Uprooted - a Canadian War Story

  “Hallo, Lindy,” she said.

  “Mrs Hembrow, I found it! I’ve brought it.”

  She didn’t ask me what – her eyes had already gone to the round shape wrapped in the Star Phoenix.

  “Come in.”

  We went into their sitting room. The moose’s nose stuck out so much I had to go around it. I put the head down on the table, with the paints beside it.

  “Why did you bring paints?”

  “Because we need to paint the face back on. I mean, I’ll do it if you like. But I thought you’d like to do it. From what you remember.”

  She stared at me, and then reached out and took the newspaper off. She turned the ball over slowly until the washed-out face showed. You could still see the bulging eyes, a bit, and a faint red where the tongue had been.

  “Yes,” she said. “Leave it here. I’ll do it. I’ll do what I remember. Then I’ll put it in the furnace. Then it goes away.”

  Suddenly she turned and kissed me.

  Just as she did it, Mr Hembrow came in from the kitchen. He came up to the table and looked at the head. There was a long, solemn moment as we all stood there. I felt something important was happening, but I wasn’t sure what.

  Then Mr Hembrow silently took me by the elbow and walked me to the front door. He came out on to the porch with me.

  “She kissed you,” he said. “Mae don’t never kiss strangers. When she did that, she took you into her nation.” He smiled all over his face. “You’re honorary Ojibwe now.”

  Willie went and did it. She asked their new hosts, the Blundells, if they could invite us. And they did.

  They not only invited us for Easter – or what would be left of our two-week school holiday, take away six days for the journeys – but offered to pay our rail fares. This gave Mummy a dilemma – the play was due to be put on for its three performances just after Easter, so she couldn’t possibly go. For a whole day, Cameron and I went about with long faces, thinking we wouldn’t see New York. I’d actually written to Willie to say so, but luckily I hadn’t posted the letter.

  Despite going to a convent school I’d never really got into religion, and I didn’t believe regular praying could get you anywhere, but I had this sort of superstition. It was about St Barnabas. I’d always liked him at the convent. He wasn’t a patron saint of anything, but I knew St Jude was the patron saint of lost causes. And this was one. So I said a kind of prayer to St Barnabas, asking him to ask St Jude to get us to New York. I did it as a poem because that made it harder and I thought I needed to earn it.

  “Oh St Barnabas, come to my help,

  Cos I can’t do this by myself.

  Ask St Jude who’s everyone’s friend

  To our lost cause his help to lend!

  Way down south we long to go

  To see New York which is a wonderful show.

  We haven’t much hope, but miracles can happen

  So please make one to get us to Manhattan.”

  Of course I didn’t tell this to Cameron. He’d have had something to say about a couple of the rhymes. Not to mention probably thinking my whole idea was silly. But on the third morning after the invitation came, Mummy called us both into the kitchen and announced that we could go without her. She’d found someone to accompany us – the sister of one of her actors was going to New York for Easter. This lady had been coming to rehearsals so Mummy knew her quite well. Her name was Geraldine.

  This was so nearly a miracle, I felt quite sorry that I hadn’t told anyone about St Barnabas. Cameron couldn’t have laughed about it now!

  We were simply beside ourselves with excitement. I hadn’t seen Cameron so excited since the day he was in at the kill at a fox hunt when he was nine, and got the fox’s brush. That time he jumped up and down in a circle holding his bottom. This time he just gave Mummy a big hug, which was equally unusual.

  “It’s three days on the train. Geraldine can’t have her eye on you every minute. I trust you to behave yourselves and not do anything silly.”

  “Better drowned than duffers!” we both chanted. “If not duffers—”

  “All right, all right. They’re mailing the tickets,” she said. She looked at us and then hugged us both. “Aren’t we lucky – I mean, in a way? Canadians are so incredibly kind.”

  It turned out Americans were too. At least the Blundells certainly were.

  They were also rich.

  We were met at the railway station at Trenton by a chauffeur called Joe, in a huge car. It was something called a Cadillac, just about twice as long as a Hillman. Willie and Alfie had come to meet us. Willie looked like a teenager, in a beautiful blue sweater, sloppy-joe length, with pedal-pushers, bobby socks and saddle shoes. Saddle shoes! How I longed for a pair of those two-tone leather shoes. Even Alfie was clean and tidy and wearing new clothes, bought by their new hosts.

  Willie was so excited she could hardly speak properly. And Alfie was so excited he couldn’t speak at all.

  “It’s so great! You can’t imagine! It’s just so exciting – I have my own huge room, with wardrobes all across one wall! The bathroom’s just for me! They are so rich and so nice – we’re going to New York tomorrow – wait till you see it – it’s the best place ever – Mum says the air makes her feel intoxiated all the time—”

  We drove through some beautiful country. The spring was showing much more here than in Saskatoon – the trees were bursting into their different-green leaves, where ours were still bare. As we climbed out of the car, we could see that the house – mansion – was beside a lake. The water was perfectly still and the reflection was perfect – like a second house and woods, upside down. Apart from birds, skimming overhead, nothing moved. It was like a painting. I wished Mummy could see it.

  Irene greeted us with hugs and introduced us to our hosts. Mr and Mrs Blundell were quite old, about fifty. Mrs Blundell kissed us and Mr Blundell said he hoped we’d had a good journey. We proudly told them we’d done the last part, from New York, by ourselves – we had been very undufferish because we were scared not to be, so we had just sat there, primly. But it was only for half an hour. The main part, Saskatoon to New York, was so long we’d got bored. And been duffers. But we didn’t tell the grown-ups that.

  Only later, when I was alone with Willie, did I tell how we’d got off the train at a whistle-stop and the train started without us, and we had run alongside the track in a total panic, screaming and waving our arms until the engine-driver pulled up to let us back on again. Geraldine – who was really nice, she didn’t deserve us – had almost pulled the communication cord when she thought she’d lost us.

  I didn’t tell even Willie what she said to us about getting off the train – how she wouldn’t accompany us back to Saskatoon because we’d nearly given her heart failure. She said we could travel by ourselves and if we got lost she hoped we’d stay lost. Did she mean it? We couldn’t know until it was time to travel back.

  Mrs Blundell led us to our rooms. Cameron was to share with Alfie and me with Willie, but the rooms were so huge we each had a double bed. The bathroom was absolutely amazing. It didn’t even have a plug in the bath – you had to pull a lever to let the water out. And there was a separate little glass room near the bath, which was a shower.

  I’d never had a shower before. Willie said they were fantabulous and made you much cleaner than a bath so I had one straight away to try it out, and to get clean after the train. If my first Canadian bath had been wonderful, my first American shower was even more so. The water nearly knocked me flat – it was like being under a hot Niagara Falls.

  Then we had our first American meal.

  Almost every time we’d sat down to a big meal at the Laines’, Gordon would say one of two things: “You’re a good provider, Momma!” or, “Them’s powerful vittles, Mrs Laine!” (He’d always called food ‘vittles’. I think he was pretending to be a cowboy.)

  Mr Blundell didn’t say anything funny. He just said grace, then beamed round at us and said, “Please
make pigs of yourselves now, kids.”

  Afterwards Willie took us off to look all over the house. It was big, grand, modern. It even had a sort of grown-up playroom, with a billiard table and one for ping-pong. I liked the kitchen best. It had so many gadgets! Willie told me what some of them did, but she said, “I’m saving the best till last!”

  Her best was in the living room. It was a piece of shiny wooden furniture with a small glass window-like panel in the top part.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s called television,” she said. “Mr Blundell’s got one of the first ones in the whole United States. He’s in the business! He says one day soon you’ll be able to watch movies on it, at home.”

  “So you’ll have Errol Flynn in your living room,” I teased. Willie had a mad crush on Errol Flynn, after seeing him as Robin Hood.

  Cameron said, “Can I see it working?”

  “I daren’t touch it! You can only see the news on it so far, twice a day. And last week we watched a baseball game. The pictures are a bit scratchy, but it’s like magic to see a newsreel at home – don’t you think?”

  Cameron went to find Mr Blundell, to ask if we could watch the next news show on his television, so we could see what was going on at home.

  They came back into the living room together.

  “Are you worried about the war, Cameron?” Mr Blundell asked.

  “Of course, sir,” said Cameron, being extra polite. “Aren’t you?”

  Mr Blundell didn’t answer. He put his hand on Cameron’s shoulder. “Are your people at home safe so far?”

  “Yes,” said Cameron. “My parents live in Cheltenham. That’s safer than the big cities.”

  “Write regularly, do they, with family news?”

  “My mother does. My father’s too busy.”

  “Look, Cameron. This is how to switch the set on. I’ll tell you when you can. It’s time for the news in a few minutes. Shall we all watch it together?”

  Everyone in the house gathered to watch, including various people who at home would have been called servants, but Mrs Blundell introduced us to them as if they were family.

  “This is Max, who helps me with the hard housework. Mary – she’s a wonderful cook. Where’s Joseph? Oh, there you are, Joe. Joe never misses the news. But you’ve met already. Joe drives the car and does the gardening for us.”

  Then we all settled down. I felt something extraordinary was about to happen. Mr Blundell nodded to Cameron to turn a knob, and, amazingly, the little glass window sprang to life! There was a rather wobbly picture of a man reading the news and some film of something that was going on in New York or Hollywood – I wasn’t sure where, I just sat there, awestruck, my mouth open as I watched this little window as if I was watching the world through it.

  But Cameron wasn’t completely carried away.

  “Isn’t there any news from Europe?” he asked when it was over.

  “I’m afraid there’s not a lot of interest here about the war,” Mr Blundell said. “President Roosevelt would like America to get into it but there are too many of us Americans who think it’s nothing to do with them.”

  I hadn’t known about this. In Canada, there was always a war-bonds drive going on and all the newsreels and papers were full of the war. And of course you saw lots of men in uniform. I told the Blundells about the Crescent Club and our scrap-metal drive. Cameron looked embarrassed, but Mr Blundell said, “Well done. Anything that helps beat those swine.”

  I didn’t like listening to the news on the radio. Or watching the newsreels in the movies. I certainly never read the Star Phoenix, except the funnies. Seeing Mummy and Cameron glued to the radio at news time, I felt guilty, and when I eventually confessed to Mummy, she didn’t make me feel any better.

  “It’s bad not to want to know what’s going on in the world,” she said. “You should try to keep up. It’s the only way we have of sharing it.”

  At bedtime that first night, I knocked on Cameron’s door. Alfie was already asleep.

  “Mr Blundell seems to care about the war. Why do you think the Americans don’t want to join in?”

  “They’re too comfortable. Why should they bother? The Nazis can’t very well come over here.”

  “But isn’t it a bit awful of them to let England be bombed and all the other beastly stuff, and not come to help?”

  “Of course it’s awful. But look at us. We’re over here. Safe, and even …”

  “Even what?”

  “I was going to say happy. But I’m not.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Are you? Really?”

  I didn’t answer. He made me feel there was something wrong with being happy.

  “When you think what’s going on at home …” he said.

  “But aren’t you enjoying yourself here? I mean … it’s fun, isn’t it? And we’re going to see New York, and …”

  “Oh yes. It’s fun. Fun’s all right – being happy’s something different.”

  The day after we arrived, Mr Blundell told us he had taken a whole day off work. He squeezed us all in the car and drove us into New York.

  That first visit was so special. As we drove across the Hudson River I looked ahead and saw, for the first time, skyscrapers – dozens of them, like a forest of metal fingers pointing upward. They glistened and gleamed. I couldn’t believe they were real buildings, with people inside them. Seen from far off, the whole of Manhattan was like a brilliant statue created by a single sculptor, who wanted to show that we could reach the sky if we stretched hard enough.

  Cameron stared and stared as we drove across the bridge.

  “If the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on this,” he said, “it wouldn’t take many. It looks so fragile. Not solid like London.”

  “They can’t reach us,” said Mrs Blundell. “Thank God.”

  We drove slowly down Fifth Avenue. On every side were wonders: shops full of glorious clothes; lit-up signs everywhere; huge crowds of people on the wide pavements, flowing like human rivers across the road at the crossings; and these huge buildings like topless walls that made the street dark enough to need lights in all the windows, though it was only lunchtime.

  We had lunch in a restaurant called the Carnegie Deli. Mr Blundell said there were grander places but that this was more fun. The waiter was really rude! I ordered corned-beef hash, which was my favourite food that I hadn’t had since we left England. When it came it was the biggest plateful I’d ever seen, enough for all of us! As the waiter plonked it down in front of me, he shouted, quite fiercely, “NO SHARIN’!”

  I said, “Why not?”

  “Because, ya dumb kid, if ya share, then nobody else’ll order no food. Ya want I should lose my job already?”

  I was shocked; we all were – Irene looked horrified. But the Blundells burst out laughing.

  Mr Blundell said, “Benny, go easy on them, this is their first time in New York. Teach them how to ‘talk Brooklyn’.”

  The waiter stood up straight and cleared his throat loudly. All the people at the nearby tables stopped talking to watch.

  He said, very fast: “Toity poiple boids sittin’ on a coib eatin’ woims and choipin’, when along came Goitie Moiphy and her boyfriend Hoiman, who woiks in a shoit-factory in Joisy. When dey saw de toity poiple boids sittin’ on a coib eatin’ woims and choipin’ –” He looked round at us all and shook his head sadly – “Wuz dey pertoibed!”

  Everyone around us clapped! It sounded like a foreign language, but so funny I got the giggles. Alfie fell off his chair and had to be hoicked up again. (Or do I mean herked?)

  I hadn’t understood more than the odd word (woid), but I asked, “What’s ‘pertoibed’?”

  “Perturbed, of course,” said Cameron, who hadn’t laughed. “It means disturbed.”

  “Distoibed!” the waiter corrected him loudly. “You ain’t got it yet, kid. Eat your pastrami and wise up.” And he left us.

  While Mr Blundell ‘translated’ for us ab
out the thirty purple birds, and Gertie and Herman, we tucked into our enormous portions. Eating corned-beef hash again reminded me of coming home from boarding school and Mummy cooking my favourite dish, after saving up her rations to get the corned beef.

  I told about that, and how she’d got some whale-meat off the ration and tried to hide the fishy taste with lots of curry-powder, but how Daddy said, “If this is beef, it must come off a cow who’s been eating fish and chips!” This made everyone laugh some more.

  But there was something sort of nervous about the way the Blundells laughed. Later when I remembered that lovely meal, I thought it was strange, sitting there in that bright, noisy restaurant full of happy people stuffing themselves and having fun, while talking about London in wartime. For once I was glad Mummy wasn’t with us; it reminded me of that restaurant in Montreal, when everyone sang ‘There’ll Always Be an England’, and she had cried.

  I couldn’t get halfway through my mountain of corned-beef hash before I was full. Well, not too full for a sundae, but afterwards I dropped off to sleep in the car. Willie shook me awake.

  “Are we going up the Empire State Building?” I asked as we climbed out.

  “Next time. First we’ll shop for a nice dress for you,” said Mr Blundell.

  A dress? For me?

  We went into the most beautiful shop I’d ever seen. It was huge, full of light and colour and lovely clothes on dummies. As we walked through it, I felt as though it must be a dream.

  Mr Blundell took Cameron off to buy him a sweater, and Irene went off to the kids’ department with Alfie, leaving Mrs Blundell with Willie and me in the teenage department.

  “Brian wants you to have a formal, Lindy,” she said.

  A formal! I didn’t even know that meant a long evening dress. Did girls of my age wear such things in America? They certainly didn’t in Saskatoon! I just gaped at her. I should have said something – like that I’d rather have had a pair of saddle shoes and a sloppy-joe sweater. But I felt helpless. If Mr Blundell wanted to buy me a long dress, well, it was all part of being in this fairy-tale place. Here in New York, it didn’t seem impossible that I might be invited to a ball!