Uprooted - a Canadian War Story

  “It’s a bit like New York,” said Cameron.

  Like New York? But then I saw what he meant: the trees were a bit like tall buildings looming up with just a river of sky overhead.

  Suddenly the truck jerked to a stop. Cameron stood up and peered over the top of the driver’s cabin.

  “Lind, come and look!” he hissed.

  I got up beside him and saw a huge bull moose moseying across the road. It was the Hembrows’ moose head come to life! The truck stood still till it had disappeared.

  Exciting. But still, as we drove on I’d have been glad to see a few shops and lights and people! The word ‘wilderness’ kept coming into my mind. It made me shiver. It was about as unlike cosy Felpham with its beach balls and fishing nets and screaming kids and ice-cream sellers and donkey rides as you could imagine.

  After about an hour, Mr Kaldor pulled up the truck with a squeal of old brakes. We craned over the sides. On mine, there was nothing but a solid wall of black forest. But Cameron, on the other side, said, “Look! There’s the lake!”

  And there it was, through the pine trees. A great spread like a huge silver tray, shining in the sun. And between us and it was our cabin. All built of pine logs with a roof of wooden tiles and a stone chimney.

  Mr Kaldor had the key. He opened the creaky wooden door for us and helped us in with the cases. Right inside was a kitchen and beyond that, a big square living room with a stone fireplace, a big window you could see the lake through and a flight of backless wooden stairs leading up.

  Cameron and I immediately raced each other up them to pick out our bedrooms. Upstairs there was no ceiling, just the sloping roof logs, and no windows, only skylights. Both rooms were the same size; one led off the other. There didn’t seem to be a bathroom. We found it later in a separate shack outside, just a toot and a primitive shower.

  Downstairs we could clearly hear Mr Kaldor’s voice with a strong accent.

  “I leave you a gud log-pile,” he was saying. “I put some t’ings for you – bread, eggs, bacon, tea, coffee. Und milk. You need more supplies, you valk on down dat vay to my store. Yust about vun mile. You vant I light de fire for you?”

  “If there are matches and some newspaper, I can manage,” Mummy said.

  “You don’t leave open de doors, let in de mosquitoes. Dey get in anyvay … No electricity. You can manage de oil lamps? You keep cool de food in de safe in de ground outside. Keep closed or you get bears.”

  Cameron and I exchanged looks. Bears? Bears?

  “You vant to go on de lake,” Mr Kaldor went on, “der’s a canoe by de jetty. Dat vun is yours, it go vit de cabin. De paddles is in de porch. You don’t leave dem in the canoe or maybe somevun paddle avay it. For shvimming is best from de island. I go now or Missis be vorried vere am I.”

  “Thank you, Mr Kaldor. What do I owe you?” Mummy asked.

  “Nothing yet. I put it on your slate at my store. You pay before you leave, ja?”

  The truck went growling away, and we were on our own in our cabin by the lake. A lake with a canoe, and bears! We clattered down the stairs.

  Mummy said, “Well! Here we are, children. I’m going to get the stove going and make myself a cup of tea. Why don’t you two go and do some exploring?”

  I often felt freer in Canada than I’d ever felt in England. But the freedom to play Knock Down Ginger in Saskatoon was nothing compared to what we found here.

  We were really in the wilderness. The forests this far north had hardly been explored or even trodden in, except by the First People and trappers. There were wild animals. And there was the lake. ‘Better drowned than duffers’ was absolutely true here! Duffers could drown easily.

  We ran down to the shore, where there was a line of pine trees and then a short, sandy beach. The jetty, a narrow pathway of wooden slats on rickety posts, ran out into the water about fifteen feet. Alongside it, at the far end, was a beautiful red canoe with Ondine painted on the bow.

  It was quite big and solid-looking. We stood on the jetty, staring at it. I looked out across the water to where a stand of tall trees seemed to be growing in the middle of the lake.

  “That must be the island!” I said.

  “He said the swimming was best from there,” said Cameron.

  We stood there for another few moments.

  “Where did he say the paddles were?”

  “In the porch.”

  We looked back towards the cabin. There was a wired-in porch facing the lake, at the back of the living room.

  “I’ll get them!” Cameron said. “And I’ll dig out our bathing suits!”

  “You’d better tell Mummy where we’re going! And towels!” I yelled after him as he ran up the slope. He waved OK and was gone.

  I took my socks and shoes off and sat down on the far end of the jetty. I dangled my feet in the water. It wasn’t too cold at all. And clear as glass. As I looked down into it, dozens of little fish came to explore my toes. They nosed them and I could feel them gently nibbling, but it didn’t hurt, only tickled. Then I stared across the lake. It was so calm, so peaceful – so beautiful. Mr Gustin was right.

  After a timeless time – I mean, I forgot time and fell into a lake-dream – Cameron came panting back, already in his swimsuit, his arms full of towels and his hands full of paddles.

  “Auntie says all right if we’re careful. Go on, get in.”

  He threw my bathing things into the bottom of Ondine. I twisted my legs round till they were in the boat and, holding the sides, lowered myself in. She was lovely – wide and steady. Cameron was untying her. Then he stepped right into the water – it came up to his thighs – and pushed her further out, then sort of rolled in, rocking her madly. I clutched the sides and had a moment of panic.

  “Here,” he said in his calm way, handing me a paddle. “Do you know how to do this? OK, I’ll show you – I did it when we went to Wales on a school trip. It’s not like rowing. You face the way you’re going.” He sat at the back, on a kind of bench that stretched across, dipped the paddle in and pulled. The canoe surged forward, but at the same time, started turning.

  “You have to paddle the other side,” he said. “Go on, keep her straight.”

  We made a hash of it at first. Well, I did. At one point we were facing back the way we’d come because I wasn’t paddling properly. I saw Mummy standing on the jetty, shading her eyes, her turban bright blue-green in the sun and her cigarette smoke rising straight in the still air.

  I thought, She’s a brilliant swimmer. If we capsized she’d swim to the rescue! which gave me confidence, and after that I pulled more strongly and was able to keep the canoe going straight. It was an amazing feeling.

  We reached the island in about ten minutes. By the time we beached the canoe on a lovely sandy shore, I could paddle. I felt a wild, wonderful sense of adventure. Swallows and Amazons weren’t in it!

  I got into my swimsuit. By then, Cameron was just a bobbing head half a mile from shore.

  “It’s fantabulous!” he shouted.

  He’d never used Willie’s word before. I wished she were here! I wondered if she and Alfie swam in the lake at the Blundells’. No. I betted Irene didn’t let them. I felt suddenly proud of Mummy because she did. She trusted us not to be duffers.

  We swam and swam. It wasn’t like the sea, it did nothing to hold you up, but it was much easier because there were no waves. And you could go far without getting out of your depth.

  We came ashore, flushed with the grown-up-less-ness of it all.

  “Are there fish, d’you think?” Cameron asked.

  “Yes! Little ones at least, I’ve seen them.”

  “Let’s go fishing tomorrow! We can make fires here and cook them! Isn’t this incredible?” His wet face was all shining.

  You know happiness when you see it, especially where it usually isn’t.

  There was no one else here. That was the biggest difference from Felpham with its crowds of holidaymakers, noise and colour. Here, the only co
lours under the sky were beige, dark green and silver … Ondine’s red was just a lovely alien splash. I wondered, lying in the sand after our swim, listening to the silence broken only by the voices of unknown birds, why I’d ever thought Felpham was the best place for a summer holiday.

  That night we had supper by oil lamp in front of a log fire, blazing in the stone fireplace. Mummy had figured out the stove (which was wood-burning too) and managed to cook bacon and eggs and fried bread for us, which we ate on our knees. The night-sounds were strange – spooky. There was a bird that made the saddest, loneliest sound I’d ever heard, like a cry for help. We found out later it was a loon. And there was another like a creaky pump. That was a bittern.

  Before bed, we went out on to the back porch. It had no glass, just fly-netting. There was a baby moon, reflected in the lake. And then we saw something amazing. Out in the line of pines between us and the lake we saw hundreds of tiny lights. We couldn’t make out what they were – they looked like fairies flying in loops and festoons amid the tree branches.

  “They must be fireflies!” Mummy whispered.

  We sat there in the dark, not talking, just watching the fireflies play. It was magic.

  In bed under the log roof, I heard another sound – a faraway howling song. Was it a wolf? Another answered it. Wilderness! I wondered if I was scared, but I wasn’t. I knew I was going to love this place.

  I did love it. One of the things I loved best about it was that there was no phone, and so, no Hank. I stopped worrying about him. As to the war, it had never seemed so far away. We had no radio to bring it to us. It was as if there couldn’t be a war, and this peace, in the same world.

  The days all began the same in a way, and yet something different happened on each of them.

  We got up early, when the sun came dazzling through our bedroom skylights, which had no covering to keep it out. We went out right after breakfast for a day on the lake, on the island. When we needed supplies we walked to the Kaldors’ store along the dirt track through the forest, coming back loaded with groceries. We kept all the stuff that could go bad in a sort of metal box, like a huge Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin sunk in the sandy soil beside our log pile. The metal lid fitted tight, and a wooden one dropped down on top and fastened with a hook and eye, which we thought any reasonably clever bear could probably open, and we used to rush out every morning half hoping we’d been raided. But after a few days we decided that Mr Kaldor was kidding us. Like Hank about the gophers. Coyotes – not wolves, we learnt – yes, we could hear howling most nights. But bears? Surely not.

  Most days we took Ondine on the lake. We paddled, we swam, sometimes just Cameron and me and sometimes all three of us. We found some fishing lines – not rods, just lines wound round pieces of wood, that you dropped over the side of the canoe, with little wire hooks in a packet. We threaded the hooks on, while Mummy attached small stones to the lines to take the hooks down into the water, and sticks for floats. For bait we caught crickets. We had to lie very still on the beach until we saw one settle, then pounce with an empty jar, then slide a plate underneath to trap the poor thing.

  I couldn’t do what had to be done next – even Cameron jibbed at it – but Mummy said, “Nonsense, we’ve got to catch some fish. What if we didn’t have Mr Kaldor? We wouldn’t just sit here and starve, would we?” And she did the deed, putting the squashed bodies in a box.

  We paddled out to the deepest part, halfway between the shore and the island, and sat there in the quiet with our lines overboard, the floats sticking up … Clouds of insects buzzed and whined around us, but not mosquitoes – they’d been left behind onshore. In a few minutes, there was a plop, and Cameron’s float disappeared. His line went taut. He reeled it in, hand over hand, and at the end was a grey fish about nine inches long.

  “Right,” said Mummy briskly. “Take the hook out of its mouth and bang it on the thwart to kill it.”

  Cameron held his fish in his hands. It was thrashing about. Suddenly he twisted the hook out of its mouth, and threw it back in the lake as if he couldn’t bear to touch it.

  “Oh, really, Cameron!” said Mummy. “Foxes and gophers, yes, fish – no! If you’re prepared to eat things, you should be able to kill them!”

  “I suppose so,” said Cameron.

  At that moment, Mummy’s line went taut. She hauled her fish into the boat, took the hook out, and banged its head once on the edge of the canoe. It died. She threw it into the bottom and baited her hook again.

  “Here, Cameron, hold this while I gut mine.” She slit the fish’s belly with a short kitchen knife she’d brought with her and shucked its innards into a bucket.

  “How come you’re so good at this, Auntie?” asked Cameron with a note of admiration in his voice.

  “Dublin Bay,” Mummy answered. “We used to take a rowboat out and fish for the family supper.”

  “Who? You, Mum and Auntie Bee?”

  “Yes. When we were younger than you! Well, when Bea was.”

  No wonder she hadn’t stopped us going out on a nice calm lake! Dublin Bay is on the sea.

  “Why are you keeping the guts?”

  “Throw some in and see what happens.”

  Gingerly I threw a bit of gut into the water, which seemed to boil as a mass of fish came to the surface to eat it.

  “Little cannibals, aren’t they? If we use the guts we don’t need to kill any more crickets.”

  By the time we put in at the island, we had six fish. I hadn’t killed any of them, even the two I caught. I liked catching them, but I didn’t want to kill them.

  “Almost anyone would kill a cow rather than not eat beef,” Mummy remarked as she built the fire.

  “What?” we both shouted.

  “I’m quoting Samuel Johnson. Don’t take me too literally. Crickets and fish are about my limit.”

  We wrapped our fish in wet brown paper, roasted them in the red embers, and ate them with our fingers. They tasted as delicious as only fish you’ve caught yourself can taste. After that we went fishing often, and before long Cameron and I could do it all by ourselves. What made me stop being so squeamish was what Mummy had said about not having a shop to go to. What if we really were all alone up here, with no luxuries, no conveniences – just ourselves and what the woods and the water could give us? Like the trappers and pioneers, like the First Nations, living free and capable, depending on our own life skills?

  “I think I could kill a chicken, rather than not eat meat,” said Cameron thoughtfully.

  We began to measure well-being, security, even wealth, by the size of our log pile. With the big fireplace and the stove eating wood, it wasn’t long before it started to run out. The chipmunks – adorable little things halfway between mice and squirrels – seemed to look at us reproachfully as the logs they loved to play in sank down near ground level.

  “Time to go wooding,” said Mummy. “Come on.”

  There was a toolshed with a saw horse, an axe and two saws in it, and a big canvas carrying bag for small branches. For the first time we set off not towards the lake or along the track to the Kaldors’, but straight across the track and into the forest. The deep, dark forest, which stretched, so Mr Kaldor told us, on and on to the Arctic Circle.

  We’d asked Mr Kaldor if it was safe, and he didn’t say yes or no. He just kept up the bear joke. He said that if we saw a bear we should stand stock still, and if we saw a moose, we should run. “Don’t run from de bear, she chase you if you run. If she chase you, you lie down, tell her you died. The moose don’t chase you. If you go too near, it yust kill you.”

  We thought this was very funny.

  “And mind out for de muskeg!” he called after us.

  We were laughing too much to ask what kind of animal a muskeg was. We decided he was making it up. Who’d ever heard of a muskeg? We had some fun inventing a sort of mythical beast, a musk-ox with an egg-shaped head.

  The trees grew so close together that no light came between the trunks, only fro
m above, and not much of that. We found a faint track, but it didn’t look as if people had made it.

  “We need to mark our trail,” Mummy said.

  She made us collect pinecones in the canvas bag, and strew them along in our wake so we could find our way back. As the trees closed in behind us, we stopped talking. I remembered the iceberg, how everybody started whispering because it was so big and awesome. Our feet made no sound on the carpet of pine needles. All you could hear was the hungry whining of mosquitoes. (And the slaps as we tried to kill the ones that landed on us.)

  “Better not get in too far,” said Mummy. “Now start looking for dead trees.”

  We soon found one. Lots of the trees were dead – they just didn’t get enough light.

  “We’re going to cut it down,” said Mummy. “Cameron, do you know how to use an axe?”

  “No.”

  “Watch. Because this is your job.”

  She pushed her shirtsleeves up and took hold of the axe by the long handle. She made us keep back, and then she swung it at the trunk of the tree. It landed with a deep thunk. She did this two or three times. A white diamond shape appeared in the brown trunk.

  “See where I’ve cut a wedge? Now get hold of that saw, you two. One each end – that’s right. Cameron – pull. Lindy – pull. Back and forth. That’s it. Good, kids, you’re doing fine.”

  It wasn’t a very big tree, that first one. Before long we could hear it begin to crack. Mummy made us pull the saw out and stand back on the side of the wedge, and she went close and gave the tree a push. Slowly, slowly, it swayed, cracked, and then came crashing down. Most of the way. But it got stuck in some other trees.

  “Blast!” said Mummy. “Let’s try another one.”

  The next tree we cut down fell properly to the ground with a satisfying crash.

  “We ought to shout ‘TIM-BER!’ as it falls,” Mummy said, “like real lumberjacks.”