Two Solitudes (42 page)

“What kind of a job, Mr. Clayton?” Paul's voice was ironical.

Clayton grinned, and Paul would have felt sorry for him had there been any cause. The grin did not reach him, did not affect him, nor do the work it was supposed to do. But as Clayton didn't know this, it was all right.

“This is a swell country up here. It's been good to me and I've got nothing against it. So far as I can see there's no real difference between you and us. Only trouble is, things don't move fast enough up here. You people don't let yourselves get steamed up. Now down home, we're changing all the time. That's the American way, and”–the voice became confidential–“I'm telling you, whether the rest of the world likes it or not, it's the way things have got to go from now on. When things with us begin to look up they don't stop till they hit the ceiling.”

Paul went on eating. He wondered how Clayton had managed to be successful in his business in Montreal. Perhaps just because he was so completely American, so much what Canadians fancied all Americans were, that people found it a welcome relief to deal with him? Five years ago Clayton had deliberately refused promotion because it would have removed him permanently to his home office. His wife was a strict Catholic and he had not even asked for a divorce. So, because Kathleen was in Montreal, Clayton had remained here most
of the time while his wife stayed in Pittsburgh until her death six months ago.

“They talk about the depression like it was the end of the world,” Clayton said. “Don't you believe it. Now take me–I've been through plenty that were just as bad as this. Take the one we had back in 1907. Take the one in…”

Clayton drifted off, safe on a wave of talk. Like so many men of the same age, he thought he could prove that the system by which he lived was good because it wallowed from one mess to another while he himself somehow managed to survive. Strained, worried, high blood pressure and stomach ulcers, but so what? And yet it was hard to imagine that Clayton had ever seriously worried about anything. Life to him was fun and business, and business consisted in making money and moving large objects from one place to another. Beyond production and profit he never thought an inch. He believed that the more mechanical equipment a man has at his disposal, the better and happier he is. No man could have too many gadgets, the world could never weary of working its life away producing labour-saving devices. As he talked, Kathleen admired him with her wonderful smile, the female's eternal smile for the man who loves her. And when Clayton's eyes rested on hers, Paul knew that her satisfaction was equally matched.

Suddenly Paul remembered the lean aristocracy of his father. He thought of the old house in Saint-Marc and his jaw set rigidly. And yet, there was no cause for anger, or even for surprise. The kind of beauty his mother possessed had never demanded an answering beauty in men. She wanted only affection and admiration, naturalness and the frank opportunity to be herself, and of course the kind of animal vitality which apparently Clayton also possessed.

The breakfast ended and they rose from the table in relief. Clayton picked up the check and examined it, then laid down a dollar bill as a tip for the waiter. They went out the screened, swinging doors, out of the dark warmth of the hotel into the humid heat of the street. Clayton's sedan was parked across Metcalfe Street, the back seat and trunk so filled with luggage that the springs sagged under its weight. They crossed the street and Paul held the door open while his mother arranged herself on the right half of the front seat. Clayton went around to the other door, and after sliding under the wheel, pulled at his trouser-legs and wriggled in his suit to make himself comfortable. He pulled a cigar from his breast pocket, eyed it, lit it, eyed the grey ash forming on the end, shook his head in approval, and replaced it between his teeth.

“Hell's bells, what a day!” he said. “I met an Englishman yesterday and he said it was hotter here than in Singapore. I can believe it.” He wiped his forehead. “Well, we'll be in cool little Old Orchard tonight. I can't wait to wrap myself around one of those shore dinners.”

Kathleen patted Paul's hand as it gripped the door beside her. Clayton shot him a satisfied glance. “Don't you worry, Paul,” he said. “I'll look after your mother all right.”

Paul said nothing. He stood watching them, wishing they would go, yet longing for a crazy second that his mother would step out of the car and tell him this was all a mistake and that the last nine years had never been. Clayton started the motor. It throbbed as all eight pistons danced back and forth under the cylinder head. Clayton tapped the wheel, smiling. “Give me one of these V-Eights any day of the week. Going out of Chicago last fall, along the dunes, I was making eighty-seven miles an hour, and what do you think? Another car passed me, and…”

Kathleen turned to Paul, her smile fading out. He felt a lump choke in his throat as he met her eyes. They were filled with tears. He leaned through the open window and kissed her on the cheek, her skin soft and fragrant under his lips. Then the car began to move.

“Forgive me, Paul!” He heard the choked whisper as he stood on the curb and watched the car move up to Sherbrooke Street, his mother's hand waving from the window like a fragment of trailing white silk. The car stopped at the red light at the upper corner, then turned and disappeared.

Forgive her! For nine years…for twenty-four years…for having conceived and borne him? He stood irresolute, running his hand through his hair. He had no place to go. It was not a new situation. The places he had to go were always temporary places: way-stations on the road through to somewhere else. He thought of some of them: school, hockey practices, games when the players' entrance to the rink was dark under arc lamps on cold winter nights, the spectators lining up under the bright lights in front, and then the hundreds of tight moments before the game started with the teams poised in the arena ringed by the crowd; stores where he had worked delivering parcels in his mid-teens in the summer; the train that had taken him north to the construction gang that summer when he was eighteen; that other train with the black leather seats in the colonists' car when he had gone west for the harvesting the year following, across Ontario and Manitoba to Saskatchewan. All those places to go, even the hockey, had been to get an education. They had provided the money for it. It was now, with exams over and a degree in his pocket, that he really had no place to go.

He walked up the gradual rise of the street to Sherbrooke, then along toward his room on Durocher Street. The hot air
was tropically sensual under the tall elms of the McGill campus. The background of Mount Royal staggered in the heat. He felt empty. But it is not emptiness that fills a man so full he is likely to burst unless a valve is turned.

Paul's thoughts gathered themselves. He had things to do and a lifetime would not be long enough to do them properly. He had seen a second-hand portable typewriter in a store on Craig Street the other day. At the time he had counted his money to see if he could afford it and decided he would have to get a job first. The Corona would have to wait, like everything else he wanted these days. Again, like guilt in the conscience, the sequence of the last few years renewed itself: doors closing in his face, the regretful smiles of older, well-established men; the knowledge eating into himself and into millions of others month by month and year by year that nobody wanted them, nobody could find a use for them.

 

THIRTY-FOUR

After the night of McQueen's dinner party, Fletcher left Heather alone. Sometimes he was sullen in her presence, more often he ignored her. He spent hours in his room poring over papers and blueprints. There were entire days when he also ignored Daphne, a mode of behaviour which flustered Janet more than either of her daughters.

About the middle of July he set out on a business trip to the American west coast which he announced would take about six weeks. On the day of his departure he was quite cheerful. Heather and Daphne both saw him off on the night train and when they returned, Janet was waiting for them with
milk and biscuits. It was an old habit which she saw no reason to break. It was also a habit to talk about nothing that mattered to any of them as they ate.

Heather was almost undressed when Daphne came into her room, holding up an old middy blouse she had worn at Brock. “Look,” she said. “I found it in the back of the cupboard in my room. Why on earth it was left there I can't imagine. Isn't it a scream? What a beastly little prig I must have been when I wore it.”

Heather pulled a silk slip over her head. “Sometimes,” she said, “you were.”

“Well,” Daphne said brightly, “I'm certainly not one now.” She tossed the middy blouse into a corner. “Remember Miss Davenant? How she used to pitch into me when I played Cleopatra?” She mimicked the voice of a hearty English-woman and sat with her legs apart as she did so. “‘Cleopatra is a woman of the world, Daphne. You must remember that she is a queen, not a debutante.'”

Heather put a dressing gown over her pajamas and curled up in a large armchair by the window. “How exactly like Miss Davenant to select
Antony and Cleopatra
for a school play!”

“Poor lamb! She was frustrated and never knew it.” Daphne put her arms behind her head and her long fingers reached down to undo the buttons at the back of her dress. “I wonder what she'd think if she happened to see me now.”

“Honest, Daffy–what's it like to come back here?”

Daphne smiled obliquely, her hands still behind her neck. “How do you think I've been doing?”

“Depends on what you're trying to do.”

“Well, I feel about a million years old, of course. Funny, how we were all taught to believe in sin when we were young, wasn't it?”

Heather laughed, and the sound appeared to annoy Daphne. “Look at me,” she said. “Would you think a girl brought up by Mummy would ever be able to stand up to Noel and give him what he wants?”

The smile left Heather's face. “I wouldn't know.”

“Well, I've done all right,” Daphne said. “And believe me–he knows what he wants. My God, when I remember those first few months…” She dropped her hands. “Help me, will you? This damned button is caught.”

Heather got up and unbuttoned the dress. It made her think of the days when she had helped dress Daphne for parties, two years before she had been allowed to go to parties herself. Her hand touched the fine golden hair, lingered on it for a second, then dropped. She returned to her chair and Daphne pulled the dress over her head and gave her ruffled hair a toss. “Noel was interested in you,” she said. “Maybe you didn't guess, but I could see it.”

Heather felt herself flushing. “But Daffy–”

“Never mind. He has an instinct with women, though. In spite of his manner. That's why he's such a shock. It's always a surprise when a man like that…you should see his father. Noel's not really a typical Englishman at all. He was always more at home on the continent, in spite of the English manner. His father's the reason. The old boy's as exciting as a play.”

Heather felt unable to feed Daphne the cues she seemed to expect. “What kind of a play?”

Daphne's laugh was like running water. “You
are
a sweet thing! It would be a shame if Noel–”

“I'm not a child,” Heather said impatiently. “For heaven's sake, Daffy–when will you get over treating me as if I were a ten-year-old? What's the matter with his father?”

“Really, I suppose he's an eighteen-carat beast, but he's
such a terribly brilliant man one doesn't notice it.” She went on to tell Heather that he had been a major-general in the Indian Army. He was fanatically proud of his ancestry and had been reputed a competent officer. But his military career had ended with a court-martial when he was dismissed from the service for ordering his troops to fire on a crowd in Bombay. After that he spent a lot of time in Germany until the outbreak of war in 1914. Although he had served as an agent of the foreign office while in Berlin, it had not prevented him from acquiring a great admiration for the Prussians. He was living in Germany now.

Heather watched her sister take off the rest of her clothes until she was sitting naked on the bed. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” she said quietly. “Do you really love Noel?”

Daphne laughed. Her slim, lissom body, golden in the shaded light, moved gracefully as she threw her silk underclothes on to a chair. “Give me a dressing gown,” she said.

Heather went to her closet, pulled a garment from a hanger and handed it to her sister. When she had wrapped it tight about her body, Daphne stood for a moment watching Heather's face. “Love is an old-fashioned word, darling. Why do you bother using it?”

“Do you know a better one?”

Instead of answering Daphne crossed to the dressing table and sat down before the mirror. “It's not been exactly easy,” she said after a moment, “going from Mummy's hands into Noel's.”

Again Heather was aware that she was irritating Daphne in a way she couldn't define.

“I like being at the top of the class,” Daphne went on. “And you've got to be that to hold a man like Noel.” She scrutinized her face in the glass. “I never really understood him
until I went up in a plane with him. He's marvellous in the air. He's–he's new. A new species of human being.” In the mirror she caught a smile on Heather's lips and it seemed to anger her. “My God–can't you understand what I'm trying to tell you? A man like Noel always tries to break his women down. He'd despise me if he could and he hates me because he can't.” She filled a dropper with yellow liquid from a small bottle, raised one eyelid and then the other, letting the lotion run beneath them. “Brilliance has been bred and beaten into him.”

Heather watched as Daphne ran a finger over each eyebrow, pushed the hair off her temples and turned her head from side to side as she examined the line of her chin and neck. For the first time she saw that her sister's beauty was a weapon, a destiny, all she had.