Stone Diaries, The - Carol Shields [73]
No one knew she was coming. She just arrived one autumn afternoon wearing her WREN uniform, just rang the doorbell, the front door, and said, "Well, hello there, I’m your Cousin Beverly from Saskatchewan."
Of course they’d heard of Beverly, one of six girl cousins—Juanita, Rosalie, Arleen, Lillian, and Daphne were the others. They lived in a place called Climax, Saskatchewan. Their mother was Aunt Fan who was married to Uncle Andrew who was their father’s brother, a pastor in the Baptist Church. Every year Mrs. Flett, the children’s mother, makes up a big Christmas parcel for the Saskatchewan cousins—a new board game, flannelette nightgowns, wool gloves, a large round fruitcake—and always, when she’s attaching the little name cards she shakes her head and says, "That family, they never seem to get ahead."
And now here was Beverley, all grown up—the Flett children hadn’t expected that. She perched in the middle of the chesterfield and drank a cup of tea. "This is delicious," she said to her aunt in a cheerful forthcoming voice, as though they knew each other well and often sat together drinking tea like this. Alice and Warren perched on either side of her. (Where was their father that afternoon? In Toronto probably, or Montreal—he was always, it seemed, stepping aboard a train and disappearing for a few days.)
Cousin Beverly’s WREN hat sat neatly on her hair, but they could see that she had short curls all over her head, probably a permanent wave or else naturally curly like Shirley Temple. She’d just come back from England where she’d been "right in the thick of things." She laughed loudly when she said that, about being in the thick of things. "Oh boy," she said, still laughing, "did we ever get our eyes opened up."
She let Alice try on her hat. It had to be put on with bobby pins, but she didn’t mind a bit, going to the bother. "Hey, you look pretty cute," she told her, "a real living doll."
"Did you save any lives?" Warren asked her. He whispered it the first time and then had to say it again, louder.
Right away she laughed. "Well, I guess I saved my own skin a couple of times." Was this a wisecrack? Alice wasn’t sure.
But Cousin Beverly’s face suddenly lost its wisecracking look.
She went sad for a few minutes, telling them about the soldiers on D-Day, flying missions in the darkness, dropping bombs on the enemy. Then she told them about an airman shot down over the English Channel. "The poor fellow," she said, "he couldn’t find his parachute cord for some reason, and when they found his body they saw he’d bored a hole right through his leather jacket, he was looking so hard for it."
A human hand boring a hole through a leather jacket! In that desperate minute or two while he was falling through the sky! How do you explain a thing like that? Well, it was kind of a miracle, Cousin Beverly said, though not happy like most miracles are. Another man got both his legs blown off, but at least he was alive, at least he hadn’t got his head mashed to porridge like another chap she knew—They could have listened to Cousin Beverly talk about the war all day, but their mother interrupted. "Tell me how your parents are doing," she said. "And your sisters back home." And then she said, "Now when exactly does your train leave? We want to make sure you get down to the station in plenty of time."
Afterwards Alice couldn’t stop thinking about Cousin Beverly.
Cousin Beverly’s visit kept running through her mind like a movie.
Her beauty. Her curls. Her red mouth. Her tan hose and polished shoes. Her short-skirted WREN uniform, her quick yelp of laughter, the way she shrugged her neat little shoulders when she talked about the airman falling through the sky and boring a hole through his leather jacket. Cousin Beverly was someone in possession of terrible stories, but still she managed to walk around in the world and be cheerful and smart. She’d arrived unannounced, just marched down their street and rang their doorbell and said: here I am. But