The New Yorker Stories by Morley Callaghan

Author:Morley Callaghan [Callaghan, Morley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B07H9G2CLJ
Publisher: Exile Editions
Published: 2018-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

THE FAITHFUL WIFE

Until a week before Christmas George worked in the station restaurant at the lunch counter. The weather was extraordinarily cold, then the sun shone strongly for a few days, though it was always cold again in the evenings. There were three other men working at the counter. They had a poor reputation. Women, unless they were careless and easygoing, never started a conversation with them over lunch at noontime. The girls at the station always avoided the red-capped negro porters and the countermen.

George was working there till he got enough money to go back home for a week and then start late in the year at college. He had wiry brown hair receding on his forehead and bad upper teeth, but he was very polite and open. Steve, the plump Italian with the waxed black moustache, who had charge of the restaurant, was very fond of George.

Many people passed the restaurant window on the way to the platform and the trains. The four men got to know some of them. Girls, brightly dressed, loitered in front of the open door, smiling at George, who saw them so often he knew their first names. Other girls, with a few minutes to spare before going back to work, used to walk up and down the tiled tunnel to the waiting room, loafing the time away, but they never glanced in at the countermen. It was cold outside, the streets were slippery, and it was warm in the station, that was all.

George watched one girl every day at noon hour. The others had also noticed her, and two or three times she came in for a cup of coffee, but she was so gentle, and aloofly pleasant, and so unobtrusively beyond them, they were afraid to try and amuse her with easy cheerful talk. George wished she had never seen him in the restaurant behind the counter, though he knew she had not noticed him at all. Her cheeks were usually rosy from the cold wind outside. When she went out of the door to walk up and down for a few minutes, an agreeable expression on her face, she never once looked back at the restaurant. George, pouring coffee, did not expect her to look back. She was about twenty-eight, pretty, rather shy, and dressed plainly and poorly in a thin, blue cloth coat. Then, one day she had on a fawn felt hat. She smiled politely at him when having a cup of coffee, and as long as possible he stood opposite her, cleaning the counter with a damp cloth.

The last night he worked at the station he went out at about half past eight in the evening, for he had an hour to himself, and then he would work till ten o’clock. In the morning he was going home, so he walked out of the station and down the side street to the docks, and was having only pleasant thoughts, passing the warehouses, looking out over the dark cold lake and liking the tang of the wind on his face.

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