Emancipation Day (7 page)

He put his greatcoat on the table, then took it off the table and placed it on the floor under his chair, then put his cap on the table, then took it off the table and placed it on top of his greatcoat, where it fell to the floor. She picked it up and put it on her lap when she sat down. They decided on fish and chips. Jack took a flask from inside his tunic and topped up his glass of Coke. He offered to pour some into her teacup, but she said, “Thanks but no thanks.” She didn’t know anyone who drank in the middle of the day, not even her father.

“This place gives me the creeps,” he said, looking around the crowded room.

“Why? It’s just a train station.”

Something had changed in him. He was uncomfortable. She
wished she’d thought of somewhere more private for their first date, even Baird’s would have been better than this.

“Any one of these bums could be a spy,” he said, indicating the men in civilian dress. “On the Derry Run we sank this U-boat, see, then we had to stop and pick up the survivors. There weren’t many. We had to go out in boats and hook them out of the water. The brass wanted to know what ship they’d been attached to, for intelligence.” He paused and took a drink.

“How awful,” she said.

That mocking look had gone out of his eyes. Three long weeks at sea had taken the confidence out of him, and although she hadn’t liked his cockiness, she liked this nervousness even less.

She wondered if the German government sent out something like the
Bulletin
, if there were German women sitting in their kitchens at this very moment reading of the deaths of husbands or brothers or fiancés. Men who’d died fighting for something the women didn’t believe in. Of course there were. She wanted to take his hand, to draw him closer to her, closer than the war, and stop him from speaking these horrors. But she didn’t, and he went on.

“Some of the bodies were wearing ordinary clothes, suits, socks, ties—just like these guys. You’d think they were us, except they were German spies, going to be put ashore in Halifax or St. John’s to pose as Canadians, mingle with the sailors and GIs in the bars, get them talking, find out what their orders are. They had theatre tickets in their pockets for movies playing that week, and ration booklets, matches from St. John’s and Halifax
nightclubs. They had passports with Canadian names, home addresses in Ontario and Manitoba, letters from sweethearts, photos of wives and children.”

“Where did they get all those things?”

“From our guys who were shot in Europe, that’s where,” he said.

She gasped.

“Yeah,” he said. “Remember what I said about loose lips?” He nodded towards a group of civilians standing by the Departures sign. “They could all be spies. You can’t tell anything about a person just by the way he looks.” He looked at her for so long she thought she had missed something.

“Not you, Jack,” she said. “You’re exactly what you look like.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s right. You’re safe with me.”

She put her hand lightly on his arm.

“We could buy two tickets and be a thousand miles away by this time tomorrow,” he said. “The sky’s the limit. What do you say?”

Was that a proposal? The war had brought the world to Newfoundland, to her door. Hadn’t she wanted the world? Yes, but she wanted to leave the island to see it, not have it hauled aboard like some thrashing sea creature. And now he, too, wanted to be on the move, get off the island, see something. Where was a thousand miles away? She read down the column of figures on the Departures sign. There was a train leaving for Port-aux-Basques at one o’clock, in time to catch the late ferry to North Sydney. It didn’t seem very adventuresome, but it would be a start.

“You just got back,” she said.

“Three weeks at sea.” He shuddered. “I’m no good at it. I should have joined the Army, like them.” He looked at the American GIs with their girlfriends.

“Is Windsor a port, then?”

“Not like St. John’s. It’s on a river.”

“How do you cross the river?”

“There’s a ferry, a bridge, and a tunnel big enough to drive cars through.”

“I’d like to see that,” she said. Was she being too bold? She didn’t care. She wanted to know more about him. “What do you do in Windsor?”

“Work for my father,” he said, his voice gloomier than ever. Then he seemed to perk up. He finished his Coke, caught the waitress’s eye and ordered another. She thought she had better get back to work, but she wanted to hear about his father. “He owns a construction company in Windsor,” Jack said. He made a square with his hands, like a sign: “ ‘W. H. Lewis and Sons Limited.’ There’s me and my brother, Benny, and Dad’s brother, Uncle Harley, when we need him. If we get too many houses to do we hire more people. It’s a classy outfit. Not as big as
your
father’s, of course, but big enough. We did the Fox Theatre in Detroit. You ever hear of it?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Huge job. Took six months.”

“Do you like construction work?” she asked.

“Naw, I hate it. That’s why I took up music. Joined up as
soon as I could. To get away, see?”

“Get away from Windsor?”

“The work, the family, all that …” He stopped to light a cigarette. All that what? The waitress came with his drink. This time he drank half of it before taking his arm from her hand and refilling the glass with rum.

“Why do you want to get away from your family?” she asked.

He looked at her as though she had asked an odd question. “A fella’s got to strike out on his own.” He reached over and took her hand. “Don’t you think so?”

“This is an island, Jack. I’ve never been off it. People are born here, live here all their lives, and die without ever knowing a thing about the rest of the world. Maybe you don’t realize it, but people here look down their noses at people like you.”

He pulled his hand away as though she’d burned it.

“I don’t mean you, silly,” she said, taking his hand back. “I mean anyone from away, soldiers and sailors. They complain about you all the time, as if you’re the ones who’ve invaded us, not the Germans.” Jack took a drink with his free hand. “They don’t complain about you risking your lives to keep U-boats and spies out of our harbour, but would you mind keeping your dirty paws off our daughters, thank you?”

He looked at her blankly. She hadn’t realized how strongly she felt until she’d said it. Now indignation filled her on his behalf, the injustice of it. People like Jack should be thanked. Newfoundlanders should get down on their knees and thank God for these men.

“You’re not like them, though, are you?” he said.

“No, Jack, I’m not.”

“You don’t mind me putting my dirty paws on you?” He held one of her fingers, it was her ring finger, and rubbed his thumb gently along its side, then brushed it lightly over the little V where the finger joined the body of her hand. It made her throat throb. Maybe she was a V-girl after all.

“The war,” he said, not letting go of her hand, pressing his finger into the V. “It won’t last much longer.”

If she had wanted to, if she still had control of her limbs, she would have withdrawn her hand from his at that instant. She would have changed the subject, told him that at Baird’s they were having a special on razor blades, he should tell his buddies, or that in May the harbour at Ferryland filled with migrating birds—baccalieus, turnstones, sandpipers—and that her father was fanatical about them. But she didn’t say that. Or anything. She didn’t want him to think that his hand was dirty, or that she looked down her nose at him, and she knew by saying nothing, by letting this moment pass unremarked upon, she was saying yes to something, and that later to pretend that nothing had transpired between them would be to go back on a promise.

“I guess you’d better come over some evening,” she said, her voice trembling, “to meet Iris and Freddie and the twins.”

JACK

H
e thought he’d left family behind when he joined up and got out of Windsor, but he’d been wrong. He’d go to her house if she wanted him to, he was on his way now, wasn’t he? But he’d be damned if he was going to start comparing families with her. People from Windsor didn’t go around poking their noses into other people’s families. You never knew what might turn up.

Admiralty Road was in a good part of town. He walked with his fists stuffed into his greatcoat pockets, peering through the gathering dusk at the house numbers until he came to a gate marked 17. He’d been here before, when he walked her home after the dance, but it had been dark and his mind had been
elsewhere. He stopped, his hand on the latch of the wrought-iron gate, and looked up. Christ, the place was a fucking palace. Even the chimneys had turrets. He said he’d meet her sister, not the Queen of England. Through the gate he could see where snow had slid off the roof and piled on top of flower beds under the mullioned windows. Fuck this. It was back to the barracks for him, or down to the Caribou Club, where his mates would be swilling beer and playing darts or writing to their sweethearts, minding their own business. But he’d told Frank he had a date, so he couldn’t go back early. Everyone would think he’d been stood up. Was the gate locked from the inside to keep people like him out? He began to turn away. He was cold and his feet were wet. He was in the wrong part of town. Then, through the fence and across a narrow strip of snow-covered lawn, he saw a blackout curtain move and then fall back, and a few seconds later the front door opened.

“Are you going to stand out there all night?” Vivian called.

He pushed on the gate and it swung open easily. Vivian stood on the porch, wearing a green skirt and a fuzzy sweater with fake pearl buttons, at least he assumed they were fake. She had her arms wrapped around herself and her knees slightly bent, and she was shivering. But smiling, and her eyes didn’t look cold at all. She took his arm and drew him into the shadow of the porch so he could kiss her. When she took him in, the family was waiting, standing back from the door like they thought he might have the Spanish flu. He stomped the snow off his boots on a small rug in the vestibule and unbuttoned his greatcoat.

“This is my sister, Iris,” Vivian said, “and this is her husband, Freddie, and these are the twins, Sadie and Beverley. Everyone, this is Jack.”

The house smelled of floor wax and cooking. He smiled at the faces lined up in front of him. Iris looked like trouble, Freddie looked henpecked, and the two little girls looked like he had double vision.

“How do you tell them apart?” he asked. He looked down at everyone’s feet. Slippers. Should he take off his boots?

“Iris is the one in the dress,” Freddie said, laughing at his own joke.

Jack looked at Vivian. “I meant the twins.”

“Here, old boy,” Freddie said, “let me take your coat.”

“There’s a bottle in it,” Jack said. He rummaged in his pocket and found it. “Rum. I thought you might like it.”

“How thoughtful,” said Iris, taking the bottle of Screech. “I’ll just take it in the kitchen and make some tea.” She turned and walked towards a confusion of rooms at the back of the house, nothing as simple as a hallway. Vivian followed her.

“It’s about all you can get these days,” Jack said to Freddie. He’d grown to like rum. His father and brother and his Uncle Harley drank beer and sometimes bourbon. He was looking forward to going into the British-American Hotel in Windsor and ordering Lamb’s Navy dark and a Coke. His father would say he was putting on the Ritz.

He wished Vivian hadn’t followed Iris. He stood looking around the vestibule while Freddie hung up his wet coat. The
closet doors were narrow and high, arched at the top like the doors of an Anglican church. High ceilings, you’d need scaffolding to plaster them. Good work, though, some fancy cove mouldings at the corners and a rosette in the centre, all handmade of course. But no ceiling fixture, someone had taken that down. Nice cathedral effect in the living room when Freddie led him into it, but the room itself was disappointing, even shabby: worn furniture, magazines and books lying about, lampshades askew. Only the blackout curtains were decent. He would have thought people like them would be tidier, more careful about how things looked, especially when they were having company. Freddie straightened a rug with his foot and motioned him to a chesterfield covered with little square pillows. Why pillows? Did someone sleep there? Was he supposed to move them or sit on them? But the twins ran ahead giggling and jumped on the chesterfield, so he took one of the tired-looking stuffed chairs. There were two pillows on it. He moved one aside and sat on the other. Where the hell was Vivian?

“We’ll have our tot in a minute,” Freddie said. He was tall, elegant, with a kind of Jimmy Stewart look. Long, fair hair combed straight back, razor cut at the neck, never seen a hat. He was wearing dress pants and a wool sweater buttoned up the front over a white shirt and no tie. Jack liked his face, angular but open, no venom in it, rather a kind of innocence, like he’d be a soft touch. “We’ve been drinking mostly wine lately,” Freddie went on, sitting in the chair opposite the chesterfield. There was a coal fire in the grate and Freddie poked at it, sending a spray
of sparks out onto the hardwood floor, where he kicked at them vaguely with his slippered foot. “Fortunately we had a load in before the war started, got it put down in the cellar. Argentine,” he said, looking up. Jack nodded. “Quite good, actually.”

“Yes,” Jack agreed. “It gives off a good heat.”

Freddie smiled uncertainly. “Nice way of putting it.”

The twins were sitting in temporary truce on the chesterfield, watching their father play with the fire. “And how old are you?” Jack asked them.

“Seven and three-quarters,” one of them said, and the other one continued, “and Mommy’s twenty-eight, and Auntie Viv is nineteen, and Daddy’s thirty-two.”

“How old are you?” asked the first one.

“I’m eighteen.” He bit his tongue; he should have said twenty.

“I sleep with Sadie,” said the one who must have been Beverley, “and Mommy sleeps with Daddy, and Auntie Viv sleeps with herself.”

“Who do you sleep with?” Sadie asked him.