by Shelley Wood
Only after supper did the maroon and gold Chevrolet pull past the private gates into the inner courtyard in a cloud of dust. The car is a gift from the Ontario government, specially fitted with seats for all five girls in the back and Dr. Dafoe in front. Six additional policemen arrived earlier today from Toronto, and they helped keep the crowds back when the government car pulled inside. As far as I could tell, the gawkers were pressed ten deep against the fence trying to catch a glimpse of the quintuplets.
Marie was watching at the playroom window and gave a shrill cry when she saw the gates open and the Chevrolet glide in. Without question this was the grandest, most beautiful car they’ve ever seen at their nursery, despite the many new cars their father and Dr. Dafoe have driven over the years, not to mention the comings and goings of film stars and politicians.
At 7:00 in the evening we shepherded the girls out to the car, and I felt my heart pounding in my chest at the idea of taking them out into the frenzied throngs beyond the gates. All these years, it’s been bad enough for me coming and going with Lewis or his father behind the wheel, but with the girls themselves? How on earth would we get away?
This was all planned out, of course. The policemen used their vehicles to block the road to keep anyone from following us to the train station, then escorted us away from the nursery, a whole flank of patrol cars in front and behind. One man tried to ride alongside us on his horse, but he was stopped by an officer who was waiting roadside less than a mile from the nursery. The man and his horse ended up turning north, trotting into a field, and waving at the girls as he did. I was being driven with George, Miss Callahan, and Nurse Corriveau in a car immediately behind the girls, so we watched them squirm in their seats, their faces pressed against the back window, to wave back at the horse and rider until they disappeared from view. I thought they’d be more nervous, but they weren’t. They were excited, through and through. Not a fearful bone in their bodies.
The evening was warm. As we drove along the road toward Callander, windows down, I could feel some bite in the air, but also the warmth rising from the road as the land gave up the heat it had been soaking up all day. Once we were on the open road I stretched my arm out the window, feeling the wind eddy over my hand, warm below, cooler on top. You could hear the crickets starting their evening tune-up and a chorus of frogs from the streams and bogs, which took me back to the night the girls were born—five years ago, almost to the day.
Before reaching town, the car turned off onto the wider road that leads toward North Bay instead of continuing toward the Callander train station. I exchanged a confused look with Miss Callahan and Nurse Corriveau, and we all looked instinctively to George, riding beside the driver.
He turned and flashed a smile.
“The Ontario government made a last-minute change,” he explained. “They’re anticipating thousands of well-wishers at the Callander station, so they are actually going to stop the Quintland Express at Trout Lake junction, between Callander and North Bay, and that’s where we’ll board.”
The Quintland Express. That’s what it’s called, this train carrying us through the night to Toronto, the words Quintland Express written in gleaming letters on every carriage. The paintwork is crimson and gold, the colors of the royal visit—same as the car that brought the girls. The sun was sinking in the sky when we pulled up at the junction, but it was bright enough that the gilded paint on the train looked wet to the touch, positively gleaming against the paler gold of the hayfields beyond.
I’d never thought about how people might board a train without a station, but sure enough all of us from the nursery as well as the policemen and newspapermen, plus the whole Dionne family, were swiftly ushered on board via a special staircase, and the train started up again within a matter of minutes.
Moments later we were swooshing through Callander. I’ve never in my life seen a railway station so busy. Crowds of people were lining the tracks before and after the stop, and on the platform itself, a line of uniformed guards, arms outstretched, were straining to keep people from pressing too close to the tracks or, worse, falling onto them. The train slowed down as it went through the station, and the crowd went berserk. A brass band struck up as we rolled through playing “Old Comrades,” and the girls, all five of them, looked like their eyes might pop from their heads.
They had scrambled to position themselves at the windows of the carriage the instant we boarded, and there they stayed, flattened against the glass. When we started to see the crowds along the tracks, they began waving of their own accord, smiling, their eyes dancing over the people and children waving wildly in return. I couldn’t help but wonder what they were thinking about all these boys and girls, most of them in clothes drab and worn compared with their own, but clearly at greater liberty than our girls have ever known, wriggling away from their parents and sprinting beside the tracks.
I’m so proud of my babies. They didn’t cry or flinch or lose their tongues. They looked entranced, not afraid. I don’t think they could have known that so many different humans existed in the world—people not dressed in nurses’ caps and doctors’ coats, or the top hats and fur coats of our celebrity visitors. They couldn’t know that people come in many different shapes and sizes, and with so little in their pockets and stomachs. More than the men and women, it was the children in the crowds that captured their attention, small girls and boys gesticulating frantically at the train and holding up signs and drawings they’d made themselves, wishing bonjour and bon voyage to the Dionne quintuplets.
The train gathered speed again outside of Callander, and, after watching the countryside flit by for thirty minutes, the girls were convinced to pull themselves away from the windows. In the half hour before bed, they joined their brothers and sisters in the compartment fitted out to replicate the quiet playroom at their nursery. Mme. Dionne, sitting in a low sofa against the windows, was beatific, close to tears with her whole family gathered around. Maman has the same soft eyes as her daughters, I realized. All the children do. I’ve never noticed that before. Something caught in my throat, seeing this, but the feeling fled the instant I glanced at M. Dionne. He had a different expression on his face, a wary jubilation.
Now all the girls are bundled into their own beds and sleeping as they haven’t slept in days. Weeks, probably. The excitement of the day has done them in. I’m beat too. It is almost 3:00 A.M., and we are due to arrive in Toronto before dawn. I’m going to set aside my book now and do a quick check to make sure the others are sleeping soundly. Then I’ll come back to my nest here with little Em and do my best to fall asleep.
May 23, 1939 (Toronto Star)
* * *
QUINTS FELT RIGHT AT HOME WITH KING AND QUEEN
CALLANDER, Ontario—Happy and not the least bit sleepy, the Dionne quintuplets arrived at Callander station late last night after their visit to Toronto to meet the King and Queen. The five little girls, chattering eagerly about the trip by special train, wanted to know right away when they would be going back to Toronto. But they were whisked away in automobiles to their beds in the Dafoe hospital, where they will talk for days about Their Majesties.
A story about the Dionne quintuplets, since they have met the King and Queen, is worth more in England than anything about Hitler or Mussolini, or an international crisis. So, G. Ward Price of the London Daily Mail filed 3,000 words to his newspaper last night, the longest cabled story of his career.
Used with permission.
May 23, 1939
I jumped from the train.
It slowed to pass through the town of Barrie, and I jumped. I didn’t know it was Barrie. I didn’t know where we were. It was still dark. I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m not thinking straight now. I picked my way along the tracks in the sooty darkness, shaking, trying not to think of the pain. When I think of the pain, even now, my stomach heaves. I’ve vomited twice already. There is sick on my uniform, but that’s not the worst of it, not at all. I can’t think of this properly. Of w
hat happened. Of what I’ve done. Of what was done to me.
I jumped from the train.
I followed the tracks in the dark until I reached the lights on the edge of town. I chose a quiet street with telephone lines, a house with a yard, well kept, a woman’s touch, no children’s toys on the lawn. A door where I might knock and feel safe. I waited in the bushes beside the house until dawn, until the door opened and a man, neatly dressed, kissed his young wife and strode off down the street. Then I knocked on the door. The woman took one look at me and her face stretched wide with dismay, but she said nothing. She hustled me inside, gently, gently. She looked quickly to the right and to the left, then closed the door fast behind me.
I’ve called Ivy. Ivy is coming for me. Ivy is coming.
The woman told me the name of the town, Barrie. And she told me her name, although I can’t remember what it was. She led me to a bathroom and she filled the bath and then she brought me these clothes. She said: Can I call the police? I shook my head so violently she laid her hand on my arm to settle me down and said she wouldn’t. The hospital? I shook my head again. Then I thought of Ivy. The woman called the operator, and, after a long time, the call was put through and the woman handed me the phone. Ivy’s voice.
I’ve called Ivy and she’s coming. She’s coming for me.
I bathed. The water was hot, but it didn’t help, didn’t make me warm. Didn’t make me clean. The woman has told me to lie down, and I have, but I’m shaking, everywhere. I can’t stop. I can’t sleep. I’m shaking. I’m so cold.
I stood and went to my ripped and bloodied uniform, bundled in a bag on a chair in the corner. I wouldn’t let the woman take it. My cap is gone and my shoes. Did I walk here in shoes? I can’t recall. But my notebook was still in the pocket of my apron, so he doesn’t have that. No one will find that. They won’t find me. But they won’t find my notebook either.
What will my babies do when they find me gone?
The woman has just brought me a cup of tea. She’s dismayed to see me sitting up. She sat at the foot of the bed and asked me again if I wanted to speak, and I shook my head. I want to write this down, that’s what I want to do. But I didn’t say that. I hid my notebook. I haven’t told her my name, not my real name. When she asked, quietly, as if she knew I might not want to tell her, I said “Emily.” It was the only name still in my head. Émilie. Everything else in my head is shattered and throbbing. I need it out of my head.
Ivy will be here soon, the woman said. Ivy is coming.
IT WAS LATE, and Émilie was fast asleep, and I was writing about the day because I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to forget about how the girls and I were driven to the train in the warm dusk, about all the people who came out to see us off. So much joy. I wrote it all here, then I put down my pen and I must have slipped my notebook into my secret pocket, although I don’t remember doing it. The train was clanking and groaning like a ship, but Émilie was sleeping like an angel. I bent close over her head, her sweet, sweet head, and I breathed her in. She didn’t wake. I unlatched the door to our berth and peered into the dark corridor, the motion of the train swaying me from side to side. To Yvonne and Marie’s berth first. Both were sleeping soundly, Marie’s lips parted—the shape of a small heart. No one sleeps as beautifully as Marie. I stepped into the corridor again and slid open the door to the third room, Annette and Cécile, sleeping as if drugged. Little miracles, all of them.
I returned to my own berth with Émilie, tired now, rubbing my eyes, trying to find my way. It was darker in my little room than in the others, the curtains closed. I don’t remember drawing the curtains. I slid the door closed behind me and stepped toward Émilie’s bunk for one last good night.
I didn’t see him in the room. Did I sense him? How could I not have sensed him there? I started to lean over Émilie, squinting to make out her sleeping form. That’s when his hand clamped over my mouth and his other pinned my arms. I screamed, or I tried to scream, but no sound came. The screaming was in my head and in the train itself, but it wasn’t in that little room. It felt like the rush and chug and squeal of metal on rails got louder then, although Émilie kept sleeping, and, in the middle of that terror, I felt some relief. That she was still sleeping. She hadn’t heard my scream, none of them had. In that instant, I was more afraid that Émilie would wake and be scared or be hurt herself than I was of what was happening. Of what was happening to me. He pushed me to the floor of the train, his hands on my face and throat, the left side of my face, my ruined left cheek, grinding into the carpet. I couldn’t breathe let alone make a sound. I thought then that he was trying to kill me, that he was trying to choke the breath from me there on the floor of the train. This was all.
But that wasn’t his intention.
Pain. Pain like nothing I’ve ever thought possible, bigger than any scream. I tried to pull his hand from my throat, but it was as if moving through sand, too dense, too thick. No force in my grip. His jaw pressed against my temple, cursing, growling, things I couldn’t make out. His breath dank and foul. His hand so heavy on my throat I thought my head might break away. The pain so great, I hoped it would.
If the girls should wake, I thought. If Émilie should wake and sit up in her berth. If she should see me, like this. See him. I couldn’t bear it.
So I didn’t kick. I didn’t fight. I felt the train scream beneath me, felt his mouth wet and hot on my ear, the fear and iron bitter in my mouth. Then his head thrust abruptly against my skull so hard, the agony so great, I must have blacked out.
And then he was gone. I lay weeping, I don’t know how long, then sat up and was sick in my own lap. It was as if I’d been cleaved in two. And there was blood, I realized. So much blood, hot and sticky and shameful. I was sitting in it, in my own blood and vomit and horror. My uniform, I thought. My whites.
Then I thought again of the girls waking, of Émilie or one of the other girls seeing me like that. Of the guards who would surely be patrolling these rooms. Of Miss Callahan popping in to check on me. Of the reporters, night owls all, eager for a story.
Of him, coming back.
It dawned on me like a deeper kind of darkness that there was no one I could go to in that moment, no one who would help me, or point fingers, or allow any kind of fuss to be made. Not today of all days, but not any other day either. I sat there shaking. This is what men do. This is what men like this man do to women like me. Worse: I was not the first and I wouldn’t be the last. The catch: what had happened to me doesn’t happen in the lives of the Dionne quintuplets. It can’t and won’t, and if it does, I realized suddenly, it is erased. Ivy’s stories came careening back to me: all the gossip and tattle I’d elected to shrug off and ignore. Even this has been erased before.
I managed to pull myself to standing, trembling. So cold, so cold. I slid open my door and poked my head into the corridor. I looked right and left: once, twice. Then I took a deep breath and stepped through the door. Terrified of seeing him, terrified of seeing anyone. No safe place to go. The thudding beat of the train in my ears, the chug and clang of my heart.
I made my way to the rear of the carriage, wrenched open the heavy door, and stepped onto the rattling platform in the open air. A sob welled up, mute and deafening, louder than the train, shriller than anything outside in the night. The train was slowing down. I could see the lights of a town in the distance, too small to be Toronto, but big enough. Big enough to take me in. We slowed, we slowed, and I didn’t stop to think. I jumped.
CANADIAN PACIFIC TELEGRAPHS
ALL MESSAGES ARE RECEIVED BY THIS COMPANY FOR THE TRANSMISSION, SUBJECT TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS PRINTED ON THEIR BLANK FORM NO. W, WHICH TERMS AND CONDITIONS HAVE BEEN AGREED TO BY THE SENDER OF THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE. THIS IS AN UNREPEATED MESSAGE, AND IS DELIVERED BY REQUEST OF THE SENDER UNDER THOSE CONDITIONS.
14 AX CN37 D.H.
11 Rue Saint Ida
Montreal, P.Q.
May 24
Emma Trimpany
When you didnt arrive on yesterdays train I called Callander and Davis household. Received no answers. Very worried. Please reply.
Lewis Cartwright
2pm
June 1, 1939
Miss Emma Trimpany
Dafoe Hospital and Nursery
Callander, ON
Dear Emma,
I received one hell of a telephone call at the hangar today from Ivy, who was choosing her words carefully. She said you are safe and in sound mind, but that she couldn’t tell me where you’d gone or why—nothing beyond the cryptic message she said you’d asked her to pass along. She was upset by it, I could tell.
How on earth do you expect me to forget about you?
None of this makes sense. Wouldn’t it be better if we spoke together, you and me? I’ve tried all week to reach you at the nursery, but your Mr. Sinclair has refused to give me any information, merely parroting that you are no longer working there. I hope they at least have the courtesy to forward this letter.
Miss MacGill has given me some days off next week, and I’m coming up to Toronto to see Ivy and Fred, whether they like it or not. I’ll go on to Callander afterward and speak with your parents, if that’s what it takes.
Please, Emma. This is no way to end this. We haven’t even made a proper start.
Please write.