Cornelia fell into a kind of exhausted sobbing, then said, "You know, Wyatt, all the time she was growing up—and she half grew up in my bakery, eh?—I'd look at Tilda and think, She'll never leave Nova Scotia, not our Tilda. And now she's permanently in Denmark, of all places. Goes to show what I know, doesn't it? Shows what I know, which is nothing."
I tried to contact you, Marlais. I made every possible effort to get in touch. I hadn't before, but I did then. Cornelia gave me your address—did my wires arrive? Did my letter arrive? They couldn't have sufficed, but did they ever arrive?
In time I learned that Tilda had died on her way back from posting the first payment for the Learn Your Library program in Copenhagen, a six-week course, taught in both Danish and English, for people interested in becoming librarians. Cornelia also told me that, a few weeks before she died, Tilda had been in hospital for an infection of the lining of her heart.
Cornelia took a bus home that same evening.
The next Sunday I attended Harbor Methodist, and while all the other parishioners listened to the sermon, sang hymns and said prayers, I kept my own counsel in the backmost pew and held a private funeral service for your mother. For a moment, I had the startling worry that her obituary might appear only in Danish, in a Copenhagen newspaper. But as it turned out, Cornelia had written one and given it to Reverend Witt, and it appeared in his church's bulletin. It was nicely composed.
At church, I desperately wanted to avoid all the sanctimonious crap—sorry—usually heard at funerals. I began what I thought was a silent prayer, "May Tilda Hillyer rest in peace. She was the best person imaginable. She was beautiful," until I realized that I was mumbling out loud. Several worshipers on either side of me moved farther away.
You were still in the world, Marlais, very much in the world. But otherwise, in every other possible way, life felt disreputable and collapsed. After church, I spent seven straight hours out in the boat, gaffing in Halifax Harbor. The rain had stopped. The wind was manageable. As usual there was a cormorant on each buoy. I took hardly anything into the boat. A lady's hat, the feathers frayed and matted against the silk band. I wondered, had the wind swept it from a Hungarian leaving the Cascania? A toy water pistol. A window, its double panes cracked into spider webs, but the frame intact. Around dusk, near Purdy's Wharf, I saw a flock of gray geese descending. They are here year-round. I followed them in.
The last and final time I spoke with Reese Mac Isaac was on the following Sunday morning. No church for me that day. There was a knock on my hotel room door, and when I opened it, there stood Reese, dressed smartly, as always.
"I know, I'm showing my age," she said.
"How can I help you, Reese?"
"Sunday mornings I visit Katherine and Joe's graves. I'm going there now. I thought you might accompany me. Just this once."
My begging off might only have led to her insistence—though maybe I wanted Reese to insist—and what purpose would be served by not going? So we walked to the cemetery together. We stood at my mother's grave a few minutes, my father's the same, and then walked back to the Homestead.
"Except for restaurants and the cinema," Reese said, "any place I visit, I don't stay very long. Come to think of it, maybe I'll be cremated, you know? I don't want to overstay my keep, not even in a cemetery."
Once I was done laughing, I said, "Reese, you sure don't hesitate to think out loud, do you? I'd imagine both my mother and father liked that quality."
Midweek, when I'd got back to my hotel, a hand-delivered letter was waiting for me. No return address. I sat on a couch in the lobby and read it.
Wyatt,
It was kind of you to go to the cemetery with me. My house is now put up for sale. I leave Halifax today by train. I've arranged a room with a distant cousin—said cousin has secured employment for me in the oldest hotel in Vancouver—need I mention what that employment is? So, there should be no concern that I've gone off to Hollywood! I wish for you a good life.
Reese Mac Isaac
A Possible Anodyne
MARLAIS, WELL INTO my twenty-sixth night in a row of writing to you, I realize I've sometimes raced over the years like an ice skater fleeing the devil on a frozen river. That's a phrase from one of Reverend Lundrigan's sermons. (I've attended five in the past six months at Harbor Methodist here in Halifax.) Still, what's been true of all the intervening time between 1948, when I last set eyes on you, and this very moment, 3:20 A.M., April 21, 1967, is that I've savored each and every morsel of knowledge about you I've been given. For example, during the years you attended that small, "progressive" (your mother's word) English-speaking school in Copenhagen, Cornelia Tell provided me with your report cards.
I was grateful to get them. The report cards had substance. Your mother had copied them out and mailed them to Cornelia at the bakery in the first place. I'd rung her up when the first one arrived. "Tilda asked me to forward it to you," Cornelia said. "But I'd probably have sent it without her permission." I read each one dozens of times. I still keep them in a separate envelope. News of how you performed in school was important to me. Yet as anyone but a complete fool knows, no child worth her salt ever reveals her entire character in school, no matter how deep her allegiance to teachers or textbooks, right? So all along I naturally wondered about my daughter's whole self. What did you get worried about? What was your sense of humor like? Everything, everything, everything. I had more selfish curiosities, too. Did your mother ever begin a sentence with "Your father"? You must've asked about me, and when you did, what did Tilda say? Was there sympathy, blame, or what? Did you ever see a photograph of me? I know that Cornelia sent one to you when you were ten. Did you ever receive the official City of Halifax portrait of my gaffing crew, maybe four years ago? I'd drawn a circle around my face.
When I read a report card, if a teacher's comment was in the least critical, I railed against it, though for all I knew it might've been accurate. For instance, I've just taken out a report card from when you were eleven years old: Marlais Hillyer is intelligent—sometimes there's too much emphasis on words. Very good recall of facts—sometimes a rather snippy tone. Frequently laughs to herself—this puts fellow students off. Bold opinions—"If I started to ride horses, I'd probably stop admiring horses so much." At times offers theatrical, morbid excuses for being lazy—"Mother says if you assign me to sharpen pencils again, she'll swallow poison." Arithmetic—below standard. Excellent reader but possessive about it—"I read a lot of books but you'll never know their titles." Enthralled with her own contradictions—does poorly in Danish lessons, yet makes certain her teachers hear her speaking it quite fluently on the playground.
After your mother died, you began to write letters to Cornelia, though I imagine you were too young to remember—do you?—what she looked like. Or that you licked frosting from an outsized wooden spoon in her bakery, or that she took you for walks, or that you and Cornelia spent hours drawing with crayons. Of course, writing her letters was picking up where your mother left off, though I'd bet my last nickel you had your own flair for it, Marlais.
Anyway, you kept Cornelia up to date, and in turn she kept me up to date about my daughter. "Secondhand news, sure," Cornelia would say, "but whose fault is that? Count your blessings it's news of Marlais at all." This past September I learned that you'd taken a summer course and graduated from a two-year degree program in library science at Trinity College, Dublin. Graduated at the top of your class! Reading of that, I was allowed only a distant pride, but it was pride nonetheless. My goodness—Nova Scotia, Denmark, Ireland—you've already seen the world.
Three-thirty, four, four-thirty, five in the morning, still April 11. I've just made coffee. Dawn light touching the window, the glass beaded up from last night's rain. Insomnia—the mind jumps around a bit. Just last week I was walking home with Tom Blackwell and Hermione Rexroth. We'd accomplished ten hours of gaffing in rough waters, eight of those mainly along Queen's Wharf, but also as far out as the mouth of Halifax Harbor. Add t
o that two hours of overtime across to Dartmouth. After work, it was still raining at a windy slant and so we kept our rain gear on. It was dark out, streetlamps were like frozen pale explosions in the mist, and we were heading to Rigolo's Pub. At one point, Hermione wanted to light a cigarette, and we found ourselves standing in front of a place called Museum Gallery. The window announced PHOTOGRAPHS OF WAR BRIDES.
"Hey, fellas," Hermione said, "let's stop in and take a look."
After a few deep draws, Hermione tossed her cigarette in the gutter and Tom and I followed her into the gallery. It was one big room painted white. There were five floor lamps and three woven rugs, the attempt being to make it like somebody's living room. There was a sizable crowd, people milling about, the women quite gussied up, some of the men wearing tuxedos. Fashion-wise, Hermione, Tom and I certainly stood out. There was a table with a white tablecloth, wine glasses, bottles of wine. "This is a fancy event," Hermione said.
"At least we didn't just gaff in sacks of fertilizer, like last week," Tom said, "or this gallery might've quickly lost some clientele, eh?"
"I didn't know you spoke French," Hermione said to Tom. "Isn't 'clientele' French?"
Tom looked at a wall of photographs. "Here I'm forty-five and still hoping to find a wife," he said. "But the women in these photographs are all taken."
"I bet that's where the word 'brides' comes in," Hermione said, grinning and handing Tom a glass of wine.
There were fifty-five photographs on exhibit. First thing I looked at was a chronological sequence consisting of four photographs, which followed a particular British woman—most of these war brides were from Britain, a smaller number were from France, a few were from Italy and Holland—from the moment she stepped from the gangway of the Pasteur, a luxury liner that had been converted into a warship, to her first meeting with her future husband, to their wedding, to being carried over the threshold. The caption to this sequence was "British sweetheart to Canadian wife in less than an hour."
Everyone on our crew had seen thousands of women at the rails of ocean liners —Aquitania, Mauretania, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, Ile de France, Lady Rodney, Pasteur—we'd looked up at them just hours before they became legal brides on paper. We'd seen military personnel escort each woman down the gangway and onto the dock—some had children with them—their baggage carried by soldier escorts, too. It was dignified.
I wandered about and came to a photograph of a woman looking lost and bewildered, with a forced smile if ever I saw one. The caption read, "Pale homesickness will soon give way to rosy blush of love as war bride meets love of her life." When Hermione joined me in front of this photograph, she read the caption and remarked, "Now, you ask me, that woman left the love of her life in—where's she from?"
"Edinburgh, it says."
"Look at her face—I'm convinced of it. She left the love of her life in Edinburgh."
"How can you tell?" I asked.
"I can tell," she said. "I look at that photograph and you know what I wish her? I wish her some kindness and possibly children. Here she's traveled to Canada—seasick at least half the nautical miles, probably—and what's she in for? Imagine stepping off that ship and spying some bloke at the dock only bears a slight resemblance to the photograph he'd sent, and thinking—probably it's like a screaming prayer in the head: Please, God, don't let that be him!"
"You figured all that out from just this one photograph, right?"
"Okay, I suppose I had a predisposition, you might say."
I liked Hermione a lot. She was good, honest company. "I'm going to get a carrot stick with cream cheese, Wyatt. I'll meet you by that big picture over there," she said.
It was the largest photograph on exhibit. In it, a doctor posed facing the camera. He stood next to a woman, about age thirty, who looked humiliated and proud in equal measure. She also stared into the camera. The doctor was holding a stethoscope to her chest, though she had on an overcoat. The caption read: "With great care, Dr. Roald Ivy lovingly treats a French immigrant as if she is already a Canadian citizen."
Hermione stepped up and said, loudly, "My God, that's Mona!"
"You know this woman?" I asked. I inspected the woman's face closely.
"Tom!" Hermione shouted across the room, drawing lots of attention. "Tom, come over here!" As Tom walked over, Hermione touched her friend's face on the photograph. "Tom, this is Mona d'Ussel! This is my friend Mona d'Ussel! She's my neighbor," Hermione said, "catty-corner from me on Bliss Street."
"So you say," Tom said.
I thought Hermione was going to give Tom every nasty word just for doubting her. But she said, "All right, let's go to her house. Right now."
"What about Rigolo's?" I said.
"Rigolo's is open till one A.M.," Hermione said, buttoning up her rain slicker.
"Looking at this photograph," Tom said, "one thing I know for certain. Dr. Ivy here's a quack. He can't hear her heartbeat through that thick an overcoat."
"I'll take that under consideration," Hermione said. "Next time I'm in the market for a personal physician, it won't be Dr. Ivy."
The rain hadn't let up in the least, but Hermione was determined to show us what was what. She was fuming at Tom, and made me walk between them the whole way to 45 Bliss Street, which was about ten blocks. "This is Mona's house," Hermione said. "As you can see, my own house is over there across the street."
We stepped up onto the front porch and looked in through the living room window. There were at least twenty women in the living room and dining room. It looked festive. There was a gramophone turned up loud, a female voice singing in French. Some of the women were coupled up and dancing.
Hermione knocked on the door. The woman who answered was clearly Mona d'Ussel, except add all the years to her photograph. But there was no doubt it was her. "Okay, I apologize," Tom said.
"Oh, Hermione—hello!" Mona d'Ussel said cheerfully. She seemed a little tipsy. She had on a beautiful dress. Pearl earrings. "I'm so sorry, Hermione, but I cannot invite you and your friends in. I've even sent my husband off to the movies." Her accent was distinct, and she was more than cordial. "You see, it was my turn to have the meeting of our little club, and everyone's about to sit down for a late dinner. Please forgive me."
We heard someone calling Mona back to her party.
"Mona," Hermione said, "I work with these two fellows. Wyatt and Tom, meet Mona d'Ussel."
"Tom, Wyatt, I can't invite you in," Mona said.
"We just saw your photograph in the art gallery, Mona," Hermione said. "The boys here wanted to meet a famous person."
"That doctor—in the photograph?" Mona spit on the porch. "Not a nice man. And now I'm permanently stuck with him. When I learned the photograph existed, I tried to buy it so I could destroy it, you see. But it wasn't for sale. Now that day in my life—my first day in Canada, the day I met my husband—it's no longer mine alone. I might as well be stuffed in a museum."
"I'm sorry I mentioned it, then," Hermione said. "What kind of club is meeting here, may I ask?"
Mona's face brightened a little, though she still seemed upset. "Oh, all of us are French war brides," she said. "The War Brides of Halifax Club. There was a newspaper article about us."
"I missed it," Hermione said.
"Had you seen it," Mona said, "you would have learned that we've met every month for years now. Some of us are no longer with our war husbands—well, that's what they're called in Britain, anyway. Some of us are still with our husbands but wish we weren't. And some of us are still married and satisfied. We've all become great friends."
"Look, I apologize, Mona," Hermione said. "I feel stupid for just dropping in out of the blue like this."
"Out of the blue in the terrible rain, yes?" Mona d'Ussel said.
"Well, goodbye, then," Hermione said.
"You're not French and not a war bride, Hermione," Mona d'Ussel said, still apologizing. "Otherwise—of course!"
She closed the door, and as we stepped off her
porch, Hermione said, "Well, I'd much rather be in there than in Rigolo's Pub with you clowns."
(At that moment I wondered, had my mother and Reese Mac Isaac ever danced to French popular songs? One summer night, through the open kitchen window, I'd heard Reese play some.)
"Rigolo's, then?" Tom said.
We started back down Bliss Street, Hermione in the middle. Rain hats on, collars up. "French war bride or not," she said, "I bet I could've fit right in. I'm a good dancer."
We got to Rigolo's Pub between eight-thirty and nine. We'd just found a table when in walks our foreman, Charles Blakemore. Charles is a big man, about six feet five inches tall, with a handlebar mustache. He's been my foreman for twelve years now. He walked right up to our table and said, "I thought I might find you three here."
"Well, here we are, then," Hermione said. "Sit down and share a mug with us, Charles."
"No time," Charles said.
"What, are you late for a different pub?" Tom said.
"You look on edge," Hermione said.
"Any of you want triple overtime?" Charles asked.
"When?" I said.
"Tonight—now."
"In theory, yes, I'd want overtime," Hermione said. "But it's pretty nasty out. What's the deal, anyway? This time of night."
"What the Navy's telling us," Charles said, "is that a German U-boat's floated to the surface. Off Hartlen Point. It's lolling on its side out there."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Hermione said.
"It's all rusted up inside a length of antisubmarine chain," Charles said. "Remember the sort that was laid in the harbor?"
"For the most part it did the job," Tom said.
"Well, it did the job on this U-boat," Charles said. "Already there's any number of gawkers out there in private boats, and the newspapers got wind of it. There's two tugs on their way. They're going to try and tow it in."
"It's got to be one big coffin, though, right?" Tom said.
"Got to be," Charles said.
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