“You are John’s mother,” answered Patrick MacQueen. He was slightly awestruck at this formidable little figure…the top of her head hardly reached his chin, and he assumed that her heels were high.
“You have one great admirer. Maybe two?” A quick glance of mischief darted out of her eyes but was quickly shrouded.
“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad…” came Antonio’s falsetto voice from the stage. Rene Warnefeld-Davies placed a finger on her lips, and Patrick held open the gate. He guided her across the grassy slope, towards the end of a bench. “Can I get you a drink?” he whispered.
“Rum-and-anything,” she replied. She had a strange accent…her voice seemed to come from deep within. MacQueen looked up to see Lady Lemonton looking directly at her, without approval. That scarlet dress certainly made the rest of them look dowdy.
“Your mind is tossing on the ocean…” proclaimed Salarino. MacQueen silently crept around the outer edges of the crowd, towards the improvised bar. It was rapidly growing dark, and the stars were speckling the sky like jewels. The Little Dipper tilted over the amphitheatre and the carriage horses neighed and jangled their harness.
“…everythin’ I do is wrong…”
A door opened in the headmaster’s residence, throwing a quick red angle of light into the darkness. The bartender slapped a mosquito.
“Give me two rum and Cokes,” said MacQueen.
“Ain’t no more ice left,” said the barman.
“Why then, you are in love,” said Salarino.
Eva MacQueen had noticed her son’s entrance guiding the lady in the scarlet dress with a sinking heart. The countess remembered her from somewhere. Bill Cyples thought she would be a fiery lay.
46
Lieutenant Cyples arranged for the loan of some tents, and the cadets pitched them on the other side of the hill, near the schoolhouse. Their small encampment was in a copse of cedar trees and near the stone wharf, where they could swim naked in the clear water of the Little Sound. Most of them preferred to sleep under the stars, and they spent the nights giggling and whispering to one another despite the sharp barks of the sergeant major. MacQueen and the Reverend Mr. Pearkes had camp cots, but the latter spent most of the nights in the arms of Mrs. Beach. He returned each morning at daybreak, and he lost a lot of excess fat in seven days.
Patrick MacQueen sat beside the glowing cedar fire with his troops. The pointed canvas tents were outlined against the starry night, and a sickle moon hung above the distant glow of Hamilton across the Little Sound. The crickets chirped, and the boys rotated for the privilege of sitting beside him. The sergeants were, of course, aloof from that little game, and they speculated on their honorary major’s nocturnal activities.
“What kind of a clergyman is he, anyway?” asked John Warnefeld-Davies in his musical, upper-crust accent. He was the first actor to turn Shylock into a comedy role.
“One of the Orthodox churches, I think,” answered Patrick MacQueen. “I don’t know all of the details, but they are very ancient.”
“Who cares about all that shit?” asked Billy Cowan with a naughty leer.
“Watch your language, Sergeant,” answered MacQueen. The sergeant major gave him a thump on the shoulder. Some of these boys were not Christian, and MacQueen was nominally a Catholic. The ground they were on was a minefield.
“Listen to the voices of the forest,” said MacQueen softly. He poked the fire, and the embers glowed red, reflecting off their serious, sunburned faces. “In Europe they are called the Wandervögel—the birds of passage. God can speak through nature.”
“We’re soldiers, not Boy Scouts!” said one of the boys.
“’Ray!” chorused a few others.
“We protect the eternal,” said MacQueen. “We don’t just join the winning side, we are guardians and guards. We are a brotherhood. We don’t care who else cheats; we will not.”
John lay on one elbow and looked up at the stars. “I think my father cheats,” he said slowly. Sergeant Major Hawkins was frowning at the fire, trying to understand the conversation. In each boy’s heart a different chord was struck, but around the fire they were one. They would gather around John and protect him from his cheating father, or they would do anything else their captain demanded.
“Don’t be a judge,” said Patrick MacQueen. “Just look after your own act. You’re a good actor, surely you can manage that?”
The boys laughed. It was getting late, and they were drowsy from capturing a hill and swimming in the salty sea.
I wish we had a bugle, thought MacQueen. It had been the one redeeming feature of the army camp, and now he had everything but that.
Mrs. Eva MacQueen had received an offer that she could not refuse—a war job with a paycheque. It meant that she was required to move to Hamilton, to be the official hostess at a prestigious club devoted to stimulating harmony in the English-speaking world. She had agreed, on condition that her son could have a room in the establishment. The trustees of the club assumed that the boy was a youngster and agreed. The countess promptly joined the club and rented their only other suite of rooms.
While these important events were transpiring in Bermuda, Germany invaded Russia. Lady Lemonton realized, to her horror, that her country was not going to withdraw, a decision that she blamed on Franklin Roosevelt. She became more strident, and the Censorship Board had to warn her frequently that they would have her arrested for treason. In the meantime, the Australian novelist was posted as the air attaché to their embassy in Washington, and his wife packed her things to join him with their two daughters. Eva MacQueen did not want to leave the entire property in the hands of their old cook, who was confusing her sauces as it was, so Patrick agreed to stay there and keep the house until another suitable tenant could be found.
47
Brown, salt-encrusted, and weary, Patrick MacQueen pedalled up the curving driveway, to the front entrance of Moville. He had bought a bottle of Barbados rum and jammed it into the bicycle’s basket along with his gear from camp. The Reverend Mr. Stalker had dutifully paid him for his services, and had evinced an interest in having him return for the following term. Patrick had replied that he would have to get back into the war. His arm was nearly mended.
He parked the bicycle beside the veranda railing—something his mother had never allowed—and hefted the bundle from the basket. For the last while, he and his mother had been going through a side entrance into the small apartment they had shared. Thus, until this moment, he hadn’t stepped foot on the squared marble of the front door landing, which had been salvaged from a Spanish galleon. This would be his first time through those front doors for three years. He tried the brass latch. The two high doors swung inwards, and MacQueen stepped into the cool entrance hall. Through an arch to his right was a startled dark maid, barefoot and clothed in a cotton dress. She was dusting his mother’s teak Chinese furniture. Straight ahead he could see the fireplace of the drawing room, and to his left was the apartment in which he had recently been living with his mother.
“It’s all right, I’m Master Patrick,” he said to the maid. Her mouth dropped open.
“What are you doin’, girl?” asked the voice of the old cook from a bedroom leading off the Chinese room. The cook’s name was Connie. She waddled into the room, wearing an apron, and had a white kerchief around her head. “What’re you starin’ at?”
She looked crossly at MacQueen, then a smile of recognition spread across her shiny face.
“Master Patrick!” she exclaimed. “Git on with you, you good for nothin’ girl, this is Master Patrick. He’s the master’s boy! Git to work.”
Connie opened her arms and Patrick bent as she embraced him around the neck. “Welcome home,” she said. “You have no idea what I’ve been through with all those other folk.” She didn’t want to let him go.
The rooms did not seem to be as large as he remembered, but each one brought a flood of nostalgia. His glassless military print of the charge of the Scots Greys wa
s still hanging in the beamed stairway, which looked out onto the wildly tangled courtyard. A glass bull’s-eye was firmly set into the cedar floor, to throw light into some ancient owner’s wine cellar. Three little corner steps led into the dining room where his mother had once entertained a Braganza princess. The lawns to the rear swept into banana trees, and far to the left was the tennis club, beyond Vivienne’s old slave cottage. He was home, and he was alone, save for Connie. She poured two ounces of rum straight down her throat, and served him cassava pie and curried rice.
After a swim, Patrick sat on the sand, watching the setting sun. Lady Lemonton’s deserted cottage looked over the empty bay. He knew that nothing lasted, but that reality still left a bittersweet taste in his mouth. He watched the seagulls and thought of what he had said to the boys about eternity. Inexorably the sun sets, he thought. Maybe even on the British Empire. He thought of the powerful cruisers he had visited as a boy, and admirals with three hyphens in their name. It was all going to curl up like the embers of the campfire, and those rosy, brown faces would grow old. He thought of the moment of ecstasy that he had experienced here beyond the century plants, and of the beautiful Unity Mitford with a bullet in her head but still very much alive. He recalled his little sister, running naked on this very beach, and he wept.
The next morning, Connie brought him a large glass of tea, in the Russian style, as his mother had preferred, and a stack of buttered toast. He had not wound his watch, there wasn’t a clock in the house, and the radio was out of order. It was a cloudy morning, and a rainstorm threatened; it was badly needed, as the water tanks were running dry.
It was stuffy inside the mosquito netting surrounding his bed, so he opened it; a breeze cooled his sweating body. He heard a distant rumble of thunder, and a few large raindrops spattered on the angled shutters. Patrick glanced for a moment at the volume of The Count of Monte Cristo he had brought from the library, then pushed it aside on the bed. He thought of Lady Lemonton and, more importantly, he thought of Rene Warnefeld-Davies. He was expecting Bill Cyples for lunch, but he had no idea what time it was. Bill would arrive at Waterford Bridge on the ferry, then bicycle to Moville. He would get wet.
A flash of lightning brightened the room, revealing Lieutenant Cyples standing in the doorway. He was wearing khaki shorts with knee socks and a shirt dappled with rain.
“Do you time your entrances with God?” asked MacQueen, with a pleased laugh.
“You’re the magician,” answered William Cyples, with his wolfish smile and long teeth. “It’s lunchtime and you’re still in bed? Didn’t you learn anything at Aldershot?”
“Clear the chair and sit down,” said Patrick. “Hand me that dressing gown and I’ll get up. I’ve just finished breakfast.”
The sky suddenly opened and the rain streamed vertically downwards, washing every leaf and sending every living thing scattering for shelter. “You were lucky at camp,” commented Lieutenant Cyples as he closed the window. Connie shuffled around the house, banging other windows and muttering at the absent maid; she had been sent on a message and had not returned.
“That countess has got me all fucked out,” said Lieutenant Cyples, sitting in the chair and lighting a cigarette, which he extracted from his gold case. Patrick refused one and went in his bare feet to pee.
“That sounds better than camping with the boys,” he said ruefully when he returned. He looked into the cedar-framed mirror on the bureau and patted his hair. “That’s the best sleep I’ve had for years.”
“Sleep is only a bad habit,” said Bill Cyples. “I’ll take you to lunch, if we can get anywhere in this downpour.”
“The telephone is on the fritz again,” said Patrick. “With all this rain I might take a quick shower.”
The thunder broke over their heads with an ear-splitting crash, and jagged light danced around the room. “Land sakes!” shouted Connie. “You all right, Master Patrick?”
“It’s an air raid!” said Lieutenant Cyples, laughing.
Patrick had a shower, and then he shaved. Bill Cyples poked around the house and admired the Chinese furniture. “The sacred pearl is guarded by dragons,” he said, tracing the convoluted figure on the back of a thronelike chair. “It’s said to mean many things. Power, or wisdom. Even immortality, which is of course why it would be guarded, I suppose.”
“How do you know that?” asked Patrick in surprise.
“A gypsy once told me. She said that I would end my days in the Orient,” replied Bill Cyples slowly. “That’s a good place for Saint George to go? There are plenty of dragons there.”
The sky cleared suddenly, as though God had passed a hand over His brow. A brightly feathered cardinal sat on the shutter-pole and looked into the room. Its plumage was the same colour as Rene Warnefeld-Davies’ dress.
“I just got paid,” said Patrick MacQueen. “Let’s pack a picnic. We’ll get a carriage and go to the top of Scour Hill. It’s an old fort. My brother and I used to play there as boys.”
Connie packed the lunch while Bill Cyples walked through the wet banana trees to order a carriage. The smells were of wet earth, washed leaves, and green things growing. The duty constable sprang to his feet and joggled the telephone cradle. “It’s always bad after a storm, sir,” he said impatiently. Bill looked at the mug shots on the notice board and twirled his swagger stick. He hummed a tune from HMS Pinafore that the countess had been teaching him.
“A carriage will be at the doctor’s house in a half hour, sir,” said the constable.
“Right-o, Corporal,” said Lieutenant Cyples. He gave the policeman a cigarette from the gold cigarette case. “Much obliged.”
He walked past the Roman columns, stern reminders of the law’s majesty, and down the wide stone stairway. His Kitchener sun helmet was slightly over his nose, to keep his head back and his back erect. Another constable saluted and his bicycle wobbled dangerously. Bill’s heart was light and he forgot about sudden storms. Except for minor complications, Bill felt that he was on a roll.
En route to the fort they passed the little church where Patrick had once been an altar boy. Someone had cut down the cedar trees, and the white steeple looked like a stark cubist painting against the sky’s royal blue. The priest had put them into scarlet soutanes; not to disguise bloodstains, as the army is said to have done, but to celebrate the changing of fragrant wine into Another’s blood in a golden cup. Crosses and swords and instruments of pain become powerful symbols because they symbolize power. Here, the gentle word master glints with a final runic sign and becomes mastery.
“You’ll have to walk from here,” said the coachman.
They each took a handle of the big basket and stepped over a black chain slung between two trees across the road.
“The fort was built against the Americans,” said Patrick. “The US marine airbase will be just over that hill.”
“Add it all up and it doesn’t make much sense,” said Lieutenant Cyples.
48
The German armies appeared unstoppable as they plunged into the vastness of Russia. The war in North Africa seesawed, and Cairo itself was threatened. Finland had resumed fighting for her lost territories; Japan refused all warnings to withdraw from China; and Italy and Germany were occupying Greece.
Patrick MacQueen had moved to the club in Hamilton where his mother was working, and he made inquiries regarding the sailing dates of the Canadian National Steamships. His father had written that the naval board was sitting in Charlottetown on the first of October, and Patrick was becoming restless. News that the Winnipeg Grenadiers were to be shipped out also depressed him.
Patrick ran into the ex-king of Romania in a bookstore. At first he thought that the king was his father, and it was quite a shock. The king smiled amiably, tipped his panama hat to the sales girl, and departed. She knew who he was, and was staring dumbly into space.
New impetus had been given to the building of the US naval base, and the sight of Jeeps was becoming commonplace, as he had pr
edicted. US naval policemen prowled the streets of Hamilton, with long clubs hanging from their belts. An aircraft carrier was anchored out in Grassy Bay, and more pinnaces full of expectant sailors were packed into Hamilton every day, before returning in the evenings to their ships, full of inert bodies like sacks of meal.
The English-speaking club that was now run by Patrick’s mother was located in a private park. The entrance was a small gate on the street, which led to a flagged footpath under the trees, up a few steps, and onto a stone patio with a low wall around it. The building was a large limestone structure, angled so that only its side was visible from the street. The front entrance faced onto lawns and a wooden Victorian bandstand. There was a driveway at the rear, for carriage parking or deliveries. Patrick’s small room overlooked the bandstand and had only a single bed.
Mrs. Eva MacQueen enjoyed this job, and she put her heart into fostering understanding between the American and British dignitaries of the island. The board of trustees were opposed to innovations, but they were also in the most perilous of financial straits. This place had been their haven for years, and now it was being opened up to disagreeable elements. Their new hostess even wanted to build a small open-air dance pavilion on the lawn beside the bandstand. One evening she moved the grand piano onto the patio and had a concert under the stars. Why, this woman even festooned the lawn with Chinese lanterns!
Thus, Eva MacQueen was becoming somewhat of a celebrity. She doubled, then tripled the staff of bartenders, and an open bar was at one’s elbow whenever any event took place, whatever its nature. This assured the patronage of numerous drunken American officers—and a rapid diminishing of the club’s indebtedness.
Mrs. MacQueen was declared honorary captain of the HSS Wasp, and His Excellency the Governor appeared. Bobbie had warned her of his tastes in advance, so His Excellency had a rousing good time. He even made a pass at Patrick.
The Broken Sword Page 21