“I give up!” The photographer collapses his tripod. “You don’t have to pay me, Mr Piper, except for the fillum, I got exactly nothing.”
“Print up the last one, b’y, I’ll pay you.”
Leo Taylor packs the equipment back into his buggy. He’s a bit surprised. He has never seen Mr Piper anything but stern. Leo has always sensed something about Mr Piper — the thing you sense about certain dogs. Best to avoid their eye, don’t make them nervous with sudden moves. And yet here’s Mr Piper, high-jinksing with his daughter just as though he were her brother or her beau.
James and Kathleen are still laughing as the buggy rolls off in a cloud of sepia and Materia raps on the window with the scissors.
“Supper,” says James.
“What’re we having?” Kathleen asks.
“Steak and kidney pie.”
“Yuck.”
He ruffles her head and they go inside.
Limbo
The child was not right from the start. First of all, it hardly cried. Made a sound like a little wet kitten. So maybe it was just as well. The tragic part was that neither Materia nor James nor even Mrs Luvovitz knew to baptize it in time; how could they? There was nothing out and out wrong with it, it was even a big child. Full term, born the day after Kathleen got her picture taken. Did Materia weaken it when she prostrated herself at the plaster feet of Mary a few days ago? Seems fanciful to think so. And a tad blasphemous. No, it was a big child with a good strong heartbeat and it lived three days, then died, no one knows why. Crib death. It just happens, children stop, why? It’s a mystery. As though they arrive, look around with their little blind eyes and decide not to stay.
Materia had called it Lily but it can’t be said to have been truly named; it was unbaptized and therefore no one, and therefore incinerated. James took it, wrapped in a sheet inside an orange crate — he was a little dazed — to the double company house on King Street that served as a hospital.
Burial was not an option. Mourning was not an option. This was the other Lily, before the Lily who would live to be twice baptized, as though to make up for the first. Other Lily.
What you do after a baby like this is get over it. Don’t mope, it wasn’t meant to be. Don’t pray, prayers don’t reach limbo. Have faith, God had a reason. To test you, most likely. God never sends us more than we can bear. Offer it up. Keep in mind it was another girl.
Materia gets on with it. Cleans the house in the night, bumping and scouring from pool to pool of kerosene light till the dawn reeks of lye and she begins to bake and bake and bake. Who’s going to eat all this? She takes it over to the Luvovitzes; Abe and Rudy are teenagers now, big boys with bottomless stomachs. Materia loves to watch them eat — beautiful healthy boys, winking at their mother, towering over her, devoted to her. Good sons.
Mercedes and Frances are disappointed. Bewildered. Their new sister was there and then she wasn’t. Kathleen is angry; babies shouldn’t die.
“Well, what was wrong with it?”
“We don’t know,” says James.
“That’s a stupid rotten answer.”
“Life is sometimes rotten and stupid.” James prides himself on always telling her the truth.
“Not for me it won’t be.”
“No, not for you.”
What upsets Kathleen most is the blank face on her mother. A baby factory. Insensate. My life will not be like that.
James doesn’t dwell on it. He feels sorry for the thing, but it’s just as well not to have another mouth to feed. And Materia has bounced back remarkably. Like a heifer. He tries not to think it. Trouble is, she still looks pregnant. She’ll be slim again by the time I get back from the war.
But Materia will look pregnant from now on. People will always assume she’s six or seven months. This will come in handy.
James joins the 94th Victoria Regiment Argyll Highlanders. His captain speaks Gaelic, as does eighty per cent of the unit. James volunteers immediately for overseas duty, glad of any training that gets him away from home. Bayonet fighting at the Wellington Barracks in Halifax: rushing at bags bleeding sand, “under and up, ladies, under and up! You’re caught in his ribcage!” A British sergeant teaches them how to dig immaculate trenches, neatly sandbagged: “Not too deep, lads, we ain’t stopping long!” — just long enough for a bit of a kip, then it’s over the top with the Hun on the run. James is among the older men there. He doesn’t fraternize, he doesn’t care about King George nor does he have anything against the Kaiser. He counts the days till he’s overseas. “Under and up, ladies, under and up!”
Fifty years of European peace have generated exuberance on all sides. A lot of horses stand ready to gallop across Europe in two directions. Cape Breton has joined up in droves, despite the fact that over the past twenty-five years the Canadian army has spent more time guarding the property of the Dominion Coal Company than it has fighting. But the recruiters have been eloquent — “poor little Belgium, the blood-thirsty Boche” — the mines have been slow and what boy doesn’t long to be a soldier? The fact that friends will get to serve side by side is also very persuasive — whole towns in the same stretch of trench. Everyone is afraid that “she’ll be all over by Christmas”. James hopes the war will last two years. That way Kathleen will be old enough to leave home when he returns. If he returns.
James finishes basic training and takes up home defence duties. All through the fall, he and the rest of the 94th patrol the coast in a state of frustrated suspense, terribly worried lest the war should end before they get over there. They become known as the blueberry soldiers, because there’s not a lot else for them to do besides pick blueberries and keep their eyes peeled for a German ghost ship. James eats at home, but sleeps with two other soldiers in a shack on the beach at Lingan. Ready, Aye, Ready.
Eventually, James is transferred to the Cape Breton Highlanders 85th Overseas Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He is issued a Ross rifle. It’s a good thing there’s a knife attached to its barrel — no one knows yet just how far the Ross rifle’s efficiency in a field of North American rabbits outstrips its performance in European mud. Along with sixty-five pounds of kit, James is also issued a khaki tunic, a leather battle kilt, a blond and black horsehair sporran, a dress kilt of bright Macdonald tartan and a beret with a red tassel. The Germans will be sure to see him coming. And with the regimental pipers first over the top, the Germans will be sure to hear them. Bagpipes have a liquefying effect on the bowels of the enemy, and bare knees in battle strike the fear of the fanatical. The Germans will come to call the Highland regiments “die Damen von Hölle” — the ladies from hell.
Finally, one day in December 1914, James stands in the drive while Taylor heaves his duffel bag into the buggy waiting to take him to the docks in Sydney. It’s snowing and James feels the unaccustomed bite of winter on his knees. He knows he is in the proud dress of his ancestors but he sorely misses his trousers. Materia can’t help but think how handsome he looks. James pats them all on the head. Frances tickles his knee, Mercedes offers him her soggy cookie, Kathleen throws her arms around him, can’t stop herself crying, she never cries, she’s not a sissy. She clings, he tries to disengage.
“Be a good soldier now, look after your mother.”