What Is Left the Daughter (10 page)

I found the piece of paper and read what was on it, a poem neatly printed in ink:

CASABIANCA
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.

In a few minutes, my aunt opened her eyes and said, "Mrs. Oleander, the librarian, brought this poem to Tilda's attention. Tilda then copied it out for me. What Mrs. Oleander found thrilling, and so do I, is that it was composed by a woman who had some of her upbringing in Great Village. Practically a neighbor! This very poem was actually published. The magazine's called
New Democracy.
Granted, it was published in 1936, but the poet, Miss Elizabeth Bishop, has published many others. According to Mrs. Oleander, Miss Elizabeth Bishop's something of a world traveler. But she visits our province now and again. And do you know what? Where you and I got on the bus this morning, the house across from the Esso station, is the very house in which the poet spent several years. She went to the Great Village school. Her mother—and this is actual fact, not merely gossip—the mother's in Nova Scotia Hospital. Across Halifax Harbor to Dartmouth. Some sort of nervous collapse or other. Nobody's business, really, but the family's. Poor thing, eh? Elizabeth was only a little girl when they sent her mother there."

I returned the poem to my aunt's handbag. "It'd take ten philologists to help me understand it as well as it's meant to be understood," I said.

"Don't sell yourself short," she said. "The way I see it? A poem reaches out exactly halfway, then you reach out halfway, then see what happens."

"Provisional, eh?"

"I only mean if you're thinking's willful and generous toward a poem, the poem'll be equally those things back. As for meaning, it'll mean something different to each person. That's all you have to know."

"'Poor ship in flames went down'—that's got a ring to it," I said. "And 'stammering elocution'—I know what that's like."

"See, already you've got a good start on coming to terms with it."

"Nope, that's enough homework for me, Aunt Constance. But I'm glad you like the poem so much."

"When I get back home, I'm pressing it into my daybook. Mrs. Oleander says there's every reason to have confidence that Miss Elizabeth Bishop will establish a permanent reputation."

"Already did, in Great Village, don't you think?"

"Of course," my aunt said. "But just imagine, letting dozens, maybe hundreds of total strangers in on your private-most thoughts. Poets suffer from this. Yet their suffering's to our benefit. Writing poetry, not just for the church bulletin, I mean, risks being too openly sophisticated. Sophisticated in ways the average person can scarcely comprehend. And right there I speak of myself as average."

My aunt looked out the window for a while, then did finally doze off. She woke up only when the bus wheezed to a stop at Halifax terminal. My uncle had rigged a kind of gurney to haul my aunt's trunk, basically a dolly made of planks sawed and hinged, about two feet wide and three feet long, with wheels taken from four children's scooters fitted to the underside. Mr. Harrison and I loaded the trunk onto it. Wobbled a bit but did the job nicely, and even drew some notice from pedestrians, all the four city blocks to the wharf, where a deckhand pulled it up the gangway onto the ferry
St. Michael's.
The
St. Michael's
would connect with the
Caribou
in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton, then cross the Cabot Strait to Newfoundland.

"Enjoy yourself here in the city," my aunt said. "Take in a movie. Eat in a restaurant. A seat by the window makes you feel less alone, I'm told. But try to postpone moping aboutthings at home, at least till you get back home. I'll send a postcard, eh?"

"Have a wonderful time," I said.

"Wyatt, it's good for the soul, isn't it, to visit Joe and Katherine."

"I could go out to the cemetery straight from the wharf."

"You take care, darling," my aunt said. "And especially good luck at the recruiting office. Those young men in uniform on the bus—your age, about. I pray God lets them measure up, wherever they're sent. I love you very much. I think you'll decide things well for yourself."

We hugged, and I watched my aunt until she reached the top of the gangway. On deck she waved, then disappeared. I bet they serve tea and biscuits, and that's where she's gone, I thought. I opened my suitcase to take out a sweater and found a small tin of lemon cookies. Purchased from the bakery, I knew; my aunt never made lemon cookies. I opened the tin. Then I realized that while I was helping to get my aunt's wardrobe trunk on the dolly she must've inspected my suitcase, because she'd placed a note inside the tin:
Adequate job.

Walking through the city, I stopped in at the Baptist Spa on Morris Street. The proprietor, a Mrs. Campion, was cordial. I paid for a room, number 4, left my suitcase on the bed and set right out for the cemetery. My parents' graves were near the entrance, to the right of the iron gate. Very easy to locate.

Which reminds me, Marlais. In Nova Scotia, your mother's favorite of all the cemeteries she'd come to know was the one in Great Village. And believe me, Tilda was tough in her judgments. Again I jump ahead here, but one time—after the war— Tilda came home from being a mourner in McCallum Settlement. "The cemetery there's a disgrace," she said. "No one's weeded there for ages. Hoodlums have scrawled up a number of stones and the road in is badly rutted. Still, I did a good job and was paid on the spot. Yet it was everything I could do not to criticize the caretaker. The deceased was named Darwin Timbertea, age ninety-one, succumbed to pneumonia. Other than clergy, the only one there was a nephew. After the service, the nephew drove me to the bus. In the car, I couldn't hold back and harshly criticized the caretaker, and the nephew said, 'My uncle Darwin
was
the caretaker.'"

At four
P.M.
I went to the recruiting station, corner of Duke Street and Argyle. The desk attendant, in Navy uniform, was direct. "You're here to kill Germans, I hope, and to do Canada proud, I hope. What's your name?"

"Wyatt Hillyer, from Middle Economy."

He said, "Did they teach you to write in Middle Economy?"

"I already knew how by the time I got there."

"Fill out these forms, then."

"I'm not decided yet," I said.

He leaned forward over the table filled with recruiting pamphlets, his face an inch from mine. "See that poster?" he said. He grabbed my shoulders and spun me toward the wall and I saw a recruiting poster. It showed a Navy warship dropping depth charges down at a German U-boat with Hitler's face on its hull.

"I'm not here to help you not piss your pants, Hillyer. You want to be on that ship, doing what that ship's doing, sign up. Me, I'm from Nells Harbor—men from there get their sea legs in the womb, eh? How about boys from Middle Economy?" I signed the papers. He said, "Spend Christmas at home and come back January fifteen. Right here. My desk." He saluted and I saluted back.

It remained for me to pass a physical examination, but for all intents and purposes, I was in the Royal Canadian Navy.

I ate supper in a restaurant on Lower Water Street, lingering long past dark, looking at the harbor, thinking I'd write Tilda a letter that would begin, "Well, I'm going off to war." But to what purpose? The letter, I mean.

Directly from the restaurant, I went to a pub on Bedford Row. Among the customers were some students from Dalhousie University, men and women, talking about philosophy and music. I heard "Beethoven." I thought Hans Mohring might know them. I felt envious. I had philosophies of my own. But I didn't invite myself to join them. After an hour or so, in walked the Navy recruiter, accompanied by three other men in uniform. Ashamed to say, at the bar I spent far too much money, throwing back shot after shot. In the wide mirror back of the bar I noticed that the fellow who'd recruited me kept looking over, shaking his head, all mockery and disgust, I thought. Who knows, really, but you get my frame of mind.

There was an excellently built sled hanging on a wall, with a dart board at its center, darts stuck along the slats. At one point, a pretty woman, with dark red hair and wearing an overcoat and leather boots up to her knees, sat next to me and said, "I haven't seen you at Dalhousie. Are you a student?" I said no, I wasn't, and she said, "I'm Mary Conklin, from Dublin. I'm studying art history. Do you play darts? I have five brothers, I was raised on darts, so your pride be warned."

I introduced myself, then we pulled the darts from the sled, stepped back, and she said, "You go first." So I threw a dart toward the board. I didn't have my sea legs, to say the least, not after all that whiskey, so I didn't see my Navy recruiter step into range on his way to the jukebox. My dart struck him high on the arm, almost his shoulder. From his grimace, I expected the worst. "Oh, Lord, that's not the bull's-eye ya had in mind, I bet," Mary Conklin said. However, my recruiter just grinned, yanked the dart out, blood specking up, and said, "See you January fifteen, Hillyer." His mates roared with laughter. He continued on to the jukebox and stood there studying the choices. Mary Conklin said, "That was the shortest game of darts I've ever had," then left with her friends.

Around eleven o'clock—maybe it was later—I paid up and made my way out into the city. Stumbling along, I stopped at the first hotel I came across, the Essex House, on Bishop and Lower Water, where I paid the night clerk and somehow managed the stairs up to my room, 403.

Early the next morning, the kittiwakes and gulls were keening so loud and close, I thought they should've pitched in on the room rate. It was cold and rainy, and I'd left the window open. The bureau doily was soaked through, and on the doily, rain had gathered in a glass ashtray. I could hear the loading cranes at Smith Wharves.

Standing at the sink, splashing water on my face, I suddenly remembered I'd signed up for the RCN, and felt neither good nor bad about it. Not righteous or patriotic or thrilled to the task—what sort of Canadian did that make me? And yet I could hear my aunt's admonition ring in my ears: "Indifference is a sin." If at that moment I'd sat down and written a questionnaire on hotel stationery, it would've included:
Did I join up because I wanted to kill Germans, do my bit? Did I join up because only a coward wouldn't?
Question after question after question. Despite all the accounts of battle I'd heard on the radio, I had no goddamn idea what combat was like. Why wouldn't a U-boat find my ship? Why wouldn't I be listed among the missing in a newspaper article whose blaring headline was tacked to my uncle's shed wall? I'd like to think that I was of as sane and similar a frame of mind as the next fellow—hundreds of us in Nova Scotia alone—awaiting orders. Both wanting to get on with it—
should
be getting on with it, no doubt—and scared out of our wits.

To top off the morning, vicious hangover included, it wasn't until I'd walked all the way to a café on Granville Street to get some coffee that I remembered I'd taken a room at the Baptist Spa, paid for in full. Where my suitcase would still be on the bed.

That afternoon, on the bus to Great Village, I was so agitated I changed seats twice. I kept thinking: I should've said to Constance most of the French I knew,
Bon voyage.
I should've waited longer at the dock. I should've watched her ferry gain the harbor. What had been my hurry? The cemetery could have waited. You can't be
late
to visit parents in a cemetery, can you? All of this filled me with regret. Aunt Constance always said, when it was too late to help something, "Oh well, water under the bridge," but that was a phrase I no longer much liked.

All that. And Tilda's wedding in two days. (The love of my life's wedding.) And my church suit to get pressed and cleaned. That couldn't be done in Middle Economy. That would have to be in Truro.

F
IRST THING,
once I got back to Middle Economy, I drove my church suit to Truro. I hadn't attempted to seek out my uncle, though I knew he was working in the shed; I could hear the radio out there. Anyway, Winterson's Cleaning Establishment was in downtown Truro, on Phillips Street. The owner, a woman named, according to the plaque on the counter, Bettina Winterson, said my suit would take two days. "A prediction's not a promise," I said, being impolite for no good reason. I didn't realize at the time that I'd quoted
The Highland Book of Platitudes.

"Okay, then, here's a promise. You'll have your suit tomorrow, by four," she said, "or I'll owe you a free cleaning. Trousers, shirts, anything you please. One-time offer, of course. How's that for a promise?"

Leaving Truro, I felt confident that, clothes-wise at least, I'd be presentable at Tilda's wedding. Driving along Route 2, I put stubborn will to work and tried not to think about much at all. Jettison all worries and concerns and vicissitudes and whatnot—and this seemed to take effect, because soon the inside of my head was the same as the general view of the boat-empty expanse of the Minas Basin, the day's last gull disappearing below the horizon.

I met Tilda at the bakery the next morning. I realized I'd begun to look forward to these meetings, rely on them, all the while realizing they couldn't go on for much longer. Still, there she was, bundled up in double sweaters, a thick scarf, a pair of Hans's trousers rolled up to reveal winter leggings. She looked a touch disheveled, and I said, "Night on the town, eh?" She yawned as if it was painful to her face. She struck me as a flibbertigibbet—all nerves—and at first could not meet my eye. But then she did what she always did when she wanted my full attention, which was to place her hands firmly over mine, press a fingernail into my knuckle and talk.