A Beauty Page 5

  “I could have used bacon and eggs,” he said after he’d devoured the last of his toast. “God, I can see those eggs swimming in bacon grease. I can just about smell that bacon.”

  “Baked beans on the side,” she said.

  “Pancakes.”

  “Mmm. Dripping with syrup.”

  He leaned over and kissed her jammy mouth. She stuck an end of her toast into his. “You put me through hell, you know,” he whispered into her ear. She didn’t know the half of it – how scared he’d been that he’d killed her – and he wasn’t going to tell her.

  “I thought you were going to back out of the room, bowing all the way,” Pansy said. “You couldn’t take your eyes off the girl. She isn’t that pretty, you know. It’s that tousled look, that used-but-ready-for-more look that got you going. Not to mention the Christly smell of sex in the room. Don’t look at me like that. It’s unmistakable. Huh! If I had ten cents to spare, I’d bet it on feeling your hand on my arse before the day’s over.”

  “Aw, you’re too hard on the kids,” Merv said. “I mean the girl, the way she was looking at you, she just wanted a little womanly sympathy. You know, motherly.”

  “If I have any womanly, motherly sympathy to spare,” Pansy said, “I’m gonna spend it on myself, thank you very much. I seen her signalling, by the way, with that little pale face. I don’t know why she couldn’t see I don’t have an ounce of maternal spirit in me. And if I did, I’m damned if I’d squander it on a heedless kid in a smelly bed.” That seemed to be her last word.

  They drove out of town, past the dozen or so vehicles gathered outside a white clapboard building, a Lutheran chapel, small as a family dwelling, marked with just a cross instead of a spire. She turned to watch it get smaller. She’d never gone to church; her father had never gone and when, pressured by neighbours, she’d asked him why, he hadn’t explained. He never did explain about anything. Maybe the note he’d left for her on the kitchen table was the most explaining he’d ever done, saying she was old enough now to look after herself.

  “Everything okay?” Bill asked.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Sure?” They were coming up to the highway, and he turned and glanced at her as they rolled towards a stop.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Swell.”

  “That woman at the hotel,” she said. “Wasn’t she strange? The way she glared at us with the coffee pot in her hands. For a minute I thought she was going to dump it on us. Her husband seemed kind.”

  Bill was grinning to himself. He was only half-listening to what she was saying. It was the low, weighty sound of her words that he liked. That cute, serious hint of accent, the w almost turned into a v.

  “I wonder what she’s doing now.” I vonder.

  “Damned if I know. Or care.” He stretched out his arm and drew her in. “Maybe she’ll clean that room. It could use it. Huh. You can tell neither one of them do bugger-all. They’ve got nerve charging for a bed in that flea hole.”

  She was standing at the open second-floor window of the room they’d just left, noticing that it was windy, as usual, and already hot. She saw the big roadster driving away, flashy thing, as long as some houses, beautiful, really, all gleaming gold. She watched it roll past the church and pull up at the highway and stop.

  “What are you doing?” Merv wanted to know.

  He’d watched her strip the bed. She leaned out the window and shook the folds and the smell of sex out of the bottom sheet. The dust smell came up with the heat from the street below to mingle. The sun browsed along her arms and she turned her face up to feel it. “You could take that tray downstairs,” she said.

  “No, really, what are you doing, eh?”

  She lowered the sash so the chunk of wood that held the frame up also held the sheet waving outside from the sill. Merv was still sitting on the bed, watching her do it, watching her bony arse twitch.

  “Pansy.”

  “I’m going to let the sun bleach it.”

  “You’d have to rinse the stain out first.”

  “You just like to make work,” she said. She plopped down on the bed beside him.

  “I hope you’re not trying to prove something.”

  “I hope you’re taking that tray with you when you go downstairs.”

  “I’m not going downstairs,” he said, leaning towards her.

  She gave him a look that would have stopped a quicker man, but Merv was deliberate as well as slow, and she gave in and lay back on the bare mattress.

  “You look fetching against ticking, my little lotus blossom,” he said.

  She laughed, but she said, “I already seen you looking at who looked fetching against ticking, remember?”

  “Wasn’t ticking until now you took the sheets off.”

  “You know what I mean, you bastard.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Do.”

  He stretched her arms up over her head and pinned them. She was wearing cap sleeves. He could see her delicate hair, dampened by her window exertion, clinging to the vulnerable cave of her armpit, and caught a whiff of her personal smell. A gentle, dusty, summer breeze wafted over them, and the contrast of its light touch and the heaviness between them made a ripple of pure pleasure run through him.

  The cat nudged the door open and padded in with the bossy air of a creature with work to do. They didn’t see it or hear it until it jumped up on the bed (they felt its silent thump on the mattress). It rubbed its head against Merv’s shoulder. It stared at Pansy with its slitted, empty eyes. “Christ!” she said, and rolled away. The cat hopped down. Landed on all four dainty feet. Left the door ajar.

  It was only minutes until both of them drifted off to sleep. Old Jock and Old Caldwell saw them there on the way to their rooms, snoring lightly side by side, their mouths fluttering, their thin chests rising in unison.

  “Tough night for the Badgers,” Caldwell said.

  Jock shrugged. He’d got so in tune with the establishment, most of the time he couldn’t be bothered talking.

  The wind picked up as the morning progressed, and the sheet blew out from the Addison Hotel window like a cheeky flag. On their various ways home from church, several of the Lutheran congregation, as well as the few who’d gathered in a living room for an Anglican service, observed it. Some of them pointed; some said the reeve should do something about Pansy Badger; others pretended it wasn’t there, just pursed their lips and refused to comment. One woman said, “Oh, that’s an old story.” She was walking home, away from the hotel at the time, with two friends. All three of them were pretty women, still young, with young families they were rearing as best they could on limited funds. Two of them were pushing baby carriages, which required some effort on the dirt path. “They used to do it to prove virginity,” the first young woman went on.

  “What does it prove now?”

  “Another one down.”

  They cackled all the way home, and even the one who didn’t have a husband, who’d “got herself pregnant,” experienced an unusual happy sense of belonging in her world.

  “I wonder how you know which way to go,” she said when he turned onto the highway.

  “Regina’s east. I’m just driving towards the sun, sweetheart.”

  The wheels crackled against the gravel and then whirred as they sped up. Democratic yellow flowers nodded at them from the ditches and windswept clouds swirled across the baby-blue sky. Her hair blew back from her face. She started humming.

  “What is that?” he asked. Before she answered, he was humming along. It was “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” They looked right at one another for a split second, and then immediately looked at the road ahead. They both tried not to smile.

  The roads in Saskatchewan were poor in those days, many weren’t even gravelled yet, and the big Lincoln bounced along in the ruts and out of them. People who would never know them stopped whatever they were doing and watched them when they passed by farms and rocketed through little towns. It was lik
e being in a movie starring themselves. Elena Huhtala was no heiress, as she would have been in most of the movies of those years, but she rode with her right arm resting on top of the door ready to wave at anyone. Bill tooted the horn. After a couple of hours of this, they quieted down, and Bill admitted he liked a woman who didn’t have to talk much. Eventually, he began telling her some of his thoughts and opinions, and as that is gratifying to anyone, the day continued as delightfully as he could ever have hoped it would – or that was how it was going until he tried to explain what he did for a living. He’d been prepared for her to ask, although she wasn’t a very curious girl. He told her he bought and sold things. “I buy ’em low and sell ’em high,” he said, and in case she got the wrong idea, he said, “I’m not a salesman, don’t get me wrong. I’m no salesman.”

  “You sell things. But you are not a salesman,” she said. Her eyebrows lifted like a schoolteacher’s.

  “I’m a trader, sweetheart,” he said. “Both sides of every bargain.” She didn’t appear impressed. “I work out of Calgary,” he added, but that seemed to mean little to her. He knew he sounded confident, and Calgary was a bigger city than she’d ever been to, but maybe that was the problem; she didn’t know enough to be impressed.

  “What do you trade?” she asked.

  “Anything. Everything. Bought this Lincoln last week. When I see something I like better, I’ll sell it. Trade up.” He stretched back in his seat. “You see, it’s a matter of knowing the value of things, eh? And knowing people.”

  “Do you own a house in Calgary?”

  That came out of left field, but what the heck. “I own a few,” he said. “Real estate’s one profitable thing to trade in.”

  “But one you live in? A house that’s yours? That you come home to?”

  “Hey. Are you asking if I’m married?”

  “No. You’re not, are you?” She seemed genuinely shocked.

  “No fear. I don’t like the idea of tying myself down.”

  “Me neither.” She sat up then, apart from him.

  “You’re a strange girl,” he said. “Do you know that? I mean, you’re different from other girls I’ve met.” He had to say it; the idea had been nagging at him.

  “I see myself as forward-looking,” she said. She was sitting forward in her seat, too, watching the long, narrow road rolling towards them.

  “Forward-looking? You’re kidding.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m serious.”

  They drove along for a while thinking their own thoughts and all the time she sat on the edge of her seat as if that was going to make the world come at her faster.

  “Forward-looking,” Bill said again, with a half-laugh. “You sure that’s not just an excuse you dreamed up for taking off with me?”

  She tilted her face up to him, serious as ever. “Teach me to drive,” she said. She might as well have said teach me to fornicate. There’s something about a girl asking to be taught anything at all, just gets to a guy. He pulled to a stop right then and there on the side of the road, and turned the ignition off. They were in the middle of nowhere, anyway; they hadn’t seen another vehicle for an hour. “Come sit on my knee,” he said. “Come on, I mean it. You’ll fit, skinny kid like you.”

  She swung her legs over his and hoisted herself onto him. The steering wheel pressed into her belly, so he pulled her back and his penis lifted to fit between her legs like it was built to be there, but he went through the motions, put her hand to the key, swamped in his. “Set your feet on mine,” he directed, and she did. She depressed the clutch with her left foot when he did, and moved the right, with his, from the brake to the gas as the ignition caught, but neither of them was fast enough and the Lincoln jumped forward, stalled.

  “What now?” she said.

  He turned the key backwards and put his hands on her breasts.

  “We won’t go far like this,” she said dryly. And it’s true they were stopped for some time. They’d made such a late start that morning, the sky was getting dark by the time they got back driving again.

  “I think Charlesville’s a bigger centre,” he said, seeing the sign at the side of the road. “I sure hope we’re not too late to get supper somewhere. I’m famished.”

  “Me, too, Bill,” she said. “I could eat a horse.” It was the first time she’d said his name, and he liked hearing it from her. In fact, he thought he’d like to hear her say it again, and often. You might say it was the most intimate thing she’d done, just say his name like that, like they were friends. After that, he felt bad for lying to her, earlier, about being a trader. But it didn’t matter, he decided, and he was from Calgary, so part of it was true.

  CHARLESVILLE

  Night, fell on Charlesville, the biggest town in a hundred miles, a little later than it fell on the small villages and farms surrounding it. That, and the few specialized shops it boasted, was the extent of its distinction. The hotel beverage rooms stayed open later in Charlesville than elsewhere and light still flared in a few windows after ten o’clock. And they had street lamps to dull the glitter of the stars overhead and take the edge off the darkness, and here and there a few trees to look blacker than the night.

  Down a side street, in one of those small bungalows that look as if they were built for a spinster (picket-fenced, huddled to the ground, window in the door to peer through), Albert Earle, the district’s one paid fireman, was visiting Peg Golden in her bed. Her bed had brass railings at head and foot and the mattress rested on metal springs, although it wasn’t resting right now; it was shifting and squeaking and Peg was moaning so loud Albert was afraid her neighbours, whose house was only a few feet away, would come over and complain that they couldn’t sleep. They had made a fuss once before when Albert and Peg had shared a bottle of rye whisky and got to singing. The neighbours were an old couple, seventy at least, and it seemed they required a full eight hours in spite of having no jobs to go to or family dependent on them. Such as Albert had, he reminded himself. He went to work on Peg, two fingers deep inside her, his arm like a piston thrusting while she rose to meet him and he stared into the wall, thinking only that he really needed to get home and get his own rest.

  “Albert,” she said, pulling back, although not completely away. She had a deep voice for a tiny woman, and could make him jump when she said his name.

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m not a machine.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And stop apologizing, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “How do you think it makes me feel?”

  He ducked his head down between her legs and gave her his full attention, knowing fairly well how that made her feel. A few minutes later, she said goodbye to him cheerily, standing at the open door in a flowered silk dressing gown that dragged on the floor because she hadn’t taken the time to hem it. She watched him slink along the sidewalk through the shadows of the sleeping houses, as if anyone cared if they did see him. He was a substantial man, not very good at slinking. He had nice, square hands; she’d liked that first about him. His hands were always warm. And he was a calm person, that was something she needed – and kind.

  Charlesville was big enough only half the population knew everything about everybody else, and Peg was a newcomer; she’d lived there only four years. So even though she owned and managed the one ladies’ wear store in the district, she knew only about a quarter of all there was to know about the townsfolk. As soon as the rumours had started about Albert dropping by her house late in the evening, there had been an increase in window-shopping, and a few of her so-called customers – in case she didn’t have enough information to judge him – went further than gawking and filled her in. They let her know that as a boy he’d been so good-natured and so kind-hearted and so bad at all team sports, his nickname in the schoolyard had been Girlie. And of course they had to tell her that he had a wife, although she was, each one of them said, as good as dead. Peg didn’t ask why that was, but they told he
r. His wife was incarcerated. Betty Earle; it would be years before she’d be home, if she survived prison. She’d killed their baby daughter, born with so many deformities you’d think she couldn’t have lived. Smothered her with a pillow. Just a bundle of pain, that’s all she was, the women said. Someone had come up with that description, and it had evidently impressed them all. They’d each intoned it as if the phrase had popped into their heads that moment. Then they looked down at their dusty shoes and their dusty wrinkled ankles (since they all wore dreadful beige cotton stockings they got cheap at the Red and White store), and shook their heads. And that was how easy it was for them to rid themselves of the child’s little life and Betty Earle’s dilemma, once it had been reduced to those just-right words, those words that implied pity without the effort of forgiveness.

  Albert had been left to absorb the pain that couldn’t be assuaged by an apt expression. And look after the five kids left at home. And relieve just a bit of the awfulness with Peg, who’d thought herself too good for the boys she’d grown up with, and now had no one.

  She went to her dressing table and began sectioning her hair, dipping her tail comb into the glass of water, coiling the sections into pin curls. She always thought of the Van Gogh painting while she did her hair up. Starry Night. She’d seen it in a Life magazine and ripped the page out. Couldn’t find it now, but she thought of it every night, even pictured the page’s ragged edges. Crazy painting, like the world was crazy. Just like. Spiralling out of control every time you figured you had a handle on it. She opened each bobby pin with her teeth, speared each curl. She was meant for better. That was the other thing she thought every night. She leaned closer to the mirror and examined the lines between her eyebrows, two sharp lines in a V over her nose, getting sharper every day.