“I’m so glad to see you’re safe,” she said. “I want to thank you for helping the girls get out of the school.”
“Mam’s dead,” I said flatly. I needed to say those words, feel them on my tongue, see if they felt true. They did.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” she said. She hugged me.
“And Catherine. How are you?”
“I’m fine, Sister,” she said. “Have you seen my grandmother?”
Sister Therese shook her head. “She might be here. It’s so chaotic. People come and go. I can’t keep track of them. I came down to help out wherever needed.”
“What happened to the other girls?” I asked. “And Sister Frances?” I surprised myself by my concern for the teacher.
“Many of the students were hurt. Some were killed. We don’t know how many.” Sister Therese blinked rapidly. “Sister Frances suffered cuts and bruises like most of us, but she’ll be fine. The school is destroyed. I’m not sure what will happen—if it will be rebuilt or torn down. But there won’t be school for you children for a long time.”
No school. The secret hammered at my brain to be revealed. I winced from the pain it shot through my head, but I would not let it out.
“We’re going to find our families,” I told Sister Therese.
She frowned, and I got myself ready to run if she wanted to keep us there.
“Yes. You go look for your families. I trust you, Rose.”
She fumbled inside her sleeve, pulled out an object and pressed it into my hands. “This is for you. To help you in your search and keep you safe.”
I looked down to see a rosary. Sister Therese folded my fingers over the beads.
“I’ll keep you all in my prayers,” she said.
Patrick looked relieved. I wished I could feel the same comfort that I was being kept in Sister Therese’s prayers, but there was none. The beads felt hard and cold and lifeless to my touch. I pushed the rosary deep into the pocket of my dress. Sister Therese directed us toward the soup kitchen, then disappeared.
As I sat in the kitchen a few minutes later, fingers wrapped around a hot cup, I vowed I’d find my family if I had to search every hospital and nursing home, the tent city, and even—I shuddered—the Chebucto Road School morgue.
Chapter 14
Bitterly cold wind threw hard snow pellets into my face as I stepped out the hospital door. I pulled the nurse’s cape tight about my shoulders. Motor cars and wagons continued to pull up with wounded. A party of soldiers, shovels in hand, moved off at a quick march to dig through the ruins. The faces of everyone around us were drawn and haggard, eyes haunted. I glanced at Patrick and Catherine and saw they looked the same. I probably did, too. We stood a moment, trying to decide where to go first. Then, of their own accord, my feet started off in the direction of home. I needed to see if Mam still lay in our backyard, or whether Duncan had taken her away as he had promised.
Snowdrifts piled up against the rubble, softening the starkness of the devastation. Wind swept unchecked over the newly flattened land, fanning the fires that still smouldered. I recognized nothing, but my feet moved surely, the way engraved in my mind. Again, I was surprised at the silence broken only by the occasional shout from rescue workers, but by none of the spare words we used in everyday life. We passed the ruins of shops, including the sweet store, Patrick’s favourite. My feet grew numb in the cold and my hands clasped beneath the cape for warmth. Catherine staggered along, the soldier’s greatcoat tangled about her feet. She kept up a running conversation with her doll, of tea parties and new dresses and her father.
“Do you think your father will come home from Europe now?” I asked Catherine.
She lowered her head and tucked the doll within her coat sleeve. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sure they’ll let him out of the army if they know you are alone,” I continued.
Catherine merely shrugged, and the conversation ended.
We arrived at a church and went in. Part of one wall had collapsed, but it was dry and women bustled about with soup and bread. I took a cup, but the thought of food gagged me so I merely held it to warm my hands. Patrick gulped his down, while Catherine sipped daintily, then offered some to her doll. I averted my eyes from the cross at the front of the church and studied the people. I wished that Aunt Ida or Mary was among them. I wished so hard that it was a disappointment when neither of them appeared.
We left the church and continued walking in the direction of home. The smoke became thicker. Ash filled our throats and an acrid stench stung our nostrils. I pulled the cape over my nose and breathed in the faint scent of perfume left by the nurse. Mam had always smelled nice, too.
“You can’t go any farther.” A soldier with a gun barred our way. “Only rescue workers allowed to pass.”
“But we live here,” I said.
“No one is allowed in but rescue workers,” he repeated.
Patrick elbowed me aside and faced the soldier. “Our houses are here. We want to go home.”
“No one has a house here anymore. There’s nothing left. It’s too dangerous to let you roam about. Sorry, sonny,” the soldier said, unbending slightly from his stiff stance.
Patrick blustered about for a moment, then sagged with defeat.
“What do we do now?” he asked me.
“We’ll check the tent city and Victoria General Hospital and anywhere else they took injured people,” I said. I needed to keep moving to keep the secret controlled. It clamoured to be set free among these ruins.
Rows of tents had been placed on the Common, but without heat, the blizzard made them uninhabitable. People huddled in groups around bonfires. I scrutinized each face, and recognized a neighbour or two, but they were few and far between. Suddenly, it came to me why. Most of our neighbours were dead. I tore my thoughts away from that path. If I started to think about it, I would cry and never stop. I warmed my hands by a fire and listened to two men talk about the disaster.
“It was those two ships on fire in the Narrows,” one man said to the other. “The Imo and the Mont Blanc. Loaded with explosives that one was.”
I had seen both those vessels through Ernest’s binoculars.
“I still think it was the Germans. Sabotage,” said the other.
I moved away, not wanting to hear any more.
We searched all day in the driving snow, from hospitals to hastily erected shelters where the wounded were treated. Lists of injured were being posted now, and Patrick would grandly sweep me aside any time we came across one to read the names himself. At first it made me furious that he did, but I had to admit, he could go through the lists faster than I was able to. We stopped everyone and asked if they’d seen Da, Fred, Mary, Uncle James, Aunt Ida, Aunt Helen, Uncle Lyle, Granny and Grandpa. Patiently, we recited their names again and again. Always the answer was no. I got to the point where I didn’t have the heart to ask anymore.
Dusk had gathered when Catherine plopped down on a snow-covered pile of boards and refused to go any farther. “Dolly and I are cold,” she stated through chattering teeth.
Wind howled and whistled about the ruins, pushing sheets of snow before it. At times we waded over our knees through drifts. Like Catherine I shivered uncontrollably. The bumps and bruises I’d received the day before were making themselves known and my stitched arm throbbed. But there was one last place we needed to check.
“We’ll get a hot drink soon, Catherine,” I assured her. I pulled her to her feet. Dried tear trails stained her cheeks. I put a hand to my own face and felt the stiffness there. I’d been crying, too. Strange to not have known.
I held Catherine’s hand, conjured up the map in my mind and set off to Chebucto Road School, now the mortuary.
Snow caked our hair and eyelids by the time we arrived. We stepped indoors, grateful to be out of the wind, though our breath still puffed white. One wall sagged, but it had been shored up and the windows covered with boards. The gloom was broken by pools of yellow light from lamps. A
wagon pulled up at the door behind us, and I averted my eyes from the blanketed bulges stacked in its back.
Soldiers came and went, their faces weary. People stood huddled in small groups, but here, too, was that eerie silence that haunted the entire city. Three soldiers sat at a table, sorting watches, rings, papers, clothing, books, lunch pails and school bags. Occasionally, one would sweep a pile into a cloth bag, tie and label it, then set it aside. Two more soldiers and a man in a suit and bowler hat sat at a second table. A woman clutched a baby, and leaned over the table to watch anxiously as the man in the suit read from a paper in his hand. Her body trembled, but from cold or fear I didn’t know. The man whispered to one of the soldiers standing nearby.
“This way, Missus,” he said, and led her to a flight of stairs leading downward. They disappeared from sight.
“Scared the wits out of me,” I heard a voice behind me say. I turned to see two soldiers in the doorway of the school. They lit cigarettes and tossed the used matches into the storm. “You think they’re all dead down there,” one said. “And suddenly this body sits up and lets out a yell. Made my blood curdle, it being the middle of the night and all.”
The second soldier nodded. “The number of people we brought in yesterday. Easy to see how a live one could be thought for dead if they were knocked out.”
“A boy it was, about thirteen,” the first went on. “Leg sheared off at the knee.” He glanced up and saw me, then lowered his voice.
I strained to make out his words, fascinated and repulsed at the same time.
“How that boy lived so long with one leg is beyond me. Probably no family left. Might have been better if he’d never woken up.” The first soldier threw away his cigarette end. “Better get back to work.” They began to unload the wagon of its gruesome cargo.
“Can I help you, children?” The man in the suit asked.
I’d not noticed that we’d moved to the front of the line. “We’re looking for our families,” I said.
For being so cold a moment ago, I suddenly felt faint with heat.
“You’re too young to go into the morgue to identify people,” he said.
“But we’re the only ones left in our family,” I told him flatly.
He looked taken aback. He shuffled papers in front of him, hummed and hawed, then cleared his throat. “You’re still too young.”
“I’m fourteen,” I said. I was near enough that I didn’t think that counted as a lie.
“I’m sixteen,” Patrick chimed in.
I turned and glared at him. No one would believe Patrick was sixteen. His voice hadn’t even lowered and his chin hadn’t sprouted a single hair.
The man raised his eyebrows at Patrick, but didn’t argue. “Who are you looking for?” he asked. He signalled to the soldier beside him to write the information down.
I went through my list of names. They came easily off my tongue now, I’d repeated them so often.
The soldier’s pen hovered over the paper. “That many missing?” he said softly. “I’m so sorry, miss.”
It wasn’t until then that it hit me. That many? I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.
“Get a chair for the young lady,” the man in the suit ordered.
“I’m fine,” I said. I took a deep breath.
“Give us those names again, please. One at a time, along with their age and appearance.”
I described Frederick first. The man in the suit went through a list and put a tick beside some numbers. I could barely read words right side up in front of me, so words written upside down were next to impossible, but I guessed the list was a description of everyone brought to the mortuary. The check marks showed those who possibly matched my description. When I got to Bertie, I hesitated. I didn’t want them to match Bertie with anyone on that list. Reluctantly, I described him. Finished, I stepped aside for Catherine. She ignored us and chatted to her doll, so I told them about her grandmother as best I could. Patrick went next, then the man in the suit nodded, and a soldier stood up.
“This way, girls. You too, son.”
“I don’t think Catherine should come,” I said. I’d felt a growing concern about her behaviour. We were the same age, but she was acting so much younger right now. Younger even than Winnie. “I’ll look for her grandmother for her.”
The soldier nodded, then led Patrick and me to the top of the stairs. Patrick’s eyes darted every which way. Sweat trickled down the sides of his face and he looked decidedly green. I knew how he felt. I’d not seen many people passed away, my Mam’s mother being the closest to us. Laid out in her best dress in a coffin in our parlour, she’d looked like she was sleeping peacefully. I didn’t know what I’d see here, but I knew it wasn’t going to be like that. I steeled myself to go down.
Suddenly, I felt myself turned about and swept into a huge embrace. “Rose, oh, Rose. I’ve been looking for you everywhere . . .”
My sister Mary held me so tight, I couldn’t breathe. Her fingers were white with cold, her dress shoes soaked and falling apart. A second person came up and pulled me from Mary into another hug. Aunt Ida. I clung to her. Like so many others I’d seen this day, her head sported a white dressing. Duncan loomed behind them, face pale with fatigue.
“You didn’t come back,” I accused him.
“I did,” he said. “You were sleeping with Catherine in the hospital. I didn’t want to wake you. I had to go back out and help bring in more wounded. I’ve been working all night and day.”
The anger drained out of me. Duncan had kept his word. I shouldn’t have doubted him.
“Where’s Horace?” I asked Mary. Strange that question should be the first in my head.
“Horse is at his house lamenting the fact that the army took his beloved car to use as an ambulance.” Mary laughed bitterly. “I asked him to bring me home when I heard about the explosion, but he said he was too busy. Didn’t want to get his hands dirty, he meant. I made my way to Richmond on my own, though it took me until late yesterday afternoon.”
Suddenly I remembered. “Mam’s dead, Mary. In the backyard.”
“Duncan told me. He brought her here.” Tears washed down Mary’s face.
“I’m sorry you had to see your mother like that, Rose,” Aunt Ida said.
“But at least I know she’s dead,” I told her. “Ernest and Winnie were at the hospital with us, but I could only find Ernest when I went to find them this morning. A woman told me he’d lost an eye. I don’t know where Winnie is. I can’t find Da or Fred or Bertie. And I couldn’t find you or Mary—”
“Hush, hush.” Aunt Ida patted my back. “I spent the night at Victoria Hospital from this bump on the head. That’s where Mary found me. We set out this morning and came across Duncan. He told us you were at the Camp Hill hospital. We went there straight away, but you had already left. We saw Ernest.”
“What about Winnie?” I asked through chattering teeth.
“She’s had an operation,” Aunt Ida said.
An operation! I had heard Granny talk about people who had an operation. They generally died. I gripped Aunt Ida’s arm tightly.
“The doctor said she’d be fine in time,” Aunt Ida hastily assured me. “Her spleen, an organ inside, was torn. They fixed it. She was sent by train to Truro as they felt she’d get better care there.”
The soldier shifted impatiently. Others waited to go down the stairs.
“You don’t need to go, Rose. I can look,” Aunt Ida said.
I shook my head. I had come this far. “I need to see for myself.”
“Very well, then.” She nodded at the soldier to lead us down.
“I don’t want to go,” Patrick said suddenly. He backed away.
At the bottom of the stairs, Aunt Ida gasped and crossed herself. Row upon row of covered bodies was laid out. I couldn’t believe there were so many. Mary crowded close behind, Duncan’s arm about her shoulder.
“I’ll just show you the people who most closely match the descriptions
the young miss gave us, ma’am,” the soldier said. “Some of them aren’t in very good shape. Just so you know.”
Ice reached into my bones and wrapped around my heart, squeezing it until I could barely breathe. Electric lights had been strung up—probably the only ones in all of Richmond. They cast ghostly shadows across the walls. It was a horrible place. The soldier went along the rows reading each tag. Occasionally he would stop and gently lift the cotton from a face. I buried my head in Aunt Ida’s coat. She would let me know if anyone was found.
Mary gave a small moan.
“Yes,” Aunt Ida said. “That’s Mrs. Murphy. Helen Murphy. The boy’s mother.”
Farther along the line. “Mrs. Dunlea, the elder. Rose’s grandmother,” Aunt Ida said gently.
We found Grandpa, and Mam. She had a tag that said Alice Mary Dunlea. We couldn’t find Uncle Lyle, Da, Fred or Bertie.
“Also—” Aunt Ida’s voice broke. “My husband, James Dunlea, is missing.” She described what he had worn to work, his age, and the fact that he was a stevedore on the docks.
“A lot of workers on the docks just disappeared. We haven’t had many come in from the waterfront,” the soldier said. “A tidal wave formed after the explosion and swept across the docks and the lower part of town, washing people into the ocean. And . . .” He hesitated. “Some of the bodies here are badly burnt. We won’t ever know who they were. But come back and check again. More people are brought in all the time.”
“Thank you,” Aunt Ida said. “It’s not an easy job you have, but you’re doing it well.”
I looked up to see the soldier’s face crumble at her words. He struggled to compose himself. I had thought of him just as a soldier in uniform, but I now realized he was a boy barely older than Frederick. He’d never seen battle or death until now.
Duncan followed us up the stairs. “Tomorrow we’ll search the hospitals again. But right now, I’m taking you to my mother’s. There’re no windows left in the house, but the building is still sound and there are beds. I think the best thing for you all is to get some rest.”
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