Uprooted - a Canadian War Story

  Grampy, however, did write. He wrote in the most beautiful writing and put in lots of detail. Mummy was wrong about Redcliffe Square not being bombed. His big house had had all the front windows broken by a bomb. But don’t worry! The government will pay to have them all put back, he reassured us.

  He told us his housekeeper, Gene, was working in an aircraft factory, that Daddy was working ‘all the hours God sends’ and that he, Grampy, was an air-raid warden, going out at night on his bicycle to make sure people didn’t show lights in their windows to guide the German bombers. My dear old faithful Shott runs alongside my bike and keeps me company in the dark hours.

  Cameron and I sent him a postcard with all the autumn tree colours. We never heard that he got it. Maybe it ended up in the Atlantic Ocean.

  At the end of October we had our first Hallowe’en. I’d never heard of Hallowe’en. Mummy said that as far as she knew, it was something to do with souls of the dead, from pagan times, or maybe witches. When all the other kids started getting really excited and told me that I’d have to dress up to go trick-or-treating, I was completely bewildered.

  We asked Luti about it, but it was Gordon who answered.

  “Oh, gee whiz, you folks don’t have Hallowe’en? It’s pretty near as big as Christmas, here! The kids’ll have a ball. We must go downtown to the costume shop and buy you something to wear! What do you fancy, Cameron? Would you like to be a ghost, or a vampire, or maybe a skeleton?”

  I thought Cameron wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it, but when Mummy said he’d have to go trick-or-treating with me or I wouldn’t be allowed, he said, “I’d like to dress up as The Spirit.”

  “Well, all you’d need for that is a suit and a hat and a mask,” he said.

  “That’s fine. That’s all I want.”

  Gordon turned to me. “What about you, Lindy? You’d like something a bit fancier, I bet!”

  I said I’d like to be the ghost that walked the Bloody Tower with my head tucked underneath my arm.

  Luti jumped. “Lindy! How awful! Whose ghost was it?”

  “Anne Boleyn,” I said. “Mummy’ll sing the song for you, if you like.”

  “Perhaps some other time,” Luti said.

  But Gordon loved Mummy doing party-pieces and made her sing the whole song, which she did with a Yorkshire accent. He clapped like mad at the end.

  “How would you do the head?” he asked.

  “Maybe a football?”

  He thought that was a wonderful idea. “So, we get you an Anne Boleyn costume, if they’ve got one, and paint a football to look like a head! That’d knock ’em cold – they’ll never’ve seen anything like that!”

  “But what about your real head?” said Cameron.

  That stumped me, but only for a minute. “I could have a very long costume that came right up over my head and put a coat hanger in for the shoulders.”

  “How would you see out?”

  “I could make little tiny holes in the top.”

  “And where would your arms go? More holes, not so tiny?”

  “Be a shame to spoil the dress …” said Luti. “If you’ve had to buy it …” Suddenly she stood up. “I’ll make it for you!” she exclaimed.

  And she did. She got out her sewing machine and a long evening dress she’d worn when she was young. It was made from a beautiful blue silky fabric with a pretty pattern on it. She unpicked the seams, found some paper patterns and managed to make a new dress out of it that looked almost like a real Tudor one. But the clever part was the sleeves; I was able to put my arms through some holes in the sides and into the sleeves that hung down from the coat hanger that had been sewn in to look like shoulders. It had to rest on my head, so Luti used a padded hanger with the hook cut off.

  Gordon bought a football specially, stuck some false hair on it and painted a face. At Cameron’s suggestion, he even painted some red for where it had been cut off by the executioner.

  When I tried on the costume for the first time and came downstairs, holding on to the bannister because I could only see a bit through the eye-holes, Mummy gave a little scream.

  “That is the most horribly realistic thing I’ve ever seen!” she said. “You’re really going round the houses at night, knocking on doors? You’ll frighten the wits out of people!”

  “We should put some red paint round the neck of the dress too,” Cameron said, getting carried away.

  But Luti said no, that was going too far.

  On the night of Hallowe’en, the Crescent Club came to collect me, including Willie’s little brother Alfie, dressed, for some reason, as a gnome. They all thought my costume was ‘fantabulous’ – even Willie, who was dressed as a witch with a pointed hat and a false nose with a big black wart on it, said it was the best. They all wanted to look at the head, which really was horrible. Gordon had gone to town, making the eyes and tongue pop out and using lots of red paint for the blood around the neck.

  Cameron wore a boy’s blue two-piece suit that Gordon had borrowed from somewhere, and Gordon’s fedora hat pulled down over his mask. Of course he wasn’t too pleased about having to go trick-or-treating with a bunch of girls, instead of with his own gang, but Mummy was firm; she wasn’t keen on the whole business, but Gordon told her that nothing could happen to us if we stayed in “our nice neighbourhood” around the crescent.

  But, of course, Willie had other ideas. She wanted to go to the neighbourhood across the tracks where she lived with the Warrens. Most of the club lived there too, so Cameron, Patricia and I were out-voted.

  We tramped through the lamp-lit streets, passing groups of kids, all in weird costumes and scary masks. We saw them on doorsteps, ringing bells, and shouting “Trick or treat!”

  Cameron said, “Let’s do a few on the way,” so we did, and were given handfuls of sweets to put in our collecting bags – orange and black lollies, white ghost-chews and chocolate skeletons. Everyone who opened the door got a satisfying fright when they saw me. One man wanted us to come inside so he could photograph me, but Cameron said we weren’t allowed.

  We were already feeling like candy millionaires by the time we crossed the railway and arrived on Willie’s home turf.

  It really was a lot darker and drearier around there than in our area. But Willie and the others were quite at home, and Willie said there was an old man living next door to her house who was ‘real mean’ – he’d complained about Alfie making a noise.

  “Yeah. I hate him!” said Alfie. “He won’t give us any treats. Let’s fix him!”

  Willie and Alfie had it all worked out, what the trick would be.

  “We’ll twist toilet paper in his hedge,” she said. She had a roll ready under her witch’s robe.

  Cameron and I exchanged uneasy looks. But Margy, Babe and Rhoda (who was a ghost) said he deserved it.

  We left him till last, in case we had to run.

  There didn’t seem to be anything mean about the people around there, who gave us just as many candies as we’d got at the richer people’s houses. Nobody didn’t give, so there were no tricks, and Willie was just warming up to go to the old man’s house when we heard a hoot from across the street, and there was Patricia’s brother Bob and Cameron’s gang from Nutana. Some of them lived in this district too. They came running over.

  They looked very big to me, being proper teenagers. In their zombie and vampire and monster costumes they were really scary. We girls all backed away, leaving Cameron in front.

  “Hey, Cam, whatcha doing with a bunch of girls? C’mon with us! We’re getting plenty, and we’ve done some great tricks too!”

  Cameron hesitated. “I’m on duty here, looking after my cousin,” he said.

  I’d never heard his English accent sound so out of place.

  The boys all laughed. “‘On duty!’ You gotta love him. Heck, she’ll be OK – she’s got Willie the Witch to mind her! You’ll take care of her, won’t you, Willie?”

  “Sure,” said Willie.

 
“C’mon, Cam, ‘old boy’ – we’ll use you as our front man! The smaller you are, the more they give ya!”

  And before he could protest, Cameron was almost carried away. The last I saw of him was the Spirit’s fedora hat surrounded by teenage giants, rushing through the lamplight and off into darkness, whooping and hollering and making ghost noises.

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Willie said, “Good, we don’t need him. Let’s go do it.” And she led the way up a path to a little house made of wooden boards, like most of them.

  We climbed the steps to the porch and Willie boldly banged on the screen door. Then she kind of pushed me to the front.

  “He’ll just die when he sees you!” she whispered gleefully. “Hold the head in front of you!”

  By this time the coat hanger that was across the top of my head had slipped a bit and in reaching up to try to straighten it, I dropped the head. It fell right on the doorstep, and when the porch light came on and the door opened, it sort of rolled forwards and landed at the feet of the person in the doorway.

  It wasn’t an old man. It was an old lady.

  She stared at headless me, and then looked down and saw the football head, in all its gory glory, staring up at her with its popping eyes. She gave a scream and the next minute she’d folded up and was lying on the porch.

  What happened next was a kind of blur. We backed down the steps – Alfie actually fell down them. The old man came rushing out when he heard the thump of her falling. As he did, he accidentally kicked the head, which rolled down the steps. He didn’t even notice it. He went down on his knees beside her and started crying, “Mae! Mae! Oh God, make her open her eyes!”

  We all stood there, frozen. Little Alfie was the first to come to his senses. He picked himself up, then the head – and ran away with it, off into the darkness.

  Then Willie came to life. She raced across to the house she lived in, next door, and in a minute or two her mother and Mrs Warren came running out and bent over the old lady. All the grown-ups had their backs to us. I could barely see what was going on, through the little eye-holes Luti had cut in the front of my dress. Or maybe I just had my eyes shut, so I couldn’t see what I’d done.

  What if I’d killed that old lady?

  Suddenly we heard a police siren blaring, and turned our heads like startled deer.

  Willie hadn’t come back, but Margy and Babe suddenly grabbed me and started pulling at my dress. Margy ripped open the snap fasteners at the front and Babe tore the hanger out and then just pulled the material down to my real shoulders. The dress trailed on the ground. Babe stuck the hanger into her collecting bag. I took a deep, shaky breath, and realised I hadn’t breathed properly for the past hour because my face was covered with cloth.

  The police car drew up and two policemen jumped out, pushed past us, and went up the steps. By this time the porch was empty. The old lady had been carried into the house. A third policeman stood near us to stop us leaving. After a few minutes the others came out again and started asking us questions and looking at our costumes.

  “Is she all right?” I managed to ask.

  “She’s had a bad shock. Maybe when she saw the ghost—” looking at little Rhoda standing there in her sheet, as un-scary as a tiny tent with two holes in the top. I wanted to say, It was me, it was me! I’d never felt so frightened and guilty in my life.

  Word travelled fast. Before long other cars were drawing up and out of one of them leapt Gordon. He had a word with the policemen, and shepherded me and Patricia into the Hillman. On the way back to the crescent, he said, “I got a phone call. What’ve you kids been up to? I told you not to leave the crescent!”

  Gordon dropped Patricia off and drove home. Mummy was waiting on the doorstep. Willie’s mum had phoned her to tell her what had happened.

  She thanked Gordon and rushed me up to our room. I kept tripping over the dress, now at least a foot too long.

  “Where’s Cameron?” was the first thing she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He was supposed to stay with you!”

  My first snitch bumped against my teeth. But I bit it back.

  “Well,” she said. “The poor old girl you frightened the wits out of is all right, I gather. I shouldn’t have let you go. Silly dangerous nonsense! Thank heaven we don’t have Hallowe’en at home!”

  She was peeling the dress over my head. It got stuck on the collecting bag, which I’d somehow kept hold of.

  “What’s all this? Holy smoke! Have you been robbing a sweetshop?” she said, peering in. She brought out a chocolate coffin, stared at it, and then bit it in half. “You could have done for the poor old thing. Apparently she’s got a weak heart.”

  “Can I have a sweet?”

  We sat there on the bed, silently munching. And crunching. The lollies were the best.

  “I’ll murder Cameron,” she said.

  “Oh, no, don’t!”

  “He shouldn’t have left you! And I had to let Gordon go to fetch you in the car, even though—”

  “I know, I could smell it,” I said.

  “Did the police see you headless?”

  “No. Alfie ran away with the head.”

  “I must remember Alfie in my Will,” she said.

  Just then we heard the front doorbell ring, and Gordon talking to Cameron.

  Mummy went to the top of the stairs.

  “Cameron! Come up here!”

  He came up and Mummy took him into his bedroom and shut the door.

  I couldn’t resist. After a few minutes I put my ear to the wall and listened.

  “Who do you owe your loyalty to?” Mummy was saying angrily. She wasn’t fooling – I knew that voice. “To Lindy or to a bunch of street urchins?”

  I guessed he said me. I mean, muttered.

  “I gave you a job to do. I don’t ask much of you, Cameron. Something really bad nearly happened, and you could have prevented it.”

  “I’m sorry, Auntie.”

  “Go to bed.”

  A bit later I bumped into Cameron in the bathroom. We brushed our teeth, which needed it after stuffing our mouths with sweets till I, at least, was feeling sick. I whispered, “It’s OK.”

  He didn’t say anything. His face was still red. Mummy hardly ever told him off – not half as often as Auntie Millie did at home. But Auntie Millie, Cameron figured, had the right.

  Autumn changed to winter early in the prairies that year. Cameron and I were probably the only ones who were pleased. The first snowfall came in mid-November.

  We’d been dreaming of the snow Gordon had promised us, that was higher than a man’s head. When we woke up one morning to find a white world, we were thrilled.

  We put on our snowsuits – thick baggy woollen trousers and hooded jacket for me, something like plus-fours with thick socks and a leather fur-lined cap for Cameron – and rushed out into the garden. The cold was strange – very, but somehow not very. We could hardly draw it into our lungs, and yet we didn’t feel shivery like in cold weather at home. Our breath made dense clouds and I could feel my eyebrows kind of pulling.

  Our excitement turned to dismay when we realised the snow – fine white powdery stuff, not the big wet flakes we got at home – wasn’t head-high or anything like it, and lay only about six inches deep. It fell and it fell, but, just like in one of our favourite spoof radio commercials: Other cereals snap, crackle and pop. Our brand just kinda lays there.

  We rushed back in again and consulted Luti.

  “Well, give it time,” she said. “It’ll snow for days now. It does mount up. But for really deep snow, there has to be wind, to pile it into drifts.”

  Ah, yes, I remembered. Drifts.

  We rushed out again and tried to have a snowball fight, but to our amazement, this snow didn’t make snowballs. Nor could you make a snowman with it, let alone a fort. This snow was so dry it wouldn’t stick together. We’d never seen snow like it.

  It was good for kicking through, th
ough, rising up in slow clouds, and it didn’t make you wet if you rolled about in it. Luti came out in her own snow-clothes and showed us how to make snow angels, by lying on our backs and making wing-patterns with our arms.

  “My Spajer used to love playing in the snow,” Luti said. Then, not to make us sad, she added, “It’s good for sledding. There’s a sled in the garden shed.”

  I rushed into the house while Cameron got it out. Mummy was in the living room listening to the news on the radio.

  “Have you seen the trees?” I asked excitedly. “Every twig has a white coat! Can we go sledding on the riverbank?”

  “Sure,” she said. Even she was picking up Canadian by now. She jumped up, stubbing out her cigarette. “I’ll come with you!”

  We carried the sled through the little park towards the river. We saw that men were making a kind of wooden frame, all round the open part of the park, just about a foot high. Mummy asked them what it was for.

  “It’s for the skating rink,” they told us. “We’ll flood it tonight and by morning you’ll be able to skate on it.”

  Cameron was keen. I wasn’t so sure; Gordon had bought skates for us, and was ‘rarin’ to go’, teaching us, but his joke was, “What’s the hardest thing about learning to skate? The ice!”

  We made our way to the top of the bank, beyond the road. There we stopped. There were dozens – maybe hundreds – of kids and a few grown-ups, all with sleds and flat wooden toboggans. They’d already made slopes through, and over, the undergrowth and there were screams and laughter and swishing sounds everywhere as they went bumping and whizzing down towards the snowy beach.

  And beyond!

  Mummy was staring over the trees at the river. “Look!” she said. “Can you believe it?”

  Nobody had bothered to tell us about this. The great South Saskatchewan River was frozen! All that rushing water had been caught and tamed by the freezing cold and was still and white and solid. I don’t suppose it was frozen right to the bottom, but certainly deep enough for people to walk and sled on it. If it had been smooth, I bet you could have driven a car across it.