by M. J. Cates
PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA
Copyright © 2019 M. J. Cates
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2019 by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Cates, M. J., author
Into that fire / M.J. Cates.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 9780735273764
eBook ISBN 9780735273740
I. Title.
PS8605.A87855I58 2019 C813’.6 C2018-902719-3
C2018-902720-7
Book design by Terri Nimmo
Cover image: © Kymberlie Dozois Photography / Getty Images
v5.3.2
a
Light blue paper and retire to a safe distance.
TRADITIONAL WARNING ON EXPLOSIVES
CONTENTS
Cover
Title page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgment
About the Author
1
Does something always have to die in order for something else to be born? To Imogen, the idea seemed melodramatic. She considered herself a practical girl—woman—not the bluestocking, not the suffragette, not the pamphleteer her fellow medical students made her out to be. She just wanted to do some good, be some use in the world, and didn’t see this ambition as unsuitable. Yet she knew that others—her father, Quentin—found it unusual because their reactions made it plain.
The church clock bonged the quarter hour. Only fifteen minutes before she was due to meet Quentin on the front steps of Rush College. She had been listening to the clock for hours, her German text open on the desk before her. She hadn’t learned a single verb all morning. Consciousness of having soon to commit an unkindness had rendered her skull impenetrable.
She got up and checked herself in the mirror and started to fuss with her hair, then stopped. What was the point of trying to look pretty? Surely when you’re about to tell someone that you don’t love him it was best to be as ugly as possible.
Four hats sat on top of her rickety armoire. She took down the cream-coloured Java with the blue silk stripe. Quentin’s favourite, true, but also her own, so why shouldn’t she wear it? It was anticipating the summer a little, but the alternatives were all too formal.
Outside, the sun was bright, casting crisp shadows. She watched her own ripple ahead of her on the grass as she took a shortcut through a schoolyard, hat just so. Could you acquire a Bachelor of Science degree and membership in Phi Beta Kappa, and qualify for your MD in the top three of your class, and still care about hats? Apparently you could.
Her mood darkened as she got closer to Rush. In a few minutes she would have to tell Quentin that whatever it was they had shared could not continue, that it was over. Skinny, gawky Quentin with his bony hands and his pretty girl’s mouth had been her ally, her refuge, in this strange adventure she had set for herself. She had never expected to make such a friend. She had come almost to believe that all men hated her.
The way the other students looked at her when she answered a question! Folding their arms and rolling their eyes or staring at the floor. How smug they were on those rare occasions when she got it wrong. Sometimes she bit her tongue, repressing the urge to answer, only to hate herself later for cowardice. The sexual insults—she had been completely unprepared for those. Anatomy class in particular. “How does this gentleman’s penis compare to all the others you’ve seen, Miss Lang?”
She had not known, until then, that it was possible to blush all the way from sternum to occiput. Skin scorched, right across the shoulders, and rivulets of sweat travelling to unheard-of destinations beneath her smock and heavy clothes. It was not so much the sexual content of the remark that upset her, but the depth of hostility it revealed.
Another young woman might have run home to cry on her father’s shoulder. Her own father, Josiah Lang—one of Chicago’s top attorneys, a progressive, a friend of Clarence Darrow’s no less—could have shut her classmates up with a single riposte. There had been a time when she would have run to him, when she valued his affection and good opinion above all others. What a joke that had turned out to be.
She had sought out the other four women in the class, thinking that together they might lighten each other’s burdens. But two had dropped out in the first couple of months, and the other two were so competitive they would not so much as speak to her. They seemed to hate her even more than the men did.
And then there was Quentin.
Even if she had come to Rush in search of a man, which she most emphatically had not, the quality of her male classmates would have rapidly put her off her quest. Louts. Imogen had always imagined physicians to be a valiant example of the human male, rational and scientific, eager to be of service, even chivalrous. From what Avalon did such paragons arise? Certainly not from the Rush College class of 1916.
Except for Quentin. Quentin stood a good five inches taller than Imogen, who at five foot nine and a half was taller than most women. She loved the Euclidian angularity of him, the way he bent his neck forward to engage with his shorter colleagues, the loose-limbed way he would unfurl a long arm to point something out—a hawk riding a thermal over Lake Michigan, the sunlight blazing in the library windows. He had a disarming way of folding himself into or over a chair; he was incapable of sitting up straight anywhere except the dinner table, where he looked positively architectural. Everywhere else he slouched, he draped, he accordioned himself into, around, or over whatever support was available.
His physical being was a lovely contrast to his rationality. Professor Coughlin had posed him a question in cellular biology class once, something about mitosis, and Quentin had stood there mute, head bent, arms folded, still as a lamppost. Coughlin was sadistic enough to let dullards hang for ages before he would bail them out by posing the question to someone else. On this occasion he emitted an exasperated sputter. “Come, come, Mr. Goodchild, it’s not a difficult question.”
“It is for me, sir, because I’m thoughtful.”
Everyone had laughed, including Imogen, because it was clear that Quentin’s cranium was indeed humming all the time. And he did manage to retrieve the right answer before the laughter had quite faded from the hall.
Sometimes when they went for walks, around the campus or farther afield, he would be silent so long that Imogen would begin to get annoyed. “If you don’t want to be here,” she would begin.
“Sorry. I was just imagining the future when this is just a memory. Us walking down
Harrison Street on a sunny day in 1916—how can that ever not be real? Not be present?”
“It’ll be gone by tomorrow. Sooner, even.”
“But this heat on my skin, those twin curls on your neck—they’re just like parentheses—it’s all so vivid, so real. How can it not be forever?”
Because nothing is forever, Imogen wanted to say but found herself silenced by his noticing her curls. In moments of absolute honesty, she could admit that she enjoyed the way he responded to her—the way he might tremble a little when helping her with a coat, a scarf, or even a book. Or when they sat side by side, how he would tilt a little away from her to avoid the most innocent touch.
Once, when they had both pointed to a page at the same time, their bare hands had collided and he’d reacted as if she were a red-hot poker, his cheeks turning scarlet. She was aware of possessing such power over him, and she did not like the part of herself that was gratified. All men were idiots when it came to lust, so she tried not to attribute any deeper meaning to Quentin’s reactions. He was a man; she was a woman who was not ugly if not beautiful—of course he was attracted.
But Quentin was a wonderful person, someone she would want to know always. So why did she not react that way to him? She did not pine for him when they were apart, did not daydream about him, never wrote out his name just to see it in front of her. In short, she was not in love.
“I wish you were my brother,” she had blurted out one hot afternoon when they had known each other for about a year. By then Quentin had dropped out of medical school to study at the University of Chicago. He had set his heart on a literary career, thus enraging his doctor father—an experience with which Imogen could sympathize.
They were in Lincoln Park, sharing a bench by the fountain, and a monarch butterfly had landed on Imogen’s sleeve, brilliant wings opening and closing as it caught its breath after its long journey from Mexico or wherever. Imogen raised her arm so that the sunlight lit up the Tiffany wings.
“Hinge,” Quentin said, and opened and closed his bony hand, four fingers in unison against his thumb. “Hinge,” he repeated. “Excellent word.” He turned on the bench and interposed a crooked forefinger between their two faces, curling it closed and open as if scratching the ear of an invisible cat. “Hinge,” he said in a deeper voice, as if Imogen had just arrived from a foreign land and needed a lesson in English vocabulary.
Something about the way he said it—gravely, but with a touch of self-parody—threw her into a fit of giggles.
And Quentin became relentless. “Hinge,” he said again, solemn as a judge. He got up and stood in front of her, held his arms out and crooked the elbows, first one then the other, a living marionette discovering his invisible strings. “Hinge.”
“Stop,” Imogen cried, laughing harder.
He lifted his knee, foot dangling and swinging, a pendulum of flesh and bone. “Hinge.”
“No, really. I can’t breathe,” Imogen managed. “You’ll kill me.”
“All right. Sorry.”
He plopped himself down beside her again, and folded his hands in his lap and looked out across the pond. The butterfly was gone. Imogen extricated a handkerchief from her bag and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
When they had started walking back toward campus she touched Quentin’s arm—she had never touched him before—and said, “I wish you were my brother.”
“Oh,” Quentin said. “Oh, I—well. Um, why?”
“Because you make me laugh. Because I love your company. And obviously because I have no brothers.”
“But you don’t have a husband, either.”
Imogen stopped and looked down at her feet, at the grass, at a half-acorn with the twin grooves of a squirrel’s teethmarks on it.
Quentin realized what he had said. “I’m sorry. It was just an observation. But why a brother? Why not some other male figure, I don’t know, a piano instructor, or a priest or something? I didn’t mean, you know…”
“No, of course not.”
“I just meant—”
“No, why would you?”
“May we walk on? We’re meeting Jack at three-fifteen.”
Quentin veered away from the subject of husbands and on to John Dryden, how one could admire the poet’s precision, his perception, his brilliance with verse, but he would never in his life want to write like Dryden, and he wasn’t just talking about style. This was all so much persiflage to draw her attention away from what he had said. It was unlike Quentin to do this, and so all the more proof that he had blurted out his true feelings.
Imogen had never, not once, thought of Quentin as a possible husband; she didn’t think of any man as a possible husband. But as they continued their walk toward the fine art museum it dawned on her that he was confusing friendship with courtship. That saddened her. To some degree it even annoyed her. He shouldn’t raise the issue of marriage when they were obviously just colleagues. He had damaged this thing that was bringing her such joy, more joy than she had realized until that moment—right there, right then in Lincoln Park—when she faced its loss. In her eyes, marriage had no claim to superiority over friendship. Marriages were commonplace, even good marriages, not that Imogen had ever witnessed such a union. Fine friendships were rare—although Quentin certainly seemed to enjoy such a bond with Jack Wisdom, who waved to them from the museum steps as they approached.
Jack was a compact, lively man with jet-black hair and moustache, dark eyes of an almost Arabian cast, and an engaging grin that would surely be the envy of all con men.
“Are we ready to be cultured?” he said, as they came up the steps. “I have to say, the two of you already look quite refined.”
“Imogen, maybe,” Quentin said. “No one’s ever accused me of looking refined.”
Jack bounded ahead to open the door for them.
“Let me check your coats,” he said, when they were inside. He was already reaching for Quentin’s.
“We’ll line up for tickets,” Quentin said.
“Nope. Already got ’em.”
“Well, let us pay you.” Quentin reached into his jacket for his wallet.
“No, no—please. My treat. You two are still humble students, and here am I making a positive fortune at the Trib.”
“It’s very kind of you,” Imogen said.
“Uh-huh,” Quentin said. “And copy editing for a newspaper pays a fortune, does it?”
But Jack was already rushing off with their coats.
The special exhibit turned out to be a revelation for Imogen, who had never seen the works of the Pre-Raphaelites. Jack seemed well informed, chatting in a low voice to Quentin about Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his circle. Imogen lingered at each painting, preferring to take them in without commentary. She marvelled at the rich colours, the realistic detail, the slim, soulful figures.
“I feel as if I’ve had the most wonderful dream,” she said, as they left the exhibit and headed to the cafeteria, “like I’ve visited a strange and beautiful world. It all seemed so real, and yet…”
“I knew you’d love them,” Quentin said.
In the tea room, Jack pulled back Imogen’s chair for her, and then did the same for Quentin.
“How are things going with Miss Gilbert?” Imogen asked.
“Oh, my.” Jack put a melodramatic hand to his forehead. “Sometimes I think she’ll be the death of me. Other times, I’m the happiest man in the world. But I promised myself I wouldn’t whine about her today—I’m always bending Quentin’s ear with my tale of woe.”
“He’s getting some good poems out of it,” Quentin said.
Jack slapped the table smartly. “You know what I want to do—once I get a definitive answer out of that girl one way or the other?”
“No,” Quentin said, “but I’m sure it’s eminently sensible.”
“I want to take the Grand Tour—you know—Paris, Vienna, Istanbul. You and me, Quentin, the Grand Tour.”
“There is a war on, you know. Europe’s a ni
ghtmare.”
“My other thought was Texas—live on a ranch for a year. Wouldn’t that be something? I feel the need to do something profound.”
Quentin laughed. “We could write cowboy poems.”
“I was thinking a rhyming novel—when was the last time anyone wrote a good rhyming novel?”
“You’re perfectly insane, Jack. Just ask the psychiatrist here.”
“Psychiatrist-to-be,” Imogen said. “And no—my diagnosis would not be that he is insane, he’s merely in love.”
Now, here she was—what?—a year later, about to tell Quentin goodbye and wondering if she had not been as cruel as Jack Wisdom’s beloved. If she had not been seeing Quentin with an eye to marriage, why was she so often alone with him? Women—respectable women—do not seek out men for friendship, they seek them out (discreetly, properly) for marriage. And respectable young ladies did not do the seeking at all; they waited to be sought.
My God, she thought, no wonder he has misunderstood everything. I have misunderstood everything. But Rush had only been admitting women for three or four years, and the university not much longer. Men and women of marriageable age in such proximity? There were bound to be misunderstandings. Of course, none of the women even lived on campus; they were in rooming houses that had sprung up on its fringes to meet this new need. Imogen lived in Miss Emma Sedgwick’s Home for Young Ladies, run by a pleasant but firm spinster of sixty.
When Imogen had moved in, all had gone well for the first week. Her room was bright and comfortable, with a window that looked out on a luxuriant back garden. The bed could have been firmer and the armoire larger, but Imogen was not a complainer and adjusted her wardrobe accordingly. The desk was where she would be spending most of her time, in any case, and it was a massive rolltop that looked as if it had once furnished an office in a Dickens novel. Miss Sedgwick inquired several times if everything was to her liking, and encouraged her to speak up if she needed anything.