Alice Munro - Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories

With gratitude

to Sarah Skinner

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

Years ago, before the trains stopped running on so many of the branch lines, a woman with a high, freckled forehead and a frizz of reddish hair came into the railway station and inquired about shipping furniture.

The station agent often tried a little teasing with women, especially the plain ones who seemed to appreciate it.

Furniture? he said, as if nobody had ever had such an idea before. Well. Now. What kind of furniture are we talking about?

A dining-room table and six chairs. A full bedroom suite, a sofa, a coffee table, end tables, a floor lamp. Also a china cabinet and a buffet.

Whoa there. You mean a houseful.

It shouldnt count as that much, she said. Theres no kitchen things and only enough for one bedroom.

Her teeth were crowded to the front of her mouth as if they were ready for an argument.

Youll be needing the truck, he said.

No. I want to send it on the train. Its going out west, to Saskatchewan.

She spoke to him in a loud voice as if he was deaf or stupid, and there was something wrong with the way she pronounced her words. An accent. He thought of Dutchthe Dutch were moving in around herebut she didnt have the heft of the Dutch women or the nice pink skin or the fair hair. She might have been under forty, but what did it matter? No beauty queen, ever.

He turned all business.

First youll need the truck to get it to here from wherever you got it. And we better see if its a place in Saskatchewan where the train goes through. Otherways youd have to arrange to get it picked up, say, in Regina.

Its Gdynia, she said. The train goes through.

He took down a greasy-covered directory that was hanging from a nail and asked how she would spell that. She helped herself to the pencil that was also on a string and wrote on a piece of paper from her purse: GDYNIA.

What kind of nationality would that be?

She said she didnt know.

He took back the pencil to follow from line to line.

A lot of places out there its all Czechs or Hungarians or Ukrainians, he said. It came to him as he said this that she might be one of those. But so what, he was only stating a fact.

Here it is, all right, its on the line.

Yes, she said. I want to ship it Fridaycan you do that?

We can ship it, but I cant promise what day itll get there, he said. It all depends on the priorities. Somebody going to be on the lookout for it when it comes in?

Yes.

Its a mixed train Friday, two-eighteen p.m. Truck picks it up Friday morning. You live here in town?

She nodded, writing down the address. 106 Exhibition Road.

It was only recently that the houses in town had been numbered, and he couldnt picture the place, though he knew where Exhibition Road was. If shed said the name McCauley at that time he might have taken more of an interest, and things might have turned out differently. There were new houses out there, built since the war, though they were called wartime houses. He supposed it must be one of those.

Pay when you ship, he told her.

Also, I want a ticket for myself on the same train. Friday afternoon.

Going same place?

Yes.

You can travel on the same train to Toronto, but then you have to wait for the Transcontinental, goes out ten-thirty at night. You want sleeper or coach? Sleeper you get a berth, coach you sit up in the day car.

She said she would sit up.

Wait in Sudbury for the Montreal train, but you wont get off there, theyll just shunt you around and hitch on the Montreal cars. Then on to Port Arthur and then to Kenora. You dont get off till Regina, and there you have to get off and catch the branch-line train.

She nodded as if he should just get on and give her the ticket.

Slowing down, he said, But I wont promise your furniturell arrive when you do, I wouldnt think it would get in till a day or two after. Its all the priorities. Somebody coming to meet you?

Yes.

Good. Because it wont likely be much of a station. Towns out there, theyre not like here. Theyre mostly pretty rudimentary affairs.

She paid for the passenger ticket now, from a roll of bills in a cloth bag in her purse. Like an old lady. She counted her change, too. But not the way an old lady would count itshe held it in her hand and flicked her eyes over it, but you could tell she didnt miss a penny. Then she turned away rudely, without a goodbye.

See you Friday, he called out.

She wore a long, drab coat on this warm September day, also a pair of clunky laced-up shoes, and ankle socks.

He was getting a coffee out of his thermos when she came back and rapped on the wicket.

The furniture Im sending, she said. Its all good furniture, its like new. I wouldnt want it to get scratched or banged up or in any way damaged. I dont want it to smell like livestock, either.

Oh, well, he said. The railways pretty used to shipping things. And they dont use the same cars for shipping furniture they use for shipping pigs.

Im concerned that it gets there in just as good a shape as it leaves here.

Well, you know, when you buy your furniture, its in the store, right? But did you ever think how it got there? It wasnt made in the store, was it? No. It was made in some factory someplace, and it got shipped to the store, and that was done quite possibly by train. So that being the case, doesnt it stand to reason the railway knows how to look after it?

She continued to look at him without a smile or any admission of her female foolishness.

I hope so, she said. I hope they do.

The station agent would have said, without thinking about it, that he knew everybody in town. Which meant that he knew about half of them. And most of those he knew were the core people, the ones who really were in town in the sense that they had not arrived yesterday and had no plans to move on. He did not know the woman who was going to Saskatchewan because she did not go to his church or teach his children in school or work in any store or restaurant or office that he went into. Nor was she married to any of the men he knew in the Elks or the Oddfellows or the Lions Club or the Legion. A look at her left hand while she was getting the money out had told himand he was not surprisedthat she was not married to anybody. With those shoes, and ankle socks instead of stockings, and no hat or gloves in the afternoon, she might have been a farm woman. But she didnt have the hesitation they generally had, the embarrassment. She didnt have country mannersin fact, she had no manners at all. She had treated him as if he was an information machine. Besides, she had written a town addressExhibition Road. The person she really reminded him of was a plainclothes nun he had seen on television, talking about the missionary work she did somewhere in the jungleprobably they had got out of their nuns clothes there because it made it easier for them to clamber around. This nun had smiled once in a while to show that her religion was supposed to make people happy, but most of the time she looked out at her audience as if she believed that other people were mainly in the world for her to boss around.