I'le Dor, page 29
The two men looked startled, so lost were they in their own memories.
“It happened gradually,” Paul sighed. “I think I knew when he was lost, but I didn’t know when he started to move that way. Except he always had a streak of something that made you wonder how he’d end up.”
“That was what made him Maman’s favourite,” Lucien said.
“What about Susan?” Paul said. “I’m sorry to bring it up, but I can’t just ignore it.”
“She phones every so often,” Lucien said. “It’s not easy in Montreal, but she says she’s okay. She has some kind of job in an office supply store. And a room. I think the guy from out of town who was staying at the Alpha has disappeared, but if I bring it up and talk about her coming back, she’s furious.”
“Why do you suppose she told Michelle to tell me to stay away from you?” Libby asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out, but it does make me hopeful.” Lucien’s face brightened, and then his eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead in a deep frown. “Probably doesn’t mean a thing.”
“What about the pharmacy?” Paul asked. “How’s business?”
As Lucien replied, Libby drifted off toward the table where she poured herself a glass of red wine and took a piece of tourtière.
“Thank you for coming back,” Madame Dion said. “You must keep in touch with us.”
“Mum would be so happy to see you,” Libby said. “Would you ever think of coming to Toronto for a visit?”
“I think maybe I’m too old now,” Madame Dion said. “But you must give Charlotte my best love and tell her all the stories I remember.”
“And the new ones,” Al interjected, half filling his glass with scotch and water. “She’s seen more of this town in two weeks than the rest of us see in a year.”
When Lucien drove her back to the cabin, he started to talk about underground tunnels he had built with one of the McNabs and Paul Paquin’s older brother. “Down behind the manager’s house. The one the McNabs lived in at the time.”
“I don’t have any memories of that at all,” Libby said. “Only images from photographs I saw later.”
“Are we going to go dancing tomorrow night?” he asked, glancing at her. “That’s about the only thing you haven’t done here.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I’d like it if you would.”
“Even if Susan heard?”
“Yes,” he said. “Even if…”
“I’d like to drop by to say good-bye to your mother,” she said. “Maybe we could go there on my last night, and then go dancing for a couple hours.”
“Why not?” Pourquoi pas?
60.
NICK PARKED OUTSIDE the cemetery where the Protestants and everyone else except the Catholics were buried. Snow was falling, but he figured he could take photos of his parents’ graves. He’d intended to come back to visit them after that first day when he’d encountered Michelle on the other side of the highway, but it hadn’t seemed important as he’d started to uncover his history and to make connections with people in Ile d’Or.
He walked through the snow that hadn’t been cleared to stand beside the place where his parents were buried. There was one headstone, the dates of their deaths within a year of each other, in the late 1960s. His father had died first. He wondered if his mother’s life had been shortened by that loss, but he hadn’t been around enough to know what she’d felt. He had driven over from Haileybury when he and Marie had first moved there, to visit his parents. Disappointed that Marie wasn’t particularly interested in repeating such a visit, he’d let the intention of going back slip himself. And he’d been incredibly busy as a young general practitioner in an area with a shortage of doctors.
Maybe Jeannie could answer some of his questions. They’d fallen apart over the years, but suddenly he longed to see his sister. He would send her photographs of the grave as well as ones he’d taken of the house where they’d grown up. Maybe he would even go and visit her in California, drive down the coast to Big Sur. Then further south. Why he hadn’t done this before was a mystery now. He hoped she would want to see him.
When he left the cemetery, he put his camera in the car. Ready to start on his trip south to Montreal, he thought he would like to visit the Catholic cemetery one more time also. He didn’t know why, not visualizing any particular grave, but closed the door of the car and walked to the edge of the highway. After checking for cars going in either direction, he crossed to the other side.
Inside the gates, he walked slowly. Ah, this was where he’d seen Michelle.
Another one from those days when this was little more than a dinky frontier camp. At least his father was honest. He was never lured into high-grading. Even though not Catholic, I heard about him. Saw him on the streets. Better man than most. Maybe even than me.
Nick was oblivious to more than a breeze lifting snowflakes around him. Maybe it was speaking to him, he wasn’t sure, but he recalled what Michelle had said about talking with her parents. She even had the sense they answered.
How I would like to go with you now, young man. If I’d had a chance, maybe I would have gone to the head of the Ganges, too.
There was a loud crack near Nick, as if a branch had snapped and was about to fall. He looked around and saw nothing, thought maybe it sounded like someone laughing. But there was no one there. Only the grave of that big-bellied priest who had been there in the early days. Chicoine. That was his name. Father Chicoine.
61.
LIBBY SAT AT the window overlooking Lac Leboeuf, her arms cradling her knees and a blanket around her shoulders. She felt peaceful, as if she’d come home again. It didn’t matter that nothing had been as she’d expected. After the news of Guy’s death and the dinner with Michelle, the party had surprised her most of all with the pulse of northern community she’d almost forgotten.
After a while, she got up to look for her father’s letters. He would be surprised at the face of the world as it existed now, the ongoing saga of Canada. As well as at the saga of his own family. In one letter, he’d written that it was perhaps too early to decide who should have the tea service, the trays, the salt and pepper shakers. As the last descendant of a family that had gradually become smaller and smaller, these artefacts had found their way to the house on rue Champlain. And it never dawned on him that the silver should not be divided, that it would not have a place in the future of all his children.
Libby remembered watching her mother polish this silver with deft strokes, Charlotte’s absorption in making each piece shine. It had seemed to matter to her, but when Dad died she could not get rid of it fast enough. As if in polishing it all those years, she had somehow held the family together. Maybe she had. Perhaps the myth that had saved them from the utter ignominy of alcoholism was that her father was a gentleman. A polite man. Yes. That was what people had said. Libby could still hear them.
“Such a fine man.”
“A gentleman.”
“Enough,” she murmured, thinking of the proud, angular lines of his face, his narrow nostrils. “Enough.”
In a letter dated 13th July, 1945 that began Darling Charlotte, what followed was typical of what she had seen thus far. He missed her mother, it was clear, commenting on her last letters, on what she had written about the children. Libby, Sheila and Wally. The last paragraph was about coming home soon. The consensus of opinion seems to be that the only way repatriation will be speeded up is for public opinion at home to force the Canadian government to throw its weight around a bit and get a larger share of the shipping available. Unfortunately, in spite of the government’s propaganda to the contrary, I don’t believe Canada packs as much weight in United Nations councils as they would like us to believe. The early rush of repatriation, since considerably slowed, seems to most of us to have had political implications. Now the election is over, we can stew.
After that he wrote that he loved them all and signed it, Your loving husband, Walter.
Before he returned from overseas, the world had already begun to change in ways he considered unfortunate. July, 25, 1945: The election results are coming out here today and are quite a surprise. I never thought that Labour would get in although I thought they would cut down the Conservative margin by quite a bit. I feel sorry for Churchill. He did such a good job that I thought the people might have shown more gratitude. I guess he thinks Roosevelt was lucky to die when he did. I can’t see anyone of the Labour Party filling his shoes adequately at the Big Three Conference, or arousing the confidence of the rest of the world.
The next letter began: Sweetheart, I seem to have so much to say, but the words simply will not flow. I love you. I miss you. I miss the children. Libby had never heard her father talk like that and felt reassured. There was a p.s. that ended Charlie Roger Out that reminded her of those times she, Sheila and Wally had marched, brooms over their shoulders, to the resounding rhythms of military music. In another letter, her father described a convoy he had seen during the ocean passage. He commented that he was reading Barometer Rising. All my love, darling, he ended a letter from England. There is nothing to worry about. In fact, with the way the news is, I am safer than I was working at the mine.
After she put the letters away, Libby doodled for a while on a piece of paper. Then she began to draw a mine shaft with the flag flying atop it, a tiny emblem, but unmistakably the fleur-de-lys. Soon she was so engrossed, she had completely forgotten her surroundings. As a child, she had found similar comfort walking on paths through the bush, kicking pine needles in one season and breaking trail on skis she put on as she left the house in another. Not lying in bed where she could hear lurching footsteps and angry voices. Not in churches. When she got up to undress for bed, her legs were so stiff she could scarcely move.
When Lucien arrived on her last evening, Libby had been working on her sketches and drawings for most of two days and her smock was smudged with bits of colour. These working drawings dabbed with some pigment could one day be part of an exhibition, the background that showed where the finished works had come from.
“Chow mein,” Lucien said. He had offered to bring her some food before they went in to see Madame Dion again, before dancing at The Flamingo. Seeing that she was still preoccupied, he went over to the counter where he took a bottle of wine from a brown paper bag and opened it with a corkscrew.
“I have a letter for you,” he said, handing her an envelope.
“Where did this come from?”
“It was delivered to the store.”
Peering at the handwriting, Libby cringed when she saw it belonged to Dan. She threw it toward the counter where it landed upside down. Not until later, after they had visited with Lucien’s mother and gone dancing, did she want to read it.
“I’m going to change,” Lucien said. “Shall we go to the dance early? About nine?”
62.
THE SMOKE FROM Lucien’s cigarette wafted across his reflection in the mirror. He was unsure if the dark trousers and pale shirt he’d changed into were appropriate for the occasion. Or, if they weren’t, if he would find any other decent clothes out here at the cabin that were clean enough. He hunted on a rack to find a tie that would liven up his outfit.
Sometimes he really did suspect it was someone else’s life he was living. Looking at his heavy grey socks, he decided to change them for a pair in the drawer with navy and blue triangles on the sides. He and Susan had always been good on the dance floor, gliding with the music, with others sometimes lining up on the side to watch them. Tango. Waltz. Swing. Susan’s dark hair had flown then, her bright skirt or dress swirling around her. He took down a photograph from the bookshelf beside his bed, one of her in the canoe at the dock. She was wearing his plaid shirt, waving with a paddle.
“Mon dieu,” he sighed. Would it never get easier? He put on dark shoes, then a heavy pair of boots over them before trudging across the path to Guy’s cabin.
“Allo,” he called out to warn Libby that he was approaching. He swung the flashlight so the light beamed on the stoop of the cabin.
Libby opened the door to let him in. “It’s dark so early,” she said.
“Beautiful,” he said as he looked at her dress. Although he had been aware of her as a woman, in her slacks and casual sweaters or blouses the impact had been more subdued. He felt almost mesmerized by the way the bodice emphasized her breasts and the slim waist below them.
“It’s the dress I bought at Michelle’s store.”
“C’est toi qui est belle,” he said, shaking his head in wonder. She looked much younger than either of them could possibly be. It took him back to the Rialto, watching her spin around the floor with Guy. There had been watchful eyes then, too, the same ones that had watched him and Susan, all their feet moving to the rhythm of the band in from Rouyn for that Saturday. Everyone knew they had been a twosome, he and Susan. And Guy and Libby, too. What a big surprise it was when Guy married a girl from the mine office, even though by then Libby had refused him. No one thought Guy would get over Libby and Lucien thought now that maybe he never had.
Once again they drove the road to town, the surface now a thick layer of hard-packed snow. Lucien parked across from the club and they went inside past the bar and found a table near the dance floor. There was a candle in the centre and a glass with pink swizzle sticks with little flamingos at the top beside it. It was not long before Libby slipped one of the sticks into her purse.
“A souvenir,” she said.
Feeling almost as if he were in a time warp, Lucien nodded. Here he was on the verge of turning fifty, living with memories of being a teenager, with a woman he had not seen since then and his own wife off in the city. He could scarcely visualize Susan as other than a teenager at this moment either.
“What would you like to drink?” he asked.
“My treat,” she said.
“Mais non. It’s mine.”
She must have heard the edge in his voice because she dropped it, just told him she would like a beer. Maybe something else later.
“You used to like those mixed drinks, didn’t you?”
“That’s right,” she said. “Haven’t had one in years though. There was a pink one, I think. Another with lime and gin in it. I prefer beer now. Or wine.”
A fast tune roused him, “Let’s dance,” he said. He stood and sashayed to the music as he took her hand. So easily did they move together to the rhythm that it felt as if they had been partners on the dance floor for a long time.
“You’re good,” she said. “Guy was, too.”
As the music slowed, he pulled her to him. He felt a stab of loneliness at the thought of her departure. You’re so warm and beautiful, Libby Muir, he thought, but he did not say so. They went on dancing until an intermission at around ten, when he’d suggested they drop in on his mother.
Madame Dion was sitting in her breakfast nook, the aroma of coffee wafting through the room. The pot of coffee was always on, Lucien said.
“I remember,” Libby said. “Everyone felt welcome in your mother’s kitchen.” There were always people dropping in and she would give them coffee or hot chocolate.
Inside they sat at the table while Madame Dion filled their cups. She gave Libby the cream and sugar, a plate of cookies and a croissant with chocolate on it.
“Tell me about your mother again,” she said.
“She’ll want to know everything about this trip. It will give her enormous pleasure to hear that I saw you. Do you know that I still have the old milkshake machine from the pharmacy? When you were going to get rid of it, Monsieur Dion said I’d made the best ones, that I should have it.”
“Your father loaned him money when he started the store. When we came here, my husband was working underground. He wanted to get out. Even though your father said the mine was losing one of its best workers, he helped him. We never forgot that. Especially my husband.”
Lucien picked up his mug, sipped from it, watching his mother and Libby talk. He had not heard this story before and he wondered why. Although neither could he imagine why anyone should have told him. It was just that the pharmacy was his life now and without knowing it, he had been unaware of an important bit of history.
“But that’s really something,” he said. “That’s really something. Why would he do that?”
“He did it, that’s all, Lucien. Walter Muir was a kind man. He did things that helped people, but he never made noise about it. There are lots of people still in this town who could tell you a story or two. They might not, or they might not want to remember, but they should. He deserves that.”
Lucien didn’t say anything because his thoughts were too complicated. He thought perhaps he’d maligned the Anglos and then instead that his father might have been patronized. Maybe it was neither, just two men who respected each other. He didn’t ask if his father had ever paid Walter Muir back, but he assumed so.
Libby took the croissant and licked at the chocolate.
“Oh, mon Dieu,” Madame Dion said. “You haven’t changed one bit. I remember when you licked some of the chocolate brownies your mother made when you were just a toddler.”
Libby smiled as she bit into the croissant. When she’d finished it, Lucien stood up to get their coats. He smoked in the hall, inhaling deeply. Tomorrow Libby would be gone. It wasn’t that he could imagine her taking Susan’s place, or living with her, but during her time here he’d found it easier to confront his life. If he could live through this he might even be able to accept the thought of being fifty. It was a huge leap to think that there was nothing other than to go through it, but that was what he was about to do. He took Libby’s coat back into the kitchen and held it for her as she stood talking to his mother. As the two women hugged each other, there were tears on both their faces. He knew they were thinking about Guy, about all the ways in which all their lives could have been different.
