A NURSE, her elbows planted on a table, her chin in her hands, looked up as Clare came through the door of the YMCA. The nurse reached for her cap on the table in front of her and set it on her head. “The eye clinic is down the hall, to the right,” she said.
“I … I’m not here for the eye clinic,” Clare said.
“Oh. Are you here to see a patient?” the nurse said, looking down at a list. She was very young, her plump cheeks peppered with acne.
“No. I’d like to talk to Mrs. Beddow.”
“She’s at a relief committee meeting. She should be back soon.” The nurse glanced up at the clock above the door. “If you want to come back in an hour …”
“I’ll wait,” Clare said.
Clare sank into a wooden chair, sweating in her wool coat. The clock ticked torpidly. The young nurse studied a medical book, thick with anatomical illustrations, coiled intestines, fat red hearts. Clare got up and walked outside, breathing in the moist air. A horse-drawn cart passed, filled with fish. The memory of her cart ride to Camp Hill Hospital, the pain, the smell of fish and blood, swept her. She darted back inside and to her chair.
A few minutes later the door behind the table opened with a gust of varnish and carbolic acid, and an older nurse, no taller than a child but wearing a Red Cross pinafore, strode out. Clare could see the gymnasium beyond, military tarps strung between rows of stretcher beds, hunched figures in housecoats.
“Kathleen, you can work with Nurse Wainwright,” the older nurse said to the young woman at the table.
The young girl got up, straightened her cap, and went back through the gymnasium doors. The older nurse noticed Clare and pulled herself up to her comically short height. “Do you need help?” She didn’t wait for Clare’s answer. “These young ones,” she nodded in the direction of the gymnasium, “aren’t always thorough. Most of them are still students. The doctors too. Some only in the first year of their studies at Dalhousie. Getting more than they bargained for.” She sat down at the table. “The eye clinic is down the hall.”
At that moment Mrs. Beddow bustled in. “Almost balmy out there, Mrs. P.,” she announced to the nurse, hanging her tam on a hook by the door. Nodding at Clare without recognition, she set off down the hall.
“Mrs. Beddow,” Clare called, getting up. “It’s Clare, Clare Holmes.” The exertion of striding after the older woman left Clare light-headed. She leaned on the wall and drew a deep breath.
Mrs. Beddow turned. “Oh.” She took Clare in, her double chins, which descended all the way to her puritan collar, wobbling. Her hair, coiled in a bun, was streaked iron grey.
“May I talk to you?” Clare asked.
Mrs. Beddow’s office was in a small activity room. Cardboard boxes and files piled on a table pushed against the wall. Clare sat across from her, at a military desk, which took up most of the room.
“Are you all right?” Mrs. Beddow said.
“Yes!” Clare said brightly.
“Your injury?”
“Oh, that. Doesn’t hurt.” Clare waved her hand. “They took it out.”
“Like so many.” Mrs. Beddow laid her hands on the desktop.
“But it’s fine. Perfectly healed. I’m fine. I’d like to leave as soon as I can,” Clare said.
Mrs. Beddow leaned back. Her chins sank deeper into her collar. The dark hair on her upper lip bristled as she pursed her mouth. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“Wise?” Clare was sweating again, though she had taken her coat off and folded it in her lap.
“Perhaps you should give yourself a little more time.” Mrs. Beddow studied her with steel grey eyes.
Clare smoothed the wool nap of her coat.
“Time to adjust,” Mrs. Beddow went on. “You’ve been through a lot. Now may not be the time to take on the challenge of overseas work.”
“Please,” Clare said. She could feel tears gathering. “I need to go.” Small spots, like the lights from the cut glass pitcher, flickered in her vision.
Mrs. Beddow leaned forward. “The Red Cross has too much work to do with our wounded men over there. We can’t worry about our volunteers.”
Clare felt the room closing in around her, the antiseptic air stalling in her lungs. “But —”
“Come back to see me in a few months.” Mrs. Beddow picked up a file. “Meanwhile, there’s plenty to do here.”
Clare headed straight up to her room when she got back to Rose’s to avoid Geraldine. She’d be irritatingly curious about where Clare had gone.
Clare climbed the dark wood stairs, counting the winged cherubs flying through golden garlands on the blue wallpaper. When she got to her room she lay down on her bed in her coat and boots. Her dream of seeing Leo was moving beyond her grasp. It was preposterous that she’d even considered it. The women of Grafton didn’t leave Nova Scotia. She saw, as if from a raven’s eye, a woman leaning on the rail of a ship, in her blue-and-green coat and red cloche hat. And her black patch. She closed her eye. She would think of something.
When Clare woke in the night, tiny nurses in pinafores and caps rushed back and forth across her night table.
The next morning she woke, shivering, still in her coat and boots. She swung her feet onto the floor and instinctively reached for her laudanum before remembering that she had almost emptied it in the night. She turned it upside down in her palm, just enough to leave a faint reddish-brown stain. She licked up the last bitter taste.
IT TOOK HER A LONG TIME to get ready. She sat at her mirror, avoiding her own gaze, twisting her hair up, listening to Celia’s scales.
When she finally went downstairs. Geraldine’s empty porridge bowl lay on the draining board. Clare left the house quietly.
THE WROUGHT IRON GATES at the glassworks were closed but not locked. Clare pushed them open. No smoke coiled from the red brick chimneys of the long low building. One of the workshops was boarded up but the rest of the glass had been replaced. She looked at the fresh window of the packing room, innocently reflecting back the white sky. She pressed her palm to her aching eye socket.
The glassworks was deserted but a relentless pounding rang through the corridor between the shops.
In an empty workshop, Clare found Jack Bell hammering on a glass press. He looked up at the sound of her boots and straightened, wincing. He was thinner than when she’d worked here, his pants cinched with a belt, the leather tail dangling. He looked annoyed to have been interrupted, taking in Clare’s eye patch without recognition. Then he narrowed his eyes and rubbed his unshaved jaw. “Clare! I see that you’re back on your feet.”
Clare shoved her cold hands deep into her coat pockets. She’d forgotten her gloves this morning. “How are things here?”
“Oh, as good as can be expected.” Jack banged a couple more times on the press. “We fared better than a lot of places.” His voice broke and he covered it with a cough. His eyes were red-rimmed.
“Jack, what’s wrong?” Clare said.
“Ross,” he said, his shoulders collapsing.
“Oh no.” Clare flexed cold fingers.
“We heard last week. Shrapnel. Said he didn’t suffer.”
“I’m so very sorry,” Clare said, putting her hand on his arm.
Jack shoved a scarred hand in his pocket and pulled out a dirty hanky. “Thelma will never get over it. She nursed him through measles, chickenpox. Never imagined he’d die at the hand of a Hun.” He blew his nose and cleared his throat. “The men are starting to come around asking for work.”
“And the girls?”
“Some have been busy with family members. Molly’s family lost their house. She’s down to Antigonish with an aunt.” Jack wiped his hands on his hanky and shoved it back in his pocket. “But, most, like Geraldine, will be back. If you know anyone who wants your job, tell ‘em to come and talk to me.”
“My job?”
Jack picked at the stubble on his chin. “I just … are you actually thinking of coming back?”
“I still ha
ve one good eye.” Clare said. Ants were crawling up her spine. She couldn’t go back to Grafton. She couldn’t go back to Rose’s and simply wait in her bedroom for the horses and the trains and the injured to pour out of her flimsy mind.
“You don’t look well, Clare.” Jack ran one hand through the tuft of his hair.
Clare pulled her coat closed. She still hadn’t sewn the button back on. “I haven’t been sleeping properly, that’s all. But, the doctor — he says that will improve.”
Jack looked skeptical.
“I just want things to get back to normal,” Clare said.
“Don’t we all.” Jack picked up his wrench. “The war’s not just over there, Clare.” He pointed to the harbour. “We have enemies everywhere. Why do you think this explosion happened in our most important war port?”
“It was an accident, the two ships colliding. No one knew one was full of explosives.”
“That’s what they want us to think.” Jack banged the press a couple of times.
“They?” Clare’s feet felt heavy and cold.
“It was the work of German spies, nothing less. All part of the plan. Take out Halifax, interrupt the supply chain.” He looked around the workshop. His leathery old neck turned red. “I ask you, what’s the good of all this?” The wrench hung listlessly in his hand. “I believed in this, more than anything else.” He waved the wrench around the shop. “Glass, technology. But this — this bloody war wouldn’t have been possible without it either. Ross …” he coughed again and stared at her bitterly. “Ross’s school friend, Alistair, was invalided home. Came to see us. He told me about it. Passchendaele was the closest thing to hell I ever heard of.”
The back of Clare’s neck prickled. Passchendaele. Leo was there.
“Surely you’d rather go home.” He blinked at her. “Where was it again, Kentville?”
“Grafton,” Clare said.
“Go back, get away from this ruin.” He nodded towards the city.
“I want to come back to work,” Clare said. She would save enough to buy a full passage to England.
Jack sighed. “If the company had taken my advice and installed plate glass works, we wouldn’t have to be bringing in window glass from Massachusetts. We’d be run off our feet.” He looked down at the glass press. “Think it over, Clare. If you have to, come back in a few weeks. Not before.”
CLARE STEPPED OFF THE TRAM near the docks. She couldn’t bear going back to Rose’s. A fine mist fell out of the fog, clinging to her eyelashes and working its way through the seams of her coat. A whistle sounded down the inlet. Another warship making its way into port, the men already tasting the whiskey of the Halifax bars, no doubt. She headed up the hill.
A church bell began to ring. People were filing in the front door for vespers at the Lutheran Church. A tall man with his collar pulled high headed towards her without turning up the path to the church door.
“Miss Holmes?” he said.
He seemed to have retreated into his coat. She had no idea who he was.
“Fred. Fred Baker, from the glassworks.” He moved closer, as if trying to get a better look at her. She stepped back, taking in his blue eyes and pale eyebrows — the glass-blower. He’d brought his beakers and flasks to her the morning of the explosion.
“I’ve been wondering how you fared.”
She gave him a puzzled look.
“I was on the cart that took you to the hospital.”
Suddenly she remembered leaning into a leather apron. The smell of fish. Nausea. She wished she could walk on. She was suddenly very tired. Her head felt light.
Something in her face must have made him take her elbow. “Would you like to sit down?”
“No, I’m fine. I just — I want to get home.”
“There’s a tea room nearby. Why don’t we dry off?”
The yellow light of the tea room spilled invitingly out onto the wet road. The man’s hand on her elbow steadied her. She allowed him to steer her across the street.
The tea room was empty except for two elderly women at a back table. Fred Baker pulled out a chair near the window at the same moment that a waitress shuffled out of the back with a tea tray. She clattered it onto the table where the women were sitting, then headed over to take their order. Her hair was almost white and she moved like an old woman, but her face was unlined. She couldn’t have been over thirty. “We’re out of scones, all we’ve got is sponge.” She met Clare’s one-eyed stare. “It’s almost closing time.”
Fred struggled to find the handle of the pot under its lumpy tea cozy, nearly tipping the whole thing into Clare’s lap. She remembered now the pale golden hair on the backs of his hands when he’d handed her his glassware. She shouldn’t have agreed to tea.
The woman shuffled off and returned to drop a plate of sponge cake on the table between them. They ate in silence.
“Are you feeling better?” Fred Baker asked. He had only eaten half of his stale sponge.
“I was, am fine.” She looked down at the cake plate, pressed glass, a pattern of leaves and acorns. She hadn’t felt like eating much in the last days.
“The glassworks is still closed,” he said.
“Yes, I know. I was there today.”
He leaned in, face alert. She looked at him for the first time. He had a nose with a high bridge and thick blonde hair, which was retreating at his temples.
“Jack Bell says it will open in a couple of weeks,” she said.
He smiled. He hadn’t smiled the day she checked his glass. He had white, straight teeth and crow’s feet, suggesting that at one time he’d smiled more.
“That is good news,” he said. “The work at the school is coming to an end.”
“The school?” she said.
“I have been helping at Chebucto School.”
“Helping?” she said.
“I … ended up there after dropping you at the hospital.”
She searched her memory of that morning. Geraldine beside her, and the glass-makers, their torn shirts wrapped around burned hands. And the man behind her, holding her steady, his grip tightening as the cart bumped over cobbles. He’d taken her into the hospital. This man. Fred Baker.
“It’s where the bodies were brought,” he said gently.
“Yes,” she said with a shudder. Her eye was aching.
The two women at the back of the tea room got up. Cold wet air swirled in the door as they stepped out.
Fred observed Clare thoughtfully. “You’re coming back to the glassworks?”
“Yes,” she said, straightening her fork on her plate. “I need to get back to work.”
“You are alone?” he said.
“My fiancé is in France.”
“The waiting is hard?”
The white-haired woman started cleaning up the back table, banging cups and saucers onto the tray. She looked sideways at them. “I need to close up.”
Clare glanced outside. The fog had drawn down the dusk. In the mirror of the tea room window, sitting across a table from each other, a man and woman who could have been the perfect picture of sweethearts. Except for her black patch. She started. “I must go.”
“Can I walk you anywhere?” Fred wound on his scarf. It was poorly knit, a simple stitch in rough navy wool. Someone must have made it for him, maybe his mother. He had a bachelor’s air of self-sufficiency.
“No. I’m fine. I am on my way to Walnut Street. I’m on my way home.”
“I’m going that way.”
They walked in silence. Since she knew almost nothing about him and he didn’t talk much about himself, any questions she could ask seemed too personal. Had he always been alone? What was the faint accent she caught from time to time?
“Where do you come from?” she asked at last.
“Ontario. Hamilton. My father and I worked in the glassworks there.”
“And where was your father from?”
He stopped and turned towards her. “Lauscha.”
“Lauscha?�
�� she said. Should she know that place? Perhaps it was one of those obscure countries in northeast Europe. She never could remember their names.
“Germany,” he said without intonation.
“Oh.”
“We left when I was young.”
She was sorry now she had asked him something that made him uncomfortable. Nothing was ever simple these days. An innocent question, where are you from or how is your family, could be painful. And no one ever asked about the future. As if it was bad luck to make plans. Instead they were all to turn their shoulders to the task at hand, to fundraise and ration, to knit more scarves and socks. And wait.
“Here we are,” Fred said.
They had stopped at the corner of Argyle and Prince Street, at the School of Art.
“It was damaged during the explosion, boarded up,” he said. “And then it was full of coffins.”
Clare remembered them, overflowing into the street in front of the building the day she left for home. They were all gone now. Filled. Scattered among the town’s graveyards, Fairview, Camp Hill, or in the rows at Olivet where the unclaimed lay, identified only by a number on their gravestone.
Light shone from the arched windows, which had been boarded up after the explosion. Fred looked up at the second storey.
“Why are you stopping here?” Clare asked.
“I’m taking a course.”
“An art course?”
“Sort of. The new director, Mr. Lismer, he started a class in the fall. It’s in the evenings, after work.” He shuffled a little impatiently and glanced back up again.
A dull pain pulsed through Clare’s eye. Dr. Perkins had said she shouldn’t be feeling pain this long after the injury. But it throbbed at unpredictable times. When she was tired or when she was excited. She pressed her palm to the eye patch.
Fred looked at her with concern. “Why don’t you come in and warm up before you continue on?”
THE SCHOOL SMELLED OF paper and graphite, and the cheap soap they used to mop the halls.
“I’ll just stay a few minutes.” She stamped her cold feet on the carpet inside the front door. Men’s voices drifted down from the second floor.
“My class is upstairs,” Fred motioned. “You might be interested in what we’re doing.”
Dazzle Patterns Page 11
