Brothers Far from Home Page 8

I wrote to Jack and told him we are going to Aunt Martha’s in Guelph. I said I copied his letter into my journal. I told him that, even though Hugo was special, I loved him too and we all miss him. That was all I could manage.

  Sunday, June 10

  We went to church this morning without Father. Mother kept us at home until the last minute so nobody had a chance to cry over us, I think. She did not say so but I am pretty sure I am right. I noticed we all kept our eyes on The Book of Praise instead of looking around as usual. When it was over she led us out the side door and home at a gallop. Nobody mentioned anything except Charlie, who said that if we’d been in a race, we’d have won hands down.

  Monday, June 11

  I am writing this on the train. It makes my pen jiggle. The Twins are across the aisle reading and watching out the window. Belle is asleep against me but my writing does not seem to trouble her. Her eyelids are still puffy from crying when Mother stood waving to us. Belle has never gone anywhere without Mother before. I have not gone away from her very often either. Mother’s eyelids were red, although she did manage not to break down at the station. Father was at home and acted as though we were not leaving.

  We spent last night packing. It was strange. I kept feeling little shooting bits of excitement because we were going on a trip and we might have a grand time. Part of me could hardly wait until I was sitting on the train smelling that sooty train smell and hearing the whistle and chugging out of the station. And another part felt shoved out of the nest and forsaken. The moment came when Mother and Verity said goodbye to us. At the last minute, even Charlie was rubbing away tears. Once we got out of the station we opened the lunch Moppy had packed for us, and which we were supposed to save until noon. She had made us lovely devilled eggs. We jammed them into our mouths and gulped them down whole. We crammed in the bread and butter too and we had food smeared all over our lips and chins. We did stop at last and left a bit for later. But somehow eating that way helped us stop feeling so totally empty and pushed aside. It is as though, now there is trouble at home, we aren’t wanted. Being bad comforted us, and I am glad we did it even though I should feel sorry for misbehaving. I am supposed to be a Good Example. Mother should not expect it of me. Verity is the one who’s been practising that part ever since she was a baby.

  “You know what?” Belle said all at once in a cozy little voice. “We are being sent into exile like a prince in a story.”

  We all laughed at her, especially because she made it sound fine and dandy. But it helped me, thinking I was like some poor princess sent away by her cruel uncle into the wilderness.

  “I think we are like Heidi,” Susannah said. “But we do have each other.”

  Aunt Martha’s is not like Klara’s house in Frankfurt, but it is good to pretend. We still have a long way to go. We have to change at Union Station. Mother said they could get someone to help us but I have done it before. We will be fine. All the same, I’ll be glad when we’re on the train to Guelph.

  In the next train

  We made the switch without a hitch. Charlie was a great help. He keeps calm.

  Belle has gone back to sleep, which is a blessing. People keep getting on and off. Here comes a soldier in uniform.

  I cannot concentrate any longer, dear Reader. Excuse me.

  Bedtime, at Aunt Martha’s

  Just after I stopped writing, Belle woke up and brought up her boots. She got vomit all over both of us. Thank goodness she missed the journal! (I am devoted to you, dear Reader, but I don’t think I could have gone on writing in a book covered with puke.) Did you know that Shakespeare describes babies as “mewling and puking in their nurse’s arms.” Isn’t that revolting? When Father read that bit aloud to me he said, “No wonder the man spent most of his time writing plays away from home.”

  I was so mortified. We got most of the vomit off in the tiny, tilting bathroom, but she kept weeping and wanting to go home.

  That soldier saved the day. He had one pant leg folded up and he walked with crutches. But he was funny, kind and he likes children. He began teasing right away and he made Belle laugh in spite of herself. When her head popped up over the seat Charlie told her to keep her head down, as if she were a soldier in a trench.

  Then we all sang “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and “Pack Up Your Troubles.” Charlie asked the soldier what the men thought was the hardest thing to bear in the War. He was serious but the soldier made joking answers. “No dry socks,” he said.

  “No. I mean really,” Charlie said.

  “Oh, you mean really. Well, here’s the real answer. Having no mother to tuck me in,” he grinned.

  Susannah hissed to Charlie that his wound was worst.

  “No, no,” the soldier said. “Losing that leg got me sent home.” He told us he was being eaten alive by bugs of every kind imaginable, and drowned in mud in the trenches. Now, he said, still teasing, the minute he gets home, he’ll get to sleep in his very own bed without being chewed on by things too terrible to mention. “And I won’t have to worry about sausages falling on me any longer.”

  Belle stared at him goggle-eyed. “I love sausages,” she said.

  Charlie told her the soldier was teasing. Then the man himself told her the “sausages” he was talking about were bombs. We told him about Hugo and he said we should be very proud to have a brother who had served at Vimy Ridge.

  “We are proud,” Susannah said softly.

  Then the soldier, whose name turned out to be Timothy Whitney, had to get off. And then we were at the station in Guelph.

  Aunt Martha was there to meet us in her red velvet hat. She calls it her small rebellion hat. We came out here in their gig. The Twins squashed together and I held Belle perched on my lap. Aunt Martha kept telling Blueboy to hurry up and he ambled along at his usual clip-clop.

  “He’s a lovely horse,” I said.

  Brace yourself for a shock, dear Reader. Aunt Martha looked at me sideways and said she was getting a Tin Lizzie.

  “You can’t drive,” yelled clever Charlie.

  “I will be able to by the time I bring Lizzie home,” said our shocking aunt. “I’m having lessons.” I don’t know whether it is true or a joke.

  I have a room all to myself. It gives me the strangest feeling. I have shared with my sister ever since I moved out of a crib. Dear Reader, believe it or not, I miss Verity. And I need my penny whistle.

  Friday, June 15

  We all feel so far from home. This afternoon I took the younger children down to the river to swim. I reminded them how lovely it is to have the Speed River close by, so we can swim whenever we like. The mill pond in Uxbridge is not the same. What I said was true but we went right on being homesick.

  “I’d rather not swim and get to stay home,” Charlie grumbled.

  The others all agreed, with faces as cheerful as tombstones. I was standing on the bank watching them paddle when Belle was pushed under by Susannah. I jumped in to rescue her and then I stopped being all prissy and nearly grown up. I became the Princess Wild Rose, and Belle was my baby sister. We were fleeing from Charlie, who was a wicked baron. Susannah named him “The Archduke Ferdinand.” The real archduke got shot in Sarajevo in 1914 and that was what started the War, but not one of us knows exactly who he was. His name is just right for a villain. Susannah was his evil henchman, slinking about like the villains in Jo March’s plays.

  Belle stopped, all at once, and said, “Was the real archduke on our side or theirs?”

  Nobody was clear about this detail.

  “Do you mean that Hugo got killed all because of some archduke we don’t even know?” my small sister pronounced. Her cheeks went very red and her eyes shot sparks.

  “There was more to it,” I said. “But you will have to ask Father to explain it. I can’t.”

  It does sound crazy. But she gave up the subject, at last, and we went back to our game.

  We got soaking wet. Belle screamed such deafening shrieks when she got kidnapped by brigands, that
two women who live nearby came out on their front verandahs to see if she was in danger. She stood up, with river water running off her in streams and said, very sweetly, “I’m fine. I’m only a baby princess who is about to be carried off by that evil Archduke Ferdinand.”

  The taller lady looked surprised. Then she laughed. “What will he do to you?” she asked.

  “Inflict some vile torture in his castle dungeon, I expect,” said Belle cheerfully.

  “Dear me,” said the lady shaking her head. Then she asked if we were the Bates children. We nodded and her face stopped smiling. “I was so sorry to hear about your loss,” she told me.

  Her eyes dug into me like fishhooks. I think she was waiting for me to cry. I grabbed Belle by her sopping wet shoulder and swung her around. When I growled at her to come along home she did not fuss. Neither did the other two.

  “Old cat,” Charlie muttered. Thank goodness his voice was low enough so I could pretend I had not heard him.

  Then, as we sloshed along in shoes full of muddy water, Belle asked if I thought we were like the soldiers in the trenches.

  I looked down at Belle, who was still waiting for me to answer. The mud on our shoes was nothing compared to what I had heard Richard Webb and others speak of. I started to tell her how awful it was and then stopped. It was like Hugo writing me a cheerful letter. She is so tender-hearted. So I just nodded.

  Aunt Martha shook her head over us, but stayed calm. I suppose she is used to children getting dirty. There is more mud in the country. Guelph is not really the country, but Grandmother and Aunt Martha live by the river in the old farmhouse just beyond the edge of town. Grandfather farmed there until he died and now other farmers rent the land.

  I think maybe Aunt Martha feels as sorry for us as that lady who talked to us at the river. But our aunt is not the kind of person who makes a big to-do over a bit of dirt.

  She just got us to take off our shoes and then she handed me the floor mop. I was glad Moppy had brought me up to know how to get a muddy floor sparkling clean.

  Saturday, June 16

  Aunt Martha astonished me tonight. She really is having driving lessons so she can buy herself a car. I think she is the only woman driver I know personally.

  “Eliza, you will soon have the vote. Do you want to be a modern woman or not?” she said.

  I almost said that Verity does not want to drive or vote, but then I wondered if I was wrong about my big sister. She looks so different with her hair bobbed and she is acting differently too. Maybe she is turning into a modern woman. I certainly want to vote and drive.

  Sunday, June 17

  We went fishing this afternoon. It is lovely to be far enough away from home that Father’s flock cannot see us and disapprove of what we do. We caught eleven fish. They were very small, but Aunt Martha and I cleaned them anyway and she fried them for our supper. I am not usually a girl who loves to eat fish, but I enjoyed those. Delectable and crisp as crispy. Aunt Martha used corn meal to fry them in, with wheat being scarce. But she also used lots of butter. They still have their little Jersey cow Lizabelle. She was born when Belle was a baby and got named after us. She is so gentle. Susannah and Charlie have both learned to milk her. Belle wants to but her hands are too small, I think.

  “Let’s stay until we catch one hundred next time,” Charlie said, staring mournfully at the empty platter.

  Monday, June 18

  Today I missed Cornelia. I was surprised. Even though Susannah is smarter than Cornelia in some ways, Corny is nearer my age and she thinks about the same things. We wonder about growing up. Well, maybe Corny does not wonder when she is alone, but she listens while I talk about our bodies. She blushes. I think it is silly to blush because your body is changing. Since I have always shared a room with Verity, I know things Corny doesn’t.

  We went to Aunt Agnes’s house today and ended up looking at photograph albums. We saw pictures of Mother and her two sisters when they were our age. I look like Aunt Martha, Verity looks like Aunt Agnes, Susannah looks like Mother and Belle looks like herself.

  Grandmother told me I was the “spitting image” of Martha. I wonder why people say that. I asked her. She had no idea.

  They also say Charlie is “a chip off the old block,” meaning he looks like Father. Why are girls never chips off the old block? I guess it would be peculiar to think of your mother as an old block of wood. Yet wood can be beautiful.

  I feel guilty enjoying the country food so much. We have real butter and an egg every day. Bacon too and pork sausages. We brought those home from Aunt Agnes’s house. I wonder what Father would say about it when we’re all supposed to be doing without.

  I told Grandmother what I was thinking. Her answer shocked me but made me laugh too. “What the eye doesn’t see, Eliza,” she said with a little grin, “the heart doesn’t grieve over.”

  When I wrote a letter home, I didn’t tell about the food.

  Wednesday, June 20

  I want to go home in the worst way. Mother sent a letter to Aunt Martha and told her to tell me that Cornelia is very ill. She got red measles and then complications of some kind. This can be very dangerous. They are worried about her heart. Mother said to pray for her. I am trying. But I don’t know which are the right words. Mother says she is relieved Belle is far from the contagion.

  Tuesday, June 26

  Belle is ill too, but she does not have measles. She has a head cold. It wouldn’t be bad if it weren’t for her delicate health. Colds always go to her chest. Aunt Martha says there is nothing to worry about. Belle does look pitiful, though, and she begs for Mother to come. Mother wrote to say that as soon as Belle is well enough, we can all come home. Thank goodness! I didn’t ask, but Father must have recovered his strength.

  Mother did not say a word about Cornelia’s health. I hope she is getting better. Surely she must be. She can’t be contagious any longer or Mother would not let us come near.

  July 1917

  Tuesday, July 3

  At last, a letter came from Jack and it was to me. He got my letter telling him we were going to Guelph. He wants me to go and visit Norah, his old sweetheart, and tell her that he has fallen in love with someone in England, and he is sorry but he does not want her to build up false hopes.

  How could he have done it in such a short time? Well, I suppose six months is time enough.

  I don’t see how I can do it. I let Aunt Martha read the letter, even though he asked me not to tell Father and Mother. He does not want to worry them.

  Aunt M. sighed and gave me a strange look. Then she said I must go. She will drive me over there tomorrow and I can walk home.

  The girl’s name is Rosemary and she is a nurse. He and Rufus met her at a hospital in England when they were visiting a fellow pilot who had been injured.

  Wednesday, July 4

  I did it. Aunt Martha drove me in the buggy to Norah’s today. I told her that Jack was in love with an English girl. That was what he asked me to say.

  She looked as though I had stabbed her in the back. Her eyes scared me, dear Reader. She is always pale, but she looked as though she might swoon like some girl in a romance novel. Then she cried without making a sound. I went to put my arms around her but she stiffened like an ironing board and backed away. At last, she spoke in a thin hard voice.

  “I suppose he has found someone prettier,” she said. “Trust Jack to pick up a sweet little English floozie instead of keeping his word to me.”

  I just looked at her. I do not know what Rosemary looks like, but there are not many girls prettier than Norah. I almost told her so because I did feel sorry for her, but Jack said, in his letter, that he was glad now that Norah had insisted they make no promises to each other about the future. She had told him that they must stay free. And I wondered, all at once, why. Had she wanted him to be free, or herself?

  It was a horrible moment, dear Reader. I was sorry for her, but I was angry deep inside to hear her lie about my brother Jack, who is the soul
of honour.

  “You had better go home, Eliza,” she said. She didn’t offer me a cool drink. She didn’t even walk me to the door. But I could see she was going to really start crying as soon as I shut it behind me. Maybe I should have tried to hug her but I could not do it. She had put up a wall.

  I was halfway home and crying myself sick when along came Aunt Martha and Blueboy to pick me up after all. “Was it very hard?” she asked. I nodded.

  “Well, Eliza my dear, don’t break your heart over Lady Norah,” she said. Then she told me that Norah has not missed a party since Jack left, and is going out steadily with the Burrows boy. I remember him. He has poor eyesight. “Norah will not stay on the shelf grieving, you may be sure,” Aunt Martha finished as we arrived home. I got out of the buggy and, although it was so hot, I felt cold inside as well as sad, and somehow ashamed. But not of Jack. I think Jack is almost noble.

  Friday, July 6

  We go home tomorrow morning. Aunt Martha is coming with us to help while Moppy goes for her visit to her sister’s. A neighbour girl will stay here with Grandmother. Belle still is pale, but her eyes shine at the thought of being home with Mother.

  They are not saying anything about Jack. I hope he has been writing to them. I feel guilty when I get a letter if they have had none.

  Monday, July 9

  We are back now. And Father is better, although quieter, and he looks older. He has stopped teasing too. He and Belle sit together and say not a word, just somehow take comfort from each other.

  I actually found I was trying to stop thinking of Hugo’s being dead. I wanted to stop hurting. I was furious with myself.

  Thursday, July 12

  It is Orangemen’s Day and there’s to be a parade. Father says he wants us to stay home. He says the parade is perpetuating hatred. He is hard to understand.

  Mother says she has plenty of work for us to do tending the garden and starting preserving. I cannot believe it is really time for that, not after such a slow spring. I like eating what is in the jars, but preserving is such long hot work and it goes on forever.