A Circle on the Surface Page 4

  After some quick, perfunctory lovemaking—more a comfort, a distraction to him in his grief, than any move toward passion—the wetness down there had dried to a chalky feel, the way salt would after a swim.

  His snoring, God help them both, was like a party noisemaker unfurling in and out. And given the mattress’s softness, Una thought, no wonder Mrs. Greene had suffered a dowager’s hump. The thought of her own hands massaging it made saliva thicken in her throat. Looking after her mother had not meant such intimate care, this had been left to a nurse. The things that age, illness, and childbearing inflicted on women’s bodies, not to mention the work piled on by tending children, cooking, and housekeeping! Somehow Una had expected to avoid most of this. Too much work had not been her mother’s problem nor had it led to her demise. She died of isolation while keeping up appearances—cocktails before and after dinner, sherry before bed—while Una’s father had entertained his business friends, when he wasn’t overseeing the refinery. His position in Imperoyal had kept Una and her dying mother more than comfortable, until his death brought to light debts no family could recover from. When her mother died, the doctors had largely blamed the Change. Hot flashes and other symptoms of bodily flux exacerbated by gin.

  One of the things Una liked about Enman, that had appealed to her from the start, was how he mostly shied away from liquor and his remarks that you didn’t need it to have a good time while mixing and mingling. She supposed a drink or two after the wake was more than excusable, understandable.

  Now she contemplated mixing and mingling, but of a different sort, the mixing and mingling of cells, although she preferred to fancy it being more than simply biological. Romantic. Cells smitten with each other, embracing in a hotel’s luxurious bed.

  “Despite all my tips, the point is, it should still feel effortless, enjoyable,” Dr. Snow had said.

  Una’s imagination skipped ahead to an infant sleeping peacefully in a nursery, and not in a cramped, untidy room like the one next door. There was barely room in there for her textbooks and teaching notes after adding Mrs. Greene’s things to the clutter. What Una visualized was a perfectly formed, impeccably behaved baby in a freshly painted white crib, ten perfect little fingers, ten perfect little toes. Waking, smiling, reaching out to be picked up, held. An abiding comfort in her old age, a compensation for the children whose smiling faces she was missing.

  Would it be cheating just now to get up? She had lain quite still for a while. She would have liked tea. A warm drink in the middle of the night had often helped her sleep, after the dressing-down she’d received in the principal’s office.

  The downstairs clock chimed twice, as unreliable, though, as when Mrs. Greene wound it. Then Una remembered the corpse lying downstairs, the poor woman. So much for tea. And so much for sleep, as elusive as civilization and the city presently seemed.

  Perhaps by now those cells had turned in, were rolling over. Soon she and Enman would pick up where they had left off, but with a child. Enman would want it to be raised somewhere with paved streets, municipal water, decent schools.

  A nursery in a spacious, solid house in the city.

  Meanwhile, the man could sleep through Armageddon.

  A dull sense of occasion filled the house next morning as Enman went downstairs, leaving Una to wash and dress. In the kitchen, he had pulled up the dark green blind, and sunlight passing through the lace curtains made patterns on the walls. As he lit the stove she listened to the oil glugging from its carboy. In town, a place with such a stove would rent as a cold-water flat. As he filled the kettle the electric pump in the cellar whirred. Mrs. Greene’s cat scratched to come in, rubbed around Enman’s shins.

  “Maybe our Tippy’s all the ankle-biter we need, Una, what do you think? He’s easier to mind than a baby would be.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was joking and kept mum. Opening some sardines, Enman flicked one into the cat’s dish.

  “A good day to go in the ground, I guess. Father Heaney said he’ll meet us at the church.”

  If not for the body, which Doull’s would soon come to transport, Una would have slipped into the front room and put on the radio, just to add some life to things. Instead, she boiled eggs. It felt strange eating from the teaspoons she had so recently used to feed Mrs. Greene small servings of broth.

  Somewhere nearby, the Meades’ mongrel bayed and seagulls squawked. Una peeked outside through the kitchen window. On the ground there wasn’t a single cookie left. Not a leaf stirred in the wild rose bushes or on the plant snaking up the trellis Enman had set against the boulder, overkill if ever there was, given the garden’s fledgling state.

  She had never seen him so quiet. She spoke to fill the silence: “Do you know what one of my pupils asked once? Right in the middle of doing times tables.” She paused. “‘Where do birds sleep, anyway?’ It was the cutest thing.”

  He drew what seemed a patient breath. “And what did you say, Una?”

  “‘Well. I have no idea.’ Was I supposed to lie? It was a good question. I still don’t know the answer, do you? The whole class looked at me, stunned.”

  “At least you were honest.” He smiled wanly. “I guess that’ll be Doull’s I hear now?”

  At last, it was the undertaker, remarkable for his pale, well-groomed hands and creased black suit, waiting at the door.

  5

  Mid-July 1943

  Death has a way of slowing the days surrounding it, slowing if not stopping you in your tracks, Enman felt the need to explain to Una. Even as the rest of the world continued to spin like the rides at Bill Lynch’s fair.

  “I get it.” She almost seemed to brush him off. But it was his way of explaining his distraction and any lapse in his attentions, whether real or imagined. At least the numbness around Ma’s absence had lifted, evaporating into what felt like an airier emptiness. Going back to Inkpens’ had helped, but he would feel better once today’s meeting was behind him.

  “The meeting that’s to your credit, you mean.” Una was quick to bolster his spirits. “Take advantage of it. You are going to speak to them, aren’t you, about getting your job back?”

  It wasn’t enough that Una was eager for him to do this, Isaac and his sons expected him to secure funds needed to cover operating expenses until a certain customer paid up. The customer was the navy, the bill for repairs Inkpens’ had made to a badly damaged cutter. The pressure Enman felt had led him to have a drink or two the night before with Isaac’s sons, from the forty-ouncer Robart kept in the safe. But there was more to his nerves than business. The meeting he had with the Inkpens at the bank meant travelling to the city by water. Enman had offered to drive, but all three Inkpens, Isaac, Greeley, and Robart, as well as that youngster, Edgar Lohnes, only laughed. “We want to get there, man. And what if you can’t drive back?” Because the trip to town was supposed to be for pleasure, too.

  It was true, the Chev wasn’t the most reliable. “Beulah,” George’s widow called the car she gave to Enman after the sinking. “I don’t believe in naming cars after girls,” Una had pointed out the first time he’d taken her on a real date just before New Year’s, a mere block from their place, to see a movie at the Oxford Theatre.

  “Do you feel the same about boats?”

  “No.” She had laughed. For a month or two he had quit calling the car “Beulah” to please her, before lapsing back into a habit that stuck. He knew not to mention the book at Inkpens’ that compared a ship to a woman, about no two ships behaving alike, nor any one ship performing the same way twice in the same fashion. She is as capricious as a woman in fair weather, and as patient in foul.

  He woke with his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth. The sun coming into the bedroom hurt his head, and he tried not to think too much about the trip ahead, the five of them motoring out in the BlueBelle, Inkpens’ thirty-foot cape islander. His parts shrivelled just thinking about it, far less about the
meeting than the getting there and back.

  Una was still sleeping, a mixed blessing, as having breakfast with her would have made him want to linger over tea, as they had on Quinpool Road. A slurry of foolish excuses for staying ranged through him. But humming his favourite bit of Dvořák ’s New World symphony, he dressed in his best suit. He nudged the cat aside with his shoe, then, feeling guilty, stooped to scratch its chin. Ma had named it because of its missing hind leg, a casualty of a dog’s attentions. If Sylvester Meade and his sprawling clan fed their Chubby properly, the creature might not have attacked, he thought, following Tippy outdoors.

  The sea mirrored the pale, uncluttered sky. It was a gift of a morning, at least it was with his feet on terra firma. His fears were hardly ancient ones, about the sea’s teeming with monsters like giant squid and octopi. His worries had to do with how deceptively calm and empty the sea appeared, how fickle he knew it was.

  Losing sight of Tip, he crossed smooth granite to Ma’s cosmos and marigolds and a few scraggly nasturtiums and sweet peas flagging in their bed. He had planted them when Ma couldn’t, an effort that seemed important at the time. If not for kelp shielding their roots, the sun would have done them in. Already the day promised to be unusually warm, a scorcher.

  Funny, how all the elbow grease in the world often yielded nothing, and sometimes barely lifting a finger wrought magic. He wondered how hard or how easy it would be for Una to get pregnant.

  Careful not to muss his clothes, Enman unrolled the hose. The last thing he needed was the kid behind his teller’s wicket noting mud on his pants, the kid who’d joined the bank when Enman enlisted and no doubt had his sights on being the assistant manager. But the rain barrel jerry-rigged to the downspout on the sea-facing side of the house was bone-dry. Go figure, when rain and fog were the rule, nine summers out of ten. Yet, along Sylvester’s side of the fence the knotweed thrived, impervious to dryness. Ma had complained about its spread. Fetching bleach, seeing that the Meade’s dog was tied, he doused the weeds, guarding his suit.

  Then he hurried to peel an orange and leave it on the table for Una, their custom since the first nights they spent together, which seemed ages ago, suddenly. Stuffing the ledgers into his satchel, he inspected himself in the mirror. Decent enough.

  The run to town would take a few hours. But the sweet peas by the front stoop needed mulching and there was no need to rush. Isaac and the others knew the bars didn’t open till noon.

  He found Ma’s trowel, hoping Una wasn’t up and looking out—she’d be liable to call down and invite him to share the orange, as in the days before Ma’s illness. The routines of Ma’s care had put an end to the cosy little rituals they had settled into earlier in the marriage. Routines of care he had happily delegated to Una, though he avoided saying so, and cosy rituals he hoped would return. Digging in a bit of seaweed, he struck metal; more than rocks grew from the soil. The remains of a toy truck glinted, transporting him back to being seven: he was kneeling in the grass, Ma shouting from the doorway, “Have you seen your father anywheres?” Cleary staggering up after some altercation with Lester over their wives, stumbling inside. “Like oil and water, those two,” Ma used to say, flushing when people hinted that Lester would have made a better husband.

  The Chev was parked, bald tires and all, at the top of the lane. Why hadn’t he said he would meet the others in town? Because, driving back inebriated was not something he would do nor would he want known. They teased him enough at Inkpens’, though their razzing was good-natured: Enman Greene in his pinstripes, thinks his shit don’t stink. He always had been different, Ma had ensured it. There was comfort in knowing he wasn’t—entirely—a chip off the old man’s block.

  The night before, Isaac had told him to be good and sure he wore his best suit.

  “Where’s the fire, bud?” Clint yelled from his sunporch when Enman passed. Win, who was standing next to him, called, “How does your garden grow, hon? Nothing new with Una?” Win would talk the shirt off you. But such talk was her friendly way of showing that life after a loss went on, that life would return to normal. “Seen her heading off to Shag’s again. Not swimming, is she?”

  Everyone, including the Mounties, knew Shag’s Cove was where people went to comb for “treasure,” supplies that washed ashore from ships, or to watch the non-existent “submarine races,” as young people joked, before anyone thought of the present U-boats or wolf packs, forgetting those of the First World War. Then Win started in about some pair being caught in the dunes—so-and-so with another so-and-so’s wife, pants to his knees, and Barton Twomey, out duck hunting, stumbling upon them—and Enman felt warm under his collar. It was a hot day to be wearing wool, not to mention a tie. “Poor bugger, lucky he didn’t shoot.” Clint laughed. “Imagine, thinking they wouldn’t get caught.”

  Enman couldn’t help wondering if Una had not gone to Shag’s Cove the afternoon Ma died, she might have reached the doctor sooner. She had apologized, of course. It still bothered him a little, but he saw no point in rubbing her nose in it.

  Being in Barrein made it easier to let go of things that seemed pointless. Another example of pointlessness was wearing ties, a city formality. Aside from at Ma’s funeral, he had pretty much stopped wearing them.

  “Poor, poor Twomey.” Enman rubbed his jaw. “That model of good behaviour.” Then, wishing he could take it back, he grinned, as if all that awaited was a simple day of making out invoices.

  All three Inkpens and Lohnes were waiting at the wharf, also dressed in their funeral clothes. The BlueBelle’s hull had recently been scraped of barnacles, caulked, and freshly painted. “Have something better to do, or what?” Greeley slapped his back. Famous for hoisting barehanded a swordfish out of water, he looked a little odd wearing a suit Isla had no doubt picked out.

  Isaac hiked up his shiny-kneed trousers. “Well, I wouldn’t blame you, Greene, with Foxy up the house there. Slept late, did you? She finally had to kick you out? Just wait till she’s got a bun in the oven. Then it will change.” White-haired, freshly shaven, the old man was a formidable sight despite his stoop and the drag of his pants, a sign of his shrinkage. Isaac had been a pal of his father’s, always the taller of the two, Isaac and Cleary. Funny to think they had been friends, Enman decided, and that most of his own life he had feared Isaac, along with admiring the man. Isaac’s diminished height had not reduced his stature. “What’re we waiting for, gentlemen? Hallowe’en?”

  The tide was low. Isaac’s sons climbed down and into the boat, Robart taking position in the wheelhouse. Greeley helped his father on the ladder. Edgar Lohnes leapt around, a scrawny monkey untying ropes. Enman peered down at Greeley’s prematurely thinning hair and the ruddiness of Isaac’s ears poking out from under his cap. “What?” Isaac looked up. “You’ve got the figures? Don’t stand there froze. We’re gonna have ourselves a time.”

  Enman gripped the satchel. Of course he had the figures, no great thanks to Isaac’s accounting. The boat’s engine burbled. Robart gazed up impatiently.

  “You do have an in with that banker, right?” Isaac sucked his teeth. “No need to be chicken, old buddy. Anyone hear the ‘B as in butter’ message? Listen. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  Keeping his gaze on the pilings—their greeny black slime under nets of reflected sunlight—Enman descended as quickly as possible, the satchel a lifebuoy. Taking a seat in the stern, he avoided looking at the creatures clinging to the pilings below the tidemark—mussels, barnacles, purple starfish—and at the kelp waving from the bottom. All that life made him think of floating bodies, bodies drifting, then consumed by fire. He tried to focus on the fact that, even at ebb tide, the water was the same green as Tippy’s eyes and Una’s favourite dress.

  Her words came to him, jarring if true: Look at the cat, he manages all right without a leg. As if a ship getting torpedoed was in any way, shape, or form comparable to a feline being mangled by a dog. You must
n’t let a tragedy spoil your life forever, Una had said when they first met. “Really,” she had reminded him, “you’ve had amazing luck.” Her words hammered home what he knew plainly. Meeting her had helped him put much of the sinking and his hideous memories of it behind him.

  Still, he wondered, is it true that lightning never strikes the same spot twice? At least with the tide out it won’t be as deep, he thought ridiculously, as if a fathom or two made any difference out past the ledges and the island with its flashing light.

  Isaac waved his cap. “Grand day for a toot, fellas. You can see for goddamn miles.” But fog would have made a buffer, Enman thought, a blindfold—though whatever were to happen would happen anyway, whether or not he saw it coming. He supposed it made a difference, the quirky fact that, despite living all their lives on or near the water, none of the Inkpens had joined the navy or merchant marine, let alone gone overseas. Each of them had been exempted for some reason or another.

  “Eh, Greene? What’s the matter, missing the Fox already, are you? Oh hell’s acre—I’m sorry, it’s about your mother, isn’t it. Poor old Marge. Listen, we’re glad to have you aboard.” Isaac sank a bony elbow into him as they hove out towards the island.

  When George Archibald had quit his manager’s post to sign up it was the noblest thing Enman could think of doing, to follow suit.

  They made it past the first three bell buoys in silence, gaining on the island and the nearby Mad Rock, then cutting sharply towards the channel far to the left of both before anybody spoke. Then Greeley piped up. “Right about here’s where that sub was, Iris Finck says. Germans bold as day sunning themselves on deck, charging their goddamn batteries.”

  “Iris Finck sees lots of things. How long since Lester died, and he’s in her bed every night?” Isaac spat over the side, careful not to wet his tie.

  Iris Finck could be a snake, Enman guessed, but she’d never done him or Ma any harm. “Ah, but she’s old. Who at that age isn’t a bit touched?”