Scare the Light Away (10 page)

“Yes, it was.” I climbed up into my own seat and started the engine. The headlights caught a raccoon crossing the road on the way to Jackie’s house in search of party residue. He was huge, fat, and arrogant and barely gave my car a sideways glance or let me think that I was inconveniencing him in the slightest. I watched him waddle into the darkness at the side of the house before pulling away.

“Too bad she missed it.” Dad chattered on as I maneuvered the big vehicle out of the narrow streets. “I’ll tell her all about it, of course. But I won’t make it out to sound quite as nice as it was. So she doesn’t get jealous, you understand.”

“I understand.”

“Not that Janet is ever jealous of anyone’s good fortune.”

“No.”

“I’m gonna suggest that we drive out to Joe Armstrong’s place tomorrow. He’s been laid up with a broken leg, you know. His wife, Margaret, and Janet were always the best of friends.”

I remembered a Joe and Margaret; they’d lived not far from us when I was growing up. The Armstrongs have been dead twenty years or more. Killed in a head-on collision on the way to the hospital to visit their newest grandchild, Mom had written to tell me. I don’t know anything about psychology, but at a guess, I’d say that his mind had simply shut off the overflow of emotion caused by Mom’s funeral, and the only way he could cope was by unconsciously pretending she was still around.

It was so sad.

Dad talked as I drove, about plans for tomorrow’s visit to the Armstrongs, and worries as to if he should buy a piece of property, located I didn’t understand where. As we drove up to the house, and I helped him out of the SUV, he talked about Jimmy, wondering if he would be able to find a good job having quit school so young.

Chapter 18

Diary of Janet McKenzie. September 14, 1946

At last I am here. On this huge ship. It is all quite horribly frightening but exciting at the same time. Imagine me, on the
Queen Mary
. I remember when I was a tiny girl, looking at a magazine with a beautiful picture of the Queen Mary. Someone royal was boarding her, but I don’t remember who.

It wasn’t like this for her, the Royal, I’m sure. There are so many of us. Women just like me, some with babies, some with older children, some on their own. Everyone seems quite frightened. Like me. Shirley has a touch of a cold, not much of one, ordinarily not any kind of a worry, but I don’t want her crying and acting up on the ship and upsetting the other women.

It came quickly, this order to get ready for the trip to Canada.

I am so frightened—I have forgotten his face. I don’t know if I will recognize my own husband.

Mr. Fitzpatrick sent his motorcar again. Not Bert this time, instead Albert Grady drove. Albert, not yet twenty years old, with half his face burnt away. Everyone in town knows that Elizabeth McCallum, who he was engaged to practically since they were in the cradle, took one look at his ravaged face, fainted dead away, and caught the next train to London.

Aunt Betty packed so carefully for us. All my best clothes, and Shirley’s tiny things. Dad left us at the station. He said he was too busy in the shop to travel up to London with us. But I don’t think that is the true reason. He buried his face in Shirley’s soft blanket, and muttered words of love and caring. I have not heard from my mother, and as the train pulled out of the station and my father stood on the platform, his face as ravaged with loss as that of Albert Grady with fire, I cared no longer.

September 16, 1946

I haven’t been sick even once. All around me, the other brides are lying in their bunks moaning, unable to eat a thing. But I feel fine. Shirley’s cold is finished and she is as bright as a button. Perhaps we were born to enjoy the sea air. Some of the poor mums are suffering dreadfully; they can’t even look after their little ones. We all pitch in and try to help and the Red Cross nurses are wonderful. This ship is so lovely. Such luxury: thick rose-colored carpets, beautiful upholstered chairs, white tablecloths in the dining room. I would like chairs like that in my house and crisp white cloths on the big dining room table. Not right away, I understand. Bob doesn’t have that much money. But when we are settled and his farm is prospering, I will remember those chairs. And the eight of us (our six children and Bob and I—the McKenzie family!) will be sitting around a huge wooden table with a sharply ironed white cloth and silver polished until you can see your face in it.

As well as all the war brides and their children there are Canadian soldiers on board, heading home. They have their own decks and we brides are absolutely forbidden to fraternize with them.

The food is absolutely wonderful. White bread, as soft and fluffy and as pure as snow. Apples and oranges. As much as anyone can manage to eat. After the first meal the brides were stuffing bread rolls and fruit into their pockets and up their sleeves, afraid that it would all be gone the next day.Too bad for the sick ones who can only groan with envy as we healthy ones recount every mouthful.

September 18, 1946

Sea travel is wonderful. I have promised myself that Bob and I and our family absolutely must travel to England one day. We’ll take the children to meet Dad and Aunt Betty. So many of the other war brides are still in bed, simply being sick. I do feel sorry for them. Those of us who are well are doing our best to help with their children. I have taken charge of a dear two-year-old, all tousled blond curls and big smile, whose mother hasn’t kept a thing down since we left Southampton. The dear child pretends that she is helping me take care of Shirley.

The Red Cross nurses are perfectly wonderful and have organized feeding the children, preparing bottles for the babies, organizing the nappies and other laundry, and caring for the children whose mothers are sick.

In the evenings they show movies up on the deck. I would love to go, but I don’t want to leave Shirley. She is so wide-awake and active during the day that she sleeps all the night through in her hammock over the foot of my bunk. But what if she wakes up and I am not there?

September 23, 1946

Will this trip ever end? Or will I keep on traveling, until I have gone all around the world and am back home in dear old England? To find Dad meeting me at the station with wide-open arms, and Albert Grady standing beside the car.

We arrived in Halifax at long last. Everyone was so happy to be there. A few husbands and new families were at the dock in Halifax to meet the ship, but most of the brides, including me, still have a long train trip ahead of us.

This is all so different than the train from Surrey to London. There we saw neat well-ploughed farmland and towns and small villages and then the outskirts of the great city itself. But here in Canada we can go for hours without passing a single house or a plot of cultivated land. The woods are lovely, starting to turn color with the change of the seasons. But sometimes at night there is not a light to be seen. Not a farmhouse or a village or even a car on the road. Sometimes I think that we are back in England where the war is still on and the blackout is in effect. But then suddenly we come to a station and lights burst all around us. One lonely bride disembarks, a pile of luggage placed at her feet, perhaps clutching her sleepy baby. Fortunately most of the women who have stepped off the train have had someone (sometimes whole towns!) out to meet them with a good deal of laughing and singing and heart-felt cries of welcome. I have seen entire families, mother, father, grandparents, numerous aunts and uncles, break down in tears. But we left one poor soul standing on the platform all by herself. As the train pulled out, the stationmaster switched out all the lights but one, and she was left standing alone in a thin pool of light.

September 24, 1946

Toronto! We are almost there. I am all ready; Shirley is wide-awake, fed, washed, and dressed for the big day. Mrs. Morrison, so much older than the rest of us, heading all the way to Victoria, is playing with her, showing her the countryside as it passes by. I have taken the opportunity to write a few words in my diary. I am so excited I can scarcely hold my pen straight. Those of us who are to get off in Toronto were up before sunrise, washing and doing each other’s hair. Putting on a bit of makeup and perfume if we were lucky enough to have some and slipping into our best clothes. Thank goodness I am disembarking in a big city. I’m sure I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life of that poor girl standing on the platform in the middle of Quebec, her small scraps of cheap luggage around her, while the lights in the station go out one by one. Mrs. Beeton sewed up a lovely traveling outfit for me. I thought it was wonderful, when I first saw it. But when I see what the other women have to wear for their husbands I know that my dress is cheap and shabby, and too obviously put together by a village widow. Nothing I can do about it now. The clothes I have worn on the voyage are certainly no better.

Farmers’ fields and forests are behind us now; we are passing rows of small factories and neat houses. Toronto. I must stop writing and fetch Shirley and make sure all our possessions are ready.

I am so afraid.

Chapter 19

What bit of sleep I managed to get was rough and disturbed. Sampson, confined to the house the entire day of the funeral, woke me by pushing her cold wet nose into my face and scratching at the sheets before the sun had even crested the horizon.

I made myself a cup of coffee, sipped barely a mouthful, and took Sampson into the woods. It was colder than it had been since my arrival, and dark clouds were gathering low overhead. But the cool air of a fresh spring morning felt perfectly wonderful on my bare face and hands. The woods are beautiful up here in the spring, the forest floor an ocean of delicate white trilliums, the occasional red bloom thrown in to add a splash of color. The deciduous trees were not yet in leaf, but their buds were so ripe that I believed that if I held my breath long enough I would be able to hear them grow. Sampson bounded on ahead, sniffing at every twig and under every tree, yet still managing to cover ten yards for each one of mine. Birds and squirrels watched us from the tops of the tallest trees, and a hawk circled high overhead. These woods aren’t part of my family property. All we have is the two houses, their yards and the stretch of road that joins them. This was government land, and it was good that no one had bothered to develop it. Many times in my youth, I’d escaped here, running as if the hounds of hell were after me, to bury my tears in the decaying leaves of the forest floor, seeking comfort and solitude that they did not have to offer.

To my surprise, when Sampson and I got back to the house, Dad was still asleep. He’d never been one to lie in after the sun came up. Yesterday’s ordeal must have taken quite a toll on him.

It was close to noon when he stuck his head into the living room, nodded briefly and shuffled down the hall to the bathroom. My Discman was on my head—
Crash
by the Dave Matthews Band playing—my laptop plugged into the phone line as I finished sending a pile of e-mails.

A few minutes later he walked into the room, washed and dressed, his hair neatly combed. “It’s late. Long past breakfast.”

I pulled off the headset and smiled. “You deserve to sleep in once in a while. This must be the only day in your life you’ve ever missed breakfast.”

“Missed breakfast the day after I married your mom.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t want to sit around here all day. I’m going out to the shed for a while. A bit of work will do me good.”

“Do you want something to eat first?”

“Nope. I’ll eat in the shed. But not breakfast. Too late for breakfast. I’ll have a sandwich.”

“I’ll bring it out to you, then.”

Why was I doing this, I asked myself as I sliced twelve-grain bread and loaded on the cheese and pickle. And a dash of English mustard. Considering that traditional English cooking is so terribly bland, how have they managed to invent the wonder that is English mustard? I made the sandwich with a good dollop of resentment along with the mustard. When Ray had been marking papers or working on the last draft of a book with a deadline looming, I would bring him his meal on a nicely arranged tray. But I expected the same when I had a presentation to give the next day or a board meeting to prepare for. But this was different: Dad had to learn to cope somehow, didn’t he?

A glass of milk would go nicely with the sandwich. I rummaged under the sink in search of a tray on which to carry the lunch. I hadn’t been out to the back shed yet and had no desire to do so now. It had been such a gloomy place in my childhood. Tiny windows that hadn’t felt the caress of a damp rag since McKenzie King was Prime Minister. Nothing but spiders and mice, as well as the occasional rat, scurrying around in the corners.

A neat brick path, twin of the one in front, led the way from the kitchen door and wound its way to the shed, passing through the dug-under vegetable garden waiting for the warmth of the spring sun and the feeling of my mother’s sure fingers. The shed was bigger than I remembered, the door nicer, made of good wood finished and varnished. Hands full, I kicked the door with my foot. Dad pulled it open and stood back to allow me entrance.

“Gee, Dad. This is nice. Really nice.”

And it was. A clean cement floor, a long neat workbench, rows of tools and wide, new windows admitting the soft spring light.

He was working on a rocking horse, and several others in different stages of completion lined the far wall. They were beautiful: carved out of warm, soft blond wood with curly woolen manes and tails, huge brown painted eyes, and cloth saddles.

“Those are wonderful,” I said.

He looked at his hands, embarrassed, and accepted the tray.

The room was neatly divided into two. One half, my father’s woodworking shed, then a high divider, and the other half lined with shelves containing piles of cotton fabrics in every color imaginable. A late-model sewing machine sat on a table.

My throat closed.

“A few years ago, we demolished the old shed and put up this larger one and moved your mother’s quilting things in here. So we could be together.” He coughed and kept his eyes downcast, embarrassed. “Janet had to work hard to keep the sawdust off her cloth, but she said she liked working in here.”

“That’s a good sewing machine. Much better than the old one she used when I was young.”

“Yup.”

“I don’t see any finished quilts.”

“Everything made over the winter went up to the store a month or so ago. Then she wasn’t feeling too well and didn’t start anything more.”

“What store?”

But he wasn’t listening to me. “Lonely in here, without her. Sometimes I turn my head to tell her some stupid joke I heard in town, or ask what those twins are up to. And for a moment I almost see her sitting there, her head bent over that sewing machine, concentrating on the feel of the cloth. But she isn’t there, is she?”

“No, Dad.”

I left him to his cheese and pickle, rocking horse and memories.

Not only the sewing machine, but the sloped drafting table installed so Mom could cut fabric without having to bend over, the woodworking equipment, even the quality of the wood used in the making of the rocking horses, was at odds with my ideas about what sort of materials my parents should be able to afford.

As much as I didn’t want to, I had to confront Shirley about what was to become of Dad. Today was Wednesday; my return ticket was for Saturday morning. I would like to get it over with today. But Shirley was at work. I’d go over there after dinner.

To pass the time, I returned to the cellar.