“I can’t leave yet. Not until I’m sure everyone understands the system.” Arthur took the food, wrapped in a tea towel, and kissed her on the cheek.
“The children need to see that you’re okay,” his wife said.
Fred headed for the basement stairs. He could hear Arthur following him.
At the bottom of the stairs, Fred turned and saw her look past Arthur, at the bodies spread out around them, her cross expression blanching.
NOW, A WEEK LATER, Fred kicked the snow off his boots at the school door. A skinny woman, wearing a Red Cross armband, strode down the hall towards him.
“Can I help you?” She smiled grimly.
“I helped here, after the explosion. I’ve come back,” Fred said.
The woman looked at him blankly, waiting for him to explain himself.
“To help. If I’m needed, by Mr. Barnstead.”
“Oh, you should have said so.” She turned smartly. “Wait here.”
The school still smelled of books and chalk and children, their woollens and unwashed hair.
A door opened at the end of the hall and Arthur Barnstead walked towards him. He looked more rested, though his shoulders were still stooped, and his eyes were red. “Mr. Baker.”
A soldier walked past with a young woman, limping, on his arm. She was drawn and looked straight ahead, as they walked down the hall.
“The military is helping. Meeting people before they head down, telling them what to expect,” Arthur Barnstead said, as they passed down the hall.
The woman stopped at the top of the stairs. The soldier put his hand on her back and they began descending to the basement.
“For every one that’s claimed, seems like a new one arrives.” Barnstead pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mostly ones being dug out of collapsed buildings.”
FRED RETURNED TO THE BASEMENT to continue the work he had been first shown by Barnstead, examining pockets for personal items, putting them in numbered linen bags. Fred stayed until he needed to go home to change his clothes and to sleep. And then he came back.
One day a cart of donated coffins arrived at the front of the school. Fred went out to help unload them.
He stood in the frozen yard with a soldier, while another soldier on the cart pushed the first coffin from the stack. The box, of light cheap wood, slid towards them, something shifting heavily inside it. Fred felt a prick of dread.
The driver, who looked half-frozen, blew into his hands. “There’s a note.”
He fumbled in his pocket.
One of the soldiers took the note. “They’ve packed the coffins with food.”
“Well, people will eat anything if they’re hungry enough,” Fred said.
“And the new tenants will feed the worms,” the driver said under his breath.
SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE with the bodies too burnt to identify. A funeral was held on the street where the brick school stood, plain and broad-shouldered, its upper windows covered in planks.
“It is not by the hand of the Almighty these unfortunate human beings have suffered, but by the mistakes of others,” the Anglican archbishop said over ninety-five coffins. The mourners in ill-fitting donated coats and boots backed against the wind, not knowing if their lost ones might be in one of the boxes. Protestants bowed their heads. Catholics crossed themselves, all waiting for Father McManus to speak.
Arthur and Fred stood outside as the Irish Fusiliers pipe band, their knees red with cold below their saffron kilts, played the coffins away on carts.
The next morning Arthur arrived later than usual.
“Imagine,” he said, unwinding his woollen muffler, “no one caring whether you lived or died. No one left to visit your grave.”
Wafers of snow slid off the shoulders of his coat. He had been out a long time. Fred suspected he had come via the cemetery.
Fred was entering the numbers of linen bags in a box on the table into a ledger. “Some would say that now they’re reunited with their loved ones who’ve died,” said Fred.
There was a reckless look in Arthur’s eye. He smelled of stale rye. “I don’t believe that. Wish I did. But …” He stared out the window. “This is all we get. Think of a spring morning. A warm salty breeze is lifting off the ocean, blowing through the maples. Vireos are singing and the grass smells sweet. It’s full of light.”
Arthur hadn’t struck Fred as a man prone to poetic rambles.
Arthur looked at him with resignation, as if he was about to explain to a child some dry but essential fact of life. “Could there be a more beautiful morning in heaven? And if there is, how could it be so sweet without the dark cold mornings, mornings that make you long for spring?”
He unbuttoned his coat. “I’ve never been able to believe in an afterlife, even when I was a child. Before I studied law, I studied science, read Darwin. By the time I finished, heaven had,” he stamped his boots, and shrugged, “well, just melted away.”
Outside, a soldier was talking to a man who had arrived without an overcoat, trailing bootlaces balled with snow. The soldier brought him inside and took him downstairs.
Fred remembered a night when he and Lena walked home from seeing a moving picture. They had taken a shortcut across a churchyard to get home before dark but Lena had paused at a headstone carved with a wreath of roses. Helena F. Wife of Isaac Winston, died May 15, 1851, Age 24 years, 3 months. And under it, Helena A., Daughter, died May 24, 1851, Age 10 months.
“Look, the baby died less than two weeks after her mother. So little words and such a big story,” she had said in her clumsy English. “Her husband must be very sad. But now mother and baby are together.”
She had needed Fred to agree. Ever since seeing the Bosch painting as a boy, Fred had thought hell was more likely to exist than heaven. “I don’t believe in heaven,” Fred had said and she’d fallen coldly silent for the rest of the walk home. He wondered if that was the beginning of her change of heart.
THE MAN TRAILING HIS BOOTLACES emerged from the basement, the body of a young girl in his arms. He rushed past Fred and Arthur without a glance.
“He pushed the sheet away and buried his face among those burnt red curls,” said the soldier who had followed close behind the man. He handed a tag to Arthur, who looked up glassily at Fred. “463.” Arthur turned it over. “Amelia Bridges, 24 Bilby Street.”
Fred leaned his arms on the table, dropping his head. He had attended to Amelia. He would find the bag marked 463, take its dented silver heart locket to 24 Bilby Street on his way home.
Arthur threw the tag down on the table. “What kind of God would let this happen? The innocent, just … taken. For no reason. Again.” Arthur ran a hand over his eyes. “My father was the Registrar of Deaths when the Titanic went down.”
Fred looked up.
“The bodies arrived on cable ships that had left loaded with coffins and embalming fluid. And tons of ice.” Arthur smiled ironically. “My father told me that when the ice melted and they ran out of embalming fluid, they had to dump some people back into the sea. They brought the rest to the skating rink. Over two hundred of them. I was home from university. My father insisted I help. He wanted me to be a doctor and he thought it would be good for me to handle bodies. We worked day and night. He figured out a system: the tags, the numbers, the bags.” Arthur looked glumly towards the basement. “My father would have been a good doctor. He had a genius for the dead.”
Fred was silent.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur said. “I’ve offended you.”
“No,” Fred said. “My people were Lutherans. But I’m not a religious man.”
Arthur looked at him thoughtfully. “Who were your people?”
Fred stiffened. “We came from Lauscha, fifteen years ago.”
“Lauscha?” Arthur said.
“Germany,” Fred said. “My father was a glass crafter.”
“Ah …” Arthur said, “but you are Fred Baker.”
“Freidrich Bacher,” Fred said, and turned abrupt
ly to his work.
16
LEO TWISTED THE AUGER into the tunnel face, his hands aching with fatigue. The clay here was dense and the handles of the auger were slick with sweat. That morning Seward had given him the task of sampling the most easterly tunnel, extending under trenches. The geologist was concerned that the overlying soils shallowed here and that the company was digging perilously close to unstable sand.
A light bobbed towards him. Marty had come over from the next tunnel where he was laying electrical lines, a coil of wire slung over his shoulder. “Don’t know what it is that appeals to you about this geology stuff. Looks kind of boring to me,” he grinned.
“Well, I find what you’re doing shocking,” Leo said. He had to agree this part of the geological work was dull. And wet. His back was soaked with sweat.
Marty’s face turned serious. “I was wondering if you’ve given any thought to working up top?” he said.
“I do work up top with Seward.” Leo resumed turning the auger into the blue clay. “Hey, since you’re just standing there, why don’t you give me a hand?”
Marty took one of the auger handles and pushed it a half turn. “You’re still not back to yourself, old man.” He’d put on a Blighty accent.
Leo stumbled forward as the auger passed into soft clay.
“I’m fine. Tip top.” Leo stood straight, grabbed the auger handles again.
When Leo had returned to the unit after his illness he and Marty never talked about what happened. No one talked. About the bodies they used like stepping stones through flooded crater holes, the scattered arms and legs, bodies without heads, heads without faces. No one complained about the shakes that took them in the night, made it impossible to light a cigarette when they sat up in bed. Saying these things was a breach of the pact — let each man carry his own burden. You would more easily have asked a man to shoulder your thirty-pound kit.
“Leo, what happened to you at Passchendaele?” Marty said. “You’re a walking skeleton.”
Leo slumped down, leaning back against the tunnel. Marty dropped beside him. Both men stared at the candlelight.
“You remember, a godalmighty shell landed behind me, threw me in the air. I thought that was it.” Leo rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “I was lucky, I landed in something soft.” Bile rose into his throat. “I landed face down in some bugger’s guts.”
“Jesus.” Marty rubbed his knees. “The last time I saw you that day you were hauling that kid from PEI in.” His voice broke. “Then you were gone. I thought you were dead. We all did.”
Leo said, “I didn’t even know if he was one of us or them. Doesn’t matter.” Leo was clammy. He swallowed. “I got up and rinsed my mouth in the shell hole.”
“How did you get back down into the tunnels?” Marty said.
“I don’t remember.” Leo pressed hard on his temples with his fingertips.
“But you remember that’s where I found you, right?” Marty said.
“Yes,” Leo whispered. It had come back, like a black spreading stain in his mind. He had curled in a ball at the end of the tunnel where they’d been working that week. “How did you know I’d be there?”
“I didn’t. Went down there to get the rum we’d stashed. Remember?”
“Yeah, I do now.” Leo recalled, as if from another life, Marty sticking the bottle he’d won in poker in the back of a niche.
Marty had grabbed him by his tunic and hauled him to his feet over and over, “Come on, Leo, get up.”
Leo had sunk back, unable to stand, spitting though his mouth was dry.
“You’ll be court-martialled for desertion if you don’t bloody stand up,” Marty shouted, his face inches away from Leo’s.
Leo had staggered out of the tunnel and climbed the shaft with Marty behind him. “That a boy, keep going, a few more steps …”
Marty had told their commanding officers that he had found him unconscious in the open and dragged him back.
LEO HAD BEEN SICK with dysentery for the next three weeks. When he got over it he couldn’t eat for days without vomiting. He returned to the company and was put to work with Seward, collecting samples until he’d be strong enough for tunnelling again. Turned out to be so good at the sampling, Seward seconded him.
The candle guttered and went out.
“I owe you,” Leo said.
“And don’t forget it.” Marty slapped him on the back.
17
They were walking along the road behind the Methodist Church.
“Look,” Leo said. He was just a boy, still blonde, the gap between his two front teeth not yet closed. He opened his hand. It was full of small stones, their edges worn smooth.
“Remember?” he asked. He’d told her something about these, but she couldn’t recall what.
He grabbed the strap of her school satchel and pulled her up the embankment, then he crouched and began tearing moss away with his bare hands. The rock underneath was scarred — violently, carelessly.
“Ice,” he said. “It was here. A mile thick. He tossed the pebbles away. “Till,” he added, “what the glaciers left behind.”
He turned and started walking into the fields. She tried to follow him but the ground had swallowed him; it was gouged so deeply she couldn’t find him among its channels, though she could hear him calling to her. She tried to answer; couldn’t make a sound. Blue ice moved towards her, filling the trenches.
The cold woke Clare. She reached instinctively for her drops. The bottle was almost empty. It had been two weeks since she’d been to the clinic. She hadn’t gone back as she’d promised. In the last few days she’d tried to take less, to make it last. She’d go back when this bottle was gone. And she would convince Dr. Perkins to give her some more. She’d thrown her blankets off. Shivering, she pulled them tight against her.
SHE WOKE LATE the next morning. Geraldine, dressed in a blouse, a navy blue sweater coat, and a long brown wool skirt, was in the kitchen, stirring a pot so briskly it clattered on the stovetop.
“You are … dressed up,” Clare slurred.
“Hattie has asked me to help in the orphanage. It’s overflowing, children sleeping two or three to a bed.”
“Oh …”
“I’ve got nothing better to do, except wait on her nibs.” Geraldine rolled her eyes upwards, in the direction of Rose’s room. “Maybe I can help someone who really needs it.”
She plopped porridge in two bowls on the sideboard. “You’re just in time for breakfast.”
Clare sat at the table and traced its scars with her finger. “Just tea, please.”
Geraldine stopped stirring. “The kettle’s on the counter, if you’d like to fill it.”
Clare stared at the kettle. Her limbs were so heavy.
Geraldine let the spoon drop onto the counter. “Clare, I know you’ve been through a difficult time but, for crying out loud, you need to start taking care of yourself again.”
With great effort, Clare sat up straight. “I am. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”
“Clare! Crikey, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning and you’re still lollygagging around in your nightgown!”
Clare looked down at herself. She’d forgotten to change.
“I’m not feeling well,” she said.
“What did the doctor say when you went to the clinic with Celia?”
“That it would take some time for me to adjust.”
“Adjust?”
“To my condition.”
The freckles dusting Geraldine’s nose darkened. She slammed the pot back on the stove. “As far as I can see your condition is laziness. You do nothing but lounge around in your room all day.”
“What do you know?” Clare cried. “You know nothing! Nothing about what I’ve gone through, am going through.”
Sunlight shot the cut glass water pitcher, sending specks of light like fireflies over the table.
Geraldine clunked her bowl of porridge on the table. “You’re not the
only one who’s lost something, you know. Hattie says some of the children at the orphanage lost both eyes and both parents.”
The sun passed behind a cloud and the fireflies went out. Clare stood up, felt herself floating away from Geraldine’s words.
Geraldine yanked her back down. “Clare! You can’t just give up like this. You’ll get used to your eye. The war will end and Leo will come back. You’ll be happy again.”
“How can you know that?” Clare said.
“Do we have any choice? What if no one believed that things would get better?”
Clare couldn’t tell Geraldine what she believed: that only the drops brought happiness now. She shoved her chair back and left the kitchen.
When she got back to her room she stood in front of her mirror and pulled her dark hair up. She looked at her reflection, with the uncomfortable feeling of looking too deeply into the face of a stranger. Her eye stared back at her: its golden iris ringing the dilated pupil, the white so pure it looked blue. She was startled by its beauty, by the line of her cheek and the curve in her upper lip. But there, hovering under the gaze, was weakness, the lethargy of laudanum. And her ugly missing eye.
She got dressed and went back downstairs where, while Geraldine watched furtively from the kitchen, she put on her coat, hat, scarf, and winter boots.
CLARE, DAZED BY THE BRIGHT SUN, stood for a few moments, getting her bearings. Then she headed in the direction of Barrington Street. The weather had turned warm. Icicles shed fat drops, which gathered in cups in the snow. Small patches of threadbare earth exhaled the faint breath of soil.
The mild weather had drawn children from the dreary shelters thrown up after the explosion. They laughed, stamping through the slush in their ill-fitting boots. The air was sharp with new growth and wet cinders. All the debris laid bare: charred rafters, scorched paper, scraps of carpet, broken pottery.
Dazzle Patterns Page 10