Never Sleep Three in a Bed

by Max Braithwaite

  Even more important than the pleasure I’ve derived from that book was the fact that it broke down the generation gap, the culture gap, the skill gap, and all the natural suspicion that had existed between me and Harry. He was to produce many more books from that pack–Proust, Thackery, Thoreau, Butler, and a couple by Eric Linklater, whom I also learned to appreciate. He was full of stories, too, was Blooming ‘Arry, had a great sense of humour and a fine feeling for beauty. And through all those years, in God knows how many threshing gangs and work parties, he’d been known only as “a funny old Englishman”.

  Quoting Proust, he taught me that “happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”

  17 The End of the World

  During the late Twenties somebody was always predicting that the world would come to an end–any day. Signs and portents were everywhere. One religious group, I remember, were so convinced by their own propaganda that they picked out a definite day for the great event. The members gathered on a hill-top somewhere, and waited for the heavenly chariots to come and carry them away. The event received tremendous publicity, with pictures in the newspapers and accounts on radio, but although the group waited and waited all that day and for most of the following week those chariots never came.

  The most impressive warning of doom, however, and one that bothered a lot of people, was a message found on the membrane of an egg laid by a hen in Oregon. I can still see the picture in the paper. There it was, an egg with no hard shell, and clearly printed on the membrane the numbers 1928. What else could it mean but that the world would end that year? For some it surely did, but not for everybody.

  No, as a matter of fact, the world–at least, the world that we knew–didn’t end until a year later, in the fall of 1929. After that, nothing was ever really the same again.

  As for me, I was better off that fall than I had ever been.

  When it finally came time to leave the farm and go back to school, Wick Thompson paid me off and, for the first time in my life, I had more than one hundred dollars in my hand. It would buy me a new suit of clothes ($27.50 at Tip Top), a new overcoat (another $27.50), new shoes of the very best ($5.00 at the Hudson’s Bay Co. department store), underwear, shirts, ties, and still leave me enough to take a girl out a few times.

  Mary Patterson. She sang in the Presbyterian Church choir, and for a short while I became a devout Presbyterian. I can still see her standing so straight in her choir gown, head held high, chest out-thrust, making those beautiful mouths that girls make when they sing. I don’t know but what a girl looks prettier singing than she does at any other time. My kids often wonder why I, a monotone with no music in my soul, like to watch the CBC program Hymn Sing on Sunday afternoons. It’s because of those pretty girls and the mouths they make when they sing. My kids don’t know it, but that’s the sexiest program on the air.

  So, the first thing I did when I got home was to get dressed in my new clothes and head for Mary’s house. I’d talked to the big harvest moon about Mary, and I’d written letters filled with poems about life and love. “There’s something there that’s so four-square.” Now, at last, I’d see her again. And I’d be wearing my new suit.

  Ah, that suit. It was gorgeous. Black, with a narrow pin-stripe. The trousers high and pleated, with a tight waist-band. The kind of waist we used to describe as being a little snug under the arm pits. And those pleats. Three on each side, sharp and keen, and the twenty-four-inch bottoms. Those were trousers. And the jacket–wide peak lapels, padded shoulders, double-breasted, fitted waist. There was a double-breasted vest, too, also girdle-tight, with flaps on the pockets. I had to admit I looked something like Humphrey Bogart in that suit. Not much, but something.

  The shoes were polished mirror-bright. Pointed toes, and metal clickers on the heels.

  My shirt was new, my tie was new, even my underwear and socks were new. Never in my life had I been decked out in so much newness. My hair was plastered to my head with vaseline hair tonic, my mouth was scoured clean of that hated affliction your best friends wouldn’t tell you about, and I was positively free from B.O. I tell you I was something. True, my face was still a bit burned and chapped from the prairie wind and sun, but after-shave lotion and talcum hid most of that. The blisters on my hands had healed, and my broken and scarred fingernails I could hide by keeping my hands in my pockets.

  When I got fully dressed, powdered, deodorized and greased I looked at myself in the mirror, and I guess I never felt better in my whole life. For the first time I’d approach Mary looking and feeling as I wanted to.

  I tucked a two-pound box of chocolates under my arm and strode down the sidewalk, my heels clicking, my mind soaring. My God, I was even whistling.

  Mary’s mother, with whom I had a reasonably good relationship, seemed appalled to see me.

  “Does Mary know you’re back from the farm?”

  “Well, no. I thought I’d surprise her.”

  “Oh dear–I wish you hadn’t.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Perhaps you should have phoned or something.”

  “Uh … yeah … but I thought I’d … uh surprise her.” There was something about the look on Mrs. Patterson’s face, as though she were gazing on a dog that had been run over, that plunked a big lead ball in the middle of my gut. “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Well … um … I don’t really know. She left about noon.…”

  “Do you mind if I wait for her?”

  “No, you can sit on the verandah here.” She shot another quick peek at the box of chocolates, and hurriedly went back into the house.

  Just about then a bug rattled up to the curb. A “bug”–I believe the name still holds–was a car that had been stripped down to the chassis and a new body built on. This one had flashy colours, and signs like “Oh you kid” painted on the side. In the front seat were two happy, laughing, wind-blown young people–one male and one female. The girl was my Mary and the boy was a kid I knew and despised, a sheik named Raymond Marchand. Oh God-anybody but Raymond Marchand!

  Raymond leapt from the seat, held his arms out to Mary and she jumped into them. Then he kissed her much too thoroughly and let her down. They came up the walk towards the verandah, hand in hand. But I wasn’t there. I’d high-tailed through the front door and out the back, pausing only to whisper to Mrs. Patterson, “Don’t tell her I was here!”

  So I went home and, in the manner of Stephen Leacock’s hero, Peter Pupkin, committed suicide. “Frailty, thy name is woman,” I kept muttering over to myself, meanwhile cursing Mary. But it didn’t do any good. The hurt was too deep and it was not to go away for many months.

  That senior year in high school was a bad one. I had to work like a dog to catch up with the rest of the class; I never would have done it except for the help of Elda Stephenson. Elda liked me, sat across the aisle from me and was an excellent student. She didn’t have the softness and cuteness and boop-boop-de-doopness of Mary Patterson, but she was a much better sport. She was the best female skater in the school, and I liked to take her skating at the big arena across the river. There, to the tunes of Strauss waltzes, we’d go around and around the ice, arm in arm. It was great fun.

  And I’d take her to the show now and then, down to the Daylight Theatre to see John Gilbert and Greta Garbo, and we’d sit in the dark and hold hands. Afterwards, we’d go to the Palace of Sweets for a banana split. Then home again on the street car.

  But mostly Elda helped me with my French and Latin authors. I’d fallen woefully behind with both these subjects, and had no way of catching up. History and Literature and Mathematics were easy enough, but I had no aptitude for languages, and so I was hopeless. Besides, being in an exceptionally upset frame of mind, I did little homework. So, when George Bonney, the Latin teacher, would ask me to read my translation of Virgil or Horace I’d stand up and listen for Elda’s strong whisper. She always knew the work, and I would simply repeat it after her. It was t
he same when dear old Miss Smith asked me to read from La Petite Chose à L’Ecole, or whatever French book we happened to be reading. Neither of the teachers caught on–at least I thought they didn’t–and my good memory enabled me to retain enough of the stuff to pass the examinations.

  I also joined the mouth-organ band. This is an experience almost too embarrassing to relate, but, since I’m determined to tell all, it must be included. There was just one little problem about that mouth-organ band. I couldn’t play the damned mouth-organ.

  The band was organized by our drill teacher, who was also organizer and moving spirit in the Athletic Club to which I belonged. I liked the Athletic Club fine. Every Thursday night a group of us got together in the gym for exercises and club-swinging and tumbling and boxing and kidding around. The only one of these things I was really any good at–I never did manage even the front roll in tumbling–was boxing. For some reason I loved it. To get the gloves on and bash about with another kid my size was, in fact, my greatest pleasure. I had a sneaky left hand and, since I had a pair of boxing gloves at home and did a lot of practising, I actually became champion of the Athletic Club that year.

  We wanted to organize a regular band, with trumpets and saxophones and the rest, but when we looked at the prices of these instruments we decided to settle for a mouth-organ band. So we sent away to the Hohner Company, and got great long mouth-organs with four different keys on each-A, C, D and G- really four mouth-organs in one. We had uniforms, too, consisting of white pants and blue blazers.

  It’s a little difficult for me, thinking back on it, to understand why I became a member of the band when I couldn’t play the instrument. The only explanation I can give is that I still hadn’t really sorted out this matter of the differences between people. I still assumed that, until it was proved otherwise, I could do anything anybody else could do. God knows, it had been dramatically and painfully demonstrated to me that I couldn’t run as fast as anybody else, or jump as high, or as far. But I guess I was hard to convince. Anyway, this peculiar attitude was to lead to yet another embarrassing moment.

  About those white pants and dark blazer, that was humiliating, too. I had a dark suit coat, which was fine, but the white flannel slacks were a luxury I couldn’t afford. So I borrowed a pair from a boy called Ron McGinty–hereinafter referred to as “McGint”. The problem with these pants of McGint’s was that I didn’t return them. I don’t know why, I really don’t. They hung around the house long after the mouth-organ band had disbanded, and they used to bug me. I’d think of them and say to myself, “I must return McGint’s pants.” And then I wouldn’t do it. Of course, the longer I procrastinated the worse it got, and the more it bugged me. I never took them back.

  McGint’s pants still bother me. Somehow they’ve come to represent all those things I’ve left undone that I ought to have done. They’ve become a family legend, too. Anything that is borrowed and not returned immediately becomes a “McGint’s pants” in our house.

  But even worse was my inability to play the mouth-organ. I think I convinced myself that I could, really. I used to stand beside the piano while Doris banged out Marching Through Georgia or Dem Golden Slippers–two of our standards–and blow away to beat hell. She’d look very pained at times, but then she’d just bang harder and set her mouth more grimly and say nothing. During band practices the leader would look pained, too, and once he said, “I want each of you to play a few bars alone.” When it came my turn I blew something and then all the other members of the band looked pained. I don’t know why they didn’t turf me out right then, but I was president of the Athletic Club that year, and I guess they thought it wouldn’t be nice.

  Well, we played here and there, and developed quite a repertoire–at least the others did–and we cut quite a figure in our dark blazers and white flannel pants.

  Then came disaster. We were playing for the Boys’ Banquet. This was the big whing-ding of the year. All the boys in the school had this enormous feed, and there were toasts and speeches and funny skits. It was a great tradition of the school, and each year it was followed by a snakewalk downtown. We all marched along, each with a hand on the shoulder of the boy in front, and wound our way down Second Avenue, in and out of the movie houses and–since it was always held on a Saturday evening–through the Eaton’s store, and the Hudson’s Bay Company store, and McGowan’s Department store. It was a big affair.

  As I say, our band was playing at the banquet. I got rather carried away. Usually I just blew gently on the mouth-organ, so that I wouldn’t be heard over the others. (It must have been hell for the other musical kids, hearing this sort of whisper of off-keyness in the background all the time.) But we were marching lustily along through Georgia and since this was my favourite piece I was blowing harder than usual. Suddenly, as by some pre-arranged signal, all the others stopped and I was blowing alone.

  Chaos? Not at all. Like the damned show-off I was, I hammed it up–grinned, slid the mouth-organ back and forth across my lips at a great speed, ended with a loud blast and stood up and took a bow. The audience roared and clapped, thinking it was a gag. (At least I felt I had contributed something to the group.) Shortly after that our leader gave up the unequal struggle, and suggested that we go into tumbling exhibitions instead of band work. He knew he was safe from me there.

  Years later I came across that four-way mouth-organ in a box of junk. I tentatively placed it to my lips and blew–still hoping for the miracle, but still no music came.

  Apart from these activities, the senior high school year was dull, dull, dull. Students today complain about their curriculums being immaterial, irrelevant and obnoxious, but ours was far worse. We complained, too. I can remember one of our brighter students asking the mathematics teacher what possible purpose could be served by learning the binomial theorem. He replied, facetiously, that if nothing else you could dazzle a policeman on the street by reciting it to him. This brought a snigger of appreciation from the rest of us clods, but the boy who asked it was of sterner stuff.

  He happened to be the editor of the Salt Shaker, a students’ paper which ran the usual quota of startling adolescent revelations, carefully edited by the staff representative and therefore completely innocuous. But not this time. The editor, piqued by the math teacher’s flippancy, came out with a scathing article entitled “Academic Punk-wood” in which he ripped apart our out-dated and largely useless course of study, and advocated topics more relevant to life. It brought down a storm of protest from above, which didn’t bother the editor at all. What did bother him–and probably bothers him to this day–was that the bulk of the student body was as alarmed as was the faculty that anyone should suggest that our educational system, or indeed our entire establishment, was less than perfect.

  That was in the fall of 1929. And so convinced was the teaching staff that God was on Wall Street, and all was right with the financial world, that they were into the stock-market up to their ears.

  Yes, even school-teachers, traditionally the most timid members of society, were getting into the act, and if that doesn’t indicate that something was wrong I don’t know what would. Of course people had gone mad. They actually believed that all anyone had to do–regardless of whether they knew anything about the stock-market or not–was to buy as many stocks as possible, often on the instalment plan, and they would be rich. It was like picking money off trees. You mortgaged your house, borrowed on your insurance, sold your car, inveigled a loan from Aunt Clara, and took the plunge.

  The sublime simplicity of it! Just phone your friendly broker, and tell him to buy you some stocks. Didn’t much matter which. And spread the money out, please; so much down, and the balance when the stocks have doubled or tripled in value. Hurry! Hurry! Buy! Buy! Why work for money when you can get it for nothing? As often as not, the stockbroker, confident that all the stocks would go up, would take some of your money and buy stock for himself, figuring on paying you back out of his profits. It was a merry-go-round of financial blis
s. Everybody could play. Even the school-teachers.

  Then came that day in October when the stock-market had its worst day. The phone calls went the other way now, from broker to investor. “There’s been a slight slump and we’ll have to have more margin.”

  “But I haven’t got it.”

  “Borrow it; sell something. You’ve got a big investment here, and you don’t want to lose it.”

  “Are you sure this is just a temporary slump?”

  “Of course. Listen, all the big boys are in up to their necks. They’re not going to let the whole thing collapse.”

  “What caused it, anyway?”

  “Who knows? Who cares? Just get that five hundred clams down here by tomorrow for sure!”

  There was little work done in the high school classes in the following days. The physics teacher was pondering the law of physics which says “what goes up must come down”. The English teacher was brooding on the quote, “We are all like swimmers in the sea … poised on a huge wave of fate.” The history teacher couldn’t get his mind off the South Sea Bubble, whose bursting in 1720 ruined thousands of Englishmen. Calamity was the name of the game.

  As students, we were amused or dismayed, depending on whether or not our fathers had been hit by the crash. But like our seniors, we were confident that all would be well. Hadn’t we been taught that we were the favoured of the gods? Didn’t we know that ours was the best country in the world, run by the fairest government, and part of the Great British Empire, upon which the sun didn’t dare to set?

  We’d won the war, we knew that. We’d flogged the enemy and humiliated him beyond belief. We also knew that honesty was the best policy and spinach the best vegetable. Eat soft yeast for a clean complexion, gargle with antiseptic to ensure a breath your friends won’t have to tell you about, bathe regularly in a stinking soap so there’d be no Beeohh! Go to Sunday School–and every day and in every way you’ll feel better and better.