Road Ends

by Mary Lawson

  Struan, March 1969

  I’ve just had a visit from Reverend Thomas. I was on my way upstairs to bed—the rest of the household had retired long ago—when there was a knock at the door. Needless to say I was reminded of his non-visit a couple of weeks ago and sure enough when I opened the door there he was in his big black coat, looking so ill I thought he might collapse on the doorstep.

  Before I had time to open my mouth he said, “I’m sorry to trouble you, Edward. I know you don’t relish my company but I’m afraid I must talk with you.”

  I invited him in, of course. I took his hat and coat and hung them up and led him through to my study. When we were seated I asked what I could do for him. He didn’t reply for a moment; just sat, looking vaguely at my desk. It crossed my mind that he might have had a turn of some kind, a small stroke perhaps, and I wondered if I should call John Christopherson. But then he pulled himself together.

  “I won’t keep you long,” he said, finally raising his eyes to mine. “There are only two things I need to say. The first is an apology. Some years ago you and I had a disagreement about Joel Pickett. I expect you remember.”

  I nodded. There was no danger of my forgetting.

  “Subsequently I used my position—my pulpit, you might say—” there was a trace of that smile I dislike so much—“to … vent my anger against you. What I implied about you was untrue and did you damage. It was wrong of me and I am sorry. I hope you will accept my apology.”

  That was something I had never expected to hear. Given the man’s overwhelming pride and arrogance, it must have cost him a great deal to say those words.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I do accept it.”

  He nodded, and then looked away again and sat for a bit studying the titles of the books in the bookcase behind me. I imagine his home is full of books too. In another life Reverend Thomas and I might have found we had something in common.

  “The second thing is harder to say,” he said finally. “Harder to tell. I need to make a confession and I have decided that you are the right person to confess to.”

  That startled me, I have to say—I would have thought I’d be the very last person he would want to confess anything to—but he certainly had my attention.

  He drew his gaze back from the books. “You remember my son, Robert’s, trial.”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember he was given a very light sentence. The sentence, as I’m sure you know, is decided by the Crown attorney. In Robert’s case, a term in jail was expected, but instead he got off with three months’ service to the community.”

  I nodded. The sentence had been particularly surprising because the current Crown attorney is known to be very tough on the drink and drive issue, particularly where young men are concerned.

  “He is a friend of mine,” Reverend Thomas said. “The Crown attorney, Gilbert Mitchell. We have been friends since university. Several weeks before the trial I went down to North Bay to see him. I told him Robert had suffered enormously for his crime already, which was true. I said that he was a sensitive boy, which was also true, and that he would be utterly crushed by a period in jail, that he would be destroyed by it. Which was not true. Robert was desperate to atone, he would have positively welcomed a prison sentence. I knew that. The truth is …”

  His voice was shaking and he stopped. He swallowed, the sound of it painfully loud in the silence of the room. I couldn’t look at him. I focused on a splatter of ink on the blotter on my desk. I was so alarmed by the thought that he might break down in front of me that I found I was holding my breath. I could hear his breathing shuddering with the effort of control, and I willed him to achieve it. Gradually, he did.

  “The truth is,” he said finally, his voice steadier but harsh with the effort of forcing out the words, “I could not stand the idea of a child of mine going to jail. The idea of everybody knowing that my son was in jail.

  “So justice was not done and the child’s mother could not bear it and said things to Robert that he could not live with. And he killed himself. But the truth is, I killed him. For the sake of my pride.”

  He stopped again. I think he expected me to say something, but I was so shocked, so appalled, I couldn’t speak. After a moment he carried on.

  “It has destroyed my wife and I know it has harmed your son as well, Edward. I don’t know if he has been blaming himself in any way, but I want to be sure he knows that he could not have prevented Robert’s suicide. No one could have. I would be grateful if you would tell him that and apologize to him on my behalf. I would do it myself but I think he might find that … painful, and I don’t want to add to his burden. Whereas you would know how to put it.”

  I have to say I felt the most profound admiration for him at that moment. I couldn’t imagine how he had managed to say what he had just said, how he had brought himself to come here. That previous night when he had come to the door, it must have been to say this. He had knocked and waited, but I had delayed so long in answering that his courage had failed him. I thought of the weight he must have been carrying for the past year and a half; it must have been like being crushed by rocks. It struck me as astonishing, in such circumstances, that he’d still been able to think of what Tom was going through and had come to try to put it right.

  Finally I managed to look at him. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much. I will tell Tom.”

  He nodded but didn’t reply. After a minute, knowing that nothing I could say would make any difference but having to try, nonetheless, I said, “I’ve always understood that the Christian god is a forgiving god, Reverend. Surely if we’re supposed to forgive others, we’re also supposed to forgive ourselves.”

  He looked away.

  “God has been silent on the subject,” he said after a minute. “He has been silent on all subjects since the day Robert died.”

  I imagined him, alone in his house, waking each day to the knowledge of what he had done, listening for some message—any message—from his god, hearing nothing but the howling of his own mind. Here is a strange thing: I found myself loathing his god for abandoning him at such a time. Hardly a rational thought for a non-believer.

  We sat for some time, not speaking. Finally, with an effort, he got to his feet. I would have encouraged him to stay—I felt no resentment towards him anymore; what had happened between us years ago seemed utterly trivial now—but it was clear he had said what he had come to say and wanted to go.

  As he was leaving, he held out his hand and I took it. He said, “Thank you for listening, Edward. I wanted you to know.”

  When he’d gone I returned to my study. After a moment the floorboards creaked above me and then I heard someone coming downstairs and knew it would be Tom.

  “Come in,” I said when he appeared in the doorway. “Sit down.”

  “Was that Reverend Thomas?” he said.

  “Yes, it was.”

  He sat down. “What did he want?”

  I told him what Reverend Thomas had said. How he had fixed the trial, how he felt he was to blame for Robert’s suicide.

  Tom put his head in his hands. “Oh God,” he said when I’d finished. “Oh God.”

  I said, “He asked me to apologize to you on his behalf, Tom, for what you’ve been through. He was afraid you might have been thinking you could have prevented Robert’s suicide. He asked me to tell you that no one could have.”

  He didn’t reply. I got up and went out to the entrance hall and brought back a coat and draped it over him—he was wearing only pyjamas. I risked putting a hand on his shoulder, just briefly. Then I sat down again. Outside the wind had picked up and snowflakes were splattering against the window, melting and trickling down.

  When he seemed to have collected himself I said, “You and I have to talk, Tom. But not tonight. You should go back to bed.”

  He nodded and after a moment he straightened up and left without looking at me so that I wouldn’t see that he’d been crying. I sat on for a whil
e and then went upstairs myself. I was afraid I might dream about Reverend Thomas, but when it came to it I didn’t dream at all.

  I am glad Betty is a librarian. It means I have a reason to see her frequently, and there is something about her that gladdens the heart. She has ditched her sleeping bag. When I went to the library at lunchtime she was wearing only her coat (with three layers underneath, so she informed me), hat, scarf, boots and gloves with the fingers missing.

  “Reborn, like a butterfly!” she announced, wafting her arms. “Emerging from my chrysalis. Summer’s coming.”

  I was enjoying the idea of Betty as a butterfly—she is on the hefty side—but I urged caution. Another blizzard is forecast for this evening.

  “Nonsense,” Betty said. “What do they know?”

  I told her that I had not had time to do justice to the books on Rome, which are due back at the library in Toronto next week, and she said she would try to get an extension for me. I hadn’t known that was possible. Apparently, if someone else is waiting for them I’ll be out of luck, but otherwise I can hold on to them for a while longer.

  She asked how things were at home and I said better, which isn’t strictly true. I considered telling her about Peter and Corey’s little forays into arson but decided against it. She would suggest that I talk to them. I’ve got as far as imagining knocking on their bedroom door but I can’t imagine what comes next.

  I also thought of telling her about Reverend Thomas’s visit but decided that would be breaking a confidence.

  When I got back to the bank I saw in my desk diary that Luke Morrison had made an appointment to see me. I can guess what it’s about: Sam Waller of the building firm Waller and Sons has been up here recruiting for the new hunting lodge/hotel, and my guess is that Luke Morrison has won the contract to make the furniture for them. I hope very much that is so. It’s good to see talent and hard work rewarded.

  Luke Morrison and I have a connection he is probably not aware of. His father was the senior accountant at the bank when I joined it after the war and was therefore my first boss. He was an exceedingly nice man. It was he who encouraged me to study accountancy by correspondence course and saw to it that I had time off to get the qualifications. He and his wife were killed in a collision with a logging truck about fifteen years ago. A terrible thing. Several of us from the bank went to the funeral out in Crow Lake. I remember thinking the children—there were four of them—behaved with great dignity.

  But as a result of that accident, the job of senior accountant at the bank became vacant and I was given it. And then a few years later, when Craig Stewart retired, I became manager. You could say I benefitted directly from that family’s tragedy, and I confess I’ve never been entirely comfortable with that.

  So a few years later when his eldest son—Luke—came into the bank wanting to borrow money to set up a furniture-making business, I dealt with his request myself and gave him as much help and support as I could. He has done very well and when Sam Waller dropped in last week and asked what I knew about Luke, I was able to give him a very good reference. If he does get this new contract, it will set him up nicely.

  In contrast to last night this has been a remarkably pleasant day. Reverend Gordon came into the bank this afternoon. I believe I said before that he has been hauled out of retirement by the church until a replacement for Reverend Thomas can be found. It seems to me unreasonable, given his age—he must be in his seventies; he was at least fifty when we were in Italy during the war—but he claims to be enjoying it.

  He came in to discuss his finances. His pension is very small but so are his outgoings, and I was able to reassure him there was no cause for concern. When the business side of things was out of the way we sat on for a few minutes (his was my last appointment of the day) and talked about this and that, mostly about the new hotel and what it will mean for the town. There will be more tourists—always a mixed blessing—but it will bring money into the area and create a good number of jobs and we agreed that on balance it would be a good thing.

  We didn’t talk about the war. We never do. We shared what you could call an intense experience in the course of it but it wasn’t the sort of thing you talk about afterwards. He sat with me during what was unquestionably the worst night of my life. About a dozen of us, myself and another badly wounded man, had taken shelter from a bombardment in a deserted villa on the outskirts of Motta in southern Italy. In the end, after a day and a night of bloody battle, our forces did take the town, but that was no thanks to me; I was out of it by then.

  I have several very clear memories from that day, one of which I have tried unsuccessfully to wipe from my mind ever since. I was on a stretcher—this was shortly after I was wounded—being carried to the villa. Pain had set in, and a desperate thirst, and no one had any water. I lifted my head, looking for someone to appeal to for a drink, and what I saw instead was a flame-thrower in action, simultaneously coating its target—and inevitably the men who were manning that target—in fuel and setting fire to it. And therefore to them.

  Both sides had flame-throwers, I know that. But all I knew then was that this one was being used by us. By our side—the side that God was on. I remember hearing screaming and realizing it was coming from me.

  Then I remember nothing until I came around in the villa and found myself lying on a heap of blankets beside the other injured man, with a padre sitting on his rucksack on the floor between us. The padre was Reverend Gordon. I didn’t know him at that stage and had no idea he was also from the North. He was the minister of the church in Struan, and Emily and I didn’t move here until 1948, when I got the job at the bank, so our paths had never crossed. He was just a man in a padre’s uniform, sitting on a rucksack.

  We were in a large, imposing room with grand furniture and several magnificent paintings hanging on the walls. From outside I could hear the bombardment still going on. Inside, my fellow soldiers, who had discovered a wine cellar in the basement and were in exceedingly high spirits, were breaking up the furniture and throwing it on the fire. As I watched, two of them climbed onto a table, wrenched a painting off the wall and started hacking it up for the fire as well.

  I guess I went a little mad. I remember shouting at them, struggling to get up and fighting savagely with Reverend Gordon, who was trying to restrain me, until eventually I was too exhausted to continue and fell back on the blankets.

  Sometime after that the injured man next to me started calling for his mother and I heard Reverend Gordon say that his mother was here, right here beside him, and then he prayed with him and in the course of the praying the man died. I remember thinking that his death didn’t matter, that no man’s death mattered because the entire human race deserved to be wiped from the face of the earth.

  My final memory from that day is of an exchange I had with Reverend Gordon in the middle of the night when the men had drunk themselves into a stupor and there was silence apart from the never-ending hammer of the guns. I was in terrible pain and certain that I was about to die. If I’d had any religious faith before that day, the flame-thrower had put an end to it, and I just wanted to depart this world as swiftly as possible. Reverend Gordon was still beside me—he never moved from my side all that night—and I remember saying to him, “Just don’t talk to me about God,” (though he hadn’t been) and him saying, “All right.”

  “And don’t pray for me. I don’t want to be prayed for.”

  “All right,” he said. “Have some water. It’s very good—there’s a well in the garden.”

  And then later still, feeling the warmth of his hand on my arm, I opened my eyes and saw that although he was still sitting upright, his eyes were closed, which made me suspicious, so I said, “You promised not to pray for me.”

  He smiled and opened his eyes and said, “I’m doing my best not to, Edward. But I’m praying a kind of general prayer and you’ll have to forgive me if sometimes you slip in. Not often, though. I’m trying to keep it to a minimum.”

&nb
sp; As I say, not the sort of thing you talk about sitting in a bank thirty years later. But not the sort of thing you forget either. I hope he knows I am grateful. I have no doubt he would say there is nothing to be grateful for.

  The events of that day—in particular the flame-thrower—coming as they did hard on the heels of the forest fire and my father’s death, pretty much finished me off, mentally speaking. I had what they now call a mental breakdown and for several years I was not in good shape.

  Physically I recovered almost in spite of myself. I spent six months in a hospital in England and it was while I was there that I received a letter from my sister Margaret telling me that my mother had died. Her lungs had been affected by smoke inhalation during the fire and she died of pneumonia. I remember the gaping chasm that opened within me when I read that letter. It—the chasm—is there still, though I am not aware of it so often.

  A matter of days later I received a letter from Emily—it had been written before Margaret’s but it had spent some time in Italy and was two months old by the time I got it—in which she told me I was going to be a father.

  I read and reread that letter, trying to make it say something other than what it said. While I was still in Italy I’d realized that if I had ever been in love with Emily I no longer was. I’d worked out that as soon as I got home I would tell her that the war had changed me, which was certainly true, and that I no longer wished to be married and wanted a divorce. Her pregnancy made that impossible. Abandoning her with a child was not something I could bring myself to do even in the state I was in. With hindsight, of course, it might have been better for Emily if I had.

  Very little account was taken of your emotional or mental health back then. When I was considered physically well enough to be moved I was transferred to a hospital ship and sent to Toronto, and after a spell in hospital there I was sent home. By the time I got there Tom had arrived. I remember Emily, delightedly, ecstatically, holding out to me this small bundle that was our son, and the way her expression changed when I made no move to take him, merely looked at him and said, “This is him, then.” Hardly knowing what I was looking at.