Yesterday's Dead

by Pat Bourke

  “Glad to hear it.” Dr. Waterton turned to his son. “Don’t be late for school, Jack. And think about what I said. You need to keep your grades up.”

  “I’m never late,” Jack replied. “It’s a waste of time to arrive before the bell rings.” He bunched his napkin into a ball as he got to his feet and tossed it past Meredith’s head onto the sideboard. “See you later, Meredith-not-Margaret,” he said from the doorway.

  A pretty, blonde girl pushed past him and planted herself in front of the doctor. “Papa, Abby’s mother is taking her shopping today and they’ve invited me. Please say I can go!”

  Her long hair was held back by a band of green plaid that matched her pleated skirt and the tie on her trim, white blouse. She looked as dainty as a porcelain doll from the Eaton’s catalogue.

  “You mean you want to miss a day of school, Maggie.” The doctor sighed.

  “That’s not fair!” Jack protested. “I have to keep my grades up and she gets a day off?”

  “Jack!” Dr. Waterton exclaimed. “This doesn’t involve you. Go find Harry and make sure he’s got his books and coat.”

  Jack slouched away, grumbling. Meredith concentrated on making no noise as she added a side plate and serving platter to the tray she had set on the table. She didn’t think she should be hearing this conversation either, but no one seemed to mind that she was in the room.

  “I won’t be missing anything, Papa,” Maggie said, smiling sweetly up at her father. “We’re only doing review right now and—”

  “And your last school report was dreadful,” Dr. Waterton said. “Missing school is out of the question.”

  “But Abby’s mother doesn’t mind if Abby misses a day. Besides, I can get Abby a gift for her birthday party next week so we won’t have to do that another day. Just this once? Can I? Please?”

  “You’re not Abby, my girl, and the answer is still no,” the doctor said. “Get your things and you can ride along with Harry and me as far as your school, if you like. I’ll have Forrest bring the car around.”

  The air in the dining room churned with an angry silence after he left. Meredith could feel Maggie’s eyes on her as she added the sugar bowl and creamer to her tray. She wondered whether she was to take the salt cellar and pepper grinder to the kitchen with the dishes or whether they should go on the sideboard.

  “Who wants to go to boring old school?” Maggie complained. “I bet you’re glad to be finished with it.”

  “Oh, no,” Meredith said, pausing in her journey between the table and the sideboard to turn toward Maggie. “I liked school.”

  “Boring figures, and boring grammar, and the boring, old kings and queens of boring, old England? You liked that?”

  “Oh, yes,” Meredith said, wistfully. “It was much better than taking care of my sister, or helping in the store, or washing pots—”

  Had she said too much? Imagine telling Maggie Waterton that she didn’t like kitchen work! She set a stack of plates on the tray. It was time to get on with her work. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Maggie—”

  “Don’t call me that!” Maggie’s face was a thundercloud.

  “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

  “That name!” Maggie stood scowling, her hands on her hips. “I hate it!”

  “You mean ‘Miss Maggie’?” Meredith had definitely heard everyone else say it. She couldn’t think how she’d gotten it wrong.

  “Yes, I mean ‘Miss Maggie’!” Her face was now scarlet as a zinnia. “You are to call me ‘Miss Margaret.’”

  “But they all—”

  “I’m thirteen, much too old for a baby name like Maggie. How would you like being called by a name you hate?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t like it at all,” Meredith said, eagerly. “I know exactly how you feel. As a matter of fact—”

  “I doubt,” Maggie said, her ice-blue eyes taking in the tray, the apron, the homemade sweater, “you know exactly how I feel.”

  Mama always said it was the person that counted, not where they came from or what they had, but it seemed that was different in Rosedale, too.

  “I’m sorry,” Meredith said quietly. “I’ll get it right the next time.”

  The blue eyes narrowed. “See that you do.”

  “Maggie!” Dr. Waterton called from the hall. “Are you coming?”

  “Papa!” Maggie stamped her foot. “I’ve told you not to call me that!” She flounced out of the dining room.

  Meredith seethed as she carried the laden tray out of the dining room and along the passage to the kitchen. Maggie—no, Miss Margaret—had nice things to wear, her room was probably filled with books she didn’t read, and she didn’t have to leave school to work in someone else’s house in a strange city. That stuck-up girl didn’t know how lucky she was.

  Chapter 7

  Meredith sat on the back step the next evening, grateful for the cool night air bathing her face. Her hands were raw from scrubbing the dishes that piled up endlessly by the sink. Chopping and stirring and mixing were fun, but she hated washing dishes.

  And keeping an eye on Harry wore her out. Luckily, he loved being in the kitchen with Mrs. Butters, who let him chop and stir and mix alongside Meredith. It seemed that keeping them busy was also Mrs. Butters’ formula for keeping small boys out of trouble. Meredith tried not to begrudge Harry his messes, even though she was the one who had to clean them up.

  But then, with no warning, Harry would vanish. She’d lost count of how many times Mrs. Butters had told her to stop what she was doing to go and find him. He delighted in finding new places to hide, even though Mrs. Butters scolded him for taking Meredith away from her work. Once in a while, he would sit still long enough for Meredith to tell him a story, but then his inexhaustible motor would roar to life again. She was thankful when Mrs. Butters finally coaxed him upstairs to bed.

  But minding Harry wasn’t her worst problem.

  “You must not disappear,” Parker had scolded when he’d heard her tell Mrs. Butters that she was going upstairs to get her sweater.

  “You must not clomp like a farm girl,” he’d complained when she’d tried to walk quickly—and that after he’d fussed about how long she took to get from the kitchen to the dining room.

  “You must not dilly-dally,” he’d lectured when all she’d been doing was glancing through the newspaper. In fact, Parker had seemed surprised that she could read at all, as if not reading was something else that had been passed on from Alice.

  He was a dried-up, meddling, know-it-all fusspot! Meredith’s fingers itched to pinch Parker’s sharp nose when it pointed in her direction.

  She plucked a scarlet-edged leaf from the shrub beside the step and rolled it between her fingers. Never mind, she told herself, you’re out of his reach for a few minutes anyway. Don’t let him spoil this time, too.

  Faint automobile sounds drifted toward her. Across the yard, she could just make out a woman moving in the kitchen of the house beside Glenwaring, clearing up after supper, no doubt. Meredith had been glad to escape Parker and Forrest in one of their endless arguments at Glenwaring’s kitchen table.

  “It’s folly,” Forrest had insisted. “Pure folly. They should close them all: schools, theaters—churches, even.”

  The Spanish Flu, again. Desperate for something to read, Meredith had been ducking into the pantry to read the newspaper whenever she had a few free minutes. It was filled with lengthy, and scary, accounts of Spanish Influenza sweeping across American cities. Some reports said it had reached Montreal. No one seemed to agree on whether the people of Toronto might fall prey to it soon.

  “Dr. Hallowfield has said repeatedly that there’s absolutely no cause for anxiety,” Parker had told her just that afternoon when he’d discovered her reading in the pantry. “He’s the top man in the city’s Department of Pub
lic Health. He says healthy people should walk more, not crowd into the streetcars, and avoid anything that might bring on a cold. You’re in no danger here.”

  Then he’d said that if she had so much free time that she could be reading in the middle of the work day, she most certainly had time to polish all the shoes in the back hall.

  Meredith’s shoulder still ached from the vigorous polishing Parker had demanded. She couldn’t imagine why one family needed so many shoes. Maggie Waterton could wear a different pair every day of the week, while Meredith had to make do with one battered pair so scuffed that no amount of polishing would ever make them shine. The prospect of buying new shoes at Mr. Eaton’s store was Meredith’s one bright spot in the endless round of dishwashing that filled her days.

  All the same, Meredith knew Mama would be reading about the Spanish Flu in the Toronto papers and worrying. Meredith decided to write a letter home that night to reassure her. Meredith was working in a doctor’s house, for goodness sake! What could be safer than that?

  Forrest pounded the kitchen table. “What about Boston? They didn’t think they had the Spanish Flu, and now there are hundreds—thousands—ill.”

  “One of the hospital trustees recently visited Boston and saw the Spanish Flu there firsthand,” Parker replied, in that infuriatingly calm tone that said ‘I know better than you.’ “He said Toronto is experiencing only a slightly more serious strain of the usual grippe.”

  Meredith hoped he was right. If Toronto was safe from the Spanish Flu, then maybe Port Stuart would be, too. She couldn’t bear to think of Mama or Ellen sick when she herself was stuck here, trying to keep on the good side of miserable Parker and to avoid hateful Maggie.

  Just that afternoon, Maggie and her friend Abby had been giggling together about a party and boys. They’d fallen silent when they caught sight of Meredith, their eyes examining her as if she were some horrible species of insect. After she passed them, Meredith heard fierce whispering and laughter.

  Remembering that, Meredith felt angry all over again. Mama would have been appalled at such bad manners. “Be kind,” Mama often reminded her. “You never know what troubles someone might have.”

  Meredith didn’t care about Maggie’s troubles, and she cared even less about Parker’s. Papa would have called the two of them “hoity-toities,” his term for customers who treated shopkeepers like servants.

  “Hello, Meredith-not-Margaret. Aren’t you cold?”

  Meredith started at the sudden voice from behind. She turned her head to see Jack Waterton slouched against the doorframe, smiling down at her.

  “Not really,” she said. He made her uncomfortable, hovering like that. She tried to stand, but her skirt was caught on something and she got stuck halfway. She tugged at her skirt, gently at first, then harder, but it wouldn’t come free. Flustered, she bent down to see what was catching it and discovered Jack’s foot firmly planted on the hem of her skirt.

  “Please,” Meredith said. “You’re standing on my skirt.” She tried to work it free.

  “I’ll step off if you promise not to go in,” Jack said. Something in his tone made her look up. “Stay and talk to me,” he said, his bright blue eyes holding hers.

  Meredith darted a look to the kitchen where Parker and Forrest were still arguing.

  “Please?” Jack said.

  Meredith decided it would be nice to talk to someone who was older than six and wasn’t ordering her to do something.

  “All right,” she said, “but only for a few minutes. I have to be up early.”

  She sat back down on the step and Jack lifted his foot. As he settled himself beside her, she tucked her dress firmly around her legs, wrapped her arms around her knees and shifted away from him. She could feel him looking at her, but she made her own eyes trace the striped pattern on her dress.

  “Lots of stars tonight,” Jack said at last. “Should be clear tomorrow. Good weather for flying.”

  “Are you going flying?” Meredith had seen airplanes in the sky above Port Stuart occasionally, but she’d never seen one up close.

  “No. Wish I was, though. I will when I’m eighteen, if the war lasts that long.”

  “You’re going to be a pilot?” She could picture Jack in a leather jacket and cap, a white scarf around his neck, goggles pushed to the top of his head like the pictures she’d seen in the newspaper. She had to admit he’d look dashing.

  Jack shrugged. “I have to be eighteen before they’ll take me.”

  “The boys at home all played at being pilots fighting the Germans.” Meredith smiled, remembering.

  “Did anyone want to be the Germans?” Jack leaned back on his elbows and looked at her.

  “No, they drew straws for that.”

  Jack laughed. Light from the open doorway behind them spilled onto the path that led to the stable, making the step they were sitting on an island in a pool of light. Meredith hugged her knees and glanced toward the kitchen again. Parker would no doubt say it wasn’t proper to be sitting out here with Jack Waterton, but now she was reluctant to go in. She wondered what Jack was thinking.

  “Do you like it here?” he asked, leaning toward her. His straight blond hair fell across his forehead.

  Goodness! Meredith tried to shift farther away from him along the step, but she was already right at the edge. “Liking isn’t part of it,” she said. “It’s hard work, but Mrs. Butters is kind and I’m learning a lot.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather do something you liked?”

  “Sometimes you do things because you have to. It doesn’t matter whether you like them or not.” She stole a glance at Jack’s face. She wasn’t sure that had come out right. She didn’t want him to think she was silly.

  “When I’m eighteen, I’m going to do what I like,” Jack announced. “And it won’t be studying to be a doctor, even though that’s what my father wants.” He studied her, a small wrinkle between his eyebrows. “You’re old enough to be working, so why can’t you choose? How old are you, anyway?”

  “Fifteen.” Meredith’s cheeks burned. She wanted to put some distance between them, but if she moved any farther she’d fall into the bushes.

  “Only fifteen? What about high school?”

  “My family needs me to work.” Meredith hoped that sounded grown-up. “My aunt knew Mrs. Stinson, and she knew about this job, so here I am.”

  If only he’d stop looking at her.

  “I should go in,” she said, standing up quickly—no snag this time—and smoothing her skirt.

  Jack scrambled to his feet and blocked her path to the door. “Then we’re the same age,” he said, a smile touching the corners of his mouth, “for a few days more, anyway. When’s your birthday?” His hand brushed hers.

  “I have to go.” Meredith tried to slip past him, but she stumbled over the shoes on the mat inside the door and nearly lost her balance.

  “Steady!” Jack grabbed her arm. His hand burned through her sleeve. He was too close, crowding her, and suddenly there wasn’t enough air even though the door was wide open.

  Meredith pulled her arm from his grasp and stepped away. Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure he could hear it.

  “My shoes,” Jack said, after a long moment. He picked up the battered pair of black shoes that had been covered in mud before she polished them that afternoon. “I came for my rugger shoes.” He headed for the kitchen, swinging the shoes by their laces, without a backward glance.

  Meredith stood beside the open door, the night air washing over her, looking past Jack Waterton to where Parker sat at the kitchen table, watching them both.

  Chapter 8

  Meredith held the candle as far out over the open stairway as she could. The flame flickered in the dank draft wafting up from the coal cellar.

  They’d been preparing all day for the su
pper party Dr. Waterton had planned for Saturday night to celebrate Jack’s sixteenth birthday. Mrs. Butters had said there would be twenty-two guests, friends of the family along with some of Jack’s friends from school.

  The monstrous range in the kitchen consumed every scrap of coal Forrest brought in, and then demanded more. But now Forrest was out and Mrs. Butters had sent Meredith to fill the coal scuttle.

  Why did the electric light in the cellar have to burn out the very first time she was sent for coal? There were sure to be spiders and mice—or worse—in the inky darkness. Meredith shuddered. She placed a tentative foot on the first step and listened for the sound of scurrying feet from below. She moved to the second step, then the third, one hand shielding the candle flame as her ears tried to make sense of the darkness.

  The hinge on the back door screeched. Meredith scrambled back to the top of the stairs, her heart hammering.

  “Hello, there!” The freckled face of the boy holding the back door open looked familiar. “Why, you’re the girl with the suitcase!”

  “I dropped the candle!” Meredith stared at her empty hand in horror. A burning candle was dangerous.

  “I’ll get it!” The boy ran across the floor and disappeared down the stairs. “I can’t see a thing,” he called up to her, “but at least that means it’s gone out.” His head reappeared at the top of the stairs, and he winked. “No harm done.”

  The shoeshine boy! Meredith flushed with embarrassment. “It seems you’re always getting me out of messes,” she said.

  “It seems you’re always getting into them.” Even his freckles seemed to be grinning at her as he climbed the stairs, and this time Meredith found herself smiling back.

  “Is Mrs. Butters in?” The boy snatched his cap off and tried unsuccessfully to smooth his curly, red hair.

  “She’s in the kitchen. How do you know Mrs. Butters?”

  “My mam comes to clean.”

  “Mrs. O’Hagan?” Meredith enjoyed that cheerful lady’s stories about her five lively children. “You must be Tommy.”