Tides of Honour (17 page)

The church hall was crowded, filled to capacity with women. Audrey didn't know a soul, and she looked over the crowd, searching for expressions as lost as her own. Instead, she met the hawklike gaze of a beautiful, red-haired woman who gave her a startling grin and stalked toward her. To Audrey's surprise, the woman stuck out one hand, seeking hers.

“I'm Catherine Metcalf,” she stated. “And you are new here. Welcome to the club.”

Audrey warmed to her immediately. “Audrey Baker,” she said, returning the smile and shaking her hand. “Thank you.”

“Do you know what this is all about?”

“Oh yes, I think so. I've been to similar meetings in London.”

Auburn eyebrows shot up, evidently impressed. Catherine's lips twitched in a conspiratorial smile. “Really? Well, how positively
international
of you, dear Audrey. This will seem like child's play after that.”

“I doubt that. It's all very important, no matter where it's happening.”

“True enough. Are you meeting anyone in particular?”

“No. I just saw the poster and thought—”

Catherine grabbed Audrey's hand. “Well, come along then. There aren't very many seats left, but we have an extra in our section.”

Audrey went willingly, glowing inside about the first new friend she'd made since leaving Jeddore. She was led to a spot near the front of the room, three rows back from the standard long
table and the customary microphone. Catherine introduced her to four women who welcomed her, saying it was always lovely to see a new face in the crowd. Five other women sat at the table, two in black, one in brown, and the other two in grey. Audrey settled into her chair and pulled out some paper and a pencil, easing her adrenaline rush by quickly sketching some of the faces around her.

“Say, that's beautiful work,” Catherine said, leaning closer.

Even now, Audrey blushed with pride when people complimented her work. For so many years her art had felt like a guilty pleasure. Fortunately, now that she was earning a little money she felt more justified, but she still felt lucky to be doing something she loved so much.

“Thank you. I like to paint portraits, and there are some fascinating faces here.”

Catherine scrunched her nose with distaste and pointed at one pencil outline. “Fascinating indeed. That's Shirley Hampton. What an old nag.”

Audrey giggled and transformed the face of the woman in question into the long, angular outline of a horse, and Catherine let out a hoot. “Priceless!” she exclaimed. “Oh, my dear! That's wonderful.”

The meeting was called to order, and a woman in brown stood at the microphone to start the proceedings.

“Welcome, ladies, to tonight's meeting of the Council of Women of Halifax.” She smiled broadly around the room. “For those of you attending your first meeting, I would like to personally welcome you to the movement that is changing the world. We believe in equality for women and are successfully waging the battle that will enable us to vote. Many of the provinces across Canada have already seen the light and are allowing women the right we have always been denied, and we feel certain Nova Scotia will
soon join their ranks. For those of you who are acquainted with our meetings and our cause, welcome back. We are honoured that you choose to be here with us, and we respect the sacrifices you have made on our council's behalf.”

Minutes were read and voted upon, and everyone waited patiently for the new business to start. When it was time, the speaker turned to the table.

“And now I'd like to welcome the president of our local Council of Women of Halifax, Mrs. Agnes Dennis, who will bring us up to date on the upcoming parade and convention.”

Agnes Dennis stood and walked to the microphone, smiling sweetly at the speaker. “Thank you, Marion,” she said quietly. Then she faced the audience, who had gone silent with expectation.

Agnes was a small, sturdy woman. Her long black hair had been pulled back into a bun, and a stiff, white lace collar folded over the high neckline of her black dress. Audrey guessed her to be about thirty, and at first she looked to be nothing more than a gentle motherly type. But before she spoke again, her eyes travelled over the women seated before her, and Audrey saw the intelligent steel shining from within.

“Good morning, ladies, and thank you all so much for being here. This meeting is in preparation for the parade and convention coming up in February, during which we will feature both our inspirational member Mrs. Edith Archibald from the Women's Christian Temperance Union—”

She was interrupted by a burst of spontaneous applause, and she smiled and nodded with encouragement. As it died down, she spoke again. “Ah yes. Well-deserved applause for my dear friend Mrs. Archibald. She has been very busy of late and speaking on a regular basis with our province's honourable premier, George Henry Murray. Through her persistence and his own intelligent
nature, Mr. Murray has a good understanding of our movement, and as such he has agreed to be a speaker at the February convention. After having spoken with Mrs. Archibald, we have good reason to be optimistic that the women of Nova Scotia will finally achieve our goal and get the vote!”

Cheers and applause broke out again, and she waited calmly for quiet. When it came, her voice was strong and vibrated with reverence. “This is an age of great progress, my friends.”

The hair on the back of Audrey's neck stood, and a thrilling sensation swept through her, making her surprisingly emotional. She was suddenly proud to be a woman in this place, in this time.

“Victory is almost upon us,” Mrs. Dennis continued. “I believe that centuries of inequality will soon be at an end, though the hard work will continue. We have done momentous things over the past few decades, made undreamed-of progress, spurred on by the inspiration and sacrifice of the dedicated women around the world who first brought our cause into the light. Just look at the accomplishments of women across this great country of ours. Women in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia are all voting in their provincial elections! It is indeed a time to celebrate!” Mrs. Dennis glanced at the papers in her hand, then back at the cheering audience, always smiling, always patient.

“Now on to the business at hand,” she finally said. “The event will be on the eighth annual International Women's Day, which will coincide with the celebration being held in many cities worldwide. We will require everyone's participation in the parade, of course, and hope you will each bring a group of like-minded women
and
men with you on that day. As we all know, there is strength in solidarity. We will also need help setting up the conference itself, with speakers and tickets and advertising, among other things, and there will be smaller events going on at the same time,
all of which are being planned already. We have a few sign-up sheets here at the front, so if you would be so kind as to line up at the conclusion of this meeting, we're asking you to put your name down as a volunteer. We all have our strengths, so please do not be shy.”

She smiled again, sharing confidence among the troops. “And now we shall have nominations for various committee heads. I believe we shall start with ticket sellers . . .”

The meeting of the local suffragette chapter went on for another half hour, and afterwards, Audrey went out for a cup of tea with Catherine and a couple of her friends. Since she was new to their group, the ladies asked all the questions one might expect—if she was married, if she worked, if she had any children—but they didn't make her uncomfortable. She told them she'd been married less than a year, that her husband worked at the docks, and that she painted. In a rare moment of self-promotion, she told them about the dinner party at Antoine's, coming up the very next night.

Catherine dropped her spoon with a clang on her dish. “No!” she said, grinning. “It can't be! My, what a small world.
I'll
be at that dinner party. So it's
you
Pierre's been going on about. What a wonderful coincidence. And it'll be lovely to meet your husband as well. I understand he's some kind of war hero?”

Audrey's smile faltered. “Well, he was injured in the war, yes. But . . . unfortunately, he won't be at the party tomorrow night.”

“Oh no?”

“He's . . .” Audrey searched frantically for an excuse. She could say he was sick, but then they'd expect her to stay home and tend him. “They've asked him to work an extra shift Saturday night, and he's agreed. Some kind of major shipment coming in, I imagine,” she bluffed.

The women exchanged a glance, and the look in their eyes
told Audrey they were all thinking the same thing. She knew exactly what that was too. If she were painting expressions of pity, they would look just like that. At least they were pitying her for her lack of money, not her marital struggles. Somehow that would have been worse.

She'd lived happily in Sussex, blissfully ignorant of her station. Life had shipped her to a broken-down farm in France where she'd lived off milk and egg money for years, having little idea that she might someday have the ability to earn more, do more. She'd fallen in love with a crowded old house on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia with a small but perfect bedroom built just for them. Now she barely survived in their Richmond “home,” working, sleeping, waking in a city where she'd learned that just about anything could be bought or sold. She'd never known real money before they'd come to this place, and only after she'd seen what it could buy had she recognized it as something she didn't have. She couldn't bear it if her new friends saw through her and realized she wasn't one of them, couldn't afford to buy what she wanted.

“That's a shame,” Catherine said. “But I'm sure we'll meet him another time. Especially since his wife is about to become such a celebrity!”

Audrey laughed and waved her off. “Hardly that. But I am looking forward to the evening.”

Catherine and the others said farewell a short time later, stepping into a cab as Audrey purposefully headed in the wrong direction. There was no way she was going to let them see her walk toward the slums of Richmond.

Danny Baker

December 1917

TWENTY
-
FIVE

Danny was losing her. He
felt it getting worse every day. And there was nothing he could do about it. He'd taken to going out with Johnny, Red, MacDonald, Franco, and the rest, sucking back drinks and coming in late. Sometimes the boys stayed the night in Danny's little house, flopping on the living room floor, so when Audrey came out of the bedroom in the morning, she'd be surrounded by half a dozen stinking, hungover dockworkers. But she poured tea for them all, even made up some kind of meal, depending on if she'd had time to buy groceries that week. Sometimes when she did that, it reminded him of their first meeting. The way she'd welcomed the whole battalion to the farm and fed them breakfast, her eyes shining with innocence. And in those brief moments he almost wished he was back in France, smelling gunpowder and blood, just so the two of them could go back to those first intimate times together.

She didn't like what Danny was doing. That was no secret. Didn't like the smell of old liquor, the unwelcome men in their house. She didn't like being separate from Danny and didn't like the way he stared at her after she came home from a day at the Antoines. He knew all of that, though she rarely said a word. In fact, she said very little these days.

Danny's heart grew colder over time, chilling the anger within him to a dangerous temperature. The only thing he had ever cared about was Audrey, and now even she was turning away from him. He hated living in the city, freezing cold with barely enough fuel to run a fire in their horrible little house, penned in by other ramshackle buildings, listening day and night to the clunking and shrieking of freight trains, neighbours yelling through paper-thin walls, and the lonely hooting of ships. When he was working he spent almost all his time standing, so the pain in his stump became a constant agony. The sores blistered and burned.

He made a few friends among the dockworkers, but they were never close. Not like his boyhood friends or even the other men with whom he had shared the trenches. These men hadn't been to war, and Danny knew they watched him warily, as if they considered him dangerous. He also suspected they talked about him and his peg leg whenever he left conversations, and his paranoia made him even angrier. He thought about Jimmy and Freddie a lot during those times, pictured them dead in the mud. And sometimes he thought they'd gotten the better end of the stick.

One night she walked in the door on a early December gust, oblivious to the stink of turpentine she brought with her and the short smear of sky blue paint on her nose. Her eyes sparkled with tears from the wind, and her cheeks glowed pink. Part of Danny wanted to kiss that little blue nose, warm those cheeks with his own. The other part wanted to scratch the paint off without mercy, rant at her for staying out late, for smiling as she arrived home from another man's house. A rich man's house. A whole man's house.

Danny noticed something else as well: her eyes didn't twinkle when she saw him anymore. Didn't light up in even the tiniest way. They seemed almost dead when they touched on him at all.
Sometimes she turned from him, and if he reached for her she scuttled away like a crab, not wanting him to touch her.

He knew why. He knew she was afraid of the changes in him. He knew he had disappointed her. He knew what he was doing was wrong, that he was dumping his frustrations on her. But he carried on, feeling that if he kept it all inside instead of letting it out on her, he'd explode.

“You know, Audrey,” he said that night, just after she'd slipped away from his hand. “Why don't you just go find yourself a real man? A man who could tend to your needs.”

At first she looked shocked that he'd even spoken to her, then her cheeks blazed. “Stop it, Danny,” she hissed. “All I need is a man who cares enough to clean himself up and take care of business. You feel so sorry for yourself, it's surprising you haven't killed yourself so people could feel worse for you.”

He snorted, then taken a long, deep drag of his cigarette.

“Danny,” she said, stepping closer and softening her voice into a plea. “You have to stop this. Please? You have to believe in yourself again. If you and I are together, we can do anything. But I can't do this alone.”

“Sure, sure you can,” he said. “You just keep bringing home those big dollars you're getting from Antoine. I bet he pays you even better when the painting's all done and you can give it to him”—he leered cruelly on purpose—“real close and personal.”

Her fury was immediate. At least he saw her eyes spark again, and he instantly hated himself.

“You are a bastard, Danny.”

He'd never heard her swear. Never.
What the hell was he doing?

“You sit around crying over your lost leg, drinking what money we make while I'm out trying to make our lives work. Now you accuse me of something you
know
I would never do.” She came in close, almost nose to nose, and lowered her voice. “So
I'm a whore now? A
whore
? I bring men into my bed so I can buy you beer, do I?” Her nostrils flared with revulsion. “How could you even think that way, Danny? You disgust me.”

She turned away, but before she could escape, he grabbed her arm, yanking her back toward him. “I disgust you, huh?”

He heard it in his own voice: a rumbling that came from the trenches, the growl of a hundred Lewis guns cutting men into pieces. He knew his voice was dangerous. He knew it was the last thing he should have done. But it was in him now: the fury, the revulsion, the desire to hurt something just to prove he was alive.

He didn't remember his hand coming up then swinging down, catching her cheek and snapping her head back on her slender neck, but he heard her cry out as she fell to the floor, covering her cheek and staring at him with utter disbelief. At first he thought she might start weeping, then he saw the hard anger that tightened every muscle in her face. That was worse. Much worse. Keeping her eyes on him, she pushed backwards so she could slide out of his reach, then slowly rose to her feet. She straightened and dropped her hand so he saw the big red imprint of his palm on her cheek. He couldn't speak.

She did. “Goodbye, Danny.” Her eyes were like wells. There was no bottom to the pain in them. “I'll come for my things when you are at work.”

And she'd gone off into the cool, clear night without another word.