When she saw a scrawled line at the top of the page, she let out a silent sigh of relief. A supply ship bound for home came alongside just after I finished this, George had written, so it will get to you soon. That meant he hadn’t set foot on dry land. She could relax, at least for a while.
“ ‘Dear Sylvia,’ ” Sylvia read aloud, “ ‘and little George who is getting big and Mary Jane too—’ ”
“I’m getting big!” Mary Jane said.
“I know you are, and so does your father,” Sylvia said. “Shall I go on?” The children nodded, so she did: “ ‘I am fine. I hope you are fine. We are down here in the—’ ”
“Why did you stop, Mama?” George, Jr., asked.
“There’s a word that’s all scratched out, so I can’t read it,” Sylvia answered. Censors, she thought. As if I’m going to tell anybody where George’s ship is. She resumed: “ ‘We are doing everything we can to whip our enemies. A sub tried to torpedo us, but we got away with no trouble at all.’ ”
“Wow!” George, Jr., said.
Sylvia wondered how much more dangerous that had been than George was making it out to be in his letter. Like any fisherman, he was in the habit of minimizing mishaps, to keep his loved ones from worrying. “ ‘We went after him and we’—oh, here are more words scratched out,” she said. “ ‘They say we either damaged him or sunk him, and I hope they are right.’ ”
“What does damaged mean?” Mary Jane asked.
“Hurt,” Sylvia answered. “ ‘I have chipped more paint than I ever thought there was in the whole wide world. The chow is not half so good as yours or what Charlie White used to make on the Ripple but there is plenty of it. Tell little George and Mary Jane to be good for me. I hope I see them and you real soon. I love you all and I miss you. George.’ ”
She set the letter on the table in front of the sofa. “Now make supper!” George, Jr., and Mary Jane yelled together.
“I’ve got some scrod, and I’ll fry potatoes with it,” Sylvia said. Even though George was in the Navy, she still had connections among the dealers and fishermen down on T Wharf. The transactions were informal enough that none of the many and various rationing boards knew anything about them. As long as she was content to eat fish—and she would have been a poor excuse for a fisherman’s wife if she weren’t—she and her family ate pretty well.
Fisherman’s children, George, Jr., and Mary Jane ate up the tender young cod as readily as Sylvia did. And they plowed through mountains of potatoes fried in lard and salted with a heavy hand. Sylvia wished she could have given them more milk than half a glass apiece, but she didn’t know anybody who had anything to do with milk rationing.
After she washed the supper dishes, she filled a big pitcher from the stove’s hot-water reservoir and marched the children down to the end of the hall for their weekly bath. They went with all the delight of Rebel prisoners marching off into captivity in the United States.
They were as obstreperous as Rebel prisoners, too; by the time she had them clean, they had her wet. In dudgeon approaching high, she marched them back to the apartment and changed into a quilted housecoat. They played for a while—Mary Jane was alternately an adjunct and a hindrance to George, Jr.’s, game, which involved storming endless ranks of Confederate trenches. When he pretended to machine-gun her and made her cry, Sylvia called a halt to the proceedings.
She read to them from Hiawatha and put them to bed. But then, it was nearly nine o’clock. She’d have to get up before six to get George, Jr., off to kindergarten and Mary Jane to Mrs. Dooley’s. Silently, she cursed Brigid Coneval’s husband for getting shot. If he’d had any idea how much trouble his death was causing her, he never would have been so inconvenient.
Twenty minutes—maybe even half an hour—to herself, with no one to tell her what to do, seemed the height of luxury. Had George been here, she knew what he would have wanted to do with that time. And she would have gone along. Not only was it her wifely duty, he pleased her most of the time—or he had.
After a long day at the canning plant, after a long day made longer by missing the trolley when she was trying to retrieve Mary Jane, wifely duty didn’t have a whole lot of meaning left to it. If she felt like making love, she would make love. If she didn’t…
“I’ll damn well go to bed, that’s what,” she said, and yawned. “And if George doesn’t like it—”
If George didn’t like it, he’d go out and find himself some strumpet. And then, one day, he’d drink too much, and he’d let her know. And then—
“Then I’ll throw him out on his two-timing ear,” she muttered, and yawned again. If she didn’t intend to fall asleep on the sofa, which she’d done a couple of times, she needed to get ready for bed.
She made sure she wound and set the alarm clock. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t wake up on time, not tired as she was. She put on her nightgown, went and brushed her teeth at the sink by the toilet, and then walked into the bedroom, turned off the lamp, and lay down.
Despite weariness, sleep did not want to come. Sylvia worried about what would happen on the sea, and about how much George hadn’t told her. She worried about what would happen if he didn’t come home. And, almost equally, she worried about what would happen when he did come home. He would expect things to be the same as they had been before he went into the Navy and she went to work, and she didn’t see how that was possible. She saw trouble ahead, with no more effort than she needed to see snow ahead in a boiling gray sky in February.
She writhed and stretched and wiggled and, at long last, went to sleep. When the alarm clock exploded into life beside her head, she had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Only after that did she recover enough to turn off the clock.
“Oh, God,” she groaned, “another day.” She got out of bed.
Lucien Galtier stared at the envelope in some perplexity. It bore no postage stamp, not even one of the peculiar sort the United States had prepared for occupied Quebec. Where the stamp should have been was a printed phrase in both English and French: UNDER THE PERMIT OF THE U.S. OCCUPYING AUTHORITY. PENALTY FOR UNAUTHORIZED USE, $300.
Marie had not opened the envelope. Instead, she’d sent Denise to get Charles, and Charles to bring Lucien to the farmhouse from the fields. “What sort of trouble are you in?” his wife demanded, glaring from the envelope to Lucien and back again as if unable to decide which of them she despised more.
“In the name of God, I do not know,” he answered. “I have done nothing to make the occupying authorities dislike me, not for some time.”
“Then why do they send this to you?” Marie said, confident he had no answer, as indeed he had none. Having reduced him to silence, she snapped, “Well, why do you hesitate? Open it, that we may see what sort of injustice they aim to inflict on us now.”
“This I will do,” Galtier replied. “Once I open it, at least I will know what the trouble is, and no longer be plagued by wild guesses.” Marie ignored that, as beneath her dignity. When Charles, who had accompanied his father, presumed to smile, she froze the expression on his face with a glance.
Muttering under his breath, Galtier tore the envelope open. Inside was a single sheet of paper, again printed in both English and French. Marie snatched it out of his hands and read it aloud: “ ‘All citizens of this occupation district are cordially invited to gather in the market square of Rivière-du-Loup at two in the afternoon on Sunday, the fifteenth of April, 1917, to hear an important announcement and proclamation. Attendance at this festivity is not required, but will surely prove of interest.’ ”
“There! Do you see? I am not in difficulty with the authorities for any reason whatsoever,” Lucien said triumphantly. “It is not a letter to me or even about me. It is a general circular, like a patent-medicine flyer.”
Marie took no notice of his tone. She’d had more than twenty years’ practice taking no notice of his tone when that suited her purposes, as it did now. She said, “For what reason do they send this out? T
hey have never done anything like it before.” She regarded the paper with deep suspicion.
Charles nodded vigorously. “They cordially invite us,” he said. “They call this a festivity. They say we do not have to come to it. They have never done anything like this since they overran our country.” Galtier’s elder son was probably the quietest member of the family, and also the least reconciled to the U.S. occupation.
“It could be,” Lucien said, “that Nicole will know more of this, working as she does at the hospital with so many Americans. For now, and until she comes home, I do not intend to worry about it, as I have plenty to do in the fields if we are to put in any sort of crop this year.”
“Yes, go on, get out of the house,” Marie said. “I also have plenty to do.”
“And who called me to the house?” he asked, but he might as well have been talking to the air.
Even as he worked, though, he wondered about the peculiar announcement from the U.S. occupiers. It was the most nearly civil thing they had done in the nearly three years since they’d invaded Quebec. Up till now, civility had not been their long suit. He wondered why they were changing course. Like Marie, like most Quebecois, he was suspicious of change, as likely being for the worse.
Despite that suspicion of change, he would have been glad if Nicole had brought Dr. O’Doull home for supper. But she returned to the farmhouse by herself, and proved to be as startled by the flyer as the rest of the family.
“How are we to find out what it means?” she asked.
Georges spoke up, as innocent-sounding and sarcastic as usual: “It could be—and I know it is only a foolish notion of mine—we might even stay in town after we go to Mass, and hear this announcement and proclamation for ourselves.”
His older sister glared at him. He beamed back, mild as milk, which only made her more furious. Before the row could go any further, Lucien said, “That is exactly what we shall do.” Marie gave him a look that was anything but altogether approving. Once he had made his intention so plain, though, not even she saw any chance of getting him to change his mind.
The highway up to Rivière-du-Loup was more crowded than usual that Sunday morning, as many families from the outlying farms came in to the town to go to church and then stay. The big, snorting U.S. trucks always on the road had to use their horns again and again to clear the slow-moving wagons from their path. Many of the men in the wagons took their own sweet time about getting out of the way, too.
Splendid in his new vestments, Bishop Pascal officiated at the Mass. “Please stay for the afternoon’s announcements,” he urged his flock. “You will find it of interest, I assure you.” He said no more than that, which both surprised Lucien and set him scratching his head. The Pascal he knew could hardly open his mouth without falling in. It was another change to mistrust.
When Galtier emerged from the church with his family, he found one more change: the market square had been draped with bunting, some red, white, and blue, some simply white and blue, the colors of Quebec. “What are they going to say?” he asked the air. “What are they going to do? Are they going to say we are now a part of the United States? If they say this, I say to them that we shall be a troubled part of the United States.”
“We are here,” Marie said. “Let us wait. Let us see. What else can we do?” There, Lucien found nothing with which to disagree.
They waited, and chatted with neighbors and with folk who did not live close by the farm and whom they saw but seldom. At precisely two o’clock, Major Jedediah Quigley and Bishop Pascal ascended to a bunting-draped platform a squad of U.S. soldiers had set up not far from the church.
An expectant hush fell. Into it, Major Quigley spoke in his elegant—his too-elegant—French: “My friends, I should like to thank all of you for coming here today and becoming a part of this great day in the history of your land. As others are announcing elsewhere at this very same moment, the government of the United States from this time forth recognizes the sovereignty and independence of the Republic of Quebec.”
“The what?” Lucien frowned. “There is no such thing.”
“There is now,” someone behind him said. He nodded. He did not know what to feel: joy, fury, bewilderment? Bewilderment won. Quebecois were a separate people, yes, assuredly. Were they a separate nation? If they were, what sort of separate nation would they be?
Quigley was continuing: “I am pleased to announce that the sovereign and independent Republic of Quebec has already been accorded diplomatic recognition as a nation among the nations of the world by the German Empire, the Empire of Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Bulgaria, the Kingdom of Poland, the Republic of Chile, the Republic of Paraguay, the government of the Republic of Liberia, and the government-in-exile of the Republic of Haiti in Philadelphia. Many other governments, I am certain, will soon recognize your new and thriving nation. From this, citizens of the Republic of Quebec, you can see that your well-deserved independence from the British creation of Canada is popular throughout the world.”
From this, Lucien thought, we can see that the United States and their allies recognize this so-called Republic, and that no one else does. That left him anything but surprised: the Entente powers would hardly acknowledge that one of their own would be, could be, torn asunder. The Entente powers did not recognize the Poland the Germans had erected on soil taken from Russia, either.
As if on cue—afterwards, but only afterwards, Galtier wondered if it was on cue—a soldier came running up to the platform waving a pale yellow telegram. Quigley took it, read it, and stared out at the buzzing crowd. A wide smile spread across his narrow face. He waved the telegram, too. “My friends!” he cried, his voice choked with emotion either genuine or artfully portrayed. “My friends, word has just reached me that the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of the Netherlands have also recognized the Republic of Quebec.”
That made the buzzing even louder, and changed its note. Lucien did not buzz, but he did raise an eyebrow. Italy was a member of the Quadruple Alliance with the USA, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, but a backsliding member: she had been neutral since the war began. And the Netherlands, though bordered on her entire land frontier by Germany and German-occupied Belgium, still carried on what trade with England she could. She was a true neutral, and she had recognized this republic.
“I am greatly honored to congratulate Quebec on achieving her independence, even if it was far too many years delayed by British contempt,” Major Quigley said, “and I am privileged to offer this salute to you, Quebecois free at last: vive la République de Québec!”
“Vive la République!” Not everyone in the square shouted it. Not even a majority of the people in the square shouted it. But a surprising number—surprising, at any rate, to Lucien, who kept silent with his family—did shout it. Everyone looked around to see who shouted and who did not. Would feuds start because some had shouted and some had not?
Jedediah Quigley stepped back and Bishop Pascal stepped forward. “Vive la République de Québec!” he echoed, not inviting anyone else to shout the phrase but making clear where he himself stood. “I say to you, it is long past time that we should be free, free from the indignities the British have heaped on us for so long. How many of you men, when you were conscripted into the Army of the Canada that was, and when you tried to speak your beautiful French language, were told by some ugly English sergeant, ‘Talk white!’?”
He dropped into English for those two words, which doubled their effect. Galtier chuckled uncomfortably. He’d heard sergeants say that, plenty of times. He was not the only man chuckling uncomfortably, either—far from it. Bishop Pascal knew how to flick where it was already raw.
He continued, “How many times have we had our sacred faith mocked by the Protestants in Ottawa, men who would not know piety and holiness if they came knocking on their doors? How many times must we be shown we are not and cannot be the equals of the English before we decide we have had a sufficiency? Soon, I pray, the Republic
of Quebec will embrace all the Quebecois of la belle province de Québec. Until that time comes, though, which God hasten, we have begun. Go with God, my friends, and pray with me for the success of la République de Québec. Go in peace,” he finished, as he had finished the Mass not long before.
“What do we do now, Father?” It was Georges who asked the question, his voice and his expression both unwontedly serious.
“I do not know,” Lucien answered, and he could hear that he was far from the only man saying Je ne sais pas in the square at that moment. Slowly, he went on, “It is plain to see that this Republic, so-called, is to be nothing but a creature of the United States. But we were not altogether our own men in Canada, either. So I do not know. We shall have to see what passes.”
“It is too soon to tell what this all means.” Where Lucien had groped for words, Marie spoke with great finality. They both said the same thing, though. In the end, they usually did. Seeing as much, their children for once forbore to argue.
“Remembrance Day soon,” Captain Jonathan Moss remarked to Lieutenant Percy Stone as the two fliers rode battered bicycles along a dirt road not far from the aerodrome near Arthur, Ontario. Both men wore .45s on their hips; trouble wasn’t likely hereabouts, but it wasn’t impossible, either. Ontario remained resentful about occupation.
“It’ll be a good one,” Stone answered. His breath still steamed when he spoke, though spring, by the calendar, was almost a month old. It didn’t steam too much, though; it wasn’t the great cloud of frost it would have been at the equinox. Here and there, a few green blades of grass were poking up through the mud, though snow might yet put paid to them.
“A good one? It’ll be the best one ever,” Moss said. “Everything we’ve remembered for so long, we’re finally paying back.”
But Stone shook his head. “The best Remembrance Day ever will be the one after the war is over and we’ve whipped the Rebs and the Canucks and the limeys. Everything till then is just a buildup.”
Breakthroughs Page 21
