The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan: Volume One

by Morley Callaghan, Alistair Macleod (Introduction)

Overview

Eighty-five stories by one of Canada’s greatest writers are collected in this four-volume anthology. Several pieces of Morley Callaghan’s short fiction are collected here for the first time, while some which have been out of print for decades are now made available. Each volume contains a section providing the year of publication for each story, a question-and-answer section, and comprehensive editorial notes. As a whole, this series is essential reading for understanding the growth and importance of Canadian literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781550963045
Publisher:	Exile Editions
Publication date:	01/15/2013
Series:	Exile Classics series , #1
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Morley Callaghan was a novelist and short story writer. He is the author of numerous books, including A Literary Life, The New Yorker Stories, Such Is My Beloved, and That Summer in Paris. He is the recipient of the Governor General’s Award and was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. Alistair Macleod is the author of As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories, No Great Mischief, and The Lost Salt Gift of Blood. He is the recipient of the Trillium Award, the Thomas Head Raddal Atlantic Fiction Award, the Dartmouth Book & Writing Award for Fiction, the Atlantic Provinces Booksellers Choice Award, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He lives in Toronto.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

All the Years of Her Life

They were closing the drugstore, and Alfred Higgins, who had just taken off his white jacket, was putting on his coat getting ready to go home. The little gray-haired man, Sam Carr, who owned the drugstore, was bending down behind the cash register, and when Alfred Higgins passed him, he looked up and said softly, "Just a moment, Alfred. One moment before you go."

The soft, confident, quiet way in which Sam Carr spoke made Alfred start to button his coat nervously. He felt sure his face was white. Sam Carr usually said, "Good night," brusquely, without looking up. In the six months he had been working in the drugstore Alfred had never heard his employer speak softly like that. His heart began to beat so loud it was hard for him to get his breath. "What is it, Mr. Carr?" he asked.

"Maybe you'd be good enough to take a few things out of your pocket and leave them here before you go," Sam Carr said.

"What things? What are you talking about?"

"You've got a compact and a lipstick and at least two tubes of toothpaste in your pockets, Alfred."

"What do you mean? Do you think I'm crazy?" Alfred blustered. His face got red and he knew he looked fierce with indignation. But Sam Carr, standing by the door with his blue eyes shining brightly behind his glasses and his lips moving underneath his gray moustache, only nodded his head a few times, and then Alfred grew very frightened and he didn't know what to say. Slowly he raised his hand and dipped it into his pocket, and with his eyes never meeting Sam Carr's eyes, he took out a blue compact and two tubes of toothpaste and a lipstick, and he laid them one by one on the counter.

"Petty thieving, eh, Alfred?" Sam Carr said. "And maybe you'd be good enough to tell me how long this has been going on."

"This is the first time I ever took anything."

"So now you think you'll tell me a lie, eh? I don't know what goes on in my own store? You've been doing this pretty steady," Sam Carr said as he went over and stood behind the cash register.

Ever since Alfred had left school he had been getting into trouble wherever he worked. He lived at home with his mother and his father, who was a printer. His two older brothers were married and his sister had got married last year, and it would have been all right for his parents if Alfred had only been able to keep a job.

While Sam Carr smiled and stroked the side of his face very delicately with the tips of his fingers, Alfred began to feel a fright growing in him that had been in him every time he had got into such trouble.

"I liked you," Sam Carr was saying. "I liked you and would have trusted you." While Alfred watched, his pale eyes alert, Sam Carr drummed with his fingers on the counter. "I don't like to call a cop in point-blank," he was saying, very worried. "You're a fool, and maybe I should call your father and tell him you're a fool. Maybe I should let them know I'm going to have you locked up."

"My father's not at home. He's a printer. He works nights," Alfred said.

"Who's at home?"

"My mother, I guess."

"Then we'll see what she says." Sam Carr went to the phone and dialed the number.

Alfred was not ashamed, but there was that deep fright growing in him, and he blurted out arrogantly, like a strong, full-grown man, "Just a minute. You don't need to draw anybody else in. You don't need to tell her." Yet the old, childish hope was in him, too, the longing that someone at home would come and help him.

"Yeah, that's right, he's in trouble," Mr. Carr was saying. "Yeah, your boy works for me. You'd better come down in a hurry." And when he was finished Mr. Carr went over to the door and looked out at the street and watched the people passing in the late summer night. "I'll keep my eye out for a cop," was all he said.

Alfred knew how his mother would come rushing in with her eyes blazing, or maybe she would be crying, and she would push him away when he tried to talk to her, and make him feel her dreadful contempt; yet he longed that she might come before Mr. Carr saw the cop on the beat passing the door.

While they waited — and it seemed a long time — they did not speak, and when at last they heard someone tapping on the closed door, Mr. Carr, turning the latch, said crisply, "Come in, Mrs. Higgins." He looked hard-faced and stern.

Mrs. Higgins must have been going to bed when he telephoned, for her hair was tucked in loosely under her hat, and her hand at her throat held her light coat tight across her chest so her dress would not show. She came in, large and plump, with a little smile on her friendly face. Most of the store lights had been turned out and at first she did not see Alfred, who was standing in the shadow at the end of the counter. Yet as soon as she saw him she did not look as Alfred thought she would look: she smiled, her gray eyes never wavered, and with a calmness and dignity that made them forget that her clothes seemed to have been thrown on her, she put out her hand to Mr. Carr and said politely, "I'm Mrs. Higgins. I'm Alfred's mother."

Mr. Carr was a bit embarrassed by her lack of fear and her simplicity, and he hardly knew what to say to her, so she asked, "Is Alfred in trouble?"

"He is. He's been taking things from the store. I caught him red-handed. Little things like compacts and toothpaste and lipsticks. Stuff he can sell easily," the proprietor said.

As she listened Mrs. Higgins looked at Alfred and nodded her head sadly, and when Sam Carr had finished she said gravely, "Is it so, Alfred?"

"Yes."

"Why have you been doing it?"

"I've been spending money, I guess."

"On what?'"

"Going around with the guys, I guess," Alfred said.

Mrs. Higgins put out her hand and touched Sam Carr's arm with an understanding gentleness, and speaking as though afraid of disturbing him, she said, "If you would only listen to me before doing anything." Her simple earnestness made her shy; her humility made her falter and look away, but in a moment she was smiling gravely again, and she said with a patient dignity, "What did you intend to do, Mr. Carr?"

"I was going to get a cop. That's what I ought to do."

"Yes, I suppose so. It's not for me to say, because he's my son. Yet I sometimes think a little good advice is the best thing for a boy when he's at a certain period in his life," she said.

Alfred couldn't understand his mother's quiet composure, for if they had been at home and someone had suggested that he was going to be arrested, he knew she would be in a rage and would cry out against him. Yet now she was standing there with that gentle, pleading smile on her face, saying, "I wonder if you don't think it would be better just to let him come home with me. He looks a big fellow, doesn't he? It takes some of them a long time to get any sense," and they both stared at Alfred, who shifted away, a cosmetic showcase light shining for a moment on his thin face and the tiny pimples over his cheekbone.

But even while turning away uneasily Alfred realized that Mr. Carr had become aware that his mother was really a fine woman; he knew that Sam Carr was puzzled by his mother, as if he had expected her to come in and plead with him tearfully, and instead he was being made to feel a bit ashamed by her vast tolerance. While there was only the sound of the mother's soft, assured voice in the store, Mr. Carr began to nod his head encouragingly at her. Without being alarmed, while being just large and still and simple and hopeful, she was becoming dominant there in the dimly lit store. "Of course, I don't want to be harsh," Mr. Carr was saying, "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll just fire him and let it go at that. How's that?" and he got up and shook hands with Mrs. Higgins, bowing low to her in deep respect.

There was such warmth and gratitude in the way she said, "I'll never forget your kindness," that Mr. Carr began to feel warm and genial himself.

"Sorry we had to meet this way," he said. "But I'm glad I got in touch with you. Just wanted to do the right thing, that's all," he said.

"It's better to meet like this than never, isn't it?" she said. Suddenly they clasped hands as if they liked each other, as if they had known each other a long time. "Good night, sir," she said.

"Good night, Mrs. Higgins. I'm truly sorry," he said.

The mother and son walked along the street together, and the mother was taking a long, firm stride as she looked ahead with her stern face full of worry. Alfred was afraid to speak to her. He was afraid of the silence that was between them, so he only looked ahead too, for the excitement and relief was still strong in him; but in a little while, going along like that in silence made him terribly aware of the strength and the sternness in her; he began to wonder what she was thinking of as she stared ahead so grimly; she seemed to have forgotten that he walked beside her; so when they were passing under the Sixth Avenue elevated and the rumble of the train seemed to break the silence, he said in his old, blustering way, "Thank God it turned out like that. I certainly won't get in a jam like that again."

"Be quiet. Don't speak to me. You've disgraced me again and again," she said bitterly.

"That's the last time. That's all I'm saying."

"Have the decency to be quiet," she snapped.

They kept on their way, looking straight ahead.

When they were at home and his mother took off her coat, Alfred saw that she was really only half-dressed, and she made him feel afraid again when she said, without even looking at him, "You're a bad lot. God forgive you. It's one thing after another and always has been. Why do you stand there stupidly? Go to bed, why don't you?" When he was going, she said, "I'll make myself a cup of tea. Mind, now, not a word about tonight to your father."

While Alfred was undressing in his bedroom, he heard his mother moving around the kitchen. She filled the kettle and put it on the stove. She moved a chair. And as he listened there was no shame in him, just wonder and a kind of admiration of her strength and repose. He could still see Sam Carr nodding his head encouragingly to her; he could hear her talking simply and earnestly, and as he sat on his bed he felt a pride in her strength. "She certainly was smooth," he thought.

At last he got up and went along to the kitchen, and when he was at the door he saw his mother pouring herself a cup of tea. He watched and he didn't move. Her face, as she sat there, was a frightened, broken face utterly unlike the face of the woman who had been so assured a little while ago in the drugstore. When she reached out and lifted the kettle to pour hot water in her cup, her hand trembled and the water splashed on the stove. Leaning back in the chair, she sighed and lifted the cup to her lips, and her lips were groping loosely as if they would never reach the cup. She swallowed the hot tea and then she straightened up in relief, though her hand holding the cup still trembled. She looked very old.

It seemed to Alfred that this was the way it had been every time he had been in trouble before, that this trembling had really been in her as she hurried out half-dressed to the drugstore. He understood why she had sat alone in the kitchen the night his young sister had kept repeating doggedly that she was getting married. Now he felt all that his mother had been thinking of as they walked along the street together a little while ago. He watched his mother, and he never spoke, but at that moment his youth seemed to be over; he knew all the years of her life by the way her hand trembled as she raised the cup to her lips.

CHAPTER 2

An Enemy of the People

It is true that Luella Stevens at sixty-eight was a little too old to be singing in the choir of our church, but no one in the parish remembered when she had not sung her solo at the eleven o'clock mass. Anyone who glanced up at the delicate face and the detached expression of this plainly dressed, frail little woman realized that if the parish had ever had large attendances at mass, then she, with the possible exception of old Catherine Hogan who played the organ, was the only one who could remember them. For a long time everybody was glad to have Luella Stevens up in the choir.

The new, poorer people in town, or the farmers who drove in to church on Sundays, were uneasy when talking to Luella Stevens because she would never let them forget that she came from an old and once influential family. She had been the only daughter of a doctor. She lived alone now in an unpretentious brick cottage. People used to make up stories about how pretty she had been once, and how she had been in love years ago with a man who had gone to Chicago and become a wealthy merchant and the father of a large family. For a great many years afterwards, they said, she had cherished her secret of unfulfilled love until it was too late to bother with anyone else. Then her father had died; the people she had grown up with had gone away or were dead, too. The town had begun to decline and the only place that remained for Luella through the years, as it had been in her youth, as it had been for her family and the man who had been her lover and gone to Chicago, was the parish church and the choir with Catherine Hogan at the organ.

Yet there was no longer any use pretending that Luella had the beautiful voice of her youth. After mass on Sundays old parishioners like Mrs. Todd, the stout, stubborn-faced wife of the town flour-and-feed merchant, began to say, "My goodness, did you hear Luella Stevens today? I declare upon my soul she was positively shouting. Her voice is gone completely. Someone ought to tell the poor woman."

When this was said, prominent ladies of the parish, standing on the sidewalk under the trees in front of the church, nodded their heads gravely as if at last a scandal of tremendous importance had crept into the stagnant life of the town. Those who hardly ever listened to the choir made up their minds to listen eagerly the next Sunday.

Not knowing that her neighbors were now listening to her with a new rapt attention, Luella stood up on Sunday and, with as much confidence as she had ever had during the last thirty-five years, shouted at the top of her voice. Luella was aware, of course, that her voice was no longer a girl's voice, but by attacking the high notes with an extra enthusiasm she imagined she got over them very nicely. On this Sunday, those who had come to pass judgment on frail Luella Stevens turned in their pews and gawked up at her aristocratic old face and soon their own faces were full of indignation at the way she was shouting. The fidgeting young ladies of the choir were aware that at last, judging by the way heads kept turning round, people were noticing Luella; they were so embarrassed that they dropped their own voices in shame and sang so listlessly that the young priest, Father Malone, who had been in the parish only a year, looked up, wondering what was the matter.

After that mass, Mrs. Todd went around to the priest's house to speak to Father Malone. The priest confessed frankly that he thought Luella Steven's voice disrupted the whole choir. The wife of the flour-and-feed-merchant and the priest shook their heads sadly, talked in a low grave tone, and wondered who ought to speak to Luella. "Catherine Hogan is the one, she's been there as long as Luella," Mrs. Todd said in triumph. "A splendid suggestion," said the priest. He thanked Mrs. Todd warmly for her exemplary interest in the matter and then accepted an invitation to play cards next Tuesday night with her husband and their family.

So, one Sunday when the two old women, Catherine Hogan and Luella Stevens, were on their way home from church, they got into the discussion about church music and their own choir in particular. Catherine Hogan, the organist, was stooped and withered compared with Luella, who walked proudly upright. "Did you ever think, Luella, of letting some of the younger girls take some of the solos you've had so long?" Catherine asked. "Just so there'll be some chance for their advancement."

"It never entered my head," Luella said.

"There are those, and mind now, I'm not saying who they are, who think your voice isn't what it was, Luella, and that you shouldn't be singing so much at your age."

"At my age, Catherine Hogan? And doesn't anyone seem to remember that you, at seventy-two, are four years older than I am? Where's your own memory, Catherine? Why, when I was a child I always thought you were too old for me to play with. You know you were always far ahead of me in school like one of the older girls. I've always thought of you like that and will to my dying day. Isn't your eyesight failing you, Catherine?"

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan Volume One"
by .
Copyright © 2012 The Estate of Morley Callaghan and Exile Editions.
Excerpted by permission of Exile Editions Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction,
All the Years of Her Life,
An Enemy of the People,
No Man's Meat,
The Fugitive,
A Predicament,
A Country Passion,
The Chiseler,
Watching and Waiting,
A Sick Call,
A Cap for Steve,
Now That April's Here,
Very Special Shoes,
Lunch Counter,
Rejected One,
Old Quarrel,
The Shining Red Apple,
The Voyage Out,
Soldier Harmon,
The Young Priest,
Mr. & Mrs. Fairbanks,
An Escapade,
Rigmarole,
An Autumn Penitent,
Dates of Original Publications; Questions for Discussion and Essays; Selected Related Reading; Of Interest on the Web; Editor's Endnotes,

Editorial Reviews

“Attractively produced in four volumes. . . . The project is nothing if not ambitious.”  —www.booksincanada.com

“A pleasing anthology for the general reader [and] an important publication. Having most of Callaghan’s early short works in one place is, for general readers, a very good thing.”  —Canadian Literature journal

From the Publisher