The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.
- William Faulkner
Yes, I had been a bit senseless, I own, but not utterly mindless. Why, I wondered, had Margaret chosen Willard’s magnetism over mine? The answer seemed simple initially. As I said, Willard was placid and circumspect, certainly not the type of bod to go tom-catting about on rooftops, at least not while a girl was watching, while I was fervent and audacious. At first I thought she’d chosen him as a fellow less likely than I to embarrass her. But in time I came to see the matter in a different light.
First, she seemed not to have been shamed by having her bra strap snapped in public, and second, my delayed sexual awakening had seemed little hindrance to her before Willard materialised. Her motive might have stemmed from my silence on the matter of what place she might have in my plans for the future. It was my purpose to return to Winnipeg in the spring, as I have said, and to apply for entrance to a university in the autumn. I had indeed meant to ask Margaret to join me on my journey back to Canada, but only if she remained faithful until the time came to pack my bags.
Well, she didn’t. She had called me a ‘bastard’ in the car on our way up to London on New Year's Eve to justify, I now believe, what she meant to do that very evening. Willard would make a more malleable companion.
In the days that came after the brake-up, I wandered with Willard along city streets and country footpaths in a forlorn effort to show him something of England, but my heart was still grieving. In every scene I surveyed, I conjured up the image of Margaret. Nevertheless, time proved that I had by now clearly developed a measure of emotional stamina. Whereas my despair at the loss of Susanne had lingered for some six months before it withered, I gently laid the memory of Margaret to rest after two weeks.
On the 28th of January, Willard flew to Germany to visit relatives there. Since my cousin Terry seemed to have been ingested into domestic bliss as a result of his recent marriage, I now took up with Vince and Tom. To my surprise, conversation with them soon proved that both had a budding taste for classical music. I was aghast, and my working-class hackles rose.
“What?” I sneered in disbelief. “You mean Beethoven and all that?”
Evidently, they did. But such an admission seemed, to my plebeian prejudices, on a par with confessing to a love of flowers. Only poofs nurtured effeminate affections like that!
But when I calmed down, Tom asked if I would at least listen to a little piece of classical music. When I agreed - to escape suggestions of prejudice - we gathered at his parents’ house, where he played a classical piece for me. I think it may have been a nocturne by Chopin. Well, I had to admit it wasn’t bad, and thus another of my working-class biases began its descent into the abyss.
It was through Vince and Tom that I met Jack. At first I felt a little wary of him. He was the type of fellow whose eyes you could not seem to catch, but over time he appeared to be friendly enough, with a perennially ready grin, so I abandoned my misgivings. After all, you can’t judge a book by its cover.
My reading of the books on the Grade XII Literature syllabus had managed to stir in me a genuine interest in English Literature to the extent that one day I dropped into the Croydon Town Library in search of more books to read. But there seemed to be endless rows of them. I did not even know how to find my way about a library. But pure chance led my hand to fall upon George Bernard Shaw’s play, ‘Androcles and the Lion’. I scanned a bit of the introduction and, warming to what I read, I joined the library and took out the book, the first book I had ever taken out of a library in my life! Back at my bedsit, I devoured the long introduction because it was full of ideas, but the play itself didn’t interest me. Soon, I was back at the library searching for another introduction to a George Bernard Shaw play. From that simple beginning, a great love of English Literature began to grow in me.
In the next few weeks, I came to know Jack quite well, and one day on a trip with Vince and Tom to Bury St Edmunds, north of London in Suffolk, where Vince had relatives, I was astonished to here Jack ask if he could accompany me back to Canada. But why would he want to do a thing like that? I wanted to know. After all, I was not really longing to be going back there myself. But I had to go if I wanted to attend a university. He didn’t.
Well, he was fed up with his life in England, he said.
I told him how much an air fare would cost and asked him if he had such a sum, plus some money to live on while he looked for work.
He did.
It was thus that I undertook to chaperon Jack from London, England to Winnipeg, Manitoba.
London, England 1967
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 1965
-------------------------
Any attempt to recapture episodes of one's past life is bound to end in disappointment. You can learn a great many things from a new adventure, but nothing much at all from repeating it. Be that as it may, foolish youth will try.
I had never seen any Roman ruins before, but I was not very interested in them anyway. I had eyes only for my dazzling companion. Later, returning to the environs of the Hostel, we waited for the bus that would take her home, and there I summoned the nerve to convey a little kiss to her lips.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, surprised and seemingly a little alarmed.
“Because you are beautiful,” I replied, gazing at her face.
Well, it seems I was learning a little about the language of love at last!
And then I asked her why she was so hesitant in matters of romance. She said that when she was younger, some miscreant of a male had attempted to impose his attentions upon her. Next thing I knew, her bus drew up and she got on board and was gone. I never saw her again.
I arrived back in England 17th May, 1967, putting an end to the last European hitch-hiking trip of my life, and on the 23rd I flew to Montreal in company with my new friend Jack. Next day, we set off on a two-day rail journey to the Prairies, arriving in Winnipeg in the evening of the 25th.
Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, c1966
Yes, there had been signs - if my eyes had been wide enough to detect them - that Margaret was not the woman for me. I would have to sharpen my wits a bit to steer clear of similar hitches in the future. But I would not make the mistake of blaming the entire race of ‘women’ for the miscarriage, as my friends Vince and Tom seemed to do, for the pair of them always adopted a detached attitude when talk turned upon the fair sex. I suspect they’d both been burned too by the flames of love. But I was unflinching in my decision to spurn sinking into a pit of cynicism and self-pity. Instead, I would lay the blame at the door of my failure to draw conclusions from experience. I really should have detected the advance of the calamity, but my mind had likely been so besotted with fantasies of love that I just shut my eyes to possible consequences.
Yes, I had been a bit senseless, I own, but not utterly mindless. Why, I wondered, had Margaret chosen Willard’s magnetism over mine? The answer seemed simple initially. As I said, Willard was placid and circumspect, certainly not the type of bod to go tom-catting about on rooftops, at least not while a girl was watching, while I was fervent and audacious. At first I thought she’d chosen him as a fellow less likely than I to embarrass her. But in time I came to see the matter in a different light.
First, she seemed not to have been shamed by having her bra strap snapped in public, and second, my delayed sexual awakening had seemed little hindrance to her before Willard materialised. Her motive might have stemmed from my silence on the matter of what place she might have in my plans for the future. It was my purpose to return to Winnipeg in the spring, as I have said, and to apply for entrance to a university in the autumn. I had indeed meant to ask Margaret to join me on my journey back to Canada, but only if she remained faithful until the time came to pack my bags.
Well, she didn’t. She had called me a ‘bastard’ in the car on our way up to London on New Year's Eve to justify, I now believe, what she meant to do that very evening. Willard would make a more malleable companion.
In the days that came after the brake-up, I wandered with Willard along city streets and country footpaths in a forlorn effort to show him something of England, but my heart was still grieving. In every scene I surveyed, I conjured up the image of Margaret. Nevertheless, time proved that I had by now clearly developed a measure of emotional stamina. Whereas my despair at the loss of Susanne had lingered for some six months before it withered, I gently laid the memory of Margaret to rest after two weeks.
On the 28th of January, Willard flew to Germany to visit relatives there. Since my cousin Terry seemed to have been ingested into domestic bliss as a result of his recent marriage, I now took up with Vince and Tom. To my surprise, conversation with them soon proved that both had a budding taste for classical music. I was aghast, and my working-class hackles rose.
“What?” I sneered in disbelief. “You mean Beethoven and all that?”
But when I calmed down, Tom asked if I would at least listen to a little piece of classical music. When I agreed - to escape suggestions of prejudice - we gathered at his parents’ house, where he played a classical piece for me. I think it may have been a nocturne by Chopin. Well, I had to admit it wasn’t bad, and thus another of my working-class biases began its descent into the abyss.
It was through Vince and Tom that I met Jack. At first I felt a little wary of him. He was the type of fellow whose eyes you could not seem to catch, but over time he appeared to be friendly enough, with a perennially ready grin, so I abandoned my misgivings. After all, you can’t judge a book by its cover.
My reading of the books on the Grade XII Literature syllabus had managed to stir in me a genuine interest in English Literature to the extent that one day I dropped into the Croydon Town Library in search of more books to read. But there seemed to be endless rows of them. I did not even know how to find my way about a library. But pure chance led my hand to fall upon George Bernard Shaw’s play, ‘Androcles and the Lion’. I scanned a bit of the introduction and, warming to what I read, I joined the library and took out the book, the first book I had ever taken out of a library in my life! Back at my bedsit, I devoured the long introduction because it was full of ideas, but the play itself didn’t interest me. Soon, I was back at the library searching for another introduction to a George Bernard Shaw play. From that simple beginning, a great love of English Literature began to grow in me.
In the next few weeks, I came to know Jack quite well, and one day on a trip with Vince and Tom to Bury St Edmunds, north of London in Suffolk, where Vince had relatives, I was astonished to here Jack ask if he could accompany me back to Canada. But why would he want to do a thing like that? I wanted to know. After all, I was not really longing to be going back there myself. But I had to go if I wanted to attend a university. He didn’t.
Well, he was fed up with his life in England, he said.
I told him how much an air fare would cost and asked him if he had such a sum, plus some money to live on while he looked for work.
He did.
It was thus that I undertook to chaperon Jack from London, England to Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Any attempt to recapture episodes of one's past life is bound to end in disappointment. You can learn a great many things from a new adventure, but nothing much at all from repeating it. Be that as it may, foolish youth will try.
Thus it was that, on the 16th of April, I crossed the channel to Calais again to launch myself on another hitch-hiking trip down to sunny Spain before my return to Canada. After a short visit to Paris, I arrived at the Youth Hostel at Caluire, near Lyon, so my old youth hostel card tells me, on the 24th of April, and remained there till the 30th - waiting for Melissa again! I believe I was able to see her briefly several times during my visit to the city, but only one clear memory of a meeting remains.
One day, she arrived at the Youth Hostel by bus and then took me to a park nearby which featured some Roman ruins.
I had never seen any Roman ruins before, but I was not very interested in them anyway. I had eyes only for my dazzling companion. Later, returning to the environs of the Hostel, we waited for the bus that would take her home, and there I summoned the nerve to convey a little kiss to her lips.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, surprised and seemingly a little alarmed.
“Because you are beautiful,” I replied, gazing at her face.
Well, it seems I was learning a little about the language of love at last!
And then I asked her why she was so hesitant in matters of romance. She said that when she was younger, some miscreant of a male had attempted to impose his attentions upon her. Next thing I knew, her bus drew up and she got on board and was gone. I never saw her again.
Arenys de Mar, Spain
I trudged into the youth hostel at Arenys de Mar near Barcelona on the 1st of May, where I luxuriated on a beach in the Spanish sunshine for a week or more. It is a moot question why a fellow retains vivid memories of certain people and events after the passage of decades, but the fact is undeniable. Of all the people I met on that trip, just two of them linger in my memory.
I met the first at Arenys. He was an archetype, that is, an exemplar of a type of fellow who was just beginning to appear at that time – in America, that is. Europe doesn’t produce new types. Europeans, after all, posses a traditional culture. Yes, he was an American all right, full of himself and oblivious to the experience of discovering a warm and wonderful country.
But there was no ‘meeting’, as such. He was just there, sitting cross-legged in company with a couple of other wayfarers. Yes, cross-legged. Not the most comfortable of postures for a fully grown man, but comfort wasn’t his object. He was performing. The crossed legs were calculated to engender an appearance of child-like innocence, demonstrating how utterly natural and relaxed he was in contrast, I suppose, to those many other young Americans mentioned in an earlier post, bent on ‘doing’ Europe.
The fellow had rather long hair, I recall, and when he looked downwards, a mop of it fell partly over his right eye, a circumstance to which he responded by shifting it back to the top of his head with a flick of a finger. I fancied that this show was intended to suggest that he was a natural kind of guy, free of any obsession with bodily concerns like attention to one's hair.
This poseur was attended by a couple of acolytes to whom he was in the act of introducing samples of some brown substance he took from a cache concealed in a pocket. No doubt he deemed it part of his charm that he had the audacity to smoke marijuana in a public place. But he was in Spain, and no doubt aware that the Spanish police didn’t bother foreigners.
Gracefully, I accepted the offer to share in the communal frivolity, gathering from past familiarity that this marijuana nonsense was just a hoax. I was conceiving a sense of amusement about these nitwits who sat cross-legged while smoking a substance that had no discernible effect. They were funny, ridiculous, I thought, as I took drag after drag of my fag. They were distinctly amusing, these gullible youngsters, pretending they were getting smashed on this dodgy narcotic. Absurd, they were, laughable, hilarious!
As I stumbled back into the hostel, it seemed a flood of laughter was erupting from my lungs and as I gained the privacy of my bed and spread myself upon it I was rocked with wave after wave of giddy hilarity.
Next morning I awoke feeling rather sheepish.
The journey back to Britain was eminently forgettable except for one risible incident. In some youth hostel or other, I spotted on a wall a note by a girl asking for someone to accompany her to Paris. Well, as my romantic soul was constantly on the lookout for amorous adventures, I presented myself as just the fellow to rescue a damsel in distress. But I must admit, she didn’t look much like a damsel when she met me next morning dressed in an army jacket with sergeant stripes stuck on a sleeve. She was from New Zealand, she told me.
The hitch-hiking did not go well. By nightfall, we had failed to reach Paris and were now in need of a place to sleep for the night. I suggested we rent a room. When she agreed, my romantic imagination was set alight again.
Well, I found a room with two beds all right, don’t ask me how.
Now, owing to my efforts, honed to perfection on my earlier European journey, I had chaperoned this girl most of the way to Paris and found us a warm and comfortable place to sleep. You’d think she’d have shown a little gratitude for that kindness by responding sympathetically to the inevitable approach I made in quest of a little kissing and cuddling.
I met the first at Arenys. He was an archetype, that is, an exemplar of a type of fellow who was just beginning to appear at that time – in America, that is. Europe doesn’t produce new types. Europeans, after all, posses a traditional culture. Yes, he was an American all right, full of himself and oblivious to the experience of discovering a warm and wonderful country.
But there was no ‘meeting’, as such. He was just there, sitting cross-legged in company with a couple of other wayfarers. Yes, cross-legged. Not the most comfortable of postures for a fully grown man, but comfort wasn’t his object. He was performing. The crossed legs were calculated to engender an appearance of child-like innocence, demonstrating how utterly natural and relaxed he was in contrast, I suppose, to those many other young Americans mentioned in an earlier post, bent on ‘doing’ Europe.
The fellow had rather long hair, I recall, and when he looked downwards, a mop of it fell partly over his right eye, a circumstance to which he responded by shifting it back to the top of his head with a flick of a finger. I fancied that this show was intended to suggest that he was a natural kind of guy, free of any obsession with bodily concerns like attention to one's hair.
This poseur was attended by a couple of acolytes to whom he was in the act of introducing samples of some brown substance he took from a cache concealed in a pocket. No doubt he deemed it part of his charm that he had the audacity to smoke marijuana in a public place. But he was in Spain, and no doubt aware that the Spanish police didn’t bother foreigners.
Gracefully, I accepted the offer to share in the communal frivolity, gathering from past familiarity that this marijuana nonsense was just a hoax. I was conceiving a sense of amusement about these nitwits who sat cross-legged while smoking a substance that had no discernible effect. They were funny, ridiculous, I thought, as I took drag after drag of my fag. They were distinctly amusing, these gullible youngsters, pretending they were getting smashed on this dodgy narcotic. Absurd, they were, laughable, hilarious!
As I stumbled back into the hostel, it seemed a flood of laughter was erupting from my lungs and as I gained the privacy of my bed and spread myself upon it I was rocked with wave after wave of giddy hilarity.
Next morning I awoke feeling rather sheepish.
The journey back to Britain was eminently forgettable except for one risible incident. In some youth hostel or other, I spotted on a wall a note by a girl asking for someone to accompany her to Paris. Well, as my romantic soul was constantly on the lookout for amorous adventures, I presented myself as just the fellow to rescue a damsel in distress. But I must admit, she didn’t look much like a damsel when she met me next morning dressed in an army jacket with sergeant stripes stuck on a sleeve. She was from New Zealand, she told me.
The hitch-hiking did not go well. By nightfall, we had failed to reach Paris and were now in need of a place to sleep for the night. I suggested we rent a room. When she agreed, my romantic imagination was set alight again.
Well, I found a room with two beds all right, don’t ask me how.
Now, owing to my efforts, honed to perfection on my earlier European journey, I had chaperoned this girl most of the way to Paris and found us a warm and comfortable place to sleep. You’d think she’d have shown a little gratitude for that kindness by responding sympathetically to the inevitable approach I made in quest of a little kissing and cuddling.
Not a bit of it! At every effort I made to cuddle her, she just pushed me away, claiming she had a boyfriend.
A boyfriend? If only such saintly vows had been made and honoured by my last girlfriend!
White cliffs of Dover
Canadian National Railways train
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