"I'd never have the nerve," said Mrs. Hillcoate.
"You can't call it nerve," said Reenie. "She don't give a rat's ass." (When Reenie got worked up her grammar slipped.) "There's something missing, if you ask me; she's two bricks short of a load. She went skinny-dipping in the lily pond, with all the frogs and goldfish-I met her coming back across the lawn, with only a towel and what God gave Eve. She just nodded and smiled, she didn't bat an eye."
"I did hear about that," said Mrs. Hillcoate. "I thought it was only gossip. It sounded far-fetched."
"She's a gold-digger," said Reenie. "She only wants to get her hooks into him, then clean him out."
"What's a gold-digger? What are hooks?" said Laura.
Flappermade me think of limp, wet washing on the line, in the wind. Callista Fitzsimmons was nothing like that.
There was a squabble over the War Memorial, and not only because of the rumours about Father and Callista Fitzsimmons. Some people in town thought the Weary Soldier statue was too dejected-looking, and also too slovenly: they objected to the unbuttoned shirt. They wanted something more triumphant, like the Goddess of Victory on the memorial two towns over, which had angel's wings and wind-swept robes and was holding a three-pronged implement that looked like a toasting fork. They also wanted "For Those Who Willingly Made the Supreme Sacrifice" to be written on the front.
Father refused to back down on the sculpture, saying they could consider themselves lucky the Weary Soldier had two arms and two legs, not to mention a head, and that if they didn't watch out he'd go in for bare-naked realism all the way and the statue would be made of rotting body fragments, of which he had stepped on a good many in his day. As for the inscription, there was nothing willing about the sacrifice, as it had not been the intention of the dead to get themselves blown to Kingdom come. He himself favoured "Lest We Forget," which put the onus where it should be: on our own forgetfulness. He said a damn sight too many people had been a damn sight too forgetful. He rarely swore in public, so it made an impression. He got his way, of course, since he was paying.
The Chamber of Commerce stumped up for the four bronze plaques, with the honour rolls of the fallen and the names of the battles. They wanted their own name printed at the bottom, but Father shamed them out of it. The War Memorial was for the dead, he told them-not for those who'd remained alive, much less reaped the benefits. This kind of talk got him resented by some.
The memorial was unveiled in the November of 1928, on Remembrance Day. There was a large crowd, despite the chill drizzle. The Weary Soldier had been mounted on a four-sided pyramid of rounded river stones, like the stones of Avilion, and the bronze plaques were bordered with lilies and poppies, intertwined with maple leaves. There had been some argument about this too. Callie Fitzsimmons said the design was old-fashioned and banal, with all those droopy flowers and leaves-Victorian, the artists' worst insult in those days. She wanted something starker, more modern. But the people in town liked it, and Father said you had to compromise sometimes.
At the ceremony, bagpipes were played. ("Better outdoors than in," said Reenie.) Then there was the main sermon, by the Presbyterian minister, who talked aboutthose who had willingly made the Supreme Sacrifice -the town's dig at Father, to show he couldn't hog the proceedings and money couldn't buy everything, and they'd got that phrase in despite him. Then more speeches were made, and prayers were said-many speeches and many prayers, because the ministers of every kind of church in town had to be represented. Though there were no Catholics on the organising committee, even the Catholic priest was allowed to say a piece. My father pushed for this, on the grounds that a dead Catholic soldier was just as dead as a dead Protestant one.
Reenie said that was one way of looking at it.
"What is the other way?" said Laura.
My father laid the first wreath. Laura and I watched, hand in hand; Reenie cried. The Royal Canadian Regiment had sent a delegation, all the way from Wolseley Barracks in London, and Major M. K. Greene laid a wreath. Wreaths were then laid by just about everyone you could think of-the Legion, followed by the Lions, the Kinsmen, the Rotary Club, the Oddfellows, the Orange Order, the Knights of Columbus, the Chamber of Commerce, and the I. O. D. E. among others-with the last one being Mrs. Wilmer Sullivan for Mothers of the Fallen, who had lost three sons. "Abide with Me" was sung, then "Last Post" was played, a little shakily, by a bugler from the Scouts band, followed by two minutes of silence and a rifle volley fired by the Militia. Then we had "Reveille."
Father stood with head bowed, but he was visibly shaking, whether from grief or rage it is hard to say. He wore his uniform under a greatcoat, and leaned with his two leather-gloved hands on his cane.
Callie Fitzsimmons was there, but she kept in the background. It was not the sort of occasion on which the artist should step forward and make a bow, she'd told us. She wore a decorous black coat and a regular skirt instead of a robe, and a hat that concealed most of her face, but was whispered about all the same.
Afterwards Reenie made cocoa, for Laura and me, in the kitchen, to warm us up because we'd got chilled in the drizzle. A cup was offered as well to Mrs. Hillcoate, who said she wouldn't say no to it.
"Why is it called a memorial?" said Laura.
"It's for us to remember the dead," said Reenie.
"Why?" said Laura. "What for? Do they like it?"
"It's not for them, it's more for us," said Reenie. "You'll understand when you're older." Laura was always being told this, and discounted it. She wanted to understand now. She upended her cocoa.
"Can I have more? What is the Supreme Sacrifice?"
"The soldiers gave their lives for the rest of us. I certainly hope your eyes aren't bigger than your stomach, because if I make this I'll expect you to finish it."
"Why did they give their lives? Did they want to?"
"No, but they did it anyway. That's why it's a sacrifice," said Reenie. "Now that's enough of that. Here's your cocoa."
"They gave their lives to God, because that's what God wants. It's like Jesus, who died for all of our sins," said Mrs. Hillcoate, who was a Baptist, and considered herself the ultimate authority.
A week later Laura and I were walking along the path beside the Louveteau, below the Gorge. There was mist that day, rising from the river, swirling like skim milk in the air, dripping from the bare twigs of the bushes. The stones of the path were slippery.
All of a sudden Laura was in the river. Luckily we weren't right beside the main current, so she wasn't swept away. I screamed and ran downstream and got hold of her by the coat; her clothes weren't waterlogged yet, but still she was very heavy, and I almost fell in myself. I managed to pull her along to where there was a flat ledge; then I hauled her out. She was sopping like a wet sheep, and I was pretty wet myself. Then I shook her. By that time she was shivering and crying.
"You did it on purpose!" I said. "I saw you! You could've drowned!" Laura gulped and sobbed. I hugged her. "Why did you?"
"So God would let Mother be alive again," she wailed.
"God doesn't want you to be dead," I said. "That would make him very mad! If he wanted Mother to be alive, he could do it anyway, without you drowning yourself." This was the only way to talk to Laura when she got into such moods: you had to pretend you knew something about God that she didn't.
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "How doyou know?"
"Because look-he let me save you! See? If he wanted you to be dead, then I'd have fallen in too. We'd both be dead! Now come on, you have to get dry. I won't tell Reenie. I'll say it was an accident, I'll say you slipped. But don't do anything like that again. Okay?"