The Equations of Love (16 page)

The day after Lilly had heard her mother and the lodger talking about going away, Lilly’s mother said to her, “I gotta go away but I’ll be back in maybe a month. Your Gran’s sick and
I gotta go. I’ll fix it so as you’ll stay at Mrs. Case’s place till your pop comes down from the woods and then you can come right back home,” and she took Lilly by the hand and gave her a good yank and hurried across the vacant lots to the house of a neighbour named Mrs. Case who lived about two blocks away, keeping fast hold of Lilly, who sometimes had to run to keep up. Lilly’s mother smelt of very strong drink but Lilly was used to this smell and did not observe it. Mrs. Case did.

When Mrs. Waller had knocked at Mrs. Case’s door and Mrs. Case had come out, Mrs. Waller did a bit of crying. She still kept hold of Lilly. She said, “I feel awful bad.”

Mrs. Case smelt the air and spoke coldly. “Izzat so,” she said.

Mrs. Waller continued, “I certny had a terrible shock yesterday. My mother in Winnipeg’s real sick and I gotta go right away and I gotta leave Lilly here it wouldn’t be right to take her away from her schooling. She’s a good kid and not a mite of trouble,” she felt near her placket with her free hand and brought out some bills, “and you wouldn’t be outer pocket if Lilly could stay here a week or two her gran’ll be all right by then I guess. She’s a good kid, aren’t you a good kid, Lilly?” she asked, bending down to Lilly and giving her a shake. Lilly nodded. She was biddable always. She stood there silent, looking at Mrs. Case with her soft brown eyes, behind which she added up the situation. She knew that her mother lied; she did not regret her mother’s going, things would go on all right; and though Mrs. Case looked too clean, she was a woman, and she was a woman who produced in Lilly an impression that was good and, perhaps, kind.

Mrs. Case looked at the child without speaking, and thought rapidly. She saw the pale and silent Lilly whose fair hair was a tangled mop and whose dress was slovenly, and she
saw her soft brown eyes in which tears now welled. She looked too at the woman who had borne Lilly and with whom she lived, and she made her decision while the woman talked.

“Send her over tomorrow morning with clean on and clean to change,” she said, and held open the door. She cut short Mrs. Waller’s protestations and praise, and Mrs. Waller yanked Lilly down the steps and the door was shut. The air in the room smelled foul with cheap whiskey. Mrs. Case threw up the window, put out her head and called after the departing mother and daughter “And mind you wash her head!” Lilly’s mother did not turn round, but nodded violently as she hurried back across the vacant lots to the cabin.

Lilly settled down with Mrs. Case into a routine of cleanly living that was at first irksome. She learned a good deal about neat habits and appearance, and how to eat her food; she learned the forms of obedience and nothing about truthfulness. She even went to church sometimes, and neither liked nor disliked it. She did not steal because she feared the police; but she deceived Mrs. Case, whom she feared, when desirable and possible. She and a girl called Matty Venn who was in a grade above Lilly played hookey from school as often as it seemed safe. These hookey days they spent chiefly in the big stores, amusing themselves. Matty took to petty thievery and shoplifting, but when Matty slipped things off the shop counters Lilly wandered off and left her. This she did, not because she had any particular dislike of thieving, but from her strong instinct for self-preservation and her desire to avoid the police. Following these days Matty and Lilly would concoct notes for each other. The notes began “Dear Teacher, please excuse Lilly she was sick …” and ended “And Oblidge Mrs. Case.” Or they began “Dear Teacher I had to keep Matty home I had the asma real bad all night as I am subjeck …” and ended “And
Oblidge Mrs. Venn.” This, they knew, was the formula of the mothers of the district and was the kind of thing that the teacher expected and read on small dirty pieces of paper each day, with concealed nausea. Since Lilly and Matty were in different classrooms, the thing was quite easy; it would have been an idiot of a schoolteacher whose suspicions would not have been aroused by the frequent simultaneous absences from illness of two of a kind in her own classroom.

When it came to deceiving Mrs. Case, things were not so simple, as Mrs. Case was not very deceivable. Lilly was a realist, and knew that a deceived Mrs. Case would be an angry Mrs. Case, and then things might be uncomfortable for Lilly, who liked comfort. Still, it could be done.

Weeks slid into months, and one morning a tall, bald man in a rage approached the open door of Mrs. Case’s house, waving a letter.

“The damn bitch,” he roared, “she run off with that damn——” Mrs. Case stopped him in mid-rush. She stood there with her broom in her hand.

“You go home and wash your mouth out, Mr. Waller,” she said, “and then you can come back here and talk to
me
.”

Mr. Waller stopped short. He felt his head which was bare and, turning hurriedly, he hastened back to his cabin feeling that, because he had not his hat on, he had been caught naked by Mrs. Case who after all was a woman, though nothing to look at.

Mr. Waller, whose ruling passion was not love, greed, duty or sloth, but simple vanity, was never seen without his hat which he wore well. Without his hat he was only a bald man with dark eyes. Hatted, he appeared as a tall lounging handsome man with a pair of bedroom eyes which caressed the female on whom he looked – always excepting his wife
and daughter. And now, betrayed by surprise and anger out of his customary flattering grace, he had flung his hat upon the kitchen table of his cold and deserted home and, after reading his wife’s abusive scrawl, had rushed, angry, hatless, bald and betrayed, over to Mrs. Case’s house.

When Mr. Waller, dismissed by Mrs. Case, arrived back at his own house, he had cooled down and was able fairly to take stock of his position. His position was good. He found it very good. He was rid of a shrew and a slut whom someone else (poor fool) would now support; he had a grievance which he could thoroughly develop and enjoy; and he had no doubt of blandishing Mrs. Case into taking charge of Lilly who, at the age of twelve, thin, pale, quiet, and unresponsive, was likely to be a nuisance and a care to him. He thereupon unpacked and put on his good suit which he never left at home with his wife who would have sold it. He put on his hat before the small looking-glass, adjusted it a little this way and that way, composed his features and became a handsome man, tall, virile, debonair and satisfied. He walked again across the open ground that separated his cabin from the little house of Mrs. Case. He walked with his customary loose-limbed authority. He knocked, and Mrs. Case came to the half-opened door. “Come in,” she said.

“Thank you, no,” said Mr. Waller, who felt at a better advantage outside with his hat on, “I see you’re a busy little lady this morning. But I wanna apologize, Mrs. Case, for the way I spoke this morning and I hope you’ll make allowance. It isn’t everyday that a man comes home expecting a welcome and finds his wife has deserted him and with a dirty low-life too. That woman,” continued Mr. Waller, “has been a snake in my boosum. Times without number I’ve forgiven her but if she comes back after this I’ll have the law. What I’ve had
to take from that woman! I’ll tell you …” and he developed the theme.

I can’t stand here listening to this lump of conceit all morning, thought Mrs. Case, and she said drily, “I always heard you were a great man for the wimmun yourself, Mr. Waller.”

Mr. Waller recovered himself, smiled deprecatingly, and looked down at Mrs. Case softly-like. “I know … I know …” he acknowledged reflectively, “but it’s a
lovely
pastime….”

There was a pause.

“Coss money,” said Mrs. Case coolly. She was about to seize an advantage.

“Sure, Mrs. Case, sure. But the best things in this world come high. You gotta pay. You gotta pay,” said Mr. Waller smugly.

Mrs. Case came quickly then to the point. “If you gotta pay, what about Lilly?” she said.

“Yair, what about Lilly….” said Mr. Waller. “If I could find a nice lady, if I could find a real nice lady like you, Mrs. Case, to take Lilly, I’d pay reasonable and I’d pay regular….” His eyes embraced Mrs. Case who was not impressed.

Mrs. Case thought It isn’t just the money, and it is the money too. I can’t seem to get near Lilly, not to know her, but what can she do, pore kid? He’s just a great big nasty masher and a lady-killer and no kind of a pa for her at all and she’s got no folks and I guess I better keep her. So she said, “If you’ll send me twenty dollars the first of every month regular, I’ll board her and dress her if she’s a real good girl. But if Lilly starts giving me trouble or staying out late o’ nights or going with bad company, you can take her right back or I’ll send her to the Salvation Army….”

“You’re a good woman,” said Mr. Waller brokenly but relieved. “It’s a real Christian act,” he said, seizing her hand
(Is
zat
so, thought Mrs. Case) and pressing it warmly. “You’ll get the money regular. Bless you for a good woman, Mrs. Case.”

Mrs. Case received the money from Mr. Waller for several months, but before he was killed by the snapping of a steel cable at the lumber camp five years later Lilly had begun to give trouble, and to stay out late at nights, and to go with bad company. And when for the second time she had stayed out all night, she did not return, for she knew that the door would be closed against her. And now she was alone except for the bad company she kept. No one had loved her, and she did not even know that she had missed love. She was not bitter, nor cruel, nor was she very bad. She was like the little yellow cat, no worse and no better. She expected nothing. She took things as they came, living where she could, on whom she could, and with whom she could, working only when she had to, protecting herself by lies or by truth, and always keeping on the weather side of the police.

She had taken and lost or left several jobs before she went to work at Lam Sing’s place just off Shanghai Alley. There it was that she saw and coveted a beautiful English bicycle which seemed to be owned by the Chinaman named Yow, and so it was that Lilly found herself running, running in the dark with everything forgotten but the need to escape.

W
hen Lilly heard the cries and commotion in the dark garden, she crouched, turned, and ran.

Running, stopping, running again down the dark lanes and alleys, and walking, tense and with quickly beating heart across the lighter streets, she hunted wildly within herself, doubling and twisting, for some means of getting away at once from the unexpected terror which had only a few minutes ago sprung at her and entangled her. She did not need anyone to tell her that her presents from Yow had been stolen and that she was wearing stolen goods at that moment. She knew it instinctively from the clamour at the box-room door and she feared everything for herself. She feared only for herself. She gave Yow no thought at all, save for the terror that he might set the police on her. When she reached the house where she lived, she hurried stealthily up the stairs to her room and collected with trembling fingers all the delicate garments that she prized so much and that she had owned for so short a time. She undressed hastily and dressed again in her own old clothes. Then, hardening her heart against the beauty and feel of silk and lace and muslin, she
made up tight parcels of the garments which even now the bride was lamenting with tears and the groom with fury. She pinned the bundles as firmly as she could – she had no string and dared not look for any. She dared not make the parcels conspicuously large. She dared not take them all away at once (“the police”) … (“
What have you got there?
”) … the shadows in her room seemed to breathe and close in upon her (“the police”) … as she crammed the stolen goods into the scanty newspaper she started at a sound in the street (“the police”) … there was a creak on the stair (listen! … nothing, nothing) … and Lilly, breathing quickly, moving fast, felt and smelt the Police Station again in the very room. She opened each ramshackle drawer again and explored each corner. The room was clear. Not a trace. Now, if she could dispose of these bundles before the police should find her, she was safe. Safer still if she could get away.

Lilly turned down the gas, picked up two of the parcels, and crept down the stairs. She looked this way and that. There was no one in the streets. She walked quickly across Powell Street and then through a dark lane to a black stretch of vacant land which she traversed feeling her way in the darkness with her feet until she came to where she knew that there was a tangle of bramble and brush. She threw the parcels as far as she could into the thicket. Then she made her way back to her room, fearing with almost a stoppage of her wild heart that the police would be waiting for her there. If the Chinaman had not yet told her name, perhaps she was for a while safe. The police were not there. The gas still burned low in the room as she had left it. She picked up the two remaining bundles and looked quickly round the room. Nothing remained now but the poor stuff that was her own. The room showed her to be innocent. The Chinaman – if he told – would have lied. She cared
nothing for him. Ignorant girl, she thought of no other witnesses; she did not think of Yow’s cronies, who knew each the other’s business. She crept again down the stairs and stole out in the direction of the waterfront. She had thought that she would throw these bundles into the sea because the night which was not yet day was still darkish and no one would see her. But when she reached the waterfront she saw the small fishboats moored at the wharves and on the water. She knew that boats have eyes and ears and that a splash might betray her. Lilly’s fear was stretched to any height of cunning and of self-protection. She thought quickly, turned and slipped back towards the little waterfront chapel on Water Street. She pushed the bundles under the crazy steps of the chapel. Then she stood up, drew a long breath, looked round about her like one hunted, and forced herself not to run but to walk home. Stopping at a sound, hiding once in an alley, she was sure that she was not observed from the street, for she saw no one. She climbed her stairs with her naturally light tread made lighter by fear. All was as she had left it. She was used to flitting. She must go. But she knew that if she went away owing money to her landlord she might be pursued and still would not be safe.