“But . . .”
I kicked Patrick again, and he glared at me but said nothing further.
Aunt Ida quickly rinsed and put away the bowls. “Out,” she said.
Patrick grabbed the newspaper from the table.
As we went upstairs, I turned to Aunt Ida. “Can we put an advertisement in the paper for Bertie?”
“Oh, Rose.” She sighed. “I guess it couldn’t hurt. I’ll ask James to insert it. But please don’t get your hopes up.”
“Thank you.” I hugged her tightly.
“Now, if you would tidy the beds, please, I’m going to the hospital to see Ernest. Are either of you coming with me?” Aunt Ida looked at me pointedly.
“We have plans,” Patrick said quickly.
I glanced at him in surprise. I didn’t know we had plans, but if it got me out of a hospital visit, I’d go along with him.
“Rose, you haven’t been once to see Ernest or Winnie,” Aunt Ida said. “Even Patrick’s visited your brother.”
“I’ll go tomorrow,” I promised recklessly. “But Patrick’s right. We have plans.” I didn’t even feel bad about the lie. Lies didn’t matter now that I didn’t go to confession anymore. I quashed the thought that it would have mattered a great deal to Mam.
Aunt Ida raised her eyebrows. “Very well. Tomorrow. I have some items I need from the store. I’ll give you children a list, if you’d please pick them up after your . . . plans. And be sure to comb your hair, Rose, before you go out. It looks dreadful.”
She went into her bedroom. Patrick flopped down on his cot.
“Get off so I can make your bed,” I ordered. “Though you really should make it yourself. I’m not your maid.”
Patrick got to his feet, but ignored me, engrossed in the newspaper.
“What plans do we have?” I asked him.
He looked somewhat embarrassed. “It’s something that I saw in here.” He pointed to a page.
“What?”
“I wondered—” He stopped. “It says here that there is going to be a funeral for some of the unidentified bodies from the Chebucto Road School this morning. A ‘mass funeral,’ the newspaper calls it.” He spoke in a rush. “I want to go, and I wondered if you’d go with me.”
I stopped straightening the blankets.
“My Dad might be one of them,” he continued. “I want to go just in case. I’m the only person left alive in my family to see him . . . to see him buried. I’ll check the newspaper every day for Bertie if you’ll come with me. I don’t want to go alone.”
I had been so wrapped up in my own misery, I hadn’t even thought for one minute how Patrick must feel all on his own. At least I had Mary and Ernest and Winnie, and maybe Bertie.
“You don’t have to check the newspaper for me,” I said. “I’ll go with you. Da or Fred might be there, too. Should we tell Aunt Ida?”
“No,” Patrick said. “It would upset her.”
I saw the sense of that and nodded. “Let me finish the beds.”
The large number of wagons and relief vehicles had churned the roads to a thick, cloying mud. At first I tried to step around the ankle-deep puddles to save my boots, but soon gave that up and splashed through them.
“Should we have gone to Mass first?” Patrick asked.
I shrugged. “There will probably be lots of prayers and church stuff at the funeral,” I said. I didn’t want to go to Mass. I’d been only once since the explosion, and hated it. We’d gathered in a hall because the church was destroyed. The familiar words were spoken, and the incense, the altar boys and the priest were the same, but the peace they had once brought me was gone.
A large crowd had gathered outside the Chebucto Road School yard beneath a sky heavy with low-slung clouds. Patrick and I wormed our way to the front and peered through the close-packed bodies to see coffins laid in rows. Two small boys climbed a nearby fence and shouted joyfully at the heights scaled, but found themselves rudely plucked from their perch and soundly scolded for their disrespect.
I stared in disbelief at the number of coffins that stretched as far as my eyes could see. The past eleven days, I’d heard the number of dead repeated: one thousand, some said; more like two thousand, others announced. My brain couldn’t picture that many people. To see the numerous coffins laid out in front of me made it real. Was Da or Fred in one of them? Uncle Lyle? It didn’t matter. So many coffins—I would surely know someone who lay within. A small bouquet of flowers lay on top of each one, and to see the bright blooms made my breath catch in a sob.
Churchmen huddled in a group, black hats pulled low against a biting wind. There was no way to know which church the dead attended, so all the ministers and priests were invited to speak. I could see Duncan standing to one side with a group of undertakers, the delivery wagon ready to bear coffins to the various cemeteries. He occasionally blew on his hands to warm them. Behind me, a woman cried quietly, and a man beside her wiped his eyes with a handkerchief.
A band played a hymn, then Father McManus stepped forward and began a prayer. His voice sounded weak and thin in the open air, no wood beams and stone arches to catch his words and send them on to Heaven. One after another, the churchmen spoke, but I didn’t hear them. Instead, I fought my own battle with God. I hadn’t spoken to Him since the day after the explosion, but now I silently screamed at Him. How could You let this happen to us? To me? Don’t You care? Of all my prayers, why did You choose to answer this one?
I looked down to see my hand inside Patrick’s. I didn’t know if he had reached for mine, or I for his. Tears trembled on his eyelashes, though he blinked rapidly to hold them back. He looked so lonely and bewildered, I left my hand where it was.
The skies began to weep a cold rain that turned to ice when it hit the ground. Umbrellas mushroomed, and the churchmen scurried to the protection of their motor cars for the journey to the cemeteries.
My hand was abruptly released. I tucked it inside a pocket to keep warm.
As I turned away from the sight of the coffins being loaded in the various vehicles, I saw the red hair of a child carried in a woman’s arms. She hurried toward the street.
“Bertie!” I shouted.
I thought I saw the child’s head turn, but the woman was swallowed up by the crowd and I lost sight of them.
“That’s Bertie,” I said to Patrick. “Hurry.”
We dodged about people as I frantically searched for the woman. Then, up ahead, I saw her again. If only she was close enough for me to see the child clearly. I began to run, but the crowd closed in and I lost her yet again.
“I think she’s going to the railroad station,” Patrick gasped. He puffed beside me, out of breath.
Suddenly, I slipped on the icy road and fell heavily. Air whooshed out of my lungs and my sore arm stung fiercely. Stunned, I lay there until hands helped me up.
“That’s quite a fall, young lady,” a man said.
“You’ve cut your knee, dear,” a woman said. She dabbed at it with a handkerchief.
“No,” I screamed. “Leave me alone.” I pushed at the hands that held me, that kept me from Bertie.
The man and woman drew back, startled, and I ran off, Patrick close behind. We arrived at the station to see a train pull out in billows of white steam. I tore up and down the platform to see inside the windows of the passenger cars as they swept by. Finally at one, a white face topped by red hair peered back at me.
“There! There!” I pulled on Patrick’s arm. “It’s him. It’s Bertie! Where is it going? Where is this train going? Read the schedule!” I yelled at him. I pushed him toward the station entrance where a board listed the arrivals and departures. I needed him to read it. I might get the station wrong.
“Just a minute.” Patrick studied the printed schedule hung on the wall. “Truro. It’s gone to Truro.”
“We have to go there.”
“We don’t have a ticket or any money to buy one,” Patrick pointed out. He examined the schedule again. “Besides, tha
t was the last train today. The next one to Truro is tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”
“Then we’ll go tomorrow and find Bertie.”
Chapter 18
“This is dumb,” Patrick announced. He stared morosely around the crowded train.
“Then why did you bother to come?” I asked. “I could have gone myself. I don’t need you to help find Bertie.” I was, in fact, relieved to have Patrick beside me on the hard train seat, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
I wiped steam fog from the train window with the back of a mitten and peered out at the snow-stippled fields that rushed past. I’d never been away from Halifax before and my stomach felt hollow with fear. I was determined, though. I had to find Bertie, and if I’d thought he was in Africa, well, I would have searched for him there.
“Nothing better to do,” Patrick mumbled around a jawbreaker. He fished in the bag for a second one and popped it into his mouth.
He was right. There was nothing better to do. There was no school; there were no sleds to race down snow-packed hills and few friends to race against. Seeing those that remained only reminded us of who was gone, so we didn’t go out much.
I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. The train car was overheated. It stank, too—an old smell of coal fumes from the endlessly burning stove at the end of the car, wet winter woollens, stale sandwiches and unwashed bodies.
“But it’s still dumb,” he said again. His lips were stained black from the candy and his cheeks bulged.
Patrick would never change. I wanted to snatch away the bag that he clutched tightly in his hand.
I’d bribed Patrick to secrecy with an offer to buy him candy with the lunch coins Aunt Ida had given me. I could have just told her why we were going to Truro, but I was afraid she’d stop me, so I said I was going to see Winnie. She’d been delighted. “I knew she’d come around given time,” she’d told Uncle James happily.
I’d cringed when I heard that. Not telling the whole truth felt as bad as a complete lie, confession or no confession. I would go see Winnie, as I had said. Hopefully, that would make it less a fib—though the thought of visiting Winnie made my stomach quiver. If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t be in the hospital.
After a long while, the train lurched, shuddered and stopped. “Are we in Truro?” I asked Patrick.
He leaned over me to glance out the window. “That’s what the sign says. Can’t you read it?” he said. He grinned widely, pleased with his own joke.
We filed off the train with the other passengers, then stood on the platform while people milled about us.
“Now what?” Patrick asked.
I looked around uncertainly. I think I’d had it in my mind that if I got to Truro, Bertie would be at the station waiting for me. “Why don’t we ask the ticket agent first?” I suggested. “We know the woman came to Truro.”
“There were other places she could have got off,” Patrick said.
“What do you mean?” I asked sharply.
“The train goes on to other towns. This isn’t the only stop.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” I yelled at him.
“I just thought of it now,” he said. Behind us, the train chugged out, destined for those other places. Bertie could be anywhere.
“Well, we can start here.” I pushed open the heavy station door and crossed the room to where a man sat on a stool behind a high wooden counter.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Nowhere,” I replied.
He frowned at me over gold-coloured wire-framed glasses.
“I mean,” I explained, hurriedly. “I wondered if you know a woman who took the train yesterday to Halifax. She had a red-haired boy with her, about four years old.”
“Lots of women took the train yesterday and lots of four-year-old boys,” the man replied. “Now, move along. You’re holding up the line.”
I glanced behind me, but only saw Patrick. “No. You don’t understand. I think that boy is my brother. I’m from Halifax and he was lost in the explosion. I thought I saw him yesterday with a woman who got on the afternoon train for Truro.”
The man’s frown faded. He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I can’t remember. I see so many people.”
“Thank you,” I told him.
“Good luck with your search. Terrible thing that happened there. Terrible.”
I went over to where Patrick was examining a large poster of a train going through mountains.
“Wouldn’t it be great to take the train all the way out west? Right through the Rocky Mountains,” he enthused.
“How can you think about that when Bertie is lost?” I demanded.
“I was just looking,” he said.
“Well, start looking for Bertie,” I said.
“Where?”
I mulled over the problem. “We’ll ask at the shops. Everyone goes to the shops.”
We left the station and walked toward downtown.
“It’s not that big a place,” Patrick said. “We should be able to find him if he’s here.” He stopped in front of a store window decorated with silver garland and holly. “They’re having Christmas,” he said. “Look at that coaster.” He leaned closer to the window. “I bet it could go down the hill faster than anyone else’s. I’ll ask Mama for that for Christmas.”
Startled, I stared at him. As I did, I saw his mouth turn down and his lips tremble as he became aware of what he’d said.
“I forgot is all,” he muttered. “It felt so normal here that I forgot.” He wiped a hand across his eyes and walked away.
I knew what he meant. At home the store windows were boarded up. Lamps and electric lights tried unsuccessfully to push back the resulting gloom. A few shops had sweets for the holidays and some carried toys, but the need for food and household goods was greater, and no one had money left over for anything else. Christmas might be in three days, but not for Richmond.
For hours, we wandered in and out of shops, Patrick on one side of the street, me on the other. No one knew where we could find Bertie.
“Trouble is, dearie,” the clerk at the last store I went into said, “we’ve had so many strangers in town since the explosion, it’s hard to keep track of anyone. People here to visit family in our hospital, children brought to stay with kin.” She placed a bag of flour in a box for a woman customer. “Even some of those American doctors and nurses are here.”
I thanked her and went outside to wait for Patrick. It was hopeless. I’d never find Bertie. Perhaps, like everyone else believed, he was with Mam in Heaven.
Patrick wandered out of a flower shop, quite pleased with himself. “Look,” he said. He held up two lollipops. “She gave me some candy.”
“Candy!” I shouted. My temper flared. “Did you even ask about Bertie?” I didn’t give him time to answer. “Candy and your stomach are all you ever give any mind to. You don’t even care that your mother and father are dead!”
Patrick’s face drained of colour. Abruptly, he drew back his arm and threw the lollipops as far away as he could. I felt stunned. I couldn’t believe I’d said such hurtful words. Words that I knew weren’t true.
Suddenly, the woman customer came flying out of the store. “Oh, I’m so glad I caught you, girl. I just remembered that Mrs. Halliday down on Prince Street took in some youngsters from Halifax. I remember seeing her with a little fellow with red hair. You just go down Prince Street until you get to Pleasant—that’s five blocks down. It’s the blue house on the corner.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope it’s your brother.” She smiled and went back into the store.
Patrick stalked away from me.
“Wait.” I ran to catch up to him. “Patrick, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I just . . .” How to explain that I wanted to hurt him because I was hurting. It made no sense.
“At night I close my eyes and pretend I’m home,” he said. “Then I hear Aunt Ida or you or Mary, and I’m laying on a
cot in the hall. I pretend I’m only visiting and I’ll be home soon, but that doesn’t work, either, because I know I won’t ever go back there again.”
I felt thoroughly ashamed. “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have said such awful things to you. I don’t know why I did.”
Patrick grimaced. “Aunt Ida yelled at me this morning. I never heard her yell before. Nobody’s acting normal. Do you think they ever will?”
“I don’t know.”
We walked in silence for a few minutes. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“This is Prince Street,” Patrick said. “I saw a sign back there. The woman said five blocks. We’ve come four, so the house must be just up here.”
“Oh,” I said quietly. “Thanks.”
Patrick nodded, then pointed at a large, blue clapboard house that sat on the corner. “You think that’s it? That big house?”
“I guess so.”
My heart pounded as I knocked on the front door. I studied the garden, the brown weathered stocks that come summer would be covered with pink hollyhock blooms. I hadn’t realized until then how relieved my eyes were to see whole houses and buildings, and gardens.
I heard footsteps, then the door swung open.
“Yes?” a woman said.
“Mrs. Halliday?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Rose Dunlea, and I was told you had some children from the Halifax explosion staying here.”
“Yes, I do. Come in.”
Patrick snatched his cap from his head as we entered a large foyer. He gawked so much that I wanted to thump him for his ill manners.
“My little brother, Bertie—Albert Dunlea—is missing. He has red hair. A woman in a shop told me you had a boy here with red hair.”
“I do, but his name isn’t Albert. It’s Gordon.”
“Gordon? Are you sure?”
“That’s what he said his name was. Would you like to see him?”
“Yes, please.”
She led the way down a long hall. Patrick almost climbed up the back of my heels, he followed me so closely. I turned and glared at him.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
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