carries over the whole crowd: “ ‘Our Playwright may show / In some fifth Act what this wild drama means.’ ”

  “Terrific,” says Mike as the crowd begins to disperse. He is evidently in no doubt that an important victory has been won. Yet when Harry and his followers come out of the room, very few have lingered to congratulate them, and they hurry upstairs with serious, preoccupied faces. Mike leans down to me.

  “Hey, look, if you have no class now, how about some coffee at the Hideaway?”

  “Well … sure. Let’s go.”

  Normally I would have ducked out of this invitation. I will probably always find casual socializing with students awkward, even basically incongruous. But I am keen to raise my political consciousness, as Bill weeks ago advised. Besides, I like this boy.

  In the back booth of a cheerfully dirty campus hangout called Harry’s Hideaway, Mike dumps four spoonfuls of sugar into his mug and unhitches his duffle coat to extract and offer a crumpled cigarette pack.

  “Thanks. So the demo was a success? Won’t the old boys just carry on their meeting somewhere else?”

  “Sure. But they heard from us. Now Harry can move on to the next step in the plan. They can’t scare him off.”

  I look at him, frankly curious. He has a most pleasing face, with thin, clear skin, deep-set eyes, and high cheekbones. The narrow chin and hollow temples give it an almost exotic look of delicacy and difference.

  “And what is the plan?”

  “Oh, could be a sit-in next. Boycott lectures or something. I’m on the executive, you know, so I can’t blab too much.”

  “Really? How can you kids get any work done with all this going on?”

  “Easy,” he assures me with a shrug.

  “Maybe for you, boy. But I wonder how any colleague of mine can find time for it all.”

  “Easy there too. Harry’s like committed, that’s how. He’s got his priorities straight.”

  “Has he?”

  “Got it all together, too. A platform. Parity. Then we can get down to a real shake-up of Cartier. Changes in curriculum. Everything … the dumb system of grades, exams, all that. Then all the instruction here should be in French. Going to be, anyhow, when Quebec is free.”

  He is pleased to observe that these remarks give me a few seismic tremors, and adds with satisfaction, “Not if; when.”

  “And Mr. Innis — he’s all for this — an American?”

  “Why not? He’s up here because the States is run by a bunch of right-wing crooks. Thousands of Americans are coming up here every month now; it’s like a new frontier.”

  “I daresay.” But he appears not to notice my dryness. His hollow cheeks are still pink with excitement, and it’s hard not to smile at him and thus give offence.

  “Does it occur to you, I wonder, Mike, that all this connects in a way with your essay on nineteenth-century fathers? What you kids are doing here seems pretty old-fashioned to me — challenging your fathers. What you’re really asking for — demanding — is attention and love, and even punishment. I’d be quite interested to know, for instance, the story of Mr. Innis and his father.”

  He gives me a quick, startled look. “Oh well … I think somebody once told me his dad is some poor old bod from the Ukraine or somewhere. But you’ve got it all wrong. Couldn’t be more so. We’ve all got worried, loving, overprotective dads sitting on top of our heads, if you want to know.”

  “You too?”

  “Mine’s an orthopaedic surgeon. Every Sunday since I could walk he spends with me. He gives time, not just money. We go hunting, games, movies. Long talks.”

  “Yes?”

  He flushes. “All right. Lots of Sundays I’m bored out of my mind. Never much liked hunting. Don’t really turn on for long talks about my grades and my future and the chicks I see. In fact, he tries to manipulate me like a piece of flesh under the knife, if you want to know.”

  “I see.” And indeed I do, with compassion. He has no clear idea yet what forces inside himself or Harry Innis are the real manipulators. Nor, apparently, can he see how destructive they are. But he is a very intelligent and perceptive boy, and he is shifting restlessly on his bench now, as if obscurely uneasy. Tactfully I change the subject a little.

  “Were you surprised to find the old man had so much blood in him? — Dr. Clarke, I mean. What a subversive he is, suggesting the whole thing this morning, on both sides, was a kind of charade. Mm?”

  “Yeah.” His face lights in a charming, almost affectionate smile. “It’ll probably be his office where we sit in.”

  “Really?”

  “Unless you’d like to be chosen.” His eyes rest on me for a moment, still with that gleam of lazy affection in them. “I wish you’d join us,” he says simply. “Because I admire you. Have you noticed that, Ms. Doyle? Or may I call you Miz?”

  His smile is teasing, but I can’t help being touched and amused; even flattered. In fact, I am now blushing like a fool, and this evidently gives him much pleasure. Mike may be only twenty, but he is totally male. Furthermore, I find myself suddenly aware that he is also an attractive male. Flustered by this discovery, which is both unexpected and inconvenient, I pull out change to pay the bill, and spill coins liberally all over my own lap like some inept Danae.

  “We got an appointment tomorrow — to discuss my essay,” Mike reminds me with a grin.

  “Yes — right … well, see you then.”

  “Vive le Québec libre!” he says cheerfully. And we go our separate ways in the bright white noon.

  “Hi, Willy! Want to come for a toboggan ride?”

  Molly’s little face is pink inside the furred hood of her ski jacket, and her eyes blink in the sub-zero air. Harry grins genially and shifts the toboggan under his arm.

  “Come on, it’s Saturday. Fun time. And you’re dressed for it. Not going anywhere special, are you?”

  “No, just coming back from the garage. I have to leave the car there till Tuesday. The man said ‘Vos rings sont loose,’ and I gather that’s bad.”

  I fall into step with them and we climb the snow-clotted wooden steps that lead up to the mountain’s lower flank. The sky is a brilliant blue and the white slope twinkles with children muffled in red and yellow and green snowsuits. They are dragging
sleds uphill or bellyflopping on them downhill with screams of glee, or they are just staggering around like drunks in the snow. It is only three in the afternoon, but already the sun is low and red. I tuck trouser-tops into my boots and turn up my collar while Harry pulls the toboggan after us on its red cord. On the crest of the hill we get aboard, Harry, Molly, then me, hunching close. We grip each other clumsily.

  “All right?” he calls.

  “All systems go!” shouts Molly.

  The toboggan slides, tilts, then begins to shoot down the hill. A hilarious, crazy joy sparkles in my blood. I shout with the others. My cheeks burn. I am five years old and the world is snow, sky, bright air, friends.

  We clamber off, mount the hill, slide down again. Snow clots in big beads on the wool nap of my gloves. It smells wet and clean. We used to eat those beads. I am warm all over from laughing, spilling over, climbing. I pack a snowball and send it flying at Harry’s red tuque; at the last second he moves, and it explodes in a crash of white spray on the broad back of an old man with grandchildren. He looks around with indignation for the criminal. Molly pushes me into the snow and I lie there weak with laughing, till they drag me up. The sun is a red coal burning low on the horizon.

  “Well, kids, that’s it for me,” says Harry. “Got to get back now and type some stuff.”

  “I’ve had enough too. My ass is cold.”

  I blink at them, disconcerted. They have abruptly gone somewhere else, in the arbitrary manner of grownups, leaving me to lag behind at another time of life.

  “What I’d like — in fact, need — is a drink of something hot. Preferably with a lot of rum in it,” says Molly as we manœuvre the sled awkwardly down the steps. Harry’s beard has snow-dust in it. My feet are numb with cold.

  “Why don’t you come on home with me, then. Got no rum, but I’ll make some cocoa.” I have no confidence in this suggestion, but Molly promptly says, “Super. Love to. You can type your old minutes later, Harry.”

  “No, you go; I’ve got to work on something else tomorrow. And we’ve got the Shapiros’ party tonight, remember.”