That night he’s a deadweight beside her, that right arm of his a withered branch that would just as well fall or get snapped off by wind. She doesn’t sleep a wink watching the clock, those instructions ticking through her, when or when not to turn him. “Upsy-daisy,” she grunts, rolling him onto his other side. It’s like moving a boulder, the effort eating her strength. But, with whatever strength’s left over, she presses her palm to his cheek in place of a kiss, and closes her eyes. Wanting to nestle against him, but afraid to. For he smells wrong, of starch and antiseptic and pee laced with chemicals. Like a vehicle, not new but passed off as reconditioned—strike her dead for thinking such a thing! But watching a real car’s lights trace the ceiling, she listens to him breathe, the sound more laboured than any snore, and letting her toes touch his, feels herself melt at last into the mattress and what Rebecca would call an “airy-fairy” normal. The stuff of the stories. Goodnight, my darling. Sweet dreams.
How can it be, having Harry present and yet not, not the old Harry, anyway? The lights on, as Jewel would say, but nobody home. She should be used to it, his there and not-thereness; Lord knows she’s had practice. Not that practice helps, when it’s as if she’s been stowed in one drawer, and Harry in another, which wasn’t so bad, as long as one knew the other was safe. A tisket, a tasket, the clock’s ticking, monotonous as a child’s chant, finally draws her under. A green and yellow basket. A basket full of weeds, the thought presses down; and she imagines coltsfoot in a ditch and Harry’s snore as the idling of a truck.
1939
HER HEART HAD JACKHAMMERED, SEEING Jewel off. Her boy, her baby, so tall and skinny, the uniform buckled at his waist: he’d been just three days past his twenty-second birthday. The scratch of wool against her cheek, the smell of damp khaki—kayaki, Rebecca would’ve called it, had she been around back then. Anyway, it was like kissing a giraffe goodbye. Our soldier, pride had pricked at her, she and Harry waving in the December drizzle, bereft. They could’ve at least had a band, sending the boys off. No “Auld Lang Syne” or “Roll Out the Barrel”: the stuff of the first war, and of newsreels. But a spectacle would’ve killed her.
Maybe it was the cold, but Jewel’s face had looked beaky as he marched up the gangplank. They watched till all they could see was his peaked cap. Brass, pipes, a bit of ceremony would have been in order, but even Jewel himself had tried to keep the sailing a secret. “God Save the King,” Harry’d hummed quietly, muttering God save them all from that fruitcake in Europe with the moustache and bad haircut. What was it about those Jerries? he’d wanted to know, “And God, where’s he at?” Don’t blame him, she’d said. They’d dabbed at their eyes; tears just made it harder. As the ship’s whistle blew, Harry’s fingers had tightened around hers, her boxy little purse bumping him. She’d made herself think about canning, preserving. Their last few moments: the warmth of Jewel’s cheek, the smell of tobacco and boot grease. So long, Ma! Auf Wiedersehen. Harry’s See ya the same as sending him off after Sunday dinner.
She’d watched him disappear in a blizzard of faces. Breathing in the stink of bilge, she’d stared at the pier as Harry gulped, What a beautiful boat, the Empress of Britain. Straightening her pillbox hat for her, humming “We’ll Meet Again” as the ship slipped from her moorings. The engines’ shudder the shudder of Lucy’s heart, which Harry’d warned Jewel not to break, like telling the Jerries to go decorate tannenbaums. The army was better than the navy or the air force, he tried to cheer her, as the Empress slid out into the foggy dark, a line of foam breaking from her. The shapes of more ships moving by, spirits rumbling in the night, a convoy. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, she’d crossed herself. The more the merrier, Harry’d joked. As though all those young fellas were off on a trip, just to see the world.
As they tooled up from the docks in the new-ish Plymouth, they saw sailors reeling everywhere, never mind it was the middle of the night. Crossing town, Harry zipped past their street and St. Columba’s, the prison and Dunphy’s, the dancehall somebody’d thrown up near Deadman’s. If they raced, they’d see the ships going out; never mind that he could barely see to drive, with the fog and not a light anywhere with the blackout. Slow down, she’d said. Any slower and a dog could piss on the tires, he’d answered, admitting, though, that without Jewel around it’d be “some jeezly quiet.” Compared to the sickness in her heart, maybe. Except for the two weeks Jewel had come home after quitting work and enlisting, they’d forged a routine, she and Harry, based on quiet. And it wasn’t as if Jewel had hung around; he’d whooped it up, God knows where or what habits he’d formed at Black’s Shipping, and rooming downtown. I’m working, his excuse every time they’d asked him to supper. Sure, Harry’d said, a single guy and wartime in a town that was a hooker’s heaven—as if Artie Babineau were a ventriloquist six feet under. But war prospered sin, Father Marcus declared every week: look around.
Harry downshifting for the next cove, the harbour’d opened before them, and they’d cut down a lane hugging the cliff. Not so much as a candle flickering from a window as the “arse end” of the convoy slid past the submarine net, making good time, Harry observed. The drizzle silver-plated everything as a corvette cleared the gate boats anchored there manning the net. In daylight they reminded her of Christmas ornaments, one green and one red, or two sitting ducks. “You can take the kid outta Hellifax, but you can’t take the Hellifax outta him,” Harry joked, to comfort her. “Don’t even think about it,” he’d said, meaning the U-boats lurking at the harbour mouth with their torpedoes. But as the last ship disappeared she’d prayed aloud, not caring what he thought. God have mercy, she’d told the void that was like water rising, displacing them both. On my boy, and everyone else’s. Impossible not to imagine fire, and the frigid black sea filling lungs and sinking them all to the bottom.
Good things come to those that wait, the priest never quit saying, and business boomed at the shipyards, Harry working overtime repairing damage done by the Jerries. She had the house to tend, he reminded her, as if her war effort were reclaiming the space Jewel had so briefly filled. “You get in a knot every time the kid comes and goes,” he said, and he was right. But time stalled around them like a ship in reverse, forget that having Jewel underfoot those couple of weeks had been awkward. Who needs the Jerries when they’ve got you, Ma? Once, he’d come home near dawn, and she’d woken to the sound of the sofa squeaking like a jiggled pram. That’s when she’d found out about Mona: nothing serious, just a lark, he’d said.
“Seeing anyone?” she’d grilled him, before he’d moved back home, and he’d said there was Mr. Black, the boss, and his secretary who weighed two hundred pounds wet, not counting her moustache. Then Harry’d nosed in, saying all girls were after was a meal ticket. She’d nearly dropped the teapot when Mona came to meet them. No bigger than a minute, she had starry eyes and a blue sweater so tight her ribs showed. But she’d helped with the dishes, and there was something sweet about her sharp face. Jewel had made them all squeeze together while he snapped a picture. Cheddah, Mona said instead of cheese. She worked at the tobacconist’s next door to Black’s, and knew who smoked what. Jewel had taken Mona dancing at the new place by Deadman’s, but later, Lucy’d woken to hear him retching. So much for a steadying influence.
But as the weeks dragged after his departure, she thought fondly of Mona, and once, from a tram, spotted a look-alike. The street was choked with sailors and girls, and, beelining to Eaton’s, Lucy’d lost sight of her. Blackout curtains were on special, a necessity, but a dismal green.
She was about to leave when a brassy voice called out, “Looking for something, Missus?” A far cry from Mona, the gal seemed familiar. Fingering cheap fabric, Lucy couldn’t help staring; it had been an age—ten years?—since she’d seen her. She’d grown by a foot, but had the same catty grin, though her hair was slate-coloured, and wasn’t Lil’s daughter a strawberry blonde? “Just looking,” she’d said, smiling fai
ntly, and couldn’t help checking for a ring.
But the girl persisted—she had things to learn about serving customers—saying, “You’re Jewel’s mom, right?” and asking where he was. As if the bags under Lucy’s eyes weren’t telling enough.
Loose lips sink ships, she’d thought, and asked if people were actually buying these curtains, even as the image of the Empress leaving the jetty crowded in.
“Fugly as sin, aren’t they?” the girl joked, “some friggin’ ugly.”
A minor thing if Jerry buzzed overhead, she’d answered quickly, buying six pairs.
The curtains spoiled the look of the front room, but it was best to be on the safe side—of what, though, she’d wondered; what could be worse than waiting? Every week she wrote, packing shoe-boxes with Hershey bars and cookies. Jewel wrote back, describing buddies he’d made, how the food stank and the showers, when they got them, were freezing. Reading around the crossed-out bits, she’d composed a fuzzy picture for herself of young fellas touring around, carousing as they would at home. Sometimes Jewel gave details, like the Jerry car they commandeered, rigging a tank to its engine to heat water. Travelogues with the place names inked out, his letters. Once he mentioned a tank burning, but then it was on to the next village.
In spring he mentioned apple blossoms, the letter arriving while she cleaned house, a salt breeze swinging in and out of the opened windows. In the note that came months later he discussed chocolate; she was weeding the garden when the postman stopped. Love, Jewel signed it, the rest saying precious little.
Months, and a year, and another year crawled by. A letter here, a letter there. Leaves to London. Pubs. Then Paris. Shifting details, from food to slit trenches and hundred pounders. “It’s only lingo,” Harry’d tried to soothe her. Words like Brits and Yanks were crossed out, the censors hand sometimes unsteady. Dont worry. Jewel wrote, his punctuation gone to the dogs. Reading of the war in the paper, the endless bombings and sinkings, she’d dreamed of his baby face, features blending into those of the child she’d lost. Like a portrait captive inside a locket. Dont worry.
She prayed the rosary first thing each morning, last thing each night—and Wednesdays at noon, stretched out in the cellar. Weekly air raid drill, the signal and its routine old hat after a while. Still, she had to stop what she was doing—peeling an egg, rinsing a pot—to go and flatten herself to the concrete. Lying there that first Wednesday, Jewel’s absence an open wound, she’d focused on Harry’s tools, then remembered Mr. Heinemann’s note deep in the wall. She’d almost wanted to die, suddenly: the casualty of a Luftwaffe bomb. It could happen, people said, though at night they just drew the curtains as usual and went to bed. But a ship was sunk off Sambro; this could’ve been England, Harry said, as if the walls of the world were crumbling. Waiting for the siren’s whine to stop, she’d imagine soldiers with swastikas on their sleeves climbing in the windows.
When Harry didn’t have the radio blaring, she played the Victrola, jumping at each bump. Nervous Nellie, he called her. If Jewel came back in one piece, she’d have Harry buy a new one, but in the meantime they’d wait. Don’t tempt fate, Father Marcus said. What good, a new anything, without Jewel there with them? She’d thought along the lines of the priest’s advice, as in giving up chocolate for Lent, or awaiting the Second Coming: keep busy, but not too busy. The records’ bumps kept her on her toes. But one steamy night the spring had broken for good, and then time really dragged, with just the radio and nothing anyone would want to hear. The shipyards working round the clock, Harry was on call constantly, even with girls replacing men gone off to fight. Mrs. Chaddock had a niece with her welder’s papers; but then Mrs. Chaddock also had stories about U-boat crews wading ashore for beer and a night out. Maybe Mona had traded her cashier job for something mannish? Jewel’s latest letter said she’d married the receiver at Black’s. No accounting. And suddenly no chance, either, of buying a new Victrola, not for love or money, even if she’d wanted one, every spring and screw funnelled into war. Jewel’s letters had grown glum, full of crossed-out lines, Harry often at work when she opened them.
“Don’t wait up,” he’d said, one muggy evening, heading off to Dunphy’s.
How could she stand to be alone? The Arm was flat as a cookie sheet as she rounded the cove, Jewel’s latest note in the pocket of her good dress, one with blue roses and a twirling skirt—pretty, though it didn’t do much for her waist. By the time she found the trail through the woods, she’d felt quite wilted. Queer place for a dance-hall, even Harry said, stuck out on that swampy spit. Through the trees had loomed the ruins of Babineau’s dock, and across the channel the empty jail, munitions moved to a depot on the Basin. The trail cut to a rocky path, the glide of a clarinet drifting closer. Dunphy’s Social Club, said the sign tacked to a tree; Dunnuttin’s, somebody’d dribbled in red paint. Lounging outside, a group passed a bottle, someone giggling at Lucy’s dress.
Inside, the clarinet had given way to tinny piano. A lady with yellow hair took Lucy’s money, stamped her hand. Oh, God, she’d thought, hoping no one from St. Columba’s appeared. At one end of the dance floor was a stage and at the other a counter, girls hogging chairs along the walls, while onstage a man bashed at the keys. It must’ve taken some doing, getting a piano there. The air oozed liquor, which had made her wonder about complaints in the paper about nowhere to drink. The Mounties would’ve had a field day, stumbling on this place; she felt dirty just walking in.
As the pianist banged his way through “Jeepers Creepers,” sure enough, she’d spied Harry clapping along. He was sitting with someone; Lucy could just see her hair and doughy shoulders, and they were passing something between them. He’d leaned close enough to kiss the woman’s cheek. Then a gal shimmied past with a sailor: Lil’s daughter in a dress with straps that cut into her flesh, and with her, two others in bright red lipstick. A flotilla of skin and flimsy cotton, they’d swept Harry up and he’d laughed, tucking the bottle under his arm. Then Lil, none other than herself, had turned unsteadily, winking. “Oh shit,” he’d murmured, spying her—sloshing liquor as she approached. “At least you’re not drinking by your lonesome,” Lucy’d said, feeling stung, and wanting him to feel that way too. But he’d caught at her arm, offering her a sip and blathering that he was helping Lil out. “Sure you were,” she’d said, her voice icy, the mugginess a slap as he followed her outside, shoving the mickey into his pocket. It’s nothing, dolly—I can explain, he kept saying, as the darkening woods closed in. Explain away. She’d fled up the path, stumbling over roots as the trail steepened, Harry breathing behind her. They found themselves on the top of Deadman’s, the Arm shushing below. Dampness rose up through the bushes, carrying the funk of dead leaves and the spongy earth underfoot. To weasel out of the spot he was in, Harry brought up Artie’s stories, about the dead buried there in unmarked graves. “Yankees, Frogs, slaves; maybe even the odd Kraut,” he said, his laugh a little desperate, “prisoners of war, hundreds of ’em. Undesirables.” Like the Marryatts? she’d asked.
Moonlight groped through the pines as he tipped back the bottle. A prickly feeling had climbed her neck, then embraced her, a chilly hug, and watching her, he’d said how the place gave him the creeps. It wasn’t as though he quelled her jealousy, her perfectly reasonable disgust, but suddenly the chill had made Lil a fly in the ointment. All she’d wanted was the safety of the veranda, to sit watching moths bump the light. For something Father Marcus said had come back, about thin places, places like this, burial grounds and near water, where the spirits of the dead hovered, lingering. Never mind whose bones moldered underfoot. Then Harry’d grinned, losing his baleful look. A twig snapped; she’d heard it too. Rustling, giggling, then breathing; and through the bushes a flash of cotton. A sailor, probably, and bare arms in the moonlight: Lil’s girl?
1943
AS THE WAR DRAGGED ON, the foghorns droned nothingness—and for months the weather stayed poor. Sometimes it seemed s
he herself was smoke threading over water, or a mournful wail crossing grey ocean. Whenever the phone rang she steeled herself. Once it was Father Marcus asking if she could help with the Christmas campaign. Christmas an insult, campaign viciously loaded. No idea where Jewel might be, she’d forwarded his parcels to a post box in Britain. The return address “An East Coast Port,” though anyone with half a brain knew: Hellifax. It was the holy season, Father reminded her, and there was a widow in need in the Grounds.
“You might take comfort helping the needy,” he’d said, reminding her that God remembered those who remembered others. That, according to St. Francis, the reward was not to be loved, as to love. Herr Heinemann had crept to mind; apple cake, and bits of Harry’s clothing. An eye for an eye, or tit for tat? If only it were so: just desserts for selfless acts. But being middle-aged, forty-two, she wasn’t stupid; she knew by now that things didn’t work that way, rewards a matter of grace, not a ledger.
The priest asked her to deliver something, a shoebox; the league had made up dozens for servicemen, to which she’d contributed. Toothpaste, candy, homemade socks; too bad knitting left time to think. Clearing his throat, Father wondered if there’d been any word. “Not a peep,” she’d said quietly, and he’d told her that God was steadfast in mercy, and she mustn’t lose faith. But then one of his sermons reared itself, about loving thy neighbour, which really meant loving thy enemy. “Remember this poor, lost soul,” he’d coaxed, adding that all were brothers and sisters in Christ. His directions confirmed her suspicions; never mind that the poor widow had a daughter. Old Mrs. Slauenwhite’s hands shook as she handed over a box and some food. Palsy had locked in her frown, more or less permanent after she’d lost her grandson. “Ah, Missus! Better you than me,” she said.
Glass Voices Page 22
