The Silence on the Shore. Hugh Garner

the Gardens,” she replied. “There’s a double main bout on the card and a tag match.”

      He smiled at her across the table in the faintly supercilious way he had when she mentioned wrestling matches. His smile always angered her momentarily, but she recognized it as the mark of his superior intelligence, and afterwards she would picture it to herself and bask in its mocking scorn.

      “A new roomer moved in today,” she said, sipping at her wine. “He’s got the back room on the second floor, Cartwright’s old room.”

      “Yes, I heard you talking to him in the hallway. What is he, an unemployed chimney sweep — or another college kid with an inordinate urge to howl at the moon on the evenings of monthly remittance days?”

      “He’s an editor,” she said triumphantly. “He told me he edits a magazine called Real Estate something or other.”

      “Oh.” His enthusiasm disappeared as quickly as it had been aroused. Then as if remembering something, “Where’s that cat of yours?”

      “She’s out. She stays out every night now that the weather is getting mild,” she said defensively.

      “She’ll be having another litter of kittens again, I suppose,” he said. “You’ll be able to enjoy your vicarious pregnancy again this summer.” And as he turned towards the door with the wine bottle in his hand he said over his shoulder, “I thought you looked a trifle parturient when I came in.”

      She went upstairs later and affixed the sign she had lettered beneath the chain-operated water tank on the bathroom wall. When she left the bathroom she walked along the second-floor hallway and switched on the fifteen-watt bulb that cast a feeble light from dusk to dawn. From upstairs she could hear Monique Laramée playing with her babies.

      How could a woman tie herself down to children like that, she wondered. There was too much fear and worry in bringing up a family, and besides children could die or be killed by a car. Still, the Laramées seemed happy enough, and they paid their rent every week without fail. Of course they were French Canadians, and she knew plenty about them, having lived in Montreal. Bed, babies, and beer was all they thought of. Dirty devils mostly, but she had to admit that Monique kept the two attic rooms and her children scrupulously clean.

      She knocked on the door of the front room and heard Sophia Karpluk shuffling towards her in her slippers.

      “Hello, Sophy,” she said as the door was opened.

      “Hello,” Sophia answered, gazing at her without enthusiasm.

      “I smell something good,” Grace said. “Stew?”

      “You might call it that,” the woman answered, motioning to a small curtained-off kitchenette at the rear of the big front room.

      “How was the hospital today?”

      “The same as always.” Sophia had a more tenacious accent than Grace, perhaps because she had only been in Canada for a few years.

      Grace stared around the room. There were some small modernistic paintings on the walls, and the ancient davenport was covered with a piece of heavy material whose gold threads glittered in the light from a tri-lite lamp. A hanging bookshelf held some paperback novels, an English-Polish dictionary, a pair of volumes on practical nursing, and a book of art reproductions. A second-hand Turkish rug covered much of the linoleum.

      “You’ve fixed the place up nice, Sophy.”

      Sophia shrugged.

      “A friend of mine is in your hospital,” Grace said. “Mrs. Lillian O’Brien. She goes to the wrasslin’ every Thursday night.”

      “Oh,” said Sophia noncommittally.

      “She was taken there yesterday. Gall bladder,” Grace said. “You must have admitted her if you work in the admitting office.”

      “I’m not the only one in the office,” Sophia said. “I may have booked her in and I may not.”

      “She’s a little Irish woman lives in the west end. Always wears a blue suit and flowered hat this weather.”

      “I don’t remember her,” Sophia said impatiently. She glanced towards the kitchenette. “My dinner will be burning, Mrs. Hill. I’ll have to go now.”

      “I just wanted to see how you were getting along,” Grace said as the door was closed gently in her face.

      She cursed the younger woman under her breath. She’d lived there six months and hadn’t yet invited Grace into her room, the lying Russian slut. Pretending she was better than other people, her and her friend Lotta going to the ballet and concerts and stuff. Making out she was the artistic type and worked in the office of the West End Hospital, when Grace had phoned there and found out she worked in the hospital laundry. Grace had kept this bit of intelligence to herself to be used when it was needed. Sophia said she was a Polack too, though Grace was sure she was a Russian. But who’d want to claim to be a Polack if they weren’t? Anyways, she had lied about her job so there was no reason to believe she wouldn’t lie about her nationality. You couldn’t trust either a Polack or a Russian anyhow.

      Grace returned to her own quarters, took a dime from her purse, and returned to the pay telephone in the hall outside her door. She dialed the number of her girl friend, a German widow named Martha Greber.

      “Hello, Mart’?” she asked.

      “Yes.... Yes it will be good.... King Koenig will kill that dirty American bum.... I just have to put on my coat.... Make sure they’re near the dressing-room ramp.... Was?… Ja …” As she lapsed into German, Grace lowered her voice through habit. Because the call cost money she was reluctant to hang up too soon, and she talked for fifteen minutes about the uninteresting events that had bridged the ennui of her day.

      When Walter Fowler entered the house Grace gave him a quick nod from her position at the top of the cellar stairs. He had fallen considerably in her estimation since Lightfoot had dismissed him so quickly. Apparently he wasn’t as important as she had first believed him to be.

      CHAPTER THREE

      When Walter entered his office the next morning he was almost surprised to find that his old mahogany desk, piled lightly with unanswered mail and unsolicited brochures, retained its familiarity. His small office, crowded as it was with the paper debris of five years of editorship, seemed to reflect more of himself than either the rooming house or the house in suburbia had.

      The tall old-fashioned French windows looked out over the part of the city in which he had spent his boyhood, its compact neighbourliness destroyed by its explosive post-war growth. Though it was only a quarter to ten the government liquor store across the street had thee or four customers lounging outside, waiting out the fifteen minutes before it would open. The insurance company’s weather beacon, a couple of blocks to the west on University Avenue, showed fair weather and a rising temperature.

      Miss Everleigh, his secretary, entered the office with a musical “Good morning!” and placed a small pile of mail on his desk.

      He turned from the window and smiled at her. “Good morning, Jane. You’re in a good humour today.”

      “Who wouldn’t be except the grouches? Don’t you feel spring in the air, Mr. Fowler?”

      “Yes, I do. You’re right, I moved into a downtown apartment yesterday and this morning I walked to work, through the university campus and down University Avenue to the office. It felt great to be able to walk to work again.”

      A small sympathetic frown had crossed her face when he mentioned moving, but when he finished she had replaced it with a smile. Jane knew more about his breakup with his wife and family than he thought, but she had always refrained from mentioning it to him. She sensed that it was not the completely happy event he tried to make out, even to himself. And she had noticed his hesitation when he mentioned his new apartment. What street had he told her yesterday? Adford Road? She knew there were no apartment buildings on it yet.

      “Perhaps