Tides of Honour (14 page)

“Merci beaucoup,”
she replied.
“Vous êtes très
aimable.”

He would have to ask her about that later, Danny decided,
find out what she'd said. When Antoine finally released Audrey's hand, Danny took it and wound his fingers through hers. “My wife is an artist.”

Antoine's brow lifted. “Ah!
Une artiste!
What do you paint, madame?”

“Just about anything, sir, but recently I have been painting portraits of people.”

“
Vraiment?
Perhaps you would paint my family.”

“I would be honoured.”

He considered Audrey closely, having apparently forgotten all about Danny for the time being. “Would you come to my house? Meet my wife and show us some samples of your work?”

Audrey looked delighted. Danny stared at her, realizing how long it had been since she'd really smiled like that. Lately her expression had seemed strained.

“I would love to,” she replied.

“Excellent. Bring your supplies as well, and we can start immediately if we like what we see.” He turned to O'Malley. “Give Monsieur and Madame Baker my address. I shall see them in the morning, early. That way, Monsieur Baker will have plenty of time to get back to work after he brings his wife.” His eyes found Danny's. “Yes? This is fine?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“You see how we like to work in my little company? We help each other's families. It's good for business.”

It was difficult for Danny, swallowing his pride, but the army had drilled respect into his head. “Yes, sir, and we're grateful for your help.”

It was the right thing to say. Mr. Antoine smiled broadly at him, then at Johnny, and finally touched his hat and gave Audrey a small bow. “Until tomorrow,” he said, then he walked briskly in another direction, followed by a couple of note-taking
employees. O'Malley and Johnny headed toward the docks, leaving the couple alone.

Audrey positively glowed when she turned to Danny. “What do you think?”

What could he say? “It's fantastic! Didn't I say you'd be painting here? And I don't think you can go much higher than Pierre Antoine.”

“I'm so excited! I'll have to go and pull together those samples for him.” Her fingers linked and she held them under her chin, beaming like a little girl. “Oh, Danny, you were right. This is going to be wonderful for us both.”

“Of course it is.” He tilted his head, looking at the bag she carried. “That for me?”

She blinked, confused, then remembered. “Oh, yes. You forgot your lunch. I wanted to come and see you anyway. It's awful, being alone in that little old house, you know.”

“I know. But I'll be home in a few hours, then you can show me what you're planning to bring tomorrow morning.”

She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Thank you, Danny.”

He never tired of that, of the way she loved him. His arms tightened around her waist and pulled her close. He kissed her again, trying to be discreet since dockworkers milled around them, then lowered his lips to her ear.

“You can show your appreciation later, my love,” he hinted, and she pulled away in mock surprise.

“Why, Mr. Baker. I'm shocked!” But she couldn't hide her grin, and her eyes danced just for him.

“Sure you are. Go on now. I'll see you back at the house later.”

She kissed him again then turned back up the street. Danny watched her go, slightly uncomfortable with the fact that the bounce in her step might not be because of him. He wanted her
happy, and he knew she wanted to paint, to contribute to their income, but a small part of him was still reluctant to accept that. On the other hand, if she did a good job on the Antoines' portrait, that practically guaranteed Danny's position on the docks. He would just have to adjust his way of thinking, he decided.

The next morning, Danny carried her easel and paints to Pierre Antoine's house, kissed her at the door, then turned and limped back down the hill to the pier without a word. He had seen the man's dark brown eyes slide over Audrey's body when they'd arrived, yet Danny had left her there. What else could he do?

Halifax was a bustling, crowded city, peopled by factory workers and owners, prostitutes and bootleggers, and frequented by shiploads of soldiers and sailors. Hundreds of ocean-going ships passed through the Halifax harbour, many of which carried war supplies for the British and French. On sunny days there was nothing like it, with the vast blue of the water reflecting endless golds and reds of sloughing trees. He imagined it would be even prettier in the summer, when Citadel Hill was awash in green. One sunny day in Halifax could most likely bring a smile to anyone's face.

On the other hand, there seemed to be more grey days than blue lately. And when the city was awash in fog or drizzle, the whole world faded into tired, colourless features. It was hard to feel optimistic on days like that. What bothered him the most, though, was how that grey seemed to leech colour from Audrey's face.

The money that both he and Audrey were making, as he'd been promised, was pretty good. He did his job, keeping track of shipments, occasionally helping to unload, intimidating guys
from the other side of the docks when it was called for, and watching out for the rest of his team. Danny was becoming a popular fixture on the docks. Johnny had introduced him to all his friends and coworkers, and Danny'd connected with a few real characters, like the monster Irishman named Red, the Italian boxer Franco Solieri, Mad MacDonald from Scotland, and a couple of others he'd like to keep on his side. None of the men he knew now were the kind he'd bring home to his mother for Sunday night supper, but then again, that kind of fellow might not survive on the docks. With so much shipping action going on, there had been some fights, but though Danny had been hired for his cold countenance and ability to stand up against troublemakers, he avoided confrontations. He knew himself too well. Yes, he could pull the trigger if it was called for. But once his fists started flying, they were hard to stop. More than once Johnny had had to pull him off an unlucky longshoremen who had taken one look at Danny's wooden leg and thrown a miscalculated challenge in his direction.

Audrey, on the other hand, didn't appear to have any friends. For weeks she spent every day painting at the Antoine house, and when she got home she was usually too tired to want to go anywhere. Not that they could really afford to go out anyway, and here in the city that was the only real option. It was different from back on the shore, where they could just drift in a boat or cuddle together under the stars.

Over time Audrey became quiet, withdrawn, and he knew the squalor of the area was killing her. What choice did he have? At least she was painting, though even that didn't appear to be enough. When she looked wistfully down the street toward the sea, he knew she was having trouble seeing any other colours but grey.

Audrey Baker

November 1917

TWENTY
-
TWO

Audrey had lived a lot
of lives. As a child she'd wandered alongside her mother, dancing and dining through the poorest places in Sussex. She'd been happy, she remembered, but she'd known hunger and rough living. When the sickness had taken her mother away, Audrey had become a slave of sorts to her grandmère, tending the big, lonely farm. After that death, Audrey had stumbled with exhaustion through the munitions factory, her fingers black as pitch and frozen into painful, solid lumps, courtesy of the London winter.

Then life had changed again. She'd come to Canada with her heart open wide. Jeddore had been cold and windy and beautiful with a wild, uncaring abandon, and in the summer the sun had baked down on them, its warmth almost as loving as the people around her. She had never wanted to leave.

Now she was in Halifax, another different world. A world which offered so many choices.

In a way, having options was a new concept to Audrey. As a child she'd followed her mother, learned that even the woman she worshipped could make mistakes. On the farm she'd had no choices, but the understanding of her restrictions had only
squeezed her creativity into a more volatile package. Escape hadn't been an option—since she had no idea where she might run—but it had become the only possible path to take after she'd met Danny. He had blinded her to any others.

Then she'd been adopted by Danny's family, and oh, why bother to choose any other life? It was beautiful there, most of the time, and she was happy.

But Danny wasn't. She'd known he needed to do something to redeem himself in her eyes, to make enough money to be a “real” husband, yet she'd chosen to close her eyes, pretending to be blinded again. She tried to tell him life would be all right in their home in East Jeddore, that somehow they'd get by just fine. She'd lied to them both, and he'd been forced to choose.

Now Halifax spread before her, showing her people and ideas she'd never considered before. She tried to keep busy, tried to figure out which direction to take, but one rainy morning when she was not at the Antoines' house, she headed out with absolutely nothing on her mind but escape from the drab, lonely existence in their miserable house. She wandered into downtown Halifax and was drawn to a large, ancient cathedral called Saint Mary's. The entry was a giant set of heavy oak doors, miniature in comparison to the massive granite walls surrounding them. Audrey heaved open one door and the thick black hinges creaked gently, welcoming her inside.

The church was dark within, like a cave, and she was temporarily blinded after the grey, rainy day. Then the flickering glow of candles caught her eye, and her mind registered a blend of cadmium orange and yellow paints come to life. She moved farther into the building and found herself lost in magnificence. It felt wrong, dripping like a rag before all this splendour, so she slipped off her hat and dropped her hand so that the limp material hung at her side. She hoped it wouldn't drip all over the soft, burgundy carpet, but she felt somehow more respectful this way.

A tray of small candles greeted her at the centre aisle, some lit, some with only blackened wicks. It felt like an invitation to venture within, but she stood beside them a few moments longer, her jaw hanging open in awe as she gazed upward. The ceiling rose in a series of marble arches, and within those forms had been painted the most beautiful pictures she'd ever seen. Her eye followed the paths of the arches, marvelling, and a thought came to her that this place couldn't be the product of a regular builder. The lines and colours could only have sprung from the heart of an artist.

She knew others would claim it had been created by God. Audrey didn't know enough about that to either argue or agree. Her mother had despised the restrictions of the Church, and her mother's mother had used those same restrictions to smother them both. Audrey supposed her grandmère would call her a sinner, say she had no right to be in this sacred place, but Audrey didn't care. She had needed shelter, and here it was, more beautiful than she could have imagined.

A few people sat in the benches, scattered in solitary silence, but no one knew her. She felt liberated; she had nothing to apologize for here. Not wanting to make a sound lest she disturb others, Audrey stepped silently along one of the side aisles, taking her time, savouring the windows with their glass renderings of saints and sinners. She assumed their colours would come alive on a sunny day. As it was, they only hinted at the colours soldered within the frames, and the effect made her cold. She shivered, hugging her coat closer as she moved toward the front of the church. It would be glorious up there, she knew. She'd seen the sheen of gold from the entryway at the back of the church, but she promised herself she wouldn't peek at the altar yet. She wanted to take it all in at once. When she finally arrived at the front, she dropped her eyes to her feet and kept them there until she reached the centre of the floor.

When she was ready, she opened her eyes and exhaled. The rain couldn't touch these colours, couldn't detract from the intricate, perfect sculptures, their gold skins warming over more small flames. In the centre, suffering in an endless, voiceless agony, stretched the body of Jesus, nailed on a wooden cross. She liked that, how the artist had brought in the simplicity of the wood, to contrast with the gold. Above everything rose more arches, more spindles stretching toward heaven. In that moment, Audrey wondered if there actually could be a God. Not some old man with a long white beard, not a tortured soul on a cross, but a spirit somewhere, a presence. And if that were so, she was certain the art in her came from that presence. That God. She might not believe in heaven and hell or the saints, but she believed in her art.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

She chose a seat a few rows back, where no one else was, and lowered herself onto its hard wooden bench. She liked how she felt so tiny here, just a speck in the middle of all this, and yet she felt as if she belonged. The walls and ceiling swirled with figures which came alive in her mind, opened their painted veins and bled for real. She examined one woman's face, and wondered at the golden circle painted around her head. It didn't appear to be a crown, so she assumed it represented a halo. The woman looked so desperately sad. Captivated by her expression, Audrey stared at her, wondering who she was, and what could have happened to take the life from her eyes in that way. How could anyone be so unhappy?

An image came to her then, of Danny. She saw him in the muddied fields of France, his lovely brown hair covered by a helmet. He smiled at her then blinked, so she did too, and a tear escaped one of her eyes. Then his expression changed, reflecting the sadness of the woman she'd seen in the picture, and Audrey's heart melted.

“Oh, Danny,” she whispered. “You will be fine. You and I will have a wonderful life.”
God, if you're there, please let that be true.
A flutter of nerves deep in her belly warned that it probably wouldn't be that easy.
I'll be there for you, Danny
, she promised, then she rose and walked back to the entrance of the church.

She had come in seeking shelter, had stayed long enough to be awed by the beauty, and now she stood at the exit, cloaked in sorrow. Was it supposed to happen this way? Was she supposed to come into a place of worship and lose hope instead of gain it?

She didn't want to go back home. Not yet. Disappointment pressed against her chest. She'd wanted so much—expected so much from this, her first visit to a place of religion. If God was art, she accepted that he was in her soul, but she didn't plan to come back and visit him anytime soon. The ups and downs of being in his house were too hard on her heart.

Her hat had dripped dry along the way, and when she put it back on her head, it was cool and damp but no longer sopping wet. She buttoned up her long black coat, put her hands on the oak doors, and pushed out into the rainy day.

All she'd ever wanted before was to be beside Danny, to laugh with him and see the love in his eyes. She'd been willing to go anywhere, do anything to be with him. What was she supposed to do now that just about everything she loved about him was gone? He rarely smiled and never laughed. Not with her, anyway. He drank. He stayed out nights with his rough friends, and even worse, he often brought them home to sleep in their tiny home. Except how could she call it a home? To Audrey's way of thinking, a home was a place where hearts beat in unison, where weak, rattling walls could be overlooked because love kept them strong. There was no unison in their house. No harmony either. Just the day-in, day-out ache of heartbreak.

It reminded her a little of France, of surviving her grandmère's
smothering misery. Except she'd never known love with Céleste. That made this time even worse.

Johnny wasn't often there, since he ran rum for days at a time, but he'd settled easily into the company Danny kept, since he was a rough sort as well. Strong like his brother, with a rich, dark laugh. But Johnny, even when he'd had too much to drink, didn't carry a contagious sadness with him. He didn't wear the smothering cloak of anger Danny always wore. Johnny was a comfort to her, a friend, though she couldn't ask him for help. She'd tried once, but he'd only shrugged.

“He has to do that on his own, Audrey,” he said. “You gotta remember that Danny's seen and done things that don't just go away. But he'll come around. Best not to mess with it.”

In Jeddore, she'd sometimes lain in bed, waiting for the morning sun to light their room so she could watch him sleep. She knew the moment he awoke, knew he was sensitive to her own breathing patterns. His eyes would open first, and if it was a particularly lucky day, he was on his side and they opened to her. Before either of them said a word, it was understood and mutual:
I love you. You are my world
.

Sometimes, lately, he wasn't even there in the morning. He passed out in the living room with his friends or fell asleep with his head on the kitchen table, snoring loudly with the effects of too much rum.

Oh, she wanted to understand. She wanted so badly to be the answer he sought, the comfort he so obviously needed, but he turned away from everything she offered. The war had been planted deep in Danny's mind. Its roots had twisted and spread voraciously, unearthing more terrifying, loathsome memories. From those roots grew leeching vines of self-hate and self-pity which had bloomed into an armour so thick, he could no longer
see the sky. And all of it was fortified by the unavoidable sight of his stump.

What would have happened if he'd come home in one piece? Would he still have gotten caught up in this vortex, left her to watch helplessly from the side?

She'd watched other women cope with their husbands' depression. Some had joined their partners in the dark, drinking and fading into the broken, mouldy shadows of Richmond. Some peered nervously from behind cracked-open doors, their eyes swollen from tears, even blackened by fists. What she hadn't seen was a woman who stood up for herself, who dared to make something of her life even if her husband had quit on his own.

She couldn't talk reason to Danny anymore. Couldn't make him see. Any attempts to do that had been cut short, ending with his storming from the house without a response. He seemed bent on keeping to this path, too stubborn, too shackled by self-­defeating pride to reach for the lifeline she threw time and time again.

If she couldn't save him, she still had to save herself. As much as she loved him, and as much as she knew that deep down he still loved her, it appeared she'd have to do this on her own. Audrey was still young, and she had no intentions of allowing herself to ease into the acceptance of her life as it was now. She would not skulk in the dark, hiding from his callous words, his accusatory glares. While every nerve in her ached for the solid anchor of his arms wrapped around her, she would not beg.

Growing up, she'd lived from place to place, moment to moment. She'd never had any real, defined dreams for her future—­other than moving to Canada and marrying Danny—but it made no sense that she shouldn't have any. The world was changing. She'd learned that from the women in London, and
though Halifax was smaller, she didn't believe it was any less progressive. She would find proof, and she would do something about it.

Antoine's wife, one of the few women she'd met, would be no help in that regard. She was the perfect example of someone Audrey didn't want to be: weighted down by all her children, satisfied with a vague belief that her job in life was complete. The woman sat around with nothing but complaints, and Audrey had never seen her with anyone outside of the house.

Her husband, however, had vast connections. He was enthusiastic, intelligent, and innovative. He was charming and handsome and the centre of the city, as far as she could tell. She liked that Antoine had asked her to bring samples of her work before he asked her to paint his family. It was professional, and it made sense for a man who was so good in business to ask for references of a sort.

It seemed like another lifetime, but only a few weeks had passed since Danny had carried her things, then left her at the ornately carved front door. She had stepped inside the Antoines' grand house on a blast of cold November wind and smiled with apology as the maid took her coat. Everything about the house, from the outside in, seemed extravagant and thrilling, leaving her searching for words. She gripped the wooden handle of her bag hard; the artist in her ached to get it all down on paper.

“This way, please,” the maid said in a soft French accent, and she led Audrey to the front sitting room.

A large woman was there already, sitting like an overgrown toad on a sturdy chair, staring at Audrey through belligerent eyes.

The little maid introduced the two. “Madame Antoine, may I present Madame Audrey Baker, the artist.”

The toad blinked, attempted a smile. “Charmed. Lily, get Monsieur Antoine.”