by Alan Cumyn
Lillian clutched the pillow and let out a low, pained breath. I held her, tried to keep her from shaking.
“Why am I nothing to you?” she moaned.
“That’s not true.”
“I can smell her on you!”
“No. No, you can’t.”
She elbowed me. “Why don’t you go up and sleep with her now,” she hissed. “It’s what you want.”
“It isn’t. Lillian, I swear.”
She felt and found my cock soft as a bag of sawdust.
“Swear all you like,” she said bitterly.
Then we both froze to listen to new noises: a gentle rhythmic squeaking, like a metallic sign swinging in the breeze, and then a thumping on the floor in the spare room next to ours — a galloping bed — and hard breathing that seemed to go on and on forever.
Rufus and Vanessa.
“Damn them all! ” Lillian said. She rolled over me and onto her feet. “I’m going to sleep in the sitting room.”
She disappeared with the sheet, the blanket, the pillow and all peace.
Twenty-one
The next morning Lillian was up before any of us, clattering around the kitchen with a vengeance. My head felt stuffed and fragile from lack of sleep. By the time I walked out of the bedroom she had cooked up a whole side of bacon — rations for some weeks if it were just the three of us — and all the eggs in the house and enough coffee for a political rally. She had folded up the blankets on the chesterfield, and as soon as she saw me in the hallway she hurried past and into Michael’s room, where she changed quickly back into yesterday’s dress.
The children charged into the house from outside, Martha and Abigail wrapped primly in housecoats, Michael barely clothed in a torn pair of underpants. Alexander slouched in wearing pyjamas, his hair as squashed and tired as a bird’s nest wintered over.
“So how was it in the wilds?” I asked Martha.
“I could not sleep a wink for the parasites! Even when I burrowed down they bit me through the coverings! Look!” And she showed us all several small red marks on her arms, neck, legs and ankles.
“I wasn’t bitten at all!” Abigail declared.
“Well, I would have slept despite the bugs if you hadn’t squirmed all the time,” Martha said to her.
“I did not!”
“Now, young ladies,” Margaret said, and I turned to see her coming down the stairs. In a shaft of sunlight from the landing window, in the soft white dress she was wearing, she looked as radiant as I’d ever seen her. “You wanted your wilderness experience, so you mustn’t grumble over any physical hardship.”
“I didn’t get bites!” Michael announced. “Well, just a few.”
“There, you see — frontier stoicism. Let’s try to exhibit a small portion of it, at least.”
Henry came in then. His eyes were puffed and red, and his thin hair pointed limply in several directions. “Oh, my dear,” he said as soon as he saw Margaret. “You look as if you’ve slept a century in a glass room and emerged more resplendent than ever!”
Margaret beamed at him. “And you look as if you’ve been dragged behind a horse. Did you not sleep well?”
“I dreamt we were on board the Hindenburg,” he said. “The fire was raging all around us, but you wouldn’t jump out. You thought the children were in the back somewhere, but in fact we’d left them in Munich.”
“What were they doing in Munich?”
“I don’t know, but they were quite safe.”
“Being raised by Nazis, no doubt.”
He crossed the floor and kissed his wife lightly on the forehead. “Now I see that you floated out, safe as an angel.
What a relief!”
Margaret asked Lillian if there was anything she could do to help, but Lillian replied, with a terrible summoning of goodwill, that everything was in hand. “I think I’m ready to serve,” she said. “But we don’t have everyone.”
We waited for Rufus and Vanessa. Henry started playing with the radio, trying to get news. The reception was quite bad most mornings. Together we sat before the receiver and twiddled with the dial like amateur safecrackers, getting little but static and dead air.
Then Rufus and Vanessa emerged, looking sunny. Rufus had on a navy blue jacket with white pants, a maroon cravat around his neck, Vanessa a creamy pair of athletic slacks and white shirt with turned-up cuffs, and a maroon scarf matching her husband’s, not around her neck but in her hair.
“What a wonderful morning!” Rufus said. “I haven’t slept like that in ages.”
Without saying a word to Lillian, Vanessa stepped past her and began to pour coffee for all the adults. Rufus joined Henry and me to struggle with the radio. As soon as Rufus put his hand on the console a voice said, “. . . worst European crisis since the onset of war twenty-three years ago.”
Rufus lifted his hand and the voice degenerated into static. “What’s that?” Margaret exclaimed.
Rufus put his hand back exactly where it had been, but this time the sound did not improve.
“Darling, stand where you were!” Vanessa ordered. Rufus lifted his hand, then put it back again — nothing.
“You were over there,” Vanessa said. She strode to Rufus’s side, moved him over an inch and faced him towards the living room window.
The radio crackled to life again.
“. . . estimates there are more than a hundred dead. The town itself has been completely reduced to rubble, with fears that . . .”
Once more the sound faded to crackles and burps.
“Is that Bilbao?” Margaret asked.
“It would be thousands dead, not a hundred,” Henry said. “Tens of thousands. Think of all those refugees.” He moved the tuning dial slightly, and, with Rufus still standing with his hand on the set, we managed to pick up the ragged strains of far-away fiddle music.
“Turn it back! oh, you’re losing it!” Margaret said.
While we ate breakfast, Henry and Rufus continued to work at the radio, bringing in bits of news. “It’s some smaller place called Almeria,” Rufus said. “An ancient town in Andalusia. Germany sent five warships to bomb it to rubble in reprisal for the Deutschland.”
Later Henry came in and grabbed at some coffee. “Both Germany and Italy have pulled out of the Non-Intervention Committee. They might be set to enter the war formally if Spain declares against them.”
We chewed our breakfast over mounting gloom. The children were all quiet, impressed, apparently, with the degree of alarm among the adults.
“How old are you now?” I asked Alexander. I could feel Margaret’s eyes burning my face.
“Sixteen.”
“Your mother wants me to talk to you about war.”
Alexander looked at Margaret reprovingly.
“I hardly ever talk about it. But maybe this is a good time.”
I’d had my fill of eggs and toast. A great plate of bacon sat cooling still on the table. Lillian was already up washing the first of the dishes. But she was listening. Everybody was listening.
“I was in the Great War. Let me just tell you about one day. One particular afternoon just after I’d been captured. As a young soldier, you think you’ll win or you’ll die. But taken prisoner? I never considered it.”
I poured myself more coffee.
“I was in a church in a place called Roulers. Or at least it used to be a church. But God had decamped —” I couldn’t help myself, I looked at Lillian. “Forgive me, but I haven’t felt a whisper of Him since. That church was now a collection and feeding centre for new prisoners fresh from battle. There were maybe fifty of us. A lot of wounded men lying on the ground bleeding, not likely to survive. And all of us in shock. A tiny old Belgian man came by with a bucket of what we came to call sandstorm soup. I don’t know what was in it. Ground acorns. Bits of dirt. Greasy water. And most of us had no mess kits — no containers. We used old helmets. Some men used their boots. One fellow got so angry he took the old Belgian’s pot and hurled it across the pews.
What do you imagine happened?”
Alexander looked down at the table, his cheeks red. I pulled Michael to my knee and held him.
“First, several of the prisoners who were most starved ran like rats towards the spilled soup and began to shove it into their mouths as if it wasn’t one step above sewage. Even the German dogs stayed away from that soup. But the guards got so angry they started rifle-butting all of us to the ground. We were in defeat, but we were all fighters, you see. We fought over everything. We fought over drinks, we fought over lineups to go visit prostitutes —” I glanced over at Margaret. “I will not gloss this over. I want you all to know. We fought, at times, for the pure pleasure of being young men and fighting. But that day, as broken prisoners in Roulers, we didn’t fight. I got hit on my bad arm and spun onto the ground. I thought I was going to get up again and smash someone and then get killed. But instead I huddled on the ground and heaved up the sandstorm soup. You can imagine it. We’ve all vomited. But I was so frightened I held it in my mouth. I swallowed it down again.”
I looked around at their expressions of disgust and amazement, of incomprehension. Margaret, especially, appeared close to tears. A gentle breeze was blowing warm air past Lillian’s yellow curtains, and suddenly I longed to be outside, to have all of us feel the sun and enjoy the day while it lasted.
“That isn’t war,” Alexander said finally, his voice more belligerent than perhaps he’d meant it to be. “That’s being a prisoner. It’s not defending your country. It’s not standing up to people like Mussolini and Hitler. It’s just a little part —”
“Yes, it’s a little part,” I said quietly. “All I can tell you about . . .” The thought trailed off. I felt extremely weary, from the bad night, no doubt, from all the emotions this brief visit had dredged up. It was all too much to try to say at once. Anyway, the young insist on making their own damn mistakes.
“When do you give your life?” I asked, looking from Alexander to Michael, from Martha to Abigail and back to Michael again. They were too young to hear most of this, and yet the world wasn’t waiting for them to grow older. “Only . . . only to protect people you love. Not for your country, not for your God, not for somebody’s idea of empire, not for democracy or any other ideal, or worse yet, some kind of thrill or adventure. Risk your life only for those you love.” I rose then and washed out my coffee cup in the sink. When I turned again they were all looking at me as if collectively holding their breath.
“What time is your train?” I asked. “What shall we do with this day?”
Twenty-two
Rufus had brought badminton rackets and shuttlecocks, of all things, in his luggage, and insisted that we repair to the meadow for a tournament. We struck the tents and used two of the poles to string a hastily constructed net — of ribbons and twine — and my brother paced out the court and marked the edges with twigs stuck in the grass. Then he picked up a racket and started sending a bird high into the air over and over with quick snaps of his wrist.
“Mixed doubles, then!” he said gleefully. “Vanessa and I are a team. Who’s against us? Ramsay and Margaret?”
Vanessa picked up another racket, and the two of them began batting the bird back and forth ferociously.
“This is far too strenuous for Margaret,” Henry insisted. As soon as he said it Margaret picked up the third racket.
“That’s nonsense!” she said.
“But your heart, darling!”
“A little regular exercise will do it a world of good,” she insisted. “And that’s a direct quote from the doctor. Now if you don’t want to play with me, I’ll ask the other man in my life.” She turned — her gaze strayed right across me — and looked at Alexander. “Come on, dear. Let’s show these North Americans how to play our game.”
They warmed up for a minute or two, and then Rufus insisted that they get on with it. Vanessa had a delicate, ladylike touch, time and again able to nudge the bird over the net by the barest of margins. But in moments of excitement she also had a withering smash. Rufus too had obviously spent some years of his life on comfortable lawns developing his skills, and the two together were unbeatable.
Margaret and Alexander gave them a run, however. Though a quiet boy, in competition Alexander threw himself about the court trying to chase down his opponents’ shots. For the most part Margaret simply got out of his way or tried to encourage him, but she did hit several fine shots, while Henry worried from the sidelines.
When the game was done Rufus turned to me. “You and Lillian, now, Ramsay!” he said, in something like Father’s old tone when he was organizing us for boxing or baseball. “Where’s your bride? The tournament is on the line!”
I retreated to the kitchen where Lillian was furiously at work on lunch, cutting and buttering bread slices while chicken soup boiled on the stove.
“Come on,” I said gently. “We’ve all stuffed ourselves from breakfast. Rufus has ordered us down to the meadow to play badminton.”
She could not seem to look at me.
“It’s mixed teams and we’re supposed to play together.”
“You never told me that story,” she said fiercely. She turned with the breadknife in her hand and walked past me, then picked up a ladle and began angrily stirring the soup. “But you told her.”
“I told everyone.”
“You were talking to her.” Now she slammed the soup ladle onto the floor. “You love her. it’s all over your face whenever she’s there!”
“Let’s not talk about this now,” I said. Soup had stained her apron and was dripping down the side of the stove, puddling onto the floor.
Rufus called from outside, “Where’s Lillian? Come on, Ramsay! Can’t you get a grip on your own wife?”
Lillian looked at me through hard tears. “We never talk about it.” She reached for a rag then from the sink and started to wipe up the stains.
I left her there and steamed out the back door.
“Where’s Lillian?” Rufus asked jovially.
“She’s not much for games,” I replied.
Back in the meadow the children had got hold of the rackets now and were flailing away. Michael swung his with both hands, like a baseball bat, and Abigail and Martha seemed to be chasing butterflies with theirs.
“Lillian’s not still back in the kitchen, is she?” Margaret said.
“She didn’t want to play.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and looked elsewhere. A flock of sparrows was performing daring feats over the fields in the distance, speeding black spots against an impeccable blue sky.
“Well, I must go and help her, then,” Margaret said. “She has done everything for us.” She began to step off towards the house, but I put a hand on her shoulder.
“Best leave her for a while.”
“Oh dear,” she said, scanning my face for clues. “Have I — ?”
I shook my head, not in denial but frustration.
“Oh dear,” she said again.
Rufus insisted that he and I play singles. I felt like smashing him over the head with the racket, he was so relentless in his goading. But I finally convinced him to take on Henry. “He’ll give you a much better game than I ever could,” I said. “I don’t know the first thing about badminton.”
“He’ll not want to play me!” Henry called out, but he already had the extra racket in his hand and was swishing it experimentally through the air. After his wife’s creditable showing he seemed to want to impress her. So the court was cleared of children and we all watched Henry huff and slash at the empty air, and smash himself in the knee, and fall and kick at his hat clownishly, his face wreathed with smiles. Margaret said to me, when her husband was on the grass searching for his fallen glasses, “I must go talk to her.”
“No.”
“But I can’t have her feeling so wretched on my account!”
“It has almost nothing to do with you,” I whispered.
The game continued. At one point poor Henry fell backwards and lay, very stil
l, gazing up at the sky. Margaret ran to him on the court. “Are you all right, dear?”
He pulled her down and kissed at her — she turned her head in reflex and he grazed her cheek — and then he said, “It’s very pleasant just looking up at nothing, now, isn’t it?”
And the hours slowly passed. Rufus and Alexander played game after game. Vanessa drifted off to the garden with the children, and Henry crawled over to the edge of the wood and lay on his belly examining some ant works. Margaret and I found ourselves sitting in the shade not far from the court but at a distance enough to talk in confidence.
“I looked at your paintings,” she said quietly. “Thank you for seeing me with so much love.”
She was sitting back against her hands, and I allowed myself to run my fingers over hers in the grass.
“And for what you said to Alexander. Thank you,” she said. “I know it can’t be easy for you to talk of those years.”
I laughed ruefully. “I talked of only the smallest bit.”
Later Lillian, without a visible trace of anger, served us all another fine meal, which we ate as if it would be a sin not to satisfy ourselves when the food was so good.
The afternoon slid on, and then it was time to go. The sky above continued to blow bluer than a dream, and the sun shone kindly down, and the wildflowers seemed to be waving to us from the roadside. Even Charles was in a sprightly mood as he trotted us up the hill, the hay wagon behind loaded down with relatives and their travelling goods. We were not early this time. Already other cars and wagons had gathered in the lot. I parked Charles in the shade where I’d left him just the day before.
How ridiculous of them to stay for such a short time. We discussed it again, but the tickets had been purchased, plans were set. Rufus filled me in on the itinerary: the Basilica, of course, and Mount Royal, and staying at the Ritz-Carlton.
“If you’re going to be working in Montreal this week, then perhaps we could get together for a lunch,” Rufus said.
