The Equations of Love (9 page)

She bit into her apple, and read on. Here in her room she was at home and secure. She was safe among the people she knew so well, the true companions of her mind, who did not know her, who did not even turn their faces towards her, who demanded nothing of her – not recognition, not even a word.

T
he morning miracle had again deteriorated into a day which was merely a dull Wednesday which promised to be wet. Early risers, who had gone to bed in Indian summer, now informed themselves that it looked as though the weather had broken. The light which crept late into Myrtle’s and Mortimer’s bedroom had no quality of morning. Mortimer stirred, woke up, got up, rubbed himself, and sleepily regarded Myrtle. Mort was not wide awake and could not yet remember in what humour Myrtle had gone to sleep, so he put his guard up at once. If she lets one peep out of her, he promised, I certainly will slug her. He had, of course, no intention ever of slugging Myrtle. But whenever he made himself this promise – that he would certainly slug Myrtle if she let a peep out of her – he enjoyed it; it armed him for the day and strengthened his self-esteem which was so vulnerable. Mort then pulled up the blind quietly and let in what passed for daylight. When the weather is fine in Vancouver, fairly impartial residents will tell you that it is finer there than anywhere else in the world. That may or may not be true; but it is at least true that the surroundings of
Vancouver, on those days, are more glorious and scintillant than those of any other northern city. Other people will observe that gloomy days are more frequent and more gloomy in Vancouver than anywhere else except in the United Kingdom. I do not know for sure about that, but this was the kind of day that Mort now let into the bedroom. Yesterday the mountains sprawled nearby in frank glorious abandon; today they were nowhere to be seen. Neither was the ocean.

As Mortimer turned from the window and saw again the bed, Myrtle had a dream. Her dream seemed to Myrtle to last for a reasonable time. One cannot prove these things, but it is probable that the dream lasted for what is called a split second, or less. This was her dream.

Myrtle dreamed that she and Mort were as usual in the kitchen and that a knock came at the door. Mort went to the door and opened it, and Myrtle saw round his shoulder the figure of Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne, in a neat blue suit. Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne had on her face her usual anxious expression and held out a book of receipts and a very stubby pencil. She said to Mort, speaking in a worried manner, “Collecting for the Province.”

Mort acted very proud and said loudly to Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne, “No peddlers or agents allowed in this building!” Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne looked anxiously at Mort, and then she turned and ran down the stairs, changing, as she did so, to a medium-sized long-haired whitish dog with a tail that curled over its back. She stopped on the landing, and turned to bark at Mort; and the dog’s head was that of Mrs. Emblem in her feather hat. Myrtle was not surprised at this. Mrs. Emblem barked at Mort. He did not weaken, but said again, firmly, “No peddlers or agents allowed in this building,” and Myrtle was pleased with Mort. She was so pleased that a smile broke
through her dream and on to her face, so that Mort saw Myrtle smiling in her sleep. Her lips parted and she said with deep affection “Good old Morty, good old Morty,” and that was the end of her dream.

Mort was very much surprised to hear Myrtle say this; so much so that he murmured as he looked at his sleeping wife “Well, for gossakes!” He then went barefoot into the kitchen to put on the kettle. The kitten, who had been trying to get a bit of sleep on the potatoes under the sink, ran out to meet him.

Owing to Myrtle’s chance (or ordained) dream, the day, although dull, began very well for Mortimer and Myrtle. She awoke pleased, for some reason which she had now forgotten, and Mortimer was in great good humour owing to what Myrtle had said in her sleep, and made tea in the large pot, and set two cups, and pulled on his trousers over his underwear, and sat down on the edge of the bed and drank tea with Myrtle. He began to tell her all about the H. Y. Dunkerleys and why he was not going back there, and Myrtle encouraged him in not going back to subject himself to working for little Horse Dunkerley and his snooty wife who was a society woman and therefore was no good.

Mort was always inclined to believe Myrtle when she told him – as she had told him at intervals, for years – that society people could not fool her. Very simply, he had long since established a situation in which society people – and butchers and vegetable Chinamen, but particularly society people – were always trying to fool Myrtle; but they could not succeed. Myrtle’s fine eyelids and her inverted smile stripped them of all their silly pretences at once, and so these society people were foiled in their plans to fool Myrtle.

The kitten who was not a society person had fooled Myrtle into thinking that she – the kitten – was a tom, and
she gave Myrtle and Mort a great deal of pleasure that morning by her ridiculous and pretty antics. Then Myrtle said she must get up or she would be late again at Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne’s, and Mort said that he thought he would go and see old Cameron out at Burnaby because sometimes there was a job going at the nurseries. But as old Cameron might have gone into New Westminster, Mort might have to stick around a bit, so Myrtle was not to wait supper or anything for him, although he would probably be back. When Myrtle had gone, Mort slipped downstairs and got a yesterday’s newspaper from the ground floor tenant who was a sort of a friend of theirs, and took it upstairs and had a very pleasant morning with the kitten and the newspaper, and then he went out; and that was the last time he ever went out of the house.

A
lthough the day was dull and promised rain which came later, Myrtle’s inner climate was equable as she went on her way to Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne’s. This inner climate – which her angel enjoyed, although without confidence – had, of course, been created and was conditioned by as flimsy a thing as Myrtle’s dream wherein Mort had rebuffed Mrs. Lemoyne and had shown himself indifferent and impervious to Mrs. Emblem and had thereby caused his wife immediate and continuing satisfaction. Although the dream had completely vanished from Myrtle, she still had this pleasant feeling – from somewhere – of solidarity with Mort against people in general and – vaguely – a rare feeling of triumph over Aunty Emblem, which was nice.

Mrs. Lemoyne was delighted to see Myrtle arrive in a mood so pleasant and uncontemptuous, and therefore she weakened at once – as she was bound to do, being that kind of woman – and showed Myrtle her new overnight handbag. The fact was that it was Mrs. Lemoyne’s birthday, and she had just been regaled by one of those unique and modest self-contained domestic scenes peculiar to affectionate families, in
which there is a culmination of happy intrigue on the part of all but one of the family on behalf of that one member of the family. For several days past, Mr. Lemoyne and the three children had plotted, and teased, and then had at last disappeared on a secret expedition which Mrs. Lemoyne had affected not to notice, and then they had returned together with a small blue overnight handbag which with ostentatious secrecy they had connived into a cupboard which Mrs. Lemoyne was begged and ordered not to look into. When on this birthday morning Mrs. Lemoyne undid the handbag, watched by her children, she enjoyed achieving the right measure of surprise, and declared that the one thing in the world she had always craved was a blue overnight handbag. Everyone was very happy, although, when the parcels were all unwrapped, the children experienced a faint feeling of anti-climax, not being yet old enough to know that pleasures fade. Mrs. Lemoyne had acted her parts well, and with the private joy of a wife and mother who sees her husband and their children united in some small happy successful plot for love of her. She was, you may see, a simple woman, affectionate, anxious, not always very wise, often very silly, loved and bullied by her family, and easily put into a dither by people like Myrtle. So after this happy breakfast time when she had received her small queer gifts and the nice handbag, as soon as her family went off to business and to school, she put the handbag, wrappings and all, back into the cupboard because she could not bear the disparagement of Mrs. Johnson’s glance to fall upon it; she loved her handbag so much.

But when Mrs. Johnson arrived, pleasant and agreeably affected by the dream in which Mrs. Lemoyne herself had – unknown to either of them – played a part, Mrs. Lemoyne could not resist taking out the blue handbag and with shining
face showing Myrtle what a beautiful present her husband and children had given her for her birthday. Myrtle was very nice about the handbag and neither disparaged nor despised it, merely saying that her aunt Mrs. Emblem had one like that – only her aunt’s handbag was bigger and had fittings in it. This did not really take from Mrs. Lemoyne’s pleasure in her present, although she thought What a fool I am, why can’t I keep things like this to myself. The day passed very well.

Since Myrtle knew that her husband had gone to Burnaby about a job, and that you never could tell where old Cameron might be, she did not go straight home, but went down to Irma Flask’s place and thought she might stay there and have supper with Irma because Mort might not even be home to supper, and anyway he could cut himself a sandwich. Myrtle knocked at Irma Flask’s door and said Yoo-hoo, Irma, but since Irma had gone to North Vancouver she was not at home. Old Mrs. Uren, Irma’s mother, invited Myrtle to come in and sit, but, as Myrtle did not enjoy sitting with old Mrs. Uren, she said that she had to hurry home anyway, and then she walked home. Rain was falling fitfully. She had forgotten the kitten who greeted her with innocent delight and said she was hungry. The kitten occupied Myrtle for some time. She then had some tea and had a good lay-down and went off to sleep. Time thus passed. When she woke up, day was fading. Myrtle began to get fidgety and did a bit of tidying up. She had begun to have that waiting feeling, that waiting feeling, and to become, quite unreasonably, a little irritable; and that was the way Myrtle spent the afternoon. The evening approached.

I
f there was one person more than another that Mort liked seeing, it was Eddie Hansen. They had worked together at a logging camp up Jervis Inlet when jobs were scarce in Vancouver and Mort could get no work in town; and they had got drunk together more than once when Eddie had come down to Vancouver, and if there was one person more than another that Myrtle couldn’t stand the sight of, it was Eddie Hansen.

Eddie Hansen was tall and fair and pleasant-looking and slow moving, with a quizzical look caused by a dropped eyelid, and as he moved among other men he was almost head and shoulders above them. He was a powerfully built logger, a high rigger, and was well known and well liked up and down the coast, and he got good money. When he was on his job which was now at a big logging camp at Knight Inlet, he never drank, but when he came to town as he did two or three times a year, then he drank.

Eddie was technically and legally a widower. Actually he never thought of himself as a widower at all. He was no widower. The word widower carries a dominant overtone of
loss. Eddie had nothing to do with loss. He had forgotten what his wife Signe had looked like and he did not care; he never liked Signe anyway and he had forgotten her. He did not care for women except sometimes. Then he forgot them again. But he had a lot of friends up and down the coast and in Vancouver. He liked Mortimer Johnson, and sometimes he dropped Mort a letter which read like a telegram without the word Stop in it.

Eddie had sent Mort a note of that kind when he came down at the New Year’s which Myrtle remembered with so much resentment and which she unwisely cast up at Mort whenever she sniffed one sniff on him. But this time, when Eddie was to land in Vancouver on the very Tuesday that Mort went to work at little Horse Dunkerley’s, Eddie sent Mort no letter because he remembered how that wife of Mort’s gave him hell last New Year’s, and if he saw Mort, well and good; and if he didn’t, it was too bad.

This time Eddie began to drink on the boat coming down from Knight Inlet. He had a certain brash charm and he became very funny. But many people who had laughed with him and encouraged him at the beginning of the trip wished later on that they had never given Eddie any encouragement at all, because by the time they were halfway down
the coast Eddie had become far too friendly and had adopted them completely, still being funny, but tiresome now; his charm had palled and was not charm any more; and towards the end of the journey, by evening, as the boat steamed below the golden lights of the beautiful Lions’ Gate Bridge and entered the harbour of Vancouver, Eddie was beginning to be hostile, and resented the less warm attitude of all his dear friends on the boat. When the boat at last docked it was all right, because people got away from Eddie, and, safe in the immunity of shore and darkness, they walked, quickly into the night as if Eddie no longer existed. The brush-off.

It took Eddie some time and argument to find his suitcase. His suitcase contained his store clothes to wear in Vancouver if he ever got sobered up enough to put them on. He had a suit of very bright blue which he had chosen from amongst some other more conservative suits of clothes at the Army and Navy Stores, and an overcoat with a velvet collar which he had bought at a second-hand store on Cordova Street. When Eddie was sober and wore his overcoat with a velvet collar he did not look like a high rigger, bold and strong, magnificent among men, a rollicking Paul Bunyan of the Canadian woods, which he was; but like an imitation deacon, which he was not.