The O'Briens

by Peter Behrens

  But she was furious at him for not even mentioning the Italians. Maybe he’d been trying to shield her, but to not mention that two men had died seemed horribly callous, as though the deaths were of no consequence.

  “You ought to have told me, Joe.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m your wife, that’s why!”

  “Half a dozen fellows got pretty sick. We didn’t know what it was at first. They figured shooting an elk might mean trouble for them, so they weren’t about to tell us.”

  “My God. You don’t feel a thing about it, do you.”

  “You can’t eat game this time of year. It spoils too quick, even if you know what you’re about when you’re butchering.”

  “Death is important, Joe!”

  He looked at her quizzically. “Of course it is.”

  “Where did you bury them?”

  “Along the line.”

  “Where, Joe?”

  “I don’t recall the mile marker. I could look it up. ”

  “Is there anything to even mark the place?”

  “We buried them decently. They were Italians, so I assumed they were Catholics.”

  “Your daughter is buried along the line — do you even remember?” she said.

  He had turned away without a word, and she knew she’d wounded him. She was being unfair. He hadn’t mentioned the deaths only because he knew the news would upset her. But she thought of their lost child every day anyhow — did he really think she didn’t? He aimed to keep driving ahead and never think of the past, bury every sorrow under tons of ballast, timber, and steel. He could tell himself he was sparing her feelings, but it was really himself he was protecting. He was the one most frightened; she was only afraid of not feeling. And now she had a baby, a passionate stake in life, and another baby growing inside her. She was strong enough; she could handle just about anything now.

  She was also hungrier than ever after nursing; her body needed replenishing, her flame was burning low. He ought to have brought her a bowl of that stew. And some bread and butter. And a cup of tea. From the sound of their laughter the Americans downstairs were drinking whisky. Joe wouldn’t touch a drop. There were a few pears left from a box Elise had sent; they were in a bowl on the kitchen table and the gangers would probably finish them off. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to put a few away, save them for her and the baby. And his foremen would finish the stew and their boots would make a mess of the floor, which she swept constantly and mopped twice a day because there was nothing but dirt in a construction camp, dust and mud.

  She finished the cigarette, pushed open the window, and dropped the end outside. There weren’t so many people around the bonfire anymore. It was dying down and the women had disappeared, probably back to the Dovecote. Maybe the war excitement was already turning into just another spree — whisky, card games, and prostitutes; men spending their pay and sleeping it off along the right-of-way. The Austrians and Chinese hunkered out on the stations were probably quite safe, though they might not realize it yet.

  She wondered how long the bone-house would stand on that bare scree slope with the dribble of glacial runoff bringing down more rock and gravel every year, and she wondered if either of them would ever see it again.

  She and Joe, the men and their war fever, the women of the Dovecote, the girl she’d watched waving her flag at the bonfire all by herself, as if the roistering passion in the camp didn’t matter, couldn’t possibly touch her — they would all be quitting the mountains in a few weeks. What would become of them? She only knew for certain that the country must lock down, and soon, and that when the completion money came in she and Joe were going to be rich. They were healthy and young and on the way to having a second baby and their future was bright.

  She wondered how strong they were really. Head-of-Steel was one thing, the open world another.

  In a few weeks snow would blanket the mountains, smother the valleys, and the green river would freeze as hard as steel. They would all leave something behind in the mountains. Only the luckiest were getting out with anything, and even the most fortunate, the most privileged, would be leaving pieces of themselves.

  MONTREAL 1917–1923

  Armistice

  Brown’s Hotel

  Albemarle Street, London W1

  7th October 1917

  My Dear Brother Joe,

  The air in France is completely different than the air in England yet no one seems prepared to admit this is so. I don’t mean merely that it has a different smell — of course it does. I mean the physical structure of the air on the Continent has been changed — I think by the war.

  It is lighter and gummier. It has lost its old consistency. This is an effect I have never heard described, perhaps it’s quite new, after the heavy-heavy bombardments of the last 12 weeks all along our Div. front, we have been getting rocked in quite an exceptional manner, the ground sometimes jellifying.

  I attribute this change in the atmosphere to the concussive power of steady bombardment, which has after all been banging along the front from Switzerland to the North Sea for over three years now, with rather exceptional heavy spells recently. It is well known that any gas will change its structure, electrically, in response to change in pressure — & air is merely another gas as I tell my lads (gas is on our minds after Arras!). So, my theory: bombardment has shaken the atmosphere & reorganized the structure of the air. The air is lighter in France because concussion has you might say purified it. A cubic yard of French air must weigh less than half the equivalent volume of English air & it’s not merely a matter of London’s smut & smoke because the difference was noticeable as soon as we disembarked the Channel steamer — I’ve been given a theatre ticket, Maid of the Mountains, & must go now, love to Iseult and children,

  ton frère,

  Grattan

  Joe thought the letter sounded quite mad. His brother had written from London, where he was on his first extended leave after eleven months at the front. At the start of the war Grattan had left his wife and daughter in Los Angeles and travelled to Montreal to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He wrote Joe frequently from France and Joe had enjoyed reading the letters aloud to Iseult: they were brisk and salty and gave a humorous picture of life in the trenches.

  One week after the mad missive from London, there was another troubling letter, from Scotland.

  Kinross House

  Perthshire

  15th October 1917

  Joe my dear,

  The night train — Euston to Waverley Station, Edinburgh. Nothing you would call a berth. At Edinburgh a cup of tea and rock buns and boarded as per instructions the local train for Perth. Between Dunfermline and Kinross saw the most remarkable animal. Now I’ll admit I only had my eyes on him for a matter of seconds. If you ask what breed I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Something small & terrier-like, perhaps not a recognized breed at all.

  But the power of connection, Joe! It cannot be denied.

  Other people recognize animals are ‘totems’ . . . It’s only this morning — that I’ve finally been able to accept that what I was seeing was something more than just a dog in a garden!

  The dog was available to deliver a message. I’ve been working to break the code & get it straight.

  I saw my soul prowling in a garden behind a terrace house somewhere on the line between Dunfermline and Kinross . . . prowling & confused. I saw myself.

  I know now that I simply can’t go on as I have been. I must remove from that dripping garden, that boxed way of seeing.

  I want you as my trusted brother, Joe, to tell me, have you ever had any similar experience?

  The Montgomery family here have taken in six Canadian officers as houseguests, we are being treated splendidly, horses to ride birds to kill,

  Your brother,

  Grattan

  Joe looked up at Iseult. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  She shook her head. “He’s trying to make sense of his exper
ience. I can’t imagine what it would be like arriving in London or the countryside straight from the war.”

  After Grattan returned to France there were no letters at all for a while, only terse postcards demanding books, chocolate, and cigarettes. Then he wrote to say his application to join the Royal Flying Corps had been accepted and he was in training to be a fighter pilot.

  Too much bloody mud down there. Sick of mud. Cleaner in the sky.

  By then, the third year of the war, Joe had brought Iseult and their two children out of the West and settled them in a big stone mansion house on Pine Avenue in Montreal. He still owned a house on Butterfly Beach; they would spend summers at Santa Barbara once the war was over. The Western railway boom was finished — the government had been tearing up track and shipping the steel to France for military railways — but O’Brien Capital Construction Co. Ltd. had been winning government contracts and building shell factories, barracks, and military hospitals from one end of the Dominion to the other. Joe was prospering.

  Once Grattan started flying, the tone of his letters changed once more.

  . . . the most sullen mamzelle last night in Paris lush sweet thing my god the right girl tastes like a berry, Joe, bursts in your mouth, we must have done the jig four or five times . . .

  . . . sisters, worked in the officers’ estaminet tea and fried potatoes papa is a officier belgique it cost 2 francs well-spent did you ever make two at one time Joe I’m feeling old this morning believe me . . .

  . . . has a lovely white belly and black bush and doesn’t speak a word the whole way through . . .

  . . . had another girl on the train, gave her one fr., she screamed bloody murder . . . did you ever notice, Joe, that a cunt is awfully like a wound? You can buy a girl at Amiens for a cup of chocolate, some of them are all right, I used to think they ought to be pretty, though to tell you the truth just about anything will do.

  Joe could not bring himself to read such things aloud, but when Iseult insisted on seeing the letters he handed them over, and she read them while sitting in an armchair by the fire.

  The Pine Avenue house was magnificent, but cold and old-fashioned. It didn’t really suit them. He planned to build them a Montreal house of their own after the war.

  “I don’t like you reading that filth.”

  Iseult looked up. “It’s all connected, Joe, don’t you see? He’s trying to stay alive.”

  “It’s filth.”

  “The war is, but this is more than that. He can’t deal with anything not raw. Brutal, even. He has to try to make things very simple.”

  Iseult was in touch with her sister-in-law, Elise, in Los Angeles. When Grattan began flying, he stopped sending money to his wife and daughter, who were still living in Elise’s photography parlour above the Chinese laundry on Windward Avenue. The United States was in the war by then. People in Los Angeles had stopped going to the beach, and Elise could no longer support herself and her daughter with studio portraits and postcards. She had found work in a factory in West L.A., stitching fabric for aircraft wings.

  When Iseult asked Joe to do something for Elise, he wired money for a pair of train tickets, and she and six-year-old Virginia arrived in Montreal in January 1918, penniless and without winter clothes. They settled into the Pine Avenue house and Joe loaned his sister-in-law five hundred dollars to set up a photography business in the Queen’s Hotel, across the street from Windsor Station. She started making studio portraits for hundreds of young soldiers passing through the city on their way overseas.

  They learned that Grattan hadn’t written her a letter in months, and the only communications she received from him at Pine Avenue were printed Field Service postcards.

  NOTHING is to be written on this side except the date and signature of the sender. Sentences not required may be erased. If anything else is added the postcard may be destroyed.

  I am quite well

  I have been admitted to hospital

  {sick} and am going on well.

  (Wounded} and hope to be discharged soon.

  I am being sent down to the base.

  I have received your

  letter dated May 29

  parcel "

  telegram "

  Letter follows at first opportunity.

  I have received no letter from you-

  {lately}

  {for a long time}

  {Signature only} G. C.

  Date July 1st 1918

  The cards made Iseult furious, but Elise didn’t complain and never asked to see the crazy, lascivious letters Joe was still receiving. He’d filed them all — he could not bring himself to let go of any piece of paper concerning the family. But if Elise asked to see them, he was prepared to say he’d burned them.

  “Grattan knows what he knows,” Elise told Iseult one day. “When the war’s over, then maybe he’ll want to tell me.”

  During the last nine months of the war, Captain Grattan O’Brien of the Royal Flying Corps shot down thirteen enemy planes. One week after the Armistice, the King pinned a DSO on his chest in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, and six weeks after that, when Grattan stepped off the train at Montreal, a herd of reporters was waiting to interview him. Sojer Boy was a celebrity.

  Instead of taking Elise and Virginia back to Los Angeles, Grattan accepted a position with the Canadian branch of a British firm manufacturing aircraft engines. He settled his family into a modest row house on Carthage Avenue in Lower Westmount, with Joe holding the mortgage.

  Their sisters, Hope and Kate — who had taken their vows as Soeur Marie-Bernadette and Soeur Marie-Emmanuelle — died of influenza that first winter after the war. They were buried in a vault at the Visitations’ convent in Ottawa without Joe’s even being aware of their deaths until weeks later, when the Mass cards arrived.

  His sisters had trusted him for guidance, and he had broken all their chances by pitching them into that cloister — this was what he felt. In his greed and hurry to escape and seek his own freedom, they were the ones who had paid the price.

  The Little Priest, on the other hand, had done well at Fordham. In May 1919 Joe, Iseult, their two children and their Irish governess, and Grattan, Elise, and Virginia all took the train to New York for Tom’s ordination at Old St. John’s in the Bronx and a champagne reception, which Joe paid for, at a Catholic country club in Westchester.

  The Montreal spring had been cold, but in Westchester summer was already sweet and heavy. In the middle of the party Joe and Tom left the clubhouse and went for a walk along one of the gorgeous fairways, both of them carrying flutes of golden champagne. Tom was silent, and Joe assumed he was savouring the moment, as he was himself — the evening light slanting across lush grass, the glow of family pride on his brother’s behalf.

  He was startled when Tom, without the slightest warning, burst into tears and started babbling about how much he had hated the Church for refusing Joe’s little girl a funeral Mass; hated his Jesuit rector for not giving him leave to travel to British Columbia; and hated himself for not having had the courage to make the trip on his own.

  Joe had never held a grudge — Tom had been a powerless seminarian in those days — but before he could speak, the Little Priest had flung his champagne glass to the grass and collapsed on his brother’s shoulder, clinging and sobbing, until Joe could feel the dampness of tears through his coat. They were a couple of hundred yards from the clubhouse, standing under great oaks. The orchestra was still playing and music floated across the grass. It was likely no one had noticed them, which was lucky.

  “I’ll tell you this.” Tom’s voice kept breaking and catching, as though the words were too sharp for his throat. “The Church failing — so human — somehow made my faith stronger. Like a piece of steel in the centre of my faith. But you’re my brother, Joe. I failed you. Left you alone in the wilderness. Can you forgive me?”

  Tom had just taken holy orders, swearing himself to support a burden of faith that Joe had been letting go of all his life, it
seemed, piece by piece. It would be disrespectful, Joe knew, to try to persuade his brother of what he himself had come to believe: that chanting, benedictions, and sprinkles of holy water were distractions, that the mystery of life and death could be approached only in fear, in solitude, in silence.

  Patting the back of his brother’s crisp new black silk cassock, he told Tom he ought to save his sins and imagined sins for the confessional, not dwell on them. He took out his cigarette case and handed Tom one, and they stood under the great oak trees smoking while a lush scent of evening rose from the fairway grass.

  The Little Priest was being sent to Europe to pursue studies in advanced mathematics. He had found himself a home and a career with the Jesuits. If the order was imperfect, at least it believed in itself, and that was all that really mattered.

  After finishing their cigarettes the brothers walked arm in arm back to the clubhouse, where they found Iseult dancing a foxtrot in the arms of Tom’s Father Superior.

  ~

  Back in Montreal, Grattan quit the aircraft company after a few months, complaining that their designs were flawed. Joe put his brother on salary, even though things were in a slump and O’Brien Capital Construction’s only active project was the veterans’ hospital at Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, being developed from temporary sheds put up during the war. Part of the contract involved building a railway siding, reception sheds, and tunnels so that the hundreds of long-term cases still being transferred from military hospitals in England could be disembarked directly on the hospital grounds. Grattan wanted to test the system and insisted on making an experimental trip from Montreal out to Sainte-Anne lying on a stretcher, with a couple of Joe’s men carrying him on and off the train. The next morning he came bursting into Joe’s office.

  “Those reception sheds are fit for cattle, not men! The tunnels are freezing! We’re not building a prison out there, Joe. It’s supposed to be a hospital.”

  Grattan was taller than Joe and still wore the suits he’d had tailored in London, where he’d been a celebrity, a fighter ace, a wild colonial boy, petted and fawned over by English aristocrats.