The Equations of Love (13 page)

Vicky went on through the damp night and was vaguely aware how melancholy, how desperately sad life can suddenly become which was a few minutes ago all right, and happy – almost – and that people couldn’t stop doing things, somehow, that ended like this; and you didn’t know it would happen and so you couldn’t stop them. She went on until she came near Myrtle’s place, and as she approached the entrance she saw two tall policemen walking away together in the way that policemen walk and she was sure that they had just been up and had been telling Myrtle. The policemen had indeed just been telling Myrtle. They disliked telling her, and had done it as kindly as they could and one of them had ascertained the name of a woman friend from her and had gone down and telephoned her friend Mrs. Flask to come to her, and Mrs. Flask was out but her mother would get her right away. Neither of the policemen liked Myrtle when they came away, although they had gone there prepared – as human beings – to feel solicitude for anyone who was about to receive shocking news. And now they walked away reflectively, in their swinging dignity, both of them reflecting as fellow-husbands, not as policemen. One of them then said without enthusiasm “… boy oh boy …” and the other responded “… my gosh, when you see some women …” They remained reflective fellow-husbands in silence to the end of the block although still looking like policemen, and then turned down on their road back to the Police Station which was not far away. Myrtle had shown herself very nasty.

She was now sitting at her kitchen table. Her arms were resting akimbo on the table and she looked sullenly downwards.
You could not see her eyes, but you saw on her fine eyelids – swollen and purplish now – not sorrow, but rage and scorn. You saw rage and scorn and hate as plainly on those dropped eyelids as if Myrtle had looked up at you with rage and scorn and hate in her pale eyes … It had been like this. The two policemen had first appeared at her door, and had come in, and had told her that there had been an accident. An accident to her husband. And upon her challenging look and word they had then told her that her husband Mortimer Johnson was dead. Myrtle had gazed with apprehension, with disbelief, with horrified belief, and then with the unwilling acceptance that what these two tall uniformed men said was true … that Mortimer Johnson … that Morty … was dead, and she had burst into tears (unfamiliar tears, for when had Myrtle wept?). She sat down at the table and again questioned them through her tears which rained down because she now saw Morty kind, easy, debonair, her husband whom she owned … part of her life … whom she had left this morning playing with the kitten … going out, he said, to see old Cameron and get a job. Was it an auto? I’ll bet it was an auto. No, they said uneasily, her husband was drowned. What was he doing, she asked, startled, jealous, what was he doing to be drowned? He was on a dock, they said carefully, he was on a dock with another man. What man … why were they on a dock? Both men were drowned, they said, pitying her. What man, what man? asked Myrtle. The other man’s name was Hansen, he was a logger from up the coast. Then they were drinking; had they been drinking? Well, yes, they seem to have been drinking.

Gone was the thought of Morty kind, debonair, easy, and in his place was the idle lying drunken loafer who had so deceived her time and time again. And after all that had gone the night before Mort – the no-good loafer – had hunted up
Eddie Hansen, when he said he never seen Eddie Hansen, and knew how she felt about Eddie Hansen, and there he had hunted him up instead of coming home to Myrtle, and had got drunk with him, and they had gone fooling on the wharf, and had fallen off, and had got themselves drowned. She hated Mort so much for this that if he had then appeared, she would not have welcomed him back to the living; she would have reviled him; she might have struck him. For
her
, Myrtle Johnson that was Myrtle Hopwood, to be now an object of pity as a woman whose husband was no good, and had died a drunken death in poor company – for her to be exposed to this by Mort Johnson who had deceived her, and had gone out, and had sought out that drunken souse, and had drunk with him and had died with him – all this was not to be borne by Myrtle, but it had to be borne. And she changed. Under the eyes of the two policemen she changed from a woman bereft and weeping for her husband to a woman who regarded her husband – only just now dead – with hate and scorn. And as the two policemen listened, Myrtle poured out her pride and her venom, and became established in her mind as a woman deeply wronged by Mortimer Johnson.

And when the policemen had gone, and Myrtle was alone, she laid her head on her arms upon the table, and wept – not for Morty her husband, but for herself who would now be exposed to the pity of Irma Flask (“
I always knew
…”) and the pity of Mrs. Emblem (“
I could have made a real man of Mort Johnson
…”), and she forgot that Mort had ever been her kind and foolish lover.

Such was the devious working of Myrtle’s mind that when she raised her face all swollen and ravaged with weeping, she had forgotten the physical fact that Mort lay – somewhere – drowned, and she thought only of herself as
uniquely wronged, and, if she held her head high enough, uniquely to be pitied yet held in esteem as one superior to other people not so wronged; and the assumption of this rôle began to assuage a little the torment of her mind. Settled, then, in her pride and in her resentment, she now sat, weeping no longer but looking sullenly down with her resentment heavy on her eyelids. The kitten, finding itself neglected and no longer fondled but pushed impatiently away, returned to its little place under the sink, and Myrtle remained sitting, waiting for Irma Flask, ready, before Irma could speak, to vent her pride and her resentment, but not her grief for she had only hardness now for her once dear silly lover.

Victoria May Tritt hurried past the policemen, looking up at them but unnoticed by them, and then she hurried up the stairs, and, transformed beyond herself by death – another’s death – and by her own compassion, she opened the door at the head of the stairs, entered the room, closed the door, and stood against the wall, looking with great pity at Myrtle who raised her heavy lids and gave Vicky the full value of her sullen look. Vicky stood and looked sorrowfully at her cousin and her whole awkward little body was instinct with compassion as she stood leaning forward a little, with helpless hands outstretched and head tilted forward, and eyes – so colourless – lit now with dark pupils. How sad she stood, sadder by far in her estimation of her cousin’s loss than her cousin, sitting at the kitchen table with anger growing cold.

“Oh, Myrtle …” said Vicky, “… you heard … oh, Myrtle … poor Morty!”

Myrtle’s slight inverted smile as her lips turned downwards appeared on her stained face as the travesty of a smile, and she said to Vicky in a bitter echo “Poor Morty! …” and then she told Vicky what had happened, and what Mort, so
dying, had done to
her
, and the pupils of Vicky’s eyes grew darker and larger and her look changed as she listened. You would not have known her, I think.

“Stop it, Myrtle Hopwood,” she said sharply, “you stop it. What you’re saying isn’t true …”

“I’ll say it’s true,” said Myrtle, greatly surprised.

“What you’re saying isn’t true and you to think such a thing of Morty and him gone!”

“I don’t need you to tell me what to think,” said Myrtle looking obliquely at Victoria May with great scorn. “I seen the police and …”

Vicky leaned forward like an awkward little prizefighter. Her thin arms were bent and her weak fists clenched ineffectually over her thumbs.

“Listen to me, Myrtle,” said Vicky impetuously, with no fear in the world. “I seen Mort coming down Powell Street when I was going to service and he was no more drunk than … than
you!
And I seen that logger, that Eddie, and he was drunk, and I seen Mort come up with him and Mort was sober, like he was coming off work, and Mort looked kinda surprised and Mort took a holt of this Eddie and tried to make him go away but this Eddie he took a holt of Mort and pulled Mort and short of having a row, Mort went along and guided this Eddie.” Vicky stopped and she was breathless because she had never used up so much breath in one speech before in her life.

But Myrtle, now established in the darling imaginings of a woman uniquely deceived and meet to be sympathized with, listened without satisfaction to Vicky. Vicky gazed at her cousin in the silence that followed and then she told her tale again, with vehemence, as if Myrtle were deaf, and Myrtle looked grudgingly and consideringly at her. And Vicky, who knew nothing of married love and married hate, of married
joy and married fury, saw with a dawning understanding the dreadful thing about Myrtle Johnson – that she was content to have Morty die as she then thought he died; and that she did not much wish to believe what Vicky told her; and Vicky dimly apprehended that Myrtle in her self-love did not intend to cease being wronged by Morty in his death.

Vicky’s eyes were like black stars. “Oh, Myrtle,” she cried, strong in what she had seen, “you’re a wicked wicked woman!” And then she told a lie, and how easily it came, from the depth of the life that she lived in her dreamings and her imaginings and the newspapers which were her fairy tales and the movies which were her other life. “When Morty died the death of a hero!”

“Hero!” repeated Myrtle, surprised.

“They was a man,” continued Victoria May, still bending earnestly towards her cousin, “they was two men and they was talking to some people on the corner of Cordova when I come out of church and I heard them say Mortimer Johnson and I stopped and listened and one of the men – I’d know him again – was telling them how he was coming off work and he heard someone shouting and he ran and before he got there to the end of the wharf he seen a man and it was Morty and Morty took a dive off of the end of the wharf. He put his hands like So,” said Vicky, living in her invention, and putting her two palms together as she seemed to remember divers seem to do, “and he took and dove right in after Eddie Hansen. And the man said He sure died a hero’s death and all the people he was talking to said so too, and that was why I come along … I thought you knew …” and Vicky stopped, having invented her story with such surprising ease that she was ready to believe it herself. “Myrtle,” she continued solemnly, “you’re the widow of a hero!”

So great is the power of the spoken word that Myrtle, blinking, began to see herself not as a woman deeply wronged forever, but as the widow of the hero Mort Johnson. Vicky, watching her intently, repeated “The man said Morty put his hands together and then he took and dove into the water, and they was almost gone by the time the man – they was two men but one talking – by the time he got to the end of the wharf, because that Eddie he took a holt of Morty and pulled him under.”

Something grew warm within Myrtle and she saw the simple picture of Morty putting his hands together and diving in to rescue Eddie Hansen and she became, as Victoria May had said, the widow of a hero, and she became proud of Morty, but prouder of herself for being the widow of a hero. Vicky, seeing what she had achieved, expelled a long breath, and relaxed. How simple it had been!

“Maybe I’d get you a cup of tea, Myrtle,” she said, in her usual diffident tone. The kitten sprang onto Myrtle’s knee and mechanically she stroked it, looking not at Vicky but at Morty who dived off the end of the wharf, and now would never come back, and how terrible it was, and so she was the widow of a hero; and that was how Mrs. Emblem and Irma Flask found her a few minutes later when they came hurrying hatless into the room. Mrs. Emblem coming into the room infused it with consolation. She did not seem to see Victoria May but came straight to Myrtle and bending over embraced her saying “You poor thing. You poor poor thing,” and, bending, put her soft face against Myrtle’s changed face and kept it there in silence, weeping a little.

“When Mom phoned me I phoned Mrs. Emblem right away and we come over,” said Irma Flask. “Say, isn’t it the awfullest thing!”

Mrs. Emblem with her arms around Myrtle and her face against Myrtle’s face thought out of her own experience It’s bad anyway, but when a husband dies drunk I guess it takes everything that might be sad or kind right away, and I don’t know what to say to her; and so she continued to hold Myrtle in silence.

But Irma Flask said, taking off her coat, “I said to Mrs. Emblem, if it hadn’t a been that they was drunk …”

Myrtle shook herself loose from her aunt. “Who was drunk?” she demanded of Irma Flask.

“Why, Morty and Eddie!” said Irma Flask. “The policeman said!”

“They’re crazy, that’s what
they
are, those cops,” said Myrtle contemptuously, “and if you or anyone else dairse go around telling lies about Morty, Irma Flask, I’ll have the law of anyone, I certny will.” Irma Flask, who had come to comfort Myrtle in her own peculiar recriminatory way, was silent and surprised, and so was Mrs. Emblem, waiting.

“You tell them, Victoria May, you tell them,” urged Myrtle, and Victoria May, afraid of Mrs. Emblem and of Irma Flask, but more afraid lest this new truth which she had made up and which had become essentially true might in some way fail, began her recital again; and as she recited she lost her fear in her vivid imagining of Morty’s death.

She stood there, her plain face different (thought Mrs. Emblem), and recited, and the three women watched her and listened.

As Vicky told her story, she looked directly at Mrs. Emblem who was the one, she felt, who must believe her. When she came to the conclusion of her recital, the picture of Morty’s dive from the wharf was so real to her that she herself was deeply moved by it, and the sight of Vicky with her
simple tale and her simple tears also moved both Mrs. Emblem and Irma Flask.

As Mrs. Emblem looked at her sadly and in surprise, she accepted all that Vicky had said, as true. Even if she had in her mind questioned Vicky’s story (which she did not), she would have told herself that it had to be true, because Vicky was too simple, too honest, too frightened, too stupid – perhaps – to tell a lie, and so she would know that it must be true.