25

The confrontation between father and son was not anticipated with pleasure by either one. The doctor had been an only child, and, for that matter, his wife had only sisters. Their mutual sympathy with two growing sons became underlain with growing alarm as they matured. Both the parents had been reared strictly, and they lacked the ability to maintain communication with their boys. When their daughter was born, the boys were quickly sent away to various schools to be either bullied or, at best, casually educated. This process was crowned by their sister’s death and the consequent separation of their parents.

John had focused his determination on an army career and his very early marriage. Patrick was stuck in the ice between Cape Tormentine and Borden, in a railway car heated by the ubiquitous potbellied stoves and wearing an ill-fitting blue suit. His fellow passengers were exhausted, noisy, bad tempered, or drunk. A soldier had thrown a bottle through one window, and bleak sheets of drift ice stretched to the horizon as the ferry thudded and ground against it. The trip from Halifax had already lasted more than twenty-four hours and he knew they wouldn’t arrive in Charlottetown for another ten, which would then be midnight. Provided, of course, there were no snowdrifts.

The pleasures of travel have always been exaggerated; stagecoaches over the Alps or safaris in the Congo. Even the present scenario was an improvement over the open, oar-driven boats of yore. To the traveller in extremis, however, the dilemma of the present is the important one, like that one cavity in the one tooth in the universe. Quiet rage and frustration await the unprepared traveller, for he is virtually helpless. Thrown on his own resources, the survivalist will be prepared for all predictable emergencies, even boredom. The innocents get caught in a trap that either numbs them completely or drives them berserk. Resignation to the will of Allah is not a Christian virtue.

However slowly it appears to happen, the present becomes history in an instant, and all things pass into memory. Eventually the snow-covered, steaming train pulled hissing and clanging into the Charlottetown station and dislodged its stupefied passengers. The doctor, wearing a grey Homburg hat, greeted his son.

“We will go to my apartment,” said Dr. MacQueen after a brief handshake. “You can have something to eat there. How is your arm?”

“They took the cast off yesterday,” answered Patrick. He carried only a small kit bag. The spit-and-polish staff sergeant had relieved him of everything else, which, added to his payoff from the cheap clothing store, guaranteed him a steady income from men leaving the army.

The doctor drove a blue Pontiac coupe, as he had little use for a rear seat. It had metal chains on the rear tires and smelled of Prince Edward Island dust, chloroform, and stale cigarette butts. The snow was rutted, and one street lamp hung across from the steeply gabled station. The stationmaster was already locking the main doors.

“You can get passport photos tomorrow,” said the doctor as he revved the motor and spun the wheels. He switched on the headlights, and the chains caught traction on the ice. “Light me a cigarette will you, son.”

Somewhere within Patrick’s heart there was a stir at this familiar request. It had been considered a great privilege when, as small boys, they were motoring across the dirt roads of Alberta, or on the beach in Bermuda. A package of cigarettes lay beside the frosty windshield, and Patrick lit two. He passed one to his father.

“You are smoking Buckinghams again?” It was the first brand that he had ever smoked, and it had made him sick.

“Can’t get Murads,” replied his father. “Can’t even get Craven A.”

They drove several blocks in silence. He suddenly spun the wheel, and the car lurched right and swayed into a narrow street. He pulled over to the side, plow into a snow bank. The doctor turned off the lights. “We’re in here,” he said.

The white, rutted street stretched before them in a series of diminishing orange circles against the black sky. There was no traffic, and not a person in sight. Somewhere a dog barked, and Patrick put his foot into the wet snowbank. There will be no beer here, he thought sadly. He was tired and hungry, and his shoulder ached. He had withdrawn into his shell and his perceptions were oblique. It all seemed rather hopeless.