He must have carried her down the stairs. Clare pictured this stranger who had delivered her to a hospital for the second time.
Clare was pulling on a clean hospital gown just as her mother appeared at the door.
Ada rushed to her bedside. “I came down as soon as I heard. I wouldn’t have known at all if Geraldine hadn’t gotten word to us. Apparently a Mr. Baker from the glassworks went to the house to tell her.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve been so … ill.”
“They would only let me in to see you for a short visit yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” Clare said.
“You were delirious.” Ada pushed damp hair from Clare’s forehead. “I knew it wasn’t right for you to come back to the city so soon. Surely now you’ll come home with me? I’ve brought your things, we don’t even have to stop at Rose’s.”
Clare felt a rush of sickness. She would never be able to convince Dr. Robson in Grafton to give her more laudanum. Ada was turning her wedding band round and round.
“Has Mrs. Smithson got over that flu?” Clare said.
“Yes, she managed to make it to knitting group last week. Though she loses track of her stitches, poor dear, and doesn’t get much done.”
“Losing track of stitches …” Clare repeated sleepily. “And … Larry … is he busy with the first calves yet?” The low sun flickered through a copse of spruce.
Mrs. Winston appeared at the door, smoothing her apron.
“Right now, mustn’t tire her out, Mrs. Holmes.” She patted Ada’s hand. “Why don’t you stop by tomorrow morning? Missy will be ready to go by then, I expect.”
The nurse watched Ada disappear down the hall and stepped to Clare’s bedside. “Dr. Cox said he would like to see you tomorrow,” she said primly. She pulled a card out of her uniform pocket, Dr. G.H. Cox, Ophthalmologist, 75 Gottingen Street.
On the back scrawled in a heavily leaning script, Appointment, enucleation follow-up, 11:00 a.m., March 2.
THE WAITING ROOM of the doctor’s office was crammed. A child of about three fidgeted on his mother’s lap. One eye, like Clare’s, had been removed. The other was half-closed. He swung his head around when Clare and Ada entered the room, lifting his chin to get a better look.
An old woman knitted, a ball of red wool in her lap. Her hands disappeared in the sleeves of her coat, two sizes too big, from the post-explosion clothing line at the Green Lantern. The woman looked up briefly at Clare, took in her eye patch, and turned back to the socks. Another pair to send overseas. As if a steady stream of freshly knitted socks would be enough to bring the men back.
“Clare Holmes?”
Ada rose too.
“I don’t need you to come with me,” Clare said.
“Of course I’ll come with you. You’re still weak and the doctor will need to tell me how to care for you when we get home.”
“Please. Just wait here, Mother. He wants to see me alone.”
Her mother remained standing, the veins reddening on her cheeks.
“I’ll ask him to see you at the end of the appointment,” Clare said.
CLARE HELD HER BREATH to ward off the smell of Dr. Cox’s breath as he looked into her good eye with an ophthalmoscope, grunted approvingly, then sat back and directed her attention to the letter charts on the far wall of the office.
“You have perfect vision in this eye,” he said. “Too bad. If you were wearing glasses you might have fared better when the window shattered.”
He leaned towards her again, removed the eye patch, and lifted her upper and lower eyelid gently. “This has healed well,” he said. “Are you having pain? Is that why you needed the laudanum?”
“Not exactly,” she said.
He sat back in his chair, considering her.
“The doctor at home in Grafton said I have a nervous disorder. He said it would go away once I got some sleep. That’s what the drops were for. But it hasn’t gone away.”
“And why did he say you had a nervous disorder?” he said.
“I see things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Visions.”
“Frightening visions?”
“Frightening because I don’t know when they’re coming and I can’t always make them go away.” Clare studied the pattern of tiles on the floor, black and white squares with tiny black diamonds at their intersections.
“But they do?”
“Yes. Eventually.” She looked up briefly.
“They’re bad dreams.” The doctor sighed. “A lot of people are having bad dreams these days. Some people can hardly sleep for grief.”
“I see them when I’m awake. People appear in my room or in the drawing room or in the street.”
“People you know?”
“Kind of.” She described the girl flying from the barn roof, the tiny armies of patients from the Camp Hill Hospital marching over her dressing table.
“And horses. I see little horses.”
“You went home after you left the hospital?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And what did you do there?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t read or sew. My eye tired so easily. I spent a lot of time in bed. If I could just get some more drops …”
“Did they make the people go away?”
“No. But they made them less frightening.”
Dr. Cox regarded her with interest. “I have seen this a few times, when I was training in Toronto.”
“I’m not going crazy?”
“Maybe you are. But your visions are a medical condition,” he laughed, “called Charles Bonnet syndrome. More important for now is the fact that you have just recovered from opiate withdrawal. Probably you will find yourself wishing you could have it again. But I can assure you it will not do you any good.”
“I don’t understand,” Clare said.
“Sometimes when a piece of the body is removed the brain still senses it’s there,” Dr. Cox said. “We call it phantom limb when patients continue to feel pain in an amputated arm or leg. When sight is lost, the patient can see things that aren’t there. It is a phantom eye.” He tapped his fingers lightly on his desk. Under his faint smile was the same pleased expression Leo wore when he found a fossil. “Strangely, the visions are often of people, elaborately detailed and miniature.”
“Will they go away?” Clare said, her throat tightening.
“Sometimes they do. Sometimes it gets worse.”
Clare dropped her head in her hands, pushing hard against the black patch, where tears were pooling. Her good eye seemed to have given up crying. “I can’t live like this,” she sobbed, stopping herself from adding without laudanum.
Dr. Cox looked down at his notes. “What did you do before?”
She looked up miserably. “I worked at the glass factory checking flaws.”
“I hear the factory is closed for a time,” he said.
The door of the consulting room banged open. Ada was standing there, her face flushed. The nurse darted in behind her, looking flustered. “She insisted.”
“Of course I insisted,” Ada said. “I heard her cry. Clare needs her mother.”
“Please sit down, Mrs. Holmes.” Dr. Cox pulled an empty chair from the wall.
“She wants to take me home to Grafton,” Clare said. “She thinks it was living in the city that led to my … illness.” Clare wiped her eye with the heel of one hand and squared her shoulders. “I can’t bear the thought of returning. There is nothing for me there.”
Ada sat perched on the edge of the chair. “Clare’s been very ill,” she said primly as if Clare hadn’t spoken. “Her father and I wish her to come home.”
“Mrs. Holmes, do you know what is wrong with Clare?” Dr. Cox said.
Clare looked anxiously from the doctor to her mother. If her mother knew, she would be even more determined to take over Clare’s life.
“She has a nervous disorder. Because of what … happened to her,” Ada said.
“Sh
e has nothing of the sort.”
Clare stiffened.
“A bad flu put her in the hospital. I believe she has fully recovered from that illness.” Dr. Cox glanced at Clare shrewdly. “In fact she’s suffering from a neurological disorder, a result of losing her eye.”
“Exactly what our own doctor at home said. A nervous disorder from the emotional trauma.”
“No, not emotional trauma.” Dr. Cox shifted his ophthalmoscope from hand to hand. “Physical trauma. She is having visions, hallucinations.”
Ada leaned forward from the edge of her chair. “What the blazes?” She turned to Clare, her hands on her knees. “You see things?” Without waiting for an answer she swung back to Dr. Cox. “Stuff and nonsense. She needs rest. At home,” Ada leaned conspiratorially towards the doctor, “I was in a bad way once, when Clare was small.” Ada sniffed. “All I needed was rest.”
Dr. Cox swivelled his chair towards Clare. “Perhaps you might think of this as internal sight rather than hallucinating. At any rate, what seems to help is giving the remaining eye something to do.” He turned back to Ada. “My professional opinion is that Clare would have a better prognosis if she stayed in Halifax, where she can return to work or find some other occupation to keep her mind busy.”
Ada stood up, gripping her purse straps tightly.
“I will have Clare back in the office next week to make sure the flu doesn’t recur.” Dr. Cox rose from his chair. “I want to show you something.” He led them to the back wall of the office, where a tall cabinet stood, and pulled out a low drawer. Lying, each in its small square of space in a wooden box were twenty glass eyes in green, blue, brown, amber. Ada stepped back. In repose, the white glass discs with their vivid irises had tipped slightly at different angles, as if searching each other out. Released from the dark drawer, they scanned the room wildly. One, steely grey, stared straight up at Ada accusingly.
“As you can see, none of these is anything like your eye,” Dr. Cox said, running a hand through the eyes that clinked together. “But this is a meagre collection. We were low to start, what with all the men returning from France needing eyes.” He closed the drawer gently. “Most of our glass eye supply was brought from Germany before the war. They are superb.” He opened his office and ushered them out. “There is a fund available from the relief committee. We expect an oculist from Boston any day. He’ll bring more to choose from. Be sure to check back or look for the announcement in the Herald. Meanwhile, try to find something to keep you busy until the glassworks reopens.”
Ada stalked out without a word. Clare shook Dr. Cox’s hand and followed.
20
FRED LOOKED DOWN into the empty yard of his rooming house. Mrs. Dempsey’s sister-in-law had climbed out from beneath the blankets four days after the explosion and taken her children to Lunenburg to live with her mother. And the Dempsey children were back at school.
Blue reflected in the still puddles lying in the yard like a scattering of small lakes. He remembered the spring he left Germany. He was fifteen, travelling by train from Montreal to Ontario. Montreal: a jumble of grey buildings and dirty streets. Over that winter, heavy snows fell intermittently, burying the city, exhausting the cart horses, muffling the church bells. The streets were patrolled by local kids who smelled his foreignness before he even opened his mouth and banished him with dirty snowballs. He longed for pure snows, the solitude of the German countryside. Lauscha had lost its wild forests long ago to feed the glasswork kilns. But as a boy he would walk up from the town to the forests that still climbed the rounded summits. He imagined the countryside stretching away from Montreal, into wilderness, dense with marshes, back to the mountains of Germany.
He didn’t see the countryside around his new city until years later. After he had proposed to Lena. They had taken the train to stay with friends from Lauscha who had settled in Berlin, north of Hamilton.
The last snow lay only in the deepest shadows. Water seemed to fill every hollow, every dip and valley. It glittered like fine silver in the sun and along the shores it was stained deep green with reflection. Lena sat across from him, ignoring him, absorbed with her knitting: a dark blue scarf.
He took Lena out in a canoe he rented at a dock on Barrie’s Lake. She was wearing a long brown coat that hugged her narrow waist. Strands of her blonde hair had escaped from her hat and blew lightly across her delicate cheek.
The canoe was made of straps of birch bark wrapped over a spruce frame. Fred liked the light simplicity of the boat and the smell of it, like sandalwood. The Indian on the dock showed him how to make the stroke from the stern, which would propel the boat forward in a straight line.
Lena was nervous and wouldn’t sit on the narrow seat at the bow. She sank to the floor, holding the gunnels tightly. For a time she was happy, aware the sunlight bouncing off the tiny waves, shimmering over her face and hair, made her even more beautiful. She held an effortless power over him and seemed to know it. He understood that he didn’t really know her. It didn’t matter. It didn’t make him want her less.
Fred loved the feel of the canoe from the first stroke. For a moment he saw himself as if from afar, an exceptionally lucky young man, paddling a beautiful woman into the middle of a perfect lake. But then Lena suddenly found her skirts were soaking. She jumped up, and looked down in horror, up to her ankles in water. One gunnel slipped below the lake.
It wasn’t easy to hoist Lena onto the upturned canoe. She was a small woman but, soaking wet, in her long coat, she was heavy. By the time Fred pushed the upturned canoe to the dock she was crying.
“Don’t make yourself wetter,” the Indian said to her, making her cry harder. He held up a canvas bucket. “I forgot to give you a bailer. It takes a few trips before a new canoe is watertight.”
Fred went back to the dock other times. George, who he came to know, often let him take the canoe out for free. He let Fred help him build his next canoe as well, and showed him how to paddle in faster water on the river that ran from the lake.
Lena never went out in a canoe with Fred again. She gave up on him far too easily.
FRED OPENED HIS Herald and spread it on the table. There was the usual talk of the need for sacrifice, the reports of battles bravely fought by the Anzacs or a local regiment. On page three, a notice from Arthur Barnstead’s Mortuary Committee: “Some Details That May Assist in the Identification of the Hundreds of Unclaimed Bodies Which Have Been Interred.” It was the list of the unclaimed. And the possessions that they had arrived with, now in a cabinet at Chebucto School, a collection of small numbered canvas bags, which matched the number on the gravestones where they were buried.
He read the first entry: Woman, about 24 years, dark brown hair, fair complexion, white waist, brown striped under waist, and chemise, short corsets. One black petticoat and one blue petticoat, light ribbed pink underwear. Long black stockings, patent leather no. 4 laced boots, Found at 14 Duffus St. Effects: pin with heart.
Fred closed the Herald. It was as if the world had become caught in a dark eddy from which it could not free itself. And his life, like so many others, had stalled, circling along with it. He could not do the work he was made for. He couldn’t fight for his old country. Or his new country. Native Germans could not join the forces. He was relieved for that. Not for his own skin but because he couldn’t imagine shooting at boys he might have grown up with. The paper, the politicians made it all so much simpler than it was to him.
Lauscha. He was twelve. A summer morning. Already hot outside. Their cottage even hotter, as his mother filled the firebox for the loaves she would bake to sell in the village. Her anxious look as he ran out the door with a small pack, his sweater, a sausage roll, an apple. The limey light through tender beech leaves. Firs gathering as he climbed higher. A woodpecker drumming from deep inside the green curtained shade. And the view from the top. Ranks of mountains, growing bluer and bluer until in the distance they looked like the ocean he would cross three years later when he left his cou
ntry.
Fred balled up the Herald and pushed it into his stove. The flame caught, red, then blue, like the flames in the furnace at the glassworks.
THERE WAS STILL WORK to be done at Chebucto School. Fred pulled on his coat, wrapped on the scarf Lena had knit for him all those years ago.
He found Arthur staring at the tree outside his window. A jay hopped from branch to branch, dragging a limp wing. It carried some pale, glistening thing in its beak; another jay swooped in from above, banked, and returned to bully the wounded bird.
“Look at them,” Arthur said, turning to Fred. “Completely self-absorbed, fully alive.” And then, as if remembering why Fred was there, “The boxes are ready. Let’s get them to the van.”
All afternoon Fred helped Arthur move the tarps and sheets, the records and the personal effects, out of the school, which was just about to reopen. The sound of children’s feet would soon patter the halls, children who would have no notion of what had happened here. They were already forgetting the tragedy. Fred watched them in the streets, some still with fresh scars and eye patches, chasing each other, laughing. They were like birds, so intent on flying upwards that they had no time to light in sadness. When did adults lose their resilience, he wondered? He thought of Clare. He’d hoped she’d contact him. She moved him in some way he could not put into words. Her struggle to become intact again. He recognized it, though he himself had no visible scars.
Fred and a few of the other volunteers swept and mopped the floors. By late afternoon, the room looked like an ordinary school basement: iron posts standing in a mute line, exposed pipes hanging from the ceiling, a row of small windows with new glass. The bodies, which once lay like sleeping ghosts under their white sheets, vanished, but under the smell of Sunlight soap Fred could still catch the faint whiff of death.
“Hard to believe it won’t be haunted,” Arthur said quietly as they stepped out into the frigid air.
The older man held out his hand. “Thank you for your help here.”
Dazzle Patterns Page 13
