He made a few friends among the dockworkers, but they were never close. Not like his boyhood friends or even the other men with whom he had shared the trenches. These men hadn’t been to war, and Danny knew they watched him warily, as if they considered him dangerous. He also suspected they talked about him and his peg leg whenever he left conversations, and his paranoia made him even angrier. He thought about Jimmy and Freddie a lot during those times, pictured them dead in the mud. And sometimes he thought they’d gotten the better end of the stick.
One night she walked in the door on a early December gust, oblivious to the stink of turpentine she brought with her and the short smear of sky blue paint on her nose. Her eyes sparkled with tears from the wind, and her cheeks glowed pink. Part of Danny wanted to kiss that little blue nose, warm those cheeks with his own. The other part wanted to scratch the paint off without mercy, rant at her for staying out late, for smiling as she arrived home from another man’s house. A rich man’s house. A whole man’s house.
Danny noticed something else as well: her eyes didn’t twinkle when she saw him anymore. Didn’t light up in even the tiniest way. They seemed almost dead when they touched on him at all. Sometimes she turned from him, and if he reached for her she scuttled away like a crab, not wanting him to touch her.
He knew why. He knew she was afraid of the changes in him. He knew he had disappointed her. He knew what he was doing was wrong, that he was dumping his frustrations on her. But he carried on, feeling that if he kept it all inside instead of letting it out on her, he’d explode.
“You know, Audrey,” he said that night, just after she’d slipped away from his hand. “Why don’t you just go find yourself a real man? A man who could tend to your needs.”
At first she looked shocked that he’d even spoken to her, then her cheeks blazed. “Stop it, Danny,” she hissed. “All I need is a man who cares enough to clean himself up and take care of business. You feel so sorry for yourself, it’s surprising you haven’t killed yourself so people could feel worse for you.”
He snorted, then taken a long, deep drag of his cigarette.
“Danny,” she said, stepping closer and softening her voice into a plea. “You have to stop this. Please? You have to believe in yourself again. If you and I are together, we can do anything. But I can’t do this alone.”
“Sure, sure you can,” he said. “You just keep bringing home those big dollars you’re getting from Antoine. I bet he pays you even better when the painting’s all done and you can give it to him”—he leered cruelly on purpose—“real close and personal.”
Her fury was immediate. At least he saw her eyes spark again, and he instantly hated himself.
“You are a bastard, Danny.”
He’d never heard her swear. Never. What the hell was he doing?
“You sit around crying over your lost leg, drinking what money we make while I’m out trying to make our lives work. Now you accuse me of something you know I would never do.” She came in close, almost nose to nose, and lowered her voice. “So I’m a whore now? A whore? I bring men into my bed so I can buy you beer, do I?” Her nostrils flared with revulsion. “How could you even think that way, Danny? You disgust me.”
She turned away, but before she could escape, he grabbed her arm, yanking her back toward him. “I disgust you, huh?”
He heard it in his own voice: a rumbling that came from the trenches, the growl of a hundred Lewis guns cutting men into pieces. He knew his voice was dangerous. He knew it was the last thing he should have done. But it was in him now: the fury, the revulsion, the desire to hurt something just to prove he was alive.
He didn’t remember his hand coming up then swinging down, catching her cheek and snapping her head back on her slender neck, but he heard her cry out as she fell to the floor, covering her cheek and staring at him with utter disbelief. At first he thought she might start weeping, then he saw the hard anger that tightened every muscle in her face. That was worse. Much worse. Keeping her eyes on him, she pushed backwards so she could slide out of his reach, then slowly rose to her feet. She straightened and dropped her hand so he saw the big red imprint of his palm on her cheek. He couldn’t speak.
She did. “Goodbye, Danny.” Her eyes were like wells. There was no bottom to the pain in them. “I’ll come for my things when you are at work.”
And she’d gone off into the cool, clear night without another word.
TWENTY-SIX
Danny sat for an hour in total silence, his mind blank. Then there’d come a pounding on the door and Johnny was there, grinning like an idiot.
“Thought you were coming to the pub,” Johnny said, then his expression changed. “What’s with you? Somebody die?”
Danny blinked slowly, coming out of his daze. “I hit Audrey,” he heard himself say, his voice almost a whisper. “I hit her. I hit a lady. My lady.”
Johnny stared at him. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I’m a bastard is why. I’m a selfish bastard who just blew the last good thing I had going in my pathetic life. She’s gone, and she’s right.”
“Jesus, Danny,” Johnny said. He rubbed his forehead hard. “Jesus. You gonna go get her?”
He concentrated on his breathing, on his hands. “No. She’s better off. She’ll go to Antoine’s place and they’ll treat her like a queen.”
Johnny glanced sharply at his big brother, and Danny fought the fire in his cheeks. He’d kept that juicy little tidbit to himself, not wanting Johnny to know. Johnny and Audrey rarely saw each other anymore, since they both kept so busy during the day. When they did, her life wasn’t something Danny let any of them discuss. He knew it was selfish, had known it all along. But there it was. Now, when he saw the expression in Johnny’s eyes, he wondered if he should have said something long before. Could Johnny have done something? Helped put out the blaze before it got out of hand?
“Pierre Antoine?”
“Yeah.”
“The same Pierre who looked at Audrey like she was the cherry on top of a sundae?”
“That’s the one.”
“Jesus,” Johnny said again. “You never said—”
Was Johnny’s tone sarcastic? Danny couldn’t tell. “His wife and kids are there too, of course,” he assured Johnny.
“Of course.”
Both brothers stared at the floor, and Danny wondered what was going through Johnny’s mind. He knew his own thoughts. He felt sick. He felt as if all the lights had gone out, and he had no idea which way to turn. Audrey was gone. Audrey was his world.
“Christ, Johnny,” he said. “I could use a drink.”
Danny should have stopped drinking as soon as he got started, but he couldn’t. The more he drank, the fuzzier Audrey’s face became, and he thought if he just kept on going, he’d forget about her altogether. But he didn’t. Her face disappeared, sure, but the pain, the iron weight of what he’d done, wrapped around his chest like a chain and just kept squeezing.
They started at one pub and wandered through a couple more, picking up and losing fellow drinkers along the way. At the end of the night, which was the early hours of the next morning, they stumbled back to the pier. They never made it back to the house.
When he awoke in the morning, the sky was blue, the air cold and crisp. He instantly thought of Audrey and figured this monster hangover was the least of what he deserved. Where had she gone? Was she keeping warm somewhere?
The sun blazed through one of the doors and sliced into his brain. Must be closing in on nine o’clock, he thought, squinting at some of the men as they trudged in to work. He and Johnny had slept inside the freezing warehouse by the pier since Danny’s drunken mind had figured he might as well. He’d just go straight to work anyway.
He pulled his long wool coat tight around him and tucked his frozen fingers under his armpits. The black fisherman’s cap his mother had kni
t him was pulled low over his ears, itchy but warm. Johnny lay beside him on the cold floor of the docks, snoring fit to shake the wooden rafters if they weren’t so high up. Damn liquor. Root of all evil, their father had always said. Then again, the old man had sipped on sherry and enjoyed an ale once in a while with his friends too.
Danny suspected evil had rooted itself a little deeper than that. Set in roots back in France’s muddy trenches, and he’d been feeding them ever since.
Johnny muttered in his sleep, and Danny sighed, thinking he should probably wake his little brother up. He started to lean toward him, then felt his stomach curdle. He turned away and vomited whatever he’d eaten or drunk the night before, his head threatening to explode with every heave. As always, he felt temporarily better having rid his system of the poison.
It was damn cold. The warehouse’s concrete walls sucked in the chill and never let go. In the summer that would be a welcome thing, but December was frigid enough without that. Danny’s back end felt frozen to the floor, and he shifted and struggled upright, moaning as he did so. He was going to have to give up drinking.
“Baker!” he heard.
He staggered out on the dock toward the voice, his hands bracing the sides of his pounding head. “What is it?”
“Come see this. Why, that ship’s on fire out there. See? Looks like another ship rammed right into her.”
Danny walked to the end of the dock, where he stood with a group of men, staring across the water. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in sight, and the sun glinted off the ocean like sparks. A burning ship was floating toward Halifax, flames licking out of a huge, blackened hull, a thick column of black smoke funnelling into the sky.
Groups of people assembled along the harbour, watching the entertainment. A steel pedestrian bridge stretched over the railway yard, lined by an appreciative audience and offering an unobstructed view. Not only was the fire large, but an occasional blast shot out from the boat like fireworks, and the people cheered. A fire truck was parked by Pier 6, and the firemen had climbed onto the top of their truck so they could see the spectacle. There wasn’t much they could do to put out the fire until the ship got closer, after all.
Another of the dockworkers came to the end of the pier to watch and stopped at Danny’s side. He lit a cigarette, breathed in deeply, then blew out a stream of white smoke while he stared at the burning ship. “Kind of a pretty sight, ain’t it? I wouldn’t want to be one of the poor suckers on board. Think of all that cleanup.”
“That a warship?” someone asked.
“Could be,” said another. “Mont Blanc, it says there. French.”
Danny’d heard something about the Mont Blanc from a sailor the day before, heard it in passing while he’d been checking another boat’s inventory. What was it the man had said?
“She’s an ugly boat, ain’t she?” someone said.
Danny muddled through his pounding headache, trying to remember. The SS Mont Blanc. A French freighter, he remembered now. A three thousand tonne ship . . . whose hull was completely filled with high explosives.
“God Almighty,” Danny breathed, forgetting all about his hangover. He shoved at one of the men beside him. “Get outta here, boys. That thing’s gonna blow sky-high.”
“Eh? It’s a quarter mile away. No worry about that.”
Danny gripped the man’s shoulder, digging his fingers in hard. “See that? That’s aviation fuel burning on deck,” Danny told him, pointing at the smoke-engulfed ship.
“It’ll burn itself out,” the man said, removing Danny’s hand. “Come on. Get a hold of yourself. You don’t get to see something like this every day.”
Danny shook his head and started to run in his uneven, wooden gait. “That’s an ammo ship, boys. You run or you’re all dead.”
Johnny was still sleeping in the corner of the warehouse. Danny grabbed him by the lapels of his black coat and dragged him, kicking and objecting loudly until they were both shoved behind the building’s thick new concrete water cistern.
“What the hell you up to, Danny?” Johnny moaned, clutching at his head.
“We have to hang tight here. There’s a ship full of explosives out there, and it’s on fire and coming this way.”
“Jesus,” Johnny said groggily, sitting up slowly. “Can we go see?”
“How stupid are you? Lie flat and don’t bother arguing. Lie face down,” Danny yelled, throwing himself flat beside his brother. “God damn, Johnny. I saw the thing and it—”
“Jesus, Danny. Give me a minute.” Johnny sat up and hung his head between his knees. “Pretty sure I’m gonna get sick.”
Danny shook his head, sensing an eerie pressure building around him. “Get back here, behind the wall. You can get sick over here, Johnny.”
Johnny held up one finger, asking for a minute, then rolled to his hands and knees and scrambled a few feet away. When he figured he was far enough away, he threw up, just like he’d said. He took a moment to recover, then got up and slapped his hands together.
“There,” he said. “That’s better. Now I can go.”
In an instant they were plunged into a pillow of silence, as if all sound had been sucked from the air. Through Danny’s tightly closed eyes a light flashed once, then hell slashed through the silence, unleashing its unholy vengeance on the sparkling innocence of the Halifax harbour.
When Danny awoke, dazed and confused, the air was black with oily smoke. Desperate screams came from somewhere—everywhere, it seemed, but they sounded muted, like he’d stuffed cotton in his ears. He was soaked through with freezing seawater, and the floor was puddled with rocks and mangled bits of fish. His ears worked well enough that he heard the metal beams screeching above him, straining to support a roof that no longer existed, and loose bricks fell from the walls, chinking onto new stacks of rubbish. Rubbish that used to be walls. And furniture. And, Danny realized with sudden nausea, people.
Someone screamed, a long, ear-splitting howl of agony that dragged Danny right back to the blood-thick mud of the trenches. He fought to hold the memories back. Keep them separate. He could only fight one battle at a time.
With a groan, Danny turned toward the place where Johnny had been standing a moment before. All he saw was a pile of rubble.
“God, no,” Danny whispered. He stumbled toward the mess and started to dig, tossing aside splintered wood and bits of brick and metal. He dug deeper, shouting Johnny’s name, getting no response. Broken glass sliced through his hands, but Danny kept digging, blinded by tears.
There was no sign of a body under the pile. He stood and looked around, cupping his hands around his mouth for volume. “Johnny!” he yelled. His voice fell flat where it once would have echoed. “Where are you? Johnny!”
Then he spotted what he thought looked like a body, thirty feet away and mostly covered by bricks. He stumbled toward it, trying not to weep, then dropped beside it with a cry. It was definitely a man’s body.
“No, no, no,” he whimpered, heaving a concrete block aside and blinking desperately through tears.
There was nothing he could do. The rock had finished Johnny quickly, taking out the strong young bones of his skull, flattening his face so there was almost nothing left with which to recognize him.
Another explosion went off nearby, and Danny ducked, reflexively curling over his brother’s lifeless body as he had in France for Jimmy so long before. When the air stilled again, he pulled back and stared at Johnny, weeping uncontrollably. He ran his bloodied fingers through the short brown waves of his brother’s hair, though they—like everything else—were black with soot and grease. Even Johnny’s blood looked black. Danny gagged on his tears, then leaned to the side and threw up again. When he was done, he lay on top of Johnny, sobbing until he could hardly breathe.
“What’ll I do without you, Johnny?” he whispered. “What’ll I do?”
He straightened and gazed down at the remains of his brother. How many men had Danny seen die? How many times had he thanked God for not letting his brothers end up in that foul war? Now here lay Johnny, as dead as any of the boys at the front. What was the point of any of this? Was it God’s idea of a joke?
“Go see Big Jimmy and Fred,” he told his brother, wiping his arm across his face to blot his tears. “They’ll be waiting for you.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
December 6, 1917
Danny had never felt so alone in his entire life. He tugged the cap lower over his ears and staggered off the pile of rubbish. His peg caught on the shattered bricks and he tripped, but he made it to the exit just in time for another explosion to go off. It sounded like it came from outside the pier.
He would come back for Johnny’s body. For now he had to get out. Nothing could harm his little brother anymore.
Danny looked out over the sea and froze with disbelief. Spread as far as he could see was the thickest, whitest cloud he’d ever seen, unmoving, untouched, as if it leered over the destruction. It was absolutely beautiful.
Then he turned and faced a world where nothing made sense. He couldn’t see even one building still standing on the north end of Halifax. He thought he could pick out where their house had stood, but there was nothing there now.
Audrey. God, Audrey. Where are you?
Flakes of dry, black rain were settling over everything. Ashes, he realized. Black, oily ashes. Glass littered the wet ground like a glossy, crackling carpet. Here and there someone shuffled through the burnt-out street, crying, or they stood stock-still with nothing but a blank stare plastered to their blackened faces. Bodies, or parts of them, lay scattered across the desolation; bits of people, bits of horses, dogs, and fish. Alive, then dead.
Maybe she’s all right. Maybe her leaving him the night before was the best thing she could have done, for so many reasons. Maybe she’d even come back and look for him eventually . . .
Tides of Honour Page 20