The Heart Specialist

by Claire Holden Rothman

Honoré Bourret shrugged. “Then it is certain you are mistaken, for Montreal is a place I have never had the pleasure of visiting.” His strange, milky eyes looked straight at me. It was the oddest sensation to have this father who wasn’t quite my father deny me so brazenly.

  “But you were born there,” I said.

  “I come from England,” said Bourret. Solange watched me with sleepy, catlike eyes. The two of them were so insistent I began to waver. The face was different from the one I remembered. It wasn’t inconceivable that this Honoré Bourret was a stranger. I began to consider this possibility, but then caught myself. Three years ago William Howlett had sat with him in the Auberge des flots. Jakob Hertzlich had been a witness. He was lying. Looking me straight in the eye and lying.

  “I have just sailed from England,” I said, “from the home of a friend of yours.”

  He had relaxed somewhat, leaning back on the couch, but at the mention of Sir William he sat up again. He turned to Solange and ordered her to leave the room. When she saw that he was serious she objected. Why should she leave because of a stranger? This was her home too, in case he hadn’t noticed. What kind of a way was this to treat people? She heaped abuse on me too for disrupting her morning.

  The old man had to shoo her out. It was an embarrassing spectacle that spoke volumes about their relations, or lack of them. “Women!” he said in English when he finally got the door shut. “Always such a handful.” He sat down opposite me again. “So Dr. Howlett sent you here?” He continued in English, probably to prevent his girlfriend from listening in.

  I told him that Sir William had done everything in his power to dissuade me from coming, that he’d called the situation “complex” and tried to warn me away.

  “But you came nonetheless.”

  There was a pause during which we studied each other. I had no idea what he was thinking. Perhaps he was considering his options, trying to figure out his next move and just how much he wanted to reveal. Or perhaps he was considering me. The inscrutable eyes blinked shut. “I don’t know you,” he said for the second time that day.

  I said my name — not the English one that my grandmother had given me but the older French one chosen by him. I said I was his daughter.

  He did not respond for some time. He crossed one leg over the other and reached for a box of cigarettes. He offered me one. When I shook my head he lit one for himself. “I have never been to Montreal,” he said, exhaling. “William Howlett tried to dissuade you from coming here for a reason. It is a waste of time.”

  I left soon after. Solange was in the kitchen, preparing lunch. She did not even look up as I passed in the hall. The old man had to accompany me to the door himself and hand me my coat and boots. The vestibule was quite small and he and I had to stand perhaps a foot apart as I dressed myself.

  “You must not speak of this to anyone,” he said quietly.

  By that time I had collected myself a little, or at least I thought I had. “What is there to speak of?” I said, also low-voiced, as if we shared a secret. “We do not know each other.”

  “That is right,” he said and smiled.

  Those were our final words. I was shaking as he closed the door behind me. He was closing me out now just as years ago he had closed out my mother and a much younger version of myself, and even before that as he’d closed out his crippled sister. It was only when I reached the street that I realized my hands were empty. I had forgotten the bag with my gifts in the house. I could picture exactly where I had left it beside the chair on which I’d sat, but nothing in this world could have induced me to go back inside to retrieve it.

  A light snow had begun to fall over la rue de Verel and all the other streets of Calais. My father was probably in his kitchen now, trying to make peace with Solange. They would sit down to their noonday meal and eventually one or the other of them would return to the den and discover my bag. There was no chance that Solange would be able to decipher the materials I had so carefully packed and carried all this way, and no chance that my father would be able to read them even if he did get his hands on them.

  29

  JANUARY 1, 1919

  When morning broke on New Year’s Day it was barely distinguishable from night. The cocks crowed despite the heavy black sky. I had not slept much, in part because of my father, in part because of the noise from the bar, which happened to be located directly beneath my room. The New Year’s Eve réveillon was an event at the Auberge des flots. Their annual party was renowned in Calais, and judging from the decibel volume half the town had dropped in to raise a glass.

  I had stayed upstairs despite invitations from my hosts. When Eugenie heard me refuse her husband’s offer of complimentary champagne she invited me to sit with her and Charles in their rooms and share a hot milk. Even this I could not manage. All night I sat alone and wept. Just before dawn I dressed and went downstairs. The bar looked like a storm had blown through it. Glasses and bottles cluttered the tables. Two bodies lay prone on the floor. I tiptoed past them, found my boots, and slipped out the door.

  This time I needed no map from the innkeeper to direct me. I simply followed my nose down avenue de la Mer to the water. The sky lightened as I walked, but aside from gulls and cormorants circling above the town and calling with their piercing cries I seemed to be the only living creature. I walked at a good pace, the wind at my back, breathing in the fecund, salty odours. Calais was fronted by an enormous beach, la plage Blériot, which I had glimpsed from the ferry when we landed. A large hotel had been built overlooking it, but this was now closed for the season, its doors and windows boarded.

  I crossed the beach, whose sands were rippled by the wind, and made it to a pier with a little tower at the end. There I stopped. The tide was on its way out, which I didn’t realize right away. Rivers were what I had grown up with — the fast-flowing North River fronting my grandmother’s property in St. Andrews East, the St. Lawrence after I moved to Montreal. The ocean smelled different, of salt and seaweed and creatures in its depths. I stood there for a long time, staring out at the water.

  In a single week I had lost the two most important men in my life. Yet the word “lost” was misleading. Neither had died and it had been years since either had played any outwardly discernible role in my life. Internally, however, they had been pivotal, at the centre of everything. Now that centre, my centre, had slipped. Sir William Howlett had lied to me. I didn’t care that the situation with Honoré Bourret was complex, or even that the lie in Howlett’s estimation was in my best interests. My father was no better. For years I had believed him to be a victim, an innocent man vilified by the small-minded Scottish community in Montreal for daring to be ambitious and different. As a woman with the same qualities I had identified with him.

  My father had left a wife in the final stages of pregnancy without a thought for the consequences to her or to the child yet to be born. He had abandoned me when I was not yet five. And when I turned up on his doorstep forty-four years later he had turned away again, lying to protect himself. Such a man, I now realized, might be capable of disposing of a crippled sister who made heavy claims on him. The clues to my father had been there but I had shut my eyes to them.

  The French word fille means “girl” as well as “daughter.” Yesterday at this hour I had still been a girl, with my hopes largely intact. I had been excited, wending my way through the streets to meet him, following the ridiculous hand-drawn map. I had pinned much on that meeting. The truth was, of course, I had left girlhood behind years ago. I wasn’t the fille of Honoré Bourret or of anyone else. I was forty-nine and the bottom had fallen out of my life. I thought back to the scraps of my existence I had collected for him. I had been like a schoolgirl, toting home prizes from class. Only now could I see how pathetic I was. He would no doubt toss out the bag unexamined.

  The voices of children roused me and I realized I had been standing on the pier for some time. The beach was now wider and slick from the receding water. Sunlight was beating d
own strongly enough to have broken through the clouds. Sea birds were basking in it on the still-wet sand. A group of children had come to play by the water’s edge — two boys of eight or nine and a little girl. The boys were skimming stones and shouting, calling out the number of dips before the stones disappeared from view. They greeted me as I stepped down onto the beach. The oldest one wished me a Happy New Year and I reciprocated.

  I did not know what the coming year would bring, but happiness did not seem highly likely. As I headed back toward town I came upon my own footprints going in the opposite direction, already half-erased.

  VIII

  RETURN

  The condition does not admit of cure,

  but permits of amelioration and of arrest of

  the downward trend of the disease.

  — MAUDE ABBOTT, “CONGENITAL CARDIAC DISEASE”

  30

  JANUARY 20, 1919

  Tomorrow would be fine, the sailors had predicted, which I had trouble believing after weeks of poor weather. It appeared that my voyage home might be quite different from the one that had initially brought me to Europe. This time the wind was at our backs and the water was flat and blue, without a single squall in sight. Waves lapped at the ship’s hull and the sky was clear except for a few cotton puffs gleaming in the setting sun.

  I could still see the shoreline, although it was no longer possible to make out the buildings and houses of Brest, the port to which I had come from Calais and had been staying in for almost three weeks, waiting for a passage home. The coast of France had blurred into an indistinct line. Soon even this would disappear. I did not want to miss the moment when it vanished altogether, even though the strain of watching, of trying to hold onto it as long as humanly possible, was taking its toll. I had waited more years than I cared to count to get here, and now I was leaving it behind.

  My journey had been demanding. Had I any sense at all I would be inside with a hot drink and a book, like a normal woman my age, not out on this deck in January staring over the frigid waters. I took off my glasses, flecked with the sea, and gave them a quick rub.

  I had no idea what I would do once I got back to Canada. My professional accomplishments felt completely useless, like medals pinned on the chest of an invalid soldier. What did any of it matter? Most of the people I loved were either dead or gone. All my reference points had shifted. I was quite literally at sea, with days aboard ship before I reached land again, seven days in which to think. In part my delayed departure had been a blessing, for I had spent the last weeks wandering the streets of Brest, not talking to a soul. Solitude was what I had needed, time to permit myself to heal.

  Several yards down the deck a girl tossed a chunk of bread out over the water for a hovering gull that swooped and caught it. The girl shrieked and pointed for the benefit of a second young woman standing beside her. I had noticed these two girls when I’d boarded. They were also Canadians, like several of the passengers on this Halifax-bound ship. Wearing the capes of Red Cross nurses they looked so similar they had to be sisters. My thoughts went immediately to Laure. Above the ship the gull hovered, jerking its neck and gulping.

  AT DINNER THAT NIGHT I sat with them. Theirs was the first company I had allowed myself since the meeting with my father and I felt more than a little awkward. They were on their way to Halifax, they told me, after two years of service overseas. We were joined by a corporal from the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Regiment, a handsome fellow with hair like wheat before the harvest who had lost the lower part of his right leg. He was on crutches, pants pinned at the knee. As soon as he returned to Canada, he said, the Army would fit him with a prosthetic.

  I had been living a very simple life, on soups and bread from a bakery next to the gîte where I had been staying in Brest, and I was ready for a more elaborate meal. I was also hungrier than I knew for human contact. The laughter of the girls and their English chatter was a comfort. The blond sister informed us all that the ship’s cook had an excellent reputation. The ship was French, which made all the difference. As if to prove her point a boy of about fourteen approached our table from the kitchen holding a bottle. He went straight to the corporal and bowed, displaying the label.

  The light-haired nurse, whose name was Nora, laughed. “A sommelier! How civilized!”

  The boy, who I suspected was the floor mopper, grinned and threw his shoulders back. He uncorked the bottle in front of us and poured a few dark drops into the corporal’s glass. After the ritual swirling and swallowing, which everyone seemed to take very seriously, the corporal nodded. He also looked as if he hadn’t sat down to a proper meal in ages; he savoured each moment.

  The boy filled our glasses. We raised them. The wine was rich and warm. I was so grateful to be here with a glass of burgundy and company with whom to share it that my throat tightened. Such simple pleasures, but at that moment they meant the world.

  The food arrived, borne by the same young man who had poured the wine. The dish was coq au vin, a favourite of mine. Tiny white onions shone like pearls in the lamplight and I closed my eyes, breathing in the smells. For most of the meal I did not speak, happy just to revel in my senses.

  The Canadian sisters, in contrast, chattered blithely. The light-haired one named Nora was particularly lively, entertaining us with stories about her work at a Canadian Red Cross hospital that had been built on tennis courts belonging to a rich American who lived near London. Apparently the owner, Waldorf Astor, had offered the site to the British Army. When the Brits refused it it had gone to the Canadians. The dark sister spoke less than Nora, but had a lovely laugh. The corporal concentrated on his food, but whenever he heard the laugh he looked up and smiled.

  Outside the wind was picking up, pushing against the portholes and causing the silverware to tremble. It was not strong enough yet to rock us, but every now and again the wine in our glasses sloshed. “Don’t worry,” said the corporal. “The weather will be fine.”

  I told them how terrible my trip over had been in mid-December. I didn’t think I could survive another experience like that. The corporal asked what had induced me to travel in midwinter, so soon after the war’s end.

  “A friend who was ill,” I told him. It wasn’t a complete lie. Sir William’s health had, after all, precipitated the trip.

  “A soldier?” asked the corporal.

  I had not wanted to talk about myself. I craved anonymity and did not feel I should let strangers get too close, but the wine had warmed and opened me. Surely it wouldn’t make a difference if I mentioned Howlett.

  The corporal looked at me with sudden interest. “Howlett?” he repeated. “You mean the Howlett? The physician from Oxford?”

  The sisters were also staring. “We knew him too,” said the fair-haired one. “He came to the hospital on Mondays.”

  “We attended the funeral,” added the dark one.

  It was my turn to stare. The news left me speechless.

  “I went too,” said the corporal. He was so involved in the topic that he didn’t notice my silence. “He assisted at my amputation. He looked out for the Canadians.”

  “How strange we should all know him,” said Nora. She turned to me. “What did you say your association with him was?”

  I looked at my lap. I hadn’t said and I wasn’t about to. I could not have formulated a straightforward answer had I wanted to. “We’re both doctors,” I said after a pause.

  “You are a doctor!” said Nora, admiration shining in her eyes. Fortunately she probed no further about my link to Sir William. She did describe the funeral, though, which had apparently been immense. Half of London had shown up as well as most of Oxford. Over the years Sir William had treated the prime minister and much of the cabinet, so a good number of England’s politicians had been there too.

  I listened, but only distractedly. Howlett was dead. The thought was difficult to grasp.

  The corporal was now talking of his amputation. One third of his battalion had lost their lives, he
told us without expression. Another third had lost limbs. He spoke slowly, as if the effort of stringing thoughts together was beyond him. “Sometimes I ask myself whether I ended in the right group.”

  “Come, Corporal,” said Nora kindly. “Talk like that does no good to anyone. There’s no going back so you might as well step forward.” She paused and reddened, realizing the inappropriateness of the metaphor.

  Her dark-haired sister came to her rescue. “Nora’s right, Corporal. It’s a lovely evening, the first of our voyage. We’ve been exquisitely fed,” she paused and smiled. “Exquisitely watered too. It’s worth giving thanks for.”

  I watched this little scene as if I were watching a play. The sisters were right; their advice wise. Yet how did people go on in the wake of such imponderable loss?

  Nora raised her glass. “I want to give thanks for this night.” She reflected for a moment. “Beth,” she said to her sister, “I’ve just realized the date.”

  The dark one thought for a moment and then brightened “January twentieth.”

  “The Eve of Saint Agnes,” I said.

  Nora turned to me, surprised. “You know it?” Then she remembered my name.

  “Do you know the poem?” asked Beth.

  The corporal looked at us blankly. I thought back to Januaries in St. Andrews East with Laure and Grandmother, reading Poems of Our Land before the fire.

  Nora stood and then dropped back down as the ship lurched sideways. The Corporal reached out to steady her but she declined the help, gripping the back of her chair on her second attempt. The boat swayed, but not enough to shake her, and she began to recite:

  Saint Agnes’s Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was!

  The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

  The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass …

  She stopped. “That’s all I can remember.” She turned to her sister. “Help me out, Beth.”

  But Beth was also stumped. “There’s something about sheep,” she said vaguely. “And a rosary.”