Clara Callan (18 page)

I told him of your concerns about a possible war in Europe, but he doesn’t think it will happen. He says the French will back down on this Rhineland business and the Germans will get their way. According to him, Hitler has as many friends in France and England as he has in his
own country. He also said the Olympic Games are taking place in Germany this summer, so they’re not going to start a war in the middle of all that. I don’t know much about these things, so I’ll take his word for it.

Lewis tried to get tickets on the Italian liner
Rex
, but it was already booked for the dates he wanted, so we’ll be going on an American ship (but with an Italian crew) called
Genoa Princess
. It’s not nearly as expensive as the
Rex
and it’s fairly new. If you want to pay half your fare, fine, but it really isn’t necessary. We’re leaving on Saturday, July 18, and you and I will return on August 24, so you’ll have time to get ready for school. Lewis, of course, will go on to Paris and Berlin. I told Evelyn and Howard Friessen, and while the agency isn’t exactly happy that I’m going to be away so long, Evelyn has assured them that she can “write the show around me.” I don’t know what will happen to Alice during those weeks, but leave it to Evy, she’ll come up with something.

Now about clothes — I wouldn’t worry. If you come down a few days ahead of our sailing date, we can find some things for you. Leave it to me. I don’t imagine there’d be too much in Linden Ladies’ Wear that would be all that “chic” on the promenade deck of the
Genoa Princess
. Lewis is now working on an itinerary and it looks as if we’ll be visiting Rome, Florence and Venice. Just imagine, Clara!!! Four months from now, we’ll be in Rome. We’ll have lots of time to look around for your count or duke or prince. Why settle for anything less than a prince?

Love, Nora

The entire village is listening to the drama of the three trapped miners in Nova Scotia. The poor men are two miles beneath the Atlantic Ocean and have been down there now for five days. That is so hard to believe. After listening to the radio news this evening, I lay in bed seeing those men in all that darkness, breathing coal dust with the
weight of the ocean above them. I suffered an attack of nerves there in the darkness and had trouble breathing. I have had these attacks before, but never one so acute. Finally, I had to turn on the bedside lamp. Slept then for a while. Children too are caught up in this drama and Milton made himself the most popular man in Whitfield, among the schoolchildren at least, by bringing a radio to the school. This afternoon we all listened to the announcer describing how the rescuers are trying to reach the men.

The miners are still alive and are actually being fed soup through a tube that has been threaded down a hole. Amid so much gloomy news these days, this is a remarkably heartening story.

After 240 hours underground, two men (one of them a doctor) have been rescued. It was the most exciting event I have ever listened to. Assigned a composition for the pupils in Senior Second. Asked them to write on the rescue of the miners and the role that hope and courage play as qualities in daily life. When I told Milton, he was so taken with the idea that he decided to assign the same to his Senior Fourth. We decided we would give prizes to the winners.

Dear Clara,

Have you been following the story of the miners up in Nova Scotia? Wasn’t that something? I’m so glad they got those fellows out. It was in all the papers down here.

Speaking of stories, Evelyn has come up with a wonderful idea for the show while we are off gallivanting in Europe this summer. And maybe it would be a good idea if you didn’t mention this to anybody in Whitfield, because we want to make the show as realistic as possible. What’s going to happen is that Alice will suffer this minor accident (actually she is going to slip on the library steps and fall, hitting her head). She loses her memory and wanders away. Our dependable down-to-earth Alice just wanders away because, of course, she is not herself. Where has she gone? Everyone in Meadowvale is looking for her. What has happened? Has she been harmed? These are some of the questions listeners are bound to be asking themselves while you and I are having fun in Europe. Then Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim hire a private detective to find her. He turns out to be a handsome guy, but a bit of a scamp, and, of course, Effie falls for him.

By the time I get back, Alice will be found, just how and where we don’t know yet, neither does E., for that matter. Then Alice will have to untangle Effie’s affair with the private detective. Dr. Cal, of course, will help her. Everyone now thinks that Alice’s disappearance will be a great boost for the summer audience, which tends to drop a bit. It turns out that going away in July may be the best thing for the show thanks to Evy’s imagination. So, can I please ask you not to say who you are going to Italy with? Maybe you could tell people you are travelling with an old friend from your Normal School days or something. I hate to ask you to fib like this, but I’m sure you understand. It’s just that people take the program so seriously that we have “to keep their illusions intact,” to quote E. Hope you’re well and looking forward to this summer as much as I am.

Love, Nora

Dear Nora,

Fear not, sister. Your little secret is safe with me. The ladies of Whitfield can look forward to a summer fraught with delicious anxiety over Alice’s whereabouts while you and I and Mr. Mills cavort in Signor Mussolini’s land. Actually, I haven’t yet told anyone that I am going to Italy, but when I do I will say that I am travelling with a group from my Normal School days, class of 1922. We are the ones who, after years of frantic searching, have yet to find husbands and are now not likely to (alas); to console ourselves we are going to Italy to gawk at churches and galleries and eat ice cream. How does that sound? You must not for a minute worry about asking me to fib. I am really capable of the most outrageous lies, and there is something undeniably intoxicating about deceiving the Ida Atkinses of this world.

Our spring has been cool and damp and I long for sunlight and warmth. But everything is greening and rather wonderful. Yes, all of us listened to the Moose River Mine cave-in and it was heartening when those men were saved. A bit of good news for a change. All one hears on the radio these days is the threat of another war in Europe. I hope Mr. Mills is right about things over there. Best as always,

Clara

“Let us talk about happiness,” I said to Marion this afternoon. She had come around with some cake for me. Mother Webb, it seems, had been baking all day. Pies and cakes and tarts, a veritable bakery’s output. So Marion had brought some of her mother’s cake and I was grateful. I made some tea and we sat at the kitchen table. A nondescript day of cloud and showers. Happiness had been on my mind for days: its various aspects, its defining elements and so on. Why are some people happier than others? Could happiness more or less depend on one’s
disposition? A beggar, for example, may be cheerful and a wealthy man morose according to their temperaments. Even so, circumstances must surely play a role. Unless you are a madman or a saint, it would be hard to be happy if you were deprived of warmth and shelter and food; if you were in constant pain or had no expectation that matters would improve. All this was going through my mind when Marion came by, making her way along the hall, punishing
my floorboards with her preposterous tread. Her dark bangs were damp from the rain and she looked both pitiful and lovely sitting down beside me.

“Let us talk about happiness,” I said. “What makes you happy, Marion?”

Her beautiful dark eyes widened at once in wonder and alarm. What was Clara up to now? Was this another of her little games?
Honestly, Clara, I never know how to take you
. I could see that statement in her face. And why wouldn’t she be suspicious? How many times since childhood have I been cruelly playful with her?

“Let’s write a letter to the Prince of Wales,” I remember proposing that one listless summer afternoon on the veranda steps. We were twelve or thirteen. Together we would write a letter to the handsome young prince who would be our next King. A look of adoration in Marion’s eyes. “Oh yes, Clara, let’s.”

Her job was to make a list of questions for the prince, and she sat all afternoon beneath the maple tree with her paper and pencil. I went into the house and Father asked me to do something; I’ve forgotten now what. But when Marion showed me her questions, I only shrugged. By then I had lost interest or perhaps even forgotten about the project.

“I don’t want to do that now. When you really think about it, Marion, it’s a stupid idea.”

I’m sure I said something like that before her crushed and tearful look.

It was hardly surprising then to watch her slowly weigh my questions this afternoon. “What do you mean, Clara? I don’t get it.”

“There’s nothing to get,” I said, helping myself to another piece of matrimony cake. “It’s just a simple question. Well, maybe not so simple,” I said.

“What in the world are you talking about?”

Yes! What in the world was I talking about? Besides, I already know what makes Marion happy.

— singing in the choir of Whitfield United Church on Sunday mornings
— the novels of Ellen Glasgow and A. J. Cronin
— Rudy Vallee crooning “My Time is Your Time”
— “The House on Chestnut Street,” “Just Plain Bill,” “The Goldbergs,” “Vic and Sade,” “The Fleischman Hour”
— sitting in the kitchen with me on Saturday afternoon eating matrimony cake

I then told her that I was going to Italy this summer with some old chums from Normal School.

“Gosh, Clara. Italy!”

“Yep.”

“I’d be so frightened to cross that ocean.”

“Me too.”

“Then why are you going?”

“Just for the hell of it.”

“Clara, really!”

Dear Charlie,

It’s a year now to the day. Remember? No, of course you don’t. How could you be expected to remember fifteen minutes from a busy year? Oh, you may vaguely recall ____ing some woman in a ditch by the railway tracks, but so what? It wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last,
will it? But I remember, Charlie. I remember that cool sunlit spring day and you walking towards me along the railway tracks and the boy with his bad eye and broken shoe. You came upon me like that, and I remember how you burned my wrists with your grip as you twirled me around in that grass. And now I am wondering how many others like me will lie awake at night and curse the hour you wandered into our lives?

Who will it be today? I see a fifteen-year-old girl and the farm where her father has hired you for a few days. And don’t you get along well with the family! You’re such a polite and amusing fellow. “He’ll be all right if I tell him what to do.” The words of the girl’s father to his wife. They let you sleep on an old sofa in a corner of the barn.

“Why this is just fine, Missus. Don’t you worry about me. I’ll just be as snug as a bug here. It’s all a working man needs.” And the girl is taken with you, isn’t she? She’s not very bright and she hasn’t any friends and she likes to have you around. She likes your kidding when she’s feeding the chickens. “The Exhibition! Sure I been to the Exhibition. Why, Thelma, you should see the rides they got down there! They got a Ferris wheel. You ever seen a Ferris wheel, Thelma? Why it must be the biggest in the world. And you know what, Thelma? I worked on that Ferris wheel last summer.”

You can charm a simple girl like Thelma, can’t you? And when all is said and done, you’re not such a bad-looking fellow when you’re scrubbed up and wearing a clean shirt. That wide monkey mouth is always full of jokes and stories. And today Mr. and Mrs. have gone into town for the afternoon. You watch the truck go down the lane, and then you watch Thelma at the clothesline, rising on her toes to pin the sheets. And isn’t that a pretty sight, the backs of those bare legs and the round little rump in the cotton dress! Why, yes it is, and when she is finished you call out, “Come down here for a minute, Thelma, I got something to show you.” And here she comes, wary but fascinated too. And you show her the little bird you whittled from a stick last
evening. “Look at that now! Isn’t it pretty? I wish I could make it sing for you, Thelma.” That line surely beguiles the girl, and before you know it, the tomfoolery begins.

Everything starts with the tomfoolery, doesn’t it? The banter and the laughter and the tickling. “I’ll bet you got a funny bone somewheres, Thelma. I’ll just bet you have. Now where is that old Mister Funny Bone? Where is he hiding?” So Charlie’s courting dance begins and just listen to Thelma’s laughter. And why not? Somebody is paying attention to her. A little harmless fun on a spring afternoon when there is no one else around. “Give us a little kiss, Thelma. You’ll like it. You just see if you don’t.” That prying wheedling voice and those bony wrists of yours. Around and around and around you go there in the dust of the farmyard. And how in the world did things come to this pass? There you both are on that sofa in a corner of the barn, the dusty sunlight in the doorway and isn’t that just a glimmer of fear now in Thelma’s eyes? She wasn’t quite counting on this, was she, Charlie? Being pulled down on the musty old sofa next
to you? But the line has been crossed, hasn’t it? The line was crossed when you stood there looking at the backs of her bare legs ten minutes ago. And you are not a man who takes no for an answer, so we might just as well get on with this, right, Charlie? “There now, little girl, it’s going to be just fine. You’ll like it. We’ll have some fun here, yes we will. Oh my, look at this now. Yes, yes, I’m gonna ____ you, Thelma, and you’re gonna love it. Yes, yes, you will, you pretty little thing.”

Do you know what you are, Charlie? You are a grief-monger, purveying sadness and remorse across the land. In my dreams, I have seen you bent across this girl or someone like her, and I have brought the axe down upon your skull (waking once with such a cry because my hand had struck the wall). Oh, in my dreams I have done you in, Charlie, murdered you with mattock or coal shovel, dragged your body into bushes where only flies and maggots would ever find you. Yet none of this will happen. You will die a peaceful man in some far-off year (say 1977), a skinny frail old fellow in a charity ward, fussed
over by the nurses who love your joking manner. That’s how it will end for you, Charlie. There in a narrow hospital bed with clean sheets, surrounded by attentive women who see only “a sweet old guy who always has a smile and a story.” But not all your stories get told, do they, Charlie?