Alice Munro - Something Ive Been Meaning to Tell You: 13 Stories

Alice Munro
Something Ive Been Meaning to Tell You

Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published more than ten collections of stories as well as a novel, Lives of Girls and Women . During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including three of Canadas Governor Generals Literary Awards and its Giller Prize, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review , and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. Alice Munro and her husband divide their time between Clinton, Ontario, near Lake Huron, and Comox, British Columbia.

Books by Alice Munro

First Vintage International Edition, October 2004

Copyright 1974, copyright renewed 2002 by Alice Munro

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited, New York, in 1974.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Munro, Alice.
Something Ive been meaning to tell youthirteen stories / Alice Munro.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-81457-9
1. CanadaSocial life and customsFiction. I. Title.
PR9199.3.M8S6 2004
813 .54cd22
2004049329

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

Contents

Something Ive Been Meaning To Tell You

Anyway he knows how to fascinate the women, said Et to Char. She could not tell if Char went paler, hearing this, because Char was pale in the first place as anybody could get. She was like a ghost now, with her hair gone white. But still beautiful, she couldnt lose it.

No matter to him the age or the size, Et pressed on. Its natural to him as breathing, I guess. I only hope the poor things arent taken in by it.

I wouldnt worry, Char said.

The day before, Et had taken Blaikie Noble up on his invitation to go along on one of his tours and listen to his spiel. Char was asked too, but of course she didnt go. Blaikie Noble ran a bus. The bottom part of it was painted red and the top part was striped, to give the effect of an awning. On the side was painted: LAKESHORE TOURS , INDIAN GRAVES, LIMESTONE GARDENS, MILLIONAIRES MANSION, BLAIKIE NOBLE, DRIVER, GUIDE . Blaikie had a room at the hotel, and he also worked on the grounds, with one helper, cutting grass and clipping hedges and digging the borders. What a comedown, Et had said at the beginning of the summer when they first found out he was back. She and Char had known him in the old days.

So Et found herself squeezed into his bus with a lot of strangers, though before the afternoon was over she had made friends with a number of them and had a couple of promises of jackets needing letting out, as if she didnt have enough to do already. That was beside the point, the thing on her mind was watching Blaikie.

And what did he have to show? A few mounds with grass growing on them, covering dead Indians, a plot full of odd-shaped, grayish-white, dismal-looking limestone thingsfar-fetched imitations of plants (there could be the cemetery, if that was what you wanted)and an old monstrosity of a house built with liquor money. He made the most of it. A historical discourse on the Indians, then a scientific discourse on the Limestone. Et had no way of knowing how much of it was true. Arthur would know. But Arthur wasnt there; there was nobody there but silly women, hoping to walk beside Blaikie to and from the sights, chat with him over their tea in the Limestone Pavilion, looking forward to having his strong hand under their elbows, the other hand brushing somewhere around the waist, when he helped them down off the bus (Im not a tourist, Et whispered sharply when he tried it on her).

He told them the house was haunted. The first Et had ever heard of it, living ten miles away all her life. A woman had killed her husband, the son of the millionaire, at least it was believed she had killed him.

How? cried some lady, thrilled out of her wits.

Ah, the ladies are always anxious to know the means, said Blaikie, in a voice like cream, scornful and loving. It was a slowpoison. Or thats what they said. This is all hearsay, all local gossip. ( Local my foot , said Et to herself.) She didnt appreciate his lady friends. The wife didnt. No.

He told them the ghost walked up and down in the garden, between two rows of blue spruce. It was not the murdered man who walked, but the wife, regretting. Blaikie smiled ruefully at the busload. At first Et had thought his attentions were all false, an ordinary commercial flirtation, to give them their moneys worth. But gradually she was getting a different notion. He bent to each woman he talked toit didnt matter how fat or scrawny or silly she wasas if there was one thing in her he would like to find. He had a gentle and laughing but ultimately serious, narrowing look (was that the look men finally had when they made love, that Et would never see?) that made him seem to want to be a deep-sea diver diving down, down through all the emptiness and cold and wreckage to discover the one thing he had set his heart on, something small and precious, hard to locate, as a ruby maybe on the ocean floor. That was a look she would like to have described to Char. No doubt Char had seen it. But did she know how freely it was being distributed?

Char and Arthur had been planning a trip that summer to see Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon, but they did not go. Arthur suffered a series of dizzy spells just at the end of school, and the doctor put him to bed. Several things were the matter with him. He was anemic, he had an irregular heartbeat, there was trouble with his kidneys. Et worried about leukemia. She woke at night, worrying.

Dont be silly, said Char serenely, Hes overtired.

Arthur got up in the evenings and sat in his dressing gown. Blaikie Noble came to visit. He said his room at the hotel was a hole above the kitchen, they were trying to steam-cook him. It made him appreciate the cool of the porch. They played the games that Arthur loved, schoolteachers games. They played a geography game, and they tried to see who could make the most words out of the name Beethoven. Arthur won. He got thirty-four. He was immensely delighted.

Youd think youd found the Holy Grail, Char said.

They played Who Am I? Each of them had to choose somebody to bereal or imaginary, living or dead, human or animaland the others had to try to guess it in twenty questions. Et got who Arthur was on the thirteenth question. Sir Galahad.