Dazzle Patterns

by Dazzle Patterns (v5. 0) (epub)

  “Well, I didn’t have anything else.” Fred held the man’s hand as he paused to reword his sentence. He had the familiar feeling, even after all these years, that he wasn’t expressing himself precisely. “That is, I wasn’t needed at the glassworks.”

  “Look, why don’t you come home for dinner with me tonight?” Arthur said.

  They walked via Mount Olivet Cemetery. The earth of new graves still fresh. In a far row, the headstones of the nameless.

  Fred found himself standing in front of a simple carved stone: 108. Identity Unknown. December 6, 1917. He remembered 108, the woman, her fine brown hair and buck teeth. He remembered a broken pencil, a black armband, a ring with a green and a blue stone. He wished these small items could have been carved on the stone.

  “I come by here every day,” Arthur said, “just to know that someone visits them.”

  ARTHUR BARNSTEAD’S HOUSE was green, with cream trim and stone pillars on either side of wide stairs. His wife, Louise, met them at the front door with her finger to her lips. “Just got the children to sleep.” Her hair was sagging in its pins and she had blue shadows under her eyes. She took Fred’s coat and scarf and then leaned against Arthur’s chest for a moment before she hung them up in the hall closet.

  The smell of home cooking drifted from the kitchen. Fred was suddenly famished.

  Arthur passed him a plate of pork chops. “How did you become a glass-blower?”

  Fred helped himself to the meat. “In Lauscha, where I was born, a boy does what his father does. My father was a master glass-crafter.”

  “Is he still in Germany?” Louise asked warily as she placed a bowl of roast potatoes on the table.

  “No, he died.” Fred looked down, cutting into his meat. “Both my parents died in Hamilton, two years ago.”

  “An accident?” Arthur put down his cutlery.

  “My father first, his heart.” Fred might have said broken heart. “And my mother, pneumonia.”

  “We’re sorry,” Louise said, spooning potatoes onto Fred’s plate.

  “It wasn’t until I came here that I thought about what I wanted to do.” Fred was anxious to steer away from sadness.

  “And what is that?” Arthur picked up his cutlery.

  “In Germany, a glass-maker cannot become a designer. Designers come from other places, from the city, from another class.” He reached for a flint-glass pitcher. “I’m studying design with Mr. Lismer at the School of Art.” The pitcher had been pressed, but it had an elegant handworked lip. He filled his glass.

  “Meanwhile, no doubt, you’ll be glad when the glassworks reopens,” Arthur said, pushing his glass to Fred for filling.

  LATER, FRED WALKED DOWN the hill towards the waterfront and his rooming house. As he passed the Fisherman’s Bar, the door opened. A warm gust of beer and smoke swirled out with three men who hurried on past Fred, pulling up their collars against the cold. But one called back, “That you, Baker?” Ernie Ryan. The glass-maker who had tried to steal the ring from the dead woman. “Surprised they let you walk the streets at night, Baker. Can’t be sure what you’re up to,” he said.

  “I’m not sure I understand you,” Fred said quietly.

  “Oh, I think you do,” Ernie said, stepping closer to Fred. “Some people don’t believe the explosion was an accident.”

  “The inquiry made it clear,” Fred said.

  “Well, some things are hard to prove, aren’t they now? The Huns thought it all out.” Ernie stepped towards him unsteadily, pushing his chest out and clenching his fists. “And they must have had help here in Halifax.”

  Fred had learned long ago it was impossible to talk sense to a drunk. Diversion worked if a man was drunk enough, but if he was still alert it could be risky.

  The other two men joined Ernie. One was Leslie McCorran, who lived at the end of Fred’s street in Montreal. Fred considered running. He had had to run from Leslie and his brothers often as a child, but even then, it was a humiliating last resort.

  Ernie lurched forward swinging at Fred, catching him below his left eye and losing his balance in the process. Ernie landed on his back and lay stunned for a moment. His glasses had fallen off and one lens lay shattered on the icy street. “Hey, did you see that dirty move? Get him!”

  Leslie pushed Fred down and kicked him in the kidneys. The streetlight broke into shards of light. The other man kicked him half-heartedly in the gut before saying, “Come on, Ernie, it’s too cold to waste our time on a bloody Kraut.”

  They each grabbled one of Ernie’s arms and dragged him off. Ernie, sliding on the frozen road, called back, “You people should all be shipped back where you came from.”

  Fred had picked up a handful of snow and held it to his cheek. His heart was still beating hard when he got home. His cheek had gone completely numb.

  Mrs. Dempsey thrust her head out her door as he climbed the stairs. She took him in, narrowing her eyes. “We won’t be having hooligans here.”

  21

  LEO CAME TO IN UTTER DARKNESS, deep winter, and for a few moments he was home, in his bed on the farm. He could hear thunder and the wind blowing through the break of spruce outside his window. No, it was rain, dripping from eaves, a slow and steady beat. His blankets were so heavy. He lifted a hand to his face and sand trickled into his eyes.

  Fear rose from his belly, pushing from his throat a hoarse cough. His left temple throbbed. He felt his helmet. There was a deep dent on the left side. The last thing he remembered was an ear-shattering crack. A pressure wave. A wall of hot air. Oxygen sucked out of his lungs. Then, nothing.

  He propped himself up on an elbow. He couldn’t budge his legs. He couldn’t feel any pain. What if his spine was crushed? He’d seen that in other men. Dazed and smiling from stretchers, under dirty field blankets, feeling nothing, both their legs blown off.

  His throat was searing. He groped around in the dirt. The pack he’d been wearing had been torn off but there it was, still beside him. He ripped it open and groped among its contents: a sweater, an empty lunch tin that still smelled of a cheese sandwich, and a half-empty canteen of water. He drank the whole thing in one gulp. Where was his headlamp?

  He reached forwards to try to feel his legs. They were lodged beneath a beam. A beam still braced against the wall, inches from his thighs. He began to dig away the earth, breathing hard. After a few minutes, he was able to pull his feet to his chest and the beam dropped. Somewhere behind it he could hear soil falling in the dark.

  He scrambled backwards then turned frantically in the tight space, crawling in a direction he could not name, as quickly as he could from the cave-in. The going was slow, his hands were bleeding, and his head ached.

  He had no idea how far he went. The floor became wetter and wetter, until he was crawling in water up to his chest. It had the stench of sewer trenches. “Goddamn!” He was climbing into the Schwimmersand, towards the front lines. The dark stain was spreading again in his mind, suffocating him, pulling him under.

  The water he was moving through suddenly shallowed. Grey light ahead. Inch by inch onwards, his breath the sound of a hunted animal. He saw himself from a remove, an actor in a play, whose birth, childhood, country, every decision he’d ever made with free will and imagination swarming with possibilities, had led him to this one final pathway. No choice. He could not climb back into the suffocating coffin of collapsing tunnels. Move towards the light.

  The tunnel suddenly opened to the sky. The ground was still smoking from shells. Large wet snowflakes drifted like apple blossoms. Two Germans, kids really, dog thin, with tender necks under their helmets, stood, backs to him, guns raised. One Canadian lay face down in front of them, another stood facing them. Marty. His gun on the ground at his feet. Surprised by Leo, the two Germans whipped around. Marty, with a look of reckless bravado — they were in the woods behind the school and he was sure they could take the McDiarmid brothers this time — reached for his gun. One of the kids, eyes wild, wheeled back and shot Marty throug
h the chest.

  Marty looked at Leo for a few seconds, then he was gone, falling with the snowflakes, into his pooling blood.

  22

  GERALDINE, her hair stuffed tightly in her hat, her coat sleeves pushed up on her slight forearms, carried a small girl who had not said a word since they left the orphanage. “She doesn’t speak much. But she wakes screaming in the night.” Geraldine jiggled the girl in her arms. “I had a devil of a time getting her to come. She’s terrified of going outside.”

  Clare walked with a seven-year-old boy. He had been reluctant to take her hand on the street. Now he gripped it tightly.

  A hand-lettered sign nailed outside the door of the Red Cross: Oculist Clinic Today 9–5.

  The waiting room was moist with snow melted by the heat of a central oil stove. There was a strong odour of damp boots and coats.

  A bony, white-haired woman engulfed by her Red Cross apron strode into the room. “We’ll be taking the wee ones from the orphanage in now,” she said.

  Geraldine disappeared with the two children behind the door of the consulting room. She emerged a half hour later. The small girl had buried her head in Geraldine’s chest. “She’s too young yet,” Geraldine said, stroking the girl’s head.

  The boy was tear-stained but stoic. His eye patch was gone and in its place a small blue eye stared out, startlingly like its bright mate.

  Clare crouched down. “You look very handsome indeed.”

  The boy touched his eye as if he couldn’t believe it was real.

  Geraldine slapped his hand away. “Remember, Henry, you’re not to fiddle with it.”

  DR. BERMAN WAS A SHORT MAN with glasses that continually edged themselves down his nose.

  Clare sat opposite the oculist on a wooden chair. He pushed his glasses up yet again and faced her squarely, placing his hands on his knees.

  He slipped off her eye patch and looked at the empty socket, gently pushing apart her lids. His fingers were cool and dry. “Someone did an excellent job of this.”

  “Dr. Cox,” she said.

  “Ahh. It was remarkable what he managed given the circumstances. He did nearly a hundred enucleations in the three days.” He leaned in again, this time with a magnifying tool, to look into her good eye. He straightened. “The shade of grey-green and the pattern of gold flecking from the bright center of your iris is very unusual.”

  He turned in his chair and opened one of two large shallow wooden cases, which lay on the table beside him. He leaned over the glass eyes, humming gently, as if choosing a sweet from a candy store. He picked up one, put it down again. Moved to another. He turned back to her. “Look straight ahead.” He held a glass orb up to her eye, turning it in the light. He frowned and set the eye back in the case. He opened the other case, tried a few more, spending a long time on the last one, having her turn this way and that in the light.

  He sat opposite her again, and again pushed his glasses up his nose. “Some of these are close,” he said. “But an imperfect match is worse than a solitary eye. Especially when it is paired with an exceptionally unusual eye. Anything less than perfect only calls attention to its flaws. At times like this a custom-made eye is the only solution.”

  “Custom-made?” Clare said.

  “There is someone in Boston who makes glass eyes. We used to be supplied by German glass-makers. They brought large inventories and travelled to most major cities to supply the oculists. But of course that doesn’t happen now.” He stood up and snapped closed his cases.

  “How much does a custom eye cost?” Clare said.

  “About seventy-five dollars,” Dr. Berman said. “But it can be a long wait. There are so many men coming home from Europe … I’m sorry.”

  Seventy-five dollars. More than she could save in a year. Almost the same as passage to England. Clare looked down at her eye patch. She hated it. Why was it necessary to spare people the sight of her? She clutched the patch tightly, then put it on, arranging the strap, pinning some of her hair over it.

  As she left, the oculist handed her his card. “Contact me if you want a consultation in Boston.”

  CELIA WAS PICKING OUT a one-handed Chopin.

  Rose called to Clare as she passed her rooms. “Clare, come and say hello. I am so alone up here.”

  Rose rarely ventured downstairs anymore. She was working now on a pillow embroidered with bluebirds unfurling a banner which read Our Brave Boys. “It’s bad enough to have to listen from up here,” she said, her chins trembling. “At least Mozart wasn’t so sad.” She held her needle up to the light. “Will you pass me the blue thread, dear?”

  The raindrop prelude drifted upwards. “If it wasn’t for you and Geraldine, I don’t know how I’d manage,” Rose said, squinting at the eye of her needle.

  GERALDINE WAS CLEARING the table when Clare came downstairs, carrying two sets of Rose’s bloomers. “I think she’s afraid we’re going to leave.” Clare, wrinkling her nose, stuffed the underwear into a laundry bag.

  “And so she should be, the old cow,” Geraldine grumbled. “She should be paying us to stay, with all our waiting on her, carrying her bits and bobs up and down the stairs.”

  Celia’s prelude had stopped and she stood at the kitchen door. “You mustn’t mind Mother. She is not as strong as she looks.”

  Geraldine held a fork mid-air. “Oh. I’m sorry, Celia. It’s just …” She straightened up and gave Celia a level look. “She’s not very much help to you.”

  “I don’t need help.” Celia’s cheeks flushed. She held up her left hand. “It’s getting better.”

  Clare looked down at the table, away from the claw-like finger, the familiar hot prick in her missing eye. She’d begun to recognize its stubborn insistence to intervene with its tears and phantasms.

  “Until it’s strong again I can keep practising with my right hand.”

  Geraldine gave her a sad look and Celia sighed as if she was dealing with a child. “I’ll never be a concert pianist, Geraldine. Mother hasn’t accepted that but I have. If I work hard I’ll be able to play well enough to teach though, Mr. Devon says.” She turned back to the drawing room.

  Clare stirred her tea, watching the cloud of milk dissipate.

  “I’m sorry they didn’t have an eye for you today,” Geraldine said. “I’m sure there will be one once this wretched war is over.”

  Dr. Cox had warned her that her visions would probably not go away. When she woke in the night, the dazed and wounded she had seen on the streets and in the hospital after the explosion still wandered out of the corners of her room. In those dark hours how gladly she would have ridden laudanum’s soft waves to morning. When she finally fell asleep, only to wake again at dawn, she still felt the grip of its lethargy. But she gathered her energy, rose, and dressed.

  Through the half-opened door of the kitchen Clare watched Celia sitting at her piano bench, straight-backed. She lifted her left hand, placed it tenderly on the lower keys, and began playing the first bars of the Moonlight sonata with the other.

  Geraldine got up and stumped across the room, her empty teacup rattling in its saucer. She studied herself in the small mirror hanging over the sink. “We’ll be old by the time the men get back.” And then, with a dawning look of horror, she turned to Clare. “Perhaps only the old ones will come back.” She leaned closer to the mirror, smoothing the fine lines on her brow. “We’ll be a whole generation of old maids, Clare.” She caught Clare’s eye. “You’re lucky. At least you have someone over there who’s thinking of you, someone to wait for.”

  “You could have had that too,” Clare said. “With Lester, that fellow from the Rifles.”

  Geraldine sighed. “Lester was in such a rush before he left.”

  Is that what had happened with Leo? Why he suddenly seemed to need her? But Leo was different. She had always loved him. His skinny limbs, his thatch of uncombed hair, his brown face, a faint powdery bloom, like salt, over his cheek and jaw. Walking to school down the road that connected their
farms, he’d talked of telescopes, ocean trenches, galaxies. Gradually, as if embarrassed, he seemed to forget her, while she watched him in the shops, at church, at dances — until he and Marty signed up.

  He’d begun stopping by the farm to borrow tools or deliver bales of feed. He’d stay for dinner, linger after on the porch. At first they made small talk, about crops, animals, what they knew of the war and friends who were already overseas. Then he began to ramble, reliving their school days, the time he and Marty tobogganed off the school-house roof into a snowbank which swallowed sled and boys whole, the summer they made a raft and rode it down the river all the way to town where it broke apart and sank a few yards from the dock.

  She knew that he was polishing these memories like stones to carry with him. And she was his witness. Then one night he took her hand in his and asked her to wait for him. His hands, his familiar long fingers, broken nails, and calloused palms roused her from childhood. Beyond the farm, the evening sun caught in the orchard branches as if in a net and sank into the sea of dark grass. The scent of apple blossoms washed over them like an invisible current. His kiss was long.

  There was a knock on the front door. Celia halted her playing and got up to answer it.

  “Maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. To give Lester something to hold on to,” Clare said.

  “Well, a promise is one thing but Lester wanted more than that to hold on to, if you know what I mean.”

  Clare thought of her moments with Leo in the garden and flushed.

  “If I knew I wanted to marry him, it would have been different. I would have given him that,” Geraldine said. “Well, it didn’t take long for Lester to find someone else to ‘hang his dreams’ on.” Geraldine tucked her hair behind her ears. “Two days before he left, he was engaged to Georgina Avery.”

  “Georgina, the butcher’s daughter?” Clare said.

  But Geraldine had returned to the table and was studying Clare’s face carefully. Clare looked down into her cooling tea.