Emancipation Day (9 page)

He must have turned towards the door, because he heard Josie begging him, “Don’t go, Willie,” when not two minutes before she’d been saying don’t let him in. He was at the bedroom door, then he was at the front door. He would not turn back. His hand was on the latch. Little Benny looked up from his wood scraps. He was wearing the green-and-blue-striped shirt that Hazel had sent him from Chicago. Alvina stared at him sombrely from the sofa, a little adult. They’d be all right without him. His hat was on the peg beside the door and he put it on.

“Where you going, Daddy?” Benny asked. “Can I come?”

“You stay here with your Mama and—” But he couldn’t say “your new little brother.” Couldn’t get the words out. “And be good.”

He went straight down to the British-American, Josie’s wailing still in his ears, let the whole neighbourhood hear it, he didn’t care, it had nothing to do with him. And he didn’t step foot outside the hotel for a whole month.

VIVIAN

J
ack was right: within months of his coming back from the Derry Run, the talk in St. John’s was all about how soon the war would end. No more mines turned up in the harbour, the U-boats were all but cleared from Cabot Strait, and most of the convoys were getting across the Atlantic without being attacked at all. Allied troops in Europe and North Africa were being well supplied; it was the Germans who were starving and ill equipped, their morale low, so low, all the papers said, that any day now Hitler would capitulate or be relieved of command. People began to forget to close their blackout curtains at night and were talking about what they would do when rationing was over. Her father even mentioned going to England on one of
the merchantmen. Mother told him not to be so dreadful daft, the Blitz could start up again at any time, but her father said his business was in Paignton, in Devonshire, where the family was from, and to his certain knowledge Paignton had not been targeted in a single air attack. Besides, the Luftwaffe was totally destroyed. Vivian told him she hoped he wouldn’t go, but if he did she would like to go with him, to which her mother responded by taking to her bed and not reappearing for a week.

Freddie joked over dinner one Sunday that if her father went to England he’d have to join one of the convoys, and Jack could accompany him as an escort. “At least as far as Iceland,” he said. But Jack, who was having dinner with them most Sundays now, only laughed and said he couldn’t go if he wanted to. The medical officer on his last ship had filled out papers restricting him to shore duty.

“Worst case of seasickness he’s ever seen.” Jack seemed almost proud of it, as though he were Polynesian.

Of course Iris was appalled. Everything about Jack appalled her. “You mean to say that because you get a little seasick you don’t have to go to sea anymore? You can just futter around here playing at dances and having gobs of fun?”

“I don’t get just a little sick,” Jack said. “I get
really
sick, all the time.”

“He gets the dry heaves,” Sadie announced proudly.

Vivian looked at him, trying to read his thoughts, but his face was a blank.

“Then you’ll never make a Newfoundlander,” Iris said.

Vivian glared across the table at her sister. “You join the Navy to see the world, Iris,” she said. “Not the backside of some stuck-up little island.”

“Oh, is that so?” Iris replied. “I would have thought seeing the world required a person to be able to set foot on a
ship
from time to time.”

Freddie evidently felt it a good point at which to intervene. “Given any more thought as to what you intend to do after the war, Jack?” he asked.

Now Vivian glared at Freddie. It was her question to ask, not his. And it was one she’d been afraid to ask. Whatever he answered would mean a huge but ambiguous change in her life. She desperately wanted something; she couldn’t say exactly what it was, but she felt it could only come from Jack. She liked things to come upon her suddenly, so she wouldn’t have time to think and get confused and possibly make the wrong decision. She believed the best time to make a decision was when it was too late to make a different one.

“I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said. “Go back to working for my father, I guess.”

There was an awkward silence around the table. Even the twins went quiet. Vivian concentrated on her plate. The potatoes were mealy and the meat was tough. Freddie called Sunday their “day of roast,” but lately the cuts were so bad Iris said she would set out steak knives if it wouldn’t be so embarrassing. Everyone was waiting for Jack to speak, but he seemed unaware of the fact. He filled his mouth with mashed potato and took a
rather loud sip of tea to wash it down. Iris winced, set down her knife and fork and told the twins they could be excused.

He left soon after dinner, looking angry or hurt, Vivian couldn’t tell which. But when she saw him to the door, he said he would see her at the K of C on Friday. A whole week away, she thought. After he was gone, Vivian put the twins to bed and then helped Iris clean up. They washed and tidied together in silence, then Iris put the kettle on and they sat at the kitchen table drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. Lucky Strikes, Vivian noted, left behind by Jack.

“You can’t seriously be thinking of marrying that …” As usual, she had already had most of the conversation in her head and was now favouring Vivian with highlights.

“Who said anything about marriage?”

“Come on, Viv. You should have seen your face when he said he was going back to Canada after the war. He didn’t say anything about taking you along, did he?”

“Why should he have, after the way you attacked him? You practically called him a coward, and then you as much as told him to get off the island. I wouldn’t be surprised if I never saw him again.”

“He seemed to have taken it pretty well.”

“He was being gracious.”

“Gracious? He said what he said to hurt you. That man isn’t gracious, he’s just smooth. And he slurps his tea!”

“If you don’t want him coming here anymore, we can have our Sunday dinners somewhere else.”

“Don’t be a pill, Viv. I don’t mind him coming here. Well, I do, but Freddie seems to like him and the twins think he’s the donkey’s waistcoat.” It was true: they would stand behind him on the chesterfield and comb his wavy, black hair like he was a gigantic doll. “I just think you could do better, that’s all,” Iris said. “There’s something mean about Jack Lewis. I don’t want to see you getting hurt. Besides, you don’t know anything about him, not the slightest thing.”

“He’s sweet when we’re alone together. And he’s going back to Windsor to work in the family business. What’s wrong with that?”

“Vivian, admit it. You only think you’re in love with him because he’s your ticket off the island.”

But that wasn’t true. Anyone could take her off the island; she wanted to go with Jack, if he asked her. Iris was a snob and didn’t like Jack because he took his boots off at the door and used his fish fork for the salad. She didn’t care what Iris thought. All Vivian wanted was to lose herself in work, then hurry home to lie on the sofa pretending to read but thinking about Jack, impatient for armistice so they could get on with their lives. Mrs. Jack Lewis. Vivian Lewis. Vivian Clift Fanshawe Lewis. She would have calling cards made up. He would be a good husband. He could be a soft, sensitive, caring person. Iris hadn’t seen the musician in him. He heard music everywhere. If they were walking along the street and a bird was singing, he would whistle its song and the bird would answer. He showed her what a bosun’s whistle sounded like. The other night he’d listened to
her heart beating and made a song out of it: “
A little piece of heaven / has come down to where I live, / an angel with a halo / and her name is Viv
.” The chief question wasn’t whether or not she would marry him if he asked her. Of course she would. The question was whether she would sleep with him first if he continued to press her to, and she was very much afraid that the answer to that was yes, too.

Oh, how he made her blood race. She’d been letting him get a little bolder each time they were together, fiddling with her buttons, touching her through her clothes. She now dressed with such sessions in mind. Layers, but not too many. And silk, not cotton or wool. Every time she put on her stockings she wondered if Jack would be able to manage the fasteners. She didn’t see how she could suddenly call a halt to his adventurousness. If she were going to stop him, she would surely have done so by now.

It happened in Ferryland, of all places. She and Jack went down for a weekend in March, when the sky was as grey as an old blanket and the sea glimpsed between trees looked like quicksilver. Daddy came downstairs to meet him, looking like he’d just been awakened from a nap. His hair was wild and his vest buttons were askew. She went up to him and kissed him and said, “Daddy, this is Jack.” The two men shook hands, but her father didn’t take a liking to Jack, she could tell. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Jack wasn’t interested in birds or stamps or fish, and her father wasn’t interested in the war. Not long afterwards,
he went down to the store, saying he had inventory to check on, and she’d never known him to work in the store on a Saturday. She felt as though she’d lost an ally.

Lunch was a quiet affair, a Jigg’s dinner. Wat wanted Jack to talk about the war. How many U-boats did the Germans have left, did he think? How many rockets? Jack replied like a propaganda newsreel, with authority but not much detail. Jerry was on the run, the Navy was cutting off German supplies, England was standing firm.

Her mother pumped him about Windsor as though she suspected he had made the place up. How big was it? What church did he go to? Was there rationing there, too? Had he heard from his people? Jack evaded questions about his family. They were fine. They were Lutherans, which made Iris’s brows shoot up. Yes, there was rationing, but a person could get just about anything if he knew where to look, implying that he knew where to look.

“And you say your father builds houses,” her mother said. “That sounds awfully difficult. Vivian’s great-grandfather built this house, but he had help. You’re fortunate to have something to return to after the war. So many won’t.”

“I know it,” Jack said, looking at Vivian, and her heart lifted. “I feel very lucky.”

After the dishes, she and Jack went for a stroll down past the store to the wharf. Saddlebacks and blueys squawked impatiently overhead: the fishing boats were still out and the splitting shed at the end of the dock was empty. Jack looked at the gurry buckets and held his nose. They climbed down and
walked along the beach below the bluff, where they couldn’t be seen from the house. When they rounded the headland, they were out of sight from the store, too. The tide was out and the harbour still except for bubbles on the beach pebbles when the waves receded. Farther out, the water seemed heavy and sullen.

“I’m sorry about the third-degree in there.”

“I don’t mind,” Jack said, looking out over the harbour. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Will you really go back to Windsor when this is over?” she asked him.

“When what’s over?”

“Oh, stop, Jack.”

He took her another hundred yards up the beach, to where an old fishing boat had been washed or run onto the beach and abandoned. It had been there for ages; she’d played on it as a girl, clambering over its half-buried gunwale and up its sloped deck to the weathered wheelhouse. She used to bring books there, to read where no one would disturb her, forbidden books like
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
. She remembered the way her eyes had danced over the pages, dwelling on the most delicious words, like
pulsating
and
tumescent
, and the way at the end she would look up and imagine her lover standing at the wheel, the wind pulling at her skirt as they churned through the uncharted sea. Away.

“Whose boat?” Jack asked.

“No one’s.”

“Then we can claim it,” he said, pulling her towards it. “Law of the sea.”

It was smaller than she remembered, maybe it had sunk deeper into the gravelly beach. They stepped over the gunwale and into the open cabin, her heart pulsating, there was no other word. There were rusted fish hooks scattered about, so they had to be careful where they put their hands. He inspected the bench, then sat on it and pulled her down onto his lap, pressing his face against her breast.
“A little piece of heaven has come down to where I live.”
She cozied down into him, out of the wind. The sound of the waves would mask anyone’s arrival; she looked through the open porthole but there was no one, and no one standing at the top of the bluff.

Jack was undoing her buttons, his fingers trembling so much that she brushed them away and undid them herself. Hadn’t they been rehearsing this? Hadn’t she gone to sleep every night for months imagining herself undoing his buttons, what his bare chest would look like, feel like, sound like? She would undo his flies. No, she wouldn’t. But she did. He was tumescent! He leaned back along the bench and pulled her onto him. She lifted her skirt. She had no idea what she was doing, what was guiding her, how she managed her knees, how she could possibly fit him inside her. She knew there would be some pain, but she didn’t think it would be in her thighs. He held both her arms and rose into her, gently at first, then harder. She moved with him, then against him, her thighs screaming, and then he arched his back and stopped, suddenly, as though he’d just remembered something. She was afraid she’d hurt him.

“Viv,” he said.

She put her fingers to the side of his mouth and said, “Shh.”

“No, I want to tell you about my—”

“Shh.” If he had been about to say he loved her, she wouldn’t have shushed him. But she didn’t want to hear that he had a girl back in Windsor, or that he was being transferred the next day to Halifax.

They rearranged themselves and sat side by side on the thwart, looking out over the harbour. Her heart was still pounding. She took a deep breath and composed herself for hearing the worst.