THE BIG DOOR CLOSED behind us.
“Why are there always men who want to be yahoos, no matter what side of the law they stand on?” Hilliard muttered.
“I have no answer to that,” I said, and he smiled.
“Pity. So, Conal, off you go. Straight to bed. We’ll sort all this out.”
“I will. Good night, Miss Frayne.”
If I could, I would have scooped him up in my arms and soothed him. What was it about the man? He was probably older than I was, but he appeared so much like a young child. What the heck had happened to him in his life? I couldn’t help but think of the disturbing painting he’d showed us.
Hilliard took me by the elbow. “I’ll see you home.”
I was happy about that. The warm night air wrapped around us; without the punishing sun, it was fairly pleasant walking. More people were out and about, spirits lifted by a short reprieve from the heat. It was almost like a normal summer night.
“I get the feeling Conal is mentally fragile,” I said to Hilliard as we walked. “Is that true?”
“I suppose so.”
Hilliard didn’t seem to want to expand on this statement, but he was the one hiring me to delve into shady doings at his own café. Some more background information might prove to be helpful.
I persisted. “Left over from the war?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
We’d walked on a little further before he answered.
“A lot of things. First off, he was gassed just as he was being taken prisoner. If his eyes had been treated properly, he might have been all right, but the Krauts weren’t in the mood to mollycoddle the enemy. Nobody looked after him. Left him almost blind. He had shown signs of being a talented artist, but that was before he was so rash as to sign up. No chance after that.”
“I don’t know if I agree with you. The painting I saw was very impressive.”
Hilliard actually stopped in his tracks. “When do you think he did that?”
“I don’t know. A couple of days ago?”
“No. He painted it first eighteen years ago. Right after we were released. He’s been touching it up ever since.”
“And he hasn’t done a new painting since then?”
“He paints them, all right, but he can’t get his colours right, or his figures, so as soon as they are finished, he des-troys them. Then he goes back to fiddling with his original painting.”
Hilliard hadn’t moved while we were speaking, but abruptly he started up again. He jumped forward so quickly that for a minute I thought he was going to walk on ahead by himself. I trotted after him.
“It seemed so specific. The man slumped on the post. Does that painting depict something that actually happened?”
“Yes.”
We turned onto Yonge Street. There were more people, and it appeared that many of the shops were staying open to take advantage of the prospective customers. I was getting the hang of this strange rhythm with Hilliard. I wouldn’t push him. I’d just keep talking and walking. However, this silence was going on for a long time. I was just about to prompt him when he said, “Tell you what. Why don’t we sit on one of the benches over there and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
The bench was set slightly back from the street, not private at all really, but, with the typical anonymity of a big city, we were able to talk as quietly as if we were in the middle of a prairie. Passersby didn’t give us a second glance. That said, I was glad of the covering darkness. I didn’t want anybody to see that, as Hilliard went on talking, I wept. So did he.
“The four of us weren’t in the same regiment, but we were captured at the same time, and we met up when we found ourselves jammed into some kind of railway car that was normally used for cattle. There was dried excrement on the floor, hardly any air or light.”
He stopped, and in a gesture that was rapidly becoming familiar he began to pat at his jacket pocket.
“Do you mind if I smoke, Miss Frayne?”
“Not at all. And please do call me Charlotte.”
I hoped that by bringing in some informality, he would find it easier to relax. Right now, he appeared tense in a way I hadn’t seen before. He fussed with his pipe and tobacco, then continued.
“There were too many of us to sit down properly. We were wedged together in an upright position. Somebody figured out we could help each other if every second man knelt on one knee and made a bridge with his other. This his neighbour could then sit on for a few minutes. An old manoeuvre we learned from amateur boxing.”
He didn’t say he was the organizer with this clever tactic, but I guessed he was.
“We turned and turned about. The stronger ones held up the less strong. I don’t know how long we travelled in that manner, but …”
He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t need to. I couldn’t help it — I reached over and squeezed his hand. He looked surprised, as if he wasn’t used to being the one comforted.
“It must have been hell,” I said.
“Hell? Is there a worse place than hell? If so, I’d say it is being in that stinking cattle car for all eternity. A man actually died in the car I was in. He simply collapsed. Nothing we could do until the train stopped. Those closest had to hold up the corpse for God knows how long. Somebody started to sing a hymn. A few joined in, but mostly we’d lost the energy even for that.”
Hilliard actually shuddered, rather like a dog shaking off water.
“I happened to be jammed beside Wilf Morrow, and it turned out we knew each other from training camp. I hadn’t met Eric or Conal before, but they were both shoved against us.”
He drew on his pipe and flashed me a wry smile. “I suppose being like that for an interminable length of time creates a certain intimacy. Eric, who was quite religious at that time, later described it as a rope that God had thrown down. ‘You, you, you, and you. Gotcha.’ We were all in the same circle, like we had been caught by a lariat. We talked to each other because we had to. We hit it off. Not sure why, we’re very different in personality and background. But when we were finally let out of the cattle car we kept together. Nobody wanted to let the others out of their sight. We managed to get assigned to the same hut in Doberitz.”
His pipe was fading, and I waited for him to go through all the rituals: poking at the bowl, relighting the tobacco. When he was done, I said, “How long were you in the camp?”
“We were captured at Passchendaele in late seventeen, and we were in Doberitz until the Armistice in November of eighteen. As the war progressed, we got less and less to eat. The Kraut guards weren’t exactly living in the lap of luxury, and they saw no reason to treat us better than their own lower ranks.”
He puffed at his pipe.
I focussed on the few people walking past us. A well-dressed woman with a small white dog; two young lovers gripping hands tightly in case the wind of reality swept one of them away.
Hilliard continued. His voice seemed to have dropped lower.
“Hunger, severe hunger, makes you desperate. After a while, when you are in fact starving to death, you lose interest in food, your joints hurt. You have a bellyache all the time as your own stomach acid starts eating at you. In the last few months of the imprisonment, we didn’t do much work. The Krauts knew they were losing the war. That made some of them even more savage than usual, but others became more neutral. Who knew if they’d need us as friends before too long? We spent long hours lying on our bunks talking about food. What we’d loved. What we’d eat, if we could. We’d end every sentence with the words ‘If I could have that right now, I’d think I was in Paradise.’ It became our mantra.”
“And that eventually led to the café?”
“It certainly did.”
“What was your favourite food?”
“I grew up on a farm just outside of Sudbury. My mother was an excellent cook, and we had plenty of fresh vegetables and fruits to eat. But when it comes down to it, what I thought about all the time when I was a prisoner of war was the fresh whipped cream.”
He contemplated the bowl of his pipe as if it could provide solace.
I waited. I liked the occasional dollop of cream when I could get it, but it wouldn’t be at the top of my list of favourite foods.
Hilliard took the plunge and jumped back into his memories. They were certainly happier than the others, and he began to smile as he related them to me.
“We raised dairy cattle, over a dozen Guernseys. There were three of us kids. I’m the oldest. I’ve got two younger sisters. We all had our daily chores to do. I’d muck out the stalls, and my sisters, when they were old enough to pull on a teat — which requires strong hands, by the way — would help my mother with the milking. If we’d done a good job, and only if, my mother would give us each a dish of fresh cream. Thick and yellowish. Add a little sugar, just a pinch, and you have … paradise.”
I made “yum, yum” noises, although it was certainly not an experience that I’d ever had in my urban upbringing.
“In the summer, we’d put fresh cream on top of the strawberries we’d just picked. They were still sun-warm, red, and luscious. When you bit into them you got a mouthful of sweetness. God alone made that treat.”
He stopped to draw some more on the pipe. I wondered if God liked tobacco as well.
“We got cream throughout the winter, of course, and my mother would boil up some potatoes, all grown in her garden at the back of the house, mash them up with a bit of salt to taste, then put some cream on each serving. I’m practically salivating as I think about it.”
Me, too.
“We’d add cream to a lot of things.”
“Even pork chops?”
He snorted with laughter. “Especially pork chops. You’ve never tasted real pork chops until you’ve had them fried up in homemade lard then slipped onto the plate among the peas, served with a topping of fresh cream.”
An indecisive breeze had come up. A young man on a butcher’s bike with bedding in the front basket rode past us, presumably on his way to the lake. I didn’t really want to interrupt Hilliard’s bucolic reveries, but I was dead tired and I wanted to get home. I thought it was time to bring him back to his tale of life in the prisoner of war camp.
“Sorry, I think I diverted you,” I said. “You were telling me about your experience with your current partners when you were incarcerated. You were all virtually starving.”
“We had no idea what was happening in the world. The camp was closed off. You have no idea how desperate men can scrounge bits of information. Some of the men spoke German quite well, and they overheard the guards talking to each other. The general sense was that the Axis powers were losing. But we had been prisoners of war for almost a year. By October we were all giving up hope. The food parcels from the Red Cross were getting more and more scarce. Later we discovered one in three were being pilfered.”
He halted. I felt we were coming to the nub of his story.
“Then one day, at the beginning of November, there was a huge ruckus. The Krauts came bursting into the hut. Somebody had stolen food, two oranges no less, from the commandant’s store. Verboten. We had plenty of food. What were we? Petty criminals? The culprit must be found immediately. If he did not confess or if he was not handed over within twenty-four hours, the entire camp would be punished. Bread and water only for four days. If he was not identified by then, the punishment would be repeated.”
Hilliard said all this with a convincing German accent. A man walking past glanced over at us curiously.
“When we’d arrived at the camp, we had elected spokesmen according to protocol. I was the one from our hut. I tried to protest, but that was a joke. I got slammed in the face for my pains. It was a case of turn in the culprit or nothing. Oh no, they would not execute him even if he deserved it. He would be treated fairly. Punished only according to the martial law.”
I could see Hilliard was fighting for control. Even after all this time, it was obvious the affair still grieved him.
“Fairly! What a farce that was. Fairness, if it had ever existed in that hellhole, had disappeared a long time ago. The guards stomped off yelling, ‘Twenty-four hours! That’s it.’ … There were fifty men jammed into our hut. We knew who had stolen the oranges. It was Billy Mosely, a young fellow originally from England. He’d immigrated to Toronto from London’s East End just before the war broke out. He’d signed up right away, survived, but like us was taken prisoner at Passchendaele. He was incred-ibly light-fingered. Said it came from growing up in the slums. He was always sneaking in hunks of bread, a car-rot, a potato. He always shared his prize, and usually the guards didn’t notice what had been taken. The bread was frequently mouldy anyway.”
Hilliard pursed his lips as if the taste still lingered in his mouth.
“Billy was the one who devised the system of cutting up our daily loaf. One small loaf to be divided among three men. He showed us how to do it fairly. There’s that word again. But this time it’s true. One man measured out the loaf into three portions while the other two turned their backs. Then without looking they would call out which slice they wanted. The one on the right. In the middle. The one on the left. Kept things scrupulously fair.
“But stealing oranges. That was suicidal. We all knew how carefully fruit like that was counted. It was for the commandant only. He was a schwein named Neimeyer. Even his men hated him. Not enough to rebel, alas, but we could see how disliked he was. He was often drunk, and that was when his sadism was at its most extreme.”
Hilliard stared out into space. “One afternoon, he ordered the entire camp to assemble in the yard. He was sitting on a platform in front of us. At a table. He snapped his fingers, and a troupe of orderlies came up. Each was carrying a tray on which were various dishes of food we could see. And smell. Then Neimeyer slowly ate his meal. He waved his fork in the air with each bite. ‘Watch this, you men,’ said he. ‘Learn some manners.’”
At this point, Hilliard leaned forward and rested his head in his hands. “We weren’t getting beaten or locked up, which happened all the time. All that was happening was that a group of starving men were being forced to watch a man eat his dinner. Probably doesn’t sound that bad.”
I grabbed his shoulder. “Yes, it does. It sounds utterly dreadful.”
I don’t know if I was of much comfort. How can you remove such anguish from a man’s experience? It’s impossible.
Hilliard shuddered. “Sorry. I got distracted for a minute. Where was I?”
“The German guards had asked for the blood of Billy Mosely. You all knew he was the one who had stolen the oranges.”
“Yes, yes. That evening after roll call, he’d come into the hut, all excited. He’d been on cleaning detail at the commandant’s house, and for one magic moment, the guard had been distracted. Billy snatched two oranges from the pantry and slipped them into his shirt.”
Hilliard chuckled. “He’d put them under his armpits and managed to keep them in place all the time they were being walked back to the huts. It’s a miracle it wasn’t noticed, but the guard was either sympathetic or stupid. We never knew. Billy got away with it.”
Hilliard wiped his mouth in a gesture I thought was subconscious.
“You can imagine the challenge of dividing two oranges among fifty men,” he went on. “Probably none of whom had tasted fresh fruit for months and months. But Billy did it. First we whittled down the number to twenty by throwing dice. I won a slice. I remember to this day how I tried to savour that tiny piece of orange, making myself eat so slowly. Some men chewed the peel itself. When the Krauts left, we all gathered around, trying to decide what to do. Billy volunteered to give himself up, but we wouldn’t hear of it. Matter of pride. He’d become like our mascot. He was a little chap with bandy legs, long arms. Sort of monkey-like. He had several teeth missing, which he said his old man had knocked out of his mouth because he’d been cheeky. He never moaned, was constantly on the lookout to scrounge something, which he always shared. We loved him. Nobody was going to turn him in.”
Hilliard took a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed it over his face.
“I gather somebody did turn him in?”
He nodded. “Next night they came for him. We’d just got into our bunks when in burst the Krauts. Shouting, throwing their weight around like they always did. They said they knew who the thief was. One of them went straight to Billy’s bunk and dragged him off. He gave him a hard blow on the head, which almost knocked him out. Two of the others got him to his feet and then, semi-conscious as he was, they dragged him out. We couldn’t do anything to stop them. We just watched helplessly. It was a wet, cold night, and they took him out to the parade ground and tied him to a post. The commandant was there. ‘You can stay here until morning and think about your sins.’ For some reason, he had good English. A lot of the Krauts did, actually. Sins. That’s the word he used, ‘sins,’ as if stealing two oranges for starving men was a sin. But the guards left him out there in the pelting rain and cold. Wilf, Eric, me, and Conal had our bunks by the window, and we could hear him crying for help. After a while, his voice got fainter and fainter. Conal wanted to go out and get him, but we held him back. It would only bring punishment on him. And on us, too. We told him to wait until morning. Then we’d get Billy. I said I’d go and talk to the commandant myself.”
Hilliard’s eyes were full of tears. I knew what he was going to say.
“We had to wait until after morning roll call before we were allowed to cut him down. The four of us went, but when we got there he was dead. Exposure. The blow to the head. Starvation. The commandant made himself scarce. It’s one thing to treat your prisoners badly; it’s another to have one die as a result of your orders. We buried the little fellow as honourably as we could. And we waited out the war. Ironically, the Armistice was signed ten days later. If only we could have held on. Billy was so enterprising he would probably be a millionaire by now.”
“I presume he is the figure in the painting that Conal touches up over and over?”
“They were particularly close friends. He was teaching Billy how to draw. He took his death very hard. Frankly, I don’t think he’s ever got over it.”
“Did you find out who had betrayed him?”
Hilliard shrugged. “Could have been anybody in the camp. Everybody knew it was likely Billy who’d taken the oranges. But they didn’t want to be punished for his crime. As I said, hunger tends to throw us back to a more primitive self. They wouldn’t have expected he would die. So, no. We don’t know what man betrayed Billy Mosely.” He sighed. “In a way, we all did. Neimeyer couldn’t have done much against two hundred men if we had banded together. But we were weak, afraid. Hungry. We just wanted to survive. And we didn’t know how close we were to the end of it all. Some men found God, some lost Him. Conal found Communism.”
His story over, he stashed away his pipe and tobacco pouch. He reached out his hand to me. “Come. It’s getting late. Neither of us will be fit for work tomorrow.”
We didn’t speak for the rest of the way, but our silence was not isolating. I think he knew how much I sympathized.
He didn’t bring up the issue of the missing money at the café. Neither did I.
Hilliard said goodbye as he left me at my house, and I went inside.