The Luck Of Ginger Coffey Read online

  "That they let you go in nearly every job you've had. Why do you think Mr. Pierce sent you down to the advertising department? Why do you think Mr. Cleery in the advertising let you go? I'll tell you why. Because you're a glorified secretary, that's all you are, that's all you can ever hope to be. But you can't see that, you had to tell them how to run their business, you that knew nothing about it."

  "Glorified secretary, my foot," he said. "Those old codgers were living in the dark ages," he said. "Fifty years behind the times."

  "Yes," she said. "Everybody's out of step except our Ginger. Same thing when we were in Cork, wasn't it? And then you were coming over here to Canada, setting yourself up to do a job you never did in your life, a job you

  had no experience in. How could you sell whiskey or tweeds or anything, you that had no experience?"

  "If it wasn't for those thicks at home —"

  "Oh yes. Blame them. Blame anybody except yourself. And today — walking in, bold as you please, asking to be made an editor. You that knows nothing about it/*

  "That was Gerry's idea."

  "But you went along with it, didn't you?" she said. "Oh yes, it's Gerry's fault. ... Do you know the thing I can't stick about you? It's never your fault. Never. You've never had the guts to admit you were wrong."

  "That's nonsense," he said.

  "Is it? Then is it my fault you spent the ticket money home? Is it, Ginger?"

  "Ah, what's the sense in raking all that up again, Vera? Former history."

  "Former history! It happened yesterday!"

  "Shh" he said, looking around the room.

  "Yes, shush," she said. "People are watching. And you care more about people than you do about me. Playing the big fellow, spending our passage money."

  He looked at his hands. He joined his fingers in the childhood game. A game between him and all harm. Here's the church . . .

  "Well, from now on, don't bother to tell me anything," she said. "Not even lies. Because I don't want to hear. I'm sick of lies and dreams and schemes that founder as soon as you put your hand to them. I'm sick of your selfishness and your alibis. You can go to hell for all I care."

  And here's the steeple. Open the gates . . .

  "Tomorrow morning," she said, "I'm going to look for a job of my own. And when I get it, I'm moving out." "What about Paulie?"

  "I'll take Paulie," she said. "Then you won't have to worry about anybody except yourself. Which will suit you down to the ground/'

  . . . and let in the people. And here is the minister coming upstairs . . .

  "In the meantime," she said, "I'd advise you to take this proofreading job. Come down off your high horse, Ginger. It's just about what you're fit for. A proofreader/'

  And here is the minister saying his prayers.

  He separated his hands, looked at her at last. "For better or for worse," he said. "For richer or for poorer. Ah," he said bitterly. "You could sing that, if you had an air to it."

  "You'd better go," she said. "You have to let Mac-Gregor know at half past four, don't you?"

  "There's plenty of time. It's not even four. Besides —"

  "Oh, God's teeth, Jim, why are you so dense? Don't you understand anything?"

  She never called him Jim except when things were desperate. She wanted rid of him, this minute, that was what she wanted. All right. All right. He stood up and took the bill. "I'll have to wait for change," he told her.

  She took a ten-dollar bill out of her bag. Where did she get that, he wondered. "Go on," she said. "I'll pay the bill."

  But he could not move. Suffering J, they weren't going to leave things like this, were they? Ah, Vera —

  "Are you leaving, or must I?" she said.

  He tried to grin. "Just looking for the cloakroom tickets, dear. I have yours in my pocket somewhere."

  He fumbled for a while.

  "Breast pocket," she said. f

  "Oh, yes. Silly. I always put it there and then forget. Vera — listen to me —"

  "No," she said. "And stop standing there like a dog waiting for a pat on the head. You're not getting any pat. Not any more. Now, go away."

  He saw her hands tremble on the catch of her purse. Listen, listen, listen, he cried silently, for God's sake don't let this happen. But he had said listen so many times, in so many rows, for so many years. And she had said listen, as often. Listen to me, they cried to each other. Listen! Because neither listened any longer. She stared at him. Her face was pale, her eyes were fixed and bright, and, now that it haid been said, he saw that all her irritations, all the fits of temper he had discounted, all that was hate. She hated him.

  Still, as he went away across the room, he turned back to her once more. Tried to smile, hoping that somehow she . . . sure that she . . . Wouldn't she signal, call him back?

  But she did not. She sat watching him, willing him to go. Go away, Doggy.

  So he went.

  Three It was twenty past four. For several minutes he had been standing in the lobby of the Tribune building wondering whether he should go upstairs. After all, Mac-Gregor had said it would only be a short while until he was made a reporter. And you wouldn't heed Gerry, would you? Why should Gerry know whether MacGregor was tricking him or not?

  But he had heeded her. That was why he was here. Ah, sure that was a lot of malarkey, that stuff about them letting him go in those other jobs he had. A lot of malarkey too about him being selfish and putting the blame on other people — all nonsense — sure, what did she know, the woman? But it was not nonsense that she said she wanted to leave him. Not nonsense that he had seen a hatred in her look. She would get over it. Sure, she would. She had just been letting off, as women do, with the first hurtful thing that came into her head, hadn't she? She didn't hate him; not Vera. Not his Dark Rosaleen?

  He was troubled as he had rarely been. It was hard to find something to be cheerful about in what she had said and the way she had looked at him. And so, he had to think of something else. He thought of J. F. Coffey, Journalist. There was some good in that thought. Say what you like, he had a foot in the door there. Maybe Mac-

  Gregor would promote him in a week or so? Probably would. All right, then. Take the job. Show her she's wrong.

  At twenty-five past four he went in, took the elevator up and once again presented himself at the open doorway of the Managing Editor's office. "Excuse me, sir?"

  "Aye?"

  "I — ah — I would like to take the job, sir."

  Mr. MacGregor pulled out a sheet of paper. "Right," he said. "Full name?"

  "James Francis CoflFey."

  MacGregor wrote it down. "Hours, six to one, five nights a week. Except when you take the late trick, until two. Saturdays off, and one rotating day a week. If sick, report to me pairsonally by phone before three in the afternoon. Okay?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "One more thing, Coffey. I have fifty gurrls wurrking in the mailroom, one floor down, Dinna interfere with them, d'you hear?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Now go to the composing room and ask for a man called Hickey. He'll give you a stylebook. Study it before you start wurrk tonight."

  Galley slave. Suffering J, that was apt. CoflFey went back down the corridor and asked directions of a man in shirt sleeves. He followed the directions and after several turnings entered a large room, loud with noise. In even rows, like children in some strange classroom, the linotyp-ers threaded their little tines of words. Men with wooden mallets hammered leads into place; others, wearing long blue aprons and green eyeshades, plucked strips of lead from a table, fitting them in, tossing the rejects backwards to crash into large tin hellboxes. A foreman in stiff white

  collar and black knitted tie moved with ecclesiastic tread up the aisle. As he drew level with Coffey, he leaned over, hand to his ear, in smiling dumbshow inquiry as to the visitor's business.

  "Mr. Hickey?" Coffey shouted, over the machine roar.

  The foreman showed comprehension by a nod and led Coffey across
the room to a small, cleared area, surrounded by rows of linotype machines. There, in Dicken-sian concentration, sat three old men, each facing a pigeonhole desk, each scanning a galley of proof. At once their strange apartheid, combined with the extreme shab-biness of their clothing, reminded Coffey of MacGregor's remark. These were outcasts in a union sea. As he drew near he saw that each desk was double, with seats for two men.

  "Hickey?" he shouted.

  Without looking up from his work one old man elbowed the next, who rapped on his neighbor's desk with a pencil, who, hearing the rapping, turned slowly in his stool. His eyes, huge and shifting under lenses thick as an aquarium window, floated up to find the interrupter. Then he stood, buttoning about him a darned, many-stained cardigan of navy blue wool.

  "Mr. Hickey?"

  The red face nodded, the shifting eyes indicated that Ginger must follow. The old man's large, gently sliding posteriors moved between rows of linotypes, leading Coffey into the comparative quiet of the locker room. There Mr. Hickey paused, his distorted eyes searching for enemies, his raw, red hands knitting together a homemade cigarette.

  "Yes?" he said. "New man?"

  "How did you know?" Coffey said, surprised.

  "Gets so you can tell," Mr. Hickey said. "Hitler send you?"

  "Who?"

  "Hitler. The boss."

  "Oh! You mean Mr. MacGregor. Yes, he told me to ask you for a stylebook."

  Mr. Hickey wheezed like an ancient organ. "MacGregor," he said. "Never call him by that name, son. Hitler's his name. Because he's —"

  And then came a slow, enjoyed recital — noun, adjective, verb — of fourteen well-rehearsed obscenities. When he had finished, Mr. Hickey reached into his darned cardigan to produce a small red booklet. "Stylebook/' he said. "Now, go on down the street, one block to the left of here. In the tavern on the corner you'll find the night men. Look for a fellow with a crutch. That's Fox, head of the shift. It's pay night, so they all like to come in together. Better come in with them, okay?"

  "Okay," Coffey said. "And thanks very much."

  "Thanks?" Mr. Hickey seemed surprised. "For what, fella? This job, you don't have much to be thankful for. God bless, fella. Be seeing you."

  "Going down," the elevator man shouted. "Going down."

  He went down.

  The tavern described by Mr. Hickey was unnamed. Above its door was an electric sign: Verres Sterilises — Sterilized Glasses, a sign which no one read but which conveyed to the passing eye that here was a place to drink, a place which shut late or never, a place unlikely to be well-frequented. This last was its deception, Coffey found. Forgotten, faded, off the main streets, in a downtown limbo where property owners allowed buildings to live out a feeble charade of occupation until the glorious day when all would be expropriated in a city slum clearance drive, the tavern, instead of dying, had burgeoned

  in a new and steady prosperity. As Coffey pushed open its doors he was met by a beer stench and a blast of shouted talk. Two waiters in long white aprons, each balancing a tray containing a dozen full glasses of draught beer, whirled in and out among the scarred wooden tables, answering thirsty signals. Slowly Coffey moved up the room, searching for the man with a crutch. The customers put him in mind of old Wild West films: they wore fur caps, peaked caps, tuques. They wore checked shirts, lumber jackets, windbreakers. They wore logging boots, cattle boots, flying boots. They talked in roars, but they numbered also their solitaries. These sat alone at smaller tables, staring at the full and empty bottles in front of them as though studying the moves in some intricate game.

  No one heeded Coffey as he moved on. At the far end of the room a huge jukebox, filled with moving colors and shifting lights, brooded in silence amid the roar of voices. Near it, disfigured with initials, an empty phone booth — symbol of the wives and worries the tavern's customers bought beer to forget. Coffey paused by the phone. What if she were sitting in the duplex this minute, already sorry for what she'd said? She could be. Yes, she might be.

  He went into the booth and shut the door on the noise. He dialed, and Paulie answered.

  "Is that you, Bruno?" she said.

  "Who's Bruno, Pet?"

  "Oh, it's you, Daddy."

  "Is your mother home yet?"

  "She was in but she went out again."

  "Where?"

  "She didn't say, Daddy."

  "And she left you all alone, Pet?"

  "Oh, that's all right, Daddy. I'm going to supper at a

  girl friend's house and her mother's giving me a lift home in their car."

  "Oh."

  "I must go now, Daddy. I'm late already."

  "Wait a minute, Pet. Did Mummy tell you IVe got a job?"

  "No."

  "Well, I have. A — an editing job on a newspaper. Isn't that good?"

  "Yes, Daddy."

  "Well — well, tell your mother I phoned her, will you, Apple?"

  "Okay, Daddy."

  "And listen, Apple — don't be too late getting home, will you?"

  But Paulie had already hung up. Who the blazes was selfish — he or a woman who would go out of the house and leave her little girl all alone? Suffering J! Ah well — let's have a beer. Where's this man I'm supposed to meet? Fox with a crutch.

  He came out of the phone booth and stood solitary among the shouting drinkers searching for the cripple's sign. On the top of a radiator by the far wall, he saw an aluminum cane with a rubber-covered elbow grip. Nearby, sticking out into the aisle, a built-up boot. Its owner was a tall, vaguely professorial man with fairish hair and a gray stubbled chin. Coffey went over.

  "Mr. Fox?"

  The cripple ignored him. "First million," he said to his companions. "That's the caste mark. As long as they made it long enough ago for people to forget what it was made in, they become one of Canada's first families."

  One of the men at the table, a bald, sweating person in a navy blue shirt and a vermilion tie, looked up, saw Coffey. "Fu-Fox," he said. "Wu-wanted."

  "Oh?" The cripple sprawled backwards in his chair, letting his gaze travel slowly from Coffey's brown suede boots to the tiny Tyrolean hat. "New man, eh?"

  "Yes. How did you know?"

  "How did I know? Hear that, Harry?"

  Both Fox and the stammerer were seized with a laughing fit. Fox cleared glasses and bottles from in front of him in a rash sweep of his arm, laying his laughing face on the beer-wet table top. He was, Coffey realized, half-seas over.

  "Sit down," said a third reader, pulling out a chair for Coffey. He was very old, strangely dressed in a duckbilled fawn cap, fawn windbreaker and high, elastic-sided boots. A feathery white goatee grew precariously on his caved-in jaws, and as he reached forward to shake hands, Coffey was put in mind of the recruiting poster's Uncle Sam. "My name's Billy Davis," he said. "And this here is Kenny."

  Kenny was little more than a boy. His face, tortured by eczema, looked up at Coffey in a lost, posed smile. His right hand clutched the neck of a beer bottle. He sat primly on the edge of his chair.

  "Drink up, Paddy," Fox said, signaling a waiter. "You're behind."

  A waiter came and Fox paid for four glasses of draught beer which he at once lined up in front of Coffey. His companion, Harry, seemed to consider this a further occasion for laughter. "Now, Paddy," Fox said. "Let's see you sink these. Go ahead."

  "Thanks very much," Coffey said. "That's very decent of you. My treat next, I hope?"

  "Drink!" Fox shouted. "One, two, three, four. Go ahead."

  Lord knows, Coffey liked a wet as well as the next man.

  But there was something lunatic about this. He began on the first beer. Bald Harry's upper lip dripped sweat. The boy widened his fixed smile a fraction, in encouragement. The old man nodded his goatlike chin. Glass empty, Cof-fey put it down and reached for a second.

  "Good man/* Fox said. "Away you go. One swallow."

  It took two swallows.

  "Number three, now," Fox said.

  But as he raised the
third glass to his lips, Coffey paused. Wasn't this daft? What was he doing, drinking himself stocious for a clatter of strangers?

  "What's up?" Fox said.

  "Nothing. Only that it's against nature, guzzling like this. What's the rush?"

  Fox and Harry exchanged glances. "A good question, Paddy," Fox said. "And it answers mine. Booze is not your problem, right?"

  They must be joking. It must be some sort of joke, this chat?

  "Never mind him," the girlish boy said. "Say, that's a dandy overcoat you have. Sharp." He touched Coffey's sleeve.

  "Wu-women?" Harry said. "Du-do you think that's his pu-problem, Foxy?"

  "Why must I have a problem?" Coffey said. "What are you talking about?"

  "Every proofreader has," Fox said. "All ye who enter here. Look at Kenny." He leaned over as he spoke and put his arm around the boy's shoulders. "You know what Kenny's problem is, I suppose?"

  "Shut up," the boy said. "Lousy gimp."

  "Hostility to the father figure," Fox shouted. "Classic!"

  Feathery fingers plucked at Coffey's wrist. The old man thrust his Uncle Sam visage close. His mouth opened,

  showing gaps of gums policed by ancient dental survivors. "Could be money," he said. "That's everybody's problem, am I right, fellow?"

  "That's right," Coffey said, uneasily jovial. "It's the root of all evil, they tell me."

  "Wrong!" Fox shouted. "Why, money is not evil, Paddy my boy. Money is the Canadian way to immortality."

  "Cu-christ, here he gu-goes again," Harry said.

  "Quiet now," Fox shouted. "I have to explain the facts of life to our immigrant brother. Do you want to be remembered, Paddy? Of course you do. Then you must bear in mind that in this great country of ours the surest way to immortality is to have a hospital wing called after you. Or better still, a bridge. We're just a clutch of little Ozymandiases in this great land. Nobody here but us builders. This is Canada's century, they tell us. Not America's, mind you. Not even Russia's. The twentieth century belongs to Canada. And if it does, then you had better know our values. Remember that in this fair city of Montreal the owner of a department store is a more important citizen than any judge of the Superior Court. Never forget that, Paddy boy. Money is the root of all good here. One nation, indivisible, under Mammon that's our heritage. Now drink up."