I watched the northern lights for a long, long hour, after I got back to my room. They were clean and white, on that night; they moved very slowly, giving a steadfast beauty to the crisp cold sky. Watching them across a range of glistening rooftops, I felt more than ever that they looked down on worthless men. The sum of foolishness, cruelty, and cowardice which had made up our contribution that evening could not deserve such riches.
Not at all in the mood for work, I was taking these sad thoughts to bed when there was a knock on my door, and Mary walked in.
I was not ready for her; not in humour, not in dress, not in inclination. But she must have walked into many rooms, wanted or not wanted, unannounced or heralded by song; the entrance was precise, self-assured, a statement of policy rather than a question mark. Once she was inside, the door swung shut behind her as if part of some confederate act. Then she smiled briefly and briskly, and said: ‘Hi!’
I was barefooted, and taking off my tie; she had me at a disadvantage, in a pattern I did not like. Close to – and by now she was close to, crossing the room in quick clicking steps – she was just as I expected; she had that fatal air of having been mauled by men, of being the end product of careless or brutal use. Good manners, and tolerance as well, evaporated as I said: ‘What do you want?’
She must have heard that kind of greeting, also, many times; it did not check her. Without a change of expression, she answered: ‘I wanted to say thanks for what you did tonight.’
‘That’s OK.’ Though the excuse was reasonable enough, I was wary still; in this particular area, one thing led to another, and I did not want to trigger any of it. ‘I thought the old man was getting a rough deal.’
‘He always does.’
‘But it’s his own fault.’
‘Oh sure, sure.’
The disbelieving tone was just enough to needle me. Unwisely, I tried to make my point.
‘Well, it is his own fault. If liquor hits him that hard, he should stay out of bars.’
‘Lots of people should stay out of bars.’
Silence fell again. She was looking round the room, taking in the snow clothes, the typewriter, the serviceable luggage. She was painfully thin; the face which properly fleshed might have been beautiful, was positively skull-like. What she needed, I thought, was a solid programme of steak dinners. But I wasn’t in the steak dinner business, and I wasn’t going to be.
She said: ‘You’re a writer, aren’t you?’
‘Newsman.’
There was a bottle of whisky on the night table. I saw her looking at it, but I wasn’t going to trigger that sequence, either. I went on unknotting my tie. Finally she said: ‘Well, like I said, I just wanted to thank you.’
‘Forget it.’
‘Ed was a real help, too.’
‘He’s a good man.’
She looked at me directly and steadily, for the first time. ‘So are you,’ she said. Then, as if to show that she could match me on any ground, that she had pride to wear as well as clothes, she nodded, and turned, and was gone.
Her footsteps receding down the bare corridor were businesslike, unhesitating. They conveyed the clear message that she wouldn’t have come back for at least a hundred dollars.
She came back next day, for nothing, because I asked her to. There were various reasons for this turnabout, which on the face of it was stupid.
Primarily, I had a bad conscience; I knew that, in a better mood, I would at least have acknowledged her effort to thank me. I didn’t want to get involved, but, equally, I didn’t have to be rough about it – or so it appeared, by the more liberal light of day.
Then, I was bored. The northland story was only limping from my typewriter, because I kept feeling that there must be much more to it than I had found out. Or a better story hiding somewhere – something like that. That was not the climate for writing – it was the climate for making excuses and doing something else instead. The choice of something else, in Bone Lake, was not wide. Talking to Mary was a ready-to-hand alternative.
Finally, she had intrigued me – not as a person, but as an element in a situation. I wanted to know about her and the old man; why she was involved, and what she was involved in. I wanted to know more about him, and for this she was the best lead.
For these reasons – if they were the reasons – I smiled when I met her in the lobby next day. Then I said: ‘I owe you a drink,’ and she nodded, as if we were continuing a conversation, and answered: ‘Twelve o’clock.’
We talked all afternoon, up in my room, with sandwiches to help out, and a bottle to help me. She had brought, of all things, her knitting – it was a scarf for the old man – and she sat on the shabby sofa by the window, her hands busy, her eyes intent on her work, her voice making a thread of the facts, like the yellow wool she worked with. It was a good voice, full, deep, belying her thin face and meagre body; it was a voice not ashamed of emotion, nor ashamed of silence if silence would serve the story.
More than once she asked me if I wanted to work. The answer was always no.
Because I was inquisitive, our talk was, to begin with, mostly about her. Like the majority of men, I knew more about her by hearsay than by experience. Prepared for excuses, for a romantic gloss on a coarse fabric, I was surprised by the austerity of fact. Many hallowed superstitions went by the board as I listened to her answers.
She was not a clergyman’s daughter, orphaned at sixteen. She was not a stranded chorus girl, working off her hotel bill. She was not a widow with a tiny pension and two piteous mouths to feed. She had not fled away from a Peeping Tom stepfather. She had not been seduced by this rich politician’s son, and run out of town by the chief of police.
She was a working girl, like her mother before her. She had come to Bone Lake because Montreal was too tough. She did not especially like her job, but she did not like any other job better.
She was thus an honest woman, and many of her thoughts were immaculate. Particularly where they concerned the old man. We had talked about the number of times she had come to his rescue, and I had wondered, out loud, why.
‘He needs help,’ she answered flatly, as I seemed ready to dismiss him as a nuisance. ‘People should help each other.’
‘But what’s his trouble?’
‘Booze. And some funny ideas that may be right and may be wrong. And he’s old and sick, as well.’
‘Then he should see a doctor.’
She said, with finality: ‘He’s seen one.’
‘Oh … Then he shouldn’t be getting into these rows.’
‘That’s something he feels he must do.’ She looked at me, and then down at her knitting again. She produced, from her compassionate storehouse, another maxim. ‘People should be sorry for other people.’
‘But he’s just a drunk.’
‘Who isn’t?’
‘Don’t say that! You know it’s not true.’
‘All right–’ she smiled at my vehemence, ‘–I mean, who doesn’t have some kind of a weakness?’
‘But you’re supposed to fight it … So all this means that you’re sorry for him.’
‘Just that.’ She looked at me again, more defiantly, daring me to suggest otherwise. ‘He doesn’t have any money.’
I think that was the moment, some time during the late afternoon, when the bottle ebbed, things warmed up, and I made a conventional attempt to kiss her. But all she said was: ‘You don’t really want to,’ and we left it like that, without embarrassment, and went back to what we had been talking about, which was now exclusively the old man.
‘How long have you known him?’
‘Two years,’ she answered. ‘Since I’ve been here.’
‘You know they call him the Mad Trapper?’
‘They always call someone the Mad Trapper. That’s standard hereabouts.’
‘What about these funny ideas he has?’ And as she did not answer, I pursued it: ‘He’s always saying, “I know”, at the top of his voice. What does he know?’
Her face was averted, not giving much away. ‘It’s something he’s found. Or thinks he’s found.’
‘Thinks?’
‘Well, it’s hard to believe.’
‘But you believe it?’
Now her head came up, and her hands were still. ‘Yes, I believe it.’
‘But what is it?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ she repeated. ‘I promised not to.’
‘Who else has he told?’
This was something she was definite about. ‘Over the years, he’s told seven people.’
‘And?’
‘They think he’s round the bend. But they’re wrong!’
‘That all depends. What sort of people were they?’
Her head came up again, with an odd kind of pride. She recited, as if from some well-learned text: ‘The Pope. President Truman. The Archbishop of Canterbury. Nehru. Stalin. Mr St Laurent when he was prime minister here. And some English king.’
I looked at her sharply, wondering if she had started to play the fool. But her face was quite serious.
‘You mean, he went to see all those people?’
‘No. He wrote to them.’
‘Oh.’ The picture was becoming clearer, and more conventional. There were people who wrote letters to popes and prime ministers and kings, and other people who did not. The dividing line was usually clear. ‘You said, an English king. Then this was some time ago.’
‘About twenty years. Maybe more. He tried to go back–’ She stopped suddenly, and put her hand over her mouth in the schoolgirl gesture of dismay. She had said too much, perhaps by a single word, and I jumped on it.
‘Then it was some place he found? Or some man?’
She shook her head, refusing to answer. But I wasn’t going to be put off; the process of deduction was too tempting.
‘If he tried to go back, and couldn’t,’ I pressed on, ‘then it’s some place, difficult to get at. Whereabouts? Round here? Up north?’ And as she kept her silence: ‘Oh, come on, Mary! You’ve told me this much–’
I saw then that she was gathering up her things, taking flight already, and shaking her head again as if the movement would strengthen her resolve. I had pressed too hard, and the result was going to be a blank.
When she was ready to go, she said, almost angrily: ‘You mustn’t make people break their promises.’
‘I’m sorry … No more questions, then. But don’t go.’
‘I have to, anyway.’
Her mood had changed completely; the easy afternoon had given place to the calculated business of the evening. To smooth over the transition, I said: ‘Well, it was fun talking. Perhaps I’ll see you later.’ I smiled. ‘As Joe would say, simmer down now.’
‘That Joe!’ she answered viciously. ‘He’s a snake! And those other two just need shooting! They’re the meanest pair.’
‘That’s the way they’re built.’
She was suddenly glaring at me. ‘They don’t have to act that way! Mr Shepherd–’ I had a moment’s difficulty in recognizing the old man under the formal label, ‘–Mr Shepherd says they can’t help it. That’s not true!’
‘But–’
‘It’s not true!’ From some pent-up spring, a torrent of argument burst out. ‘People are always saying they can’t help it! If they steal a million dollars, they say they couldn’t help it! If they get pregnant, they say it wasn’t their fault! Even if there’s a war, it’s just too bad, it can’t be helped. Baloney! Things don’t just happen. It’s people that do things, and they can help it!’
Before such vehemence, I might have backed away with a soft answer. But a small demon from the realm of discord prompted me to ask: ‘What about you, then?’
‘What about me?’ she snapped. ‘I’m not dreaming up any excuses! I’ve made my own life, and I’m not blaming it on anyone else! Anything that’s happened to me is my own fault.’
‘Then that must go for the old man, too.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve got to admit that he’s been making a fool of himself, lately. And it’s been going on for a long time, hasn’t it? He doesn’t have to go down to the bar and stick his neck out. That’s his own fault.’
She sighed, losing the edge of her anger and her taut determination. ‘Oh, sure … It’s his own fault, all right … He can help it, but he doesn’t want to … He says he’s fishing.’ The strange word slipped by us, and away. Mary sighed again, a deeper, more considered message from a compassionate heart. ‘Don’t think I haven’t warned him … He goes on like this, they’ll crucify him.’
They crucified him that same night, with ease and with appetite. I should have been there, perhaps to make it less cruel, perhaps to stop the execution altogether; but in fact I backed away from it, at the first show of teeth, like any mangy dog. Excuses need time to formulate, and careful thought to make them convincing. At the moment of truth – which is a real thing, not a by-product of the bull – I had none that were not ignoble.
I had left my room about nine o’clock, and gone downstairs in the general direction of the bar. I talked to the desk clerk in the lobby, and bought some cigarettes, and stepped outside for a brief look at the stars and two economical breaths of ice-cold air. Then I crossed the lobby again, making for the swing doors, and stopped in my tracks at the sound of a voice.
It was the expected voice, the known voice, shrill and keyed-up, shouting: ‘This time you have gone too far!’ Before I even had time to echo, in thought, Ed’s words: ‘Here we go again,’ there was a crash of broken glass, a moment of silence, and then the same voice on a gasping note of denunciation: ‘It’s a horrible thought – that two thousand years of civilization – can only produce a brute like you! Perhaps we should – wipe out what we have done – and try again!’
I knew then that I was not going through that door into the bar, for all the sunbeams in Heaven. Indeed, I had turned away from it, even before the excuses starting queueing up in my mind. All I wanted was a quiet evening. By the sound of it, there were far too many people there. I didn’t really need a drink. I had a drink up in my room, anyway. And why should I waste time with the same dreary scene, when actually I had all this work to do?
Every sort of reason.
To the prudent music of ‘I know not the man’, I climbed the stairs again, and went back to my burrow.
It was Mary who roused me out, a half-hour later. She burst in, without knocking; her face was distraught, her hair wildly tousled. The dress, torn at the shoulder, signed the completed picture with a sordid scrawl of violence. Irose from my typewriter, knowing that I was not going to escape after all.
‘What’s the trouble?’
The words came tumbling out: ‘They took him away! You must do something! They beat him up and took him away!’
‘Who took him away?’
‘The police.’
I was conscious of relief; the news seemed a noticeable improvement upon the past. Mary continued to stare at me, as if she expected me to jump on a snow-white horse and gallop to the rescue, with no more delay than a caper or two before the cameras. She was not yet up to date with the official mood of disengagement.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘let’s work something out. Sit down and have a drink, for a start.’
‘We haven’t got time!’
I didn’t like the sound of that at all; brisk movement was no part of the plan – nor was any other kind of movement. I crossed to the night table, and poured myself a drink, very slowly, very deliberately. I had my own decisive scene to play, the one that solved everything and sent the audience home with a warm feeling that, after the troublemakers had done their worst, business trends were still up.
I said, in a soothing voice: ‘There can’t be all that hurry, if he’s in jail.’
‘But we must get him out. Or he’ll die.’
She sat down on the bed, and was hitching the edge of her dress together with trembling fingers; she had taken, from me, the cue for calmness, but it was not yet within her compass. I poured her a drink, and she accepted it, and gulped greedily; it was the first time I had seen her do anything save sip at her glass, a sip which consumed time more than liquor. Now her hands were reaching for her hair; her fingers became combs as she tried to set it to rights. She was doing her best to lower the temperature.
I said, like any stage uncle: ‘That’s better. . . Now tell me what happened.’
She gathered her wits, towards a reasoned story.
‘He got in a row again, and Callaghan beat him up.’
‘Callaghan?’
‘The big one.’
The Ox … ‘But how did it start?’
‘Oh, Callaghan began picking on him. You know.’ Her face was drawn and hopeless as she relived the sequence. ‘He was waiting for him, because of what happened last time, when you … He climbed right in, as soon as Shepherd came up to the bar. There was an argument, and Callaghan started to slap him around.’
‘Didn’t anyone try to stop him?’
‘Not this time.’
‘So?’
‘Then he fell down, and Joe called the police.’
The pronouns were mixed, but they could not mask the story. A thug had had his way, an old man had been beaten to the ground. The fact that I had heard the prologue to it myself, and had backed away, was beginning to tell. From the look of her, Mary had played a much more valiant part.
As if chiming in with my thoughts, she stood up again, and smoothed her rumpled dress, and said: ‘You must help him.’
Her voice had lost its strident edge; the tone was simple pleading. I reacted to it brusquely.
‘Help him? How help him? What could I do?’
‘Bail him out. Get him home somehow.’ Her hands were clasping and unclasping, as if uttering small, urgent prayers. ‘He looked so terrible … He looked nearly dead when they carried him out.’
‘They’ll take care of him all right.’
‘They won’t! The police here are awful. I know!’ I turned away. ‘Well, anyway … It’s out of my hands. It’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘It has everything to do with you!’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I tried a scornful laugh, not too successful. ‘How do you figure that out?’
‘Because of what’s happened. Because you must be interested, or you wouldn’t have asked all those questions. Because you helped him the last time, and now he needs help again. More than ever. If you weren’t sorry for him, you wouldn’t have helped him the last time. Why did you help him, if you weren’t interested?’
Why indeed? And how could an old man brutalized be less appealing than an old man merely threatened? The leaven of pity, the most insidious blackmail in all the world, was working against me. In face of it, a man could say ‘No’ only just so often … But I stalled once more, in sulky defiance, the last refuge of the hard-driven male.
‘It’s his own fault.’
‘It’s everybody’s fault!’ She came near to me. For some reason, undefined, the trap had sprung while I was looking elsewhere. It was as if she were handing me my coat, and I were taking it without argument. She said again: ‘You’ve got to help him.’