house, he recalled these things. His life with Brenda had not ended with one swift determined action, but slowly over a period of a month. He had been impatient to finish it, to escape from the bungalow, to get rid of his possessions along with his memories. But that, apparently, was not the way of such things. There had been endless negotiations about the sale of the house, furniture, and car which kept him imprisoned in the bungalow long after his use for it had ended.
He had discovered a trait in himself that had gone unrealized up to then: that there were usable objects and possessions he would sooner destroy than give to others. There had been evenings when he had sat before the living-room fireplace and had carried on a solitary burning of books, photographs and even a few cheap paintings, in a lonely auto-da-fé of his heretical dreams for the future. When the house was finally free of all his possessions but his clothes, he had felt free himself at last, free to go back to where he had begun more than eleven years ago. It was this search for his former freedom that had sent him back into a furnished room rather than into the apartment he could well afford.
Now he could write the novel he had been putting off for years, the autobiographical book about his youthful struggle for recognition, with his disguised self as its protagonist. Up to now he only had its title, Lead Them Through the Deep.
Tomorrow he would bring home some paper from the office and begin the writing of it. What was the name he had thought up for the main character? Jason. Jason Simon. No, Simon was the fictional name for too many villains, and it wasn’t Anglo-Saxon enough. Jason Bancroft? No. Jason Bourne. That was a good name, Jason Bourne. He rolled it around on his tongue.
He mentally wrote the title at the top of a fresh sheet of paper; beneath it, carefully centred, “by”; and, beneath that, “Walter Fowler.” It was a good name for a novelist — twelve letters and almost phonetic.
Glancing at his watch he saw that it was after six. He pulled on his topcoat and left the room.
As he crossed towards the stairs in the half darkness he became aware of a human presence, and caught a whiff of a pervasive perfume. He looked behind him just as the figure of a woman glided past and disappeared into the bathroom
“I’m sorry,” he said before she disappeared. “I didn’t see you.”
Without a word the woman pushed the door shut behind her, plunging the hallway into darkness. He had recognized her as the dark woman who had stared at him from the front window when he alighted from the taxi. With careful steps he felt his way down the stairs until he reached the area of light thrown by a small bulb in the downstairs hall.
As he headed for the front door a familiar voice from behind him shouted, “Going to supper, Mr. Fowler?”
He turned his head and found a doorway at the rear of the hall half-filled with the stocky figure of Mrs. Hill.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m going to supper.”
The early spring evening bore the smell of upturned earth and of growing things and the cars passed him with their windows open, so that he could hear brief snatches of conversation from inside them. From Bloor Street, the main east-west street two blocks to the south, came the brake-gasps of buses, the clang of streetcar bells, and the raucous noise of speeding traffic. He thought of the woman who had glided past him in the upstairs hallway and tried to revive the odour of her perfume in his mind.
The landlady had told him the woman’s name, but he had forgotten it. It was something foreign, something Slavic. He turned the corner onto Bloor and walked in the direction of a cafeteria he remembered from his rooming-house days of a dozen years before.
CHAPTER TWO
After she watched the new roomer close the front doors behind him, Grace Hill returned to her kitchen and sat down at the table. Peanuts lay on the inside sill of the back window absent-mindedly washing one of her shoulders but keeping a green eye focused on the movements of some sparrows that were chasing each other through the budding leaves of a pair of lilac bushes against the fence.
Grace watched her for a moment before she said, “Peanuts, you red devil, what are you doing?”
The cat gave her an insolent glance over her shoulder and went back to her toilet, first stifling a bored yawn.
Grace planted her slippered feet more firmly on the patterned linoleum of the kitchen floor, cupped her chin in her hands, and gave herself up to thoughts of the coming summer. This year, she decided, she would go to the Sun Lovers’ Club every weekend. Not like the year before when she had missed too many trips because of her fear of leaving the roomers alone from Saturday morning to Sunday night.
She was going to enjoy the coming season, with its long days in the sun and the beautiful nude young men strolling above her on the grass of the sunny hillsides. It would be wonderful! Which reminded her that she hadn’t yet mailed in her application and membership fee. Here it was the second of May, with the club opening up on the first of June.
She crossed the narrow kitchen to an old-fashioned kitchen cabinet and rummaged in a top drawer until she found a pen, a half-used package of envelopes, and the skinny remains of a writing pad. With these in her hand she once more took her chair at the table and began to write, in German, to the secretary of the club. When the application was written she pushed herself to her feet with a sigh and shuffled over to the large pantry that she had converted into her bedroom. She returned to the table and made out a cheque to the club, signing it with her maiden name, Gretchen Stauffer.
Peanuts was now standing on the windowsill, her back slightly arched and her tail twitching, intent on something below her in the yard. Grace walked over to the window, as the cat gave her a quick nervous glance, and looked down at the lawn. A big tom tabby stared up at her with unblinking eyes. Even from that distance she could almost count his gaunt ribs which ran back from a pair of heavily muscled shoulders. She stared in fascination at his flat head with its scars from a hundred fights. The tom took his eyes from the window and moved his head slowly from side to side, taking in the lawn on both sides of him and the bushes that lined the fences.
Grace picked up Peanuts and whispered in her ear, “Is that your lover, you red devil? Eh, is that your lover? Eh?”
She trembled as she carried the cat to the kitchen door, opened it, and placed Peanuts on the floor of the back porch. The big red female tried to squeeze herself back into the house but Grace blocked her with her legs. The tomcat didn’t move but stared intently at the frantic female as she tried to regain the safety of the kitchen. Grace, with a series of gasping giggles, said, “Here she is, cat. Here’s your sweetheart for the night.” With a quick jump she got back inside the door, closing it behind her.
She ran to the window and looked out. She could not see Peanuts, who was hidden from view as she pressed herself against the door, but she stared in breath-holding fascination at the tomcat who had pulled himself up to full height, his eyes on the porch and his tail slowly flicking from side to side. As he stared at Peanuts he shoved out his tongue and licked his dry lips, before glancing over his shoulder to reconnoitre the garden behind him. Then, his eyes on the female again, he took a stiff-legged forward step, then another, bringing himself closer to the steps that led up to the porch. Grace heard Peanuts backing her haunches against the door, and she laughed quietly, her eyes still on the tom. Though he had not returned her glance since his first insolent stare, Grace knew that he was aware of her presence at the window.
She heard Peanuts give a warning mew, and the tom stopped momentarily and glanced about him carelessly before moving slowly ahead as before. The door rattled slightly as Peanuts backed herself against it, and Grace gripped the sill with both hands as she urged the tom on under her breath.
