Such Is My Beloved

THE NEW CANADIAN LIBRARY

General Editor: David Staines

 

ADVISORY BOARD

Alice Munro

W.H. New

Guy Vanderhaeghe

 

CONTENTS

Title page

Dedication

Epigraph

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Afterword

About the Author

Also by Morley Callaghan

Copyright

 

To those times with M.
in the winter of 1933

 

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.

– “Song of Songs”

 

ONE

T
he most eager young priest at the Cathedral was Father Stephen Dowling. From the time of his ordination he had approached every bit of parish work with enthusiasm and preached with such passion that old Father Anglin, the pastor at the Cathedral, used to shake his head and wonder if the bishop could be advised to send him to some quiet country town where he would not have to worry about so many controversial problems. It was rather disturbing for the older priest and some of the old and prosperous parishioners, too, to have a young man around who was apt to attack any difficult social problem with all the intensity of his very ardent nature. Last Sunday, for instance, at the ten o'clock mass, Father Dowling had preached a sermon on the inevitable separation between Christianity and the bourgeois world, and he spoke with a fierce warm conviction, standing in the pulpit and shaking his fist while his smooth black hair waved back from his wide white forehead and his cheeks were flushed from his glowing enthusiasm. After that sermon, Father Anglin had wanted to argue with the young priest, but he was afraid he would reveal too easily his own lack of faith
in any social progress, so, instead of arguing, he merely stared at him with his pale blue eyes and shrugged his shoulders as a kind of warning.

Father Dowling was giving himself so eagerly to his work that he never stopped to wonder whether people approved of him. Besides, he had a charming smile that usually made everybody feel amiable, so he did not have to take criticism too seriously. Young people of the parish used to like him to come to their bridge parties. Older women loved to wait at the church door till he smiled a bit and then laughed out loud with a jolly burst of enthusiasm.

One night in the winter Father Dowling was returning from a visit to old Mrs. Schwartz who was sure, until he got to her bedside, that she was going to die. He had rushed to the house all ready to administer the last rites of the Church and he had bent over the old woman, listening to her moaning over and over that she did not want to die. He tried earnestly to soothe her. Then he began to be impressed with the vigor that was in the pious old woman's plea for life, and he smiled and felt sure that this time she would not die. After praying a while he began to talk to her in a loud, hearty voice; he assured her he would see her many times in church on Sundays, and then he went away.

He was on his way up the street by the theatres. The crowds were coming out. It had been snowing, the snow had suddenly turned to rain, but now the rain had stopped. Slush on the sidewalk was almost ankle deep. Father Dowling had his heavy woollen scarf up high around his neck. Young men and women huddled together for a while in the theatre entrance and then emerged under umbrellas as they rushed toward taxis. Father Dowling smiled at the way they stopped suddenly, looked up at the sky and then put down their
umbrellas when they found there was no rain. From the corner he could look along the side street and see the Cathedral spire, but he did not look up, he turned mechanically, for he was carrying on in his head another powerful discourse on the building of a society on Christian principles and wondering if he dare use such fine bold thoughts in his next Sunday sermon. Some people would be stimulated enough to invite him to dinner for a further discussion: more prominent and wealthy parishioners would be sure to complain to Father Anglin and ask if it were wise to have a nice young fellow just a year out of the seminary bothering his head about such matters.

As he walked briskly by the hospital, he noticed two girls standing not far away from a lamp-post. One was tall with a dark red coat and a bit of scraggly gray fur around the neck; the other, the small one, was wearing a brown coat and a felt hat that had become shapeless after the rain. Father Dowling would have passed without ever looking at their faces, but the tall girl called, “Heh, where are you going? Wouldn't you like to stop a while?” Father Dowling's head shot up in surprise. Then he ducked his head and began to walk more rapidly, with his heart thumping hard. He only wanted to get out of their sight. But before he had gone twenty paces he began to be ashamed of his behavior, for he had ducked his head and hurried as though hiding some guilty thought or longing within him, or, in a way, it was as though he had turned up his collar and hidden from two wretched-looking girls who, no doubt, lived in his own parish not far away from the church. Turning he looked back, feeling ashamed, but wondering what he might have said to them. “At least I might have shown a little pity for them,” he thought. Back at the corner the little girl, standing on one foot, held the other up as if it were wet and cold. Both girls were watching him. In spite of
his timidity Father Dowling began to walk back slowly, and as he got closer to them he even managed to smile a little. With solemn, expressionless faces they stared at him, the big girl holding her withered fur collar up around her head to keep out the wind. He did not look like a priest with the muffler wrapped around his neck. Then the tall girl grinned and said suddenly, “Did you change your mind, Rosy Cheeks?”

“Eh, what's that?” Father Dowling said. The way she had spoken to him made him forget everything he had intended to say. He looked very severe as he said, “It's a terrible night to see you standing there. You ought to be home in some decent place out of this.”

“You're right about that. We're not going to stand here much longer,” the big girl said. “We're on our way now. Want to come, Rosy Cheeks?”

“Listen to me a moment, child.”

But the little girl with the round, solemn face, who had been listening attentively, started to laugh and took hold of his arm. “Oh, come on. You want to come. Sure you want to come. I can tell you want to come.”

Exasperated, Father Dowling pulled his arm away from her. He still wanted to be persuasive and patient, only now he was embarrassed. “You can't stand on the street corner like this. God knows what will happen to you in the long run. If you don't want to listen to me, go on your way home.”

“Who said we didn't want to listen?”

“Sure we want to listen. Come on along and tell us all about it.”

“Where are you going?”

“The Standard Hotel, Rosy Cheeks. It's just around the block.”

“No, I can't do that,” he said hastily.

“All right. If you can't, you can't, and there's no harm done. Some other time you may feel different. See what I mean? This is what I mean. Just ask for Ronnie any old time.”

“Any old hour, we'll be awfully nice to you, Rosy Cheeks.”

“You mustn't talk to me like that,” he said, bending down angrily. He wanted to speak with earnestness and passion, but their sly, coaxing faces leering up at him made him feel confused, and suddenly, as he lost all confidence, he sighed, turned, and walked away rapidly with his head down and with contempt for himself. And he never looked back. His failure to be impressive with the girls made his face hot with shame. It was not yet clear to him what he ought to have done, but as he hurried to the church rectory he was full of sharp disappointment and more discouraged than he had been at any time since his ordination.

In the house he took off his hat and coat in a slow, thoughtful way, much worry showing in his sober face. Father Anglin, who was passing in the hall, stopped to offer the young priest a cigar that one of the parishioners had given to him. “It may explode in your mouth, but you like explosions, I believe,” the old priest jested. “Thank you, thank you very much,” Father Dowling said, and made no retort. As he went upstairs to his room, chewing the cigar, he was very worried, and when he sat down on the bed he was still twisting the unlighted cigar in his lips, for he couldn't stop thinking of the two girls on the corner, the serious, abrupt tall girl, the little one with the coaxing mouth and solemn eyes; they would be on the streets night after night and he had had an opportunity to help them and had failed. At this moment maybe they were in a cheap room in a low third-class hotel just on the other side of the block. Their rain-wet faces kept passing into his thoughts and he began to run his plump hand through his
black hair, feeling dreadfully sad for the sake of their souls and full of pity because of the meanness of their lives. The more he pitied them and worried, the more vividly he saw them standing on the corner with the small one lifting her foot off the ground. “If I had been different, if there had been more warmth and understanding in me, those girls would have felt it. They would have wanted to listen to me. I would have touched them in some way,” he thought. Through the noise of traffic on the streets and the long, shrieking whistle of a train down at the station, he still heard their voices and their mocking laughter. “Two girls in my own parish and in a hotel I could almost see from the window,” he thought. And he got up eagerly and went to the window and pressed his smooth-shaven face against the cold glass, trying to see over roofs and chimneys, warehouses and backyards to the place where he knew the hotel was. But the water that had streamed down the window now blurred his vision. For a long time, though, he kept his face thrust against the pane, and all the time he was growing more dreadfully anxious. Then he felt an eagerness that made him turn suddenly from the window, full of confidence, and start to button up his vest. “I'll go over there and speak to them. Why shouldn't I call on them as I would on any one else in the parish who might need me?”

Father Dowling went out on tiptoe, and when he was on the sidewalk, going along the street, he smiled at his own nervousness. He knew he ought to tell another priest or even tell a policeman he was going to the girls' room, for fear of scandal developing, but he was more afraid this might lead to something that would cause the girls' arrest. It was necessary to have in mind some appropriate thoughts one might use in talking to such girls: the best he could do now as he put his head down against the wind was to half remember the sermon of an old
missionary he had once heard preach to women at a mission. In the confessional it had always been easy for him to talk to women about moral looseness because they couldn't see him in the darkness and he could hardly see them. By this time he was on the other side of the block, in sight of the old hotel. The hotel, a three-storied yellow-brick building, was next door to an unlighted barber shop and a one-minute lunch counter. A broken electric sign with only a few of the letters lighted dimly, swung in the wind over the narrow hotel entrance.

Father Dowling began to make excuses to himself for his hesitant movements as he stood looking up at the sign, saying such things as, “I've passed this place many times. I've often wondered if the place did any business. I wonder who owns it?” or anything else he could think of that would permit him to delay. Then he took a deep breath, pulled his scarf high around his neck so no one would notice he was a priest and went bravely into the hotel. The lobby was small and dark. At the desk was a fat man with heavy, lifeless black hair with a rigid unnaturally white part in the middle and a very yellow dead-looking skin, who was apparently reading the newspaper spread out before him. He straightened up, readjusted the glasses on his almost bridgeless nose and eyed Father Dowling, who was smiling and making a little bow to him. The priest said, “There are two girls here I wanted to see. One is called Ronnie…”

“You want to see them, neighbor?”

“If you please.”

“Then you sure can see them. Go on upstairs and rap on the first door to the right. It's a white door. Go up there, see.” His short finger was pointing to the stair that had the edges of the steps protected with strips of brass. “Go up there, neighbor, and rap on the door.”

As he went up the stairs Father Dowling wanted all the time to look back at the man at the desk. At the top he looked along the hall for the first door on the right, a white door. His heart began to beat more heavily as he went forward in the dimly lit hall. There was the faded gray-white door. And he rapped. But by the time the door was opened by the tall girl who had worn the red coat with the gray fur collar, he looked composed and very grave, and he nodded and said, “I've come to see you after all.”

“I'll be jiggered if it ain't Rosy Cheeks himself, Midge. He's here after all. Come right on in.”

“I think I will come in for a little while.”

“I didn't say stay the night. You can't stay the night.”

Father Dowling took off his hat and looked around slowly as if it were most important that he find a proper place to put it. He saw the room with the faded blue flowers on the wall-paper, the thick blue curtains on the window, the wide iron bed, painted white but chipped badly at the posts, and the copper-colored carpet that had a spot worn thin near the side of the bed. There were two chairs in the room. A door led into the next room. While he was looking around, the tall fair girl, who was wearing a loose blue dress that concealed the angularity of her body, assumed a ready smile, came over beside him and began to help him off with his coat with a dreadful efficiency. And the little, dark one with the round brown eyes and the smooth soft skin and a big bunch of black hair at the nape of her neck, jumped up from her chair with the same impressive efficiency, and in the affected manner of a great lady, extended her left hand with the elbow crooked as if he would be permitted just to touch the tips of her fingers. “How do you do, Sweetie. We are so mighty pleased to see you. You can't go wrong in coming here to see me.”

“Who said he was coming to you?”

“He'll want to come to me. Won't you want to come to me?”

“Take it easy, Midge. Don't be so pushing. He doesn't want you. Why, he first spoke to me. You heard him speak to me. Hell, though, if Rosy Cheeks wants you, it's all the same to me.”

“I'm not trying to rush him. Let him suit himself.”

As Father Dowling listened, all the words from the sermon of the old missionary priest that had been in his head were forgotten, and by this time Ronnie, the tall one, was pulling off his scarf. Holding the scarf in her hand, she stood still. She saw his Roman collar and knew he was a priest. They both looked scared for a moment, then Ronnie said, “For the love of God, Midge, look what the wind blew in.”