The Little Shadows - By Marina Endicott Page 0,210
pair of ebony sticks and was working through a routine with them, sharp and graceful except when he had to shift from the sound leg to the crutch. Almost juggling, except the sticks slid and fell oddly. Sometimes a ball appeared between them and disappeared again.
‘Did you—do you know a lot about the war?’ Aurora asked. ‘I mean, what is really happening there?’
‘It is so close, the Front—like taking the train from Edmonton to Calgary, and there, right there, is the mud and the wire. But I did not know enough to help him at all. I ought to have gone for an ambulance driver, I would have liked that—no, not liked. I could have done it. I would have liked to see some of—’ Clover gritted her teeth, spoke more carefully. ‘Not liked. I wish I could have seen what he was seeing. But there was Harriet and I could not go.’
Aurora found Victor’s movements mesmerizing. ‘When he came back, was he—?’
‘Off his head? Not long. I think he might wish it had been longer. He was stuck with thinking. The nights are bad. You won’t hear us, we have become good at silence.’
On the grass, Victor stood still, in as straight a pose as his leg allowed, hands clasped. He ceased to move. His stillness was very restful.
‘I think of Mama living with the same thing, without the trigger of the war. But Papa was the same, you know he was, gripped by that hideous understanding of—the underlying horror of every single thing. Livid if Mama talked to Mr. Dyment in the street, you remember; suspecting that she gossiped of his weakness, or worse. How he squashed her frivolous mind, stopped her singing. I think of her.’
Aurora kissed the pale cheek, and smoothed Clover’s hair while she talked.
‘I am not always certain I can go on with him, living this way. It is bad for Harriet … and I must be so careful not to irritate or trouble him, or make everything worse by causing him anxiety. He can’t decide anything. He can’t choose what to eat in a restaurant. I just order for him as if that’s what every wife does. I think he has forgotten that it’s not.’ Clover shook her head to erase all that. ‘His leg, his wounds, are bad. But they will mend. He’ll work again. It’s merely a matter of my good sense to get us bookings again.’
She laughed suddenly, and all the heads turned to look up to the veranda, even Harriet peeking out from the spruce-boughs to see what had amused her mother. ‘I sound like Sybil, keeping Julius off the roller skates.’
Victor removed the strange cup-brace and came slowly back to the house, cane sliding on gravel. ‘I had some skill, once,’ he said, looking up at Aurora. ‘I seek to get it back.’
Spring Song
Next morning Mama taught the children to dance, just as she had taught the girls when they were small. A jaunty song that Clover had brought from England squawked on the Victrola: ‘Hello, Hello, Who’s your lady friend? Who’s the little girlie by your side?’
With her fresh eyes, Clover could see how well Mama had recovered—and after the horrors at the Wandsworth Hospital, Mama’s impairment seemed quite minor. She had a clever way of hiding the stiffness on her right side by holding a hand to her mouth as if musing: the left arm and leg did the dancing. Harriet was working hard to learn the waltz-step. Tall and sturdy at two-and-a-quarter, Avery danced very well already. Clover’s feet itched pleasantly.
She and Aurora left the children to Mama and Aunt Elsie and walked in to town with Mabel, three abreast down the empty road.
Breaking through her shyness, Mabel asked whether she had liked London, and a wave of bitterness flooded through Clover.
‘I hated everything about it,’ she said. Then checked herself: ‘Not London. It was the war I hated—the talk of glory and noble sacrifice, the self-righteous politicians safe at home. Even the men, how they love each other so as soldiers, and how girls love them too. I did myself, the boys in the hospital, the men coming home in pieces. It’s easier in England because all the men are in, anyone able-bodied, so everyone knows what you’re—well, they don’t look sideways at Victor when they see the crutch. People don’t understand here.’
‘We do,’ Aurora said, no doubt to protect Mabel. ‘Eight men from Qu’Appelle have been killed now, and many more wounded.’