The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [69]
Father stood with head bowed, but he was visibly shaking, whether from grief or rage it is hard to say. He wore his uniform under a great-coat, and leaned with his two leather-gloved hands on his cane.
Callie Fitzsimmons was there, but she kept in the background. It was not the sort of occasion on which the artist should step forward and make a bow, she’d told us. She wore a decorous black coat and a regular skirt instead of a robe, and a hat that concealed most of her face, but was whispered about all the same.
Afterwards Reenie made cocoa, for Laura and me, in the kitchen, to warm us up because we’d got chilled in the drizzle. A cup was offered as well to Mrs. Hillcoate, who said she wouldn’t say no to it.
“Why is it called a memorial?” said Laura.
“It’s for us to remember the dead,” said Reenie.
“Why?” said Laura. “What for? Do they like it?”
“It’s not for them, it’s more for us,”said Reenie. “You’ll understand when you’re older.” Laura was always being told this, and discounted it. She wanted to understand now. She upended her cocoa.
“Can I have more? What is the Supreme Sacrifice?”
“The soldiers gave their lives for the rest of us. I certainly hope your eyes aren’t bigger than your stomach, because if I make this I’ll expect you to finish it.”
“Why did they give their lives? Did they want to?”
“No, but they did it anyway. That’s why it’s a sacrifice,” said Reenie. “Now that’s enough of that. Here’s your cocoa.”
“They gave their lives to God, because that’s what God wants. It’s like Jesus, who died for all of our sins,” said Mrs. Hillcoate, who was a Baptist, and considered herself the ultimate authority.
A week later Laura and I were walking along the path beside the Louveteau, below the Gorge. There was mist that day, rising from the river, swirling like skim milk in the air, dripping from the bare twigs of the bushes. The stones of the path were slippery.
All of a sudden Laura was in the river. Luckily we weren’t right beside the main current, so she wasn’t swept away. I screamed and ran downstream and got hold of her by the coat; her clothes weren’t waterlogged yet, but still she was very heavy, and I almost fell in myself. I managed to pull her along to where there was a flat ledge; then I hauled her out. She was sopping like a wet sheep, and I was pretty wet myself. Then I shook her. By that time she was shivering and crying.
“You did it on purpose!” I said. “I saw you! You could’ve drowned!” Laura gulped and sobbed. I hugged her. “Why did you?”
“So God would let Mother be alive again,” she wailed.
“God doesn’t want you to be dead,” I said. “That would make him very mad! If he wanted Mother to be alive, he could do it anyway, without you drowning yourself.” This was the only way to talk to Laura when she got into such moods: you had to pretend you knew something about God that she didn’t.
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “How do you know?”
“Because look – he let me save you! See? If he wanted you to be dead, then I’d have fallen in too. We’d both be dead! Now come on, you have to get dry. I won’t tell Reenie. I’ll say it was an accident, I’ll say you slipped. But don’t do anything like that again. Okay?”
Laura said nothing, but she allowed me to lead her home. There was a lot of frightened clucking and dithering and scolding, and a cup of beef broth and a warm bath and a hot-water bottle for Laura, whose mishap was put down to her well-known clumsiness; she was told to watch where she was going. Father said Well done to me; I wondered what he would have said if I’d lost her. Reenie said it was a good thing we had at least half a wit