On the final day of the course, Red taught the men various ways to make winter shelters. Alice Donnelly’s first birthday was celebrated with fifty parka-clad men building a snow house at Hiawatha.
CHAPTER 46
The winter course ended in March 1941. Training the Americans had been Red’s one bright spot. He wanted his team to stop at Still Bay before returning to Fort Brady. There they could experience a practical example of how a frozen lake could support the weight of Belgian horses. It seemed a miracle to the young recruits that the huge beasts didn’t go through the quickly melting ice when the daily average temperature hovered around freezing. The horses, with their blond manes flipping back and forth across their thick necks, trotted out onto the ice without a moment’s hesitation. They had done this year after year.
“Could ice fishing be on the course next year?” a recruit asked.
“Absolutely,” Red said. “Feeding yourself in winter will be part of your survival. Currently, your country’s divided on whether to join the war. This course shows the foresight of your leaders.”
No one in the course anticipated that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor eight months later, bringing the United States into the conflict.
Red’s mood was noticeably more cheerful after the course at Hiawatha Park. “If the boys are posted, they will be safer for what I’ve taught them.”
“I’m so happy to hear those words,” Ivy said, kissing Red before he could respond. She saw a summer of happiness before her.
In June, the Ivy League, the twenty-seven-foot cruiser Red had purchased at the Toronto boat show, arrived and was docked in Gawas Bay. He and Ivy cruised around Lake Huron with Alice in a makeshift crib. The cottage wasn’t livable yet, so home was on the boat. They caught fish for dinner and cooked them on a small propane stove. Alice was mobile but had learned what the word no meant. She was an easy child. Ivy rinsed her nappies in the lake, and Red revved up the engine and they moved on, leaving the mess behind.
Blueberries were abundant by August. Big Beau had been rejected for his flat feet and hyperextened knee joints. Thus, he and Betty became regular passengers on the Ivy League. They had no children and loved to look after Alice while Red and Ivy dived in the lake for a swim. Anne, with a basket of gourmet food, arrived for a weekend driven by her father’s chauffeur. Her parents were delighted to have Daniel on their own. After Anne recounted the last letter she had received from Tom, conversation turned to rising numbers of local casualties and the escalation of the war. On the surface, it seemed that Red had accepted his fate, but Ivy still worried.
In October, Red took the Ivy League through the locks and put the cruiser in dry dock at Michipicoten Harbour. When he returned, he was soon off hunting with his youngest brother, Ian. His usual partner, Geordie, was overseas. Ivy could feel Red’s despair as they skinned their animals in the garage. He didn’t have the same camaraderie with young Ian as he’d had with Geordie.
In the fall of 1941, Red received a call from Max Laird’s mother. Max had been Red’s best man. Mrs. Laird was calling to tell Red that Max’s plane had been shot down over Germany in a night raid.
“No one on Max’s flight survived,” Mrs. Laird said, controlling her voice.
Although Red had seen little of his best man since the wedding, he was as despondent as he had been when he returned from Niagara Falls after the incident in the dining room at the Royal York. He spent a week in Toronto visiting Max’s family and on his return rehired Nancy Stratichuk.
“I thought we’d been through this, Red,” Ivy said. “Every day I’ll wonder exactly what she’s doing in your office.”
“She’s learned her lesson,” Red said.
CHAPTER 47
Every week another friend from Red’s Sault Collegiate days or a worker at Donnelly Building Materials would come to say goodbye, dressed in uniform. “We know you tried to enlist,” they always said.
“I feel I’ve been shamed by the military,” Red lamented. “The doctor in Niagara Falls said, ‘I suppose you feel lucky,’ while I feel jinxed.”
After the Dunkirk evacuation in the spring of 1940, Red spiralled down emotionally. Ivy found him hunched over, repairing the inboard motor of the Ivy League, head in his hands.
“I should’ve been overseas fixing boats rather than sitting in a comfortable office,” he said tearfully.
Ivy was at a loss for words.
Red put on a brave face during the hastily arranged wedding of his friend Jeff Wilkes to Ruth Cohen in the upstairs of Allen’s Ladies Wear. Jeff was heading overseas. The presiding rabbi and Anglican priest prayed emotionally, not only for the happiness of the young couple but also for the safety of the Jews in Europe.
Red didn’t stay for the reception but returned home to look out at the garden he had excavated for Ivy and weep.
Death tolls increased drastically after the Dieppe Raid in the summer of 1942, and Ivy thanked God the doctors had spotted Red’s scar where his kidney had been removed.
Joining Kathryn Derrer’s “war machine” mitigated the turmoil Ivy felt about her marriage. Kathryn had organized the young wives whose husbands were overseas into a team for the efficient distribution of packages. The war machine worked from the same place as the clothing depot but expanded to handle more volunteers. Anne Rossiter fitted in comfortably with the well-intentioned ladies. She surprised them by suggesting that Shingwauk boys who went overseas should have letters, too. Reverend Hives gave Anne the names of the former students who had enlisted so she could send notes of encouragement.
“I’m writing these in Oji-Cree,” Anne said to the gawking ladies. “They might laugh at my mistakes, but I hope they appreciate my intent.”
“Your father will be proud of you, Anne,” Ivy said.
Anne laughed. “He expects and never flatters.”
Across the city, many imaginative ways to raise funds were emerging. Jessie Rossiter and Clara organized a series of contract bridge tournaments to raise money for the war effort. They had both experienced the Great War. Jessie related memories from her year in Great Windsor Park at the end of the previous war, hobnobbing with minor royals. Clara’s experience in London hadn’t been so entertaining, since she nursed severely wounded and dying soldiers. The bridge games were intended to raise the spirits of the players as well as money for the soldiers overseas. Clara also possessed an unexpressed gratitude that Red wasn’t in the war. At the same time, she worried about his self-destructive choice to spend and spend and spend. First the Gawas Bay property, then an expensive boat, and finally the mixing trucks, she thought. Clara worried that Red was expanding the business too fast.
The distribution ladies liked to congregate at Ivy’s to play bridge and share their letters from overseas. Red would stay to greet Ivy’s friends and then take off. The bridge players were effusive, telling Red how lucky they were to have him around. Ivy was pained to see the cloud spread over Red’s handsome face. When he returned late in the evening, he showered and went straight to bed.
“I’ll never get pregnant with your snoring,” Ivy said.
Red obliged, but Ivy wept in the aftermath of lovemaking that lacked the passion of their early marriage. She lay in bed imagining the loneliness of her friends whose husbands were overseas. Yet she imagined she was lonelier than they were.
CHAPTER 48
Chas and Dot Greer, a few years older than Ivy, moved into the large unoccupied house at the corner of Pim Street and Hilltop Crescent in the fall of 1942. Ivy was delighted to have a friend down the street. Dot grew up in the Soo and left to study nursing at Toronto General Hospital where she met Chas, a post-surgical resident. Sir James Dunn, known as a hypochondriac, hired the newly graduated Chas as his personal physician. Sir James quipped that he needed to be fit for his much younger bride. He enticed Chas to move to Northern Ontario, giving him the Pim Hill house that was listed as an Algoma Steel asset. Chas was immediately appointed chief of staff at General Hospital with a staff of over twenty
. The couple had two young children when they arrived, and Dot was expecting a third.
Dot’s father, D.T. Walker, was the school inspector in the Soo. Although D.T. wasn’t responsible for residential school inspections, Clara remembered when he had circumvented the rules to help her find appropriate desks for smaller students. They had become friends, and it was a nice coincidence for Clara that his daughter would be her neighbour. Chas had fewer patients, given his executive responsibilities at the hospital. However, he did accept to be Clara’s personal doctor when she asked.
Free of a house mortgage, Chas was in a position to purchase a hundred-acre farm on St. Joseph Island. It took only one day spent on Red’s cruiser circling the island to convince Chas that, despite the inconvenience of the ferry, he wanted to buy the farm. Red and Ivy’s renovated log cabin was at the opposite end of the island. Once Dot and Chas had set up the farm, they invited Red and Ivy to come for lunch. The pair travelled by car rather than in the Ivy League, since the Greers hadn’t put in a dock.
“There’s a wooden sign at the entrance to our driveway,” Chas had warned. “Watch for it, or you’ll end up in Richard’s Landing.”
Ivy spotted the sign, and Red turned off onto a rough road through a magnificent white birch forest. They drove for about a mile before they reached the open fields where the tractor was parked. After another half mile, they spotted the fieldstone house where the Greers waved from the steps.
Chas had bought the farm at an estate sale, and the purchase had included a Massey-Ferguson tractor with a three-point hitch and another piece of farming equipment. Dot wanted Chas to put the equipment back up for auction, but he refused. According to Chas, the land included sixty acres of woods, forty acres of fields, and a thousand feet on the shoreline.
“Not a typical farm,” he loved saying, “with access to a beach.”
It was noon when Ivy and Red arrived, and Dot suggested they eat before the men took off to explore the property.
“What are your plans for the house?” Red asked as they ate the cold meats and potato salad Ivy had brought.
“I’d like to build a whole new footprint,” Chas said. “And keep the original building as a nostalgic reminder.”
“Do you plan to do any farming?” Red asked.
Chas chuckled. “I’m the gentleman sort. I don’t have any idea how to run the tractor, but it looks good in the field. There’s a round thing behind that looks like a mower.”
“That’s called a brush hog,” Red said. “It does rough cutting. Will you let me have a go?”
Chas nodded enthusiastically. The men hurried through lunch, leaving the ladies to clean up. Dot’s helper, a young girl from Richard’s Landing, took charge of the children.
“I should check the oil before we start her up,” Red said.
“Are tractors feminine?” Chas asked.
“Ships and machines. I’ve grown up with machines and knowing how they work. And you?”
“My family was in finance.”
Red inserted the dipstick to check the level of oil, then levered himself behind the wheel, with Chas climbing up beside him. A few pushes on the starter, and the old tractor sputtered to life. After lurching a few yards, Red got the rhythm and started methodically down the field.
“Why, it’s cutting the grass!” Chas said, excited to see the overgrown weeds looking tidy. “Let me have a go!”
The men switched places. Chas went to pull the choke, and Red stopped him. “You’ll flood the engine. Just press the starter.”
The men brush-hogged the entire field and then headed back to the house to show Dot that Chas was driving. She had been skeptical about keeping a tractor that would never be used on the property. She grinned, and her dark eyes showed how much she adored Chas.
“We’re all sweaty,” Chas said. “We need to go for a swim.”
The ladies went into the house and came back with towels and bathing suits. The four of them headed down the steep hill that led to the water. At the shore, there was a rustic cabin that the men conceded to the girls, while they went behind it. Dot and Ivy came out clad in swimwear and bathing caps to the sight of two barebummed men diving into the water.
CHAPTER 49
Nancy Stratichuk had been working in Red’s office when she unexpectedly quit in 1943. Ivy was expecting a second child.
Red arrived home in the middle of the day and again blasted Ivy. “Nancy was a good secretary, and I need her.”
Ivy guessed what had happened. Clara must have interfered in some way again, she thought. She put her hands on her newly pregnant belly to calm herself. “Alice, go upstairs and play.”
Red waited for Alice to get to the top of the stairs before exploding. “Your mother threatened to expose Nancy’s past. That’s blackmail!”
“Do you want someone in your office with a past?” Ivy was hurt by Red’s loyalty to a secretary. “I’m sure my mother has her reasons to threaten Nancy.”
“I have to run my own business, Ivy. If she interferes again, she won’t be welcome in this house. The next secretary I hire won’t speak to Clara.”
It was a cold November day, so Ivy bundled four-year-old Alice in a winter jacket and put on her own ill-fitting coat before crossing the street to Clara’s. Her mother was playing solitaire at her desk, which overlooked the street, and she seemed to be expecting Ivy.
Clara sighed as though it were her last breath. “Go and look in Granny’s trunk,” she told Alice. This was a regular routine. Alice would go to Clara’s immaculate basement, open the trunk, and come back with a treasure. Her favourite item was a child’s woollen coat with a pair of small rubber boots marked “Billy.” Each time Clara would tell Alice the same story. “There was a little boy who loved to garden. He especially loved roses.” Alice wasn’t allowed to remove the preserved pressed rose in the trunk. “The boy’s name was Billy, and he wanted to own a nursery one day and be surrounded by flowers. He died when he caught the flu and went to heaven where he’s surrounded by toys.”
“Can I go to heaven?” Alice would ask with each telling.
“Not for a very long time,” Clara would answer.
“Why are you crying, Mommy?” Alice now asked.
“Go back down to the trunk while I talk with your mother,” Clara said to her granddaughter.
Ivy sat on a chair opposite her mother.
“Nancy Stratichuk is an extortionist,” Clara began. “She was working for a doctor as his receptionist. When she became pregnant, she accused the doctor and threatened to tell his wife unless he paid her. The doctor had never had a relationship with Nancy. He gave Nancy a tidy sum, and she left quietly.”
“Why would he do that if he weren’t the father?”
“Even an untrue accusation can wreak havoc in a marriage,” Clara replied. “Nancy knows everything about Donnelly Building Materials’ finances. Who knows what she could extract from Red? That’s why I said I’d expose her if she didn’t quit voluntarily.”
Ivy’s moss-green eyes, identical to Clara’s, filled again with tears. Red would keep Nancy despite her bad character, Ivy thought miserably. “I don’t understand Red since the war began. He’s wounded without having gone overseas. What does war mean to Red?”
Alice returned to the living room, still gripping the baby outfit, and wiped Ivy’s tears.
“It means manliness,” Clara said. “An evil person like Nancy knows that.”
Clara resigned herself to being persona non grata in Red’s house. She needed a new focus in order to stop worrying about Ivy. When she discovered William Martin, the Shingwauk boy whose hair she had deloused, was being treated by Chas Greer at General Hospital, she went to see him.
William was in the veterans’ ward with much older men. He must still be in his teens, Clara thought. I imagine he lied about his age.
“Do you remember me?” Clara asked.
William had a grown-up smile. “You’re Matron Durling, the lady who told me my hair would grow back.�
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Clara tugged his braid. “It did. Did your commander yell, ‘Follow the braid’?”
“He called it a ponytail.” William had the same soft voice and questioning eyes he’d had at the school delousing ceremony.
When Chas came in to check on his patient, he was pleased to see his neighbour. Clara never passed the Greer house without a bag of food scraps for Chas’s three English setters.
“William can’t remain in the hospital to wait for further surgery,” Chas told Clara. “It was hard convincing the nuns to take yet another unbaptized patient. I understand from Sister Marie Claire that you were quite persuasive when you worked at Shingwauk.”
Chas had the twinkle in his eye that Clara loved in her doctor. She chuckled. “That’s true.”
“William wants to go home to Batchawana to be with his grandfather.”
“Albert Martin was a decorated soldier, but I can’t vouch for his housekeeping,” Clara reported. “Why don’t I give William a room until the next operation?”
“Excellent, though, of course, he’ll have to agree to the arrangement. The dressing must be changed every two days.”
“I’ll leave you to make the suggestion. If he agrees, I’ll have my tenant, Sergeant Stuart, pick him up at the hospital.”
Once William assented to the living arrangement, Clara wanted to send Albert Martin a message that his grandson was being well looked after. Red would be hunting near the Batchewana Reserve, but he wasn’t inclined to be Clara’s postman.
“I would have thought Red could bury the hatchet,” Clara told Ivy indignantly. “Albert will be worried about his grandson. I’ll deliver the message myself,” she huffed. “Such pettiness on Red’s part. I’d rather we have our differences out in a good fight.”
Patchwork Society Page 18