Good Hope Road: A Novel (7 page)

Still the snow fell, a soft, insidious rebuttal to that first thrust of spring. When it got unbearable, the silence, her absence, Jim shouldered his gun and headed once more for the woods. Too stubborn to go where they had met, by the Garland property, he circled his old haunts instead. There was nothing to be hunted, he never once lifted the muzzle, but still he walked, through the low, grey light, past sugar brush and pine, until he came at last to the water. The pines along the shore stood dark and brooding in the half-light, sentinels, bridging this world to another. Snow drifted delicately down, sideways, feathering the pines, dusting his face, sifting over the slow-moving river. Where once a balloon had floated, red and swollen, now white ice touched black water; a brief dance, as one slowly dissolved into the other, and still the snow continued to fall.

He stood on the bank, motionless, watching its dark rippled flow. Abruptly he shifted, making up his mind. He would attend the gala.

Perhaps it was the turn in the weather, the way the morning light played over the window panes. Maybe it was the clocking of enough days and the consumption of enough whisky that had served to recess memory once more into dormancy. Whatever the reason, the Major awakened on Saturday, on what – although he didn’t know it yet – was also the morning of the gala, to a blessed, internal stillness.

Instead of reaching automatically for the bottle that lay on the floor, he blinked instead, at the quiet. Dawn was seeping through the windows, the edge of the bureau revealing itself in inches and quarter angles in the soft glimmer of morning.

Aurora
, he thought to himself, recalling the ancient Goddess of the dawn.
Aurora, riding forth from her saffron bed
.

The pressure within his chest had eased; the abyss of the past no longer gaping wide. His pupils shifted, examining the pillow beneath his cheek, a single tuft of goose feather sticking upright through the fabric. His gaze moved lower, taking inventory of the contours of thigh, calf and foot beneath the bedclothes. He lifted a hand and cautiously flexed it. He spread the fingers, absorbed in every ridge and misshapen knuckle, like a newborn discovering the boundaries of its body for the very first time. Shakily, he raised himself, and holding on to the headboard for support, lowered his feet to the floor. A wave of nausea; he squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, focused on the rumpled sheets, stained yellow with sweat.

Saffron bed
. . . he thought again, faintly amused by the irony.

The water from the faucet stung his skin, so cold that it hurt his teeth, but it cleared some of the fuzz from his tongue. He limped slowly downstairs, staying close to the balustrade, and in the kitchen, tacked cordwood on to the smouldering remains in the stove.

A spark flew out, caught on the front of his flannel shirt, flaring into a brief, fierce orange before spluttering out. He picked at the spot of soot, flicking it from him. A sense of accomplishment even in so small a task, relief over finding himself in the present once more, at being able to participate in the mundane events of the day. He ran over the facts in his head, taking comfort in this litany: a spark had lit out. The belly of the stove was bright with fire. It was April 1932.

Pulling on his boots, the Major stepped into the dawn. The apple trees beckoned through the mist like old friends. He limped among them, touching a familiar hand to bark and bough. Angling to the right, he continued along the old stone wall that bounded the orchard, waist high and scattered with snow and fragments of moss. The wall dated back to the first Stonebridge claim on this part of the hills, and was built from rocks cleared from the land. Some gneiss, a few stretches of limestone, but mostly granite of varying dimensions. Just a stone wall, no different from the others to be found winding about these hills, except that this one he knew like the back of his hand. The three largest stones were arranged next to one another about half a mile out. Bill, his brother, had liked to sit astride the wall there, whittling at pieces of wood with his penknife. And here, on this stone, at the base of the wall, covered now by grass, two sets of initials, carved a lifetime ago. His own, and a girl’s whose name he no longer recalled, but with eyes of vivid green.

Sunlight caught the wall, coaxing fire from brumal stone, morphing jut and thrust into rose and a deep, burnished amber. He pushed on, panting now from the exertion, a stooped, solitary figure among his beloved trees. Just ahead, there, by the Baldwin that had taken seven years to bud, a man had once run, his young son bouncing on his shoulders, his hands gripping the child’s legs. Laughter, the man’s and the boy’s, echoing through the trees. Had it been him and his father? Or was it him carrying Jim? The Major paused for a moment, unsure. It didn’t matter, he decided, chary of probing the memory any further and risking it crumbling to nothing.

He quickened his pace through the thinning mist, going as fast as he was able, reclaiming these scattered bits of his life as they revealed themselves to him, piecing together as if from broken glass a picture of the person he once had been, of the life lived before.

Before the war, before France, before everything.

At last he faltered, the ache in his leg too pronounced to ignore. He leaned against the wall for support, waiting for the spasm to ease. Slowly he turned back towards the house, an imprint of his hand left in the snow that topped the stones.

He came around to the kitchen, breathing heavily as he unlaced his boots. The familiar creak of the armchair as he lowered himself into it. He leaned his head against the backrest, the tranquillity of the morning still held close inside him. There he sat, hardly moving, watching the sun swim across the surface of the mirror, the last strands of fog clinging futilely to the apple trees before vanishing into the day.

The morning grew steadily clearer, the sun holding firm court over the skies. It buoyed Jim just to look at it – the wash of light over the hills, sweeping aside shadow, restoring palette and definition to a smudged, undertone world.

He whistled as he brought in the backlog of mail – bills, a catalogue from Monkey Ward, and newspapers of nearly a week – whistled as he walked back up the drive, snow melting around his boots. A dark sweep of wing over the roof line – a barn swallow, in solitary, joyous flight. He looked up, squinting against the sun and was reminded in an instant of Madeleine, the way that she’d stood just about here, the tilt of her head as she’d looked up towards the roof. His carefree whistling stalled, and in its stead came a nervousness that he was entirely unaccustomed to, at the thought of seeing her again.

It was this feeling of being slightly off kilter that made him approach his father once more. He’d noticed that the Major had risen early, but Jim had given him a wide berth all the same, still hurt from being so profoundly shut out all these days. Now, however, he hesitated behind the Major’s chair.

‘I’m headed out this evening,’ he said. ‘There’s a gala.’

So startling was the notion of this boy of his – rough-hewn, given to solitary wanderings – attending an evening soiree that the Major temporarily forgot the mirror, swivelling around instead to look directly at his son.

‘A gala,’ he echoed, astonished. ‘Where?’

Jim cleared his throat, tapping the roll of newspapers in his hand. ‘The Garland place.’

There was a silence and then the Major nodded. ‘Douggie Garland.’ The springs of his chair creaked as he turned away.

‘Madeleine – she’s going to be there. She’s the one who invited me.’

‘Did they print it?’

‘What?’ Jim asked, confused.

‘The letter.’ The Major nodded towards the newspapers. ‘Did they print it?’

‘No. I don’t know. Haven’t looked.’

‘You probably don’t remember the Garland mansion – you were young, but it’s grand alright.’

‘I remember. I was seven, old enough.’ Jim hesitated. ‘I’ll only be gone a while.’

‘I’m not your keeper, boy,’ his father said, more sharply than he’d intended. ‘Go, and there’s no need to rush back either.’

A stiff silence followed. The Major drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair and glanced at his son in the mirror. ‘And I wouldn’t wear overalls,’ he offered gruffly.

He had meant the comment to be wry, but the boy started as if stung. He tossed the roll of newspapers on to the side table. ‘Butler’s dropped out of the Senate race,’ he said shortly, changing the subject.

The Major reached for the newspapers, frowning. ‘Shame.’

Jim shook his head irritably. ‘He was running on a dry ticket. Yes, I know, long-serving Marine, Medal of Honour, what not and all, but still, dry as they come.’

His father nudged the bottle of whisky that still lay by the armchair. ‘Every man’s allowed a vice,’ he said lightly, ‘and he has his – temperance.’

Once again, it was a badly misjudged attempt at humour. The sight of the nearly empty bottle angered Jim anew. He started to say something, changed his mind, and without another word, turned and left the room.

The Major’s face flushed a dull red. ‘And it’s two-time,’ he called tightly after his son. ‘Major General Butler is a
two-time
Medal of Honour awardee.’

‘
An analysis of the solid 2–1 victory of US Senator James J. Davis over his dry opponent, Major General Smedley D. Butler, shows that the results of Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary will stand as a weather vane for the rest of the nation
.’

The Major shook out his newspaper and read the sentence yet again. That fragile sense of peace he’d found earlier seemed lost. The mention of Garland had been jarring, but it was the exchange with Jim that had cut him to the quick. He stretched out his leg and slowly massaged the aching knee, gripped by a deep melancholy. The memory from earlier that morning, of a man running through the orchard, his laughing son bouncing on his shoulders . . .

Cutting a fresh plug of chaw, he tried to keep reading. ‘
The unabashed and vocal support that the ex-Marine has provided to the proposed Veteran Bonus Bill is suspected to have contributed to Tuesday’s outcome
.’

The Bonus Bill. He knew it. It wasn’t the fact that the General had been running on a dry ticket, it was his position on the Bonus Bill. ‘
The Bill has encountered severe opposition . . .
’, ‘
The Bill has . . .
’ When he found himself going over the same words for the fifth time in a row, he gave up. He folded the paper, and set it on the table.

The bottle of whisky caught his attention. The look on Jim’s face, the scorn he’d seen in his son’s eyes reflected starkly in the mirror. Ashamed anew, he reached for the bottle, filled with the urge to fling it from him, to smash the accursed thing in the grate, but his hand stayed, slowing almost to a caress as his fingers curled about its squat neck. Shame turned to resentment and a deep, burning thirst. The Major lifted the bottle closer, tilting it this way and that as he examined the dregs. He started to twist the cap open, but again came that searing sense of shame, and abruptly he set the bottle down.

He shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead. A thought occurred to him and, rising to his feet and leaning heavily on his cane, the Major limped upstairs.

Jim stayed in the barn all morning working on the dirt bike, finding absorption in the clank of chain and machine part. The sun grew in strength, pouring in through the small, high windows of the barn, casting bands of haze over the dark wood walls and drawing meadow scents from the hay that carpeted the floors.

When finally he came back to the house, he found a cummerbund left immaculately folded on his bed. One belonging to his father. A peace offering of dark blue silk and smelling of cedar roses.

Paris • June 1914

he ticket to the fight cost me nearabout a month’s wages. It’s most of what I got in my pocket, but hell if I care. I’d have emptied my pockets and given my pants too had it come to that, but no way am I goin’ to miss watchin’ Jack Johnson.

I hold on to that ticket all the way to my room in the 12th arrondissement. What with the fight the next evenin’, and the Grand Prix the day after, Paris was ’specially crowded, and I ain’t ’bout to let no quick-fingered thief pickpocket that ticket from me as he hustles past. I hold on tight, lookin’ down now and again at it in my fist. Just the sight of it got me grinnin’, from one end of my mug to the other like some soft-brained fool.