Uprooted - a Canadian War Story

  But it wasn’t flat. It was as if the cold had caught the river in all its waves and eddies – as if it had been frozen not little by little, the ice weighting it to flatness, but suddenly, all at once. There were humps and panes of ice sticking up and even driftwood logs jutting out of the mass.

  We just stood and stared.

  “The temperature must be much lower than it feels,” said Mummy. Her winter coat was wide open, showing her jumper and trousers, and her scarf wasn’t even wrapped round her neck properly. Right on cue as she said this, a strange man came up to us. To all our amazement he pulled the edges of Mummy’s coat together.

  “My dear lady,” he said, “you mustn’t expose yourself like that! You must be from the Old Country. You don’t feel it because your blood’s still thick, but this below-freezing cold is treacherous! Please fasten your coat and wrap something round your face!”

  Mummy did as she was told. “How cold is it?” she asked.

  “It’s twenty degrees below zero,” he said.

  Mummy stared at him as if she couldn’t believe she’d heard right.

  “Twenty below zero! Why aren’t we all frozen like the river?” she laughed.

  “It’s no joke. You can get frostbite. Don’t let the kids take their gloves off.” He turned to us. “Son, cover your ears. And whatever you do, kids, don’t touch metal with your tongue or your bare fingers. They’ll freeze to it.” And he tipped his cap and walked away.

  Cameron brought the ear flaps on his cap down and tied the tapes under his chin. “Ow,” he said suddenly. “My ears are hurting! Auntie, do you think they’ve frozen already?”

  She rubbed them briskly through his cap. “Go and sled,” she said. “Go on. Get in the queue. And don’t forget, I want a turn after you.”

  I wanted Cameron to go first, but at the same time I hated waiting. It was too cold to stand in a queue; however much you stamped your boots your feet got colder and colder. When Willie – who I hadn’t seen since That Night, when I’d considered she’d deserted us – came up to me and offered me a go on her toboggan, I took her up on it. I generously decided to forgive her. I’d missed her, anyway.

  I sat on the toboggan, which was flat with the front curled over and a bit of rope to hold on to, and Willie gave me an almighty push. Before I knew what was happening I was hurtling down the slope, bumping over snow-covered bushes and just missing a young tree halfway down. It was as exciting as my first proper bicycle ride, down the hill from my old school. Was that only five months ago? It felt like a lifetime.

  I saw Cameron careering down the slope on the sled. Its metal runners took it much farther and faster than the toboggan, right out on to the river! It was crazy. It was wonderful. I dragged the toboggan back up the hill.

  “Can I have another go?” I asked, panting.

  “After me,” Willie said.

  Then she did an amazing thing. She stood up on the toboggan, holding the rope, and went down like that, her pigtails flying under her woolly cap. This time she didn’t make a Tarzan cry, but shouted, “Hi-ho Silver! Away!” like the Lone Ranger.

  Even the boys gave a cheer.

  I thought, If she can do it, so can I.

  Meanwhile Cameron had handed our sled over to Mummy. She sat on it, pushed off with her heels and went shooting down the slope, which was now icy and very slick. She kept her heels off the ground and didn’t try to brake and in a few seconds she was out on the river.

  “Your mum’s a good sport, isn’t she?” said Willie admiringly.

  Well, I could be a good sport too.

  I took the rope and stood on the toboggan. Its nose pitched down and it began to fly, with me standing on it. But not for long; halfway down the slope I lost my balance and sat down. Hard.

  I felt my tailbone crack against the wood, and a sharp pain shot up my back. I let out a howl. The toboggan was still going. At the bottom I fell off and lay on my side in the snow. I was in agony.

  Willie and Cameron came galumphing down, kicking snow all over me. “Are you okay? Did you hurt your bum?” Willie shouted as she reached me.

  Yes, I’d hurt my bum. I thought I’d broken my tailbone.

  Cameron hiked me to my feet. “Can you walk?”

  I found I could. But oh boy. Did it ever hurt!

  Mummy hadn’t seen what happened. She was back at the top, talking to Willie’s mother, who had come to fetch Willie home for tea. When the others hauled me back up the slope, crying with pain, Mummy turned a face to me that told me something had happened already to shock her. Of course, she was shocked more when she saw my tears. She and Cameron practically had to carry me back to the crescent, where I was put to bed with a hot water bottle on my tail and two ‘pinkies’ – tablets Mummy had brought from England, Daddy’s magic pills that were supposed to cure everything, and often did.

  Later, when she came to bed, I sensed she was worried about something that wasn’t me.

  “Poor Irene,” she said. Irene was Willie’s mum. “She’s in a terrible state. Mr Warren has lost his job. She says it’s simply impossible for them to keep her and the children any longer. She’ll have to get a job, and she’s like me – no qualifications! She married straight from school. What on earth will she do? Oh, God, I do wish our government would change its mind and let our husbands send us some money!”

  “Can’t O’F help us?”

  “He already does as much as he possibly can. I don’t like asking Gordon for money either.”

  “At least Gordon has a good job.”

  “Yes.” After a bit she said, “Lindy, what would you think if … if we left here and got a place of our own?”

  “That’d be perfect! Then we wouldn’t have to keep quiet when Gordon’s in a mood.”

  “You do know that that’s a euphemism, don’t you?”

  Euphemism was one of Cameron’s words. It meant saying something nice to cover up something worse.

  “Well …” I said. “Is it whiskey?”

  “He’s fine when he’s sober. But he goes on benders. He drinks too much and then he …”

  “What?”

  Mummy lay still in the darkness.

  “He gets … difficult. Luti has to tiptoe about, not to upset him, and I do too. He – he wants me to drink with him. He insists. He pours me a very large drink and puts ice in it and then he gives it to me. I don’t want it so I sit there with the glass and I try to hold it steady, but … I can’t. I’m so tense, my hand shakes. And he watches. He watches the glass. And the ice … tinkles … and I’m ordering my hand to keep still … and then suddenly he starts to roar.”

  I’d heard this. At night. It had woken me once or twice, Gordon’s roar. But I could never hear the words. Now she told me.

  “‘Look at you! You’re shaking! You’re scared of me! I scare my women! What kind of swine am I? What kind of beast?’ And then he starts to cry. Once he threw his own glass on the floor. And Luti rushes to comfort him as if he were her little boy.”

  I forgot my sore tail and moved over to cuddle her.

  “Can’t we leave?”

  “If only I could work to keep us! But I’ve never had a job, except acting, and I can’t act here. How can we live if we have no money?”

  This problem should have occupied my mind all the time, but it didn’t. The weather was too exciting.

  Whatever his faults, nobody could say Gordon was a tightwad. Our winter clothes that we’d brought with us simply weren’t warm enough – he had to buy proper Canadian stuff for all of us. Not to mention three pairs of skates.

  Everyone went to school dressed for the cold in snowsuits over their ordinary clothes – skirts for the girls – with fur-lined boots. When we got there we had to strip all this off in the cloakroom. The school was heated, like the houses, by a furnace in the basement. Gordon taught Cameron how to ‘feed’ ours with coke – “I guess you didn’t do that kinda work at home, but here, that’s a man’s job.” Shovelling the endless snow was another! Luckily for
Luti, Mummy and me, women weren’t expected to do men’s work.

  The little park turned into a skating rink, sure enough, and was alive with skaters most of the day and into the evening, when there were special floodlights. The ‘wall’ round the rink wasn’t high enough to hold on to so Gordon had to be our support. Cameron, of course, wouldn’t stoop to hanging on to anyone, though. When he was determined, he didn’t waste time, and was soon sailing round on the ice with his hands behind his back, as if he’d done it all his life. I clutched Gordon and didn’t so much sail as stagger.

  Mummy learnt to skate too. Gordon far preferred giving her his arm and helping her round the rink than me, so I didn’t get as much practice as Mummy did. Still, the little park gang was nice and would get each side of me and kind of pull me along until I got the idea. My ankles burnt like fire at first, but after a while they stopped and I could slither around the rink on my own.

  I did go sledding again when my tail-bruise healed, but didn’t do any more stand-up stunts. I’d gone off Willie, a bit. She was too reckless for me. I missed her in a way, but as we didn’t go to the same school, and as she lived across the tracks, I didn’t see her unless one of us made an effort.

  And one terrible night, that’s what she did.

  Gordon loved board games like ludo and chequers and snakes and ladders, and card games like gin rummy, at which he always beat me. I didn’t like this and sometimes sulked. I might have been a better sport, if he hadn’t crowed when he won.

  One night we were all around the dining table playing snap when the doorbell rang. Luti went to answer it.

  I heard a shrill voice at the door. A voice I knew! I jumped up and ran through the living room. There on the porch in the lamplight was Willie.

  She had Alfie with her. They had no proper snow clothes on – they had snow on their bare heads and on their shoulders. When redheads cry their faces go a kind of red that clashes with their hair. This makes them look extra desperate. But Willie and Alfie couldn’t have looked much worse – sobbing and shivering, like orphans out in the snow.

  Luti called, “Gordon! Alex! Please come!” She looked, and sounded, frightened. “Something’s happened to Mrs Lord!”

  Gordon took charge. He brought the kids in, wrapped a rug around Alfie, and sent Luti to the kitchen to get them something hot to drink. He asked Willie a couple of questions, which she was crying too much to answer. He practically ripped Cameron’s sweater off him and put it round her. Then he muffled himself up, and drove off in the car. Mummy carried Alfie, all bundled up and shivering, into the kitchen, while I took Willie into the dining room and shut the door.

  “What’s happened to your mum?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I think she’s dead,” Willie sobbed.

  The word ‘dead’, connected with a mother, hit me like an electric shock.

  “Dead? She can’t be! What do you mean?”

  “She’s lying on the floor. Nobody’s there. I couldn’t go next door. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Willie put her head down among the cards on the table and sobbed out loud. I pulled my chair closer and put my arm around her. I could feel her shaking. I tried not to imagine Mummy lying on the floor in an empty house, maybe dead. The worst. The worst.

  Cameron came in. “Luti says, come into the kitchen,” he said. He looked at Willie’s bent shoulders for a minute. Then he said, “Willie, Alfie wants you.”

  Willie stood up. She wiped her dripping face on the sleeve of Cameron’s sweater. Then she stumbled into the kitchen, Cameron and I following. Alfie was there with Mummy and Luti. He threw himself at Willie, nearly knocking her over.

  “I want Mum! I want Mum!” he kept shouting.

  Willie held him tight. She looked at me over his head. I knew I could never forget the sight of her red face and wild green eyes.

  Luti was hovering helplessly near the stove. Mummy said firmly, “Sit down, children. Gordon will be back soon and I’m sure he’ll bring good news.”

  They sat down close together. At first they didn’t drink the hot cocoa Luti put in front of them, but Mummy wrapped their cold hands around the cups and after a while they carried them to their mouths. Mummy made a few hopeful remarks, but nobody else spoke. We just had to wait till Gordon came back. It seemed to take for ever. Cameron couldn’t stand the tension and went upstairs.

  When we heard the car, we all rushed to the front door. Gordon came in with a policewoman.

  When I saw her, I thought, She is dead!

  The policewoman asked Luti if she could be alone with Willie and Alfie, then she went into the dining room with them and shut the door.

  Gordon poured himself a stiff whiskey.

  “She’s alive,” he said. “She took too many sleeping pills. By accident, let’s hope. The doctor said when they do it on purpose they always do it in bed.”

  “Where are the Warrens?” Mummy asked.

  “I don’t know. They weren’t there. I just don’t know.”

  “The poor little things! Poor little things!” Luti kept saying, wringing her hands.

  At last the policewoman came out.

  “I’ll take them to the hospital to see their mom,” she said. “Can we borrow some warm top-clothes till I can sort something out?”

  I rushed to give Willie, who was now grey in the face instead of red, my snowsuit and warm boots. I hugged her as I gave them to her, and helped her put them on. Alfie just had to make do with being wrapped in a blanket. Gordon carried him to the police car.

  “It’s a wonder they didn’t freeze,” he muttered when he came in and shut the door on the winter night. “It must be thirty below out there. Indoor shoes and nothing on their heads or hands … They must’ve run all the way …” He swallowed his whiskey in one gulp. “Gahd. This is awful! I never thought those Warrens were suitable folk to have war guests, but I didn’t think of anything like this!”

  “That poor woman must have been desperate!” said Luti. “What do you think, Alex?”

  I hadn’t looked at Mummy properly since it started because I’d been looking at Willie. Now I looked, and got another shock. She was white as paper.

  “I think I need a whiskey,” she said.

  Mrs Lord got better, but a lot of things changed after that night. Mainly slowly, but they did change.

  Willie told me that the Warrens had gone to live with relatives in Alberta. Before they left they’d told Willie’s mum that she could go on living in their house for the moment, and that that was all they could do. But how was she to pay for things?

  Well, that got sorted thanks to Luti and her bridge club. She persuaded some of her friends to get their husbands to make Mrs Lord an allowance to help her and the children to live. Willie said she had to take the money but that it had made her different.

  I don’t want to sound like Pollyanna, but there was a good side to the awful business.

  We never knew if Mrs Lord took too many sleeping pills on purpose, but word reached her family in England, and they made a big fuss. Willie’s dad was an officer in the army and when he came back from France (what a relief that was!) and heard, he was furious. There was stuff in the papers at home, about what a scandal it was for the government to send people overseas without any money. This made our families, Cameron’s and mine, panic – specially the aunts. They, along with Grampy, complained to their members of parliament. And there were others. It seems Mrs Lord wasn’t the only evacuee English woman who was finding it all too much.

  “We’re just not built for being dependent,” Mummy said. “It’s bad enough being far away from home. Living in a strange country, among strangers, having to ask for every cent you need … No wonder.”

  “You’d never take sleeping pills, would you?” I dared to ask.

  “No,” she said. “But I might take to drink.”

  She was joking. She could joke because news came that our government was going to let men send money to wives who’d taken their children abroad to be s
afe.

  In the meantime, I was finding that coping with Gordon’s ‘moods’ was getting harder. For Luti too. You could see. Cameron swore that her going-white hair was going whiter.

  I was friends with Willie again. I started to visit her house, taking the puddle-jumper out to where she lived, because it was so hard to walk on the icy sidewalks. I used to look out through the showers of sparks sent up by the wheels – it was to do with the frost – and think of her and Alfie, running through the cold that night, believing their mum was dead.

  Willie had calmed down since what happened. She told me she used to rush home from school every day with her heart thumping, afraid of what she might find, though her mum had promised and sworn she’d never take even one sleeping pill again in her life. She liked me to visit, telling me once, “Willie needs friends.”

  Willie had never been short of friends before, but word had got round that there was something ‘weird’ about her family.

  Cameron thought it was funny, ‘Lords’ living in a little, poor house. lt was a bungalow with three bedrooms, a small back yard and an open porch. Everything in it was shabby and half worn-out but somehow I liked it – it was homely and friendly. Willie said that they were much happier there without the Warrens, even though they’d been very kind to them.

  “It’s just lovely to be on our own,” she kept saying.

  I thought, Yes, I bet.

  O’F began to come round more often. He couldn’t ride streetcars because he had arthritis, so when he did visit, he had to take taxis, and this was a luxury for him.

  “He gives me bits of money,” Mummy told us. “He can’t really afford it. I know he’s feeling the pinch because he doesn’t smoke his pipe any more.”

  “Couldn’t you stop your Black Cats and let him smoke his pipe instead?” I asked.

  She gave a huge sigh. “Don’t give me more guilt,” she said. “If I couldn’t smoke, I’d be a nervous wreck.”

  When we visited him in his little flat he always apologised because it was so small, but he made us welcome and had cookies and milk for us and lots of good strong tea for Mummy. He made it properly too. (Luti never could.) He’d sit with us and talk to us about England (which he’d left forty years before) and the ‘situation’, meaning the war. Sometimes we listened with him to his favourite radio programme, Fibber McGee and Molly, which made us all laugh. Or if it was lunchtime on a Saturday, he’d take us out for a meal at a café called the Elite. My favourite lunch was a chicken sandwich with hot gravy poured over it, and French fries, followed by a marshmallow sundae.