At two o’clock next afternoon he was back in Peggy’s room taking off his overcoat and overshoes and putting them in the cupboard. First he tidied up the bureau, dusting off the spilled face powder and the hairpins. He made an orderly arrangement of the face cream and nail polish so he would have space for writing. Opening his briefcase, he spread out his papers on the bureau. It was too high for writing comfortably. He put a layer of books on the chair seat and then a cushion on top of the books and sat down. It was awkward and uncomfortable.
He wanted to get down some background material for his first three columns. He tried to work with the air of a man who had come to the one place where he could think with beautiful clarity. But the light from the ceiling was not good; he would hear a whirring noise from the floor above and jump up: it would be Mrs. Agnew’s vacuum cleaner. The woman had a passion for the vacuum cleaner. If she were unhappy or lonely or restless she ran her vacuum cleaner, and he would listen nervously to the whining until he wanted to scream. He would look around and frown, wondering how he got there. Instead of working in such a dump he could have been in his comfortable hotel room, or he could have used Foley’s apartment; yet he had let himself be chained in this musty-smelling basement with the odour of stale food seeping through the cracks in the door.
He had only one visitor, a strapping, good-looking young Negress who came to the room accompanied by a five-year-old boy. It was at five-thirty, when Peggy should have been home. The smart young Negress, who was abashed at encountering McAlpine, said that she was in the neighbourhood and wanted to take an hour to have a drink with her boyfriend and knew Peggy would mind the boy for her for that hour. McAlpine offered to look after the boy. She refused, and was puzzled by his obvious approval of her visit. But her visit for him was a vindication of his own judgment of Peggy. Not only Negro men but Negro women liked and trusted her.
Those moochers who used to come must have heard he was there on guard. No one came to disturb him. He would write grimly until his eyes got tired, then he would get up and stretch and saunter to the little back window and look out at the snow-capped fence and the cat’s footprints in the snow leading to the three garbage pails by the gate. Then he would turn away from the window and stare morosely at each stick of shabby furniture and hate it for its cheapness. The smudges on the wall, the bare spots on the floor, and that odour of lighter fluid perfume she brought into the room every night filled him with disgust, and so did the little discoveries he made every day of her untidiness. Toast crumbs would be left on the burner, toast crumbs and cigarette butts, and the dregs of coffee in a cup; a stocking would dangle from a drawer or be tossed on the floor in the closet. His loathing of the room became a dull ache in his brain. His sense of order would compel him to tidy up the place as a gesture to the dignity of his work and his own self-respect; he would wipe off the burner and take the coffee cup along the hall to the bathroom to wash it. He kept asking himself bitterly why she hadn’t the sense to let him take her somewhere where they could lead an orderly life.
Each night when she came home from the factory she would look around, smile brightly and thank him for tidying up the room. She began to take it for granted that he was willing to play housekeeper for her and hardly bothered to make the bed. She was trying to provoke him, he thought, and drive him away. With all the resources of her slovenliness, she was cunningly protecting herself against him by inducing him to believe she was a slut. But the true sluts, he told himself, were meticulously clean on the outside. This flaunting of her untidiness was her way of repelling him.
He prowled around the room, searching in drawers and closets for scraps of evidence to prove that her carelessness with her clothes was part of her defiant resistance. On his knees before the lower drawer of the bureau he pulled out a silver bracelet, a little discarded beaded bag, and a pair of satin pumps saved from her college days. He got up slowly, the beaded bag in his hands, an exultant smile on his face, and stood in a trance. Then he hurried to the closet and looked at her black dress. Again he smiled. In that black dress which was so beautifully and simply cut she had true elegance and knew it; and when she put on that white silk blouse and black skirt she had her own peculiar distinction. Good style was instinctive with her as was her gentleness and the lovely tone of her voice. All the untidiness, the overall mess was her gesture of contempt for those who were passionately concerned with these things, for she knew she could emerge effortlessly with her own kind of superior elegance.
When she came home from work he would have the coffee made and serve her a cup, then sit in his chair by the bureau, crossing his knees and holding his cup while they gossiped and she stretched out on the bed. She would always love him for his coffee, she said. It was as if they were living together.
She would move around the room, and sometimes he would reach out and circle her hips with his arms and put his head under her breast, listening to the beating of her heart, and she would stand still, unprotesting, but uninterested, till her stiff stillness gradually took the heart out of him. Then she would smile to herself.
It was his privilege to stay there until she got dressed to go out for the evening. He did not ask where she would go. Nor did she ask him whom he would see. There were no strings attached.
He had to go to the Carvers’ in the evenings for conferences with Mr. Carver, and with those visits he believed he was clarifying his position. Mr. Carver was helping him with his work. They would adjourn to the library; they would remain alone there, and he would be so businesslike that Catherine hesitated to interrupt them. Mr. Carver became his editor; he himself was simply the conscientious newspaperman. He had drafted three columns, each one a development of the same idea. He wanted to express these ideas as stories. He wanted to tell of the lost men of Europe, the mass men who were driven by some death wish to surrender their own identity and become anonymous parts of a big machine: he intended to make the point by devoting each column to one character, one lost man. The plan and the treatment delighted Mr. Carver, who had some shrewd suggestions. “Keep it lively and personal. Always put flesh on the bones, Jim, and you can’t go wrong,” he would say. Then they would have a drink and Mr. Carver would talk about ice fishing. In two weeks he would be able to get away for a weekend, he said. It would be nearly midnight when they came out of the library, and Catherine, who had got bored waiting, would have gone to bed.
Going back to the Crescent Street room was like going home to his work, his happiness, his love, and that dream he had about four o’clock in the afternoon when his eyes grew tired from the bad light and he had to lie down on the bed, cupping his eyes with his palms and focussing them in the darkness behind the palms to rest and strengthen them.
In the dream he would give himself the time he needed before the Carvers heard of his attachment to Peggy. Sooner or later Catherine and her father would hear of it; but, given a little more time, he would be prepared. Given time, he and Peggy would be ready to emerge from the dark cellar world of illicit relationships and meet the Carvers. As yet they were not ready, and he could only pray his job wouldn’t be jeopardized by Catherine’s premature shocked discovery of his love for a girl like Peggy. But when the peculiar fury of Peggy’s defiance was exhausted they could emerge together.
In his scheming dream of breaking her resistance and remolding her, he failed to see that he was pitting himself against her; that he was justifying her instinctive resistance. He went on dreaming of her as she would be when she had yielded to him. He dreamt of the two of them meeting his friend Sol Bloom, the Jewish gynaecologist, whom he had called when he first came to town. Sol had been in New York. The short round-faced little doctor, with only a fringe of hair around his head, was one of the wisest and kindest men he knew. He could see Sol having a cocktail with him and Peggy. And Sol in his wisdom would say, Yes, she had those rare childlike qualities that the Chinese sages used to admire, she was spontaneous, acted only on impulse, never reflected, cared nothing for her circumstances, took no stock of the future. And after the cocktail he would take her to the theatre, to His Majesty’s if a play from New York were there, and between acts Catherine would be in the lobby, and, of course, there would be one shy diffident moment. But as a token of her own self-respect Catherine would invite them home for a drink and Mr. Carver would meet Peggy. Mr. Carver would be shrewd and worldly enough to make it plain he sought talent and energy in his employees, value for his money, and not the right to pick wives for them; the only vital question for him would be whether Peggy would do the newspaper and McAlpine credit, and of course he would soon succumb to her gentle charm. The first meeting with Angela Murdock would be more amusing; but even that meeting could come off easily with a warning word to Peggy. That expression of disapproval thagt had shone in Angela’s eyes when old Fielding had mentioned Peggy’s name was born no doubt of wounded pride. A spoiled woman like Angela had been unable to endure Peggy’s indifference; that had been the trouble. But if Peggy were friendly and enthusiastic Angela would like her. On a weekend he would take her to meet his father; yes, he could see them walking up the path to the house. And there at the open door would be his father in his best suit, restraining his natural eloquence as he tried to remember he was the dignified father of the columnist of the Montreal Sun. But her refinement, her simplicity and fresh intelligence would be too much for his exuberant father. “You have chosen a fine girl, Jim. She has poise and charm,” he would whisper enthusiastically. “Your mother would have liked her. Why don’t you get married here at home?” And that night of their marriage with her at last in the bed beside him: the incredible surprise of having her lying in the dark beside him, his hand on her breast, her neck, the curve in the small of her back…
His dream would be broken by the heavy beating of his heart. But he would go back to it to watch her turning to him, her lips parting, her head back and her eyes closed; and again the dream would break, always breaking like that before they entered the darkness and peace of their being together.