“C’mere, baby,” said the leering man on the chaise longue. “Sit on daddy’s knee…” He raised the glass and poured some of the liquid onto his shirt.
“Money first, boys,” said the madame. Her dress was torn at one side and her lipstick was smirched. The heat from the stove was like a boiler room.
They sat at a vacant table by the wall. “Have you got any decent whisky?” asked the sergeant. He fumbled for some money but didn’t wish to produce too much—he pulled out a five-dollar bill.
“I got good rye whisky,” she said. “A dollar a shot and no mixers but water. D’you want girls?”
“Babeee…” pleaded the man on the chaise longue. “Daddy’s gettin’ lonesome…”
“No girls and two double whiskies,” said the sergeant. “And clean glasses, eh?”
She took the five dollars and jammed it between her breasts. She pinched the man on the chaise longue on the nose, then stood in the middle of the floor with her feet apart and lit a cigarette.
“Man, oh man!” exclaimed the chaise longue. “Get between those an’ you’re in paradise!” He started to slip to the floor. The two prostitutes rolled their eyes in disgust.
“Ernie, mate,” said the Liverpool sailor. “Wake up, luv…”
Ernie was slapped on the face and opened his eyes. “Where the fuck are we?” he asked. Then his head bobbed forward onto his chest again.
“You boys fairies?” asked the madame. She placed two half tumblers of liquor on the table. “Take a girl.”
“Keep the change,” said the sergeant, with a grin.
“Drink up,” she said. “You either drink or leave, I got parking rates.” She actually cocked a hip and put her hand on it in the best Yukon style. If nothing else, thought MacQueen, I’ve seen that. The lady might look ravaged, but she would have to be a tough nut to run this place.
“Drink up,” said the sergeant. “I’ve got to get my bag and make that train.”
“Tuck me in my little wooden bed…” sang the soldiers.
“They’re all a bunch of faggots,” said one whore to the other.
“Ernie, luv,” pleaded the sailor, “we’ve got to get back on board or we’ll be beached in this hellhole. Ernie, mate, wake up.”
Ernie’s head lolled on his chest.
“Listen to me, you runt,” said the madame. She was shaking the chaise longue’s occupant by the lapels. “You’re drunk and you’ll bring the coppers down on my neck.”
“Do it again, baby,” he spluttered, dropping the glass with a crash onto the floor. “Just wiggle me nice and easy…”
“C’mon, MacQueen,” said the sergeant. They bolted the whisky, and both grimaced.
The madame squashed a hat onto the head of her would-be suitor and frog-marched him to the door. “You couldn’t get your pecker up if you were sober!” she said. The sergeant opened the door and she shoved the man into the hallway. “Go back to your hotel!” she ordered.
The sergeant held the door and MacQueen walked through it and descended the stairs. The sergeant closed the door and started to follow.
“That fuckin’ bitch stole my money!” exclaimed the man in the hall. He dropped his overcoat, adjusted the squashed fedora, and kicked the door with the bottom of one foot. The door caved in at its hinges and bounced off the stove. The madame had a coal scuttle in her hands and was pouring coal into the stove. She looked up in alarm. The sergeant looked over his shoulder and saw the man as a dark shadow above him. He saw the madame lift the scuttle over her head and throw it out the door. It hit the man on the head; he fell over and down the stairwell. He hit the sergeant between the shoulder blades and, together with the scuttle and a shower of black coal, they sprawled down the stairs.
MacQueen heard the commotion and stepped aside, nursing his injured arm. He tripped over the inert soldier in the hall and fell backwards. The banister cracked him over the head as it fell outwards.
“You crummy cock-sucking son of a bitch!” came from the top of the stairs.
The sergeant had twisted himself to fall on his back. The man landed on top of him with alcohol-induced inertness. The scuttle bounced off the front door. MacQueen lay on his back and opened his eyes. The little girl was standing directly above him, still clutching her doll. “Gimme a nickel,” said the little girl.
The sergeant rolled the man onto the floor and rose to his feet. “You okay, Pat?” he asked.
Patrick MacQueen started to laugh.
Someone opened the front door and pushed the scuttle aside. “Looks like quite a party!” said a voice from the snowy night.
The sergeant also started to laugh. He gently raised his nearly hysterical friend to his feet. He brushed coal dust from his cast and his blackened face.
“If this isn’t the utter god-damned end!” he said. “Come on, Pat, let’s get out of here before the cops arrive.”
“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” said MacQueen with incongruity as they stepped over the debris. They warned three sailors, two with red pom-poms on their hats, to go somewhere else.
“My mother is a convert,” answered the sergeant. “The worst kind.”
The snow had deepened. Lights from the harbour reflected through the gentle flurries and cars were driving off the Dartmouth ferry that plied the harbour at all hours. The traffic on Water Street was minimal; a few dark figures huddled in doorways or dazedly tried to find their bearings in this ghostly, weary city. A sturdy tugboat chugged past the end of a wharf, with a stoker looking out the hatch of his warm engine room. A distant foghorn sounded at intervals. The snow silently covered everyone’s despair. A new year was approaching, and everything only looked worse.
24
Dr. J. Edward MacQueen, M.D., regarded his son Patrick’s current problems with mild irritation, especially when compared to the steady progress and stabilizing marriage of John. He had been proud when his two boys had joined the army at the start of the war. Even though they were both underage he had felt it was the proper thing to do. They had both emerged from high school with erratic marks, and his recent relocation from Bermuda had left the family coffers empty. The value of Bermudian property had plummeted, and it was in the sterling area which froze all assets anyway. His wife had turned the house into apartments but constantly complained of hardship.
Dr. MacQueen sat in the officer’s club of Charlottetown and nursed his grievances. This was an old, three-storey building just across the street from the Charlottetown Hospital, where the doctor hoped one day to head the medical board. This would follow the footsteps of an uncle-by-marriage and a first cousin, each of whom had filled the post in turn. This was the Catholic hospital, the Protestant one being farther out of town on Brighton Road. He held a crumpled sheet of Wellington Barracks notepaper in his hand, adjusted his spectacles, and tried once again to decipher his son’s scrawl. The click of billiard balls could be heard in the adjoining room, but it was only mid-afternoon, and the club was virtually empty. The tips of large icicles could be seen descending from the roof through the high windows.
The Catholic and Protestant populations of Prince Edward Island were divided approximately half and half. They met and intermingled at Government House, in the civil service, or in everyday business. When it came to their education, healthcare, and social life they tended to be mutually exclusive. Everyone went to church—and there were many churches in Charlottetown. The most prominent feature of the city were the twin spires of Saint Dunstan’s Basilica, which, from the harbour, gave the city a medieval look. Some Acadians lived on the north shore, and some Mi’kmaq on a reserve. All the rest were of British descent and reflected the patterns of the English, Irish, and Scots. The English settlements were manicured gardens; the Scots cleared the trees to the shoreline; the Irish lived in relatively happy disarray. The Acadians were fishermen.
This was all the good doctor’s home ground. He had left it to complete his education, then to go to the Great War. He returned briefly, only to leave it again for
Robert Service’s wild west. The collapse of everyone’s dreams in 1929 returned him to the east, where he won a job with the colonial government in Bermuda. When his daughter died, he could bear it no longer and returned home, on the eve of another great war. There was not one week of his life that he would wish to relive.
The front door of the club opened, and a smiling man wearing a naval officer’s greatcoat stamped into the hall. He took off his cap and cupped his ears with his hands. “Hello, doctor,” said Commander J. Donnelly. “B-r-r-r-r—it’s getting cold and the sun is past the yardarm.”
“Hello, Jerry,” said the doctor grumpily. “How’s the good ship Queen Charlotte?” That was the name of the naval division, which was a building in downtown Charlottetown and never put to sea.
“Fine!” answered the commander with enthusiasm. “Everything tickety-boo. How are your boys doing?” The commander was a reserve officer who was now on active service. His face glowed and his blue eyes had a merry twinkle—with his prematurely white hair he looked like a friendly von Ribbentrop. The commander had been in the postal service, but he had sailed every summer with the Royal Canadian Navy to the West Indies. He had been a guest at the doctor’s house in Bermuda on two occasions, where he had consumed a prodigious amount of rum. He unbuttoned his coat and hung it on a coat hook. Placing his cap on top, he blew into his cupped hands and pressed a buzzer for the bar steward. “What’ll you have?” he asked.
“Nothing for me,” answered the doctor, stuffing the sheet of notepaper into his pocket and removing his spectacles. “John got married, as you know, but Patrick is on the loose again. He was in an accident and is waiting his discharge in Halifax now.”
“Oh?” said the commander. He scribbled his order onto a little pad held by the bar steward. “Nothing too serious, I hope.”
“He’ll get over it in a few months,” said the doctor. “I thought of sending him to his mother for a while. Could you take him when he gets back?”
The commander sat in a large leather chair beside the doctor. His new, wavy three stripes of bold braid glistened on his midnight-blue cuffs. He wore gold cufflinks with an engraved naval crown.
“How old is Patrick now?” asked the commander.
“Officially, he will be twenty this year,” replied the doctor, “although really he’ll only be eighteen.”
“There’s a naval board sitting here in the early summer, then again in the fall,” said the commander. “They interview candidates for naval officers.” He accepted a cigarette from the doctor and produced a gold lighter engraved with the naval crown. “Maybe Pat could go before one of them? They are trying to find young gentlemen who want to chase that path. I’m sure that he would stand a good chance, but he’d better forget his army career.” He puffed pensively on his cigarette. “Just up from Bermuda should do fine,” he commented finally.
“Let me buy you one of those,” said the doctor, with a sigh of relief. “You have taken a load off my shoulders—rum and ginger?” The doctor rose and pressed the button.
“Of course, I can’t guarantee anything,” said the commander. “But we’ve got to send somebody. He has certainly been on the ocean enough, and lived close to a dockyard, as if that matters.”
“He has always wanted to be a soldier,” said the doctor, scribbling an order for a double rum and ginger. “But he’ll adapt. I haven’t seen him, but he was apparently shot in the arm. I spoke to his doctor on the telephone. He’ll need some rest and to exercise the arm—why don’t we put his name down for the fall?”
“Good-oh,” said the commander. He accepted the drink, raised it towards the doctor, and tasted it. “You’ll have me falling overboard!” he exclaimed.
“A little of Nelson’s blood won’t hurt you,” said the doctor, with a smile. “It preserved him and it’ll do the same for you.”
Lord Nelson had been stuffed into a barrel of rum after his death at Trafalgar. He had been in pristine, if fragrant, condition for the state funeral in London.
25
The confrontation between father and son was not anticipated with pleasure by either one. The doctor had been an only child, and, for that matter, his wife had only sisters. Their mutual sympathy with two growing sons became underlain with growing alarm as they matured. Both the parents had been reared strictly, and they lacked the ability to maintain communication with their boys. When their daughter was born, the boys were quickly sent away to various schools to be either bullied or, at best, casually educated. This process was crowned by their sister’s death and the consequent separation of their parents.
John had focused his determination on an army career and his very early marriage. Patrick was stuck in the ice between Cape Tormentine and Borden, in a railway car heated by the ubiquitous potbellied stoves and wearing an ill-fitting blue suit. His fellow passengers were exhausted, noisy, bad tempered, or drunk. A soldier had thrown a bottle through one window, and bleak sheets of drift ice stretched to the horizon as the ferry thudded and ground against it. The trip from Halifax had already lasted more than twenty-four hours and he knew they wouldn’t arrive in Charlottetown for another ten, which would then be midnight. Provided, of course, there were no snowdrifts.
The pleasures of travel have always been exaggerated; stagecoaches over the Alps or safaris in the Congo. Even the present scenario was an improvement over the open, oar-driven boats of yore. To the traveller in extremis, however, the dilemma of the present is the important one, like that one cavity in the one tooth in the universe. Quiet rage and frustration await the unprepared traveller, for he is virtually helpless. Thrown on his own resources, the survivalist will be prepared for all predictable emergencies, even boredom. The innocents get caught in a trap that either numbs them completely or drives them berserk. Resignation to the will of Allah is not a Christian virtue.
However slowly it appears to happen, the present becomes history in an instant, and all things pass into memory. Eventually the snow-covered, steaming train pulled hissing and clanging into the Charlottetown station and dislodged its stupefied passengers. The doctor, wearing a grey Homburg hat, greeted his son.
“We will go to my apartment,” said Dr. MacQueen after a brief handshake. “You can have something to eat there. How is your arm?”
“They took the cast off yesterday,” answered Patrick. He carried only a small kit bag. The spit-and-polish staff sergeant had relieved him of everything else, which, added to his payoff from the cheap clothing store, guaranteed him a steady income from men leaving the army.
The doctor drove a blue Pontiac coupe, as he had little use for a rear seat. It had metal chains on the rear tires and smelled of Prince Edward Island dust, chloroform, and stale cigarette butts. The snow was rutted, and one street lamp hung across from the steeply gabled station. The stationmaster was already locking the main doors.
“You can get passport photos tomorrow,” said the doctor as he revved the motor and spun the wheels. He switched on the headlights, and the chains caught traction on the ice. “Light me a cigarette will you, son.”
Somewhere within Patrick’s heart there was a stir at this familiar request. It had been considered a great privilege when, as small boys, they were motoring across the dirt roads of Alberta, or on the beach in Bermuda. A package of cigarettes lay beside the frosty windshield, and Patrick lit two. He passed one to his father.
“You are smoking Buckinghams again?” It was the first brand that he had ever smoked, and it had made him sick.
“Can’t get Murads,” replied his father. “Can’t even get Craven A.”
They drove several blocks in silence. He suddenly spun the wheel, and the car lurched right and swayed into a narrow street. He pulled over to the side, plow into a snow bank. The doctor turned off the lights. “We’re in here,” he said.
The white, rutted street stretched before them in a series of diminishing orange circles against the black sky. There was no traffic, and not a person in sight. Somewhere a dog barked, and Patrick p
ut his foot into the wet snowbank. There will be no beer here, he thought sadly. He was tired and hungry, and his shoulder ached. He had withdrawn into his shell and his perceptions were oblique. It all seemed rather hopeless.
26
The ships that plied the trade routes between Canada and the British West Indies were known collectively as the Lady Boats. They were painted a dazzling white, with a single red, white, and blue funnel. There were five of them, each named after the wife of a naval hero; the Ladys Drake, Somers, Nelson, Hawkins, and Rodney. Their schedule started in Montreal, called at Halifax, then Boston, and on to Bermuda. From there they continued through the Barbados islands and Trinidad to end in Demerara; some branched off to Jamaica and British Honduras.
They were basically cargo vessels with first- and second-class passenger accommodations of distinction and were operated by the Canadian National Steamships. To any Canadian living in the West Indies these ships were a second home. The passage was leisurely and the service top rate. The trip to Bermuda took three days and cost $75.00 for a return ticket, first class. The thirties were halcyon days for wanderers capable of buying one.
But now those happy days were over and the war had cast its grim shadow on everything. The Lady Hawkins, moored at the cavernous Pier 21 in Halifax, was painted a dull grey and her portholes were all blacked out. The waterfront was surrounded with barbed wire and patrolled by sentries. No one knew the times of arrival or departure. There were no bands or excited crowds to wave goodbye or welcome back sunburned holidayers…everything was grey, subdued, tense, and cheerless. Foghorns seemed muffled by the enshrouding mist, the gigantic pier building was dimly lit, and the waves of the harbour lapped constantly in the darkness against the ship’s side. A covered companionway led from the purser’s deck into the building itself, and there was always a small group of people at its foot. The sharp hoot-hoot-hoot of a destroyer joined the sounds of bells, buoys, and seagulls. The sharp salt tang of the Atlantic woke the senses, and the harbour scent of oil and rotting fish combined with the fog to make the nostrils flare. In every harbour in the world the scene was the same.
The Broken Sword Page 11