14

The teddy bears tumbled from the box in sickly shades of yellow and pink, with muddy red eyes that looked like scabs. Over three hundred teddy bears donated by the St. John’s Boys Club—the hard-won result of who knows how many bottles collected and cold-plate dinners sold—and all so tragically ugly.

“A merchant clearing out poor stock,” said Ingrid, the Red Cross interpreter from Toronto. “Something doesn’t sell. So when a charity comes he offers a discount, or a two-for-one.” Using one edge of the scissors, she cut the seal on a second box. More of the same. “For the children, it doesn’t matter.”

“No.” Joyce squeezed a pink bear, its fur greasy on her fingers. “It’s a sin all the same.” She dropped the bear and wiped her hand on her slacks. Reached into the fusty, tangled innards of the latest clothing donations to separate the most essential items—winter coats, boots, hats, scarves, long johns, and sweaters.

She had given up trying to distance herself from the refugees. Over three thousand Hungarians had passed through the airport since last week, en route to New York or Montreal or Toronto. Plenty more to come, what with the Russians killing everyone and setting fire to everything. Joyce had watched several newspapermen talk to a barber from Budapest, with Ingrid at his side to translate. I got out with the clothes on my back and a razor to defend myself, the barber said. I saw their bayonets cut down women and children. Bodies trampled under their boots. If they found out you fought against them, they killed your family and friends and neighbours. Ingrid struggled with the translation, and said later that it was impossible to get people’s stories straight. The barber had been small and handsome, with a luxurious white moustache like the man in the Monopoly game. He had borrowed a clean jacket before meeting the newspapermen. Combed the moustache before they took his picture.

Joyce had stopped reading the papers after the barber’s story, had stopped eavesdropping as well. Instead she took to watching the Hungarians as they entered the makeshift relief centre, a curtained-off section of the terminal. They fumbled with glasses, formed orderly and near silent lines for soup and fresh clothes and washrooms, and repeatedly checked their pockets for important papers or money or small items to be held and worried like rosary beads. They rarely embraced or even touched each other. Joyce liked the children best of all. How they shook off the shyness and disorientation, blinking back to life, desperate for release after countless hours trapped on a slow air force freighter. Before long they would be laughing and carrying on, riling their parents.

The latest group had just been packed off to Montreal, bellies full, teeth cleaned, bowels voided, faces and armpits scrubbed, pads changed, cheeks shaved, and hair combed. Less than ninety minutes earlier they had stumbled into the airport, lifeless and slack-jawed.

“No shortage of help today,” said Ingrid, arranging the ugly bears on one of the plywood tables that lined the back of the room. With another flight due in a couple of hours, the volunteers had mostly stayed on, clearing dishes and wiping down tables. Card games were starting up. Beth Ann McCurdy was winning. Her husband Dave had been with the band for ages, his big bass so reliable that no one gave it a thought.

“Sure that’s not even cards!” Beth Ann cried, slapping Dawson on the shoulder of his Star Taxi windbreaker. “You’ll go on anything! That’s not even cards!” Dawson hunched in his jacket and grinned.

“Here comes your friend,” said Ingrid, touching Joyce’s hand.

Andor strolled into the relief centre at a leisurely pace, toes out and legs wide, greeting the volunteers like a plant owner touring the shop floor. He leaned into the soup tureen, sniffed, frowned, nodded. Took his time selecting a new toothbrush from the toiletry table. Shorter than Joyce and impossibly thin, with long ears down the sides of his long head, he looked like a dissolute magician in the clothes he had chosen: grey flannel schoolboy pants cinched under a billowing bright red shirt. The shirt was surely a woman’s blouse.

Andor was one of the sixty-five men who had been stranded in Gander for the past three days, waiting for their freighter to be repaired or for a replacement plane to show up and complete the journey to Toronto. People said they were resistance fighters who had spent weeks hiding in the woods before finding their way to Vienna. They were sleeping on cots at the old Eastbound Inn, irritable with the delay. They slouched about during the day, smoking, dozing, eating little, complaining of headaches.

Andor was different. He never stopped moving and made faces like a comic actor. The first time Joyce saw him he was digging through the donated clothes, trying on colourful outfits and striking ridiculous poses for anyone who wanted to watch. She had laughed and offered him a cigarette. He lit it, puffed thoughtfully, wrinkled his lumpy red nose, and muttered something that Ingrid had refused to translate until Joyce badgered her. “He says, I hope you American girls are sweeter than your tobacco.”

She didn’t need his foolishness today. Joyce was desperately tired, and due back at work at four. She turned her back and went to work with a box of used toys. They smelled of metallic paint and mould and cardboard, and a salty tang that could only be children’s saliva. In her exhaustion she couldn’t suppress a wave of emotion at the touch of each object, an awareness of the human presence in every toy. The nicks and scratches on a battered wooden boat. A baby’s teeth marks in the lid of a jigsaw puzzle.

“Question, Miss Joyce.”

“Yes?” Joyce turned and pushed back her hair, a strange plastic object in one hand.

Andor perched on the table and searched for the English words.

“Why does your Eisenhower, does not, send armies to save Hungary?”

“Ha-ha,” said Joyce, with a roll of her eyes. Andor laughed, showed his yellow teeth. He raised this question every day. The first time he asked, Joyce had told him this wasn’t America. The second time, she had snapped, “He’s not my bloody Eisenhower,” which was apparently the funniest thing Andor had ever heard. Now it was their running joke.

Joyce reached for her cigarettes and laid two on the table. Andor tucked one behind an ear, and took matches from his pocket to light the other. Like all of them, he had grey circles around his Chinese eyes, and always seemed slightly out of breath.

He beckoned Ingrid, speaking Hungarian to her in a low, gravelly whisper.

“He wants to know, is your heart pure and strong and worthy of the love of a Hungarian man?” said Ingrid.

“My heart is tough as an old boot,” said Joyce, examining a fine black velveteen skirt with a rope-tie belt. “You wouldn’t get a steak knife through it.”

Andor turned an ear to Ingrid, then whooped with laughter and raised his puffy sleeves to clap twice. Joyce reached under the table, where she had stored a thick canvas shirt, nearly new. She tossed it to him. “Tell him that blouse smells.”

Andor caught the shirt and made a great show of surprise and delight, long ears lifting and flexing as his face split with a smile. Clutching the shirt to his chest, he bowed deeply and blew Joyce a kiss, skipping away to the dining area, where Gordon was wiping down tables. Snatching the towel that hung over Gordon’s shoulder, Andor propped a shoe on a chair and began buffing it.

“Get out of it with your foolishness,” said Gordon, and snatched the towel back. Like a mime, Andor twisted his face in mock bewilderment and shrugged his shoulders.

“He’ll be back here before long,” said Ingrid. “Where his hijinks are more appreciated.”

//////

The goal was to have each planeload back in the air in two hours. But everyone talked as if the Hungarians might settle in Gander and never leave. Gloria said they should be put to work straight away building houses and roads. They’d be happy for the work and do it for any wage. Den Shea said there was sure to be Communists among them, and soft-hearted kindness was exactly what they were counting on. Mike Devine said the first thing that happens when a crowd like that settle somewhere is the foreign men go after the women and the local men are shut out altogether. Alice Henley had heard that Hungarians ate soup made from cherries, and they wouldn’t be very happy with the pitiful cherries around these parts. “They want to go to Nova Scotia,” she said. “Up to Digby, where my father’s from. Gorgeous cherries.” Rachel said there ought to be more military around to keep them quarantined, as they might carry diseases.

Rachel feared everything since her marriage to the fellow who ran the fire department. They had a house on the new town site and Rachel worked hard to leave behind her old airport days, with all the parties and boyfriends. She called Joyce occasionally. But they never crossed paths anymore.

Joyce didn’t say much, but she understood that the Hungarians had come from violence. Some of them must have killed and lied and stolen to save themselves. What if they still carried this violence with them? The fear never surfaced when she took a shift at the relief centre. But later, when she recalled their faces and their restless, twitchy bodies, the way they huddled and shivered as if unable to get warm, she thought that some of them would surely kill and lie and steal again if they had to. She knew that a jolly, outgoing man often held awful things inside.

The Hungarian crisis had brought all manner of stranger to the airport—Red Cross staff, military men, nurses from St. John’s, customs officers, out-of-town volunteers. The place felt lighter with so many strange faces. None of them knew Joyce’s history. They didn’t feel bad for her or treat her like her best days were behind her. In the two years since Eric died, Joyce had been circled by a few men and been set upon by a couple of widowers encouraged by Gloria or Mary. She had allowed none of them more than an after-work cup of coffee. She was social, playing bridge and stepping out weekly with the TCA bowling team. Last year they had recorded the highest team score of the season, duly reported in the Beacon sports section the following Wednesday. But the streets around the airport were quieter now, with so many moved into town. Hardly any children around, unless their parents drove them up for the hospital or the rink.

Chaulker’s Store was the last one Joyce could walk to, with the rest moved to the new town square. Joyce had her name in for one of the apartments going up on Elizabeth Drive, though everyone said it was more expensive to live in town. Gloria said the town taxes were robbery.

She returned to the relief centre the following afternoon, and walked in as Maeve Vardy grew very curt with a teenaged girl who refused to exchange her filthy dress for decent clothes. “Look at this,” said Maeve. “Nice sweater set, and slacks to match. Just your size.” The young woman backed away. Her black hair was short and bristly, with patches of exposed scalp showing red welts. Ingrid stepped between them, speaking gentle Hungarian to the woman, who replied in a shaky voice, near tears. “She thinks you want her to undress here, out in the open,” Ingrid explained to Maeve.

It was a small group off the latest flight, and there wasn’t much to do. They picked through the food and clothes with little apparent interest. Alice Henley distributed towels and cakes of Sunlight to those lined up to wash. Joyce helped bring dirty dishes to the commissary, passing through the room being used as a clinic. The girl Maeve had scared sat with her skirt hiked up and stockings rolled down, showing bruised and bandaged legs. A nurse changed the dressings while the girl stared unblinking at her wounds, as if committing the sight to memory. The battered legs looked strong and her exposed neck was straight and sturdy. Joyce was sure she would live many years.

“Your friend got out this morning,” said Ingrid, when Joyce returned to the clothes station.

“Andor? Got out?”

“Flew out to New York.”

“But…But they’re going to Toronto.”

“New York or Toronto, it’s all the same to him. He didn’t want to wait any longer, so he talked his way onto a planeload bound for New York.” Ingrid shrugged and apologized—“Boch-uh-nut”—to a grey-bearded man who held up two odd shoes, the last ones in a wooden crate. A boy in a ragged shirt approached. “Hello. Fogo-ta-tash!” Joyce said in the phonetically crude Hungarian she had picked up. She pulled a blue dress shirt from the box at her feet. “Ked-vuh-led? You like?” He snatched the shirt and scurried away.

“What a shame,” said Ingrid, lifting the shoe crate and tossing it back with the other empties.

“He’s only a boy. Scared out of his wits.”

“I mean about Andor. That you didn’t see him to say goodbye.”

“No, no. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“He left something for you.” Ingrid pulled a small box from a wrinkled paper bag, the light rippling off its shiny black surface. “A jewelry chest, I think.”

“Goodness,” said Joyce. She took the box, which was much heavier than it looked. “It’s got a racy picture.” The lid was painted with a brown-skinned woman on a couch, her robe opened in a V down to her navel. “Where do you suppose he got this?”

“When the invasion began, some of them managed to get away with a few valuables, like jewels or money. I talked to one man who took his liquor with him.”

“Took his liquor? Dragging bottles of liquor around with the Russians after him?”

“The liquor is what saved him. They came up against a Russian tank, and the tank commander let them through, as a trade for the liquor.”

Joyce examined the brown-skinned woman on the lid, her breasts fully outlined and barely covered by the robe. Threaded gold lines looped and curled around and down the sides of the box. She opened the lid, wondering if it might be a music box. The blue carpet inside darkened when she ran her fingers against it, and the extra shelf that hinged from the lid held a small bracelet. But no music played.

“Is there anything in there?”

“Just this.” Joyce held up the bracelet, made of smooth, polished stones linked together.

“I’d say he started out with a box of jewelry, and bartered pieces for food or passage,” said Ingrid. “He had a message as well.”

“Andor? What message?”

“He said.” Ingrid shook her head and sighed in exasperation. “He said, ‘Tell Miss Joyce my great adventure is over. From now on my life will be like any other.’ He was nothing but jokes and nonsense, the entire time he was here.”

“Oh, but I would have been disappointed if he didn’t leave us with nonsense.”

“It’s gotten him this far, I suppose.”

//////

The Christmas Eve refugees stayed a few extra hours so they could have turkey dinner with all the trimmings. The school choir sang and the gifts from the toy drive were ready because Mrs. Bowe and the other teachers had stayed up all night sorting and wrapping them, marking each with a B or G and a number to suggest appropriate age.

Joyce spent all afternoon in the kitchen, using an ice-cream scoop to add a ball of mashed turnip to every meal. Maeve Vardy was at her side, dousing each plate with gravy.

“Father Kiloran says they’re mostly Catholics, of a sort,” said Maeve. “They looked very devout when we did the blessing beforehand.”

When everyone had their pudding, Joyce took up a plate of turkey and dressing and found a stool in the rear of the commissary kitchen. Racks filled with dirty dishes wheeled through the door, and steam plumed from sinks being refilled for another round. “Look alive now, girls,” called a voice, just as several plates crashed to the floor, raising laughter and a round of applause.

“Joyce!” hissed a voice behind her.

She turned to see Gloria’s husband looking through a barely opened door.

“What are you doing in the pantry, Frank?”

“We’re ready to do the gifts for the youngsters. Come here.”

She stepped in and he closed the door behind her. Joyce blinked, adjusting to the glare of the overhead light bulb. He was a few drinks in, she could tell by the minty candies he sucked to mask his breath. He always had a few in when he played Santa for the Airport Club kids’ party.

“Give me a hand with the jacket, will you? Can you get the first three buttons for me?”

Frank held an old pillow across his waist while Joyce pulled the two sides of the threadbare Santa jacket together. She had to kneel to do the buttons. “They’ll pop,” she said. “The buttonholes are nearly gone.”

“Christ, Joyce. You’re a saviour.” He groaned, and the pillow belly swayed toward her.

“You can manage the rest.” Joyce stood and backed into a shelf, knocking over two cans of peaches. The pantry was large, but crowded with crates and flour sacks and beef buckets, the walls lined with tinned fruit, tomatoes, peas and carrots, coffee, lunch meat. A crate of potatoes smelled earthy.

“Give me a hand with the belt, though?”

She crouched again, and took the strip of black vinyl hanging from either side of the jacket. He kept the pillow in place as she ran the belt through the plastic buckle and cinched it.

“Do they know who Santa is, I wonder?” asked Frank, as she stepped away.

“I don’t know. They’ll be grateful either way.”

“Do you get lonely up here now? With most people moved to the new town site?” He asked this as if it were the next obvious question.

“That beard needs replacing,” Joyce replied. The white mass of curls had shriveled on one side. Someone must have left it on a radiator.

“Remember that?” asked Frank, using his chin to indicate over Joyce’s shoulder.

She turned and recognized the costume hung from a hook on the door. A head-to-toe bodysuit with a zipper up the front, patterned in faded diamonds of green and yellow. It was more of a jester’s outfit. But Joyce had worn it during her first Christmas in Gander, acting as Frank’s elf at the children’s party.

“Nobody wore it this year,” said Frank.

“What happened to that girl you had last year?”

“Her husband won’t allow it,” said Frank. “But no one ever wore it like you, Joyce. You’ve still got the figure for it. You know that, don’t you?”

She touched the sleeve, wondering at her brazen confidence of three years ago. It had stretched around her like a second skin. “Where’s Gloria? I thought she was bringing Anthony and the twins.”

“Anthony’s terrified of Santa. When I pulled off the beard and said, ‘Look, it’s me, Daddy,’ he cried even louder. But Joyce, you’d fit nicely into that costume still. How about it, eh?”

“No.”

“Come on now. For a lark.”

Joyce opened the pantry door. “I imagine they’re ready for you.”

“A house full of screaming youngsters, it makes you remember the old days. How good you had it.”

“Merry Christmas, Frank. I’ll see all of you for dinner tomorrow.”

//////

She helped with the dishes and slipped in for a look at the party. Frank was on his feet, empty sack over his back. The children were gathered around and calling to him in their strange language. Some clutched dolls or teddies or colourful objects. “Bulldog,” shouted Frank, and paused. Ingrid leaned into him and whispered in his ear. Frank nodded, and roared what sounded like, “Bulldog-Kara-Choneee!” The kids laughed and clutched at his legs as he started wading through the crowd. He touched their heads and bent for kisses. He threw his head back and arched to the ceiling until Joyce thought he might fall. The pillow bulged out from under his jacket. The suit was filthy. “Ho! Ho! Ho!” he boomed. “Bullllllllldog-Kara-Choneeeeeeee!” The grown-ups were clapping in time as “Jolly Old St. Nicholas” played on the phonograph.

The noise echoed around the room, bringing others from the kitchen. “Good lord,” said Beth Ann. The parents hadn’t moved quick enough, and one young man was bowled over by the child mob. Frank trudged through the crowd, the kids swarming him, grappling at his legs and sleeves. Mike Devine thrust himself into the middle of it, raising his big arms. “Now, now, boys and girls,” he shouted. “I think we all need—”

Frank called out something, and the children must have understood because now they were jumping and screaming, drowning out the music. From the sack he drew a handful of candy.

“I didn’t know there were so many,” said Joyce.

“It was all families, this flight,” replied Beth Ann.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” said Maeve, wiping a tear away. “They’re all God’s children. Even the poor Jews.”

Candy spilled to the floor. The kids dove for it.

“I meant to tell you,” said Beth Ann. “Gord Delaney—”

The shrieks from the children hit a higher register as more candy rained down from Frank’s hand. Then another handful, landing at Mike Devine’s feet. The children attacked, nearly toppling him before he could back away.

Frank finally escaped through a fire exit, with Mike doing his best to hold off the horde. A little boy in a green cardigan slipped through the door. Mike, teeth gritted and hair askew, grabbed the tail of the cardigan and dragged him back, handing him to an old woman who landed a good cuff at the back of his head. The boy started crying, cuing an outbreak of tears around the room. Several older boys appeared to be fighting in the corner, running hard at each other and tumbling to the tiled floor. A little girl sat alone not far from Joyce, sobbing and pulling at her fine yellow hair.

“Gord Delaney and Fran. They’re moving to Halifax in the new year.”

“Moving?”

“For work. They haven’t told anyone. But Dave got wind of it. Gord’s been hired to run the show up there. It’s closer to Fran’s family as well. They’ll have a bit of help.”

Joyce counted a pulse in the arch of her foot. She had never known Gander without Gord. Never sung without him. “Could Dave lead the band, do you think?”

“Dave’s going to give it up. He says there’s nobody to lead the band, really. And he’s tired of it.”

The children began to slow, voices turned hoarse. The criers sniffed and snotted. The fighting boys slumped in exhaustion. The room trembled in aftershock. Joyce sneezed twice from the dust they had kicked up. The boy in the green cardigan sprawled on the floor, wiping a sleeve across his hot face. The yellow-haired girl hung over the shoulder of a birdlike man, her mouth open and eyes glazed.

“It couldn’t go on forever. God knows I could do to have Dave around the house more. We were in such a rush to get in. The yard’s a shambles, and the basement half-done.”

Joyce wiped her nose. The Hungarians were on their hands and knees, men, women, and children, gathering the remaining candy. Who knew when they might see such bounty again, or where?

“Never mind all that,” said Beth Ann. “Are you working tomorrow?”

“I’m off until four on Boxing Day.”

“There’ll be a crowd making the rounds tomorrow night.”

“I don’t know.” Making the rounds was tiresome. Trudging through the snow. Fumbling with boots in a darkened foyer while your stockings soaked in melted snow. Warm drinks and mixed nuts in an overheated living room. And just as you started to get comfortable someone would be shouting Come along now, come along, forcing all hands back out into the black night, feet freezing and sweat chilling, on to the next house. Last Christmas a fellow from Atlas Construction had vomited in Nel Anstey’s lap. It was like he was taking aim, the way he lurched at Nel and let fly. A few feet to the left and he would have hit Joyce. “Everyone’s so spread out now. You can’t just dodge to the next house.”

“The boys will drive. But listen now.” Beth Ann glanced behind her, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “Those new boys started last month at Air Traffic Control? They’re coming with us. Not one of them married, Joyce.”

“I don’t know.”

“Top dollar at ATC is a fortune, Joyce. Best salary in town. Wouldn’t you rather have a fellow like that, instead of dirty old Frank Tucker pulling you into the pantry?”

“I didn’t let him do anything,” hissed Joyce.

“Of course not. But that’s how a fellow treats a girl when she’s footloose.”

As long as she remained single, she had to endure it all. The pity and hushed whispers. The dancing boys who brushed their lips to her ear and worked their fingers into her waist. The besotted men who pulled her into the pantry, sighing as she dropped to her knees to help with their buttons and big pillow bellies.

The room was nearly silent now. Parents lined up for the washrooms with the bodies of their spent children draped across them. Exhaustion seemed to sweep the room all at once.

“Don’t be sad about the band, Joyce. It’s someone else’s turn.”

“I’m not sad.”

“A lot of people just want records now anyway.”

“They can’t leave right after Christmas,” says Joyce. “We’ve got a booking for New Year’s.”

“And that’ll be it, then. By next New Year’s, you can have your own night on the town, maybe with a fellow to take you out.”