The Heart Beats in Secret

by Katie Munnik

  It’s a lovely location here. The lake isn’t very big – you can even swim right across it – but I haven’t even been brave enough yet for a swim. Just dipped my toes in. It’s lovely to be by the water. Reminds me a bit of Aberlady Bay. And there are freshwater mussels in the lake – is that strange? Bas calls them pocketbooks and says they’re a nice addition to soup. More Quebec surprises. Fish, I expected, but nothing with shells.

  The nights are still cool, and in the morning, there’s mist on the lake. There are birds, too – herons along the shore and mergansers and northern divers. They call them loons here. When I mentioned them to one of the other girls, she thought I was being poetic. It’s funny – speaking the same language and continually tripping up on all the little differences.

  She’s here on her own, too. Carole. I can’t quite figure her out. Feisty, but that’s just self-protection. She doesn’t try very hard to make friends. The midwife says she’s carrying twins and needs to be careful because twins can come early, but she’s restless, so she tends to walk a lot. I don’t think she should be alone, but she hasn’t taken kindly to my suggestions of company.

  There’s a family here, too. Draft-dodgers from the States, with the most adorable toddler. And a new girl arrived a few days ago. Marie. She’s very young, but Rika says that happens. Apparently, you can get married at fourteen. I shudder at the thought, but hey ho, that’s Quebec. New place, new customs. Her husband is a friend of Bas, and they’re talking of staying, once their kid is born. They’ve been drawing up plans for a cabin and looking at stove catalogues. Rika says she’ll get us all organized to help sew curtains and bedding, and Marie is so excited she can barely keep her feet on the ground. We’re all feeling a bit big-sisterly towards her, I think, and maybe a little green-eyed that she’s got a solid man and a place to root in. Well, here’s to happiness and hopes for the future.

  I’m copying out a recipe that I think will make you both smile and suit you fine over a cup of tea. Bas says that a teacup should work fine for measuring. Enjoy!

  Cranberry bannock

  3 cups flour

  1 teaspoon salt

  1 tablespoon baking powder

  1½ cups water

  1 cup berries or diced apples

  Mix the dry ingredients, then add the water and stir loosely before adding the berries. Tip into a skillet and, with wet fingers, pat out the batter to the edges. Takes about twenty minutes to cook in a hot oven. Slather with butter as you like and think of me.

  Lots of love,

  Felicity

  5

  ‘YOU HAD ANY ROUND LIGAMENT PAIN YET? SMACKED crotch, it feels like. A real bitch.’ Carole had a way of dropping words like plates, and Rika always smiled. Not like it was a joke. More like Carole was sweet.

  We were together in the farmhouse and I couldn’t relax. It might have been the rain or maybe it was Carole. She and I sat on floor cushions, doing tailor-sit stretches Rika had showed us that morning. She said they’d be helpful.

  Carole’s voice broke into a groan. ‘Ma-aan, this sucks. You just wait, Felicity. It’ll be your turn next.’ She rubbed her hand against her pubic bone, and made a horrible noise.

  ‘No one said it was going to be easy,’ Rika chuckled. ‘But you can be strong.’

  She’d say these things and they made sense. She could bring peace into a conversation just like that and I thought she was remarkable, but then Carole would say something else ugly and Rika reached out for her, massaging a leg, a shoulder, the stretch of her belly. I looked away.

  The wind threw more rain against the farmhouse and the chimney whistled. No one had gone outside since breakfast, and Bas had kept the teapot filled. Eleta spread newsprint and crayons on the table and Soleil and James drew trees, castles and dragons. On the sofa, Bethanne balanced Ember on her knees, their faces close and absolutely eye to eye, Ember making soft, open-mouthed mewing sounds.

  ‘She’s perfectly lovely,’ I said. Bethanne looked up and smiled, then patted the sofa beside her. I stopped stretching and, as I eased myself to my feet, Carole threw her foot out and kicked me hard on the pubic bone.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, smiling. ‘Foot cramp. You got to work them out, you know, or it’s more pain and agony for the preggo girl.’ I swallowed and gave her my stoniest glare, then shifted out of her way.

  Rika hadn’t seen. She couldn’t have or she’d have said something. Surely. Bas took a cookbook down from the shelf.

  ‘How do donuts sound?’ he asked. ‘Do you think dragons like donuts?’

  Soleil nodded, laughing.

  ‘Yes, I think so too,’ Bas said. ‘And it’s that sort of day, isn’t it? Hans here used to be a fan of donuts, if I remember correctly.’

  ‘And what is this? Bas, maker of donuts? What about Bas and the revolution? Bas waving the workers’ flag. Now Bas and the apple peeler? The rocking chair? Is that it? I didn’t expect to find you in a nursery.’

  ‘Revolutions need nurseries, too,’ Annie said. Hans shrugged and laughed.

  ‘That is certainly true,’ Hans said, catching up Marie’s hand and holding it to his lips. ‘Nurseries and donuts. And love, too.’

  ‘We all find our work,’ Eleta said.

  Hans smiled. ‘Thank you, my friend. I am particularly glad of your work. You and Rika are so good. We didn’t know where to go, in the end.’

  ‘I’m just glad I have a site cleared already.’ Bas said. ‘That will save you a lot of work with the brush when the rain stops. But we would have found space for you anyway.’

  ‘You building a town, then? Carving out a new country for a new generation here in the trees?’

  ‘Not quite. Some folk just drop by for a visit. But it’s home for us. The only place we’re going from here is deeper.’

  Rika looked up and caught Bas’s eyes. ‘I like that. That’s good.’

  Bas scooped flour into a bowl and measured salt and baking powder. Then he grated in some nutmeg and the room smelled warm.

  ‘Do you have a workshop here?’ Hans asked. ‘If we can stay, I’d like to do some work. Make a cradle. Maybe some bookshelves. And what about a sign for you? You could stick it out by the tracks. We weren’t too sure we were in the right place when the train stopped.’

  Bas rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Not sure what you’d put on it. The train men just know us as the freaks on the farm by the lake.’

  ‘When I asked for the stop, I left out freaks.’

  ‘And they stopped anyways? Fancy that.’

  ‘But I could make one that said “The Camp”. That would be fine, right?’

  ‘Might look a bit odd written out.’

  ‘Or vague,’ Rika said. ‘What about using the lake’s name?’

  ‘That might confuse folk looking for the village,’ Bas said. ‘A new name might be good. What do you think, Carole? You must be thinking about names these days.’

  ‘I’m not. It’s not like I’m keeping them. They can be A and B until they’re adopted. I can do that, right?’

  Rika just smiled and said she could do what she liked. Bas cracked eggs against the side of the bowl and stirred them into his batter.

  ‘The farm must have had a name before you arrived?’ Hans pressed.

  ‘Just the family name,’ Bas said. ‘MacDonald’s Point. But they’ve been gone a long time. Maybe it’s time for something new.’

  There’s a moment in a conversation like this, when you hit on a suggestion and you know that it’s right – absolutely perfect, in fact, like it always was the answer and you’ve remembered it somehow – but instead of speaking up so everyone can hear, you hold it for yourself, just for a moment so that before it’s real and everyone knows it, it can be yours. I watched Carole, flat on the floor and looking up at the roof beams, blinking, her lashes spiked, her nose peppered with freckles. Just a kid. Scared and scratching out.

  ‘What about Birthwood?’ I said, my voice lidded.

  Rika turned towards me and smi
led.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s … apt.’

  Carole rolled over and looked right at me, but she wasn’t fierce now. She smiled, and Bas smiled, too, putting his wooden spoon down on the table. The knock and settle of wood against wood.

  ‘Yes,’ he echoed. ‘It’s just right. Couldn’t pick a better name. It’s a new beginning.’

  Of course, Dr Ballater should know. I’d have liked to let him know that I remembered the name of his childhood home and was putting it to good use. That I remembered our chats and his stories. That it hadn’t all been forgotten or wasted. I could write this down and send it to him. One airmail envelope and then he’d know. I could even tell him about the new kind of community we were trying out, a simple place where the war really was over and anyone might put down roots. I could tell him Birthwood was a new beginning. But it wouldn’t work. I didn’t want to hurt him. And I’d have to mention why I was there and then tell the story of Asher. Then while I was at it, I’d write to Asher, too, and tell him. I’d have to. Once you start these things, they grow.

  6

  I FOUND IT ALL EXTRAORDINARY. THESE PEOPLE LIVING together but separate, too, building their homes and measuring time in seasons, not shifts. I’d fallen into a new world. Mornings baking and afternoons in the garden. All day, the sound of hammering was loud between the trees and, at the dinner table, we talked about fireplaces, shingles, freedom and peace. I had time to read and wander and nap. I stopped thinking about bombs and learned to dodge Carole’s moods and swerved away when I needed to. The days were warm and the forest path inviting. On Sunday mornings, we all sat together on a flat rock by the lake. No one preached, though sometimes Bas told a story. It was enough.

  Morning and Rika asked for my help.

  ‘I need to redo the birthing packs,’ she said. ‘The ones I have will be expiring soon so they need to be done.’

  ‘Are you expecting someone?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really. But I wasn’t expecting Hans and Marie either. It happens. Sometimes, people just show up ready to have a baby. And babies don’t wait for equipment to be ready.’

  She hung up her tea towel and we headed over to the birthing house together. Bethanne and Ember had moved into the farmhouse, leaving the birthing house empty again. I liked the idea of it sitting empty, waiting. Belonging to everyone.

  She opened the curtains and all the windows and turned on the radio. A CBC voice talked about an upcoming interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from their hotel-room bed in Montreal. All HAIR PEACE BED PEACE, whatever that meant. I wondered if there would be singing or only politics.

  ‘Here’s the list of equipment,’ Rika said. ‘Just take a good poke around the room and I think you’ll find where everything is kept. You can set things out on the table and then we’ll make up the sterile packs together.’

  ‘How on earth do you sterilize things out here? Just soak everything in Zephiran?’

  ‘Not everything, though some bits need it. For most instruments and all the towels and cloths, heat is sufficient. I wrap things in heavy paper, truss the package up with string and bake it in a hot oven for two hours. That does the trick nicely. You just need to remember to put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven so the pack doesn’t scorch. And, of course, wash up thoroughly before you touch anything.’

  ‘You should have seen how they taught us to scrub at the hospital. A full two minutes and up to the elbow with Matron standing over your shoulder watching.’

  ‘I think I can trust you to be sensible and clean. These packs will last for a week and then we redo them, so you’ll need to mark the date on them clearly. It can be easy to lose track out here.’

  The birthing house would be Carole’s next. I heard her up at night in the bunkhouse. Feet on floorboards. Opening and closing the windows. I lay in bed listening and watching the moon through the thin curtain. What Asher would call a woven moon. Asher, who liked Basho. At Expo, he’d bought a pocket paperback in the Japanese pavilion, and read poems to me beside a fountain. People walked past, girls in their miniskirts, pigeons pecked around our feet, and I saw them all, but I heard Asher.

  Mountain path –

  Sun rising

  Through plum scent

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes! There’s nothing clever there. Or obscure. Just a moment snatched from time.’

  I dipped my hand in the fountain, nodding because he didn’t expect a reply.

  ‘He places it all so well. An exact moment. Those plum trees long gone to dust, but we have them, don’t we?’

  I lifted my hand, listening, happy, watching the drops collect on my fingers, fall.

  ‘He catches them, gives them to us, and we participate in their reality, proving we are … alive. Whammo. Alive.’

  Stethoscope, haemostats, scissors on the table.

  Sponge clamps, speculum, foetoscope, scales.

  Rika showed me how to fold the towels and gowns, the gauze pads and cover sheets to be sterilized in the oven along with the instruments. It felt good to be working again with white things, metal things, clean and hygienic, and odd suddenly to be wearing army boots. Since I’d left Montreal, I hadn’t felt like a nurse. Almost since I left Scotland, because in Montreal, we didn’t wear capes, and no one recognized me on the street. Even on my way to the hospital, I might have easily turned down another street and been someone else altogether. Maybe I did, and who was I here anyway, in army boots and my growing hair, this tumbling belly full of what? Who knew? Who.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Rika said, reaching for the roll of gauze that tumbled unravelling across the floor. ‘I’ll get it for you.’

  Then she asked me about Asher. Or rather, about ‘the baby’s father’. If I wanted to call him, to let him know where I was. I didn’t. Because I didn’t know where he was. Not really.

  He left the city before I did, before we were over. He had to; his brother was ill in New York. His brother was dying. He would come back, of course he would. He might be a while. His brother would die.

  He sent me those words on postcards. The Statue of Liberty. Central Park. Cherry blossom. In longer letters, he told me about his parents, their history, their hunger. He told me about watching them holding his brother’s hands, about their hungry eyes, their clutching hands. His mother was German and couldn’t understand what the nurses said. His father, full of fear, refused to speak German to her in the hospital, just in case someone heard. Neither one had spoken Yiddish since they were children, but now over the starched sheets and gripping fingers, she whispered bubeleh bubeleh bubeleh. Darling, Asher wrote. That’s what it meant, and they were all scared.

  I left Montreal before he knew. No. Before he found out. Before he came back and before I might tell him. Because I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want to share. Maybe I didn’t want to need him. I didn’t want his trailing families, or worn-out history like stones in rivers, stones in pockets. I didn’t want old countries and languages, old wars heavy in my veins, my baby weighed down already. We needed to be quick and light, to skim across the shining surface. We needed to get away.

  And what’s a father anyway? Only the beginning. And after that? A fairy tale. A useful story. Is that right? If he’s gone? And if he’s there?

  Because Stanley fits in here somewhere, doesn’t he? I couldn’t really ask Rika about that. Or explain how, despite the high-school rumours, I still believed that Stanley was everything. Wasn’t he? Everything. As good as could be. As good a chance of happiness as any mother could find. That’s how I understood it. And my mother said nothing more. In the evenings, they would sit together on the bench behind the house. She leaned on him, her head on his shoulder, his hair caught by the wind and I remember standing behind them in the doorway, my hand on the wooden frame, aware of the grain beneath my touch and the continuing sound of the sea. I stood and watched, but they didn’t move. They never did. I thought I understood.

  But we can never see things
as they were, can we? In the days that came before us. We can look as long as we like, but we’ll only see things as we are. A daughter, looking. And now, a lonely almost-mother, looking back.

  ‘You and Carole are in the same boat,’ Rika said. She handed me the gauze, the look in her eye necessary, nursed.

  ‘Because we’re housing bastards?’

  ‘Not quite how I meant it. Because you’re on the brink. Is that fair? So much is changing for both of you, and whatever decisions you make, the changes are real.’

  ‘I’m keeping my baby.’

  ‘Are you? That’s big. Exciting. We can talk about this. But I wasn’t asking yet. I only wanted to say something about Carole and about you.’

  She leaned against the tabletop and folded her arms over her flat middle. I could see her taking a moment before she spoke. Leaves brushed the roof of the birthing house, a soothing sound. Something to listen for when it was my turn. ‘You’re sensible,’ Rika said. ‘And she’s scared. Of course, you probably are, too. That’s natural. But I’m not sure that Carole’s going to be able to help you out. I’ve seen you watching her and trying to tag along on walks. It’s okay. She hasn’t talked with me about it. But I want to warn you that it might not help. She’s too much on edge. See if Marie wants company. She’s not going to be able to do a whole lot to help Hans build the cabin. It might be nice if the two of you could spend some time together.’

  Driving a wedge – was that it? Or was she keeping Carole to herself? It wasn’t as though Carole was the best of company anyway. I’d only wanted someone to walk with. A dog would have worked just as well. Better. He’d be faithful and confident. Make me feel a little safer among the trees.

  But I was managing on my solo walks just fine now. I’d found a path that led around the shoreline and spotted some good mushrooms I might pick for Bas: fairy rings and mica caps. A foraging walk is always a gift and besides, it was a gentler hike than up the hill. Carole made it clear the lookout was hers. Told me that she’d been the one to heave all the stones into the firepit, that the seat was perfectly placed so she could look down at the lake and that she wasn’t going to share. I didn’t know what to say. Absolutely couldn’t imagine shifting stones like that whilst pregnant. Of course, she had pains. She might have ruptured something. Or possibly that was the point.