by Vicki Grant
Once I looked over at the lodge and saw Glennie serving guests on the patio. She didn’t see me.
I saw Eddie twice.
The first time, I didn’t even know it was him. A boat pulled up to the dock and two men in crumpled hats climbed off, carrying fishing poles and wicker baskets. That made me think about Joe and the time he’d taken the Seven trouting, so I didn’t notice the guy driving the boat until I heard that laugh, and by the time I realized it was Eddie he was bombing back out into the lake, and all I could see above the spray was his hand shooting out in one last goodbye.
The next time, I was about to head in the servants’ entrance when I noticed him giving his arm to an old lady in a bright-red dress and some crazy turban-like thing on her head. She struggled with the patio stairs. “Up you go,” he said, just like he’d said to me, and my stomach clenched. I stood there gaping and relieved he hadn’t seen the toad face I was no doubt making.
My heart didn’t slow down all that afternoon. Until then, I’d never realized that the sound a sewing machine makes is EddieEddieEddieEddieEddie.
Since I’d started at the Arms, I’d been working on tablecloths and bedspreads, but around two that afternoon—it was a Friday—Mrs. Smees plunked a canvas bag on the floor and said, “Guest mending. I tagged each garment with instructions.”
It was mostly hems and missing buttons, but I figured a bigger project would distract my brain and be better for my heart. I dug around and found a man’s tweed jacket with a note on the pocket that said Torn lining.
It was the color of porridge and smelled of cigars and some slightly sock-like odor I think of simply as “old man” or, more specifically, Reverend Messervey. I unbuttoned the jacket to check out the tear. The label said Howell’s of Buckminster.
My breath was sucked down my throat, a Hoover on high.
Mrs. Smees was standing on a stool, changing the list of chores on the blackboard. She spun around and glared at me as if I’d done something wrong. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that nothing business.” She was down on the floor, charging toward me, face like a bayonet. “What?”
“Just, um…”
She snatched the jacket out of my hands, chin bouncing up and down as she scanned it for mistakes. “Yes?”
I’d been caught. I didn’t know for what, but I’d been caught. I shrank like a mangy dog who’d just peed on the rug. “Just. It’s from Howell’s. Like, of Buckminster.”
“And that made you gasp?” Eyebrow raised. Suspicious.
“I mean, it must be old, that’s all.”
“What? Not that old. Howell’s closed on June 13, 1944, so that’s only—” She stopped. Looked out the room’s one little window. “Good Lord. That’s twenty years.”
“You know the exact date it closed?” It just kind of came out.
She huffed. Of course. “One week after D-day.”
“Oh. That makes it easy to remember, I guess.”
“D-day? You think that’s easy to remember?” Sometimes, the calmer a person’s voice, the scarier it sounds.
“No. Sorry. That’s not what I meant.”
“You think it’s easy to remember all those dead boys?” She kind of laughed, a hot, fast shot of air out her nose. “Boys like Bertie Howell? As if Bertie was the type to storm beaches. Storm anything.”
“No. I—”
She leaned in and pointed a finger at me, thin as her lips. “You want to know why I remember? That’s why I remember. I was there when Mr. Howell got the telegram saying some Nazi’d splattered his one and only kid all over the coast of Normandy. He closed the store that day. Never came back.”
She shoved the jacket at me.
“And look at the work they did.” Tapping hard on the lapel with a yellowed nail. “Beautiful. What a waste.”
I nodded. I wanted her to stop.
“You know what the sad thing is?”
Sadder than this?
“The war’s what made Howell’s. Half their business was officer’s uniforms. Funny, ain’t it? Here Mr. Howell thought Bertie’d be sitting in clover, all the money they was making off the war. Young guys all roostered up at the thought of getting their stripes came from across Ontario wanting their uniforms done up in the finest British wool. A few even got them made out of cashmere, if you can believe it.”
“Cashmere,” I said, because of course that word meant something to me now.
“Cashmere,” she repeated, because of course that was ridiculous. “As if a cashmere greatcoat would make getting your head blown off at nineteen any easier.”
She was about to say something else, but her skin bloomed red around her eyes and she stopped midword.
She cleared her throat, straightened her sleeves and turned into Mrs. Smees again. “Whose is that? L.M.B.?” she said, reading the initials on the inside pocket. “Probably Lionel Beals.” She sniffed. “It is. Good Lord. Finish it up, then give it to Bas. See if he can get the stink out.”
She pushed it toward me, disgusted, no tears in her eyes now.
“Do you know where Mr. Howell is these days?” I said.
“I told you. Gone.” She turned her back, hands on hips, and acted like she was reading the blackboard. “What are you so interested in Howell’s for anyway? Don’t got enough work to do?”
She strutted off.
I shut my mouth, stitched up the lining and thought about my coat. Was it part of someone’s uniform?
Did my father go to war?
Was he Bertie Howell maybe?
No. Couldn’t be. Bertie died in ’44. I wasn’t born until ’47.
I got out a lady’s sundress that needed hemming and tried to think this through. I didn’t know much about the war. I’d watched the veterans marching in the Remembrance Day parade every year and seen the ladies dabbing their eyes beside the statue in Hope with the names of all the boys who didn’t come back. And, of course, there was Mr. Caswell with the burned face, who worked at Egan’s service station. Mrs. Hazelton had torn a strip off us when she caught us staring at the waxy place where his ear used to be. Other than that, all I knew about the war was what I saw in the movies. Mrs. Hazelton had let the Seven go to the Odeon last Christmas and watch The Great Escape.
I started imagining my dad as a taller version of Steve McQueen, sitting on his motorbike, smirking, looking the Nazis right in the eye and saying stuff like, That’s a chance you’re going to have to take. That made me happy for a while.
At around three, Mrs. Smees sent me upstairs to see about a torn curtain. The halls along the way were lined with framed photos of the resort and people who’d stayed there. There were pictures of men with twirly mustaches from a 1902 regatta and men in fur coats at a 1924 curling bonspiel and wedding portraits of the Honorable Mr. So-and-So and the lovely former Miss Whatever.
The picture that stopped me, though, was of a 1939 farewell supper for the officers and gentlemen of Dunbrae Arms. Thirty or forty men with Brylcreemed hair and big smiles were clowning around in front of the lodge. All of them were wearing coats that looked just like mine.
Impossible to tell if any of them were made of cashmere.
Someone had written the men’s names across the photo in white ink. I looked for an E.B. Something, but no hope of that either. They were all nicknames. Ace Mathers. Pidge Filpots. Some poor guy called Sourpuss Kitteridge.
And who’s to say Mr. Something was even in the picture? Thousands of guys from around here had gone to war.
Needle in a haystack, I thought. I got the curtain from the lady cleaning Room 312 and headed back down to work.
Four o’clock rolled around. Mrs. Smees dropped my pay packet on the table and said, “Don’t you forget to take that jacket in for cleaning before you go skittering off for the weekend.”
When I went into the laundry room, Bas was reading a western, his chin on his chest, his feet crossed on the folding table. “Sorry, Dot. Done my last load for the day. Just throw it
in the corner.” He nodded over his shoulder without looking up from his book.
I didn’t move.
Bas grew up in Buckminster. He was nice. Maybe he’d know.
“Um,” I said.
“Yup.”
“I…”
He took a stick of Juicy Fruit out of his pocket and stuck it in the book to save his place. “Okay. What?”
“Ah. Know anyone who worked at Howell’s?”
“Howell’s?”
“Howell’s—the men’s store.”
“I know what it is. Given the tone of your voice, I was just expecting you to ask how to dispose of a body, not know anyone who worked at Howell’s?”
“Do you?”
“Why d’ you want to know?”
“Well…there’s this, um…actually I—”
Bas put his hand up like a stop sign. “I’ve been working in this laundry since I was your age, and I’ve seen that face plenty of times. You’re planning to lie to me. Frankly, I don’t really care enough about your business for that. Makes no difference to me what you’re up to. I shouldn’ta asked.”
I tried not to look too relieved.
“Want to know about Howell’s? Muriel Smees’s the gal to talk to.”
“I did, sort of, but she kind of cut me off.”
Bas plunked his feet on the floor, scratched behind an ear with one finger. “Yeah. Come to think of it, that’s a scab you might not want to pick. Best not to bring that up again.”
“Was Mrs. Smees in love with Bertie Howell?” It suddenly seemed so obvious.
He laughed, one wheezy ha. “No. You’re way off. She was already with Walter Smees by then. They used to double-date with my oldest sister and that jackass she married. Muriel would have known the Howells pretty good though. She worked at the shop for years. Thinking about what happened to Bertie mighta got her thinking about what happened to Walt, and that’s not a happy story neither.”
“Was he hurt in the war?”
“Depends what you mean by hurt.”
I had a vague idea what he was getting at, enough to know to drop it. “So there’s nobody you can think of who worked there?”
“Alive?”
“Yeah.” Dead wouldn’t help me much.
“Hmm. Tough one. Howell’s closed when I was fifteen or something.” He puffed out a cheek and thought about it for a second. “Mr. Howell’s gone. Grace McFetridge is dead, and Alvin Comeau—he was the tailor there—he’s alive, but his mind ain’t much anymore. Sits outside the Buckminster Manor for the Aged all day with his mouth hanging open. Poor bugger. Those are the only people I can think of.”
I thanked him, threw the jacket on the pile in the corner and headed off for the day.
“I do like me a good mystery though.” Bas tucked the stick of Juicy Fruit back into his pocket and reopened his book. “So when you feel like disclosing what you’re actually up to, drop by for a chat.”
When I arrived at the cafeteria that evening, Ida was just taking meatloaf out of the oven, so I grabbed a plate of that. I needed to be back at my cabin before the waitresses and chambermaids and dock boys got off for the day. That was my routine. Gobble down a meal, go to my cabin, close the curtains and reread that romance novel until I fell asleep.
The other workers would start coming back around seven. Sometimes I’d peek out through the gap between the curtains. It was like watching one of those movies we’d seen in geography class about the traditions of other lands. The kids would be sprawled all over the picnic table or on the scrubby little patch of grass in front of the Meat Department or dancing to music coming from a record player perched in a window. On warm nights, the boys would be shirtless and the girls in bathing suits, even when they were dancing. If things got too loud, someone from the lodge might stomp over to tell them to pipe down, but otherwise the serfs were on their own.
Once, after I’d gone to bed, I heard giggling outside my cabin, and the next thing I knew the door swung open. A couple staggered in. The girl screamed when she saw me, the boy swore, and then they both staggered back out. They apparently thought the seamstress’s cabin was empty and knew there was a bed there. After that I locked my door every night.
I finished up the meatloaf and asked Ida if I could take a bowl of tapioca back to my cabin.
“And me lose another dish? You all promise you’ll bring your bowls back, then that’s the last I ever see of them—unless I find them on the beach or behind the bushes or way back in the woods where none of you people think I know you go.”
I nodded an apology and put the tapioca back in the fridge.
Ida took it out again. “You don’t seem as bad as the rest.” She wiped her hands on the underside of her belly. “But no bowl, no breakfast. Understood?”
We both smiled. I took my dessert and headed down the little path to my cabin. Tapioca wasn’t my favorite thing in the world, but it tasted like the Home, and I liked that. If I paced myself, I could make the bowl last right through the final four chapters of Proudly Rode the Chevalier by Arabella Castlebury. It seemed like a perfectly good way to spend the night, until I got past the lilac bush and saw a note wedged in my door.
Dot, it read in neat blue writing. I’ve been looking for you all week. Ran into Glennie today and she tells me Mrs. Smees has you working in the sweatshop. How about that ride you promised me? I figured since you have certain amphibian characteristics you might like to get out on the water. (I’m anxious to see your frog kick…) What say I meet you on the dock Sunday at noon? I’ll make lunch. Eddie.
Six
I NEEDED SOCKS and I needed something to do until Sunday so I wouldn’t explode or float off into the atmosphere like a pink balloon at some little kid’s birthday party. I decided to go into Buckminster the next day. The doorman told me the bus came at ten to the hour. I just had to walk up to the highway to catch it.
I opened my suitcase to get some money from my pay packet. Would three dollars be enough for socks and the return trip? I could use new underwear too. The bridal shop in Hope had given us each two sets after the Home burned down, but I was tired of washing them by hand every second night in the staff washroom, and I’d die rather than give them to Bas to do.
So I was thinking about clothes and stores, and maybe that’s what got me thinking about Howell’s again.
Alvin Comeau was still alive—that’s what Bas said—and living in the Buckminster Manor for the Aged. I was going into town anyway. I grabbed the coat and an extra couple of bucks and headed for the highway.
The bus dropped me off by the little park I’d stopped at on the first day. I could see Buckminster Manor from there. It looked like it had been built by the same guy who built the Benevolent Home, or maybe his brother. One little pig built it out of wood. This little pig built it out of stone.
I asked for Mr. Comeau at the desk. I was expecting the lady to grill me about who I was, why I wanted to see him, that type of thing, so I’d spent the bus ride concocting some half-baked story about being a great-niece he’d never met, here from Moose Jaw for a couple of days.
The lady didn’t even ask. She just popped up, a grin slung between her ears like a double Dutch skipping rope. “Mr. Comeau? He’ll be so pleased!” then, in a whisper, “He’s been here since ’45, and I swear the old dear hasn’t had a visitor in ten years.”
She walked me through quiet, dark halls to the back of the manor. The lawn sloped down to the river. Near the bank, a nurse in a crisp white uniform was leaning over a man in a wheelchair parked under a gazebo.
“There he is! Oh, he’ll be thrilled.” The lady hellooooooed to the nurse, who waved me over.
It was a hot day, but Alvin Comeau was in a full dark suit, his head drooping and his tongue hanging out as if he was trying to lick something off his burgundy bow tie.
“Well, Alvie, looks like we have company.” The nurse had a good figure, but her lipstick scared me. “What can we do you for?”
“I’d like to have a little ch
at with Mr. Comeau, if that’s okay. About Howell’s. Someone told me he used to work there.”
“A chat.” Her laugh sounded like a car on a cold morning. “A bit late for that. Not much goes in anymore. But have a go at it. He might surprise us.”
I knelt down in front of him and tried to catch his attention.
“Mr. Comeau?” His eyes stayed blank, but his lips tried to move. They reminded me of the fatty parts on a boiled ham. “I was given a coat…”
“No, no, no. That’s never going to work.” The nurse muscled me out of the way and shouted, “ALVIE!” as if she was calling him in from somewhere out behind the barn. “THERE’S MY BOY! YOU GOT A VISITOR. WANTS TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT HOWELL’S.”
He lifted his head at that, and she swung her hand toward him like a waiter showing me to a table. “Breathe from your diaphragm and aim at the back of the room. He’s deaf as a post.”
I knelt back down in front of him and hollered hello. A light turned on behind his pale blue eyes.
“I know you,” he mumbled, a long, sticky pause between each word.
“I don’t think so,” I shouted. “I’m new to town.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Just smile and nod,” the nurse said. “He gets a bit confused.”
“I was given this coat.” I opened the package and laid it on his lap.
He put his hand on it, looked up at me and smiled. “I made it.”
“Yes, you were quite a tailor in your day, weren’t you, Alvie? Tell her about the suit you made for the governor general.”
Alvie smiled and jawed the air. I didn’t want him to tell me about the suit he made for the governor general.
“Did you make many like this?” I yelled.