12

Joyce thought it might be more than just a headache. More than just the humidity. She waited, wiping down the baseboards and putting a wash through. A mild cramp sent her to the bathroom and she thought, “That’s it.” Stood up from the toilet to see the red cloud in the water, circling the paper.

“Alright then,” she said out loud, dabbing herself. “Alright then.”

She sat in the kitchen to think about it. Instead of thinking she looked out the window to the tops of the birch trees, watching the light change as clouds raced past the sun. Watching the birds flit in and out. The pace outside seemed too quick.

//////

It’s true that she missed mass from time to time. Working, or stuck somewhere with the band, waiting out a snowstorm or a late train. She didn’t sing in the choir. Had told Maeve Vardy she’d drop by for Wednesday rehearsal but never did. Father Kiloran didn’t seem the kind of man to keep account of such things. But what else would bring him up her front step? And what was Gordon doing at his side? She wasn’t about to take any lectures from him. Not on matters of worship.

Joyce started to remove her apron, then left it. How else should they expect her at eleven o’clock in the morning? She glanced in the mirror and tucked a lock of hair back under her scarf. It fell out again.

Through the front door window, both men seemed to examine their shoes. Joyce put a hand to her stomach to settle a gentle stirring inside, like a spoon turning in a teacup. Her lunch was ready, just laid out on the table when she had caught sight of them walking up to the house. One knee began to shake.

At the creak of the hinges both faces looked up and filled the doorway. The whole town smelled like tar from the paving crews and she nearly shut the door again to lock it all out. Nobody said anything and she was sure she would slam the door if one of them didn’t talk soon. Gordon put two damp hands on her, one holding each bicep. She hated that.

“Joyce,” he said. “There’s word from the airport.” He faltered, throat growling.

“An accident,” said the priest. “That is…Can we talk inside?”

Just last weekend, Eric and Gordon had talked of the trapper who found the B-25 that went down north of Deadman’s Pond; how he stuck a frozen arm in his backpack and took it to the airport as proof. It was the sleeve on the arm that confirmed it. Only American pilots had leather jackets. He found the tobacco too, and kept it. Tobacco was scarce during the war, after all. It was a well-worn anecdote, recounted this time for the benefit of the new drummer, a fellow who had arrived from Winnipeg to help plan the new town site. He had been duly impressed and horrified.

Joyce tried to concentrate as Father Kiloran parsed the useless details. A homily, delivered in his gravelled monotone. “Eric left this morning, you see. Flying Maritime Central Airways to Labrador.” Why would this priest come around assuming he knew something she didn’t? Then he said, No survivors. She heard that part, and stopped listening. Pictured the trapper and the frozen arm.

When he said something about God’s mercy she knew he was finally done.

She said, “I was poaching an egg for lunch.”

She let them lead her into the kitchen, as if she had to show proof of the egg, sitting on its square of toast, perfectly cupped. She had found the poacher in the back of a cupboard a few weeks before, when Eric took possession of the house, and had called Gloria to ask how it worked. It was awfully clever, the way the water bubbled in the bottom of the pan, cooking the eggs from below. She had been eating poached eggs just so she could watch the process.

Joyce sat at the kitchen table. If she felt anything, it was more like foreboding. Like the story was incomplete. Like there had been a crash and Eric might or might not be alive, pending further news. Joyce had been denied the moment when hope still nags. The disaster was confirmed before she understood it, before Gordon and Father were in through the door.

Gordon brought her a folded strip of toilet paper.

“Can’t find a tissue,” he said. “Sorry.”

Joyce held the paper tight, turning and twisting it. It was so much more substantial than the crumpling, flaking stuff her father kept in the outhouse. On a summer morning like this, her father’s voice would carry from behind the door, humming a tune. If he wasn’t anxious about work he might be in there half an hour or more.

A fat teardrop landed on the back of her hand, another hit her thumbnail. She was crying, after all. Still she held the paper. Turning and twisting. Someone shut off the stove, where water still bubbled in the poacher.

Gordon hovered like an obstruction. He was by her side, one knee on the floor. She got a whiff of the whiskey smell before he placed a drink in her hand. It smelled like that song about wanting rain but getting only sun, and being blue like the sky.

Her throat felt thick. It didn’t want to let the whiskey pass.

“She’s not breathing so well,” said Gordon. “Do you want a doctor, Joyce?”

“No,” she whispered. Perhaps she did. She turned to Gordon and said, “What are you doing here?”

Father Kiloran must have still been there as well. But later she would have no recollection of him in the house. Just a grim, cassocked figure ascending the steps, his shiny red cincture whipping in the breeze.

Gloria arrived at the back door and Joyce was there to meet her. Apparently expecting her. She’d brought Anthony, asleep in his stroller, and left him on the back step.

“Dear God, Joyce,” she said. “We never know. We can’t possibly know.”

Know what?

Gloria stood away from Joyce, and circled her waist with her arms to untie the apron. Then she gently lifted it over Joyce’s head, barely touching the hair, and tossed it on a chair. It would stay with her, the burnt cotton smell of the apron.

Joyce opened her dry mouth and lifted her chest, seeking a good breath of air. Gloria’s breath came in big, convulsive gulps. She was red and hot and swollen, teary-eyed even at the best of times now that she was pregnant again.

“Remember how beautiful he looked?” Gloria’s words garbled through her tears. “That night at the Allied party?”

Joyce didn’t share the memory, but felt the power of it. Eric at some party. Playing the fool. All the girls wide-eyed. (“Any one of them would snap him up in a second,” Rachel had warned her.) An essential part of the man had been unavailable to her. The part of him that turned up at these parties.

The sky was blue outside the kitchen window, and she didn’t think she could stand that anymore. Or the egg and toast, cold on the plate with knife and fork on either side. Joyce walked down the hall to the bedroom, shut the blind and sat on the bed.

“I’m sweating,” she said, and pushed a hand into her blouse to lift it from her skin.

“The baby. Your poor baby.” Gloria sat next to her. “Father Kiloran will pray for your baby.”

“There’s no baby,” said Joyce. “I was late, that’s all.” She kicked her slippers off and kneaded her toes into the rug.

A descending roar shook the window blind and the lamp at her bedside. Flight 850. One o’clock already? The clock on the table confirmed it.

“Give me a moment, will you?”

Gloria left and started to pull the door behind her, but the thought of being fully enclosed in one room gave Joyce a twinge of panic. “Leave it,” she said. “Push it open.” Through the door she saw Gordon in the kitchen, his eyes averted from her. She appreciated him for it.

She let herself imagine Eric in a wide clearing of the woods, pacing irritably and pausing to sit on a downed tree trunk, not far from where the plane lay twisted and smouldering. Checking his watch and shielding his eyes to scan the horizon. Where was that bloody rescue crew? The light changing as clouds passed over the sun. Black smoke billowing from the wreck, carried away on the breeze.

//////

The loss of the PBY Canso—an amphibious twin-engine 22-seater, thousands produced during the war and later refurbished for civilian use—left the airport faintly embarrassed. The crash did not demand heroic effort. There was no grimly determined rescue team trekking into the wilderness and battling the elements. A daring airlift of survivors was not required. Saintly doctors and nurses did not work round the clock to save lives.

The plane had simply failed to gain altitude, and clipped the treetops about two miles off Runway 32.

The man from DOT would eventually conclude that the pilot had done his best. Maintained control and brought her down flat enough for the belly to carve a long furrow in the bog. A violent landing, yes. Hard enough to break a man’s neck. But maybe not if he was strapped in. The bog was wide and soft, with plenty of room. After the initial shock of impact there might have been a moment when they believed they had a chance. A moment before they saw the boulder. They must have seen it. The aircraft met the boulder with enough force to cave in the nose and send an unmounted compass a good 200 yards through the windscreen.

The wreck cast a broad circle of nylon, leather, plastic and canvas scraps, long shredded strips of rubber tire, life jackets, rescue flares, buttons, buckles, twisted scraps of clothing ripped from suitcases, shoes, cigarette lighters, and keys. One engine disappeared in the nearby pond. A cabin door lodged between dead trees. A thick husk of fuselage, emptied by the impact of the boulder, was angled to catch the sunrise on a clear morning and reflect it for miles.

//////

She told Gordon not to introduce her as Eric’s fiancée.

“What should I call you, then?”

“Don’t call me anything. Call me Joyce.”

Eric’s father and brother had arrived by mid-morning, the day after the crash.

“They went down to the Drill Hall for the identification,” said Gordon. “And they’ve been there ever since. At a bit of a loss, I think.”

The old Drill Hall on Foss Avenue had been commandeered as a makeshift morgue. “They’re using the shooting range downstairs,” Gordon explained. “Cooler down there.” Of the eleven dead, only Eric had lived in Gander. The rest came from around the island, with the exception of an American from Maryland. Men trickled into town throughout the day—fathers, brothers, uncles, in-laws—identifying bodies and waiting until Magistrate Clowe saw fit to release the remains for burial.

Joyce and Gordon pulled up in Eric’s truck, and Gordon said, “There’s the brother.” A man sat on a folding chair with a hand cupped over his eyes, watching as they approached. He shook Gordon’s hand and turned to Joyce. “I’m Teddy.” His forearms were burnt red, with white patches where skin peeled away.

“Joyce Pelley.”

“You knew my brother?”

A rush in her stomach like a long drink of cold water. “We hadn’t known each other quite so long, but…” She took in Teddy’s face. Red like the arms. “I only knew him since last year. I got here last year.”

“Is the skipper about?” asked Gordon.

“Dad!” Teddy turned to call over his shoulder. His neck was dimpled, with a loose pouch of flesh under the ear. An old wound, maybe. Or a surgical scar. “Dad, come over a minute!”

“Oh, there’s no need,” said Joyce. “We don’t have to interrupt.”

“Is that the wreck?” Teddy lifted his face. “The smell, I mean? The burning?”

Burning bodies. Joyce pushed the thought away. “Oh! No, no. That’s just trash. They’re burning trash over at the base.”

“Over behind the curling club,” said Gordon.

“But it’s close by? The place where they went down?”

“Just beyond Runway 32.” Gordon lofted a hand overhead, in the direction of the airport. “They barely got airborne.”

“We all met because of the band,” said Joyce.

“Well now, me and Eric go back a ways before that,” said Gordon.

“Of course,” said Teddy. He looked from one to the other without a spark of recognition. She could see that Eric had never mentioned her.

A white-haired man appeared from the shady side of the building. Small, but with a perfect bowling ball middle. The belly looked firm, protruding like a pregnant woman’s. He wore a dusty dark suit and a plaid shirt buttoned to the neck. He walked with a roll, one side rising and the opposite shoulder pitching, like an unseen hand was yanking at the left side of his trousers with every step.

“Dad, this is Joyce Pelley. She and Eric were close.”

“Well now,” said the old man. He reached for her hand and lifted it. “Well now, my dear.” His eyes were small bluish pools, nearly swallowed in doughy flesh.

“I only…” said Joyce. Her throat closed and tears gathered, sinuses aching with the pressure. “I knew him with the band.” Teddy sank back into his folding chair.

“That’s alright now,” said the old man. “Going up on the Labrador, was he?”

Joyce nodded, biting hard on her bottom lip. “Just for a few weeks. He had a few weeks work up there.” They had argued about it. Joyce thought it unwise for Eric to quit a good job at the airport for six weeks work somewhere else. Eric argued that it was nearly twice the pay, with travel and board included. And couldn’t he always find something when he got back? Wouldn’t there be all kinds of jobs in Gander, or anywhere, once he had eight weeks experience as a rigging foreman?

They hadn’t said much that morning, though he had thanked Joyce several times after she gave him a tin of sweet biscuits for the trip. Nice ones from Browning and Harvey.

The old man released her hand. “His mother had great hopes for him, you know. If only he’d stayed put.”

“Dad, please,” said Teddy, without looking up.

They paused as an EPA mail plane made its groaning ascent over the hangar, banking lazily to begin its northern trek.

“He was never one to stay put,” said Joyce.

“You fellows must be starved with all this waiting around,” said Gordon. “We could get a bite to eat.”

“I was just talking to a fellow.” The old man pulled a white hanky from his pocket and wiped his nose. “A fellow, and he was saying…” Another swipe across the nose. “He was saying about the service they got planned. Did you know, Ted, they’ll have the priest and the Anglican fellow and whoever all up there on the altar together? Each man taking his turn? Who’s your parish priest here, love?”

“Father Kiloran.” Joyce raised a hand to wipe the tears tickling her eyes, but they had already dried in the sun.

“And he doesn’t mind having the Protestant fellows on the altar? What a sight! Won’t that be a sight, Teddy?”

“We won’t be here,” said Teddy, raising his voice.

“What’s that?”

“They say we’ll get hold of him tonight. We can take him home on the overnight train, if there’s room.”

“What about his passage?”

“The fellow at the station says there’s no charge. He says they load up all the baggage and mail and what have you, and if there’s room we can put him on, and there’s no charge. If there’s no room we got to wait for morning.”

They spoke as if arguing, as if each had lost patience with the other. But they didn’t appear agitated. Teddy tilted back in his chair and squinted into the distance. The old man stood over him, hands on his belly, lips parted and moving slightly as he whispered to himself, repeating what he had just heard.

“I’ve got to make me water,” said the old man.

Gordon took him by the elbow. “We’ll go around to the Elk’s Club. You been in Buchans many a year, I suppose.”

“Since twenty-six, when they collared the Lucky Strike.”

“Twenty-six!” said Gordon. “You must have been there for the first bucket of ore.” They disappeared around the building. Teddy looked up from his chair and said, “You can stay at the house with my missus. I’ll stay at Dad’s.”

“The house?”

“In Buchans, for the funeral.”

“Oh,” said Joyce. “But I have to work.”

“The house will be quiet, you know.” She said nothing, and he added, “We’ve no youngsters, me and her, and the wake’ll be down at Dad’s.”

Joyce found a tissue in her purse and lifted her feet one at a time to wipe her shoes. The hot wind had left a fine layer of dust. “I just don’t know. Of course, you’re his family, so…”

“It’s alright, love,” he said finally. “Never mind.”

“I just don’t know what I would be…”

“It’s fine. Never mind.”

They both lit cigarettes, Joyce flicking her lighter rather than bending to share the flame from his match. She was relieved not to be pregnant, but that didn’t fully account for the liberation she felt.

“I wonder will they take the sacrament?” said Eric’s father when he returned.

“Who’s that, Dad?”

“The crowd when they come to the service. What’s to stop any of them taking the Holy Communion, putting their tongue out for the host, as bold as you please?”

//////

Joyce’s bed was littered with cards. Chaulk’s, Eaton’s, the Co-op, DOT, the weather office, Oceanic Control, the Skyways Club, the Naval Station, Shell Co., TWA, Royal Dutch, Trans Ocean, Pan-Am, Gert and the girls at the ticket counter. A bottle of whiskey from the boys at the Bristol Building. A note from the wire chief at CN, who had briefly courted Joyce a few months ago.

“I don’t know who I am, or what I am in all this,” she said. “I just insulted his brother, anyway.”

Footsteps sounded in the hallway, and she sighed with relief as they continued past their door and on to the stairwell.

“Go somewhere,” said Rachel, lying on her bed with a paperback.

“Go? Where would I go?”

“Anywhere.”

“Cripes, Rach. I can’t just disappear.”

“Why not? Every day you put people on those airplanes.”

Joyce waved this away and they fell silent. Rachel read. Joyce rubbed her eyes and temples and neck. The next set of footsteps stopped to knock. “Joyce?” It sounded like her lips were right at the crack of the door.

“It’s open.”

Katie let herself in, leaning against the door as she closed it. “I’m sorry. Is it alright I came?”

“Everything still grounded?” asked Rachel, taking the measure of Katie in full stewardess guise, hat, eyebrows, and all.

“Everything, till after supper at least. I’m sorry, we haven’t… Katie Hogan.”

Rachel offered her name without rising from her pillow.

“Is it alright I came, Joyce?”

“Of course.” Joyce had no idea what was appropriate.

“Joyce should get out of here,” said Rachel. “I told her to go away somewhere.”

“Oh!” Katie looked to Joyce. “I can get you out, you know. As soon as we’re flying again. Do you want to go to Montreal for a bit? You can have my apartment.”

Joyce recalled rising from the toilet and turning to see the clockwise swirl of reddened water, a darkened fold of toilet tissue at its centre. She saw it as though looking down from a great height. By then everything had been sealed. They were already down, no survivors.

“I can’t go,” she said. “Not now.”

“Of course you can,” said Rachel.

“We went off the same runway three years ago,” said Katie. “It was nothing. Only we skidded off into a snow bank, and everyone was fine, only I had headaches for a bit, and sometimes still. But, I’ll stop now.” She was still pressed up to the door, hands behind her back. Like they kept her in the room against her will. “Everyone’s afraid, only they won’t admit it. I can’t be around them tonight.”

Joyce shared a tin of wieners with Rachel for dinner, got cleaned up and went to the drill hall, where Maeve Vardy was to lead the rosary. The shooting range in the basement was long and cool and dim, with plain coffins laid side-by-side along the far wall.

They began with the Agony in the Garden, and carried on with a mix of the sorrowful and glorious mysteries. Joyce picked through her beads and swayed gently on her knees, stumbling over the Hail Holy Queen, as always. She muttered what phrases she could recall—“…send up our sighs…this our exile…”—and emerged slowly back into the room. There was quite a crowd, three dozen or more.

“I understand, Joyce,” said Maeve, pulling her aside. “I went through it all in the war, when Toby’s ship was lost. It’s a sisterhood, really. So many of us.” She produced a sheaf of paper from a folder. It was thick, cream-coloured paper scripted with fancy black letters. To everything there is a season…began the first page. “Will you do a reading for the general service, Joyce?”

“I don’t know,” said Joyce. “Isn’t it every church? You want readings from the different bibles? Whatever they use?”

“I got the sister-in-law of the pilot. They’re Baptist. Is it Baptist? Anyway, Father Kiloran agreed to it, whatever bible they use.”

“I might be in Buchans,” said Joyce.

“Oh, well then.”

Gloria came to Joyce’s side and clutched her hand. “The children are doing the offertory,” she said. “Father Kiloran can’t be letting old Reverend Wiseman have his way all the time.”

“Each crowd gets their prayers and blessings,” said Maeve.

“You don’t have to do a reading, Joyce.”

“That’s up to Joyce,” said Maeve, turning a shoulder to block Gloria out.

//////

Joyce waited until the hallway was silent, then crept from her room to the telephone. She called Den. As good a confessor as any.

“Should I go to Buchans?”

“It’d look awful queer if you don’t,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“I’d have to go as his fiancée.”

“Yes.”

“It’s wrong.”

“Ah.”

“Not wrong. But it doesn’t feel honest.”

“Ah. How bad would it be, to be there?”

“Easier than here, I’d say.”

“People go to funerals with all kinds of feelings. Nobody’s completely honest about it. Don’t mind that.”

“I already said too much, to one of them at least.”

“You won’t be held to it. You’re in shock, like everyone. Will you be alright, Joyce? Want me to come with you, as your brother, or uncle?”

She considered this, declined, and thanked him. Called the Eastbound Inn, had Finley on the night desk track down Teddy.

“I’ll come with you,” she said.

He sighed. “We’re leaving first thing.”

Morning dawned pink. The skipper dozed as soon as the train pulled out.

“We’ll introduce you as the fiancée,” said Teddy. “Will you agree to that?”

Joyce nodded, tugging at her hem.

“Then we’ll talk no more about it,” said Teddy.

//////

For two days the crowd pressed into the old man’s house, bringing in the smell of the town. A grinding, smouldering odour. The smell of friction. The brother Joyce had met before, the one working for the sawmill women in Appleton, spent most of the first day outside, pulling rotten planks off one corner of the house. The others implored him to come in, not to ruin his good clothes. “Look at this,” he replied, holding up a plank and pulling it apart. “Rotten. Look.” There was a brother who worked the Lucky Strike Mine, a brother with one eye who had helped cut the drift to the Oriental Mine, and a brother who said the Maclean would be the deepest pit of them all, just you wait. There was a brother who had won two Herders playing defence for the Miners, and a brother who had burned the theatre down by letting the film overheat in the projection room. The women mostly spoke on the run, in and out of the kitchen. They were all older than Joyce, except a cousin near her age whose husband never showed, and a novice with the Presentation Sisters who couldn’t have been more than sixteen. There were little boys who stuck pencils in each other’s ears and were sent outside whenever someone noticed that they had come back in. There was an ancient man who had towed the very first ore sample across Red Indian Lake so it could be shipped overseas for testing.

“Do you meet the movie stars in Gander?” asked the brother who had burned down the theatre. He had a florid face, as if he had been permanently scorched by the blaze. “Did you meet the ones who came to do a picture with Jimmy Stewart. Did you know about that?”

“No,” said Joyce.

“Jimmy Stewart wasn’t in Gander,” said Teddy.

“And that’s what he was,” said the brother who burned down the theatre. “They made a picture. And when they were done they had a big dinner laid out for the whole crowd of them. Sixty pound of lobster, that’s what they ordered. I have it on good authority.”

The girls always talked about stars spotted at the airport. Monty Clift last week. Ida Lupino, coming in soaking wet on a Sunday morning. Bob Hope on the radio while his flight refuelled. In his cups, said Den. Joyce didn’t pay it much mind. But she knew the heightened buzz that ran through the airport when someone special was sighted. She had been shocked to look up one day and see Bobby Darin striding by right in front of her. Hands in his pockets and a nice blue checked jacket. Disappearing into the men’s room.

The casket sat under the front window, closed. Joyce wondered whether it might be empty. Alice Henley had told her that there were empty caskets for some of the poor folks who had been cut to ribbons on the runway back in forty-six, because what was left of them couldn’t be put in a box.

The young novice, Sister Rosalia, led the rosary on Thursday night. Her slender throat puffed and quaked as she rang out the mysteries in a high, clear voice.

Teddy kept his distance, but he and his wife sat next to Joyce for the funeral. There was a big turnout, though the service felt drab and perfunctory after the drama of the wake. Back at the house, the parlour felt empty without the body and attempts at conversation died in the rattle of unsteady cups on saucers.

When Joyce brought down her small, sturdy case in the morning, she found Teddy and Sister Rosalia standing inside the front door. They looked as if they had been standing there for some time.

“She’ll accompany you to the station and carry your bag,” said Teddy. The sister looked fearful, standing next to Teddy with her hands hidden and her wide, dark eyes on Joyce.

“Oh, but I can carry this. It’s nothing.”

“Well, you’d best get underway then,” said Teddy. “Goodbye, Joyce. We’ll remember you in our prayers.”

“Thank you for everything,” said Joyce, and would have said more. But Teddy was out the door.

Sister Rosalia walked quickly, though they had plenty of time. “This way,” she said. “This way.” Joyce knew the way. The railway station was almost in sight of the house, at the end of a path that ran down a small slope and alongside the tracks.

They walked in silence until the girl turned her wide eyes to Joyce and said, “I was nearly spoiled, you know. We had a lodger who…I could have been spoiled.”

“I don’t understand, Sister.”

“When Father took in lodgers, there was one who tried.” She looked away again, hugging one arm to the other. “I kept away from him. Once he caught me at the washing, and meant to force a hand. He pulled at my clothes. But then he stopped before anything else happened. He seemed to be in pain, and then there was a dark spot on his trousers. He said it was because I was filthy.”

“What’s your name, Sister?”

“Rosalia, since I took my vows.”

“Before the vows.”

“You mean my baptismal name. I was Elizabeth Margaret.”

“Elizabeth, why are you telling me this story?”

“I never told anyone before, outside the Order.”

“Don’t you think you should keep it that way?”

“But what if it might help someone else?”

“How can it help anyone?”

Elizabeth stared at the ground. “Well, I, I didn’t want, I mean, just because a girl is spoiled…” Her voice trailed off in what might have been a sob. With her cameo face and fulsome, straight teeth, the strands of black hair escaping her wimple, Joyce thought it awful foolish for her father to have invited strange men into the house.

Elizabeth stopped walking. The path had taken them parallel to the railway tracks, and they were close enough to the station that Joyce recognized several men and women waiting on the platform. She had met them during the wake. A little boy stared at her as he reached into a wrinkled bag and crammed candy in his mouth.

“Do you have your permissions for the train?” asked Elizabeth. “From Uncle Ted?”

“Yes. I have everything.” Teddy had presented the required papers to her that morning, and had done so with some ceremony, explaining that travel on the branch line was restricted to persons with written permission from the company.

“Uncle Ted says he doesn’t blame you, and he wanted to be Christian about it so he let you come here.” She spoke quickly, and pressed both hands to her legs, flattening her habit as the wind picked up. “He says Uncle Eric was awful, how he…he carried on. He says Jesus is merciful. You’ll find some literature for your journey. You have my prayers. My prayers are with you, I mean. Goodbye.” She hurried away, the habit lifting behind her.

Joyce dropped her suitcase beside her and opened her purse to retrieve the brown envelope stamped Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company. In the folds of its officious documents she found a pamphlet: The Next War: A Call for Christian Vigilance Against the General Slackening of Moral and Social Standards. She opened it to a page marked by a white strip of paper.

The Good-Time Girl

A decline of parental responsibility was an unfortunate by-product of the war effort, as well as a diminishing influence of religious and social values. Having grown up in a time when the stable life of home, church, and school was disrupted and threatened by the Japanese and German Peril, young people prone to social and mental defects emerged with no sense of responsibility. Left unchecked, these defects led to a licentious deviation that has been particularly damaging for young women.

It is this subset of the community’s wasted and wanton that produces the ‘Good-Time Girl.’

She is self-centred, valuing little beyond personal enjoyment and committed to little beyond her own gratification. She is morally and emotionally unstable, with a tendency to reject discipline and control.

Joyce turned to the front of the pamphlet. Pages flipped in the breeze, and she caught it at the table of contents: The Jewish question. What happened to daddy? Idle hours and delinquency. Healing the wounds. The corners of this page were decorated with small line drawings. A smoking man in a fedora, a shapely woman drinking from a glass, a crying baby, and Jesus on the cross.

Boarded and seated, she returned to the bookmarked article and browsed it, registering phrases at random. …personal adornment…the venereal stain…she often does not trouble to wash and is sluttish about her undergarments.

She took a TCA linen napkin from her purse and wiped her shoes. Tugged at her hemline a couple of times—she was travelling in the troublesome skirt again, the one that hung on to the seat while her legs slipped forward and out. She held the pamphlet tight in one fist until a man came around selling the raspberry drops she and Gloria used to gorge on every Christmas. Then she dropped the pamphlet to the seat beside her and bought the candy.

//////

Christmas was approaching. She asked Gordon what bookings the band had, and said she wanted to sing. They hadn’t replaced Eric. A lot of halls and clubs didn’t have a proper piano anyway.

The change was immediate, and so obvious as to be embarrassing. They heard it in the sure-handed flow of a tune, in new spaces that let a little air into a horn solo or a crescendo. The band sounded cleaner, like the grit had been washed from it.

The only difference was Eric’s absence.

Joyce flew to St. John’s and found a rippling plum-blue cocktail dress with a high neckline and a pearl-beaded bodice miraculously cut to her size. The first night she wore it, she had the extraordinary sensation of opening her mouth and the music coming with hardly any effort, the words forming and settling back on her like mist. It stayed like that for many nights after, and she had the cocktail dress nearly worn through by summer. Occasionally, a song might put a lump in her throat for no reason. A simple line she had sung dozens of times overwhelmed her one night with its perfectly matched string of words—glitter…gleam…dream. She had to skip the final chorus, feeling stupid and embarrassed until Gordon struck up the next number.

Gordon needed the band more than Joyce did. Fran was getting out again, picking up a few groceries at the Co-op or driving Matilda to Girl Guides. People said it was good for her, a fresh start. The way she shuffled about with little steps and big, wide eyes, hardly exchanging a word with anyone, was an embarrassment trailing Gordon’s every move. But people still danced to songs about romance and eternal love. Gordon had been right all along. It was a kind of playacting, a dress-up game.

Every show the band did now closed with Gordon taking the microphone to sing “Days of Wine and Roses,” while Joyce stepped down from the stage and danced with any man who offered. Sometimes other men would cut in and the band would give the song an extra couple of turns, until everyone waiting could have his twirl. Some of them treated the dance with great solemnity and ceremony, and Joyce suspected these were the men who pitied her. Others were flirty and breathy, with crawling hands pulling her to their hard hipbones. These must have been the ones who understood that she had never truly been Eric’s fiancée, though she had never mentioned this to anyone except Den, who was airtight.

“Is that what people are saying?” she asked Gloria one afternoon. “That I’m good for a bit of fun?”

“Oh, goodness no!” cried Gloria, though neither of them pretended the answer was truthful. “It’s not like if we were back home,” she added. “It’s not like you’re spoiled goods.”