Homesick Read online

  Maurice certainly was of no use. The mere idea of confronting someone and ordering him to remove himself from the premises was enough to provoke chest pains so bad that the ticket-seller had to be sat down and given an Orange Crush. Frank tried but almost always made matters worse. Six trips to request some noisy chap to quieten down and the fellow grew louder with every visit. There was something about the way Frank walked and talked and breathed peppermint all over the rowdies which only whipped them up into further frenzies of misbehaviour. As for Mr. Buckle – quite early in his career he had got his nose broken when he tried out his high school principal’s voice on a young soldier. He avoided running any risk of a repeat performance.

  No, when it came to giving somebody the bum’s rush, nobody held a candle to Vera Monkman. Mr. Buckle attributed her success to the same disagreeable qualities which disrupted his inspections and often caused him to regret the day he ever set eyes on the woman. These were cheekiness, coarseness, natural belligerence, and an outrageously inflated opinion of herself. In many respects, Mr. Buckle thought, Vera Monkman was a thoroughly hateful young woman.

  At the first whiff of a disturbance Vera would swing into action, shoulders squared, mouth set, flashlight poised at the ready like a cocked pistol. Vera did not hesitate. She’d give them the high beam full in the face. As they sat blinded, shrinking behind an uplifted hand, she’d say, “Listen, pal, nobody paid good money to listen to you. They came for Clark Gable. They’re having trouble hearing Clark on account of you. So button it and give us all a break. Thank you or else.”

  Then, snapping off her flashlight, she would wheel abruptly around and stride vigorously back up the aisle before they got a chance to answer. It was part of her tactics. Don’t let them get a word back at you. Above all, never plead and never argue. Show them who’s boss. If the disturbance resumed, back she went, this time to remove them. There were no second chances. She’d just reach down, grab them, and boost them out of their seats. Most rose without a whimper of protest, it was the element of surprise that did it. If they resisted, Vera quickly sketched what they could expect.

  “Look, mister, you don’t want to get in a scuffle with me. I don’t embarrass. I’ve got lungs like a banshee and I hang in screaming bloody blue murder until the cops arrive. So it’s that or get up quietly and leave. You’ve got exactly five seconds to make up your mind which it is before I start in. One, two…” They usually hustled out of their seats by four.

  Vera explained her method to Frank. “The most important thing is never to doubt they’ll come. If you do, you’re finished. They’re like dogs, they can smell fear.” But Frank couldn’t seem to get the hang of it.

  Although everyone admired Vera, no one admired her quite the way Thomas the projectionist did. Thomas was an unusual young man. Not only did he project film, he also projected wishes. He had a genius for inventing stories and telling them to people who had reason to wish they were true. For instance, he informed Maurice that Mr. Buckle suffered from a secret heart condition much more serious than Maurice’s own angina pectoris. “You think you’ve got it bad? You’ll live to be a hundred because you take care of yourself. Have you taken a good look at Buckle lately? The man looks like he’s got one foot in the grave. Honest to God, he does. They don’t give him much longer, Maurice. Compared to him, you’re the picture of health.” To Mr. Buckle he confided that both Doris and Amelia adored the manager, found him kind and sympathetic and handsome in a mature, distinguished way. “If I were you, I’d be sure not to show one favour at the expense of the other,” counselled Thomas. “It doesn’t do to stir up jealousy at work.”

  He encouraged Frank to get a hair-piece. “Why, it would take twenty years off you. Because, Frank, I have to tell you, that fresh, youthful skin of yours just doesn’t jive with those scraps of old hair. Really, it doesn’t.”

  Thomas had no stories for Vera because he could not fathom what she might like to be told. Perhaps it was the mystery that prompted and stoked his ardour. Isolated in his projectionist’s booth he meditated on her constantly. Vera, for her part, hardly gave him a passing thought. If she did, it was to feel sorry for him. Sorry for his long, skinny neck perpetually inflamed with ingrown hairs, sorry that he believed wearing a bomber jacket could cover up the fact that he had been rejected for military service. (Frank laid the blame on a hernia.) Sorry that he talked so smugly and embarrassingly of his ambition to operate a small electrical appliance repair shop. “After the war is the Electrical Age. There’ll be a fortune to be made in that field. For the ones with the brains to get in on the ground floor.”

  It never dawned on Vera that the bomber jacket and electrical shop were given such prominence for her sake. Nor that Thomas’s offers to walk her home after the theatre closed were anything but a courtesy extended by a shy young man who happened to be strolling in the same direction. So it took her entirely by surprise when Thomas proposed a date. If she had smelled it in the wind she would have prepared a tactful, graceful refusal. But she hadn’t and, caught without an excuse, Vera heard herself agreeing to have supper with him on Sunday, the one night they were free from work.

  It was a wretched, excruciating evening, a disaster. Thomas had the taxi drop them off in front of one of the better hotels where he proposed having supper. There his courage failed. He knew he had enough money in his pocket to buy the very best, most expensive meals the dining room served, but did he know how to act in such a place? Was he well enough dressed? He ran his tie between his fingers and said, “I just remembered something. I knew a guy who worked in the kitchen here once. The stories he used to tell. I don’t think we want to eat here.”

  So they set off walking in search of another restaurant. Thomas was in a quandary. He had boasted to Vera of the superb meal she had in store for her. “There are only three decent places to eat in town,” he’d said, “and Thomas knows them all.” Now he was in a dilemma: he had to deliver what he had promised but he was afraid that if he went into a really high-class restaurant he wouldn’t know how to behave and would end up making a fool of himself. So he dragged Vera through a hot, humid July night, searching for a restaurant splendid enough to impress Vera but not so splendid as to bewilder him. He would lead her into a hotel, determined this was to be it, and then on the threshold of the dining room he would be assailed by doubt and would hustle her away. His explanation for these sudden retreats was that the place was clearly not up to snuff, didn’t meet his demanding standards. “No,” he would say, gazing with a wistful air at the waitresses ferrying food from kitchen to table, “this isn’t it. I want you to enjoy something really special. I want you to have the best. Money’s no object with Thomas.”

  There was always a better place just up the street, just around the corner. Making for it Thomas would swear to himself that this time there would be no backing down, no failure of nerve. This time he would demand a table in a firm voice, nothing would deter him. But at the last second something always did. Shamefaced he would make his excuses to Vera, invent implausible criticisms, and then bolt with her in tow. Each time his resolve collapsed he grew more desperate. He began to walk more quickly, like a man possessed, hurrying down the hot sidewalks from hotel to hotel with long, stiff-legged strides that almost jerked Vera off her high heels as she clung to his arm. “No,” she heard him mumble, “not good enough.”

  Vera felt as if she were being asked to run a race in a steam bath. By nine o’clock she had had her fill of galloping around aimlessly in the heat with this maniac. She was starving, she had sweated clean through her girdle and was hobbled by a blister on her heel. Enough was enough. Vera made Thomas promise that they would eat in the next restaurant they happened upon, even if it was a greasy spoon. Although Thomas pretended to resist this eating house ultimatum, it came as a great relief to him. He saw to it that the next they passed was the sort of place he was comfortable and confident in, the kind that advertised working-man’s specials during the week. Vera was grateful just to be a
ble to sit down and slip her shoe off. She was going to have to stand on that stinging blister through a matinee and two screenings the next day and the sooner she got off it now, the more endurable it would be tomorrow.

  The restaurant was deserted and its emptiness made Thomas’s voice seem particularly strident and aggressive as he disparaged what it had to offer. After he read each dish aloud from the menu he repeated the refrain, “What a joint. You mean they’ve got nothing better than this?” He insisted that Vera order the T-bone steak because it was the most expensive item listed. To shut him up she did. Thomas had the Sunday supper special: vegetable soup, roast beef, creamed corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, plus a choice of either vanilla ice cream or chocolate pudding for dessert. When Vera’s steak was served to her by a middle-aged waitress with powerful, spectacularly bowed legs, Thomas inquired anxiously, “Is it okay, Vera? Because if it isn’t, I’ll make them take it back and cook it right. You spend that kind of money – it ought to be done to your liking. Exactly so.”

  Vera assured him it was lovely, perfect.

  “Well, if it isn’t just give me the nod. I know how to handle them in clip joints like this.”

  To deflect Thomas before he really got humming on this topic, Vera remarked: “My, wasn’t it hot today though?”

  With passion Thomas agreed that it was. Damn hot. Weather like this made you awfully thirsty. Was there enough ice in her water? He could get her more if she wanted it. Boy, was he thirsty. To illustrate how thirsty he was, Thomas noisily downed a large tumblerful of water in one draught.

  Never again, Vera promised herself.

  Silence reigned for the remainder of the meal. When it came time for dessert Thomas pressed apple pie and ice cream on Vera. He only gave it up after she told him she was watching her figure. “I don’t mind watching it myself,” said Thomas coyly. Other gallantries were interrupted by the arrival of his chocolate pudding. He complained it had a skin on it.

  “They all do,” said the waitress implacably. “Cook made them this morning. Can’t be helped.”

  Vera watched, fascinated, as Thomas painstakingly skinned his pudding with the blade of his knife before he mined its goodness with a teaspoon.

  It was no longer intolerably hot by the time they came out of the restaurant. Thomas was relaxing now that the evening was almost over. He decided that he had handled things rather well. He sauntered along with his suit jacket slung over his shoulder and a toothpick flicking up and down between his front teeth. “That wasn’t such a bad place after all,” he said. “But next time, we’ll go deluxe.”

  Vera didn’t hear what he said. The softness of the warm night air had awakened memories of how her father and mother had taken her and Earl for evening drives in the country, to cool them off before they were put to bed. Earl, who was little, rode in the cab, seated between her parents, but she was allowed to ride in the open, in the box of the truck. That had been pure pleasure, her long hair whipping and streaming around her face as she leaned out against the rush of air, pretending not to hear her mother tapping on the rear window, signalling her to sit down, to be careful. And the tears springing into her slitted eyes so that the big-bellied white moon above actually seemed to be afloat and rolling in a vast black ocean.

  There was longing in her voice when the thought escaped her. “It would have been a lovely evening for a drive in the country,” she said.

  All the next week Vera avoided bumping into Thomas and readied the explanation, the excuse she would offer when he asked her out again. On Friday, he crept down from the projectionist’s booth while the first reel was running and accosted her. “I got one,” he said, evidently highly pleased with himself. Vera thought he looked like the cat who had got the canary.

  “Got what?”

  “A second-hand Dodge so’s I can take you for those rides in the country you were hoping for. What do you say Sunday we take a spin out to Niagara Falls?”

  Vera was speechless. Was this misunderstanding her fault?

  “My old man claims I’m crazy,” said Thomas. “One minute I’m saving every penny I earn so’s I can establish myself in business and the next I blow a big chunk of it on a car when the streetcar gets me to and from work, no problem. But what Thomas says is this: If you can give a little pleasure to somebody you care about, what’s money?”

  Vera knew she ought to say something right then and there. But how could she? How could she spoil his fun with him looking like that, like a little boy with a new train set? She couldn’t. They went to Niagara Falls. Vera and Thomas stood side by side staring at the hypnotic sheet of falling water, drenched by the fine spray diffused in the air. “Isn’t this just about the most romantic place on the face of the earth?” said Thomas.

  “I’m never getting married,” Vera put in quickly.

  For the next three Sundays in a row Vera consented to be chauffeured about southern Ontario by Thomas. Barns, cornfields, and red-brick towns slid by her dazed eyes. She was absorbed in a difficult calculation. Exactly how many outings did she owe Thomas because of the car? What it had cost him and was costing him was never long out of his mind or conversation. She wouldn’t believe what oil and gas alone added up to. Then he had had to buy a new battery. “But,” he added graciously, “it don’t seem much when you’re pleasing somebody.”

  When could she, in good conscience, make an end of it? And what did it mean to end with Thomas? End what? Was there anything to end? Everything was mixed signals, confusion, ambiguity. On one hand he seemed to assume they were sweethearts, yet he had never so much as kissed her. His behaviour towards her was always scrupulously proper, almost brotherly. The most he permitted himself was to hold her hand while he walked her to and from the Dodge. But on other occasions his talk became suggestive, even smutty. In particular, what Thomas had said about Mr. Buckle had left her feeling uneasy – not about Mr. Buckle but about Thomas. She wasn’t sure she believed his story.

  “You watch yourself when you’re alone with Mr. Buckle,” he said one golden Sunday afternoon as the Dodge whirled through a shower of autumn leaves.

  Vera hadn’t really been paying attention. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “I said,” repeated Thomas with emphasis, “watch yourself when you’re alone with Mr. Buckle.” “I’m never alone with him.”

  “You will be,” said Thomas, oracularly. “All the female employees are, sooner or later. It’s when he gets you in his office, alone, that you’ve got to be on your guard.”

  The thought of Mr. Buckle pursuing her around his desk like some figure in a bad cartoon amused Vera. “Buckle chasing a woman would be like a dog chasing a car. Neither would know what to do with it if it caught it.”

  “He doesn’t chase anybody. He just sits behind his desk. Ask Doris and Amelia if he ever gets out from behind his desk when he scolds them.”

  The significance of this was lost on her. “So he sits behind his desk. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe more goes on than meets the eye.”

  “Thomas, if you’ve got something to say, spit it out.” Vera was getting mightily annoyed by these riddles.

  “I don’t think I should say.”

  “Fine,” said Vera. “Good. If you can’t say, you can’t say. The subject is closed.”

  It was obvious Thomas didn’t want it closed. He licked his lips before proceeding. “Well, I came into his office right after he had Doris and Amelia in there about them not watching the kids stealing gum and candy and like that. When I came in he was tucking something away – if you get my drift. It seems he likes to give something an airing when he gives you women hell. Under his desk, I mean.”

  Vera stared.

  “You get my meaning? He exhibits himself sort of. Under the desk, that’s how.”

  “I see,” said Vera. She turned her face away. A horse was standing alone in a field behind a snake fence.

  “Would you say that’s sick? That’s pretty sick, isn’t it?”

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bsp; Vera didn’t answer him.

  “So if he ever pulls any of those tricks with you, just let me know. I’ll make him sorry he was ever born. You can count on it.”

  It was this story and the queer sensation it left her with that prompted Vera to concoct one of her own stories. This one involved an elderly female relative whom it was necessary to visit every other Sunday. It was the first step in a plan to wean Thomas from her company. On the Sundays she supposedly spent with her female relative the phone in the rooms she had rented after leaving Mrs. Konwicki’s rang all afternoon, at intervals of an hour.

  Vera’s feeling of uneasiness about Thomas began to grow. Nothing he had done so far was extraordinarily peculiar, but many things were slightly off, unfocussed, like a blurry film which had you wiping at your eyes as you watched it. The gifts he was constantly presenting her with were a case in point. These were small, inexpensive presents which he rather ceremoniously gave her before they embarked on their Sunday rides. His tributes, however, were strange ones, the sort of gifts given to people in hospital but not to your best girl: a bag of plums, magazines, a package of cigarettes. Never flowers, chocolates, or perfume. Not, of course, that Vera hoped for anything intimately associated with an avowal of love. Far from it. Still, his gifts were so eccentric that Vera sometimes wondered if she wasn’t the butt of a subtle and devious practical joke. Were these offerings an elaborate form of sarcasm? What did he mean to say with a bag of plums?