Her husband closed the bedroom door behind him then stepped toward her, and she moved easily into his arms, craving his warmth and the solid proof that he was really there. He loves me. His breath was in her ear, his fingers sliding down her back, and Winny felt so dizzy with desire she almost lost her balance. She had felt this kind of need before, when they’d been alone together, kissing, touching, wanting. Tonight she wouldn’t have to walk away from it.
His kisses were slow and tender, and she moved with him as he edged toward the bed.
“I think I’ll need some help,” she suggested breathlessly, then she turned her back to him and closed her eyes. His fingers went to the line of pearly buttons down her spine, and she felt his warm touch as he released them one by one. She shifted her shoulders, helping the soft yellow material slip down her back.
“God, Winny.” His hands brushed over her skin, and she closed her eyes to savour the luxurious feeling before realizing what he was tracing. She wondered how terrible the scars looked. She hadn’t felt any pain in years, though sometimes she felt the urge to scratch where she couldn’t reach.
“We all have scars,” she reminded him.
The tips of his fingers drifted over her, and his lips followed. They rose up her spine to the base of her neck like butterfly wings, then travelled up to her ear.
“No one should ever have hurt you, Winny,” he said, his voice husky.
She turned to face him, eager to leave the past behind. “Jack, please. I’m all right.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I wish I could have saved you, and her, and everyone else.”
“So do I, but we couldn’t, Jack. We’ll make our own happiness from now on.” She touched his cheek. “Let me make you happy.”
She began unbuttoning his shirt, and when she took it off, her soul bled for the mess his master had made of his body. Faded pink lines crisscrossed over the skin, one on top of the other, like a jagged map detailing the many times he’d been lost. A faded puncture scar drew her eye, a mere two inches from his more recent war wound, and she wondered where it had come from. Would he ever tell her? Her fingers caressed the lines and dimples, raising goosebumps along his skin, and he shivered.
“Come here, Irish,” he said gruffly, turning towards her. “I want to make love to you.”
She caught her breath, every nerve tingling with longing, but he misinterpreted the sound. “I’ll be careful,” he said. “I don’t want to frighten you.”
She reached behind and unhooked her brassiere, then let it slip down. A new light came into his eyes, one that gave her a sense of confidence she’d never felt before, and she reached for him.
“I’m not afraid,” she said.
* * *
The next winter, Susan was born. The moment the nurse laid the swaddled infant in her mother’s arms, Winny felt herself reborn as well. I made you, she thought. I created you. I will always take care of you. When Jack came into the room, she saw in his eyes that tiny Susan would come before her in his heart, but Winny didn’t mind. Someone had once told her a father’s love was an unbreakable bond, and she knew she would always have a place amid so much love.
“She’s so beautiful,” he cooed, touching the tip of his daughter’s nose with his fingertip.
Winny loved watching him, watching their baby. “So are you.”
At first, they worried that Billy would object to having a baby sister seven years his junior, but he put their fears to rest right away. He and Esther were in the living room waiting when Winny and Jack came home from the hospital, Susan sleeping in her mother’s arms. With Esther’s help, Billy had decorated the apartment with cutout stars and hearts, and he’d even made a card for his little sister, complete with a drawing of himself as a stick man holding a baby-sized lump.
As far as Billy knew, Susan was his true sister, just as Winny and Jack were his true parents. When Winny had first brought him home from the orphanage, she had taken the matron’s advice to heart. No good could ever come of telling Billy he wasn’t their natural child, and Jack had agreed wholeheartedly with the plan. There was no reason to complicate the boy’s life, and since he would never know his natural mother, he wouldn’t be missing anything.
It had taken no time at all for Billy to forget that Jack had once been a stranger in their apartment. From the moment the couple returned home as man and wife, Billy followed him everywhere, asking endless questions, copying the man he soon called Dad.
Jack and Billy were devoted to Susan. Winny often woke in the night to find her husband standing over the crib, singing to the baby. He was fiercely protective of his daughter, watching everything she did with such a fascination that Winny started to wonder if it was normal for fathers to feel this strongly. She had very little to base it on. She remembered vaguely that as a child she had loved her own father, and he had done what he could to make her life a good one, but any true memories she had of him were gone.
Billy was a great help to Winny when he wasn’t in school. At eight years old, he was strong and confident, and from his dark looks and cheeky grin, she could see he would one day be a real charmer. He took to clearing dishes and folding clothes as if it was something he was proud of, and Winny was sure to give him new tasks whenever he asked. He was smart and eager, and his love was as big as the moon.
He was kneeling on the floor across from Winny one day, holding out his arms and encouraging his baby sister to take her first steps when Jack burst through the front door, a smile lighting his whole being.
“It’s over!” he cried, shaking a copy of the Evening Telegram in the air. “It’s all over!”
Winny hopped up and read the paper, then she whooped with joy. He hugged her tight and spun her around, and all of them cheered the end of the war.
“I gotta go see Edward,” Jack said, off to change his shirt. “He’s gonna want to celebrate.”
She felt a pang of disappointment at not being invited, but she understood. She was needed here.
“Mummy!” Billy cried, and she turned just in time to see Susan grab on to a table and wobble to her feet, then take her first step toward her big brother.
Winny was often sorry Charlotte couldn’t see how much their little Billy had grown, and even more that she had never met Susan, but she knew Charlotte was happy. She and Jeffrey had sold his house in Toronto and moved to England to take care of her mother; they’d bought a small house outside London. Winny made sure to send photographs of the children often, and she’d received letters back raving about how beautiful they were. Charlotte and Jeffrey hadn’t had any success in starting their own family yet, but neither seemed concerned.
With Susan walking, the apartment grew more and more crowded by the day, and Winny and Jack started to think about getting a real home. It was hard to imagine buying anything on his mechanic’s salary, but one day he pulled out a government brochure he’d received in the mail called A Home on Civvy Street.
“Remember this?” he said, flipping through. “This is how I got paid to go to school. I hadn’t bothered to look at the housing information back then. But now… What do you say, Irish? Shall we buy a house?”
They talked late into the night, pillow to pillow, about where to buy or build, drunk on the idea that, after everything, they would soon have a home to call their own. They agreed right off the top that they wouldn’t be buying a country home: there would be no more farm work for either of them.
Jack had become indispensable at the garage as an auto mechanic, and with Winny’s encouragement, he decided to see what he could do with that status. When he asked the boss if he could give him a deal on a used car, the boss sold him a five-year-old Ford for a hundred dollars and even let him use his shop to fix it up. Once they had a car to get them around, Winny and Jack took advantage of the government offer and put three hundred dollars down on a three-thousand-dollar “Victory House” in Etobicoke. They bid the downstairs grocer farewell and crowded into Jack’s car, then they drove out of town and in
to a neat little community with sidewalks and nicely planted trees.
“Which one is ours?” Billy kept asking.
“Look for number sixty-eight,” Jack told him. “It’s white with a black roof.”
“They’re all white with black roofs!”
But Billy had no complaints about his big new yard or his very own bedroom upstairs. “I can see everything from up here!” he yelled, looking out the window. “This is gonna be great.”
Even Susan got her own room, right across from Billy’s, though at first it was difficult for Winny to tuck her into her crib and leave her there all by herself. Fortunately, Susan quickly let the whole family know that she could be loud enough to wake them up no matter how many rooms there were.
Winny loved the house. Her kitchen was beyond her wildest dreams, with its clean, white stove and oven, refrigerator, even her own Maytag washing machine with a ringer at the top. When the water was squeezed out, she carried the wet clothes outside and hung them on the line, and the sweet songs of birds chattered through the growing trees. Sometimes her neighbours came out to hang theirs as well, and Winny was thrilled when she started to make new friends.
“It almost seems too good to be true,” she confided to Jack one night.
“We deserve every bit of it,” he replied, and she flinched when she heard the old edge return to his tone. “Every bit of it and more.”
Billy entered his new school with the plan of being the smartest one in it, but talk soon turned to soccer and baseball and hockey, and he decided his new goal was to be the best at everything. When Winny received a gracious note from his grade-four teacher saying what a helper he was in the classroom, she revelled quietly in the knowledge that she and Jack had raised a good, happy boy.
“Miss Hanson says we’re going to learn about our country’s history,” Billy told her one day when he came home from school. “She says Canada is seventy-eight years old this year.”
“That sounds interesting,” Winny said, digging out her recipe book. With rations as tight as they were, she’d decided to make chili. That way she could cut back on the ground beef and add more beans. Maybe Jack wouldn’t notice. Now where did I put that recipe?
“She says Canada is made up of all different kinds of people from all over the world. We’re the youngest country, and everyone left the old places to come here for a better life.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Oh! There you are.” Her finger skimmed down the page as she checked she had everything she needed.
“She said we are going to make a big wall of pictures, and she wants all of us to bring in a special family photograph to share. Can I bring one in?” He waited. “Mummy?”
She turned from the recipe book, distracted. “What is it, Billy?”
“I need a family photograph to bring to class. Do we have any that aren’t in frames that I could take?”
“Sure we do,” she said. “There’s a box at the back of my closet. You can take whichever one you like, as long as you return it when you’re done.”
An hour later he reappeared. Winny was setting the table, pleased with the comforting smell of chili in the air. She hoped Jack wouldn’t stay out too late tonight.
“Is this me?” Billy asked. “I think I remember this.”
“What is it, dear?”
He held out the photo and her stomach dropped. What had she been thinking? How could she just let him sort through that box? “Yes, that’s you. That’s our wedding photo.”
“I don’t understand. How can I be in your wedding photo?” He eyed her sideways. “Was I born before you were married?”
She could feel sweat, slick on her palms, as the lies started up again. “Oh no, Billy. We were married. Of course we were. It’s just that we had to have a quick ceremony because your father had to go overseas for the war. We decided to have a more formal ceremony with our friends later on. Look how handsome you were in your little suit.”
“But the war started after I was born, didn’t it?”
“Silly me. I forgot. He had to go away to work for a couple of years before then. Jobs were hard to find, so he had to leave me here.”
He was still frowning at the photograph. “But you never put this one in a frame. Why not?”
Her mouth was parched. “Oh, I must have just forgotten. Here, hand it to me. You know, I have a much nicer photograph you could take. I think Miss Hanson would like that much more. It was at Christmas last year, remember? When you got that new baseball mitt from Dad?”
That night she stared at the photograph he’d given her, wondering what to do with it. The thought of destroying that perfect moment in time made her feel sick inside, so she stuffed it away again then hid the box.
* * *
Their new home in Etobicoke was far from the mechanic shop in downtown Toronto, so Jack had to drive quite a way to get to work in the morning. By the time he came home each night, he was tired and greasy. Sometimes he arrived a little later than usual, the sour-sweet smell of beer clinging to his shirt, and Winny would wash it off along with the grease and not say a word. If it helped him relax, she didn’t mind at all. As he said often enough, he’d earned it.
Winny found solace in her vegetable garden, which Jack and Billy had dug at the side of the yard for her. The wide rectangle was in a perfect spot, where the sun eased her seeds into sprouts that grew into a harvest she served on their dinner table. As she seeded and weeded, clearing the lines and rows, a peace descended over her, a reminder of how she had found an unexpected contentment in Mistress Adams’s garden.
These days their lives were busy, and sometimes Winny got so caught up she briefly forgot about her past. Then she’d see or hear something and be reminded of before, and if no one was around she’d sink to the ground and let the sadness of times past wash over her. This garden, her very own garden to do with as she pleased, was where she went to heal.
One rainy day, Jack came home early from work and found her there, sitting between the rows as the rain pummelled the ground around her, turning her garden to mud.
“Winny!”
She looked up at him, surprised. She’d been thinking of Mary and hadn’t noticed the storm.
Stepping carefully around the young plants, Jack crouched in front of her and slid a finger across her brow, clearing the wet hair from her eyes. His own was straight and dripping, loosened from his Brylcreem. He looked younger, and she preferred it that way. His skin bore proof of his years, but when his hair was messy and unkempt, she saw that fearless boy from the streets.
“Hey there.”
She couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“You’re all right, Irish,” he said, then he scooped her up in his arms and carried her toward the house. She clung to his neck, wet cheek against his wet shirt, safe again.
thirty-eight JACK
— 1952 —
Jack climbed out of the car and was instantly engulfed in the sticky September heat. He glared at the black stain on the driveway that reminded him the old car was leaking oil. He’d have to order a new set of piston rings and try to find time between customers to fix the engine. Not a lot of work, just time, and there never seemed to be enough of that these days. As he headed toward the door, he heard the lawn mower in the backyard, and he was glad that Billy was finally cutting the grass. He looked out over the front lawn and frowned at a strip the boy had missed, the wispy blades standing a full two inches over the rest.
“Daddy!” Susan called, running out the front door, her wild hair in a cloud.
“There’s my girl,” he said, lifting her warm little body and hugging her against his chest. She was a beam of sunshine, just like her mother. How had he managed to be a part of creating such a beautiful human being?
“How was school today?”
“It was lots of fun. We’re doing a play!”
“Oh really? What’s it about?” he asked as he walked into the house, Susan still wrapped around him. His annoyance was left in the yard; h
is little girl could easily clear his mind of every storm cloud.
“I don’t know yet, but Miss Grantham says she’ll tell us tomorrow.”
“You’re getting too grown up, Susan.” He put her down and gave Winny a kiss. “Something smells real good in here, and I don’t just mean dinner.”
“Jack!” Winny laughed. “What a flirt you are.”
Behind them, the front door opened then slammed shut, and Billy strode in. His hair was plastered to his face by sweat, and his shirt stuck to his narrow chest. He was a strong boy, but he was only fifteen. He had an adolescent, sort of stretched-out look to him. He’d grow into it, Jack could see. He’d been there himself.
“You missed a whole strip of lawn out there, Billy.”
Billy sighed and jogged up the stairs. “But I did the rest of it.”
Jack shot Winny a look. More and more he was hearing a belligerent tone from the boy, and he didn’t like it. “Get down here, young man.”
Billy reappeared, looking nonplussed.
“You did the rest of it? You think that’s good enough?” Jack pointed to the door. “Get out there and do the job right.”
“Dad, it’s fine like that. No one will notice, and I’ll cut it next time. I’m really hot right now.”
“You don’t know what being really hot is.”
Billy rolled his eyes. “Tell me, Dad. When were you this hot?”
The warm, dank water from Warren’s well returned to his mind, and he saw Quinn again, bent over a shovel and hacking at the dry earth. That day made today feel like winter, he thought. But the story of Warren’s farm was one that he’d never tell his children. He’d only ever told Winny, and neither of them talked about those days anymore.
“Little place called Sicily,” he said. “You’ll have heard of it if you’ve studied your history and geography.”
“I’ve heard of it. Must be nice to have lived by the sea.”
The Forgotten Home Child Page 27