Letters Across the Sea

by Genevieve Graham

  Max watched him leave, then he turned to lift his pack onto his bed.

  “You okay?” Arnie asked from the bunk across the aisle.

  He nodded, but didn’t speak. He couldn’t tell Arnie that seeing Richie had brought back all the memories of that summer. Even after all this time, the pain felt fresh. He could still see that look on Molly’s face behind the clubhouse, the one that assured him I’m with you. Despite everything that had happened between their families, he had never really stopped wanting to believe she still might be. He’d written to her after the riot, hoping he was right, but after a month of waiting for her to reply, he’d reluctantly made a decision. There were only two things he’d ever wanted in his life: Molly and medicine. When she hadn’t written back, he’d buried his feelings, determined that from that point on, it would only be med-icine.

  But seeing Richie changed all that. The old hurts and the anger from that summer were coming to the surface again, reminding him of the swastika pin on Richie’s shirt, and the sharp crack of Mr. Ryan’s baton. The days and weeks and months of waiting for a letter from Molly that had never come. He clenched his jaw against the memories, swallowing the pain. It was bad enough that they were stuck way out here in Gander. Now that Richie was here, he’d have a daily reminder of the biggest mistake of his life.

  twelve MOLLY

  1941

  I hugged my handbag to my chest as I strode through the windstorm, muttering to myself about November being the worst of all the months. I closed my eyes against a blast of wind just in time to splash into an icy puddle, which soaked immediately through one shoe. I hissed with exasperation. I’d feel that misery all day long.

  “Good morning!” I heard from across the street, and I smiled despite myself.

  Mr. Rabinowitz stood at his usual spot on the sidewalk outside Palermo’s, his back to the wind.

  “Mr. Rabinowitz,” I said, hopping across the street. “You should go inside, out of the wind. Mr. Palermo wouldn’t mind, I’m sure.”

  I thought he was looking more fragile than ever, and stooped with arthritis. When he smiled at me, ignoring my suggestion, his eyes were milky. “What a day this is!” he said in his creaky voice. “Reminds me of Poland.”

  The poor man. I wondered where he slept at night. I knew Wellington House took in homeless men, but I’d read somewhere that the shelters were terrible places to sleep, crawling with vermin and criminals. Maybe he just huddled in a corner or alley, thinking he was at home with his long-departed wife. Maybe it was a blessing not to remember some things.

  I reached into my bag and fished out the lunch I’d packed, then offered it to him. It wasn’t much, just crackers and a bit of cheese.

  He pushed it away. “That’s very kind, but it’s your meal.”

  “Oh no,” I lied. “My lunch is at the office.” I told myself that when I got hungry later, I’d remember the gratitude in his eyes.

  The fingers that accepted the food poked through holes in his gloves, and the tips were slightly blue. His coat was old and threadbare, and from its fit I could tell he was now a much smaller man than he used to be. His boots were worn and wet.

  “Aren’t you cold, Mr. Rabinowitz?”

  He waved a hand. “This coat’s been with me forever. It’ll do. These days they don’t make nothing that ain’t schlock. Mrs. Rabinowitz will patch this up. Thirty-seven years she’s been patching me up.” He chuckled, then shivered despite himself.

  No one was going to patch up his old coat. I thought of the noisy, whirring sewing machines at Eaton’s, remembering the thick grey wool I’d made into so many coats, and I wondered how much they cost.

  I was reluctant to leave him there, alone in the bitter cold, but I didn’t have a choice. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rabinowitz, but I have to go to work,” I said. “I don’t want to be late.”

  “Ah yes, don’t let me keep you,” he replied. “I should be getting back to the factory myself.”

  When I arrived at work, the newsroom was darkened by the storm outside, adding to the doom and gloom forever being typed up in the office. Mr. Rabinowitz drifted to the back of my mind as I pulled out the latest news from the war, which brought my daily fears for my brothers back to the forefront. One by one, they’d all gone to fight. Eighteen-year-old Liam had been the last to go, in 1940.

  Jimmy had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, and his brief letters home were messily scrawled stories of danger that kept me from sleeping. In the summer of 1940, he and the rest of the Number 1 Fighter Squadron had flown their one-man Hurricanes during the Battle of Britain, and he’d written with a sort of crazy glee about their first engagement of enemy planes in August.

  Those bombers couldn’t keep up with us. What a thrill to finally get into the fight! We shot down three, and four others took some heavy fire.

  There was a big ink blot, then he continued on.

  We did lose one of ours, though, and that was a sobering fact to remember as we all touched down at the base.

  The next letter sounded less like a celebration, and it had chilled me to the bone.

  We weren’t so lucky today. The Messerschmitts came out of the sun—you remember what that’s like? When you’re out in the field and someone pops a fly ball right into the sun? There’s no way to see it, then all of a sudden it’s in your face. Well, we fought well, but we lost three more planes.

  I kept track of the numbers he sent me. Later, I’d see them printed in our paper.

  “Your brother’s a hero,” Ian reminded me one morning in October as I sat at my desk, staring at nothing. “Thirty-one enemy aircraft destroyed, and another forty or so more damaged. He and his squadron are saving a lot of lives, Molly. Try to think of it that way.”

  “I’m trying,” I’d replied, “but then I think of the sixteen downed Hurricanes, and those Canadian boys who will never see their families again. And I think it could be Jimmy next time. And I can’t imagine a world without Jimmy in it.”

  Liam was just as bad at stopping my heart. Maybe worse. He was with the Royal Canadian Navy, sailing on a corvette through the deep waters of the St. Lawrence, trying to stay above the surface while wolf packs of U-boats hunted from the deep. At least he tried to inject a little humour when he could.

  I was awful glad to hear from you that Louise is all right, he’d written privately to me. It doesn’t matter how many times I write, she still seems worried. Please tell her I love her—even though I have probably told her fifty times recently. I keep promising I’ll be back so I can marry her, whether she likes it or not!

  Hey, I wanted to tell you about our cuisine out here, Molly. You know how tired we were of corned beef and cabbage? Well, guess what we eat practically every day out here? Corned beef and powdered potatoes! What I would do for some of Mum’s overcooked cabbage right about now.

  I didn’t bother writing back to tell him I missed corned beef too. Our weekly individual rations were very restrictive, including no more than a cup of sugar per week and four ounces of butter. Meat was so hard to find, they’d come up with cans of a new, seasoned ham called Spam, and I was not a fan. Vegetables were hard to find these days too, considering everyone’s victory gardens were all done for the season. Good thing Mum and I had canned like fiends.

  Mark and the Royal Regiment were, so far, as safe as could be in Iceland, where they were protecting that unappreciative country from Russians. He’d made it clear in his letters that he was not pleased about the assignment.

  Iceland is dull and most of the locals don’t want us here. I told Helen there’s no need to worry about the girls out here. If any of them say so much as hello to us, they’re reported to the police! We’re bored out of our minds. But they say if Hitler wins Iceland, we lose the North Atlantic, so I guess this is where they want us.

  Then, just yesterday, we’d gotten a letter from Richie, saying he was in Hong Kong. That had been a big surprise to us all. He’d known they were sailing somewhere, but no one had let the cat out of the bag abo
ut exactly where until the second day of the voyage. He wrote that Britain was vaguely concerned that the Japanese might come after Hong Kong, one of their colonies, but the Brits were too busy fighting Germany to do anything about it. Their solution was to send troops from Canada and British India to make a show of force. I’d been worried about him being so far away, but Ian assured me that he was likely the safest out of all my brothers, with the possible exception of Mark. He handed me an article about Hong Kong, and I was relieved to read that no one was overly concerned about any kind of military action happening there. From what I read, even if they did decide to invade, the Japanese were not great fighters, and there weren’t many of them anyway. Most were caught up in a war with China that had been raging for four years already. It was understood the Canadian and Indian forces would easily fight them off.

  A steaming cup appeared magically on my desk. “Thought you could use a drink,” Ian said. “Sorry it’s not something with a little more zip to it.”

  I peered into the cup, impressed. “Is that tea?”

  “I have a secret stash. Don’t tell anyone.”

  I closed my eyes and took a fragrant sip, then smiled up at him. “I won’t tell a soul.”

  Since my brothers had enlisted, Ian’s friendship had been a real comfort. I knew he was interested in me romantically, but despite my attraction to him, I was maintaining a safe distance. I didn’t want to rush into anything. Once in a while he took me to dinner, but he seemed to understand that my heart wasn’t in it and was satisfied with my company. He never pressed for anything beyond friendship.

  Our mothers, though, saw our relationship through much more optimistic lenses. I warned Mum not to start making wedding plans anytime soon, because my job was the most important thing. She pretended to agree.

  Ian leaned over my shoulder. “What are you working on?”

  In the last year, I’d begun reporting on some actual stories, but it was still mostly local news. And while Mr. Hindmarsh, in his usual, emotionless voice, said he liked my work, they never added up to more than three paragraphs, and were never printed before page thirty.

  I rolled my eyes. “An argument at a church bazaar that led to fisticuffs, if you can believe it. Honestly, Ian. Is that really news?”

  He grimaced. “You know what I think, Molly. You got to stand up for yourself in here. Write something that matters to you.”

  I nodded, drumming my fingers on the desk. Every page in the paper was full of stories from the war, but every day I was reminded that the city’s own problems hadn’t gone away. I saw people lined up for hours for rations, and the homeless population kept growing. I pictured Mr. Rabinowitz, hunched in the icy wind, and an idea began to materialize. The more I thought about what I could write, the more I felt the almost forgotten thrill of a story rising within me.

  Everyone had a story. What was his?

  “Free for dinner tonight?” Ian asked.

  “Not this time, I’m afraid. There’s something I need to do.” I gulped down the tea and grabbed a pad and pencil, nearly forgetting my coat in my rush.

  The corner of his mouth curled. “Atta girl. I can’t wait to read it.”

  I hustled outside, questions popping into my mind. Why had Mr. Rabinowitz left Poland, and when? What had life been like for him when he’d arrived here? How had he met his wife? I’d only seen her once or twice when I was little, but I vaguely recalled her thick grey curls and wide smile. I tried to remember what Mr. Palermo had said about why she’d died. Was it cancer? Suddenly, I wanted so many answers, and I couldn’t get there fast enough.

  The wind had died down, and the day was warmer by the time I spotted Mr. Rabinowitz huddled on his regular bench outside Palermo’s. Before he could spot me, I ducked into the shop.

  “Molly!” Mr. Palermo looked up from the counter, and I noticed his moustache was almost pure white now. “How are you? Your father says you’re working at the Star? Congratulations.”

  I smiled. I’d always liked him. “I am, thanks in part to your lovely letter of reference. How are you doing?”

  He gestured at the store behind him, slightly fuller than it had been on my last day of work, despite today being late fall. “Things are slowly recovering, I dare say. It’s a shame that it takes a war to make things better, though.”

  He asked about my father, then about my brothers, and we commiserated over the state of the world, then I paid Mr. Palermo for the best of his slightly soft apples.

  “For a friend,” I told him as I headed back outside.

  Mr. Rabinowitz beamed at me before he even saw the apple. Then he looked surprised. “What’s this? Oh, what a treat. Thank you.” He took a bite, making a satisfied kind of humming noise while he chewed.

  “Mr. Rabinowitz, I’m wondering if I can ask you a favour.”

  “Ask away,” he said, taking another bite.

  I fought the urge to pluck a tiny bit of apple from his beard. “I don’t know if I told you before, but I write for the Star.”

  “Eh?”

  “The newspaper. The Star.”

  “Ah yes? Good for you.”

  “I’m interested in speaking with people in the neighbourhood. Doing interviews. And I am wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

  “Oh, ho! You’ll make me famous, will you?” He chuckled. “Nothing interesting about me, but I’ll answer what I can.”

  “Let’s start with where you were born,” I said, pulling out my notepad.

  “Bobrowniki, Poland, in 1875,” he said. My mind clicked through the numbers, astonished. Mr. Rabinowitz was only sixty-six, but he looked so much older. “My papa had a farm,” he said. “I looked after the chickens. It was my job to watch out for those chicks. So sweet, those little yellow things, and their mothers all talking kuk kuk kuk.”

  As I asked more about his childhood, I realized that his memories from long ago were fresh in his mind.

  “Did you fight in the Great War?” I asked eventually.

  He waved a hand, dismissing the question. “Meh. I don’t talk about that.”

  “I’m curious, though. Can you tell me a little?”

  A slight frown. “I was in the cavalry during Szarża pod Rokitną. June of 1915.”

  My pencil paused. “What’s that?”

  “They called it the Charge of Rokitna. I lost seventeen friends that day, but I managed to save my friend Piotr. I pulled him out of the way when he was shot.” He laughed bitterly. “They gave me a medal for it, but it seemed pointless when so many others had died.”

  I felt a hitch in my chest, imagining this poor, broken man, young and terrified, desperately trying to save his friend. A hero. Now forgotten on the streets. “Where’s the medal? Do you still have it?”

  He shrugged. “I threw it away. Should I be proud that I killed other men? I didn’t want anything that reminded me of that time.”

  I changed tacks. “What about your wife? When did you meet her?”

  He smiled, a far-off look in his eye. “Ava and I met at our friend’s wedding, just after the war. She was a wonderful dancer. I could have danced with her all night,” he said. “We got married, then we came to Canada in 1919.”

  He went on to tell me about their first house and the babies, his face lighting up in wonder at the “six beautiful blessings” that filled its two bedrooms. But that’s when his memory started to fail him. He knew the children’s names and could tell me the details of each one’s birth. He knew stories from their childhood, but his expression grew vague when I asked where they were now. Still, I jotted down everything he said, thinking all the time about how I might weave his words into a story.

  That night I started to write, and the story swept through me, filling me with a sense of exhilaration I hadn’t felt in months. I kept going long after Mum and Dad had turned in for the night, and the next morning, I was at work an hour early to type it all up. When I’d finished, I scanned the pages for errors, then approached Ian’s desk. He was talking wi
th someone on the phone, but his eyes flickered up at me.

  One minute, he mouthed, smiling.

  After a moment, he hung up and gave me his undivided attention.

  “I wonder if you have time to read something for me,” I said.

  “For you? Always time.” He eyed my pages. “What is it?”

  “A little something I wrote,” I said, placing them on his desk. “I did what you suggested. I wrote something that mattered to me.”

  I checked over my shoulder as I walked away and saw he was already deep in concentration, reading my words. Minutes later, he stood before me.

  “I love it,” he said. “In depth, but with such an emotional hook. You should bring this to Mr. Hindmarsh.”

  My heart swelled with pride. “Really?”

  “Absolutely. Want me to come with you? As a supportive colleague, I mean.”

  “Do you think that would help?”

  “Can’t hurt, can it?” He handed me back the pages then tilted his head toward the office. “Ready?”

  Mr. Hindmarsh’s silvery head was bent over his desk, studying an article, but his small, heavy-lidded eyes showed interest when he looked up and saw Ian behind me.

  I cleared my throat. “Mr. Hindmarsh, I wrote something that I’d like you to read, if you have the time.”

  He adjusted his black-rimmed glasses on his nose. “I’m very busy, Miss Ryan.”

  “You should take a look,” Ian said smoothly. “Perfect for what you were talking about at the last editorial meeting. Local interest, poverty, veterans… She nailed it.”

  Mr. Hindmarsh lifted one eyebrow and looked from Ian to me. “Is that right, Mr. Collins?”

  The revered managing editor of the Star held out his hand, and I gave him my precious story. “Thank you, Mr. Hindmarsh.”

  I turned to go, but Ian reached for my arm. He gave me a reassuring wink, so I waited beside him, watching Mr. Hindmarsh read.