Uprooted - a Canadian War Story

  We sawed or chopped off all the dead branches we could reach and managed to drag or carry most of them back along our pine-cone trail. Then we put the long branches across the saw horse and Cameron and I took turns with the short saw to cut them into logs. This was very tricky at first, but we learnt. Mummy left us to stack them. We were just finishing, feeling very pleased with ourselves, and calling the chipmunks to come back, when we heard her from the front door.

  “Come here!” she called, in a funny sort of voice.

  When we got to her, she pointed. There alongside the cabin wall, near the door, was a dog.

  It was a sort of collie, what you could see of it for dirt. It lay there, panting up at us. Under its long dusty coat it looked very thin, and its long tail was full of burrs.

  “Look at it! What a picture of misery! Someone’s abandoned it.”

  “Or maybe it ran away,” said Cameron, bending to stroke it.

  “Careful …”

  But even if it’d been a snappish dog, it was too tired. It just lay there, as if it had dragged itself for miles and could hardly lift its poor head.

  “Can we keep it?”

  “Try getting rid of it! Lindy, go and get it a bowl of milk.”

  I ran to the safe and brought out a bottle of milk, and an egg. In the kitchen I beat the egg up in the milk. I knew that was good for invalids. I put the bowl down in front of the dog, which slowly stood up on shaking legs, put its nose down, and lapped up every drop.

  “Probably covered with fleas … Oh well. Can’t leave the poor brute out here …”

  When we cleaned him up, we found he had a collie’s mixed-colour coat, long muzzle, perky ears and long, sweeping tail. He looked a bit like Lassie Come-Home, which I was just reading, but he was a male dog, so we called him Laddie.

  Next time we went ‘into town’ (as we called the Kaldors’ tiny shack store) we asked if anyone had lost a dog, but they didn’t know anything. There were other cabins spread out beside the lake, some let to visitors. Maybe one of them had lost him or left him behind.

  Laddie was obviously young, and when he got over whatever he’d been through to get to us, he became very lively and loving. After two days of eating everything we offered him, and getting a lot of brushing and petting, he let us know he was our dog. But mainly Cameron’s, like Spajer. If he had a choice who to walk with or sit with, he always chose Cameron.

  When we took him out, he chased everything that moved. The chipmunks fled our woodpile and no bird dared land. We tried him in the canoe and he nearly capsized it when he saw a distant duck and leapt straight into the lake after it. We hauled him back, dripping wet and looking as if he’d like to say sorry. After that we left him barking on the shore, but we did take him wooding with us. Of course, having a dog made everything better, and if Cameron wasn’t a little bit, I mean seriously, happy, well …. He was. That’s all.

  Mummy had settled down to do some writing in the mottled-red notebooks she’d brought with her, and let us go into the forest by ourselves, or rather, with Laddie, to fell trees and bring back wood. We didn’t penetrate far into the dark woods – we still weren’t quite sure about the bears – and when we’d got a dead tree on the point of falling, we’d yell “TIM–BER!” then listen to the crash as the tree fell. We’d keep perfectly quiet so Mummy would think we were squashed, till she’d come out and shout, “Are you all right?” (It never failed.)

  “Of course!” we’d chorus innocently.

  “Oh, you little villains, you scared me!” she’d grumble as she went back into the cabin.

  I knew it was awful of us. How could we? But we did. And she never even punished us by forbidding us to cut down trees. I developed serious arm muscles, even more than from the stables, and I was proud of them. And proud of us – Cameron and me. It was another pioneering skill. I wondered what Sue, left behind at the convent, would think if she could see me now.

  After we’d been at the lake for two weeks, Mr Gustin arrived to open up the cabin next door and start his summer music school. And something new and exciting and life-changing happened to me.

  Cameron was given a new teacher, because Mr Gustin was busy. His name was Leo and he was French Canadian. He was also tall and dark and if Willie had seen him she would have said “Hubba hubba!” and got a crush on him. I got a crush on him. But that wasn’t what changed my life.

  Music began to flow between the Gustin cabin and ours – only about ten yards away – all day and much of the night. It was all classical. Mummy adored this. I thought it was quite nice as a background.

  Cameron was in heaven. That sort of music just sent him into raptures. He used to sit near the window facing the Gustin cabin reading, and when something he specially liked was being played, he’d stop reading and go into a dream. Once I dared to ask what he was thinking about.

  “Depends,” he said, and then clammed up again.

  I wanted to know more. What was the big attraction? So when he went over next I crept through the trees and listened underneath the window of his lesson-room.

  But it was Leo who started playing. I imagined beautiful dark Leo running his hands over the piano keys. And something happened. I just stood there while this skein of sound flowed out of the window and wrapped me up in its magic, lifting me off the ground and into a new world. When it ended I came back to earth with my ears still sparkling.

  I shouted up at the window above my head: “What was it? What was it? It was so lovely!”

  “Berceuse,” Leo shouted back. “Chopin.”

  “Play more by him!” I shouted.

  “Not now, we must have our lesson,” Leo called back, and the next thing I heard was Cameron playing a chromatic scale.

  That night, it rained. We hadn’t had rain at all so far, but that night the clouds built up over the lake and the lamps had to be lit early. It was my job to clean the lamp chimneys with newspaper – oh, yes, we did have a newspaper, but only once a week and we read it a day late. I did read it now, some of it, so as not to feel stupid or be what Cameron called ‘an escapist’. There wasn’t much news about England. Most of it was about Germany invading Russia. Mummy said, “If it lasts till the winter, that’ll teach them, like it taught Napoleon.”

  The rain started pouring down just before we went to bed. I was already in bed, when Mummy came up to kiss us goodnight and said that Cameron’s teacher was at the door and wanted to see me.

  I went downstairs in my dressing gown. Leo was there, the rain streaming down all around him from our little front-porch roof. Behind him the forest was just a black, solid wall.

  “Bon soir, mademoiselle Lindy. You like Chopin? So open your side window and listen – I’m going to play something special for you.”

  He scurried off, his torchlight a thin white triangle streaked with rain. I went and opened the window in the living room that faced the Gustin cabin. Through the fly-netting I saw the window across the way light up with the cosy glow of an oil lamp, as Leo, a tall, ghostly figure, carried it in and put it on the piano. He sat down and began to play.

  And suddenly, amid the raindrops that were pattering past my window, I heard musical raindrops.

  I was enchanted. I stood, hardly moving or breathing, for the whole length of the piece, listening to how Chopin had turned the dripping rain into a beautiful musical poem. In the middle, the gentle dripping built up into a storm, just as our real storm broke overhead with crashing thunder and flashing lightning … I loved storms! The music underlined it, competed with it – and won! When the music ended, the real storm went grumbling off, as if it were annoyed at being beaten by the music, and I was so excited inside that I found I was crying.

  When I turned round, Mummy and Cameron were behind me, silently sharing it with me. I put my arms around both of them. Cameron didn’t hug me much. But that night, he did. For the first time, I felt, and shared with them, the absolute wonder of a piece of classical music. Maybe it wasn’t a Beethoven symphony, but it was the beginni
ng of a love that would last for ever.

  One morning, we found our ground safe had been broken into, or at least that something had tried to break into it, but hadn’t got past tearing off the top cover. Mr Kaldor wasn’t kidding, we realised then – there were bears in the forest. We found its tracks, big as side plates, and after that Mummy wasn’t so happy about us going wooding without her, though she said having Laddie with us would probably make a bear think twice.

  We never actually met a bear. We found something else, though. Or rather, Laddie found it.

  We’d made a sort of path through the trees by now, to a bit of a clearing about a hundred yards in. We’d cut down two or three trees there and it was a bit more open to the sky. It was our special wooding place. One day while Mummy was busy writing, we crept off there with our tools, Laddie rushing ahead, his nose to the ground, hot on some scent. He went out of sight and we heard him suddenly start barking madly. I clutched Cameron’s arm.

  “Let’s go back! Maybe it’s a bear!”

  But Cameron pushed on.

  We came into the little clearing, and saw Laddie with his front paws against a big fir tree, his nose pointing up, barking his head off. We looked up into the lowest branches, and saw something huge and black and white, like a ball of spikes, clinging to the trunk about six feet above our heads.

  At first glance I thought it was some kind of fungus or growth on the tree. But suddenly the spikes moved and spread, with a sinister rustling sound. The Thing let go of its hold on the trunk, and slid down to the ground, its four big paws rasping as they clawed at the bark. It lay at the bottom with all its spikes erect and its head drawn in, and its tail, also spiky, swinging towards Laddie. A big mound about two feet long, with a fan at its back end, a fan of quills as long as drinking straws.

  “Blimey! A porcupine!” shouted Cameron. “Laddie! Leave! Leave!”

  But Laddie didn’t listen. He simply rushed at the porcupine. Its tail swung right in his face.

  Our poor dog fell back with a sort of dog-shriek. He lay down, whining loudly, and began to rub his nose with both front paws. We could see the long tail-spikes bristling out of him. His face was like the porcupine’s tail, a huge pincushion of quills.

  “The beast! The beast! Look what it’s done to him!” screamed Cameron. I’d never heard him scream like that. “Hold him, Lind! Don’t let him go near it!”

  And he dropped the tools and ran back along the path towards the cabin.

  I crouched beside Laddie, who was writhing in pain and pawing his face frantically. I dared to try to pull one of the prickles out – but I couldn’t. They were stuck in, and when I tried, Laddie yelped and half snapped at me. I just held him down on the ground in case he should try again to attack the porcupine, which was sitting at the foot of the tree as if it was waiting to stick more quills into him. Not trying to run away.

  After what felt like an age, Cameron came back. I heard him coming by his panting breaths. He burst into the clearing.

  He was carrying a gun.

  It looked like a rifle. I couldn’t believe it! Where could he have got it from? From where I crouched on the ground, I watched helplessly as he walked quickly up to the porcupine, pointed the gun at its head, and fired.

  The bang was a thunderclap, and it echoed back from the trees, smacking my ears. I jumped, and so did Laddie. He wriggled out from under my hands and ran into the woods yelping, his tail between his legs. I stood up. The porcupine’s tail had dropped, its quills were sinking. Cameron put his foot under it and rolled it over. It was dead.

  We both stood there in shock. I was staring at him as if I’d never seen him before.

  “You didn’t have to kill it,” I whispered.

  “Yes I did,” he said. “Beastly, bloody thing. Let’s go.”

  I saw he was shaking.

  He stood there while I picked up the axe and the long saw. I put them into the canvas carry bag and lugged them back along our path. Cameron carried the gun.

  Halfway back we met Mummy, running.

  “I heard a shot!” she shouted as she saw us. “What happened? Where’s Laddie?”

  “Didn’t you meet him?”

  “No! Good God, Cam, what’s that gun? What’s going on?”

  Cameron didn’t answer. He just strode past Mummy. I dropped the bag, grabbed Mummy’s hand, and led her back to the clearing. I showed her the dead porcupine and told her what had happened. She stood there staring at it for what seemed like minutes. Then she took a deep, deep breath.

  “I will never understand that boy,” she said. “He couldn’t stun a fish. But he can shoot a porcupine.”

  “It hurt his dog,” I said.

  “Yes. And speaking of which – where is he? He’ll be in a bad way. We’d better find him.”

  We searched the nearest part of the forest, calling and calling. Then we went back to the cabin. Cameron was next door. I knew his practising by now. He was playing scales. Furiously. The gun was nowhere to be seen.

  Amazingly soon, we had a visit from a policeman. He said he was after illegal hunters, and had we heard a shot? Of course we told him everything.

  “Ma’am … did you realise that killing a porcupine counts as illegal hunting?”

  Mummy’s mouth fell open. “You mean, we’ve committed a crime?”

  “Porcupines can only be killed for food,” said the policeman. “They’re so easy to kill, and so good to eat, that you’re only allowed to kill them if you’re lost and hungry.” But when he realised we were war guests, he just gave us a warning, and went into the forest to take the body away in case it attracted coyotes. He never thought to ask where the gun came from. Apparently lots of people up north had guns.

  That night, I heard Mummy telling Cameron off after I’d gone to bed, because there was no door at the top of the stairs. It turned out the gun belonged to Mr Gustin. He kept it for students who wanted to shoot ducks, and Cameron had known about it; it seemed Mr Gustin was horrified, and angry, when he found out Cameron had borrowed it.

  “Cameron, did you know the gun was loaded?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know how dangerous it is to handle a loaded gun? Did nobody ever tell you that?”

  “They told me you should never point a gun at anyone. And I didn’t.”

  “Your mother begged me to take you to Canada for her. She trusted me to look after you. How would I explain to her that I let something happen to you?”

  If there was one thing Cameron couldn’t stand, it was being told off. And this was his second telling-off in one day. So he said something stupid to defend himself.

  “Well, Auntie, you don’t take very good care of me, do you?”

  I sat up in bed with a jerk. Could he have said that?

  There was a long silence. I knew Mummy must be terribly shocked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You let us take all kinds of risks. You let us go canoeing by ourselves. You let us go into the woods, by ourselves. You leave us alone in the flat in Saskatoon. Mum would never do any of that.”

  The silence got so long and so bad I put my fingers in my ears to shut it out. But when I heard Mummy start talking again of course I took them out.

  “Well, if it comes to that, your mother let you go fox-hunting when you were only nine. She sent you away to boarding school even earlier. I want you to learn independence and to have the freedom other kids in Canada have. But if you don’t like it – if you think for one moment that I’m not taking proper care of you – I’m going to stop all that. From now on I’m not going to take my eyes off you.”

  “I didn’t mean—” Cameron began, and I thought, You prize chump, now you’ve done it!

  “I think you did,” Mummy said. “Now go to bed. And don’t you ever handle a gun again without proper supervision.”

  Cameron came up the wooden stairs and I saw his head and then the rest of him appearing through the opening cut in the floor of the bedroom.

  “Come h
ere!” I hissed furiously. “You fat-headed fool!”

  But of course he didn’t. He went into his own room and slammed the door.

  Next morning there was an ‘atmosphere’. I was so mad at Cameron I wasn’t speaking to him at all. If he minded, or even noticed, he gave no sign. He went off to his piano lesson early. I half wanted to talk to Mummy, and tell her that she did look after us properly and that I was one hundred per cent on her side, but I didn’t like to admit I’d listened – she hated that. So I went and sat on the jetty and read.

  When Cameron came back he said, “Can we go wooding?” and Mummy (natch!) said, “No. Stay near the cabin where I can check up on you.”

  I thought, That’s it. The holiday’s ruined. But then Laddie saved us.

  That night, after being missing for more than twenty-four hours, he came to the door and scratched to be let in.

  Poor, poor Laddie. It was ghastly. The quills had worked their way into his nose, lips, cheeks. And we had to get them out. The policeman had told us we had to, or they’d get infected and our dog would die a horrible, painful death.

  I found a pair of pliers. We took it in turns. Two of us had to hold Laddie, who was a big strong dog, while the other one pulled out the quills. They had barbs on them – that’s why I hadn’t been able to pull them straight out before. The ones through his lips weren’t so bad. We held his mouth open and drew each quill out the same direction it had gone in, so the barbs didn’t catch. But the ones in his nose just had to be dragged out. It must have hurt terribly.

  Every now and then he would pull himself free and crawl under the big dresser where we couldn’t reach him, for a rest. But he always came out again, had a drink, and – I swear – as good as said, “Let’s get it over.” As if he knew it had to be done. And the thing was, he could have bitten us – we had to put our hands right into his mouth – but he never did. Not once.

  He was such a good dog. And so brave.

  Some of the quills had been broken off – these were the most difficult. It was hard to see them by lamplight, so Cameron sent me next door to borrow Mr Gustin’s torch. Leo came to help us, but after about five minutes he said, “Je suis désolé, I can not bear this,” and left again in tears. We were all crying by the end, even Cameron.