8

Joyce and Rachel slept all morning. Woke to the sound of rain on the window and shared a cigarette. They could do this without either of them disturbing the covers. If they each extended an arm, their fingers met in the middle. Joyce lay on her back, sending long streams of smoke to the ceiling. The westbound arrivals ought to be underway, crossing overhead as they found their bearings on the radio range. But perhaps it was too early. A uniform grey sky had closed over the airport in recent weeks, making it difficult to guess the time of day.

A stinging spring rain came hard against the window, driven by the whistling wind.

“They’ll perish in this,” said Rachel. The cigarette butt hissed in her water glass.

“Maybe they’ve turned up,” said Joyce. The hotel was dead quiet.

The town was consumed by the lost men. Two of them missing since yesterday. They had set out after breakfast to do some trouting, and were due back for dinner. By the time Joyce began her midnight shift the call had gone out: a couple of fools from out of town gone astray out around Boot Pond. All available men convening at the Airport Club. But the search couldn’t begin in earnest until daylight.

“Ever been lost?” Joyce asked,

“No,” said Rachel, her voice thick. “Hates the woods. You?”

“Once.”

“For very long?”

“Better part of a day.” Thirteen years old, prickling with distraction, Joyce had wandered off the path to the Chute on a fine morning in May. She knew her place until a shift in the sky threw her. It was a ripple of shadow that cast the world in a strange, yellow glow. The light started playing tricks on her, dropping the ground under her feet and pulling an alder away when she reached for it. She stared at the sky and listened for the Chute or the wider ocean, which she could follow home. An osprey tracked her, the shadow of its wingspan flitting in and out of view. At dusk, a red fox ran alongside her for a few paces, though her father later said she must have been seeing things.

“Weren’t you afraid of the little people?” asked Rachel.

“No.” She probably was, but couldn’t recall. She lost all track of time and bloodied both shins without knowing it. Imagining her future as she stumbled blind. The whole shore brought to a standstill. Her father overcome, her mother keening, and Marty shocked into silence. Girls from school weeping hysterically, and a boy overwhelmed with grief, his secret crush exposed. Though she couldn’t decide which boy.

“We should get over there and lend a hand,” she said to Rachel. But her legs felt heavy, throbbing after five shifts in four days.

The second time she woke, Joyce inhaled the damp, oily smell that indicated plenty of traffic on the tarmac. She sat up and pulled on her socks. Extended a leg and rested her toe on Rachel’s shoulder. A gentle shove.

“No.”

“I’m starving.”

They had the dining room to themselves. There was white pudding, split down the middle and charred on the grill. Fried potatoes and onions. Bread with real butter. Too much tea.

“We’ve got to go over and lend a hand,” Joyce said.

Rachel tipped the sugar dispenser to make a little mound on the table. Ran a finger through it, drawing circles and swirls. “I’d rather go back to bed,” she said.

Joyce envied the way Rachel could give herself over to a big, lazy lunch and a wasteful day off. Gaps in the schedule unnerved Joyce. To be idle was to be out of step with the place. The adjustment to days off staggered her.

She went for more bread and butter, spreading it so thick it showed teeth marks where she took a bite. In a couple of days the butter would be gone and they’d be back to watery margarine.

Voices approached in the corridor, and four, six, eight women entered the dining room, groaning and sighing and falling into chairs. Cup of tea, they cried. Cup of tea, for God’s sake.

Alice Henley broke from the group and approached their table.

“I’m going to pee,” said Rachel.

“Don’t you dare.” Joyce looked up at Alice. “No word?”

Alice shook her head. The first search parties had been out at the crack of dawn, she said. All day, teams of three and six trudging through deep woods. A truck dropping men down the logging road. Two punts out on Deadman’s Pond and a Cessna in the air. Even spotters on the train from Alexander Bay. No signs.

“They should bring in the military.” Alice pulled a tissue from her sleeve and squeezed it with her red hands. She was pregnant but not yet showing. “Jews,” she said. “You don’t know about them, see?”

“What Jews?” Rachel worked a polished fingernail between her front teeth. It was a substantial gap and she always picked at it after she ate.

“They’re Jews, for God’s sake.”

“The lost fellows?”

“They could be out there to destroy the radar. Or up on Transmitter Hill cutting wires. Henley says you never saw a craftier fellow than the Jew.” Alice always called her husband by his last name.

“They were trouting,” said Joyce.

“Jews?” asked Rachel. “You mean like Scheffman?” Mr. Scheffman had a small shop at the Eastbound Inn. “The Jews were on our side in the war,” said Rachel. “Weren’t they?”

“The Russians wave a dollar at them and they’ll do anything.” Alice was standing straight now, her voice steady. “Henley says they don’t know truth from lies. They don’t even have the words for it, in their Jew language that they speak among themselves.”

People said Alice’s husband wasn’t right in the head. Alice ought to have given up her job at the central laundry because she shouldn’t be hauling those big loads with a baby on the way. But she was still at it because Henley couldn’t hold a job at all. Everywhere he worked ended in some kind of blow-up. Lately he was pushing a mop around the hospital, and if he couldn’t stick with that there’d be nothing left for him.

“Those soldiers you said came through the other night,” said Rachel. “Were they Jews?”

“They were from Poland, I think,” said Joyce. They hadn’t looked like much. Weedy and hollow-chested.

“Poland and Russia, it’s all the same,” said Alice. “And Germans coming through here all the time as well.”

“But the Germans,” Rachel paused. “They switched to our side, yes?”

“A leopard don’t change his spots. The Germans were sneaking around here during the war, you know. Sabotaging the bombers, Henley said. They had a girl here, too. A little steno girl with the ferry command. Spoke perfect English, like in the movies. And she was in silk stockings every day, and she disappeared after.”

“Well, there’s spies in the news all the time, isn’t there,” said Rachel. “Spies in the movies. Just last week at the Globe.”

“Ruth Pinsent was the last one seen them,” said Alice. “They bought a few supplies from her yesterday. Tea and sugar. Says they were right greasy looking. Dirty fellows with pointy noses. I’m telling you, they should call in the army.”

Joyce had been to Scheffman’s on her last payday, buying four pairs of nylons at thirty-nine cents each and putting a deposit on a shirtwaist dress from London. It felt deliciously careless to waltz into a store and cast off her money this way.

//////

The door to the Airport Club jammed, as it always did since Fox Connolly kicked through the plate glass on one of his sprees. The glass was replaced, but Connolly’s boot had put the frame off kilter, and Old Dunphy said a new one was more trouble than it was worth. Every time Joyce saw him behind his bar he was telling someone that it was time to get out of these bloody old air force shacks. Get on with the new town site. Get it built so people can live properly and have a night out at a proper club.

Den Shea was in the foyer as if he had been waiting for them, chewing a sandwich. The sight of him—tie cinched to his neck under waxy, clean-shaven cheeks—made her alert to the seriousness of the situation. In times of trouble Den always looked his best. Hair combed and slicked into place, shirt starched, and somewhere in the panic of a chaotic day he always found a moment to take a razor to his craggy face.

“Wonderful, girls,” he said, and clapped them both on the shoulder. “You’ll want to lend a hand in the kitchen. Many mouths to feed. Joyce, love, take a moment to drop this off with Dawson and Tucker?”

“Frank Tucker?”

“That’s right.” He handed her a file folder. “They’ll be updating the map.”

Joyce said hello to Fred Yetman before she realized he was asleep on his barstool, arms folded and head tilted to the wall. Men stood leaning on the bar, drinking from chipped white mugs. Others sank deep in leather-upholstered chairs, dark-eyed and damp. Even a crisis couldn’t dispel the louche, lazy rhythms of a tavern on a rainy afternoon.

Frank sat at a table against the far wall, between the two washroom doors, playing cards with a man she took to be Dawson. They leaned back in their chairs, white shirt cuffs rolled over hairy forearms. The cards flew quickly between them, each one briefly aloft and skidding to a halt on the table. Dawson pushed the trick aside and started the next without delay. The map hung from the wall above them, sagging between its thumbtacks.

“You’re to update your map,” she said, handing the file folder to Frank. He laid it on the floor next to him and pushed his chair back, opening room at the little round table. “Hand of forty-fives, Joyce?”

She was in no hurry to get to the kitchen. She knew Maeve Vardy would be in charge. Maeve volunteered for everything, and insisted on running everything. Mary said she had a special way of spoiling a good cause. Joyce took the chair indicated and released the top button of her coat. Laid her gloves in her lap.

“How’s Gloria?” she asked. “And baby Anthony?”

“The house is in an uproar, day and night.”

Dawson snorted a laugh. Joyce recognized him now. Used to be the TWA station manager, always strolling the airport with a wet-lipped smile and ambling, open-toed gait. He had recently left the airline under murky circumstances and was driving a car for Star Taxi. The town seemed to attract men like him. Lean and hawkish, with tiny waists and jutting elbows. She would see them at Goodyear’s or the Co-op with their equally severe wives. The women bustling and scolding dirty children. The men trailing behind and looking away, as if not wanting to be seen with their families.

“Now, Joyce.” Dawson gathered the cards and tapped them on the table to make a deck. “Would you not say that this parchment before us is a fair and accurate picture of our beloved community?”

“Parchment?”

“He wants to know if you trust the map,” said Frank.

“It’s a surface chart,” said Joyce. Why in the world wouldn’t she “trust” it? She saw it every day. The weather office sent surface charts around the clock, along with upper-air, isotropic and adiabatic charts. Their arrival was always treated with great ceremony. The crackle of virgin paper unfurling across a desk. The damp, pulpy smell rising as men gathered round to frown at the curling lines and scribbled numbers, their neckties dangling over air currents and disturbances. Smoke rising from their cigarettes as if from the chart itself.

“See that bit of territory off the side of Runway 32?” said Dawson, dealing the cards. “Our friend Bern Henley doesn’t believe this piece of territory exists. What does he imagine might be there in its place, I wonder?”

“Check.”

“Twenty-five.”

“Go on.”

“Diamonds,” said Frank, and gathered the kitty. “He never said anything didn’t exist. It’s a matter of proportion. From runway to pond, it can’t be that big.”

Dawson said something about proper scale. Joyce had the ace of diamonds and drew the five. So what was Frank going twenty-five on?

“Now Joyce,” said Frank. “If you wanted to hide out, wouldn’t you make for uncharted territory?”

“It makes no sense, the whole business,” said Dawson.

Joyce took a trick with a ten and another with the nine, and Frank shagged up the next one by failing to follow suit.

“Henley don’t know which way his arse shits,” said Dawson. “Beg pardon, Joyce. Got his brains half blown out in Italy.”

“Those are the fellows who win you the war. The ones who are so deep into it they’ll never get out.”

Joyce reneged on the five until Frank played the jack, and put him in the hole. Perhaps they were letting her win, as if she were a child and they were charged with keeping her amused.

“Aren’t they just fellows who went fishing?” Joyce was trying not to take any of it seriously. It was hard to know when men were serious, the way they were always braying at each other.

Frank put down his cards and looked at her. “Tell you what,” he said. “Head over to the old navy site. If you can get one of those boys to take off his headset, ask him what Joe Stalin had for dinner last night. I guarantee you he’ll know, right down to the brandy and the pudding.”

“Surely you’ve seen the B-47s landing here,” added Dawson. “And the B-17s with their photo reconnaissance.”

“You may have seen a distinguished-looking gentleman at the terminal a couple of Sundays ago,” said Frank. “A Slavic sort.”

Slavic? Joyce shook her head. Her knees jiggled under the table.

“None other than the Russian foreign minister, taking a little stroll on his stopover.”

“And not his first visit, either.”

“You wouldn’t know the Russian foreign minister to see him, would you, Joyce?”

“No. Are we done with cards?”

“Dmitri, I believe his name is. I wonder did our friend Billy Scheffman drop by to say hello?”

“You might like to know, Joyce, that before coming among us as a merchant, our Billy did a stint in the Russian army.”

“So he and Dmitri are old comrades, you might say.”

“You might.”

“It’s a point of interest, if nothing more.”

“Especially when you consider that Billy is of the Hebrew people.”

“Which explains his success.”

“Explains his flair for separating the Christian housewife from her dollar.”

They talked across her, in a way that Joyce felt pinned to her chair.

“Anyway, you’ll need to update the map,” she said. “That file I gave you. It’s from Den.”

“Now see here,” said Frank. “Some of the great military campaigns in history were conducted without a map. The Romans, or Alexander the Great.”

Dawson said something about Napoleon in Russia and they were off again.

//////

Joyce made the rounds with a big tomato juice can, dumping ashtrays into it. Old Dunphy dimmed the lights, throwing shafts of deep shadow over the room. Gord Delaney’s wife, Fran, appeared with a steaming pot of beans and wieners, and scurried back to get the buns. You’d never know Fran and Gord were married, to see them on an evening at the Airport Club. Him running the band and her running the kitchen, not so much as a glance between them. People said they weren’t happy, rarely seen together except at church. There was no sign of Gord today.

Men began drifting to the table, where Rachel towered over the used teabags, dirty dishes, overflowing ashtrays, and bread crusts marked by half-moon bites. She dug a ladle into the beans. The men lined up before her, dutiful and quiet, as if taking Holy Communion. Joyce laid out spoons and napkins.

“Are they Russians out there?” she asked one, laying a full bowl in his hands. “Or Germans?”

“Well, miss, I’d say they’re awful fools, whoever they are. Out on a night the like of this.” The man grinned at her, pleased to be singled out for conversation. “Did you know, miss, they had mind to blow this place to bits during the war?”

“Who? The Germans?”

“No, my love. The Brits. They had a plan to blow the works rather than see it fall to the Krauts, if it ever came to that.”

“That’s enough,” said the next in line, a balding, stubby man in bib overalls. “Mind your dinner.”

“Bern Henley got the Jack-a-tars out looking,” said the next one behind him, and the group broke into giggles.

“The Jack-a-tars will find ’em for sure.”

“Got the smell of the bog right in them.”

“They say there’s a bottle in it for them.”

“That got their attention.”

“The Jack-a-tars with a bottle? Look out!”

They were interrupted by a commotion near the front. Frank was shouting, though he didn’t seem to direct it at anyone. His shirt was soaking wet, with pink flesh and a ribbed undershirt showing through at the shoulders. He must have been outdoors, or fallen in something.

“Cripes. Can’t the wife come and get him?” someone asked.

“Gloria won’t go near him in that state.”

“He might find a friend among the Jack-a-tars.”

Frank fumbled with a package of Viceroys, dropping several cigarettes as he made an unsteady path to the door. A crash of coat hangers as he slipped in the muddy foyer and tumbled into the closet. Open laughter rippled through the room, and a smattering of applause.

Joyce wondered if she ought to call Gloria and warn her not to let him in. He shouldn’t be allowed in the house with her and the baby.

It seemed unlikely that men would carry on like this, if there were Russian agents about. Or would they? She didn’t understand the Gander crowd at all. It was all a bit of a lark around here. You had to scratch the surface to get at the serious business of life, and people didn’t like having their surface scratched.

//////

Nobody wanted to say, with dusk coming on, that the search might soon be for bodies rather than men. Joyce and Rachel were waiting on a tray of sandwiches—Fran Delaney had just loaded a boulder of ham into the meat slicer—when Maeve Vardy came through the kitchen door at great speed.

“Dirty dishes sitting out there gone rotten,” she said. “You’d never run a kitchen where I’m from.”

Fran, stout and slightly walleyed behind thick glasses, ignored Maeve and flicked the switch on her slicer.

A whirring motor set the blade spinning. Wriggling sheets of ham, veined white with fat, piled up on the butcher’s paper.

“Anyway, there’s news,” said Maeve.

“News?” Rachel spoke through her full mouth.

“They’ve found someone.”

“Why didn’t you say so, woman?” cried Fran.

From the lounge came a burst of applause. They all ran from the kitchen to find a crowd gathered around Den. He stood on a chair, talking, black hair gleaming under the lights. “Word from the doctor is, if he’d been out another night all would have been lost. So thank you. Thank you, all.”

More clapping, but Den raised a hand for silence. “If I may, if I may… Want to acknowledge our rescue team today. A full effort by the whole town.” Vigorous applause. “You’ve all earned a drink,” shouted Den. A roar of approval.

Music started up from unseen, crackling speakers overhead. Old Dunphy laid out bottles on the bar, one at either end and one in the middle, with stacks of tumblers. The liquor glowed gold and amber.

“Joyce?” It was Den, appearing at her side with a drink.

“They’re safe?”

“There was only one fellow, as it turns out. I believe he’s alright.”

“But is he a Jew? Some kind of criminal?”

“Ah, some people just like to talk a lot of guff,” said Den. He held his drink with two hands, turning it slowly. “Look, Joyce, I thought you’d like to know. It’s that fellow Walser who was lost. I just thought…”

“Julian Walser?”

“Yes.”

“Cripes,” said Joyce, using her mother’s favourite curse.

“He’ll be alright,” said Den. “He’s at the hospital. Some bumps and bruises. Hard night out there.”

Rachel had been dragged onto the dance floor by a pair of men who were now dancing a ridiculous jig around her, spilling their drinks. She laughed as if nothing could be funnier. With everyone on their feet the lounge was suddenly crowded.

Joyce returned to the empty kitchen to get her coat and bonnet. Fran was there, smoking furiously. The meat slicer still hummed, waiting for her to lean into the big ham again. Joyce had never seen such a machine before. Her father’s slicer had a hand crank.

“Maeve bloody Vardy,” said Fran. “Wouldn’t run a kitchen where she’s from? I wouldn’t let my dog lift his leg where she’s from. Bloody townie.”

//////

She had been in the hospital once, to visit Gloria and the new baby. The medicine smells and church-like quiet had unnerved her. Tonight she appreciated the sharp, unsoiled air. It was a relief from the club, which was all mud and wet socks and whiskey.

Through the small window in the door, Jules looked much as he always did, hunched over a magazine. But the posture was exaggerated, his back curled as if under a burden. The arm holding the magazine was bandaged.

The head turned slowly at her knock, and Joyce saw the damage. One side of his face yellow and blue. Its cheek bulbous, as if he were a boy working on a jawbreaker. The eye above reduced to a red slit, though she felt its gaze.

He lifted a hand to beckon her inside.

“They gave you a room to yourself.”

“Nobody wants to look at me.” His voice was hoarse and slurred.

“You’ll be in here for a while, I think.” She held the door with one hand, as if just popping in for a moment.

“I’d like to get out soon. See a proper dentist. Come in, sit.” He indicated a chair at the foot of the bed.

The bruised side had little knots of black thread in three different places, the biggest running along his jaw line.

“I trust you, Joyce,” he said.

“You shouldn’t talk.”

“I wasn’t lost.”

“What?”

He pushed two fingers into his mouth. Wincing with pain, he pulled a blood-soaked wad of cotton from the swollen side and dropped it in a metal tray on his bedside table.

“I was never lost,” he said. The voice was still laboured, but sounding more like him.

“You meant to stay out all night in the rain?”

“I was detained, Joyce. Delayed.”

Joyce felt a tingle at the nape of her neck, and shivering goose bumps raced down her arms. She pulled her coat tight, though the room was stifling, heat coming off the radiator in waves. “Did you hear what people are saying about you? That you’re a Jew?”

“So I am.”

“But you were at church.”

“My parents converted, turned Catholic. Before they had me. Before they left Austria.”

“Can you do that?”

“All kinds have done it.”

She wondered if he might be a bit touched after all those hours out in the cold and wet. His good eye looked glassy and marbled, as if looking inward rather than out at the world. It reminded Joyce of her mother in her final days, when her mind went bad.

“They came for me,” he said. “Your friend was one of them.” He wiggled his fingers. “The piano player.”

“Eric Furlong.”

“Right. They did this”—he touched the bandaged arm—“and this”—drew a finger across his brutalized features.

“Why in God’s name would they come after you?” A drop of sweat rolled down her spine. This goddamn town and its nonsense. She was always trying to make sense of it.

“I didn’t do anything, Joyce. If people are saying I’m Jewish, I suppose that was the cause.”

Setting her things on the chair, she approached the bed. Lifted his shoulder to adjust the pillows and pulled the covers up around him. Touched his hair. “Is that good?”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

Bracing her hands against the head rail, she leaned into him, close enough to smell the ointment on his wounds and decay on his breath. Laid a hand on the swollen cheek. His eyes widened.

“Now you’ll tell me what’s going on.” Flecks of saliva hit his cheekbones.

“Joyce.”

“Tell me.” She pressed against the bruise until he emitted a groan that frightened her.

“You know I make runs to the base,” he said finally.

“Yes.”

“Two or three times a week. Parts and supplies from Argentia, mostly.” The bad eye slowly closed, and she heard the lid release as it peeled open again. He touched her hand where she pressed the bruise. “Cripes, Joyce. Please.”

She stood straight, and folded her arms. “Keep going.”

“There’s a woman, works evenings at the base. We got to talking.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. The base.”

“Talking how?”

“Talking, just…She was working nights. And…” Both eyes closed. “I always arrived at night, it seems.”

Joyce curled her toes. The sweat coming off her was thin and gritty. “She works at the laundry?”

“No.”

“She does.” Joyce leaned into him again. Touched his stitches.

He gave a little gasp. “Okay, yes. There’s a night supervisor, Mitchell. He’d be off playing cards, so she was the only one there. At the laundry. Do you see?” he said, as if the whole story hinged on the arrangement between the woman and Mitchell. “Anyway, she has a husband. So that’s where the trouble starts.”

Joyce backed up and gripped the rail at the foot of the bed. “You don’t seem the least bit ashamed.”

“And why should I be ashamed? A woman makes a fool of herself, she gets what’s coming to her. I told her my next posting might be Bermuda or Rangoon. Let her believe whatever she liked.”

“You brought this trouble on yourself, then.”

“Yesterday I went trouting at Boot Pond.” His voice gathered strength, sounding more like him. “These boys show up and throw me in a truck. Start driving, out past Union East and down some old dirt road. Barely a road at all. I had to lay in the truck so the branches wouldn’t tear me to pieces. Stopped at an old cabin. Tore my clothes off. Took my boots. Said I could walk back to town if I liked. I sat in the back of the truck, freezing. Them in the cabin, drinking and playing cards. Rain started up. This morning they came out and knocked me around a bit and let me in the cabin for a bit. They said never lay a finger on another girl in this town, or it’ll be worse next time.”

“And Eric Furlong was among them?”

“He’s a nasty customer. He said to me, ‘You were lost last night, and we found you. Tell anyone otherwise and we’ll be back.’”

“And here you are telling me otherwise.”

“I trust you.”

Joyce saw Eric’s hands at the piano. The black grease worked deep into the creases and knuckles. The fingers striking sharp, staccato notes. Pictured those fingers curled into a fist. A nurse entered, and Joyce stared at the floor a moment. But on who’s account was she being discreet? “You’re disgusting.”

The nurse stared straight ahead, silently lifting his wrist to take the pulse. “How are you feeling?”

“Not so well.”

“I thought you were the sort to make his way in this world,” said Joyce.

“What world is that?”

“The way everything’s changing now, a man needs a good head on his shoulders. But you…”

“What do you mean, everything’s changing?” Jules laughed in spite of himself, wincing as his mouth stretched. “A woman looks for trouble she bloody well gets it. That’s all there is to it.”

“You had best let him get some rest, miss,” the nurse said without looking at Joyce. She picked up the tray with its blood-soaked cotton, the red so deep it was nearly black. “We’ll get you a new dressing.” She glided from the room.

“Don’t play innocent with me, Joyce. That night I found you wandering around the Officers’ Mess, well in your cups. A fellow could have done anything with you. Taken you anywhere. You’re lucky it was me. I can still get you out of here, if you’ll clean up your act and do your duty.”

The nurse returned, scissors and dressing in hand, the quiet pad of her shoes surprising them. “Open wide, let’s have a look,” she said, perching on the edge of the bed.

“Come on, Joyce.”

“That’s enough,” said the nurse.

“Don’t you ever think about living somewhere else?”

“I already live somewhere else,” Joyce said, and left.

//////

Mary brought her a coffee in the locker room. Joyce took the paper cup and ran a finger along the blue crosshatched pattern that swirled top to bottom like the stripe on a barber’s pole. She had never been a coffee drinker until she joined TCA. The women drank it black and the men added long streams of milk and sugar.

Mary dropped into a discarded office chair, which rolled back and bumped the row of lockers. They had long been promised new furniture, but were still stuck with broken chairs and lockers salvaged from the RAF.

“Would you like a pair of shoes?” She produced a shiny black box. Not without a sense of performance, she lifted the cover, which held for a moment and released with a tiny puff of air. Parted the tissue with her fingers.

The camel-coloured pump felt like velvet in Joyce’s hands.

“I can’t imagine.”

“Suede leather,” said Mary. “I don’t know how they make it. The silky end of the cow, I suppose.”

“You can’t give these away.”

“Well, I could leave them in the closet, for all the good that would do.”

Joyce gripped the shoe by its wedge heel. Light as air. Three slender straps across the front. Three gold buckles. She shook off her flats.

“Joe got them in Montreal. He knows I can’t wear them, but he can’t walk by a shoe store.”

“But even if you wore them once. The Christmas dance.”

The buzzer went, indicating a customer at the front counter. Joyce started to rise.

“Somebody will get them,” said Mary. “A fifteen-minute break is fifteen minutes.”

Joyce took the second shoe from the box in Mary’s lap and stood to slip into them.

Mary’s chair let out a metallic shriek as she leaned back. “Oh, my love. It’s like your legs grew them.”

“Thank you.” The left one nipped at her pinkie toe. She sat and lifted the foot, rotating it, examining all sides.

“They’re from Spain. It’s all that spicy food they eat. Makes them randy, and they put it in their shoes.”

“Mary!”

The buzzer again. “Girls!” shouted Mike Devine with a rap at the door. In a frenzy, as always. Racing around with a telex in one hand and a stack of reservations in the other. Crew schedules half done. Shouting for a weather report, as if it was someone else’s fault that he hadn’t paid attention. Mike was always flustered or on the verge of it, gasping for breath with his big mouth hung open.

Joyce slipped the shoes back in the box and folded the tissue paper back over them. “My mother,” she said. “She never…” Her fingers left moist prints in the slippery black cardboard. “I mean, she wouldn’t have allowed herself. Even the thought of it.”

“I know,” said Mary, and they both laughed.

//////

Gert kept her girls in line by force of shame and exposure. Lateness, shabby dress, scuffed shoes, smoking at the ticket counter, tawdry lipstick or eyeliner, too much perfume, stale breath, undesirable odours of any sort, curt manners, less-than-cheerful comportment, illegible cursive, “wild” hair, making a show of yourself, and other lapses were usually corrected with a glance and perhaps a quiet word. (“Run in the stockings, love.”) Repeat offenders were chided before the whole crew. (“Now girls, we don’t care what Catherine does on her own time, but she can’t be coming to work with those big black bags under her eyes.”) Only the worst offences earned a private audience with Gert, with the whole crowd catching every word of it through the paper-thin walls of her office.

Joyce knew she had it coming after a trio of air force men waltzed through the gate without proper boarding passes. She shouldn’t have been working departures in the first place. Rushed over at a moment’s notice to cover for Mary, who rushed home to cover for her husband, who was at the hospital with a finger bitten nearly clean off by one of the youngsters. The flight was called and the three airmen got through while Joyce was still rifling through the clipboard, looking for the passenger manifest.

She thought she might get away with it until Moncton telexed that they had been delivered three RCAF fellows now demanding passage to Montreal for the weekend, without so much as a ticket between them. Gert waited until shift change before calling Joyce in.

“Documentation,” said Gert, snatching a piece of paper from her desk and shaking it before her. “You know bloody well, Joyce. Paper, boarding pass, ticket, waybill. Something. You know it’s not our job to ferry those boys to their girly clubs in Montreal. Next time you tell them the war is over and they don’t have the run of it anymore.”

Joyce went straight from Gert’s office to her locker and slipped out the side door, eyes averted. She was in no mood for the banquet at Gleneagles, even with lobster on the menu. Anyway, there was no time to mope, as the boys were gone ahead to set up and she was due by seven.

It was a big cabin, newer and nicer than Deadman’s or Spruce Brook, with a higher ceiling and shiny tableware. Good, solid tumblers and hefty ashtrays that didn’t upend when you crushed your butt in them. A banquet for management from Anglo-Newfoundland Development, and a dance for the whole staff. The workers and their wives gathered at the doors during pineapple upside-down cake, waiting for the doors to open. Joyce’s mouth was dry and her tone thin. But she was mostly on the mark. When all hands were good and soused, Roland on the saxophone did his little routine of coming next to her and wrapping a hand around her waist. The fingers wandered up her ribs while he climbed a scale on the horn, until his instrument blared a high, urgent note and he brushed her breast a quick paw before scuttling back to his music stand. Men roaring and women tut-tutting on the dance floor.

Gleneagles had no piano, but Eric came along anyway and sat in on drums for a few songs. He bought Joyce a whiskey at the end of the second set, and sat with her at a corner table. When a small, grey-stubbled man came by to bus the table, Eric introduced him.

“This is my brother Aubrey. What are you doing here tonight, Aub? A few extra dollars, is it?”

“A few extra dollars,” said the brother, who looked much older.

“Are you still down at the sawmill?”

“Oh yes, it’s all lumber this season. A good deal of it headed out your way.”

“Houses going up all summer in Gander.”

“Not so much the pine as the birch.” Aubrey propped a full tray against his skinny hip, and hardly noticed when the glasses and beer bottles wobbled precariously. “No end to the birch coming through. Like shit through a goose.”

“Mind language, Aub,” said Eric.

“Sorry, miss.”

“It’s alright,” said Joyce.

“Some days they wants it rough, some days dressed,” said Aubrey. “So you got to be on your toes, see?”

“And is it still the two women running it?”

“Missus Murphy and Chippy Steele,” said Aubrey. “They got me up to nine dollars a day, so I calls it fair. Hard old maids, mind you.”

“You’d do better with Bowater, I imagine.”

“Bowater got Joey John superintendent, and I don’t like his manner. I might go over to Point Leamington or Badger, catch on with a logging camp.”

“Miserable work, that. Miserable pay.”

“The union will put it to rights, I figures. Smallwood’s a union man, see? So it’s good for unions. Anyway, I calls it fair, what I gets from Chippy.”

They were three songs into the third set when the crowd started calling for a man named Myrick. “Come on now, Myrick!” they shouted. “Tell us a story, Myrick!”

Gordon indicated that the band should stand down. Joyce went to pee. When she came back a man was at her microphone, telling a laboured tale about a lady with a wooden leg. His rubbery face was remarkable, twisting into grimaces of agony and surprise. The crowd roared. He continued with rhyming stories about dead goats and buckets of squid and Lacey Simms losing her bloomers in a gale and how Edgar Mouland nearly went mad trying to work the pocket grinder down at the mill. This went on until well after the bar closed and the lights were up, until a flushed man with scars around his mouth started in on a recitation called “Pisspot Pete.” He was interrupted by several others, who said the tale wasn’t fit for mixed company. This seemed to break the spell of the room, and people began drifting to the door.

Eric offered Joyce a ride back, with a short detour to drop Aubrey at the road down to Appleton. The prospect of hanging about for the train was exhausting, so Joyce got in the truck and sat between the brothers. For a few minutes they drove silent, Aubrey breathing loudly through his mouth and dabbing his nose with a rag.

“Thought about starting my own operation though,” he said, as they bumped and rattled in the dark.

“What kind of operation?” asked Eric.

“Sawmill. In Glenwood.”

“How would you do that, Aubrey?”

“Cobble it together. There’s ways.”

“Don’t be at that, Aubrey. Take a steady pay packet at Bowater or ANDCO.”

Aubrey took a mouthful from the bottle he had been holding between his thighs. “I don’t much care for this, though. Whatever it is.” He held the bottle to the light of the dashboard and squinted. “Spur Cola.”

“It’s what they drink in St. John’s.”

“No doubt,” said Aubrey. He rolled down the window and tossed the bottle. “I don’t know that anyone expected that music you were playing.”

“They danced,” said Joyce.

“They danced, yes.”

Aubrey had them stop at a trail only he could see. The night swallowed him.

“Did you ever see the like?” said Eric, reversing the truck to go back the way they came. “‘Start my own operation.’ Bloody fool.”

They backtracked to the main road, drizzle picking up, and Eric talked of his family. “Seven brothers. Five of them still in Placentia Bay at the salt fish or the herring or whatever they can manage.” He shook his head. “They can have it.”

It became hard to talk as Eric picked up speed, the truck rumbling and kicking up gravel, rocks ringing sharp off the underside. They hit the airport road, freshly resurfaced, with a jolt and a satisfying purr of asphalt. Runway lights blinked through the trees out Joyce’s window.

“Come for a drink,” said Eric.

“At this hour?”

“What hour is that?”

“It’s late.”

“No harm in it.”

“There’s nothing open.” She gripped the door handle and leaned toward it, as if she could direct the truck. But they were already past the hotel and turning towards the airport.

“Well, I’m going for a drink,” said Eric, as he pulled to a stop at the terminal.

Joyce sat listening to the ticking of the engine, watching the rain blur the windshield. Finally she climbed from the truck and caught up to him inside. “I suppose you find this funny.”

“Not at all. A nightcap is no laughing matter.”

Their voices echoed down the terminal concourse, which was silent except for the buzz of overhead lights and the distant skitter of a telex machine. Bodies were scattered about, slumped in chairs or sprawled on benches. The only one awake was a skinny girl behind the coffee counter with a paperback.

The leather-padded door to the Big Dipper was shut, its small oval window dark. Eric thumped a hand on the door. A sleeper sighed. The coffee girl shifted on her stool, coughed and turned a page.

“We should go,” said Joyce.

A bolt released and Parsons the bartender let them into the empty bar. Eric nodded and asked for two Scotches. Parsons didn’t look especially happy, but he set his mop in a corner, bolted the door behind them. Eric directed Joyce to the nearest table.

He said that he and Aubrey had gone to California during the war, working the sawmills and box factories. “Should have stayed down there. They were desperate for men. Aubrey’s problem is he’s too proud to work for another man for very long. This foolish notion to start his own operation. He’ll starve.”

“My father would never work for another man.”

“I don’t mean to disrespect your father. But Smallwood got the right idea. You get the experts in here, Europeans, Canadians, to show us how it’s done. You get your steady pay and baby bonus and the old age. Never mind scraping by with your own fishing boat or your own sawmill.”

Joyce held the first sip in her throat and felt it down to her toes. She had been shivering all the way home from the damp. Parsons mopped around them. Apart from Eric’s drink order, the two men had not exchanged a word.

“Newfoundlanders, see? They hardly know there’s a world out there.” Eric stared into his glass. “Most places it’s the same five families staring up their own behinds for the past two hundred years or more.”

There was a spill of change on the bar. Parsons counted up the evening’s take, mumbling numbers as he flicked coins into an open palm.

“Those two women must be turning a dollar, though,” said Joyce.

“What women?”

“Your brother said he works for a couple of women. They have the sawmill in Appleton?”

“Yes, well, we’ll see. The Bowaters could run them out of business just like that if they chose to.” He snapped his fingers on that.

It seemed to Joyce that if the sawmill women were paying Aubrey nine dollars a day and the lumber was coming out as fast as they could make it, they must be doing alright.

The coffee girl stared at her paperback, sucking at her teeth as if to dislodge something. There would be gossip, but Joyce suspected she was already being talked about. She didn’t doubt that Gloria talked about her all the time. Gloria loved gossip, and always laced the barest facts with the most salacious speculation. Then she would say, “Shame on me for even saying that, for even thinking it,” and shiver with pleasure. Joyce saw now that she’d never be rid of Gloria, and so never completely rid of Cape St. Rose.

Outside, Joyce insisted on walking home.

“Walk? Nonsense.”

“It’s just around the corner.” The drizzle had stopped, and the air felt mild compared to the cold of the truck.

“Alright then,” said Eric, tossing his keys in his hand. “Now look here, maybe we could do this again, only at a more decent hour? On Thursday? Payday and all. What do you say?”

“No,” said Joyce. But her feet wouldn’t move beneath her until she gave the honest answer. “Yes.”

“I could see I was winning you over,” said Eric. “Just a matter of time. Ha.”

It seemed like a long time since she had spoken the word with any kind of conviction. “Yes,” she said again, because it sounded so good, with its affirmative hiss at the end. Then she started away at a good pace, the porch light of the hotel already in sight.