Blue Moon (36 page)

“There were all kinds of rumours that the city was a major recruitment centre for turning prairie girls into white slaves. No one ever tried to grab me off the street. I had little trouble getting factory work. I was a riveter at the factory that made the Blackburn Sharks,
the warplanes. When work ran out there, I switched to the Boeing factory which made parts lor the B-29 Superfortresses,

“Just after I arrived, some city hall gent I had met at a bar took me to the big shindig for the opening of the new Hotel Vancouver. The city nowr had its own sixteenth-century chateau sprawling a half-block over Georgia and Burrard. On that night, May 25, I was close enough to King George and Queen Elizabeth that I could have kissed them!

“Once the war started in earnest, there were blackouts, rumours about the hazards of drinking local water, and the exodus of the Japanese fuelled in part by fear of the power of the Black Dragon Society. One Japanese submarine did shell Estevan on the east coast of Vancouver Island, but by and large I didn't feel in great danger. All in all, I had a good war.

“I partied with Yvonne de Carlo who, after a long strenuous publicity campaign, was chosen by Hollywood to star in
Salome, Where She Danced.
Yvonne was hailed as 'The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.' That was strange because I thought in those days I was the most beautiful girl in the world!

“After Japan was bombed, life seemed to come to a standstill. All the excitement vanished. People became more serious, were intent on making money and leading stable lives. I had no such ambitions. I had lots of boyfriends, one right after the other. In those days, what I was looking for in a man was well expressed by Winston Churchill: 'It will be long, hard and there will be no withdrawal.' Sometimes my men friends overlapped, which led to some pretty awful fights. One knifing, no murders. Nowadays, the word 'slut' is given to such women, but it wasn't like that, even in the early fifties. But, gradually, I was still partying when all my friends had stopped. I was alone, desperately alone.

“I became very depressed, started drinking, couldn't work and went on the game. I made my pleasure my business. I did so exactly at the wrong time because in the wake of Senator McCarthy's witch hunts in the States, there was a corresponding clamping-down by the vice squads here. Vancouver's small-town mentality surfaced in full force. All of a sudden, I was part of the 'criminal element,' as city hall gracefully put it. Police Chief Mulligan was disturbed, he said, by the number of amateurs and housewives entering the profession; he was particularly offended that a number of women were setting up
business in apartments in the West End near the Stock Exchange. He closed down the production of Erskine Caldwell's
Tobacco Road
at the Avon. Not that the citizens of Vancouver weren't interested in sex: the mating habits and rate of reproduction of the penguins at Stanley Park's penguin pool when it opened in 1953 were chronicled in graphic detail in the newspapers.

“A city in search of some sort of cultural life. That was what Vancouver had become. There was Professor Francis, a tall, elongated pretzel of a man, clothed in a tattered overcoat with a dead flower in his lapel, who appeared at every single serious musical event. Joachim Foikis, the official town fool, received grants to keep him in business. There was the tall, fierce-looking 'Russian General' whose costume included a Balaclava helmet, tunic, and breeches; he strode through downtown clipping his jack boots with a riding crop.

“Two years before you showed up at my doorstep, I married Mr. Skeffington, who was fifteen years older than me. For many years, John had been a patron of mine. That is, he sought my services on an almost weekly basis. He had some lowly job on the docks, had been a life-long bachelor, and had—through frugal living (he never spent any money except for sex)—amassed a small fortune. The only trouble was that John was well-known to the Mob, although he was not a part of it. When he started to drink, he opened his mouth promiscuously. I warned him about keeping his trap shut. He would faithfully promise to heed my warnings. We had been married for a year and a half when John vanished into thin air. I called the police, who showed no interest in locating him. His body was dragged out of English Bay three weeks before you came here. The body was intact except for his penis, which had been dexterously removed with what seemed to the pathologist expert skill.

“When we first encountered each other, you remember, I had just taken over the house on Alexander. Since then I have attempted to be a good girl. I do not wish to attract the watchful eye of the Mob, I have enough money to keep myself in modest comfort, and just about the only sex I enjoy is at the movies. Mar cello Mastroianni is now my heartthrob. The pitiful state to which I have been reduced. My life is merely sad; I'm not capable of tragedy.”

The regrets were all there, but there was a complete absence of self-pity. When I told Emma of my sorrow at the way things had
turned out for both us, she winked “It's the way of the world. We're just animals, putting in time before we shuffle off,”

My own favourite films were very different from Emma's: Truffaut's
The Wild Child
and Malle's
Lacombe Lucien.
In the first, a kindly doctor—played by Truffaut—tries to establish genuine communication between a boy raised by wolves and himself. In essence, an impossible task but one undertaken with compassion and gentleness. Malle's film is altogether different: Lucien is an ordinary, somewhat brutish boy who simply goes along with the Gestapo. Passively, he betrays and kills. He unthinkingly becomes embroiled in the evil of others.

When I told Dr. Newman about my encounter with Emma and, in the process, praised her naturalness, he broke his usual vow of silence.

“You have the tendency to make black and white distinctions. Emma is a more instinctual person than you, and you immediately put yourself down because you are not like her.”

“She is much more alive than I am, more responsive to herself and, therefore, to others.”

“Again, that is your reading of the situation. Once again, you place yourself in the worst possible light.”

“Why shouldn't I? I am a person of little human warmth and even less feeling.”

“Absolute nonsense!” This was the first time he had ever raised his voice. “You fail to see that there is a part of every human being that is determined by nature, not by nurture. Temperamentally, Emma has different responses to stimuli than you do. This does not make her a better or worse person than you are.

“I have been giving this a great deal of thought in the past six months. Perhaps I could offer you an interpretation?” I felt like telling him it was about time but kept my mouth shut. “Some women who are abused as children by a father, an uncle, a family friend, become promiscuous when they reach young adulthood. It's almost as if they take on the responsibility for the bad behaviour of their elders, can only catch a glimmer of self-worth by treating sex with men as a replaying of the initial trauma.

“Then, there are those victims who once they reach young adulthood—wrhen sexual interest in men is natural—have
absolutely no interest in such activity, even dislike it. I think you are a member of this group. The trauma of sexual interference on the part of both your parents cauterized your normal sexual feelings. You have told me that you would usually imagine yourself and your body somewhere else when you were having sexual intercourse with clients.

“Your attraction to Bill Bohozuk was very emotional but not strongly sex-driven. You have no interest in partaking of sexual activity. You have commented many times in amazement at how different your feelings about sex are from what you term 'normal people.'

“I think you and I must see this disinclination as in large part a constitutional adjustment your psyche made to unwarranted intrusion.”

He sucked his breath in, as if uncertain he wanted to say more. Finally: “You have allowed yourself to wallow too long in totally unjustified self-loathing.” His last remark was issued as if a command, a direction in which I must now turn. For me, the path ahead still seemed completely blocked.

I had known Ethel for about six years when Wallace Wilson died in 1966. I had met him about a dozen times. Always congenial, he routinely inquired about my adventures in the book trade. “Duthie isn't working you too hard, is he?” Sometimes he would ask me to recommend a recent potboiler. “If I wanted a really good read, what would you suggest?” I once pointed out to him that Dickens had written excellent page-turners. “Oh, I'm not up to that speed. Something simpler, Elizabeth, for me! Put your mind to it and give me a call. Or give the title to Ethel. Or, if you like, send it right over, and I'll pop a cheque to Duthie in the post!”

In contrast to Ethel, Wallace seemed an unduly ordinary person. But I think that was an essential key to their strong marriage. In their case, opposites attracted in a wonderful way. After Wallace died, Ethel wanted to follow him. Often she told me to prepare myself for the inevitable. “The next time you come here, I may have vanished. I long so for the day when I shall see him again.” Once she assured me: “It won't be too long. I am confident my booking has been made—I must now be patient for the actual day and time to be set. I am optimistic that the GreatTimetabler has me close to the top of his waiting list.” For Ethel, there could be no life after Wallace. Her heart was broken.

In
Swamp Angel,
elderly Nell Severance, a widow of many years, mourns her late husband, many years dead. The intimacy that existed between them is suspended as she patiently waits for death to arrive. The odd thing is that
Swamp Angel
was published twelve years before Wallace died, almost as if Ethel, when she wrote that book, had foreseen her unhappy fate.

Suspended. That was exactly the right word to describe my own existence. I went to work, attended faithfully four times a week at Dr. Newman's, went to the cinema twice a week, usually accompanied by Emma. On the outside a remarkably plain life, one entirely devoid of great sensations. And yet within me the past lived uncomfortably. I was consumed by guilt about the children. And I even managed to feel a great deal of shame and—sometimes compassion—for what had happened to John Dick. Most nights in my dreams, I drove up the Mountain. Outwardly, I guess, I seemed a thoroughly reformed person, but the past still threw a menacing shadow over me.

A whitened sepulchre. In that awful image I summed myself up. No matter how subtly Dr. Newman suggested I was a victim, I resisted that interpretation.

Ethel implored me to write. “Force yourself, my girl!” or “Put what you know down on paper, Ducks! That's the trick!” Even in the midst of her own great sorrow and her longing for death, her eyes remained crystalline bright as she upbraided me: “The spark's there. You have to uncover it.”

Increasingly, my non-writing became a concern of Dr. Newman's: “Perhaps Mrs. Wilson is correct. Perhaps you should
switch from reader to writer. Much of your analysis has been about the switch from passive to active voice. Perhaps writing would allow you to find your true voice.” Those perhapses had more than a dash of exhortation to them. Usually, I tried to be a compliant patient. In this instance, I was rebellious.

Invisible hurdles blocked me. I couldn't imagine a coherent storyline even though I knew all the plot details of, say, Lydia's life. Or the right words evaded me when I actually took pen to paper. Or the right shape for the story seemed lost in an unfathomable mist. So I drowned in a sea of ineptitude and timidity.

By 1964, the dream had a new variant. Instead of Mr. Romanelli waiting for me on the brow of the Mountain, John is there. His face more haggard than usual, he gives me a wan smile and thanks me for saving him. Before we drive home in the Packard, he informs me he has promised to do a favour for Romanelli for letting him off the hook. He points in the direction of the woods, indicating I should follow him. The sharp, sticky smell of the pines both overwhelms and comforts me as I penetrate them. I followr John closely but after a while the distance between us is considerable. I yell at him to slow down, but he does not hear me. He plunges ahead. The distance between us increases. Then, he vanishes. All of a sudden, any semblance of moonlight has vanished. Enveloped in a darkness so real I can touch it, I turn to my left and stagger on. Then I change direction but to no avail. My legs ache, I am thirsty, and I am about to burst into tears.

Then I see a break in the woods, a small clearing bathed in a bright yellow light. I head in that direction and, after what seems a good fifteen minutes, I reach the periphery. At first the tract of land seems empty. Then, as I walk around the edge, I notice a few spots of blood on the ground. I bend down to inspect them. When I stand back up, I am aware of a menacing force. I turn around and then see the bodies in the middle of the clearing: a young girl about 6 or 7 and two newborn babies, a boy and a girl. All three are naked and all have recently died. The two infants look as if they have been strangled—there is no blood near them, but their faces are a bright blue; the little girl's throat has been cut.

These variants of the dream intrigued Dr. Newman: “What do you make of the fact that John Dick leads you into the forest and then disappears?”

“Perhaps I feel less guilty about what happened to him? I no longer seem to have the need of reliving that part of that horrible night.”

“Yes. That is very possible. What about the children?”

“Their deaths seem totally unrelated to me. I don't have the sense in the dream that I am responsible for their deaths.”

“Why are they there then?”

“I feel incredibly sad when I see them. I mourn for them, for their blighted lives.”

“When you look at the tiny corpses, you are in mourning for yourself, for your own sense of your early life having been spoiled by your mother and father's cruelty. You are much more in touch with what you had to endure as a young girl.”