Extensions (44 page)

I hope you and our family are going fine. I miss you.

Your son,

Llewyllyn

Jane presses the letter to her heart and closes her eyes, tears escaping down her cheeks. “September 15. That's five weeks ago. Where is he now? Oh, where is our poor boy now?”

“He's a man, wherever he is,” says Roland, removing his jacket and revealing the camphor pendant he wears at his wife's insistence. “And the war's as good as over, if you can believe the papers and the talk. He should be home soon.”

“Sure enough, he's been through more than many men, but he's still a lad of eighteen. How can he build houses without a thumb?” Jane thinks of her own infected thumb that almost killed her. Why was she spared hers and not her innocent son?

Night shift behind him, Roland settles back on the couch where he opens the
Nanaimo Free Press
with shaky hands. A two-bits bucket of near beer, the only legal beverage now, does not pack the punch of even a pint of what he needs to still his tremors. From the corner of his eye, he watches his wife reread the letter three or four times before relaying the news he brings daily from the mine and bar.

“Heard your old neighbour Gertie Salo died of flu in Chase River.”

Jane shakes her head in dismay. She remembers young, slow Gertie, now the mother of five, who still cares for her mother because she speaks only Finnish. “That's a houseful of dependents who won't know where to start without her.”

“And Milt's packing up.”

Jane clears her throat with a dry cough and looks sadly toward the house next door. “When?”

“First of the month. Got a buyer for the property and says we should like our new neighbours. He works at Wakesiah but takes jobs in the bush when he can.” Miners who owned their own homes were permitted to farm or work in the lumber industry when there was a slowdown in the mines, rare as such opportunities were during wartime demand for coal.

“Married?”

“Just. Milt said the wife seems shy, but he told them you'll make her welcome.”

Oh did he now? Who says she has to welcome another woman living in Marjorie's house? She cannot look in that direction since her best friend died and her mother took the twins' favourite playmates back to Comox with her. She sends food for Milt with Roland because it is too heart-wrenching to pass the empty swing and hear the laughter again in her head. “Where's he going?”

“Vancouver. New Westminster, maybe. Marjorie's sister is likely to take the girls and he wants to be close. Might work on the wharves to start. Strong as he is, he won't have a problem. He can't take it here alone.”

He's not the only one
, Jane thinks. When Suzanne and June left with their grandmother, Sara and Janet were listless for so long Jane feared they had the flu. But they are playing quietly in their bedroom at the moment, both healthy. She looks in to find Sara reading
Black Beauty
aloud to her teddy bear and Janet crocheting a bracelet for her doll.

Their school has been converted to a hospital and she feels safer having them at home. She has already done lessons with them this morning, marvelling at how quickly Sara picks up all her studies, even numbers. Her curiosity reminds Jane of herself at that age, and she makes a pledge that Sara will get all the schooling she wants. Janet learns just enough not to disappoint her mother. At the end of lessons they sing songs: “Li'l Liza Jane,” “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag,” and “Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning
,
” saving the silliest ones for last, like “Aba Daba Honeymoon,” “K-K-K-Katy,” and “Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!” to finish with giggles. Since Llewyllyn's letter, “Roses are shining in Picardy…” is now running through Jane's head, her twins always coming to mind as the roses in any song. Longer now, their dark hair tied back in a ribbon is silkier than ever; Jane has never seen such beauty before. Her gasp of gratitude gets caught in her throat as a rasping cough.

Janet looks up from her bracelet. “Mama, drink some milk and ginger.”

“Not now, it's suppertime.” Jane shivers, pulling her woollen cardigan around her. “It's cold in here.” She turns to Roland, who puts down the paper and adds a half-scuttle of coal to the burning embers in the stove, shrugging. She files her son's letter with the others in the desk drawer, then stands in the kitchen, rubbing her hands in front of the warm oven until Janet comes out to set the table for supper. Sara remains reading in the bedroom.

Jane hands Janet a knife and two tomatoes to slice on a plate. “Mind your fingers,” she says, more from habit than real concern. With the war dragging on and the flu raging, she feeds her family frugally from provisions she herself has put up. She takes a barley, mushroom, and bacon casserole from the oven along with a fresh loaf of bread. A sealer of pickled green beans completes the first course and will be rewarded by pumpkin pie.

The calmness of the scene also prompts Jane to give thanks for a healthy family with enough to eat, adding silently, “and no drunken ravings,” once commonplace before Prohibition. She regrets her son cannot see his father this way, just once. “Let us pray Llewyllyn is also well-fed, warm, and whole at this moment and will be back with us soon.”

She dishes out portions onto three plates, knowing how much each will eat. She puts a spoonful of barley and a tomato slice on her own, hoping no one will notice she doesn't touch it. Her appetite is rapidly being replaced by nausea. It spreads from her stomach through her chest to her throat, where it mingles with congestion in her nose. She coughs again, using an overused hankie from her apron pocket to cover her mouth. She asks Sara about
Black Beauty
as a distraction from the aversion she feels to the food. She has not experienced such queasiness for — for nine years.

Could she be pregnant?

She looks across at Roland, intent on his food, and blushes. In six weeks, she will be forty years old and the prospect of a latecomer like Gomer had never occurred to her. If it is to be, she must stay strong to spare her daughters from raising a sibling as she was forced to do. And now her younger brother in Victoria might as well be dead to her, if indeed he is still married to Thelma and working in the family business there. Even Ladysmith seems a world away when it comes to travel and inclination, but at least Roland brings occasional news of Tommy through the mine circuit.

Janet jumps up from the table to ladle more water into their drinking glasses, taking the last from the pail. The pump at the sink is jammed and Milt has made his outside well available to them. Will Milt repair theirs before he leaves, as he promised? Jane hopes so, because Roland is oblivious to such inconveniences. Sara watches Jane. “Mama, why aren't you eating? Don't you feel well?”

“Maybe I sampled too much while I was cooking. I'm not very hungry.” She shivers and coughs.

Sara sets her fork down. “I'm finished too.”

“Come now, you've only eaten a little. You can do better than that.” Jane stands as close as she can to the stove without burning herself. “I'm cold is all. Must have caught a chill when I went out to the root cellar for pumpkin. Eat up now; you know how you like pumpkin pie for dessert.”

“Mama, you're sick. Your face is red.”

“It's from the hot stove.” Jane cannot confess to the source of her blush, but does not deny the dizziness in her head. She must sit down on the sofa where she can lean back and pull her feet up. “I'll rest a bit and be well in no time.” This new life in her womb is testing her properly at such an age.

Roland and Janet also leave the table, and Roland covers her with an afghan she and Janet made from crocheted squares. Sara brings a comforter from the bedroom.

“I'll make some tea,” says Janet.

“No, darling, I don't want anything. I'll just lie a spell.”

Roland brings the sitting room stove to full blaze, his own faded eyes ablaze with fear. By now the whole world knows the symptoms. He crumples the
Free Press,
with its latest flu statistics, for kindling. Sara and Janet dart nervously around the house. They had been playing nearby when Auntie Marjorie rubbed her forehead, and that was the last they ever saw of her. Jane's bewildered smile contemplates a different source of warning signs.

“Mama, Janet will cut up some onions.”

Understanding now, she laughs at Sara offering her sister's services. “Oh no. If it is the flu, it won't last long. I'll see to that.”

She believes her words, since she has never been sick in her life other than blood poisoning. But Roland, frantically stoking the fire in the kitchen stove hears them over the crackle as “I won't last long.” His thin neck swivels jerkily and he begins to pace. Talk everywhere is just this. How whole families are found lying on the floor, unable to feed themselves or tend fires. How two women went out dancing at night and one was dead in the morning. How new vaccines are not working against the virus, and isolation proves just as useless. How Aspirin powder is now being sold by the Bayer Company in tablets and helps with aches, but is not a cure. How last week he took his lunch break with a fellow miner who three hours later had to be carried out of the mine. He's getting better, Roland has heard, and so will Jane. So will Jane.

From the couch, she recognizes her husband's powerful need of a drink. Not just the diluted beer he's been imbibing, but something stronger from the blind pig at the harbour. “Roland, I'll be fine, if you want to go out. My nurses here will take care of me.” Sara has brought a pillow for her head, and Janet is pulling her father's warm woollen socks over her mother's lisle stockings. Jane loosens the garter belt that has become binding around her waist.

His cheek twitches in surprise. “Well, awright, I might just do that, if you think you can manage. And I'll pick up some camphor gum and Aspirin at the chemist. Could be quinine's back in stock.” Blinking now with justified purpose, he starts out of the overheated house. Then he turns back.

Jane says it for him: “You'll need more money. Camphor's gone up from ten to fifteen cents an ounce. And we're almost out of carbolic.”

He jingles the change in his pocket, wanting to cover his wife's medicine, but his thirst causes him to reach for the money tin. He returns it empty to the shelf and leaves.

From the pillow, she issues more instructions to her daughters. “Get the masks from the press in the bedroom. They're clean.” Ideally, masks were to be changed every two hours, but usually by then they were cast aside. “And we need to wash hankies.”

“I'll do it,” says Janet. “I know how.”

“You'll need fresh water and use just a few drops of carbolic until Papa brings more. Pour out the soak pail water, and mind you don't touch the hankies when you put them in the fresh. I'll drop mine in when you're ready.”

Sara in a pink tunic and Janet in blue move like Rose Red and Snow White through the house with masks, throwing supper remains in the slop pail and wiping the counters with bleach. Two pumpkin pies remain untouched in the pantry. Jane wants to tell them to sit down, that she will be all right, but in truth, the pounding in her head has become blinding. Unbidden, Sara lays cold cloths on her forehead, and after tending to the handkerchiefs, Janet brings willow bark tea, then a cup of hot water containing a few drops of liniment. Both know the remedies, not only because of what their mother did for Aunt Marjorie, but from friends at school before it was closed. Everyone has a stricken relative. On such hearsay, Sara has taken an enamel bowl and the fire tongs to the open stove until Jane stops her.

“But Mama, brown sugar and kerosene on hot coals will cure you.”

“You've done enough for now, dears, both of you. Get into your nighties and to bed so you'll have strength for tomorrow if I require your help again.”

Janet heads obediently to the bedroom, but Sara starts to cry. “The fire will go out. Papa won't be home for hours and you'll get cold.”

Jane knows she can't win against Sara's will, and her own is failing fast. She cannot raise her head from the couch to crawl into her own soft bed. “All right. Put on your housecoat and slippers and bring the cot and blankets. You can sleep in here if you keep your face at the other end away from mine.”

Most mine houses possess fold-up cots for extra sleeping space in small areas. They are made of heavy canvas with a thin, flexible mattress on a metal frame. As Sara snaps it into place, Jane resists thinking of it as her bier. Marjorie and all the other women she has provided with food ended up on cots in their cramped kitchens. And there they lay down and died.

Is this it, then? Is this the unknown realm she has cried over as a helpless bystander? Can she make her daughters and Roland understand that the weakness overrides all the alternatives that terrify them? That her position is not easier but clearer. From the centre of the cocoon that will release her, she must leave them outside to guess with dread and fear at its mystery. But how did it happen so fast? Just hours ago, she was reading her son's letter with a dripping nose. And wasn't it only yesterday she was running up the green hills of Wales picking wild pansies?

Janet emerges from the bedroom in a long blue flannel nightgown. She whimpers when she sees Sara installed on the cot next to their mother. “I can fit too.”