soil and sleeting winds.
“Just be thankful we live where we do,” he said for the hundredth time. We raised our eyes to the map again, as if in prayer. In 1939 the sun never set on the British Empire, and Canada was the biggest pink patch in the whole world.
Cambridge, England
October 20, 1939
Dear Anne,
Thank you for your recent letter and the photograph of the children. We were surprised to see how much they have grown. Rose is quite the young lady now.
Roger’s teaching position continues, although class sizes have dwindled since so many students have enlisted. It’s a mercy you aren’t in England. I have often felt sorry for you, so far away from civilization, but now I wish we had emigrated when we had the chance. Both my cook and housekeeper have joined up and we are in an awful muddle without them.
The tin of sweets you sent was most appreciated. We are simply longing for a taste of sugar. We don’t even have marmalade for our toast now that the oranges aren’t getting through from Spain.
Will you please send me some American cigarettes? And six pairs of silk stockings.
Your cousin, Pamela Spencer
“Dear old Pamela,” Mother said. “She always thought she was better than the rest of us, but when she landed an officer she became insufferable. After he started teaching at Cambridge, Pamela conveniently forgot she had any relatives. It must be a real comedown to clean her own house again. Well, I can’t afford silk stockings, but I’ll send her a carton of cigarettes.”
I thought my mother was being a little harsh. After all, Pamela led the life of a real English lady. No wonder she wasn’t used to scrubbing floors.
3
“Rose!” MacTavish came into the office, shaking the snow off his moth-eaten beaver hat. “There’s another bunch of young blockheads leaving on the afternoon train. Run down and take a picture!”
I hurried along the street, the snow crunching beneath my galoshes, anxious to return to my comfortable desk. But when I came around the corner and stepped onto the platform, I forgot about the cold.
A small crowd stood shivering in the clouds of steam gushing from the engine. I said hello to Laura Guthrie, who was dressed to the nines — brilliant lipstick, high heels, and fox-collared coat — but she didn’t even notice me. Her eyes were fixed on her boyfriend’s face as if she were trying to memorize it. Old Mrs. McGill clung tightly to her only grandson. One father whacked his son on the back as if he had something stuck in his throat. Several of my former classmates clowned around, punching each other’s shoulders, pale and feverish with excitement. Their breath was ghostly in the frigid air.
They’re so young. I had heard my mother’s words a dozen times but never truly understood what she meant. I was the same age as these boys, and I was ready to experience life to the fullest. But for an accident of birth, I would be leaving with them.
Yet I couldn’t help thinking that they did look awfully … immature. That boy’s face was so smooth you could tell it had never felt a razor. The one beside him was wearing a baggy uniform whose sleeves fell to his fingertips. I remembered MacTavish’s words: “The army issues their uniforms too damned big because most of them haven’t even finished growing yet!”
I lifted my camera to focus on a young man standing with his mother before I realized that his chin was trembling, and he was wiping his nose with the back of his hand. She handed him a handkerchief. “Blow,” she said, as if he were still a toddler. I lowered my camera and turned away before my own tears began.
“Hey, Charlie, bring me a Jerry’s helmet!” shouted someone in the crowd.
I turned to see Charlie Stewart lumbering up the steps, wearing his old brown plaid jacket with the corduroy collar pulled over his ears, duffel bag in hand. “Charlie! What are you doing here?”
“The same thing as everybody else, Rose.” He spoke in his usual low voice, his eyes on his feet. It had been several years since Charlie looked at me directly. “I’m off to do my bit.”
My jaw dropped. “But … what about the farm?”
“I stayed long enough to finish the fall work. My cousins from town are going to help Dad with the seeding next spring.”
“I’m just, just, flabbergasted, Charlie. I was sure you’d ask for a deferment because you’re an only son.”
“Yeah, I could have done that, but it didn’t feel right. Somebody has to stop the Krauts.” He squinted down the tracks toward the eastern horizon. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to fly.”
I didn’t know what to say. Charlie Stewart, of all people. We had known each other all our lives, built snow forts together, helped each other catch frogs in the slough. After Charlie’s mother died when he was only ten years old, he spent a lot of time at our house. We were playmates until people started pairing us off and I suspected he was getting a crush on me. That was the kiss of death for our friendship.
I gazed at the puffing train while I tried to imagine how Charlie, so bashful and awkward, would fare across the sea, a stranger in a strange land. The poor boy was so clumsy he couldn’t walk through a classroom without crashing into a desk. I couldn’t picture his massive shoulders squeezing into the cockpit of an airplane.
Then I gave myself a mental shake. He should do as well as everyone else. After all, he wasn’t stupid — just the opposite. He finished school with the highest mark in geometry.
I raised my eyes to find him still staring into the distance with an unreadable expression. Then he said a curious thing: “You know, Rose, I’ve never cared much for farming.”
That was all. A gust of icy wind tore across the platform and I held my skirt down, freezing and miserable. The whistle blew and the men began to move toward the train. Behind us, a woman broke into sobs.
“Well, best of luck, Charlie!” I held out my red-mittened hand and he squeezed it so hard that my grandmother’s gold signet ring cut painfully into my little finger. The pain ran up my arm and into my chest.
I felt a sudden sense of loss. For the first time in my life I wasn’t going to have him in my back pocket, my ace in the hole. Now that I might never see him again, I was sorry that I hadn’t been nicer to good old Charlie.
For once, he was looking into my eyes, and I realized that he wanted to kiss me. I hesitated, then stepped forward and lifted my face. Charlie’s big arms came around me in a bear hug that drove the breath out of my ribcage. He gave me a noisy smack on the mouth. His lips were warm in the frosty air.
The whistle blew for the second time, and without another word Charlie bounded up the steps onto the train, hitting his head with a glancing blow on the doorframe. While I waited on the platform with the other women and children and old men, he appeared at the window, his shaggy hair flopping over his forehead and a huge grin on his face.
The last thing I saw as the train chugged away across the endless white prairie was Charlie’s big hand waving goodbye. I ran to the end of the platform and waved back, almost frantically,
