ELSPETH WROTE:
Dearest Izzy,
Life up here goes on. It’s hot here. I never knew I could sweat so much. Trees are falling, and we have cleared a great deal of the forest. Stumps everywhere. I have learned to fish, Tyler taught me. Caught a trout and ate it right away. Had whisky and condensed milk for afters – it’s nicer than it sounds.
Last Friday night we held a concert. It went very well – at first.
The rehearsals hadn’t gone well at all. Mostly, because the girls hadn’t wanted to be distracted from their love lives, the warm weather and long, light evenings were ideal for flirtatious excursions into the forest. Still, Elspeth believed she had discovered some talent.
Lorna admitted that as well as being able to flare her nostrils, she could tap dance. Tricia could do a passable imitation of Marlene Dietrich and Dorothy had briefly gone to ballet classes when she was seven. Costumes were a problem, since the girls only had dungarees, boots and their official uniforms with them. There were no lights. But, Elspeth thought, it will be light on the night. This time of year, it hardly got dark.
There was no curtain and the only music would be from the wind-up gramophone and Tyler’s six records. But she could always accompany acts on her accordion. It will be fine, she told herself. ‘Forest Frolics’, she would call it – ‘An Evening’s Extravaganza with the Dungareed Darlings’. She always did like a bit of alliteration.
On the morning of the grand concert, Elspeth asked Frazer if he was coming.
‘I am. But I’m a wee bit hurt you didn’t ask me to do a turn.’
Elspeth said she hadn’t known he was talented.
‘Well, I am. I do bird calls.’
‘What sort of birds?’
‘Any sort of bird. It goes down a fair treat at parties and the like.’
‘Well,’ said Elspeth, ‘come along tonight. Do some bird calls, why not? You could do requests. You know, someone will call out a bird – a raven or a corncrake – and you could do it.’
‘Ye’ve just mentioned two birds I can’t do. But, never mind. I’ll be there. All dressed up and all.’
Elspeth said, ‘Excellent.’ Then she worried.
‘The thing is,’ she said to Lorna at lunchtime. ‘It’s got to be saucy. I mean, there has been so little rehearsal, the only way we can keep the audience entertained is by being naughty.’
They had to shout. Four bombers were thundering overhead, roaring south.
‘Something’s up,’ said Elspeth. ‘That’s the third lot today.’
‘I know,’ said Lorna. ‘Really noisy. He could do rude bird calls. Like the noises birds make when they’re mating. All frenzied.’
‘I don’t think he’d be willing to do that. No, some of the girls will have to stand behind him, cupping their hands to their ears, sexily looking up into pretend trees.’ Elspeth sighed. It was a worry putting on a concert.
She was even more worried at seven o’clock that night when her audience started to throng into the open space between the dormitory hut and the dining hut where the concert was to be held. Word had spread. Men had come from other camps. Instead of the fifty or so Newfies Elspeth expected, there were over two hundred men waiting for the show to go on. Not many of them were sober.
Earlier in the evening, Tyler and one or two others had made something of a platform by putting two strips of duckboard over a long pile of logs. It wasn’t much, but it raised the performers enough for people at the back to see what was going on. A couple of chairs were placed at the side to ease the entertainers’ climb onto the stage.
Elspeth started proceedings by welcoming the audience and asking them to please keep down the noise and give the girls lots of appreciation for their efforts. ‘Let’s get on with the show.’ She played polkas for the first ten minutes because the girls, preparing themselves in the cookhouse, were scrambling about, tripping over one another, putting on lipstick and arguing. But, at last, Lorna stuck her head round the door, stuck up her thumb and nodded. Time for the cancan.
A row of high-kicking girls would always meet with wild cheers and whistles even if they were wearing dungarees instead of multi-frilled skirts and petticoats. The noise was so loud, it drowned Elspeth’s frantic rendition of Offenbach’s ‘Galop’. Still, there were cartwheels, screams, legs were shown and, at the end, the row of dancers turned their backs on the audience and wiggled their bums. It got a standing ovation.
Next up was Tricia’s Dietrich impersonation. She sang ‘Boys in the Back Room’, looking sultry, one hand on her hip, the other thumbing over her shoulder, indicating where the back room with the boys was. The audience stamped their feet in time to the song. At the end, she winked. Another ovation and calls for an encore. Adrenalin was flowing. Elspeth was getting high. Time for her comedy turn.
Tyler and Lorna’s beau, Freddie Tait, heaved a log onto the stage. Elspeth, dressed in dungarees, boots and a sou’wester hat, draped with sprigs of heather and as much jewellery as she’d been able to gather from the girls in the dormitory – beads, bracelets, brooches – came on stage. She had made two huge hands out of cardboard and attached them using elastic bands to her own hands. She carried an axe. Slowly snedding the log, she sang ‘A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening’. Trilling an octave higher than her normal voice, clutching her bosom as she delivered her heart-aching melody, she gazed at the audience in gentle rapture and whacked off branches. It took a while for the onlookers to realise that every time she raised her hand, a cardboard finger was missing. ‘Thees ees a lurvely way . . .’ she sang. She whacked a branch, lifted her hand to her breast, one finger missing. She sang with verve and passion till all ten fingers were gone, waved her stumpy hands, bowed and walked off the stage. Everyone cheered, and Elspeth wondered if this hadn’t been a bit tasteless. Heartless, she thought, but then out here – cold, homesick, hungry – everyone was a bit callous. There was nothing like sleeping in an army cot covered by two scratchy blankets, living on a diet of spam, cabbage and carrot sandwiches to harden the heart. She’d come down in life; Izzy had gone up. Much as she loved the girls she worked with, loved their openness, she couldn’t help wishing she were somewhere else. Her envy of Izzy got deeper and deeper.
Lorna came on next. She tap-danced ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing If it Ain’t Got that Swing’ with a chorus in the background singing ‘Doo wop de doo wop de doo de oooh!’ Dorothy, in bare feet, danced ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’.
The trouble started with the bird calls.
Frazer’s dinner suit, threadbare at the shoulders, fraying at the cuffs, got a roar of approval along with cries of, ‘Penguin, penguin.’ He stepped from the chair to the platform, feeling like a true trouper, a seasoned entertainer accompanied by his trusty assistant, Lorna.
‘Let me take you on a stroll through the woods. Let’s meet a few of our feathered friends.’ He looked up, pointed, turned to the audience. ‘What do I spy? Why it’s our gardener’s friend, the thrush.’ He cupped his hands over his mouth, whistled and trilled. Lorna put her hand behind her ear, leaned forwards, lifting one leg behind her and did a good job of looking entranced.
The crowd clapped, and one or two added their own bird whistles. Frazer took that as a sign of his audience’s appreciation of his talent.
‘And who is that sitting on a branch watching us with his bright beady eye? None other than a cheeky little robin.’ More whistling and trilling that made the robin sound not dissimilar to the thrush. Lorna pointed upwards and mouthed a thrilled ‘Oooh’. By the time he’d spotted the goldfinch and that shy little stranger, the crossbill, the audience was joining in – whistles, chirrups and somebody was doing a rooster. There were calls for impersonations of budgies, sparrows and ducks. A voice from the depth of the rows of men watching shouted, ‘Get off!’
Several people turned to the get-off shouter and told him to shut up.
‘Who are you telling to shut up?’ the get-off shouter shouted.
‘You,’ said someone behind him, giving him a shove.
The shove was met by a punch. And the punch was met by a punch back. A scuffle started.
Elspeth had seen it all before. She signalled Lorna to get Frazer off the stage.
But Frazer, ignoring the fight, spread his arms wide, gazed up in rapture. ‘Who is that soaring above me? None other than the king of the sky – the golden eagle.’
Everybody who heard it thought it a startling impersonation of an eagle. A thrilling high-pitched call. Frazer bowed and stepped down from the stage. ‘That went well.’
The fight was spreading. Elspeth decided to go straight into the grand finale. No time for the planned sing-song. Get the girls up there dancing and wiggling and pouting.
She hustled the girls out of the cookhouse. ‘Quick, quick, get on and dance.’ Dorothy hopped across to the stage, pulling on her boots. The others shoved and jostled behind her. Elspeth did a swift chord on her accordion, the girls linked into a line and off they went – high-kicking, squealing, jiggling.
They weren’t co-ordinated. Tricia lost her balance and the line started to tip over. Then, in a burst of enthusiasm, Dorothy kicked too hard. Her boot flew off and hit somebody in the face. Squealing, she jumped down and crawled into the ruckus to retrieve it.
Elspeth yelled for the fighting to stop. Waving her arms, she shouted, ‘Enough, enough. That’s the end of our show. The extravaganza is over. Thank you and goodnight.’
It was agreed afterwards that playing the National Anthem was a brainwave. Elspeth struck the first chord, and began to sing, ‘God Save our Gracious King . . .’ The effect was stunning. Everything stopped. The audience stilled, stood rigid. Dorothy appeared from the depths of the crowd, still on all fours, boot stuffed down the front of her dungarees. She stood to attention till the anthem was finished, then scarpered.
Elspeth stopped playing and told everyone to behave themselves and go back to their huts in an orderly fashion. Much to her surprise, they did. Grumbling and shuffling, they headed into the night.
Bats were flickering through the gloaming when Elspeth made her own way back to her hut. She had helped clear up and served tea to all the performers. Duncan Bowman was waiting for her outside the cookhouse.
‘Good concert. Too many dancing girls, though. You reminded these men of what they’re missing.’
‘They always fight,’ said Elspeth.
‘Well, they would. It’s what they do when they’re frustrated. Women cry, men fight.’
Elspeth supposed this was true.
‘Anyway,’ said Duncan. ‘It’s Friday and you forgot the dung. I’ll be expecting it first thing in the morning.’ And he stomped away.
‘. . . and that was that,’ Elspeth wrote, ‘next morning I trundled the dung to Duncan’s cottage. I didn’t mind, the sun was shining, birds were singing and for a little while I had the world to myself. Is that all it takes to make me happy, these days? I have become accustomed to this life, I fear. And I am not the person I used to be.’
She put down her pen, folded the letter, stuffed it into an envelope. This is my life, Izzy, she thought. It can be rapturous. I love the scent of the morning, the soft warmth of the horse’s mouth when she takes a carrot from my hand. I love the feel of her by my side as we run back and forth taking logs to the roadside. I love my new friends. Sometimes, at work, everyone bursts out singing. That is wonderful. There are jokes and there’s laughter. But, sometimes, Izzy, life is hell. Mud under my fingernails, mud everywhere. Rain, sleet, snow and, sometimes, I’m so very cold. There are rough men, fights and I have to shovel up an awful lot of horseshit. You don’t seem to know this, but you have everything – an exciting job, a decent place to live and someone to love.
The last time you visited, you seemed dreamy. You were distant, thinking of your love. You are lost to me. I am jealous of the man you love. I’m jealous of you. And I’m ashamed of myself. But I can’t help it.