Dazzle Patterns

by Dazzle Patterns (v5. 0) (epub)

  “You didn’t, did you?” Geraldine said. “With Leo. You did!” And then, in a whisper, “How did you … you know … make sure … nothing happened …?”

  In fact Clare hadn’t made sure of anything. For the first few weeks after she lay with Leo, she’d felt much as when she’d had her first period: apart from the risks, the aches, and the mess, there had been the elation of entering this mysterious, complex version of her former self. As her period drew near, she became more and more anxious. But it arrived — three days late, the usual dreary cramps, and the first spots of blood, welcome for once.

  There was a soft cough from the door of the kitchen where Fred Baker stood in his coat and lumpy scarf.

  Geraldine jumped up, a hand at her throat. “Oh! Yes, Mr. Baker?”

  Celia resumed the sonata. Rose’s bell rang insistently. Geraldine and Clare shared a glance.

  “I’ll get it.” Geraldine glanced upwards and sighed.

  “I thought I’d stop by to see how you were.” Fred looked at Clare.

  Clare stood abruptly, sending a teaspoon clattering to the floor. Fred bent to pick it up.

  “I should be asking you that,” Clare said, looking at his black eye.

  “Oh.” He touched his hand to his cheek. “It looks worse than it is. I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

  Fred folded himself onto a kitchen chair. He pushed back damp hair from his temples and placed his hands on the table. His fingers were long, almost delicate. They had none of the scars that many glass-makers’ hands bore.

  “Well, thank you,” Clare said to him. “Again.”

  He looked surprised. “Again?”

  “You’ve taken me to a hospital twice recently.”

  “Are you feeling —”

  “Better,” Clare said.

  “The nurse told me it was the flu. She assured me that you were recovering well.”

  Clare was getting used to his formality. She suspected it was something to do with speaking a language other than his mother tongue. Or perhaps it was simply the manner of his people.

  “Hopefully this will be the last time,” Fred said.

  Clare looked at him, puzzled.

  “That you need me to take you to a hospital.” He smiled, crow’s feet leaping into the corners of his eyes.

  Geraldine appeared with an empty tray. “She’s wanting tea and a full account of who was at the door.” Geraldine set the tray down roughly. “And she says to tell you that she’s devastated that you didn’t get an eye today,” she said.

  Fred looked at Clare.

  Clare shot Geraldine an irritated glance.

  “I went to the oculist,” Clare explained reluctantly to Fred. “He’s from Boston. He’s come — he has glass eyes.”

  Fred leaned a fraction closer to her across the table, watching her intently.

  “There wasn’t a match.” She tried to sound casual. “Apparently I have unusual irises.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Fred said.

  Clare looked away. Celia began playing Bach’s Für Elise.

  Geraldine filled Rose’s Queen Victoria cup, and with a groan, turned to carry the tray back upstairs.

  “I should go,” Fred said, rising. “I have my class at the art school this evening. And I’m sure you have many things you need to do.”

  Fred walked to the drawing room door and stood very still, watching Celia play. Celia caught his reflection in the dark window and turned around on the piano bench.

  “I know that piece,” he said.

  “It’s very popular,” Celia said, cheeks brightening.

  “I used to play it.”

  “Did you study?”

  “Yes, in Germany. As a boy.”

  “This is Fred Baker,” Clare said, leaning on the doorframe. “From the glassworks.”

  Celia put her hand on the piano bench. “Well, Fred from the glassworks, perhaps you could play the left hand for me?”

  Fred sat down close to Celia. Clare remembered the feeling of leaning into him in the cart that took her to the hospital. The warmth of his hand, now laying lightly on the keys, almost touching Celia’s. Celia flushed more and started again from the beginning.

  23

  AT FIRST CLARE THOUGHT the front door of the building was locked. But she could see students, all women, bent over easels through a doorway at the corridor’s end.

  “Turn the knob, then push hard,” a young blonde woman coming up the stairs behind her said. “Like this.” She wrestled a portfolio under one arm and threw all her weight at the door with one shoulder.

  Clare stepped behind her into that particular smell of turpentine and floor soap. A memory of her last time here made her itch inside her coat.

  “Good morning, Henry,” the young woman who had opened the door called to a tiny grey-haired woman behind a wooden desk, as she bustled down the hall.

  The little woman said nothing, just watched her disappear. She turned to Clare, still wearing a look of affected annoyance. She took in Clare’s eye patch.

  “Yes, Henry?” Clare said.

  “It’s Henrietta,” the woman growled.

  “I was wondering if Mary is here?”

  “She’s teaching.” Henrietta flicked her hand in the direction of a room down the hall. “Go right in.”

  “I wouldn’t want to interrupt,” Clare said.

  “Mary’s very informal,” Henrietta said, with a slight roll of her eyes.

  Clare walked tentatively towards the open door at the hall’s end, passing another open doorway. She stopped short. There he was. The man who had been working on the painting when she came here with Fred. He stood in front of his easel, bouncing on his toes, jabbing at his canvas with a brush loaded with green paint. And there it was on an easel in the corner of the room, the ship painted with blue-and-white dazzle patterns, observed from snowy woods at the harbour’s entrance. Mr. Lismer turned around briefly at the sound of her footsteps slowing outside the door, catching her in his green gaze. He nodded. She hurried on.

  Mary’s students were drawing a large still life, a table on which were propped a classical statue of a Greek goddess, partially draped in a sheet, a battered stringless violin, and a vase stuffed with dried milkweed and teasel.

  Clare stood at the open doorway, Mary’s back to her. “Look not only at the objects themselves, but the air around them,” Mary was saying.

  How did one draw air, Clare wondered. Eight easels circled the still life, students intent on their work. Only the woman who had arrived late looked up briefly and gave her a quick smile.

  Mary turned and saw Clare. Clare hadn’t prepared what she wanted to say. She hesitated as Mary walked briskly towards her, wiping her hands, dusty with charcoal, on a small towel she drew from the pocket of her smock. Clare was struck once again by the grey eyes. Not by just the unusual colour but by the expression, the masculine directness of her gaze. She had the feeling she was being precisely observed.

  Mary stuffed the towel back in her smock. She looked Clare up and down. “That was quite a to-do.”

  Clare had the sense of falling into those grey eyes.

  Mary smiled. “Better?”

  “Yes.” Clare unbuttoned her coat. “I wanted to thank you for your … help.”

  “Well, it was your friend, Fred, saved the day.” Mary stood, her feet apart, her hands on her hips. “He carried you down the stairs.” She rocked back and forth a little. “Quite the white knight.”

  Over Mary’s shoulder Clare could see the blonde woman leaning away from her easel, then slipping a cigarette from her smock pocket into the smock of the girl next to her.

  Mary followed Clare’s gaze, but the women were working diligently on their drawings once more. “We’re drawing still life today. Would you like to see?” Mary pressed her hands together.

  Mary led her around the room, circling behind the students. “Remember not every line should have the same weight, Jane.” They had come to the blonde woman, who pushed str
ands of fine hair out of her eyes, smearing her forehead with charcoal.

  Mary took the stick from her and sketched a few quick lines in the top corner of her paper. “This is one of the ways we convey dimension in the line drawing.”

  The blonde woman went back to work. Mary remained behind her. “No. No. No. Don’t just make it up.”

  Again Mary took the charcoal. The woman exhaled a little puff of breath. “You have to look. See how the light falls on the arm, how the edge there almost disappears. Now look at the vase, in shadow, how the line of it is hard and solid against the lit cloth behind it.”

  When they’d made a round of the classroom, Mary checked the time on the watch that hung from a gold chain around her neck. She clapped her hands. “Switch places now, girls. Take a position with a completely different view of the subject.”

  The women pulled their wooden drawing boards from the easels and began milling around the room.

  “I didn’t say take this opportunity to have a social!” Mary said over their chatter and then, turning back to Clare, “Are you interested in art?”

  “Actually that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Clare said.

  They stepped out into the hall.

  “I want to take drawing classes.”

  Mary looked at her with surprise.

  “I know that I only have one eye but I can still see with the other.” Clare didn’t tell her that her good eye had become vigilant, meticulous in its attention to detail. She didn’t mention her desperation to give it and her mind something to do.

  “I took lessons when I was a girl.” Clare pulled out a sketchbook from her purse and Mary thumbed through it, lingering on the sketch of Clare’s sister, Pearl, leaning against the apple tree, then handed it back.

  “This class is full of Normal School students, girls keeping themselves busy until the men come home.” Mary sighed. “I’m afraid we haven’t gotten very far this term. We were delayed in starting because of the explosion.”

  Clare dropped the sketchbook back in her bag. When she looked up Mary was eyeing her appraisingly. “We have classes in the morning. In the afternoons the students are welcome to stay and work on their own pieces in the studio rooms. It’s five dollars a week.” She ran a hand over her hair. “I thought you said you worked in the glass factory.”

  “The glassworks is still closed. When it opens I’ll have to go back.” She fiddled with the clasp on her bag.

  “So you won’t even be able to continue here?” Mary said curtly.

  “I could work part-time at the factory,” Clare said. If she could convince Mrs. Beddow and the Red Cross to send her, she would be saving all she could for England.

  But until then, she had to fight the ennui, which would make her long for the drops. Suddenly this classroom was essential — the salvage it offered, an absorption which would take her outside of herself. She held her breath.

  “It would be unusual for a student to come to classes part-time.” Mary turned back to the class. “Girls, settle down!” She turned back to Clare. “You’d have to work every afternoon you’re here in a studio to produce the same portfolio as the rest of the girls.” She headed back into the room where the girls were quietly sitting at their easels once more. Clare remained standing just inside the door.

  “Come in,” Mary called impatiently. “No reason not to start today!”

  Most of the women smiled a frozen smile and turned to their drawings. Only the blonde woman didn’t look away from Clare’s eye patch.

  “Jane,” Mary said to her, “why don’t you get Clare a smock and show her where the easels and drawing boards are.”

  Clare had the light-hearted feeling of having been swept into a reel.

  Jane set up Clare’s easel beside hers. The girl next to her grumbled, “This changes my angle. I’ll have to start over!”

  “I’m sure the next one can’t be any worse,” Jane whispered.

  Clare felt a giggle rising. She looked over the girl’s shoulder at her clumsy drawing.

  “That’s Elsie,” Jane continued, flapping her left hand. “She just got engaged.”

  Indeed Elsie, who was clipping a fresh piece of paper to her easel, flashed her small heart-shaped diamond ring around whenever possible.

  “Draw from the general to the specific.” Mary paced the room. “Find the big shapes first.” She whirled her arm in a circle. “Then refine. First the lines you think you see.” She jabbed at the air. “Look and look again.”

  She stopped beside Clare and took her charcoal from her hand.

  “No, no. Like this.” She drew large geometric shapes, a cylinder for the plaster statue, an oblong for the violin, a triangle for the vase.

  “Now add the curves and angles.” Her charcoal followed the outside edges of the objects, working fast. “Look for the shapes of the spaces between things. These are the negative spaces.” She sketched the puzzle pieces formed by the spaces between the statue and the vase, between the heads of teasel.

  Clare’s eye followed her line. “Learning to draw is learning to see,” Mary said. She handed Clare back her charcoal. “Now, you try.”

  Clare’s hand was shaking. Her first marks were tentative and wavering. Mary took her hand under her own and moved it in large arcs over the paper. Then, just as suddenly, she let go, turned, and carried on to Elsie.

  Clare’s first study was smeared with so many lines that it was impossible to make out the subject. Partway through, her left eye pricked but her right eye was too absorbed to indulge in tears.

  Her second study was easier. Mary paused by her easel. “Better,” she said. “You can register, pay your tuition for the week, and buy a portfolio from Henrietta at the front desk.”

  As Clare walked home, early evening snowflakes, no bigger than grains of sugar, began falling from a clear sky. She had spent too much of her last money. Her eye was aching. She rubbed it gently.

  When she woke in the night, it was to blue shapes between bare branches.

  24

  THE SOLDIERS, German and Canadian, watched Marty, each frozen in place. The boy who had shot him swung towards Leo. Leo raised his hands. Snowflakes slowed in their descent through the smoke of barrage and wood fires. The mineral smell of the tunnels rushed out from the earth below them. Under the flat white sky, his blood answered some distant hammering. Numbness climbed from his feet upwards, blurring the scene before him, Marty’s face, until it felt no longer real. Then his mouth filled with the metallic taste of death. This boy could easily pull the trigger. There would be no witnesses. No one would know that he was shot, unarmed. It wasn’t uncommon, soldiers on both sides, frightened, confused, enraged, exhausted, shooting the enemy, instead of taking prisoners.

  Later, Leo would grant the boy some humanity, maybe a childhood not unlike his own, fishing for trout with his father, climbing an apple tree. Leo would never know what checked him but the boy lowered his rifle and motioned for Leo to march ahead of him and the other young German soldier, through craters, strewn with the dead, identical in their mud-caked uniforms.

  WHEN THEY REACHED the German trench lines, Leo was taken to a sagging tent where a dozen other prisoners stood, stooped and listless. Two soldiers in spiked helmets and uniforms hanging loose on their thin frames prodded Leo. There was Wes Cochrane, from their unit, his red moustache crusted with dried blood. They exchanged silent glances. A German officer, in a double-breasted tunic with gleaming brass buttons, eventually arrived. His lower eyelids drooped and rolled out like a bloodhound’s. He took in the prisoners without expression, speaking tersely to his soldiers. When he turned and left, one of the soldiers, a middle-aged man with a wide forehead stained with a port wine birthmark, approached Leo. He grabbed the chain around Leo’s neck and jerked it. Leo pulled out his dog tags, two silver discs attached to the chain, one to be collected from his body or if he was taken prisoner, one to be left on for identification: 65438 Lt. L. Ramsay 25thBn. Canadians. The soldier opened his palm. Leo broke
one tag off, but the German kept his palm open until Leo had surrendered the other tag as well.

  The soldiers collected all the dog tags, then motioned the men to line up and began marching them north along the line.

  The barrage had stopped. German soldiers, slumped in trenches, looked sullenly up at them as they passed. Some said things that made their comrades laugh. Leo could almost imagine that he was back on his own side. It was eerily similar: the brown puddles lying in the trenches, the smell of sweat, wet boots, cigarettes smoke, and the exhaustion that hovered behind the eyes of the men. But his throat was parched and his mind was numb.

  “Hei. Sandsäcke aufheben!” The soldier at the front of the line, no more than thirty but with the stoop of an old man, shouted, turning and holding his arm up. The men stopped. Wes pressed close to Leo, swaying a little. Leo recognized a couple of other faces, but most of the men were from different companies. None were commissioned. Leo wondered what they had done with the officers. The German indicated a pile of sandbags. Each man shouldered one and continued in their line to the north.

  Wes was still bleeding from his nose and ears. He staggered under his sandbag. The bags were the weight of a human body. Leo walked behind him, staring at Wes’s muddy boots.

  After a half hour, they came to a cook tent where an aproned soldier stirred two blackened pots on a wood stove.

  “Halt! Sandsäcke ablegen!” the stooped soldier shouted, gesturing for the men to drop their loads. He waved them to the cook tent, where the aproned soldier ladled turnip soup into their upturned helmets without a word and pointed to stale crusts of bread in an ammunition box on the floor.

  The sun was dropping through fog, which hadn’t lifted all day. The prisoners, their uniforms caked in mud, crouched on low benches outside the cook tent. Leo brought his helmet to his mouth but the old nausea, the taste of the body he had been thrown into at Passchendaele, rose in his throat. He threw down his helmet, turned away, and vomited.

  Wes, who had been greedily finishing his soup, leaned over Leo, a hand on his shoulder.