Transgression (27 page)

“We saw it in a movie,” his friend said.

“Johnny and I went through the whole shebang together. The war,” Alex added by way of explanation.

“Almost the whole shebang. Until the end.”

“We were each other’s good luck charm. That’s what I always said, didn’t I, Johnny? Caen, Verrieres, Falaise. Jesus. How come we didn’t die?”

“Maybe God didn’t want us. A couple of ugly toads like us,” Johnny said.

“So many others died.” Alex’s eyes were beginning to redden. “Shit,” he said.

Adele slipped her hand into his.

“I saw most of France,” Johnny said.

Adele wasn’t sure whether he was trying to deflect attention away from Alex’s show of emotion or not, but he didn’t seem particularly concerned by it. In some subterranean way, Adele thought to herself, he seemed pleased.

“I didn’t meet you in France, though.”

“No.”

“If I’d known Alex was getting married, I would have been there.”

“They split us up in Germany,” Alex explained. “I didn’t know where the hell you were, pal.”

Adele didn’t think Johnny looked convinced that Alex didn’t know where he was, even though his black eyes hadn’t left her eyes.

“Nothing could have kept me away.” He leaned a little toward Adele. “I had a French girlfriend. From Tours. I had lots of them, actually.”

“Not like Adele,” Alex said.

“No, that’s for sure.” Johnny picked up Adele’s free hand. “Alex is my best friend. That means you are, too. Anything you ever need, any help at all, you can count on me. I want you to know that.”

He didn’t seem drunk. “Thank you,” Adele said, though he made her feel somewhat uneasy. As soon as it was polite to do so, she took back her hand.

After the guests had left, Adele helped her new mother-in-law and her three sisters-in-law wash up the dishes. She didn’t have to, for Mrs. Wells had made it clear that she could go right up to her room and rest, she’d had such a long day, but Adele had insisted on helping.

The eldest sister, Deborah, who was even taller than her mother but thin and quite glamorous looking, was concerned about both the night drive back to her out-of-town home and the silk sleeves of her blouse, so she hardly helped at all. Adele felt uncomfortable with this sister because of the height difference and her smart clothes, and because, when she was first introduced to Adele, she’d unnecessarily bent her knees a little.

Betty, the youngest, seemed the happiest. She was the mother of two children. The middle sister, Grace, was short and plump and had a sour face that looked just like her father’s. Apparently she was childless and worked at the family store. Unlike her older sister, who maintained a kind of regal inscrutability, Adele could tell at a glance what Grace was thinking, that the world and everyone in it were continually conspiring against her, and now Adele, this foreigner, whom everyone was making such a fuss over and whom she’d been eyeing sideways all evening, could be added to the list.

“Where have the boys got to?” Betty asked, looking out the kitchen window into the dark.

“What boys?” Deborah said.

“Our husbands.”

“You know where they are,” Grace said, whacking a pan against the edge of the sink more violently than necessary to dislodge some left-overs, “Behind the house, standing in the snow drinking.”

“I’m sure they’re not,” Mrs. Wells Senior said, smiling encouragingly at Adele. “They’re out walking, getting some fresh air.”

Later on, upstairs in a large and chilly bedroom at the back of the house, Adele pulled off her new clothes, changed into her nightgown and crawled under a pink eiderdown. She felt exhausted. Alex was nowhere in sight.

She turned off the lamp and lay in the dark. After a while she heard Mr. and Mrs. Wells talking in the hallway. She could tell that Mr. Wells was refusing to whisper, though she couldn’t make out what he was saying. She heard the toilet flush and then the house became very silent. She fell asleep.

Adele was bounced awake by Alex climbing clumsily into bed. She couldn’t see him but she could smell the alcohol.

“Sorry. It was Johnny’s fault.” He rubbed her arm for a moment. “Did you like everyone?”

Adele thought, No. “Yes,” she said.

“You looked great.”

“So did you.”

“We won’t be living here for long. I’ll get looking for a house right away.”

The air in the room was thick with the smell of alcohol. Adele could see the rain-stained skylight above her head. She could hear André stumbling around somewhere in the dark.

“Alex. Please. Don’t come to bed any more stinking of drink.”

“What?”

“Don’t come to bed any more. Stinking of alcohol.”

Alex fell silent. Adele wondered what he was thinking. His arm wrapped around her. He drew her close against his wide stomach, his furry chest. He felt warm and comforting.

He didn’t answer her.

J
ack waded into the water. Though it was as warm as a bath, it felt cool in comparison to the sweltering air that pressed in all around him. The sun blazed right above his head–it didn’t seem to matter that it was after five o’clock.

He surveyed the situation, his bare feet sinking into the muddy bottom. The river had receded to its late summer levels after the downpour of almost a week ago. It rippled gently around the Devil’s Elbow. The deeper water off the cliff face looked dappled and still as a millpond. The sandbar had appeared again.

Jack was standing on the downriver side, his police boots and black socks sitting on a rock behind him. He could see the crime unfolding. The hunted man in his hand-me-down clothes and his cast-off shoes cutting across the clay bank, his assailants closing in, dragging him down into the river, forcing him to his knees and blowing his brains out. A bloody trail of debris floated down the river and around the Devil’s Elbow. One of the men tossed the gun into deeper water. They picked up the body and splashed up the river looking for a place far enough away to bury it.

As simple as that.

A brown ribbon of dry riverbed outlined the far shore. A band of seared grass covered the far bank. Just beyond Jack could see a thick tangle of cedars. He tried to peer into the dark shadows underneath their sweeping boughs. He turned and looked up the cliff face. Harold Miles could be watching. It could be a trap.

Jack looked across the river again and picked out a dead pine tree. That tree would be his first line of direction. He’d planned it out. Criss-cross at set intervals, feel the bottom with his bare feet and work upstream. He knew he could wade across quite easily from where he was standing. He knew it would get deeper the farther along the cliff face he went. He would worry about that later when he got there.

He looked around again. There was no one in sight.

Jack started across the river, dragging his feet along and out to both sides. The sun followed him. Light was bouncing all around him.

He tried to think things through once again. If Miles and his men had already searched the Devil’s Elbow, if they’d found the murder weapon, if those notes had been a lie and now Miles and his men were following him, what would it look like? It would look like he’d panicked and he was trying to find the weapon he’d thrown away. That’s what it would look like.

Jack stepped on a submerged rock. His foot slipped, his ankle scraped on something sharp, he stumbled a little. The water was seeping up his thighs, climbing his wool trousers like a wick in a kerosene lamp. He regained his balance and pressed on. The river began to cool his privates. He hit his foot on another rock–it hurt like hell. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

Jack limped up on the far shore and looked back across the river. He could see his boots and socks sitting there on a bleached rock. They looked lonely.

He took off his dark blue jacket and laid it down on the bank a small distance farther along. All he had to do now was aim himself a short distance above where his boots and socks were and cross the river again. And then move his boots and socks up river and so on.

He felt a little winded, though.

He studied the trees on the high ridge above the cliff face. There wasn’t a breath of air over there. Nothing was moving, not even the topmost branches. He checked behind him. He could barely see the cedars over the top of the grass. He could smell them, though, their pungent leaves turning rusty red in the blazing sun.

Jack took his police cap off and ran his hand over his head. His short silvery hair was soaking wet. He dropped the cap on top of his jacket and started to wade back.

“Fuck,” he cried out. He pulled his foot out of the water. His big toe was bleeding. He reached down and felt around. Now he was soaking himself up to his chin. His tie was floating in front of him. He pulled up a tin can from the bottom and tossed it downstream so he wouldn’t step on it again. He continued on, leaving a wispy trail of blood behind.

When he reached the halfway point he stopped. Light danced in his eyes. Dragonflies droned by like miniature rainbows. Swallows were chasing insects right past his face. He stood there for a long while.

By the time he’d reached the shore, his feet were killing him but his toe had stopped bleeding. He sat down below the cliff face. The cut looked white and puckered as if that part of him had already died. He stilled his breathing and listened for a rustling in the brush piles hanging above him. He couldn’t hear a thing. Just insects. The river had come alive with a black mass of insects.

Jack got up, picked up his boots and socks and placed them farther along the shore and waded back into the water. He aimed himself upriver from his jacket and cap sitting on the other side. The water was soon lapping over his waist, pushing against him.

Jack staggered out on the other side, moved his jacket and cap again and started back the other way.

Back and forth. The water went past his chest. Back and forth. It crept by his arm pits. By the time it had topped his shoulders, his breath was coming in little sing-song whines and he was heading toward the middle of the sandbar. He couldn’t swim.

“Kyle,” he said.

The strangled sound of his own voice startled him. It skipped away across the water like a flat stone. He could hardly see anything any more, reflected light had bleached his eyes. “Kyle.”

His foot hit something. Whatever it was seemed to scuttle along the bottom. It had felt hard. Jack went under water for the first time in his life, his hands grabbing at nothing, and then at mud and clay. And then he had it. He had it in his hand. He came boiling back up.

Black and malignant-looking, short of barrel and thick through the handle, he recognized it right away. The soldiers called them souvenirs.

He was holding a German Luger in his hand.

T
he next morning Alex had to go to work. He asked Adele if she’d like to see the store. She said she would. Apparently his father was already there. Up at six o’clock and arrive at the store by seven, that was Mr. Wells’s routine.

Up some time later and take a cab to work was Alex’s.

As it turned out, the cab company had only the one cab and Alex had a standing order to be picked up at eight-thirty, though the cab was rarely on time. Four passengers were already sitting in it when Alex and Adele climbed in. Alex introduced her to everyone, including the driver, and then settled back in his seat and closed his eyes. He looked pale and hungover.

The cab drove through the snow-packed streets, bumped over some railroad tracks and pulled up in front of a factory with piles of lumber stacked at the back. A middle-aged woman struggled out of the cab and went in through the front door.

On the other side of the tracks, Adele could see several ragged looking men walking away from the town.

“More DPs,” a large man sitting in the front seat, snug in a fedora, scarf and long overcoat, observed.

“Or just hobos,” the driver replied.

“DP’s,” the large man insisted, “hobos don’t shave. These fellows are trying to get jobs. Your job and my job.”

“They can have my job,” the driver said. The other passengers chuckled.

Adele stared out the window. She’d seen ragged men like that before, long lines of them shuffling along the road toward the Rhine. She hadn’t expected to see them again. She glanced at Alex. His eyes were still closed.

The cab came back along the tracks, turned down a steep hill, and pulled up in front of a large factory. The remaining passengers got out, except for Adele and Alex. Adele looked out the window-she could hardly believe her eyes. Steam was pouring out of the side of the building. An iron footbridge spanned a frozen raceway and a line of women were walking across the bridge. If Adele had seen the blitzkrieg widow and the button-eyed woman among them, she wouldn’t have been surprised. She looked away.

The cab stopped on the street with the shops. “Don’t mind Turnbull,” the driver said to Alex as they were getting out, though he was looking sympathetically at Adele, “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Alex looked displeased. “Adele isn’t a DP,” he said and slammed the door.

“DP. What is that?”

“Displaced Persons. Refugees from Europe. Stupid assholes.” Alex looked like his headache had grown worse.

“Stupid assholes?”

“Not the DPs. The people in this town.”

Alex pulled out some keys and they turned in at a shop. Gold lettering across the glass on the door proclaimed,
Arthur Wells & Son.
It was past nine o’clock. Alex didn’t need his keys, the door swung open.

Alex grimaced. “Great,” he said.

Arthur Wells & Son was surprisingly long and narrow and dark, with worn wooden floors that slanted dangerously toward the middle of the building. Adele could see rows of shelves sagging under the weight of every kind of hardware anyone could imagine and just as many rows of labelled wooden drawers. Barrels full of nails and spikes and brooms and mops cluttered the aisles. The air smelled sharp and tinny.

Alex pulled off his coat and put on a green cloth smock to protect his shirt. Before he turned his face away, she could see he looked embarrassed. Adele noticed the plump sister staring down from a perch above an office at the back like a lookout on a ship.

“Good morning,” Adele called out, waving up at her.

Grace nodded glumly.

Mr. Wells came out of the office and looked at his watch. “Ten past nine.”

Alex didn’t reply.

“Good morning,” Adele said for both of them.

“It would be if Alex ever got here on time,” his father replied and disappeared back into his office.

“Charming, isn’t he?” Alex said.

At Alex’s suggestion Adele went sightseeing along the main street. The sun was climbing into a cloudless blue sky. She turned her face up to it and was surprised not to feel any heat. The new snow from the day before was reflecting the sun brilliantly, though, hanging over rooftops and off rolled-up awnings. The cold air pinched her nose in a not too unpleasant way, but it made her want to sneeze.

It took her five minutes to reach the end of the street. She crossed over and took more time looking at the shops coming back the other way. When she re-entered the store, Alex had a customer, a weathered-looking man wearing a corduroy hat with ear flaps and with a hammer hanging off a loop in his baggy overalls. Alex dipped a large metal scoop into a barrel and with a loud clatter poured some nails on a scale.

“Hello,” Adele said.

The man smiled. “Hello there.”

“Alex, I can help. What can I do?”

“Is this the new missus, Alex?”

“I think it must be,” Alex said.

The man took off his hat. “My name is Walter Jack and I’m very pleased to meet you. You’ve come a long way.”

“Thank you. Yes. My name is Adele Wells. You have a very beautiful town.”

“Oh, it’s all right, I guess, as long as you don’t mind people knowing everything you think and everything you do.”

“How was your walk?” Alex asked, pouring the nails from the scale into a large paper bag.

Adele began to unbutton her coat. “It was fine but I’m ready to work now.”

“There you go, Alex, you’ve got yourself a helpmate.”

“I don’t want you working here.”

“What’s Grace doing?”

“She does the books. That’s different. We’ll talk about it. Later.” Alex aimed a smile in her general direction and secured the bag with a strip of tape.

“You can help me anytime,” Walter Jack said.

Adele wandered about the store for a while feeling awkward and useless. She found a rag in a storeroom and started to dust.

“We have someone come in and do that at night,” Alex told her. He suggested she go home and rest up-the gang was going tobogganing after supper that evening.

Adele took the same cab back up to the house. When she arrived, Mrs. Wells was pitching a bucket of soapy water out the side door. “Just doing the kitchen floor, dear,” she called out.

“I can help.”

“It’s all done, dear. Go in the front door.”

Adele was taking her boots off when Mrs. Wells came hurrying down the hall. “My goodness, you weren’t downtown very long. You couldn’t have seen anything.”

“I saw the store,” Adele said.

Mrs. Wells took Adele’s wool hat and her dowdy coat and put them in the closet. “But there’s lots more stores. There’s really some lovely ones. There’s a wonderful store with old-fashioned linens and there’s three dress shops. Alex didn’t show you around?”

“He had work.”

She led Adele into the front room. “I’ll take you downtown next time, dear, and we’ll go into all the stores and I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

Adele sat on a settee by the front window. Mrs. Wells sat down on a chair opposite her.

“How do you find Alex?”

It seemed a strange question.

“I mean, you haven’t seen each other for four or five months. I was just wondering if Alex seems the same to you now as he did in France. That’s all.” Mrs. Wells looked anxious and hopeful all at the same time.

“In France,” Adele said, “Alex was a soldier. He was, for a long time, a soldier.”

Mrs. Wells nodded vigorously. “A year in Canada. Two years in England. Two years in Europe. We were so afraid.”

“You have such a beautiful house here. You have such a beautiful town. It is difficult for anyone here to know.”

“That’s what I keep telling Gordon. Alex has been so restless. I think he missed you.”

Adele smiled. “Alex is good.”

“Yes, he is. He is so good! But he’s not good, you know? It’s his nerves. Have you noticed?”

Adele shook her head.

“No? Well, perhaps he’s better now that you’re here.” Her eyes began to glisten. “I badgered and badgered until I finally got him to go see Dr. Jerrison. He gave him some pills but Alex said it was an insult and refused to take them. He said they were for crazy people. Gordon said he didn’t need them, either. All Gordon ever says is that he should pull himself together, that there’s lots of other men home from overseas and there’re not falling all over themselves.” She looked dismayed.

“I will see that he takes his medicine,” Adele said.

“But I don’t want to cause trouble, dear.” Mrs. Wells brushed at her tears. “Maybe you should wait for a while.”

After the floor dried, she made a pot of tea and they talked in the kitchen, but not about Alex. She wanted to know everything about Adele’s family. Adele told her about her father’s life in politics. She told her that her two young brothers were travelling with their uncle, the diplomat. Mrs. Wells seemed very impressed. At eleven o’clock she told Adele she had a meeting of the Women’s Missionary Society. She was the chair and so it was unavoidable.

“I won’t be long,” she promised.

Adele watched her go down the front walk and get into a friend’s car that had great plumes of exhaust floating up behind it. She watched her drive away.

She wandered through the downstairs’ rooms. She sat on the settee again and flipped through a magazine. There were so many colourful advertisements, so many things to buy.

She went upstairs and looked out her bedroom window. The neighbours had a large backyard with a gazebo in the middle. Everything was covered with snow. She thought about Alex. She wanted to tell him the truth, who she really was, what she had done and everything that had happened to her. She wanted to do that more than anything else in the world.

That night Alex took Adele tobogganing out at the local golf course. They drove out with Johnny Watson and his girlfriend in Johnny’s old car. All the gang was there waiting for them on the third hole.

The moon was full, so it was almost as bright as day and Adele could see for miles. Farm lights winked at her in the far distance. Long shadows lay across the snow. It was fun careening down the hill, everyone shouting and screaming, sometimes falling off and rolling over and over. Adele got snow down her neck and in her ears. It wasn’t so much fun walking back up the hill.

Some of the men had silver flasks inside their coats, others just bottles. Everyone drank. Alex drank. Adele took a sip or two. She began to notice that Johnny was placing himself in a way that blocked her off from Alex. He seemed to have forgotten that his girlfriend was there, a tall skinny girl who, perhaps in retaliation, was out-drinking all the men.

She heard Johnny tell Alex a joke. It was probably a joke, though no one else could hear it, certainly Adele couldn’t, but Alex laughed. So did Johnny. He leaned in to Alex and grabbed his arm, just to hold himself up, his sharp face creased in a grin. It must have been a good joke.

Adele began to feel chilled. The fun was seeping out of the occasion. She was relegated to tobogganing down the hill with some of the other women. Alex seemed to be more interested in drinking. Johnny began to turn his attention to her.

“Are you cold? Are your feet cold?”

“No. Thank you.”

“How about your hands. You can put them in my pockets.”

“No, thank you.”

“Having a good time? Enjoying yourself? Fun?”

“Yes.”

“That’s great. You like fun. You’re used to having fun, I bet.”

They were standing halfway up the hill. Adele had stopped to rest and Johnny was standing much too close to her. She looked for Alex. He was far ahead, pulling a toboggan up the snowy slope.

Johnny’s black eyes were relentless. “You know, you seem familiar to me.”

“No,” Adele replied.

He put his face close to hers. “I know who you are.” His hand touched her between her legs. He turned away and started up the hill.

Adele couldn’t move. Alex had to come back down to get her.

“Are you all right?”

“I want to go. I’m tired.”

Alex looked disappointed. “So soon?”

“I can walk home.”

“No. Of course you can’t walk home,” Alex said.

Alex went over to talk to Johnny. Johnny looked like he was commiserating with him. Alex came back and said Johnny wanted to stay but he’d given him the keys to the car. They drove back toward town.

“I thought you’d get a kick out of it,” Alex said, “tobogganing.”

Adele didn’t respond.

Alex let her off at the house and drove back to the golf course. He had to give Johnny back his car. Adele got in bed, pulled up the pink eiderdown and waited for him to return.

She tried to think of all the places she’d lived in since she’d met Manfred, places where Johnny could have met her, but it didn’t make any sense. The only people who knew what she had done were living in Rouen.

Except for André. But that didn’t make any sense, either. How would he know André?

Lucille? What if he’d been a customer of Lucille’s? He looked like he could have been. And what if Lucille had told him about her? But how would he know who it was that Lucille was talking about? How could he know, here in Canada, that it was her?

Because she had made the mistake of telling Lucille who Alex was. All Lucille had to do was mention Alex’s name.

No. It wasn’t possible.

After what seemed an unnecessarily long time, she heard Alex clumping up the stairs and along the hall. He came into the bedroom still looking disappointed.

“Did you come back with Johnny?”

“No. He wanted to stay. I got a ride with Ray and Nancy.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Adele, did something happen?”

This is my chance, Adele thought, I’ll tell him about Rouen, I’ll tell him everything. The words wouldn’t climb out of her throat. They wouldn’t appear. “No. I was just cold.”

“I thought you were having fun.”

“I was.” Adele grabbed his hand and kissed it. “I was!”

Alex’s expression changed from disappointed to worried. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

He lay down beside her.

She kissed his nose. She smiled at him. “Johnny Watson is your blood brother.”

“I guess.”

“You have known him a long time.”

“Since about six or seven. His father died in a mill accident. It made Johnny kind of special. At least I guess I thought it did.”