Blue Moon (12 page)

Much has been made in the succeeding years about Heather's appearance. Some said she had a definite Oriental cast to her eyes, implying that I had slept with a Chinese or Japanese gentleman. This is untrue—there were no such men in Hamilton in those days. The claim may have been an overly subtle way of suggesting Heather was a Mongol. Also a falsehood. From the time she was a toddler, Heather was a very average child, not especially gifted or deprived intellectually. What is patently true is that my mother took Heather over, never allowing her to speak on her own.

This interference on my mother's part obviously made it difficult for my daughter to establish her own voice. I suspect that turn of events is the fount from which the various stories about the supposed slowness of my only surviving child springs. Less than a year later, another accidental child came into being, but that frail creature mercifully lasted only a few hours. I resumed my profession in October.

I was an overly dutiful but frightened daughter, a neglectful mother and a wayward woman. Less than a year later, the gossamer web carefully spun by Mother with my assistance began to disintegrate.

I fell in love. An unusual turn in a courtesan's life. Earth-shattering, as in
La Dame aux camélias
by Dumas
fils
or Verdi's version of it in
La Traviata.
In those long-ago days, that sad, poignant story was known to me only in its Hollywood version, Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor in George Cukor's
Camille.
Woman of pleasure finally meets the man of her dreams; his father is furious at his son's pursuit of an immoral woman; even the heart of the angry patriarch is melted by the beauty and integrity of Camille, who is dying of tuberculosis. A melodramatic, quasi-sentimental story perhaps, the classical rendition of the story of the prostitute with a heart of gold. Yet, in my experience, real life has a way of imitating even the most outrageous clichés.

My Robert Taylor was a man with the preposterous name of Bill Bohozuk. A year older than me, he lived with his sister on shabby Picton Street East where the houses were crushed together. He worked the open hearth at one of the steel mills, the Dominion Foundries, and rowed with the Leander Boat Club. Seems a rather nondescript existence. Yet, Bill was a celebrity eagerly received at the best homes in Hamilton. Achievement in sports cuts across all social lines, and Bill was a magnificent rower. In the past, his group had won Pan-Am, Olympic and World Championship medals; he was expected to lead his club to even greater glories. Physically, he was a splendid specimen. Huskily built, he had close-cropped dark brown wavy hair and straight eyebrows above small, narrow eyes. A strange choice to play Lancelot to my Guenevere, but that is exactly what happened.

Bill was obviously not a client. He was not the kind of man who needed to pay women to sleep with him. I first encountered him at Smithy's, the pleasantly seedy, always-crowded bar across the street from the Tivoli. Rosie and I had gone there after our weekly visit to the pictures. We had a booth to ourselves and were eagerly immersed in discussing Lana Turner's love life, as revealed in the pages
of Photoplay.

As we were chatting, my eyes wandered to the back of a man seated at the bar opposite me. Maybe, it was his shoulders. Perhaps his hair. I became intrigued and waited impatiently for him to turn around. When he did so, it was to greet a woman who entered the room, advanced towards him and nodded, whereupon he stood up, took her by the arm, and left the bar with her.

The next time I saw this fellow was about six weeks later at Smithy's, when he walked by our booth on his way to the washroom. Rosie, noticing my interest in the stranger, asked me: “Bill Bohozuk isn't one of your clients, is he?”

“Of course not, I've never met him. How do you know him?”

“Local hero. Star of the Leander Boat Club. You must have seen his photo in the paper.”

“I never read the sports pages.”

“You shouldn't need to. He's often in the social pages. A real man-about-town. He's the sports star factory worker who dines with millionaires. He's competed all over the world.” When Bohozuk walked past us again on his way back from the washroom, I must have seen him in a slightly different light, as a god in the Hamilton firmament.

I met Bill a month later at. another watering hole, Haley's Hotel in Dundas, where I was waiting for Rosie to meet me. He asked if I had a match. I handed him my lighter, whereupon he exclaimed upon its beauty: a sterling silver Ronson. I thanked him for the compliment and off he went. I next encountered him at the cocktail lounge at the Connaught, one of my usual haunts. This time, he came right up to me.

“How are you today, Miss MacLean. Or should I say Mrs. White?”

“You know both my names. I didn't think you knew who I was.”

“Everyone knows who you are. May I call you Evelyn?”

“If you prefer.”

“Evelyn it shall be.”

“Fine. What can I do for you, Mr. Bohozuk?”

“You know who I am?”

“Turn-about is fair play. A friend told me.”

“I guess that's natural. A friend tells a friend. We're both celebrities.”

“I don't follow you. No one knows who I am.”

“Everyone knows Hamilton's most celebrated courtesan.”

“I think you're being incredibly rude.” Summoning up the little bit of dignity left to me, I walked out of the room.

My next encounter with Bohozuk was at the races, just as I was collecting my winnings at one of the pari-mutuel windows. Doffing his hat in a courtly manner, he bid me good day.

“You're looking especially lovely today, Evelyn. Really beautiful.”

I thanked him, but, since I was with a regular client, I could only acknowledge his compliment and make my way back to my seat.

We continued to take sightings of each other at the movies, bars and other spots frequented by the demimonde of Hamilton. On one of the rare evenings I went to the Tivoli by myself (Rosie had to accompany Stephen to a dance in Toronto), I encountered Bill as I was heading up James to catch my bus at Gore Park.

“Beautiful evening, Evelyn.”

“Hello, Bill. Were you at the Tivoli?”

“No. I just caught you out of the corner of my eye as I was leaving Smithy's.”

His breath smelled of whisky, and he was obviously not in the same jaunty mood he had been at the Connaught two months before. There seemed a bit of desperation in his voice—and in his eyes. “You really like the pictures?”

“It helps to pass the time.”

He nodded in agreement. Then, he struggled with what to say next. He hemmed and hawed a bit and then asked, “Is there anywhere we could meet, have a real talk. Could I come to your house?”

“That would be dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“A courtesan—to use your word—cannot be seen in public with handsome young men. It would put clients off.”

“I understand. At least I think I understand. Perhaps we could have a drink at Smithy's? Sit in one of the booths out of the way?”

I agreed and suggested a day and time. He nodded and disappeared back down James Street.

At our next meeting a few nights later, on 10 February 1944, the so-called suave man-of-the-world Bill was much in evidence. If I had caught even the slightest hint of vulnerability in our last encounter, that side was absent.

“Well, Evelyn, how's tricks?”

I felt I might pass out. Seeing I was upset, he decided to change his approach. “How've you been?”

I nodded, as if to suggest I was well.

“Sometimes, I really play the fool. You have to forgive me.”

I nodded again, not sure where the conversation was leading.

“Evelyn….?”

“Yes.”

“Evelyn, love me a little.” He added: “Please.”

My friendship with Bill might possibly have transformed itself into an affair, except I discovered a few days after his declaration that I was pregnant for a third time. Here is an even stranger revelation: Bill was the only man to whom I was ever remotely sexually attracted, but I only slept with him once, and that was much later. Love rather than lust. A stunning claim to emanate from a prostitute. In retrospect, Bill is a difficult person to write about, perhaps because he seemed so perfect. Tall, magnificently built, and deeply handsome. Those qualities were obvious to anyone, but, beyond that, he seemed a remarkably generous and kind person.

Straddling the aristocracy and the working class, he was at ease in both environments. As I learned during one of our first encounters, Bill could be teasingly and mockingly cruel, but those sides of him vanished when we became friends, and when I confided to him I was with child and that my parents were furious with me. I do not mean to imply that Bill played the role of St. Joseph to my Mary Magdalene. No, he was, I am sure, far from chaste during the time we began to see each other.

Once or twice, we met at the White Towers snack bar at Burlington Beach, a spot that could be seen for miles away because of the huge rectangular Orange Crush sign that crowned it. Usually, we were more discreet. Every two weeks or so, Bill would take me for a drive in his powder blue Oldsmobile, usually to the outskirts of the nearby town of Ancaster where the chances of our being recognized were severely reduced. During our talks in the wood, I told him of my childhood and of my profession. He complained of his reputation as a local Renaissance man, of how everyone—his sister, his parents, his friends—expected him to be perfect. He had a semi-secret life as a ladies' man, but, since he protected the names and the reputations of all the women in his life, he was accused by some of his loutish friends of being priggish. In a way, his local greatness was a burden to him, a weight he did not like shouldering.

At first, we shared with each other our desire to abandon Hamilton. Later, we began to form a pact to leave the city together, to start our lives anew, perhaps in the south-west of the United States—Arizona or New Mexico. These vague plans became more concrete as my confinement approached. As soon as the baby was born, the three of us would escape.

I had already determined to leave Heather with my mother. My daughter represented a past I was then stupidly determined to destroy. This resolve was heightened by Mother's fiery anger at my carelessness in becoming impregnated yet again. A girl on the town must take steps to evade such an eventuality: Mrs. White, in a delicate condition for a third time, had gone beyond the accepted bounds of her profession. No matter what I said about broken rubbers, my mother assured me I was responsible. It was my responsibility to fit the condom on the client, to be certain he was wearing his envelope properly so that no nasty jism escaped.

At first, my father comforted his “wee lass”; he did so in part because it provided him with yet another opportunity to annoy his wife. As time went on—and the Lady MacLean funds were in short supply—he too became resentful of the income that would be lost. Although I was never large for dates, I did gain more weight during this pregnancy; I also became tired more easily. By May 1944, I could no longer work. Mother had to begin removing money from one of the three bank accounts that held what was left of my earnings, and she was loath to make any of the withdrawals accessible to my father.

By the summer of 1944, life at the cramped bungalow on Rosslyn Avenue became unbearable. There was the constant skirmishes between my parents. Things heated up when Bill came to pick me up. He simply parked at the front of the house and waited for me. At first, I did not mention him by name, but I didn't have to: my mother and father knew who Bill was.

In a wonderful ironical twist, Father condemned Bill, the man he claimed had impregnated his daughter. I explained he was neither client nor boyfriend, but my father refused to believe me. In his eyes, Bill was the culprit because he was young and attractive and patently not one of the elderly or middle-aged men father reckoned my clients to be. Bill was a genuine sexual threat, something my generous clients had never been. Not to be outdone, my mother accused me of being no better than a common whore, presumably because such women easily allowed themselves to become pregnant. She also resolved to protect Heather from the corrupting influence of her prostitute-mother.

I had to believe Bill was perfect—or nearly so. Except Rosie, I had no one in whom I could confide, let alone speak with. Politely but firmly, my mother refused all my old clients. “I regret to have to tell you that Evelyn has not been at all well.” Although I am certain most of my patrons were well aware I was in the family way (I had informed many myself), Mother considered it a serious breach of protocol to make such a revelation. Very “ultra dig,” she informed me.

During the pregnancy, I began to imagine the baby I was carrying had been fathered by Bill. My mind turned in that direction because I was in love with him and wanted him to be the father of the baby. He had also offered to become the baby's parent and, moreover, to assert
that he was the natural father. I clung to this lifeline in the face of the constant disputes with my parents. In my father's view, I had betrayed him because I had fallen in love with another man; in my mother's view, I was a traitor because I had destroyed her careful plan to establish me as Hamilton's Madame de Stael. Financially, they were both bereft since my father's income provided an existence below the poverty line, and security at the HSR had been stepped up. We were three cornered rats clinging precariously to the same sinking craft.

The birth of the new baby would be a liberation, I assured myself. Although I had saved many pieces of Heather's infant clothing, I was convinced the baby I was carrying was a boy. I bought a few odds and ends at Eaton's, but I spent the last three months of my pregnancy knitting a huge assortment of sleepers and cardigans, mainly blue and white. My mother, herself an accomplished knitter, did not assist me.