The Heart Beats in Secret

by Katie Munnik

  The light here is amazing. Cold and white and blue. New snow brightens everything, and then there are layers of reflections – neon and shop windows and all the cars. The snow piles up in high banks along the streets and on the spiral staircases outside apartment buildings. From my window, the fire escape looks both laden and lightened with all the snow. The city trucks come by and scatter salt on the pavements to melt the ice, but they call them sidewalks here like the Americans, or les trottoirs. Mincing along, trying not to slip, I think of pigs’ feet. I read in the paper that there’s talk of heating them from underneath so that the snow will melt on contact. Isn’t that crazy? Very space-aged, like so many things here. Since the Metro system was built, there have been extensive expansions underground, so it’s like a brand-new city just under the surface. Shops and restaurants, even a church and a discotheque. Imagine all that under Princes Street!

  Despite the cold, there is so much life in this city, so much feels just about to happen. And I love the mix of people. The whole world is here, all bundled up in a thousand layers against the freeze. French and English, obviously, and a fair number of Scots among the mix. But black people, too, with fantastic French accents, and Hungarians and Jews and even Chinese. I hope to go down to Chinatown soon to try one of the restaurants Jenny keeps talking about. I’ll let you know all about it when I do. I wonder if foetuses like ginger.

  Did I write to you about Expo? I know I sent the book about it, but I can’t remember what I told you. Probably not much. I know I didn’t write much when I first arrived – I’m sorry for that. Everything was so new and I was so ready to be far from home, but I should have been better at writing. Anyway, Expo was amazing. Space-age for real, with real Apollo capsules and an American astronaut suit. I first went with Jenny a month or so after I moved into the flat. We took the Metro and stood all the way to Île Sainte-Hélène, which is an artificial island made of earth dug out from the Metro tunnels and deposited in the middle of the St Lawrence River. Then everything was built on top – all the buildings of the world. I loved the American Pavilion. A 200-foot geodesic dome covered with a shiny acrylic skin. Dad would love it: a great clear bubble filled with spacecraft and Raggedy Ann dolls, Andy Warhol prints and totem poles, cowboys and neon, and Elvis Presley’s guitar. Pure poetry. The Americans hated it. Not enough about technologies and arms, not enough about trade. Instead, it was all American imagination and so beautiful in its glorious gaudy way. But more than the exhibits, it was the space itself that I loved. A shining bubble floating above the island, the light shimmering in triangles. It was honeycomb and patchwork quilt and crystals and constellations all at once. A mini-rail train ran right through the building, and giant escalators climbed to the very top. Everywhere you looked, there were people moving, bright colours, and a sense of beautiful space.

  Everyone came to Expo. All the languages in the world on one little Canadian island. Like the war was finally, finally over, and everyone was together in a place that was new and glowing.

  It was all supposed to close at the end of October and all the countries were to pay for the individual demolition of their pavilions. But the powers that be changed their mind and opened it up again this summer. Renamed it, too. Couldn’t very well be Expo ’67 in perpetuity. Now it’s ‘Man and His World’, which ticks Jenny off no end. Margaret, too, but Jenny is louder. All this mind-expanding globality, she says, and they go for the archaic misogynistic tag. I can’t say I’m bothered, but she is, so we hear about it continually. It’s even worse in French, she says. ‘La Terre des Hommes’. And just when do we get our world, she asks over porridge and tea, waving her spoon about histrionically. I shrug and she says I’ve been brainwashed by the patriarchy and need to wake up, but I say I’m tired out by ten-hour shifts and a growing lump of humanity in my belly and I don’t feel excluded by an historically accepted inclusive noun. She’d prefer ‘Humanity’s World’, which suffers poetically, but maybe equality has higher value than poetry.

  Jenny is from London and used to teach primary school, though that’s impossible to imagine now. She’s far too loud and bright and flamboyant for any classroom. Maybe things were different in London. She wears ground-trailing skirts and her hair is short and dyed jet black to match her mascara. And she’s an actress now, which she says isn’t a world away from teaching. She’s managed to get leading lady roles in a few Shakespeare plays – says it’s the accent that kills at auditions. She thinks it’s a riot I’m still in nursing. A last-generation job, she calls it, perfect for old-fashioned girls. I’m not quite sure she understands wanting a stable life. And it’s not like she has pots of money to prop her up. Before she moved into the flat, she had a basement room with no furniture. Just a mattress on the floor and a radio to keep her company. She says it did wonders for her Canadian accent, all that talk radio. The prime minister is said to be very upset about this room-er. Tomorrow, the high temperature will be twenny-three degrees.

  Heat is supposed to be included in our rent, but the flat is still cold. Jenny walks about draped in blankets. Margaret says that the weather will be warmer by March. I’ve already been through a full year, but Montreal weather is hard to anticipate. Margaret keeps saying things like when the snow melts … and that was before the dog days. They roll off her tongue quite naturally, but then, she’s from here. I should be keeping a logbook, I think, marking down temperatures and the superstitions of the natives. But she’s right to remind me. Seasons change quickly here, and spring doesn’t linger. Last year, it was such a shock. Ice and blizzards one week and then the crocuses were up and gone the next. Blink and you miss it and everyone’s in bare legs. Margaret says I should really call the folk at the camp soon and see if they can help, if that’s my plan. She said it so sweetly. You’d like her. I guess I want you to know that I’m being looked after. We’re a family of sorts here at the flat, the girls like sisters and guardian angels – their friends and suitors, too.

  I’m not going to write to you now about my baby’s father. I don’t mind that you asked and I will tell you at some stage, but for now he isn’t important. And I’m fine with that. That sounds defiant, or defensive. It isn’t meant to. I am well and as peaceful as I can be in this cold and troubled city. Jenny says get used to it – not just snow but bombs, too. Bienvenue au Québec, baby. But don’t worry about me. I am well and safe and more or less happy.

  Lots of love,

  Felicity

  * * *

  Montreal,

  March 1969

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  So much for nonchalance. Even if I didn’t have to, I’d want to leave my job now. Not because I’m tired out – though I am – and not at all because of the people, because they really are lovely. But the work is getting scary and so is this precarious city. You probably don’t hear much on the BBC, so here’s the scuttlebutt, as Dad would say.

  Last night, there was hell of a march. The anglo press is reporting it as a peaceful protest, but at the hospital, we see another side to things. Of course, they are comparing it to last month’s attack at the stock exchange. No bombs last night, so no structural damage, but there were ten thousand people out on the streets, at least. From what we saw, the police got rough, or possibly the protestors did first. I was in the flat and there was so much noise outside. Someone lit a bonfire in the middle of the street like we were in a war zone or revolutionary Paris, and there were firecrackers or worse, too. Some were even shouting ‘A bas la Bastille!’ but it wasn’t the prisons they were protesting about or even the government. It was McGill. For heaven’s sake, a university. But a symbol, too. Everything is becoming a symbol, or a slogan. ‘McGill au Travailleurs!’ they chanted. ‘McGill Français!’ They’re demanding that the university become a unilingual French, pro-worker institution. So much for art history and politics if that happens, though I suspect nursing would still get funded. They’d need it.

  At the hospital in the morning, we saw a lot of bruising, twisted ankles, and more tha
n a few broken legs, too. One boy, who was carried in dangling between two cronies, came in with a fractured skull. They were all grinning, which was perhaps the most disturbing part. ‘Had a good night, boys?’ one of the doctors asked, but they only whispered to each other in French and kept on grinning.

  One of the students who had been demonstrating came by the flat this evening, and got angry when I told him what I’d seen at work. He’s half French and mostly fervently separatist, but he likes hanging out with us British girls. I made a pot of tea and he told me about his grandmother – mémé. She had a digestive problem and it turned out to be cancer in the end and he spent a lot of time in the hospital with her, translating. Officially, everyone is guaranteed medical care in their own language, but he said it’s never really that way. His mémé needed a specialist, but the specialist didn’t speak a word of French and neither did half the nurses. Not like you, he said. You try at least. ‘Bonjour’ alone works wonders. He told me his mémé went downhill pretty quickly after she was admitted. He couldn’t be with her all the time and she spent her final weeks fumbling through the few English words she knew, trying to make herself understood by the busy anglo nurses. That’s no way to go, is it?

  I see the injustice, but it’s all getting scary. There were four bombs on New Year’s Eve then three mailboxes exploded in the next few days. And those are the ones that get reported because they’ve exploded. I wonder how many other bombs have been found and stopped in time. Two exploded at the end of November at Eaton’s downtown. Even Jenny is getting apprehensive. She’s talking about heading out of town for a bit. I might try to convince her to come out to the camp with me. I called them the other day and the woman on the phone was lovely. No trouble at all, she said; come as soon as you like. There is a space where I can stay, and she wanted to know if the father was coming, too. A gracious way of asking. I told her that he wasn’t and she really gently suggested that I talk to him. Tell him where I was going. Give him the option, she said, so he could know and choose for himself. I don’t know. I’d rather do all this on my own. It isn’t like he’s going to turn around and ask me to marry him. He’s not that type. But he knows about the baby, so maybe I should talk to him before I go.

  I’ve been having weird dreams, which isn’t surprising. I dreamed the baby was stuck in a postbox and I couldn’t get it out. When I looked down through the slat, I could see it all curled up on top of the letters like it was floating, way down at the bottom of a well. Then I dreamed that the baby was a package and I was wrapping it up with paper and string and worrying about the postage. What does it cost to post a baby? The woman at the post office was being difficult, and then, when I finally had it all wrapped and stamped, I realized I didn’t know how to address it. Isn’t that odd?

  I hope this letter gets through – well, gets out of Montreal, I mean. I keep thinking about all those letterboxes. Sorry this is all so disjointed and rambling. That’s just how I’m feeling myself. I hope you are well. Thanks for the description of Aberlady Bay. It’s nice to think about things continuing on just as they always have – the wild flowers, the rabbits and the deer.

  Lots of love,

  Felicity

  * * *

  Montreal,

  April 1969

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  I will be moving soon. Yesterday, I went to the campus with Margaret to talk with some of her friends about the camp – they looked like a bunch of radicals with long hair and jeans, but they were kind. One of them had lived at the camp last summer and the other – Annie – was friends with the folk who started it up. She says she goes back and forth a lot to help them out. I asked if it was a cult or anything, but both girls said no. Annie said the folks who started it were Christians and there are some hippies now, too. Some folk are radical, but not everyone. It’s a real mix and it’s just a good place to be.

  She showed me photos of the farmhouse where the midwife lives. Just a humble log house, really Canadian with a porch along the front, and a swing and gardens, too. They grow lots of food, and anyone who wants to can share in the meals. It’s about three hours away from Montreal, which sounds good to me.

  Margaret’s going to be moving, too. Not far, but also to somewhere pretty different. She’ll be out along the St Lawrence Seaway in one of the new villages, living in her grandmother’s old house. When the province flooded the Long Sault Rapids ten years ago and the Seaway went through, whole villages were abandoned and people relocated, but some houses were moved instead. Margaret’s grandmother’s house was one of those – picked up and planted in a new village made from old homes. The Hydro Company promised the process would be gentle and everything would be safe. Even said they could leave the kitchen cupboards as they were, with all the plates and bowls still inside. It was that easy. The Hartshorne House Mover would arrive on the Thursday. All the family needed to do was pack a change of clothes and wait a day or two for their house to be delivered to New Town 2 where it would be built on a new foundation supplied by the Hydro Company. Safe and sound. Her grandmother worried – she hadn’t cradled the family china all the way from Ireland thirty years before to be smashed up by a machine now. But her grandfather took the company at their word. Even filled a teacup and left it on the kitchen table to see what would happen. That was Tuesday. But when the Hydro men came by on Wednesday and cut all the elms behind the house, he stood on the porch and cried. Margaret’s grandmother knew then that everything was changing.

  Last winter, she passed away after eight years on her own. Margaret said that neither of them really felt settled after the move. They’d talked of moving to the city to be near their sons, but never got around to it. Margaret’s glad because it’s nice to have a family house to return to.

  It would make me dizzy, I think. A house you know in a strange new place with different views out of the windows and a different piece of sky overhead. Margaret told me that when she was small, she used to help her grandmother dig potatoes in the garden behind the summer kitchen and they stored them for the winter in a dry root cellar with a red trapdoor. Now, the garden and the cellar are both under the river, but Margaret says she doesn’t mind. She told me she likes walking along the new shore. Everything still there, she says, but also washed away. You can see where the old highway runs right into the water. And Dad, it’s not far from your whales – only 10 miles or so. I suppose if there were more bones still buried, then the waters have covered them again. Margaret says where there used to be hills, now there are islands and if I go for a visit, she’ll take me out in a canoe to see. But that will have to wait until after the baby.

  When I get up to the camp, I’ll send you the address. Well, the post-office box anyway. There’s a village not too far away, with shops and things, which is good because the camp isn’t quite self-sufficient yet. There’s also a sympathetic doctor in the village, and he helps out when he’s needed. So, see? I won’t be out beyond the moon – I will be okay.

  Any thoughts about a name? Any advice would be great.

  Lots of love,

  Felicity

  * * *

  From the camp,

  September 1969

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  Thanks for the box of baby things – perfect timing. Little Pidge is growing so quickly and much faster than even Rika can knit! I didn’t know you’d kept my things. I’ll need to find a camera so that you can see how sweet Pidge is in that little lacy bonnet. Did you make it? I’d love to know more about all the bits and pieces.

  We’re settling into routines now, Pidge and me. She’s nursing really well, which is such a blessing. I can’t quite believe I’m coping. She’s still dainty, but strong, too, and with a gorgeous mop of dark hair, and her eyes are so big, taking everything in. Rika says she looks really bright – not that it matters, but it’s nice to hear. It feels like there is so much to tell you because she’s perfect and this is working, the two of us, and I’m feeling so much better now. My energy is coming back and she’s maki
ng me cheerful again, too. Everyone is being so kind and helpful and lovely. But it is you I want to thank, the two of you, because it was thinking about your decision about me that drove me to make my decision about her. I wouldn’t have known how to love her – not on my own, not like this – if it hadn’t been for the two of you showing me how it’s done. You love because your love is needed, right? And it doesn’t matter how that happened or what anyone else might say. You just love and that puts more love in the world. Anyone who says otherwise can go jump.

  But blether enough, the baby’s crying.

  All love,

  Felicity

  * * *

  From Birthwood,

  January 1973

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  Just a short note today. I sent off a package for you yesterday with the finally finished rag rug for you and a long newsy letter, but I had to write again today to tell you what Pidge has been up to. Reading! Would you believe it? So little but she’s picking it up so fast, like a duck to water. Or maybe a fish.

  Rika and I were busy at the table, working away on our latest leaflets for the girls on campus, and Pidge was tucked away under the table with a pillow and blanket. I thought that she’d fallen asleep, she was that quiet. But then out she sprang and right over to Bas to show him something. He was kneading bread at the counter and clapped his hands together to get all the flour off, which made Pidge laugh and sneeze, but all the while she was saying hat, hat, hat! Because, of course, she had sounded out the letters that sat under the drawing of a hat. Absolutely magic! So out came Bas’s notebook and the two of them sat down on the floor to make a list of H words, then B words and words for animals and things. You should have seen the two of them sitting like that on the rug. R – U – G. He told her that her mother had made it before she was born and I looked up, but didn’t say anything. Then he asked her to name the colours and they traced all the letters onto a blank page in his book. B for blue. Y for yellow. G for Green.