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By Root 276 0

inside. When she asked what these were, her father had laughed and said, “Multiple-risk insurance policies,” and called her pie-face and sniffy-nose. She thought he must be proud to act as custodian to any part of Victor’s private affairs. Victor was associate in a firm of engineers, established since 1900 on St. James Street West. The name of the company was Macfarlane, Macfarlane & Macklehurst. It was understood that when Macfarlane Senior died or retired, “Cochefert” would figure on the letterhead – a bit lower and to the right, in smaller print. Three other people with French surnames were on staff: a switchboard operator, a file clerk, and a bilingual typist. During working hours they were expected to speak English, even to one another. The elder Macfarlane harbored the fear that anything said in an unknown language could be about him.

Nora’s father knew the exact reason why Uncle Victor had been hired: it had to do with Quebec provincial government contracts. Politicians liked to deal in French and in a manner they found pertinent and to the point. Victor used English when he had to, no more and no less, as he waited. He was waiting to see his name figure on the firm’s stationery, and he pondered the retreat and obscuration of the English. “The English” had names such as O’Keefe, Murphy, Llewellyn, Morgan-Jones, Ferguson, MacNab, Hoefer, Oberkirch, Aarmgaard, Van Roos or Stavinsky. Language was the clue to native origin. He placed the Oberkirches and MacNabs by speech and according to the street where they chose to live. Nora’s father had escaped his close judgment, was the English exception, even though no one knew what Ray thought or felt about anything. The well-known Anglo reluctance to show deep emotion might be a shield for something or for nothing. Victor had told his wife this, and she had repeated it to Nora’s mother.

He had taken the last war to be an English contrivance and had said he would shoot his three sons rather than see them in uniform. The threat had caused Aunt Rosalie to burst into sobs, followed by the three sons, in turn, as though they were performing a round of weeping. The incident took place at a dinner given to celebrate the Cochefert grandparents’ golden wedding anniversary – close relatives only, twenty-six place settings, small children perched on cushions or volumes of the Littré dictionary. The time was six days after the German invasion of Poland and three after Ray had tried to enlist. Victor was in such a state of pacifist conviction that he trembled all over. His horn-rimmed glasses fell in his plate. He said to Nora’s father, “I don’t mean this for you.”

Ray said, “Well, in my family, if Canada goes to war, we go too,” and left it at that. He spoke a sort of French he had picked up casually, which not everyone understood. Across the table he winked at Nora and Geraldine, as if to say, It’s all a lot of hot air. His favorite tune was “Don’t Let It Bother You.” He could whistle it even if he lost money at Blue Bonnets.

Just before Victor’s terrible outburst, the whole table had applauded the arrival of the superb five-tier, pink-and-white anniversary cake, trimmed with little gold bells. Now, it sat at the centre of the table and no one had the heart to cut it. The chance that one’s children could be shot seemed not contrary to reason but prophetic. It was an unlucky age. The only one of Victor’s progeny old enough to get into uniform and be gunned down by her father was his daughter, Ninon – Aunt Rosalie’s Ninette. For years Victor and Rosalie had been alone with Ninette; then they had started having the boys. She was eighteen that September, just out of her convent school, could read and speak English, understand every word of Latin in the Mass, play anything you felt like hearing on the piano; in short, was ready to become a superior kind of wife. Her historical essay, “Marie-Antoinette, Christian Queen and Royal Martyr,” had won a graduation medal. Aunt Rosalie had brought the medal to the dinner, where it was passed around and examined on both sides. As for “Marie-Antoinette,