The Equations of Love (11 page)

Mort’s acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Mottle was social and slight. They were in Mrs. Emblem’s set and were often quoted by her, and before Mr. Mottle took the caretaking job away out at the nurseries, Mr. and Mrs. Mottle had been members of Mrs. Emblem’s Bridge Club, although they only played whist, which they preferred – whist being optional at the Bridge Club. They were conservative people, not quite as dashing as Mr. Thorsteinsen and Maybelle Slazenger with whom they had a chatting acquaintance. The Bridge Club was a very nice place for Mr. Mottle in particular because he was a male gossip, passionately inquisitive, and the Bridge Club presented opportunities for making one’s way from person to person, collecting irrelevant data about these persons and about the other members which was at once transmuted into significance by Mr. Mottle and by Mrs. Mottle too, and was passed along, instantly becoming news. Mr. Mottle was also
devoted to disease and the discussion of disease, not so much in the abstract – although he enjoyed that too – but with reference to A’s kidneys, B’s liver, and C’s guitar of the stummick; thus he romped merrily amongst his friends’ organs, publicizing them on the way; Mort did not know all this, as he was not what you would call well acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Mottle, but he had met them once or twice when he was with Myrtle at Mrs. Emblem’s place, and had also hung over the fence at the bowling green and had encountered Mr. Mottle doing the same thing on more than one summer evening. So that although he did not know Mr. Mottle at all, he felt that he knew him very well and auspiciously, and that Mr. Mottle would be bound to recommend Mrs. Emblem’s nephew-by-marriage to old Cameron as a desirable gardener and as a man of excellent character. The job was as good as his. What job? Any job.

Mort got off the interurban car and walked the five or six blocks down the rough irregular road bordered by half-cleared and uncleared land which led to the nurseries. He looked about him appreciatively. There to the north where opaque clouds hung were, of course, the invisible mountains. Burnaby Lake lay not far away. In this depression of a country of hills and wooded ridges which lay near yet remote (it seemed) from Vancouver, the sun, when it shone, poured down its warmth; the land was well watered; the nurseries, with the good brown soil and the long rows of now decimated green, with the potting sheds, the long greenhouses, a few shacks, stretched in earthy richness. The tempo of slowness and peace was another exhalation of the land, like the earth and humus smell, and the faint and pleasant rotting odour of manures. Unlike the Chinese vegetable gardens which lay far away beyond South Vancouver on the River Road and on the
delta islands of the Fraser River where the cultivated ground gave evidence of fierce unresting meticulous physical exertion, the nurseries in Burnaby displayed an easeful life in death of the soil. The very sight of the Chinese vegetable gardens – where a few active small men worked incessantly early and late, planting things, transplanting, cultivating, with an arithmetical calm ferocity and industry – would have repelled Morty in search of a job. He would regard slightingly, as one superior, the small expert Chinamen, squatting, under their wide hats, through the hot summer day, living their hidden Oriental lives of great frugality in adjacent shacks. Here after long days of planting their vegetables with elegant horticultural geometry – long rows radiating, spinning, crossing and recrossing to the river’s edge, green against brown – they gather in earthy monastic conviviality and eat their rice and fish and pork when the day’s work is done. Morty would have seen in the rich Chinese truck gardens little beauty, only a hard repellent toil, good enough for Chinks but not for him; but here, as he strolled in at the gate of old Cameron’s nurseries, was the kind of work whose doing or evasion he understood.

I will mooch about a bit, he thought, not wanting to hurry things; so he mooched. Anyone interested in plant nurseries would at once know that work was being done, the slow work that tends flowers, shrubs, and young trees. Anyone unfamiliar with plant nurseries would think the place deserted and the work at a standstill. So Morty mooched, not much wanting to see old Cameron in person – yet – but thinking it better to find Mr. Mottle first, and so approach old Cameron by the Mottle avenue. No Mottle in the greenhouses or in the gardens, so Morty opened the door of a shed that might be – and was – an office, and looked in. He was a
little apprehensive of seeing old Cameron but, fortunately, there was only Mr. Mottle doing nothing in particular.

“Yes?” asked Mr. Mottle.

Morty took off his hat. “You wouldn’t remember me perhaps, Mr. Mottle,” he said frankly and engagingly, “but my name’s Johnson, Mortimer Johnson, and Mrs. Emblem is my wife’s aunt. I seen you at Mrs. Emblem’s place and down at the bowling green if you remember.”

Mr. Mottle at once held out his hand. He wore a hat and kept it on. He was very much pleased to see Mort and asked him how Mrs. Emblem was and said that he and Mrs. Mottle was only talking about her the other day, and how in winter evenings they’d missed the Bridge Club living out here, and how about going outside. So they went outside, and there was a box and there was an upturned barrel, and Mr. Mottle sat down on the box and Mort sat down on the barrel and Mr. Mottle took out his pipe with a spurious air of leisure that suited Mort well, and, encouraged by this, Mort rolled one, and they settled down to a good talk – Mr. Mottle the beneficent elder man of affairs and Mort not young, but younger, and of an engaging candour and attention. Mort left the conversation to Mr. Mottle, thinking that the job part could come later. Into the sounds of Mr. Mottle’s speech crept, sometimes, but not regularly, echoes of his English boyhood. He was a friendly man, and, as I say, a male gossip, and always ready for a talk at his ease like this. It appeared that Mr. Cameron was away but might be back by six, or he would phone, and he – Mr. Mottle – had to stick around.

“And how’s Mrs. Emblem?” enquired Mr. Mottle. “She’s a fine woman, a very very lovely woman. She going to marry old Thorsteinsen? My wife – Mrs. Mottle – she says he’s well fixed. She says he’s got a homestead in Saskatchewan and he
don’t
have
to sell Fuller brushes. But you show me a man who’s well fixed and chooses to sell Fuller brushes at
his
age! You tell your Aunty all that glitters isn’t gold and that goes for old Thorsteinsen’s front teeth. I seen him have a little money on the game under the table at the Bridge Club, but that doesn’t mean a man’s got money in the bank because he’s got it under the table. She’d best be sure how he’s fixed first. I said to Mrs. Mottle you tell Mrs. Emblem to hold off of Thorsteinsen where Matrimony’s concerned until she finds out. He’s okay for an evening, but for marriage he’s too flash. You tell her. How’s your wife?”

Mort was just about to say that Myrtle was fine but as that seemed a conversational dead-end he said, “I’m kinda worried about her, she’s not so good.”

Nothing could suit Mr. Mottle better than for Myrtle to be not so good. He lowered his voice, leaned towards Mort, peered into his eyes and said with intensity – this being exactly the kind of conversation that he liked – “What’s her trouble?”

“The doctors don’t seem to know,” replied Mort, hedging.

Mort’s angel, on hearing Mort say this, became extremely irritated. It buffeted Mort, or his id (or psyche), and said sincerely For God’s sake why do you have to make up things like that? Isn’t the truth good enough for you? And the id (or psyche) answered Sh, this is the way I like it, and so Mort continued “No, not a one of the doctors seem to know.”

“Doctors … !” exclaimed Mr. Mottle. “You’re telling
me!
Doctors … !” He lowered his voice further and looked around as though doctors might be creeping up through the shrubs, and said “There was a prominent doctor come here for seedlings last spring – wallflowers it was – and that doctor he was the stoopidest man I ever see and if I told you his name you’d be surprised. No int’rest in ’elth! No int’rest in medicine! Only
wanted ’is wallflowers and get away. That’s all’
e
cared about. I could of told ’im more in fifteen minutes than ever ’e learned in college. Exhibited no int’rest. Well, I said to Mrs. Mottle, there’s doctors for you!” Mr. Mottle, foiled and still smarting, had a better audience in Mort who had plenty of time and no convictions about medicine, and was ready to agree with anything that Mr. Mottle might say, especially as he wished to ingratiate and endear himself and so to establish himself by good report from Mr. Mottle with old Cameron, who was inclined to be tough with you. So Mort continued to sit on an upturned barrel and look respectfully at Mr. Mottle and encourage him with his kind brown eyes, and nod, and say emphatically “Sure,” and “I’ll say,” and Mr. Mottle read admiration in the brown eyes, and went on expounding and Mort went on thinking Where’s old Cameron.

“I’ll tell you,” said Mr. Mottle, “what’s wrong with your wife. I’ll tell you just what’s wrong with Mrs. Johnson. It’s the colin.” He had neither seen Myrtle nor heard of the nature of her complaint which was nonexistent, but that was of no consequence to him. “Tell her from me. You tell Mrs. Johnson to flush the colin and she won’t need to have no truck with doctors.”

“Thank you, I’ll tell her, Mr. Mottle,” said Mort respectfully, wondering Who the devil’s Colin?

“You see that man,” continued Mr. Mottle confidentially, “that feller going along there with a sack of fertilizer? Pore feller, ’e can’t ’ardly carry it. You wouldn’t think ’e’d been a passionate man in ’is day would you, but ’e did used to. What d’you s’pose is wrong with
’im?
”

Mort looked at an undersized man who bent beneath a small sack which he carried on his shoulders as he trudged beside a long furrow of good brown soil.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. The man might be elderly, or lazy, or have corns, or rheumatism.

“Well, what would you
think?
” insisted Mr. Mottle. Mort thought.

“Rheumatism,” he suggested.

Mr. Mottle smiled omnisciently, pulling down his lips, and shook his head from side to side.

“Wrong,” he said. “’E’s got a tapeworm.”

“You don’t say,” said Mort, and he looked with more interest after the unwilling host of the tapeworm, who continued plodding down the gardens.

“Did the doctor say?” enquired Mort.

“‘
Say
’! No doctor didn’t need to ‘say.’ I took one look at ’im, and I said Tapeworm. Might have two for all you know,” said Mr. Mottle knowledgeably and proceeded to his climax which usually interested people. “I s’pose you didn’t know I’d had the tapeworm? Well, I did. You can’t tell
me
. Went to prett’ near every doctor in Canada and U.S.A. Couldn’t do nothing for me till I went to a feller here and he delivered me of two tapeworms head and all. A yard long apiece them two reptiles was if they was an inch. I regret I never kep’ them two reptiles but they sure were a spectacle for any museum. And now look at me!” Mort looked at him. “If I’d known enough then to flush the colin I’d never have had ’em.” Just as well as it was though, for Mr. Mottle had the memory, and retrospectively the reptiles gave him a great deal of pleasure, and were well known to all his acquaintances. Mort was pleased, too, but was beginning to get restive. He began to talk of the job.

“You wouldn’t want to
live
here, or would you?” asked Mr. Mottle. “There’s two old shacks and me and Mrs. Mottle took one and transformed it into an ’ome. When Mr. Cameron’s brother-in-law seen it ’e said ‘Well, Mr. Mottle, that is indeed a
transformation.’ If old Cameron,” he became familiar, “took a fancy to you and if I recommend you he’s very liable to take my say-so and if there’s a job coming up which there is for a man who’s a good potting shed man and would see to some of the firing and you and your wife wanted to live here and not come traipsing out at all times, old Cameron’d let a man have that other shack and do it up for himself rent free. Like to come along, and I’ll show you.” Mr. Mottle got slowly up from his box and Mort arose from his barrel and the two of them proceeded down a path, Mr. Mottle going at his rather aged pace and Mort walking behind.

There stood on the confines of the nursery garden three shacks near together, relics of old schemes and old abandonments. One had caved in, one looked as though it might cave in, and one was a natty painted dwelling of white and blue. Mr. Mottle and Morty stopped and regarded these.

“You wouldn’t believe,” (and you wouldn’t) said Mr. Mottle indicating the shacks with his pipe, “that me and Mrs. Mottle transformed this ’ome you see before you from a shack prett’ near as bad as that one there,” and he pointed at the middle shack whose door swung half open, repulsive home of bats and spiders. “Old Cameron said Go ahead, and will you believe me it only cost us the paint and some finishing nails and I cut the cedar shingle in the bush with a shake knife and picked up a bit of stove piping laying around the furnace house and a bit of two-by-four laying around the carpenter shop and we brung our things out and here we are snug as bugs and rent free. That’s the way, young feller. And there’s no reason but what that other shack – not the one that’s fell in – wouldn’t do the same, if you’re handy. Cost you nothing or near to nothing. You and the wife handy?”

Mort assured Mr. Mottle that he and Myrtle were handy and you couldn’t beat Myrt for fixing things up, there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do, and so Mr. Mottle and Mort stood and regarded the smart little home, product of the undoubted handiness of Mr. and Mrs. Mottle, and also the residence nearby of bats and owls, and their two minds were occupied by two different illusory visions. Mr. Mottle had a vision of Mort and Myrtle, handy and neat as the Mottles, quickly transforming by their industry the melancholy and dilapidated shack into a trim and simple two-room residence like their own, and then how nice to superintend and advise and boss and own this nice feller to whom he – Mr. Mottle – was taking such a fancy, and in the evenings how nice to visit back and forth with Johnson and that refined looking wife of his, and it would be company for Mrs. Mottle who found life at the nurseries a bit dull without her friends and the Bridge Club, and in winter evenings a good game of whist. And in front of Mort floated the illusory vision of the melancholy and dilapidated shack transformed without any effort on his or Myrtle’s part to the twin of Mr. Mottle’s house, white with blue trim, and a pleasant easy steady job of stoking and potting, and him and Myrtle getting in to a show whenever they wanted in the evenings and not too much of Mr. and Mrs. Mottle. He had a presentiment that one could come to be owned too much by Mr. Mottle.