Good Hope Road: A Novel (50 page)

There began to be more instances, as the months went on. Shirts left untucked, one side of the Major’s braces hanging loose from the waist of his trousers. It was because of this damn heat wave that they’d been experiencing, Jim told himself. When the Major forgot to shave a couple of mornings in a row, he brought it casually to his father’s attention, pretending not to notice the start of embarrassed surprise, quickly masked, as the Major reached a hand to his stubbled cheeks.

Minor things, each of them, but brought into sharp focus by the eerie passivity that seemed to have taken hold of the Major, a silent, glassy calm, like the sea after a storm. The Major drifted through his days, only brightening while muddling through the orchard with little Jimmy. When Ellie came in especially early one morning, to avoid the summer heat and get a head start on the day, it gave her quite a turn to find the Major sitting in front of the black mirror.

‘You haven’t slept all night, have you?’ she asked, worried.

The Major turned distant, unfocused eyes on her. He looked bewildered as he tried to recall her name. ‘Good morning,’ he said hesitantly then, and turned away.

The bonuses were paid out in the middle of June, with an immediate rash of engagements, weddings and divorces that followed among the veterans and their women. A few men put their bonuses into savings accounts. Many others bet it on the race track or on gold brick, get-rich-quick schemes, promptly losing it all. Much of the money would go towards settling accounts and old debts; there was many a doctor, a reporter wryly commented, who slept a little easier these days. The papers were full of stories of veterans and their plans: some talked proudly of clothes and shoes for their families, a new overcoat perhaps for themselves, others put the bonus into a new truck, or repairs.

‘Boy, that’s all going on a first payment on a decent shack made of brick instead of lemon meringue,’ a veteran named Frank told the
Los Angeles Times
, beaming from ear to ear.

Pete, a partner in a service station, had a ‘Santa Claus’ list of wishes: a new set of teeth for his wife, an encyclopedia for his son, and for himself, a set of rare cactus plants.

‘Never owned more than three pairs of underwear in all my life,’ yet another veteran happily told a reporter outside a haberdashery store in Chicago. ‘Now, I’m gonna get twenty.’

The Major stood confused in the hallway, unable to remember whether he’d been entering or leaving. ‘Do you need something, Major?’ Madeleine asked. He mumbled unintelligibly in response. She stepped closer and took his hand, flinching slightly at the ripe, unwashed smell of him. He followed without protest as she gently led him to his armchair.

‘Wasn’t Jimmy with you?’ she asked, puzzled.

They found the child still happily playing where his grandfather had left him in the grass. ‘No harm done,’ Jim said quickly, before Madeleine could get upset. He played down her doubts when she told him about the expression on the Major’s face when she’d come upon him – the blank confusion, and the stench on his clothes.

‘It happens,’ Jim shrugged. ‘What do you expect a man to smell like anyway, after a morning spent working in the sun?’

He kept an even closer eye on his father after that, alerting him to an undone fly, keeping tabs on him in the orchard as much as he could. Nothing particularly untoward happened for the next couple of weeks, and Jim was just beginning to hope that his father was taking a turn for the better, when he happened upon the Major sitting in his armchair, fiddling agitatedly with one of Jimmy’s wind-up toys.

It was an old, battered tin bear, one that the boy was especially fond of. Jim remembered the child clutching it closely as he’d stepped out to the orchard that morning with the Major. ‘Where’s Jimmy?’ he asked tightly, not waiting for a response as he ran out the door.

Behind him, the Major looked distressed, turning the toy over in his hands, as if trying to remember something important, something that tugged faintly at his memory. He cranked the key in the back, winding it until it would not turn any further. He set the toy on the floor, intently following its progress as he drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair.

Jim found his son inside the paddock. Pulling him out from under the fence, he headed back towards the house, his face dark with worry. Jimmy squirmed from his grasp as soon he spotted the Major. ‘Gran’pa!’ he shouted eagerly.

The Major turned, his face transformed with delight as the child clambered on to his lap.

‘Ellie,’ Jim gestured towards the Major. ‘Have you noticed . . .’ He swallowed, unable to complete the sentence. The toy bear was still marching forward.

‘Yes,’ she said simply. The bear bumped against the fireplace and ground to a halt with a clicking, whirring sound. Ellie looked at Jim, her eyes beginning to well. ‘He’s worn out, Jim. He’s just plain worn down and worn out.’

Madeleine walked out to the orchard where Jim was watering the trees. He pretended to splash her and she laughed and ducked. ‘How much longer?’ She ran a hand down his bare back, which was damp with sweat.

‘A few minutes more.’ He gestured at the apple sapling that the Major had grafted for Jimmy. ‘The young ones, too much sun and they can dry out, never quite grow right after that.’

She nodded, trying to find the right opening for what was on her mind. ‘Ellie says it’s so hot this year that berries have been baking right on their bushes – wrap them in a little sugared dough and we might well get pie.’

He grinned. Madeleine hesitated, watching as the spray caught the sunlight. ‘. . . she also said that the Major hasn’t been doing so well.’

Jim stiffened. ‘He’s fine.’

‘Maybe we should get him a nurse,’ Madeleine suggested gently.

‘He’s fine.’

Upset by the notion of his father being perceived as an invalid, Jim would brook no more discussion on the matter. Madeleine tried, a few times more, before giving up in frustration. Jim began to shield the Major all the more, filling in his pauses, shepherding him through his day, as if by his constant, unwavering vigilance, he could somehow make his father better.

The Major continued his decline well past the summer. There were good days, when he was withdrawn but lucid and present. Then there were others, when he mistook Jim for his uncle Bill and rem inisced with him about pretty Samantha Lockhart who’d summered in Maplebridge back in 1901, with eyes like greenest sea glass.

Things came to a head when he stumbled one night into Jim and Madeleine’s bedroom. He stood disoriented in the dark, dimly aware that he wasn’t in the right place. Before he could turn around, however, his bladder gave way. With a pungent splatter, the Major urinated over himself and across the parquet floor.

Madeleine sat up with a scream of fright, holding the bedclothes to her chest. Jim rushed his father into the bathroom, angry and embarrassed. In his hurry to get there, he nearly slipped in the puddle of urine, which only made him angrier. He stripped off the Major’s nightshirt, and the Major acquiesced without a murmur, sitting in the bathtub with the touching trust of a child as Jim poured water over his head. He held out his arms and Jim soaped them down. He scrubbed the pink, wrinkled flesh, filled with a raging sadness at the soft sag of skin, the helplessness that his father had been reduced to.

As the Major watched the back-and-forth motion of the bath brush, its tiger-striped handle triggered a memory. ‘So many owls,’ he said suddenly. ‘The winter of 1917. Great flocks of them, migrating from the north. Went out into the woods once after them. There was a full moon, and icicles—’

‘I was there,’ Jim said, cutting him off. ‘Don’t you remember? You took me with you.’

The Major looked confused.

‘You took me with you,’ Jim repeated, his tone softer. ‘Woke me up, and bundled me into my coat and boots. You’re right, it was a full moon. You pointed out the icicles along the barn.’ He paused in his washing and looked at his father, his eyes tender. The Major was listening intently, as if to a story he was hearing for the very first time. ‘You held my hand all the way. We went deep into the woods, and when there were no more owls, we saw a brace of hares, dancing, upright on their hind legs.’

‘Hares,’ the Major repeated, wonderstruck, ‘dancing under the moon.’

The end when it came, was peaceful. Jimmy had just woken from his afternoon nap. Despite having spent the entire morning toddling about in the orchard behind the Major, he’d immediately asked for his grandfather again, sleepily rubbing his eyes. Jim gathered his son into his arms, smiling as the child snuggled his face into his shoulder and yawned.

‘Gran’pa!’ Jimmy called as they headed downstairs.

‘I think your grandpa’s asleep,’ Jim said, shushing him. He could see the back of his father’s head, as he sat in the armchair.

‘Gran’pa!’ Jimmy called in response, even louder.

The Major didn’t so much as stir. A prickle of misgiving went through Jim. He strode forward, Jimmy still in his arms.

His father’s eyes were shut, a look of such peace, such infinite calm on that worn face, that Jim knew, even without touching him, he knew.

‘Gran’pa?’ Jimmy asked uncertainly.

‘Your grandpa . . .’ Jim’s voice shook. He tried to smile at the child. ‘He’s been very tired, Jimmy. He’s been tired for a long time and he’s going to sleep for quite a while now.’

The child nodded solemnly. ‘Sleep awhile,’ he echoed.

Jim looked down at his father, tears brimming in his eyes. A breeze gusted through the open window, touched with the first scents of fall. Jim reached forward to smooth down his father’s hair. His fingers stayed, caressing the Major’s cheek, gently shaking his shoulder, stroking a motionless arm. ‘Dad,’ he called softly. His voice broke. ‘Dad,’ he said again, choking back his tears.

They buried the Major in the family plot. The
Gazette
composed a long, glowing obituary about their local veteran. Half the town came out to pay their respects at the wake. Black Pete too, extricating himself from the woods, clutching a handful of wild ferns and moss. Saluting the coffin, he stood quietly to the side during the service, placing the bouquet, such as it was, by the headstone after it was done.

Soon after President Roosevelt was re-elected for a second term that November, Jimmy turned three. Madeleine threw an elaborate party for him in Boston, but despite the best efforts of the clowns and the magician, he cried inconsolably all the way through, asking over and over for his gran’pa.

Paris • May 1940

rôle de guerre
, they been callin’ it, the phony war, one full of drollery and jest. Germany gone and picked a fight with France once more and with England too this time, but for months after that first declaration last September, ain’t much more that happened. After that first shock, folks been goin’ ’bout their days, livin’ and lovin’ just the same. The shops still open, the market at Les Halles as busy, the stalls filled with eggs and butter and fruit. Even when the Government done put wartime rationin’ in place, allowin’ meat to be sold no more than four days a week, there still plenty to be had. Montmartre look strange in the practice blackouts, without the lights of the clubs and the shiny signs over their awnings, but behind them darkened windows, folks be boozin’ up a storm still, dancin’ and carousin’ same as before. A fat Thanksgivin’, a right merry Christmas, with turkey and chicken, oysters too, if you knew where to go, and the city crowded this Easter with tourists and soldiers on furlough. Soldiers with polished buttons and new-pressed uniforms, and smilin’, happy dolls on their arms.