15

When Sergeant William Cyples rose to his feet he looked like a crenellated tower. Auntie, whose judgment of people had been formed from extensive reading, was delighted with this new visitor; she held a half glass of wine in her hands. Barbara helped MacQueen with his coat, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and whispered, “He’s terrific.”

“Sergeant Cyples,” said MacQueen with a wide grin.

“Hello, Pat,” answered the sergeant.

MacQueen bent for his obligatory kiss and Auntie whispered, “Don’t be jealous. I still like you best.”

The sergeant had brought a bottle of sherry, and MacQueen accepted a glass and sat opposite the sergeant, angled towards Auntie, who sat in the bay window.

“I must check the dinner,” said Barbara, and she ran through the dining room and the swinging door into the kitchen. She had two pots bubbling on the stove and a roast in the oven. She had been a cheerleader in grade eleven and was vice president of her class at high school, where she also edited a section of the yearbook. The start of the school year had coincided with the invasion of Poland, so her interest in current affairs had been kindled in a romantic sort of way. She had thought the Princess Flavia boring and a prude. She turned everything to simmer and rejoined her guests.

“Sergeant Cyples was telling us about the Panama Canal,” said Auntie. “He sailed right through it.”

“Please call me Bill,” said the sergeant. “It would certainly make a target! The Americans have to divide their fleet in two, which would mean a trip around the Horn if there was trouble in either ocean.”

“Everyone’s always talking about the war,” said Barbara. “It hasn’t been very exciting yet.”

“The Germans have captured Norway, which cuts off Finland from our help,” said MacQueen. “That must have been exciting?”

“Another democracy down the drain,” laughed the sergeant. “Now they can hit south, right to the Pyrenees.”

“Never, never, never,” said Auntie. “The British army will stop them. And all of those French fortifications—they are the most modern in the world. I have seen photographs of them.”

“What does your father think of it all?” asked MacQueen. “The sergeant’s father is in the CCF,” he explained. Auntie had that confused with the Social Credit “funny money” people. Barbara, for an alarmed moment, thought he was talking about the KKK.

“Socialists were caught with their pants down—pardon me, ma’am—were caught unawares by the Communist-Nazi pact,” said Cyples. “As long as those two are allies, the United States can’t enter the war and Britain will probably pull out of it. France will go the way of Poland.”

“Good heavens!” said Barbara. “That almost sounds like dangerous talk from a soldier!”

There was no doubt that the sergeant exuded an atmosphere of danger, which clung to him at all times. His last statement had verged on the unpatriotic, and Auntie frowned for a moment as she concentrated. The sergeant laughed.

“Warriors and soldiers can be two different things,” he answered, with a quick wink at MacQueen. “Every soldier isn’t a warrior—and sometimes they get in one another’s way.”

“I’ll have to get you to speak to my current affairs class,” said Barbara. “It would be like dropping a bomb!” She refilled the small glasses, although Auntie refused, then announced that dinner was ready. She sat the sergeant in her father’s chair at the head. Auntie wheeled to the foot and sat opposite MacQueen to be near the kitchen. Little glasses of tomato juice stood on saucers and cloth napkins under the side plates. Barbara rose to serve the meal in the kitchen and carry the plates in.

“What was all of that with Browne?” asked MacQueen softly. “He won’t even look at me now.”

The sergeant glanced at Auntie and smiled. “I wanted him to strike me,” answered Sergeant Cyples in a low voice. “Then we could have broken him to bits. He was too yellow. Or too smart?”

Barbara pushed the door with her shoulders and backed into the room holding two steaming plates with a dishcloth. “Hot, hot!” she exclaimed and served her two guests. “Auntie couldn’t eat half of that. I’ll be right back.”

“Do you come from around here, Bill?” asked Auntie.

“I’m a westerner, ma’am,” said the sergeant. “From way out in Winnipeg. I happened to be in Halifax when I joined up, so they gave me a few weeks’ training, pinned three stripes on me, and here I am.”

“How do you like Nova Scotia?” asked Auntie.

Barbara burst through the door again with two more hot plates and set one in front of her aunt. “Daddy is sorry to miss the little party,” she said. “But Saturday night is the busiest time in town. Everybody comes in from the country to shop and go to the movies or a dance or something. My sister Gale is at a dance at Wolfville.”

“We were there last weekend,” said MacQueen, then regretted it.

“Oh?” said Barbara. “That’s a long walk.” She demurely commenced cutting her roast beef—which, she thought, seemed tough.

“If what you said is true, then who is going to win the war?” asked Auntie. She vigorously cut her meat into small sections so that she could get it past her dentures.

“I don’t know,” answered the sergeant. “If the soldiers become really indispensable then maybe they can win it.”

“I have a new recording of ‘Isle of Capri’,” said Barbara. “Keep on talking, I’ll play it low.” She started to wind the Victrola in the drawing room, and placed the needle. “It’s an old song but I like it. I’ll sing it for you later.”

“Which soldiers?” asked MacQueen.

The sergeant chewed his food with relish and held the knife and fork like weapons. “What difference does it make?” he asked. “Soldiers are soldiers. They took over the Roman world when the empire collapsed. Down in Latin America they are doing it all the time.”

“Christ!” muttered MacQueen, then apologized and wiped his lips with a napkin.

Auntie frowned again.

Barbara was gently singing, “T’was on the Isle of Capri that I found her…” as she rejoined them.

“What about beliefs?” asked the incredulous MacQueen.

“Where are we?” asked Barbara. “How do you like it?”

“Just perfect,” said the sergeant.

Barbara whisked his empty plate to the kitchen for a refill.

“Don’t be a dull clod, MacQueen,” answered the sergeant. “Beliefs have nothing to do with it, the only factor is power. And the basis of power is who controls the guns.” He grinned across the table as though he had just told a joke. Barbara placed another plate of meat and vegetables in front of him.

MacQueen had lost his appetite as he tried to assess the contours of the strange world that his friend kept intimating. He knew that world existed, if only in theory, because to a degree he actually lived in it. It had never occurred to him to use that as a pattern for the universe. Maybe it was the pattern, and all the rest just trimming?

“You are a dangerous man to have around,” said MacQueen only half-jokingly.

“I knew that right away,” said Auntie. “I said to myself, ‘This man is a buccaneer’—and, Bill, you certainly talk like one. Heavens, my brother used to talk about marching for King Edward, but you want to treat it all as a merry game!”

Barbara felt that Bill Cyples had an edge of gentle violence…and it fascinated her. She was a practical young lady on the surface, but dreamed of romance with a lord of the Atlas and the cry to Allah rising above the mountains. In Kentville, one had to compromise one’s dreams. The sergeant certainly had the profile.

Sergeant Cyples leaned back in the chair and waved a hand at MacQueen’s uniform. “I have told you that you are a romantic, Pat,” he said. “That is good—the troops will follow ideals and symbols, and even die for them. That might change the face of things now and again, but I am talking about power. It doesn’t have any ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to it. It’s like electricity. It can burn down your house or light the room without any question of ideals. It’s the raw stuff—soldiers and gold.”

“You are a monster!” said Auntie, pretending to be horrified. “I never heard such talk! People laugh and people cry, surely that is important?”

“He’s just teasing you, Auntie,” said Barbara. “Bill is as much a soldier of the king as any of them. He won’t let the Germans land in Nova Scotia, and neither will Pat.”

MacQueen was glad that he had been included, even as an afterthought.

“Which is more important,” asked Auntie as they left the table. “Gold or soldiers?”

The sergeant smiled directly at her, disarming her completely. “Give me good soldiers,” he replied, “and I will give you all the gold you want.”

“You spent too long on the Spanish main,” said Barbara, starting to clear the table. MacQueen turned the record over and put the needle into the grooves of “Blue Moon”. “How about beauty?” he asked. “What about music and painting and stuff like that?”

The sergeant wheeled Auntie to the bay window and gave her shoulder a light squeeze. “That’s your department, MacQueen,” he said. “You tell me what’s beautiful and I will believe you. You once said that guns are beautiful, which I had never even thought of.”

“Beautiful guns?” asked Auntie in surprise. “Why in the name of God would anyone want to make a gun beautiful?”

“Why not, I suppose,” answered MacQueen. “But I can’t figure Bill’s interest in anything else if power is so important.”

“Lord, but you people are serious,” said Barbara, coming from the kitchen. “What is so important on a Saturday night?”

“I’ll take you to the dance,” said Sergeant Cyples. “Then Pat can accidently join us. No one can object if he runs into his old girlfriend with me, and it would do my prestige good to be seen with a beautiful blonde!” They all laughed, and Auntie agreed to keep house, alone with her memories. Barbara served the last of the sherry.

“Just one thing before we leave, Pat,” said Sergeant Cyples. “We are born into a time and a place and a family. My family were uprooted, and I ended up in a dust bowl during a depression. I don’t have any safety net at all. Just look at it from that angle when you are admiring yourself in that uniform.”

“That’s not fair,” said Auntie. “Why shouldn’t soldiers dress up?”

“Browne called it a pansy outfit,” said MacQueen.

The sergeant was startled then smiled grimly. “Soldiers should dress up,” he replied, “and I will kill that bastard one of these days.”

“Bill!” exclaimed Auntie in shock. “You are going to a dance! Don’t talk about killing people, it isn’t nice.”