The Silence on the Shore. Hugh Garner
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a couple of weeks before, and had spoken to her that time in the hallway.
It was too late to cross the street and avoid a meeting so she walked on, tense, hoping he would pass by without speaking. She pretended there was something that had caught her interest in an upstairs window farther down the street, but conscious of his approach through the corner of her eye. Suddenly they were only a step or two apart, and she glanced at him without giving a sign of recognition.
As he moved aside to let her pass he smiled and said, “Good evening.”
Once again he had caught her unawares. She realized she couldn’t ignore him a second time, and make every consequent meeting an embarrassing clash of wills or wits. She paused, turned her head, and said, “Oh, hello. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
“It’s all right. I live at one-twenty. I didn’t expect you to recognize me; it was pretty dark in the hallway that other time.”
“Yes,” she answered, afraid he might try to lengthen their greetings into a conversation.
“It’s going to be a swell night,” he said, turning to walk on.
“Yes, isn’t it? Good night.”
At the corner of the cross street north of Bloor she looked around. He was just turning up the front walk of the rooming house.
When Walter had seen the woman from the front room coaling towards him he had been of two minds whether to speak to her or not. One of the things he hated most was to have a greeting ignored, especially when it meant little or nothing to him. It was the one way in which a mental or social inferior could best a person more polite than himself, and it always left him angry and critical of his own politeness.
As they had drawn closer together, however, he had decided to speak, for a second snub would have left him able to ignore her completely from then on. Her answering his greeting had been as unexpected as it had been welcome. Suddenly he had felt a boyish urge to escape, to give himself time to think, to arrange his new feelings about her. He had murmured, “It’s going to be a swell night,” the sort of trite thing he would say. He could always rely on himself to end up the loser when it came to a good-looking woman.
When he reached his room he opened the window, took off his jacket and necktie, put on a pair of battered slippers, and sat down to read the paper. Later on he would do some work on his novel, writing in longhand on the paper he had brought home from the office.
He had read his favourite columnists while having supper, so he concentrated on the “human interest” stories about a woman having a baby in a taxi, a bridegroom in London who wished to share his wife with his brother, a man who was crossing the continent on horseback, and a list of the various coins, washers, and slugs that had turned up in the local parking metres.
He put down the paper and thought of the woman in the front room. Her presence in the house excited him, and for a moment or two he gave in to a lascivious fantasy involving them both. Meeting such a woman in the intimate purlieus of a rooming house was one of the dreams he had entertained since breaking up with his wife. Such a possibility, approximating those of his younger days, had been one of his reasons for moving into a rooming house again.
There was a loud knocking on the door of the room next to his. After a short pause it came again, even louder and more insistent this time. Walter got up and stuck his head into the hallway. Mrs. Hill was standing there, her fat face working with anger and indignation.
“Is there anything wrong, Mrs. Hill?”
“Only this guy who has gone out with his light on,” she said.
Walter kept from smiling. “Maybe he’s asleep,” he said.
“If he can’t hear me knocking he must be dead,” she answered, attacking the door once again. “He’s gone out, I’m sure.”
She hunted for a key on the ring she wore attached to her belt, found it and opened the door. Bending her head and shoulders inside she shouted triumphantly, “He’s out! I knew it!”
She pulled her head back into the hallway and said to Walter, “I left a note for him to put the light out when he leaves the room. Smart alec young bastard is making a joke of it. I’ll fix him, you see!” She switched the light off and relocked the door.
She came and stood in his doorway while Walter backed up and sat down in his chair. Grace seemed in no hurry to leave, so he jumped up from the chair and invited her to sit down. She did as she was asked, while Walter sat down on the bed.
“That magazine you work for is all about real estate?” Grace asked.
“Yes.”
“Maybe you could give me some advice?”
“I’ll try,” he said.
Grace walked to the door, shut it, and returned to her chair. “I don’t want to tell everybody my business,” she explained.
She shifted her hips on the chair before she began. “There’s a syndicate going to buy all the houses on this side of Adford, from Berther to Lownard, and on the east side of Bemiral too,” she said, pointing through the window at the houses across the yards. “To build apartment houses.”
He nodded.
“They haven’t come here yet, but they’ve already bought some houses up the street. What I want to know is what to do when they come here to buy this house?”
“If they offer you a fair price, take it,” he said.
Grace smiled craftily, and Walter knew she had been giving a lot of thought to the question. Like many homeowners she had an exaggerated idea of her property rights, and was determined to hold out against the buyers until she could wring every cent she could from the sale.
“Do you own this house outright?” he asked her.
“Yes. Since last December,” she said triumphantly.
“They’ll probably be a pretty powerful bunch,” he said. “There’s ways they can force you to sell, you know.”
She laughed, slapping her hand on her knee. “How? You tell me how they can force a woman to sell her paid property! They can’t make me!”
“They might have the house condemned, or stop you from renting rooms through a change in the city by-laws. There’s plenty of ways that a rich corporation can squeeze the little person,” he said. “Those are only two ways, and God knows how many others they could think up.”
She was suddenly sober. “They can do that?”
“It’s possible. When and if they make you an offer, get a good lawyer,” he said.
She sat in deflated silence.
To cheer her up he asked, “What do you intend to do if they buy your house?”
“I’ll go back to the old country for a visit. I won’t stay there though.”
“You’ll come back here?”
“Why, sure. I won’t stay in Europe. I’ve been a citizen here for —” she bent her head and figured the years on her fingers. “For twenty-four years.”
“Will you buy another rooming house?”
“Who, me!” She laughed, destroying with her scorn the memories of the times she had fought with roomers, over the lights, over the hot water, bringing girls into the house, giving her bum cheques for the rent. “Ha! Never will I own another rooming house. Never!”
“What will you do?”
She clasped her hands on her belly and squeezed a delicious thought. “I’m going to buy some land outside the city and start a nature farm,” she said.
He entertained a picture of several old people sitting on a veranda eating raw carrots and yogurt, with Grace in the background driving them to take exercise, wheedling them to eat their salads, pushing