The Equations of Love (4 page)

“Oh, of course, Mort,” said Mrs. Dunkerley in a suitable voice. “You
must
be anxious to get home! There is nothing – serious, I hope!”

I shall probably, thought Mrs. Dunkerley as she drove, hear about Mrs. Johnson’s liver, or her kidneys, but it is very nice of him to be so devoted and take such an interest, and I shall certainly take an interest too.

“Not serious,” said Mort. “The doctor says … m … the doctor says that there
might
be a slight touch of cancer, though.”

“Oh dear me!” said Mrs. Dunkerley, swerving a little. “A slight … well well!” What troubles people have, she thought, and how little we know about each other, and she became quite sententious.

“Well, here we are!” said Mort, brightly and bravely, getting out at the bottom of the hill. Mrs. H. Y. Dunkerley took her cue from him and dwelt no more on Myrtle’s disease, but said she would see him tomorrow. Then she remembered to pay him, and with a smile and a gesture, she turned to the right and drove rapidly out of sight in the direction of Caulfield.

Mort stood and waited for the bus. He began to realize that without intending to, and simply because he had been late that morning, he had wished some kind of an illness on to Myrtle, which was too bad. He felt a warm protective feeling for her rising within him and wanted to do some little thing to make up for the disease which he had wished upon her. And so it happened (the feeling rising more and more strongly after he had crossed the Lions’ Gate Bridge into Vancouver) that he got off the bus and instead of going home he went to Eaton’s Store. He thought he would get Myrtle a pair of nylons, and as he had in his pocket the money which Mrs. Dunkerley had already paid him, what could be easier. As he walked into Eaton’s Store he experienced all the joy of the little boy who is getting a valentine for his mother who will exhibit an exaggerated delight. If she doesn’t, she will disappoint her little boy very much indeed. It was as this nice and eager and atoning
little boy that Mort walked into the store, but people did not see that he was a little boy, and one or two women in their hurry felt the pleasant feminine glow that the large masculinity of Mort often evoked from women quite unreasonably. People are very deceiving and you never can tell.

He took his place beside a man who was engaged in buying nylon stockings. This was a tubby red-faced well-dressed man whom Mort did not at first recognize because he did not at first look at him very carefully, but I am sorry to say that it was Mr. H. Y. Dunkerley. After Mr. Dunkerley had boarded the plane at Calgary he had suddenly realized that he had forgotten to bring his wife some little present from New York, and so he had taken out his red notebook, and had made a note in it because he left nothing to chance – a note to buy his wife a dozen nylons directly he got to Vancouver, and here he was, buying her a dozen nylons.

“Half a dozen of these,” he said, indicating some so thin as to be almost non-existent, “and half a dozen of these.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dunkerley,” said the nice girl who seemed to know him, and Mort, who as I said was feeling good and in the self-satisfied frame of mind of a man who is buying nylons, even one pair, for his wife, suddenly recognized Mr. H. Y. Dunkerley. He was feeling jocular, or he would never have said to Mr. H. Y. Dunkerley (as he did) in a deprecating half-familiar manner as one stocking-buying male to another, “You won’t recognize
me
, Mr. Dunkerley, but I was working up at your place today. Buying some nylons for the little lady, I see! Same here. I know I’m only a working man,” continued Mort with a simple-sounding nobility which had no basis in fact, “but I am sure that under the circumstances you will pardon me speaking to you.”

Mr. H. Y. Dunkerley turned and looked full at Mort with great dislike. It was too bad no one had warned Mort Johnson, but, in the very first words that he had addressed to Mr. H. Y. Dunkerley he had made him very mad.

Mr. Horace Dunkerley had been born in the province of Nova Scotia, near a fine place called Antigonish. He regarded Antigonish, which he had never revisited, with the same sentiment, with the same romantic attachment that people seem to think that only Highlanders have for their homes. Or Jews even. The whole of this romantic attachment – not so foreign to successful business men as some people think – was impregnated with the memory of a hard-working but happy boyhood spent in helping his father who was a hand-logger and had a yoke of oxen, and his elder brothers. He had been to school in Antigonish, but not much. He was a woodsman from the age of ten, and by the time he was sixteen he was doing a man’s work daily. At the age of twenty-four he had worked his way to British Columbia. By the time he was thirty, through continued industry, he had come to own a small shingle mill. Before he had finished paying for that shingle mill he had established another. And because he was that kind of person he was now a lumber man in a big way. He still worked much too hard and too long, with his head rather than, as heretofore, with his arms and legs; and while he had worked continuously, and prospered, he had established within himself a violent phobia which caused him nearly to explode when he heard the simple word “working man” uttered, unless it was applied to anyone who knew what “work” was in the sense that he, Horace Dunkerley, knew what “work” was, and had known all his life. So that at dinners – which he now attended frequently, or in his clubs – of which he now had a fair number, or on planes or trains – which he
seemed to frequent, when he heard the word “working man” applied loosely to people who worked only eight hours or less a day by choice or by law, he said what he thought about it, in full. So this was the Achilles’ heel of Mr. H. Y. Dunkerley, and Mort had stuck a needle right in and did not know it.

Mr. Dunkerley showed restraint owing to the fact that Eaton’s stocking counter did not seem the right place to demonstrate to a stranger the absurdity of the word “working man” as applied to people who did not work as hard as Mr. Dunkerley, and of denying the name “working man” to people like Mr. Dunkerley. In his club he would have expressed himself violently, so when he looked in a hostile way at Mort and grunted “Oh,” he was showing great self-restraint, and was not, as Mort thought at once, being snobbish and haughty.

This “Oh” had a dampening effect on the little boy who was Mort. In fact the little boy disappeared as through a trap door, and a slightly truculent man took his place.

Mr. H. Y. Dunkerley addressed himself to the nice girl at the counter.

“Charge them,” he said, speaking clearly, “to Mr. Horace Dunkerley; I have a charge.”

“Yes, Mr. Dunkerley,” said the nice girl, and charged the stockings, and wrapped them up.

While she was doing this, Mort’s face took on a look of wonder. He scrutinized the well-dressed form and compact face of Mr. Dunkerley, and as he looked, he distinguished in the compact face of Mr. Dunkerley a small chubby and serious boy of about twelve years old.

“Say,” said Mort, forgetting how rudely he had been treated, “did you ever live in Antigonish?”

“
Certainly
I lived in Antigonish,” responded Mr. Dunkerley coldly.

“Was it your father was a hand-logger and had a yoke of oxen just a piece out of Antigonish?”

“Certainly he did,” answered Mr. Dunkerley, wishing to escape this questionnaire but unwilling to disclaim Antigonish and the yoke of oxen.

“Well, whaddaya know!” exclaimed Mort with the happy air of discovery. “Well, whaddaya know! You’re not going to tell me you’re little Horse Dunkerley!”

“Certainly I am Horace Dunkerley,” said Mr. H. Y. Dunkerley who seemed to have found a formula.

“Well … Say … So you’re little Horse Dunkerley!” said Mort. He simply could not get over the fact that this successful business man was little Horse Dunkerley and that little Horse Dunkerley had grown into this successful business man.

“And to think I licked the pants off of your big brother Alfy! I sure licked the tar out of Alfy! Where’s Alfy?”

“In Yorkton, Saskatchewan,” said Mr. Dunkerley. He still looked coldly on Mort because he did not like him at all and not because he had licked the pants off of Alfy.

This coldness became too much for Mort. It takes two to make harmony and Mr. Dunkerley was doing nothing about it. Mort felt outraged that little Horse Dunkerley to whom life had evidently been kind should act in this snobbish way to Mort just because Mort was a working man – and doggone it! employing
him
, Mort, to dig his old garden! Why he bet he never even went to the last war. Just stayed at home and made money.

“Did you go to the war?” Mort asked with seeming irrelevance.

“Certainly I did,” said Mr. Dunkerley, desiring to get away.

“Captain, I suppose,” said Mort sarcastically.

“Major,” snapped Mr. Dunkerley, and pushed past and on and out of the store.

“Were you wanting some stockings?” asked the nice girl who had been listening with interest while pretending not to. She did not say “Do you want some stockings?” which was what she really meant, but used an oblique and genteel form of address in a past tense.

“Were you wanting some stockings?” she asked again of Mort who seemed to be amazed about something.

If he had answered her with scrupulous correctness he would have said “Yes, I was wanting some stockings but I don’t want any now. To hell with stockings. I don’t care if I never see another one.”

But he just said “No” (Well, what did you come in here for then, thought the nice girl) in a furious tone of voice, and walked with his easy rolling gait out of the door, going in the other direction from that taken by Mr. H. Y. Dunkerley. This brought him out onto Hastings Street facing down towards Main Street.

He walked down and down Hastings Street feeling very mad and reiterating inside himself that it was not fair and he wouldn’t go and dig that old garden not if Horse Dunkerley gave him half the earth. He glowered in front of him. Many women and girls thought Oh what a man, and some gave him soft looks but he did not see them.

He walked on until he came to a new beer parlour called The Old Bodega, and though he was an abstemious man and spent very little money in beer parlours, unless he met an old friend – he and Myrt went once in a way – he went into the beer parlour which was cool and pleasant and smelled, naturally, of beer, and sat down at a small table and ordered a beer, which he drank, sipping moodily.

When a tall thin man without a hat came in and walked across to a table beyond where Mort sat, Mort did not observe him except with a lacklustre eye which saw nothing because all his cognition was turned inwards not outwards, and he was occupied in ruminating on the unfair and unpleasant day that he had had, and he wished he’d licked the tar out of Horse Dunkerley as well as his brother Alfy while he had had the chance, the little bastard. So it was that the tall thin man, looking idly round, met the eyes of Mort, looked, brightened, got up, came and stood over him and said “Well, if it isn’t the old buzzard himself!” but at first Mort was unaware of him.

Mort then looked up right at the thin man whose face was double-creased into a long sad pleasant clown-like smile. Then Mort’s eyes came to life. They brightened. His face came to life. His mouth opened.

“Well, whaddaya know!” he said. “You old So-and-so!” He stood up, and he and his old friend, whose name was Pork, slapped each other on the back and said “Well well well, you old son of a gun!” It was plain from this that they were old friends, and the fact was that Pork and Mort had been buddies in the same Battalion, and had been at Passchendaele together and had been in lots of spots together, both tough and funny, and had seen each other only at intervals of years and years. Each was thoroughly pleased to see the other, and so Pork went back to his table and picked up his glass of beer and came over and sat down across from Mort, and how comfortable it was, Pork and Mort sitting across from each other and ordering another beer and taking their time saying things to each other and none of this nonsense of not understanding each other – nothing
between
, as you might say. Mortimer forgot about the things that had so agitated and annoyed him as he walked down Hastings Street into the beer parlour; or if he
didn’t quite forget at first, these disturbing thoughts turned themselves round and round like dogs settling down and then they settled to sleep. Mort was not bothered by them now, as he sat at the table with his old companion Pork, who was no angel but a good old scout. And Mort’s own particular angel sat up and dusted itself off and breathed the inner air of harmony.

“Didn’t someone tell me you was married?” asked Pork, and Mortimer said he was, to the finest little woman God ever made; everybody liked her and she was the refined type.

“Nothing like a Good Woman,” said Pork, and they both agreed, and ordered another beer and that was the last beer they had. Three, no more.

“Workn?” asked Pork.

Mort nodded. “Doing a big
con
tracting job over in West Vancouver.”

“
Con
tracting eh?” asked Pork, implying What kind of contracting.

“Millionaire’s place. Landscaping,” said Mort, pursing his lips and looking into his beer with the air of a man concerned with slopes, haulage and drainage. He had forgotten that he had stopped working at the millionaire’s place.

Pork pursed his lips too, raised his eyebrows, put on a certain look, and nodded, impressed.

“What are you doing?” asked Mort, rousing himself from the haulage and drainage.

“I work at Love’s. Classy morticians,” said Pork.

“Morticians?” asked Mort.

“Undertakers to you,” said Pork.

“Oh, sure. Undertakers to me. I don’t go for them fancy names,” said Mort.

“Well well,” said Pork, looking at his silver watch, “I’ll have to be gettinalong. I’m on duty nights.”

“I’ll come along,” said Mort. “I never seen an undertaker’s place. Behind the scenes as you might say. I’ll come along with you.”

So the two friends got up, and took their time and walked together along Hastings Street and took the street car and changed twice and got off at a very chic building which was large and spreading and of white stucco with window boxes, and a grass plot all around; the kind of building that caused tourists driving in from Bellingham to say “Oh let’s stop here, Momma. This looks like a nice kind of place!” You cannot blame these tourists because it does indeed look like a nice kind of place to stay, but it is not, it is not, it finally and inescapably is not. It is a mortician’s place, it is a funeral parlour, it is a funeral home, it is the undertaker’s, and people who approach meditatively and a bit early for the funeral wonder How on earth did we manage in the old days! Back east when Grampa died it doesn’t seem to me we had anything swell like this. We just had the funeral right in the house and old Miss Foster came in to help.