Emancipation Day (5 page)

But if you didn’t know better, if you forgot you were in the Knights of Columbus Hostel in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and if you squinted up at the stage through the smoke and the darkness and the dancing couples, well, you might think it was Frank Sinatra up there, but you’d have to wonder what Frank Sinatra was doing in St. John’s, looking like a lost kid. That was the difference—the real Frank Sinatra never looked lost.

Since she was at the K of C dance as a volunteer, selling lunches to raise money for the war effort, during the break she took a tray of sandwiches and tea to the band in the back room. The King’s Men, they called themselves. They were drinking beer, which wasn’t allowed but she didn’t say anything. They were from the Navy Band down at HMCS
Avalon
. She’d seen them many times, parading back and forth from the base to the dockyards whenever a convoy sailed. They looked right smart in their dark blue uniforms, with white puttees and dickie fronts. But St. John’s was full of men from away, and a girl had to be careful. She served him last, when there were just two halves left on the tray. By the time she got to him, she’d worked herself
into a fine tizzy. He looked at her and she felt caught. There was only the tray between them.

He pointed at the sandwiches and asked, “What kind are they?”

“Fish. Mary Parsons made them and she’s Catholic.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

Mainlanders didn’t know much, did they. “The fish is left over from last night,” she said. “Friday,” she added when he looked at her blankly.

“Leftover fish,” he said. “And tea.” He took a swig from his beer bottle. “Just like home.”

From close up he was handsome as all get out. His eyes seemed to pull her in and she had trouble keeping the tray straight. He was a bit wound up, she could tell that, it might be from being on stage but she hoped it was from being near her. He was tanned, like a fisherman, maybe he came from somewhere warm. She sensed a need in him that she liked because she thought it was a need she could fulfill. Everyone had needs, her parents, her sister, her younger brother, but satisfying their needs was something she had to do, she didn’t have a choice in the matter. With this man, though, this stranger, she felt in her body that his were needs she would be happy to look after. His woollen uniform had dark stains down the back and his white dickie was soaked. She almost asked if he wanted her to find him a towel.

“You eat a lot of fish where you come from, do you?” she said, surprised that her voice was working.

“Enough.”

“Where’s it come from, then?”

“From a can.”

“You mean from a tin.”

“Yeah, from a tin can,” he said. “How come your skin is so white? Don’t you ever get any sun?”

“This is Newfoundland, Mr. Lewis. Have you seen any sun lately?” She should have called him Ordinary Seaman Lewis, but that sounded vulgar.

“My name’s Jack,” he said, holding out his hand. There was an awkward moment as she shifted the tray to her left hand and shook his with her right. His felt cold and bony, as if she were shaking a frog. It didn’t repel her, though. It told her he was as nervous as she was.

“I’ll call you Jack Tar,” she said.

“That’s a sailor, ain’t it? That’s me, then. Jack Tar,” and he sang: “
I was born upon the deep blue sea
.”

He hadn’t been, she thought. He hadn’t been anywhere near the sea before. And she hadn’t been anywhere else. “Well,” she said, “if you don’t want a sandwich …” She began turning from him.

“Wait.” He reached out and held his hand a few inches from her chest, pretending to be choosing a sandwich. “They both look so nice,” he said, looking up at her and smiling into her eyes. He thinks I’m a V-girl. Am I? Her arms ached from holding the tray, but she couldn’t move. She could feel the heat from his hand through her blouse. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“I’ll never tell.”

“Come on, I’ll bet I can guess.”

“Go ahead and try.”

“Lily White.”

“No,” she said. “It’s Vivian. Vivian Clift.” It was only part of her name, but it was close enough.

Finally he looked down at her tray and took a sandwich. She almost stepped back, as though he had let go of her. “Thanks for the grub, Vivian Clift. Got a song you like? I’ll sing it for you next set.”

But she couldn’t think of a song she liked, couldn’t think of any song at all, not even one she didn’t like. Her mind was still on his hand, its heat. “I’m not staying,” she said. “I’ve got to get home.”

“Too bad,” he said, biting into his sandwich. “How much for the sandwich?”

“It’s on the house,” she said.

“Thanks.” He washed the sandwich down with the last of his beer. “See you around, then, Lily White.”

Not since she was a girl had she been dismissed so suddenly, as though she had failed a simple test. All the way home, as she crossed Buckmaster’s Field and walked along Duckworth and up Admiralty Road, the street lights out and the houses and storefronts dark in the blackout, she remembered tons of songs she liked. They rolled off her tongue like the names of her father’s ships. “Always.” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” “I’m in
the Mood for Love.” What a dolt she was. “That Old Black Magic.” “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.” It wasn’t as though she liked him. He was exactly like Frank Sinatra after all. Vain. Full of himself. Dangerous. She liked the lost little boy on stage, not the bantam rooster in the back room. “I’ll Be Seeing You.” “People Will Say We’re in Love.” “You Stepped Out of a Dream.” Oh, shut up!

The next Saturday night when the announcer at VONF, the radio station that broadcast the K of C dances, introduced the King’s Men and asked listeners to call in with requests, she rang at the start of the broadcast. Her fingers trembled so much she could hardly dial. “Tell Newfoundland’s newest singing sensation that it’s Lily White on the line,” she said to the woman who answered. “Tell him she wants to hear ‘Till We Meet Again.’ ”

He rang the house the next morning, one of the other girls had given him her number. She was at work at Baird’s department store and her sister, Iris, answered. “Are all the girls in your family named after flowers?” he’d asked her sister, and Iris hadn’t known what he was talking about. She said he sounded coarse and had a funny accent, but she still told him where Vivian worked, and he turned up at Baird’s just before noon to ask her out for lunch. Strange, but he seemed smaller standing up, not much taller than she was and she was only five-two. He’d had a tailor alter his uniform by widening the bell-bottoms; they were so wide that in the ladies’ wear department outside the
accounts office he looked like he was trying on a long woollen skirt. She told him so and he laughed. “I’m afraid of drowning,” he said. “With these cuffs I can get my pants off quicker if I fall overboard.”

“That’s fine talk,” she said. “Here we are, only just met, and you talking about taking your trousers off.”

My God, what was he going to think? To cover her embarrassment, she told him that Newfoundland men wore hip boots when they went to sea. “When a man falls overboard,” she said, “his boots fill with water and carry him to the bottom.”

Jack said, “Oh,” as if he were in pain, and stopped, clapped both hands to his stomach and bent over. She touched his back. It was like touching the flank of a wild animal.

“Are you all right?”

“Why don’t they just learn to swim?” he gasped. His face had gone white. “What would be the point of swimming,” she said, “if your boat went down fifty miles from shore?”

He took her to a restaurant on Water Street, a workingman’s café, narrow and dark and smelling of stale beer and fried fish. There was the rattle of cutlery on thick china and a drone of people talking, like the low sound of airplanes flying overhead. He led her through a pall of tobacco smoke to a booth at the back, almost at the kitchen door. Some of the other booths were filled with men from her father’s warehouse, which was just down the street. “Afternoon, miss,” they said, one after another,
tugging at their cloth caps. They eyed Jack with suspicion, a fella from away with a local girl. Her father was ninety miles south in Ferryland, but he would know about this by suppertime.

“You have a lot of men friends,” Jack said when they were seated.

“Jealous?” she asked.

“Naw, not me.”

He’d taken off his cap and set it on the bench beside him, and his tightly waved, brilliantined hair shone in the dim light. He took a comb from his pocket and drew it over his temple, watching her, and then put it in an inside pocket of his tunic. She cleared her throat.

“The men work for my father,” she said.

“All of them?”

“Most of them.”

He whistled. “And here I thought you were just a typing clerk at Baird’s.”

“No you didn’t,” she said. “Whoever gave you my telephone number must have told you who I was.”

“Naw,” he said. “All I did was look up Lily White in the directory.”

“Liar.”

But she laughed and he reached across the table for her hand. There it was again, that need, “
Let me have this
,” but she no longer thought he was just being fresh. He had a musician’s hands, so thin his knuckles looked like walnuts in the fingers of a leather glove.

“What are you doing in St. John’s?” he asked.

What was anybody doing in St. John’s? “Living with my sister and her husband Freddie, and the twins.” She withdrew her hand. She didn’t want him touching her. Well, she did, but not here, not like this, not yet. “Is your band playing at the hostel again tonight?”

“You bet. Have you thought of another song you like?”

“Anything will do,” she said.

“Sorry, don’t know that one.”

She laughed. God, she was giddy as a spring lamb. But he laughed, too. “I’ll probably be busy at home tonight, anyway.”

Playing with him like this was a dangerous game, like jumping from ice pan to ice pan in the Ferryland harbour. Watch your step, girl.

“Are those waves natural?” he asked.

“Are yours?” she countered.

“Naw,” he said, sitting back. “That’s what Brylcreem’s for.” He took the comb from his pocket and ran it through his hair again. A nervous tic. She found it reassuring.

She ended up going, of course. She gave the twins their bath and put them to bed, then put on a grey pleated skirt, her open-necked blouse with the pearl buttons and her checked tailored jacket. Very Gene Tierney. Even while she was putting on her lipstick she told Iris she wasn’t going. But she couldn’t resist the tug at her heart.

The band was already playing when she arrived at the K of C. Jack saw her come in and broke into a smile, waving to her from the stage. He wasn’t playing drums this time, he was holding a trombone and standing at the front of the stage. She waved back, wriggling her fingers idiotically. Blushing, she sat at a table by herself and watched the others dance. The floor was so crowded she lost sight of the stage, but she could hear the trombone. Someone had cut out paper stars and pasted them to the ceiling, above the steam pipes. She hadn’t noticed them before. Twice she took her turn at the service table and sold soft drinks and sandwiches and cigarettes. Maybe he would join her on his break.

It was as though she were testing herself. Not dancing with anyone, sitting alone, looking for any excuse to stand up and catch Jack’s eye and smile at him. How much of this could she take? She was almost painfully sensitive, especially to Jack and what he was doing on the stage, as though every nerve had been rubbed raw and now she was pouring salt on them. It angered her, how silly she was getting, even envying his trombone when he put his lips to it. Get a grip on yourself. But how delicate his fingers on the slide, and what a smooth moan it made when he blew into it. She tilted her head to catch his voice when he sang, to hear him through the noisy crowd around the service table, as though hers were the only ears she wanted his words to reach.

When the band took its first break, he did come down to sit with her instead of going into the back room with his mates to drink beer. His forehead glistened and his hair hung in ringlets
down one side of his face. She was conscious of the other girls watching them. Envious or resentful, she couldn’t tell. She took a hankie from her purse and put it on the table in front of him, an offering. He looked at it but didn’t pick it up. “Thanks,” he said. He lit a cigarette and drank Coca-Cola from a bottle. “Fag?” he asked her, holding out a pack of Lucky Strikes.

“No, thank you.”

“You don’t smoke? You don’t dance, either, I noticed. What else don’t you do?”

“Lots,” she said archly, then relented. “I never learned how to dance.” The truth was she didn’t like jitterbugging. She thought it was a fad that would pass, and then she’d just have to learn a new one anyway, so why bother? Instead, it kept getting more and more complicated, with the men doing the breakaway and the girls flying up into the air step to show off their nylon stockings. “Never had the right partner, I guess.”

“I could teach you. I’m a whiz at it.”

“I bet you are.”

“Used to dance with my sister back home.”

So he did have a family. “What’s her name?”

A pause. “Alvina.”

“Where’s home, then?” She realized he’d not mentioned where he was from. With most people it would have been the first thing they talked about.

“Windsor. Ever heard of it?”

“No. Where’s it at, then?”

“Across the river from Detroit.”

She wasn’t sure where Detroit was, either, but at least she’d heard of it. Something to do with motor cars. Her father bought his cars in England, brought them across strapped to the deck of one of the company’s merchant vessels. Not since the war started, of course.

“My sister and me went across to the dance halls in Detroit. They had live bands, all the big names. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Guy Lombardo. Glenn runs the American Army Air Force Band now. You ever hear them play ‘In the Mood’?”

“On the marconi, yes. It’s nice.”

“And Tommy Dorsey. I’ll play a little Tommy Dorsey for you next set. You’re staying this time, ain’t you?”

“I suppose I will.”