A Circle on the Surface Read online

  She hadn’t really believed she would get pregnant, still did not fully believe she was. She had held off mentioning it, expecting Enman to be almost as confounded, as stunned, as she was. But he kept his hands on her waist like he might get down on his knees and talk to her belly, shed tears of joy. But he stayed put, and she could feel his soft chest fill and his arms tighten then loosen. She felt his words hum in his throat before she heard them. Words that should have made her blush with happiness, or at least relief, but instead made her feel cornered. Some earnest talk about knocking down walls, adding room, managing.

  “Get over yourselves, would you? All of you.” She pulled herself free, feeling nauseous again. “Land’s sake—I haven’t even seen the doctor yet. It’s probably something else, I mightn’t even be. So can you drop it? Can you just? If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people getting ahead of themselves.”

  Enman Greene turned three shades of red. “Win, my darling,”—how Una disliked hearing the term of endearment speciously applied—“Clint’ll be wondering where you’re at, won’t he. Maybe you should run along now.” And in a voice as gentle and cosy and grey as summer fog, “What’s that you’ve got there, Hannah?”

  “Just a little something I brought her,” Win murmured. “It’s been in the sea for a while, I’m guessing, so it should be free of germs.”

  “Well you’re a piece of work and a half, Win.” He said it admiringly.

  And bending low—giving his old girlfriend something-and-a-half to take home with her, proper thing, as Win would say—drawing Una close again, he put his ear there, to her belly. Neither Enman nor Una moved as Win slipped out through the mudroom.

  “When, dear? How soon? So that’s why you’ve been feeling rotten—but why didn’t you say?”

  “I don’t know, I really don’t. I was afraid to. In case you wouldn’t be pleased. I wanted to be certain first, I guess.”

  Disentangling herself, smoothing her skirt, she went and got the letter, handed it to him. He whistled through his teeth, rubbing her back. “Well. They say when the boss in the sky closes a door, he opens a window. There you go! Don’t give the school board another thought.”

  “What window, Mister? Can Uncle see out of it? I hopes not.”

  As a fresh wave of nausea hit her, Una hurried to the pail in the mudroom.

  “Poor, poor Missus, coughing up her cookies all the livelong day.” In any other circumstance, Hannah’s singsong would have made her laugh. Hannah patted her shoulder, passed her a remnant of grimy flannelette, went to fetch saltines.

  “Thanks, dear. Where would I be without you?” Una tried her solemn best to smile.

  23

  Coming a week or two later, Snow’s news was exactly as they’d longed for and delivered as expected, with smugness and a kindly pat on Una’s shoulder. “Well done, Mrs.” And for the father-to-be, a handshake: “You too, Greene. And, you’ll be happy to hear that by Halloween or so the morning sickness should lift.” Una beamed with relief at that.

  What Enman didn’t expect was afterwards, in the car, the gap that spread between the two of them. There was a gap, too, between this moment and how he had envisioned having the news confirmed: relief, Vs for marital victory! Hallelujahs! Jubilation! The world opening, finally, like a dinner-plate dahlia, all radiance and bursts of colour, all promise and rejoicing. Their marriage receiving the blessing that was due, a blessing that would be like a starter shot from a pistol. At last, their lives together would truly begin, lives guaranteed to proceed entwined! Having a baby would silence once and for all any notions of Una’s leaving.

  After seeing Snow, they drove around for something to do. No, it wasn’t at all how he had pictured the news becoming official. He had imagined something delicious, cosy, celebratory. A candlelit supper, a fancy cake, glasses filled with punch. Foolishly, he realized, he had also imagined Una going to the doctor by herself. Her surprising him with Snow’s verdict, their clinking glasses then holding hands, gazing out the kitchen window at a magnificent blood moon.

  Instead, he felt just now like he had run straight up Citadel Hill. Driving around the foot of it, watching the signal flags at its summit recede in Beulah’s rear-view, he clamped a sweaty hand over hers. “Whoa, baby,” he muttered like a fool at an old lady, braking just in time to let the woman hobble across Summer Street. The spitting image of Ma, she was, until the woman waved her fist, shouting, “Slow down, you bloody moron!” The rest of the way to the Gardens, two full blocks, he drove as an octogenarian would. Dogs could’ve pissed on the tires, indeed.

  “I’m sorry,” was the most Una seemed able to muster in the car.

  “Sorry?” He mopped his face with a hankie—the mid-September day was warm and had a burnished feel, a soft, cidery glow lighting the treetops in the Gardens. He stopped and parked on Spring Garden Road and they got out. He held her arm gently—almost the way he would have held Ma’s, though Ma had never been keen on being treated like that, like a child. They should take a gander at the dahlias, he said, while the dahlias were in their prime. Another couple of weeks and they’d be ruined by frost, though this seemed unlikely given the Indian summer that had replaced late August’s run of cool, rainy weather.

  They were almost to the Gardens’ tall, fancy gates when a raucous gang of sailors forced them to cross the street to the opposite corner, by the Lord Nelson Hotel. If things between him and Una had been friendlier, he’d have steered her into its dining room for a late lunch—an extravagant, joyous meal to toast this next happy phase of married life. Instead, they stood in silence. A man beside them happened to say, “Did you hear the big man himself is here in town? Winston Churchill. Kid you not. Top secret. Swear to God, hurry and you’ll see him. Up on the Hill. He’s got some ladies with him, taking in the view.”

  Una perked up. Enman laughed. “How come you’re not up there? Didn’t hear a thing on the radio.”

  “Don’t be a stick in the mud. We can see flowers any old time.” Una pulled him back to the car.

  Outside the Citadel’s gate, overlooking the Old Town Clock, a handful of naval officers gathered around a stout, stolid oldster who looked for all the world like a large, baldheaded baby in a yachtsman’s cap. Two nicely dressed women, one young, one older, stayed by his side as the man called out about “sacrifices,” pointing his walking stick at the harbour below, at the ships crowded into Bedford Basin. Despite his leisurely gait, Churchill smiled a bit testily at a man who looked like he could have been from the newspaper, doodling on a notepad. He flashed back the “V for Victory” sign at some sailors on a grassy rampart flashing the sign at him.

  A handful of passersby had gathered and, joining them, Enman and Una obeyed as a police constable directed them to a spot some fifteen feet away.

  A woman walking a dog stopped and gaped. “What’s he doing here?”

  “It can’t really be him.” Una craned closer. Enman gripped her hand. It felt a little warm and clammy. She wasn’t going to be sick again?

  “If not, he’s a good actor.”

  An officer raised a trumpet. “There’ll always be an Ennng-lund,” the tiny smattering of people sang along, “and Ennng-lund shall be free.”

  “If Ennng-lund means as much to youu—” Una joined in.

  Reining in her dog, the woman shook her head. “So the Brits are gonna save us. Sure. Wipe out every Jerry till not one of them’s left?”

  “—As Eng-lund means to meee.”

  Chewing a cigar, Mr. Churchill and the women were hustled into an unmarked car, and none too soon as a complement of men came through the fort’s gate, past its sentries, yelling as they cut downhill. Enman could already imagine them drunk.

  He hadn’t had a drop since Mrs. Finck’s odd visit. A drink to toast the prospective baby would have helped wash the news down, let him celebrate by raving about it. But the sharp, clear light of sobriety had ta
ught him to chew over, swallow, and practically digest each word before spitting it out.

  “So there you go, Una. Your brush with fame. Something to tell Junior about.”

  “My last brush with things beyond Barrein, you mean.”

  They drove back down the Hill to the Gardens and parked near the lofty wrought iron gates that, as a kid, Enman had pictured whenever the “Pearly Gates” were mentioned. He led Una through a smaller, swinging gate into the Gardens’ oasis. The hum of bees ousted the noise of people and traffic.

  Looking pale, Una sank to a bench, closed her eyes.

  “I’m not sure why you’re so keen to be a dad. You never really wanted to be, did you?”

  Something her friend Kit had said once came back to him: “Not me. None of that baby stuff for me. Not in this life.” Was Una now thinking the same? Or perhaps she just wanted to put her head down, figure out how to get through the next month and a half.

  “A comfort in our old age.” Una’s look was whimsical, then she seemed resigned. “I don’t know what having a baby in the house will do to your practising. Maybe you’d be happier devoting your time to something easier, like violin. God, the things we do to avoid being alone. Sabotaging ourselves and others.”

  “I never thought I wouldn’t be a father,” he lied, and patted her arm. “This is my party too, dear—our child.” The words were a little like sand on his tongue, he had to admit. The world was so full of grimness, it struck him anew. Not things you wanted to subject a child to, even if, as the Churchills of the world would say, living in hope you could expect a certain goodness to prevail.

  Una watched a bee disappear into the spiny yellow heart of a bloom. “You don’t have to…I won’t blame you if you change your mind, if you can’t be—”

  Her trying to let him off the hook was insulting. But he didn’t let it show, or let his smile flag. “A name—it’ll need a name, Una.”

  “He. A he will find it easier to get along. It’s a man’s world.” Una gave a long, determined sigh. “I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when—”

  “I’m sorry about the job, you know.”

  She had left the letter in the hall until Hannah finally used the back of it to print a list: “suplys Ill nede for schul.”

  “Look, let’s get out of here.” Una leapt up. “I can’t stand the smell of these things, can you?”

  There was no fanfare in the street, nothing to suggest that a dignitary was in town. Churchill’s visit was an alien landing that had nothing to do with them. “What was that, anyways?” he joked, nursing the hope that the afternoon could still be savoured. Since he had taken it off to bring her to the doctor, they might as well enjoy some sights. Una peered dully out the window.

  “How would I know?”

  He had an idea that seeing the waterfront might lift her out of her funk.

  The last time he’d been anywhere near Pier 22 had been that frigid night in February, after being brought ashore by the corvette men who had saved his skin. Before the war, while working downtown he’d enjoyed lunch breaks strolling through the cargo sheds, taking in the sounds and smells of goods being unloaded. Crates of oranges and tea from exotic places, bales of rubber, sacks of rice and tapioca flour spilling over concrete floors, to the rats’ delight.

  As he took the turn onto Marginal Road he slowed. A gang of men were being marched from the port’s little brick immigration office and across the tracks to a waiting train. Una gasped, seeing the circles painted on the backs of their jackets and knees of their trousers.

  They were prisoners of war. Though their uniforms were shabby there was no disguising the fact they were Jerries. The sight of a blue officer’s cap sent an icy current along Enman’s spine, its charge moving to his legs. The last time he’d laid eyes on someone wearing such a cap had been amidst the blazing black of that February night, beyond the harbour approaches. The U-boat had surfaced long enough to inspect the carnage it wrought, cruising by close enough that Enman and his mates in the lifeboat had glimpsed the captain waving from atop its conning tower.

  “I’m sure they’ll get what’s coming,” he heard himself say, “the poor bastards.”

  Una said nothing. She just stared out at the chain gang, such as it was, and a tear wormed down her cheek. That solitary tear finally made him lose his composure.

  “Good grief, Una! You should be happy—what the heck’s the matter now, like everyone and their dog’s raining on your parade? I thought this was what you wanted. Starting a family. Having a baby.”

  When she turned to him her look was pure disbelief.

  “Enman. Am I not allowed to feel what I feel?”

  Whatever that might be, he thought, since her moods changed like the weather.

  22

  One evening a few weeks later, Enman and Hannah were busy in the kitchen and Una was resting on the sofa when Win burst in on them. Win barely stopped to knock at the back door. Without hesitation, undeterred, she bustled from the kitchen to the front room and paused in the doorway, newspaper in hand. “Beat this!” The cartoonist’s drawing was of Winston Churchill and two ladies on the Hill, the statesman shaking an officer’s hand. In the picture two fighter planes flew overhead and the harbour below was chockablock with battleships. “See? There’s the Clock in the background,”—Win pointed it out to Enman at her heels—“so it’s got to be Hellifax. How’d they slip this one past us?”

  Enman smiled as he explained that he and Una had been there.

  “Get out!” Win slapped her cheeks, amazed. “How come you never told Clint and me? Oh, but you two have had other things on your minds, Enman tells me.” Win eyed Una knowingly.

  Now Enman was speaking for her, as if she couldn’t speak for herself?

  Win had also brought a mackerel, freshly caught. It was in a paper bag by the sink, Hannah could clean it, she said. “My word, Missus, you’d better start thinking about putting meat on those bones. That baby needs—well, as soon as you can keep food down again, I mean.”

  Enman’s eyes brightened. “Hannah’s going great guns, stepping in with the cooking. Poor Una can’t stomach the smell of food.”

  Una turned her face to the wallpaper. Not when food was warmed-over Spam and peas straight from the tin, and the forks had egg yolk between their tines. Though she didn’t mean to be so picky.

  “Well, isn’t that something. Isla’s looking for help minding her grandchild. Hannah could go down and pick up some tips on babies. It wouldn’t hurt. You’re going to need help. Must be some excited, though.”

  Enman gave a little clap, then clasped his hands in a knot and flexed them. “True enough, aren’t we Una?”

  Win nodded happily. “Good. Then I’ll arrange it. Now, listen. The best thing for your ailment? Fresh air. Come take a walk some day out the shore. Pickings are slim, but you never know what we might find.”

  Una drew a thoughtful breath. “No, thank you.”

  The huckleberries on the hillside blazed red that October, and the fish blood in the sink and on the knife was the same colour. Hannah tugged away the gleaming purple innards and Enman remarked on the marvel of their functions: “A beautiful mystery.” Hannah wrinkled her nose, shook guts from her fingers. “Not anymore, Mister.” Gagging, Una ran upstairs.

  She was appalled at what was happening to her, the way her breasts, no longer small and pert, felt heavy and hard, as if they and the rest of her body had developed minds of their own.

  That night in bed, Enman spoke quietly into her ear. “If you don’t want to have it, maybe something can be figured out? Snow might know of someone who could help you.”

  “Get rid of it? How could you suggest it?” The thought of some dreadful hack, a hundred times worse than the doctor in O’Leery, was even more appalling, unthinkable. “It’s too late.” Besides, she hoped she would soon feel better.

  When Win paid her next v
isit, just before Halloween, she said Isla was happy to take Hannah now and then. “No need to thank me. Tippy got your tongue, dear? By Christmas, trust me, you’ll be out of the woods—you’ll feel like a whole new person.” And Win waxed on (and on) about the small life inside Una, and how by the fourth month pregnancy did wonderful things to your hair.

  As the days shortened, the nausea eased. But it was replaced by the feeling that her body had been usurped by the being growing inside it. She could no longer button the tops of her skirts, her waist thickening in a manner that suggested overeating and not the neat, rounded bulge she had imagined. She craved beets—not the beets themselves but their taste of dirt. She craved strawberries while the huckleberries lost their leaves, the bushes turning grey on grey. She spent most of her time upstairs lying down, listening to Hannah banging pots below. Win and sometimes Isla came to the door with plates of cookies and war cake, just what everyone wanted, Una thought cynically. Enman would creep in after supper and leave slices of it on the dresser. Its seedy raisins were like having sand in her teeth.

  “Eat up,” he kept saying. “You’ve got the baby to think of.”

  One day after work he mentioned having called Snow. “I spoke to him myself, since you won’t. ‘Baby blues’ can happen before the birth, he says, not just after. It’s not unusual.”

  “Thank goodness for that.” Una wished she could erase the doubt, the cynicism, from her voice.

  “You will snap out of it, he assures me.”

  She tried to speak brightly. “He would know.”

  “Win would like to come up and see you.”

  She brushed off some crumbs, picked away a seed.

  “Sweetie. Can’t you try and cheer up? For Hannah’s sake. For me.”

  Hannah, at least, had learned to keep to her room when she wasn’t downstairs or at Isla’s. She “read,” having figured out the grade-three reader enough to recite its simple, repetitive sentences.

  “Why not teach her a little grammar? It wouldn’t hurt.”