The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [233]
They’d given her the length of one wall. Three women factory workers, in overalls and brave smiles, turning out the bombs; a girl driving an ambulance; two farm helpers with hoes and a basket of tomatoes; a woman in uniform, wielding a typewriter; down in the corner, shoved to one side, a mother in an apron removing a loaf of bread from the oven, with two approving children looking on.
Callie was surprised to see me. I hadn’t given her any warning of my visit: I had no wish to be evaded. She was supervising the painters, with her hair up in a bandanna, wearing khaki slacks and tennis shoes, and striding around with her hands in her pockets and a cigarette stuck to her lower lip.
She’d heard of Laura’s death, she’d read about it in the papers – such a lovely girl, so unusual as a child, such a shame. After these preliminaries, I explained what Laura had told me, and asked if it were true.
Callie was indignant. She used the word bullshit, quite a lot. True, Richard had been helpful to her when she’d been nabbed by the Red Squad for agitating, but she’d thought that was just old-times’-sake family stuff on his part. She denied she’d ever told Richard anything, about Alex or any other pinko or fellow-traveller. What bullshit! These were her friends! As for Alex, yes, she’d helped him out at first, when he’d been in such a jam, but then he’d disappeared, owing her some money as a matter of fact, and next thing she’d heard he was in Spain. How could she have snitched about where he was when she didn’t even know it herself?
Nothing gained. Perhaps Richard had lied about this to Laura, as he had lied to me about much else. On the other hand, perhaps it was Callie who was lying. But then, what else had I expected her to say?
Aimee didn’t like it in Port Ticonderoga. She wanted her father. She wanted what was familiar to her, as children do. She wanted her own room back. Oh, don’t we all.
I explained that we had to stay here for a little while. I shouldn’t say explained, because no explanation was involved. What could I have said that would have made any sense at all, to a child of eight?
Port Ticonderoga was different now; the war had made inroads. Several of the factories had been reopened, during the conflict – women in overalls had turned out fuses – but now they were closing again. Perhaps they’d be converted to peacetime production, once it was determined what exactly the returning servicemen would want to buy, for the homes and families they would now doubtless acquire. Meanwhile there were many out of work, and it was wait and see.
There were vacancies. Elwood Murray was no longer running the newspaper: he was soon to be a new, shiny name on the War Memorial, having joined the navy and got himself blown up. Interesting, which of the town’s men were said to have been killed and which were said to have got themselves killed, as if it was a piece of clumsiness or even a deliberate though somewhat minor act – almost a purchase, like getting yourself a haircut. Bought the biscuit was a recent local term for this, used as a rule by men. You had to wonder whose baking they had in mind.
Reenie’s husband Ron Hincks was not classed among these casual shoppers for death. He was solemnly said to have been killed in Sicily, along with a bunch of other fellows from Port Ticonderoga who’d joined the Royal Canadian Regiment. Reenie had the pension, but not much else, and she was letting out a room in her tiny house; also she was still working at Betty’s Luncheonette, although she said her back was killing her.
It wasn’t her back that was killing her, as I would soon discover. It was her kidneys, and they finished the job six months after I moved back. If you’re reading this, Myra, I would like you to know what a severe blow this was. I’d been counting on her to be there – hadn’t she always been? – and now, all of a sudden, she wasn’t.
And then increasingly she was, for whose voice did I hear