What Is Left the Daughter (22 page)

In Halifax, I paid full passage for the toboggan to be transported first on a ship, the TSS
Athenia,
bound for Greece, then for France, and then sent by train to Sweden and on to its final destination of Copenhagen. I was concerned that the Kormikers no longer lived at the same address that was on their envelopes, but that was a chance I took. Nonetheless, I was relieved when, two months later, I got a letter acknowledging the toboggan's arrival. The address I'd enclosed with the toboggan: Wyatt Hillyer—resident, c/o The Evangeline Hotel, 227 Brunswick Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

I
'M MAKING A NOTE
here, Marlais, to not forget to tell you about a photograph in Rigolo's Pub.

Living on the little savings I had from wages paid by my uncle, which Cornelia had kept in her combination-lock safe at the bakery, and rent from my Robie Street house, I'd looked for employment all winter of 1948 -49. During that time I twice changed rooms in the Evangeline Hotel, each time downward in rent a few dollars a week. The Evangeline was quiet, and the manager, desk clerks and bellmen were friendly and pretty much left me alone. But the cleaning ladies, Mrs. Tompkins and Mrs. Delft, seemed to run the place. For instance, they kept no formal schedule, and my being blunt with them, that I didn't like sitting in the lobby at all hours, waiting for them to attend to my room, hardly put me better in their favor.

I applied for all sorts of work, and finally, in late June of 1949, I was hired on as a "detritus gaffer," as it was officially categorized on the payroll of Harbor Associates, which was the principal custodian of Halifax Harbor and subcontracted out specialty jobs such as detritus gaffing. I was now part of a crew made up of two women, Evie Michaels and Hermione Rexroth, and three men other than me, Tom Blackwell, Sam Kitchen and Sebastian Firth. We cleaned up around Queen's Wharf and Smith Wharf, along all the beachfronts on both the Halifax and Dartmouth sides, the whole coastline all the way out to Pennant Point. Our main task was to maneuver around in lifeboat-sized outboards, or lean from tugboat railings, gaffing in flotsam and jetsam in order to keep the lanes clear for the Halifax-Dartmouth commuter ferries, fishing trawlers and behemoth freighters. And Marlais, you can hardly believe everything that finds its way into the harbor, and I mean everything, from picture frames to lampshades to shoes. One time a crate full of brooms, another time a shipment of exotic potted plants.

We were required to itemize everything we hauled in. But the time Evie Michaels and I gathered up a set of the
Encyclopaedia Brittanica—
individual volumes bobbing out there under the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge—Evie said, "Say, Wyatt, you know what? My family doesn't own a complete set like this. So if you don't mind, I'm not going to write these up. I'd like to dry them out and hope they're still readable. My kids could really use them for homework."

All manner of death and near death, too. For instance, we often found waterlogged gulls, and we had a sea duck choked on a plastic necklace, a goner. Then there was a pet dachshund in a wooden crate with breathing holes. When we approached, we heard the dog barking and whimpering, so we knew it was okay. Sorry to say, we've had one suicide, too, floating face-down near the mouth of the harbor. Fishing line had twisted his fishing pole around his leg like a splint. That sight was hard to take. Again that day Evie had partnered with me. We held the poor fellow against the hull of our boat with gaffing hooks, used the walkie-talkie, and waited there until the harbor police took over. We knew it was a suicide because next morning the article in the
Mail
said he—his name was Russell Leminster—had left a note to that effect. "Who knows," Evie said, "what goes through someone's mind, eh? Maybe he felt a sense of order was important, so he went fishing first. Then came the next thing."

We each were issued a one-piece dark blue uniform with an accordion waist. Also dark blue caps with
Harbor Assoc.
stitched in cursive across the front. We were given galoshes, a rain slicker, thick sweater, insulated vest, five pairs of woolen socks and two pairs of waterproof gloves, and if you lost an item of clothing, Harbor Associates replaced it but docked the price from your next paycheck, no exceptions. I admit that sometimes I wore one of the pairs of socks or galoshes or a sweater outside of work, as part of my day-to-day wardrobe.

I don't know why I just used the past-tense "wore" when I should've used "wear," because I'm about to enter my eighteenth year as a detritus gaffer. In fact, along with Hermione and Tom, I'm a senior gaffer and have received an increase in salary—beginning at $18 per week—every year, plus there's the Christmas bonus. Philosophically speaking, in 1949 when I first landed the gaffing job, I remember feeling that I'd come up in the world from being in Rockhead Prison, but I'd come down in the world from building sleds and toboggans.

Considering what I do for a living, I realize it's a pretty awful pun to say that motion pictures are the one thing that buoys up my spirits. Nonetheless it's true. I trust that your mother told you that for fifteen years now, I've put $20 a month into a Halifax bank account under your name. But aside from that, motion pictures are my one sizable expense. With rare exceptions, I take supper at home, and I'm provided breakfast and lunch by Harbor Associates, except on Saturday and Sunday, but I seldom work weekends anyway.

From my first day back in Halifax, I wondered if Cornelia Tell would ever take up her own invitation to go to the pictures with me. And for four years, though I hadn't seen her, we stayed in touch. Letters and the occasional telephone conversation. My letters were all written on hotel stationery. She did visit Halifax a number of times, but did not telephone. Her choice, and her own business. But she'd always write and tell me which movie she'd seen, and then I'd go see it, too. Then I'd write her a letter and ask her what she thought of
The Return of Monte Cristo
or
A Notorious Gentleman
or
Holiday in Mexico,
which starred Walter Pidgeon and had Xavier Cugat and his orchestra in it. Or
The Strange Woman,
with my favorite actress of all time, Hedy Lamarr, who I thought was the second most beautiful woman in the world next to Tilda. All of those movies played at the Casino Theatre. I'd ask Cornelia's opinion of
Nobody Lives Forever
and
The Show-Off.
And I remember a sign out front of the Capital Theatre for
Undercurrent,
starring Robert Taylor and Katharine Hepburn (who grated on my nerves), that read
NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN.
The Shocking Miss Pilgrim
with Betty Grable,
Notorious
with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant,
No Leave, No Love
with Van Johnson. Believe me, Marlais, when I say that Cornelia Tell was generous with opinions about movies, pages and pages worth, on everything from A to Z.

Cornelia never once apologized for not contacting me on her visits to Halifax, and I thought, Well, when she's ready she will contact me, that's just the way she is. Finally, on the evening of January 8, 1953, she telephoned my room at my most recent hotel—the Glendale, on Hollis Street—and said, "I was thinking how about tomorrow, since it's a Friday and I could get weekend rates?" And so I met her at the Halifax bus station, her bus roughly ten minutes late.

I carried her small suitcase to the Dresden Arms Hotel, at 103 Dresden Street, where I'd arranged a room for her. We had supper at Halloran's restaurant on Sackville Street, and she caught me up on this and that news from Middle Economy. For whatever reason, Marlais, she did not mention you or Tilda at dinner. From ice water to dessert, it was as if we'd read each other's minds, that certain subjects should wait until later in the evening, when we could sit for tea back at her hotel. Toward the end of our meal, she reached into her handbag and took out a piece of paper on which she'd written the schedule of pictures then playing in town.

"Now, my preference would be
49th Parallel,
a war movie," she said. "It originally came out in 1941 in the U.S., but for some reason it's only just got to Nova Scotia. Movies keep the war with us, huh?"

"I've never heard of it," I said.

"Let me warn you in advance—it's got a German U-boat in it."

"I've seen a lot of war pictures, Cornelia."

"I just don't want you to be put off this one and want to walk out. I go to enough movies alone. So I don't want to start out not alone and then suddenly it's the opposite, you know?"

"I wouldn't think of doing that."

49th Parallel
was playing at the Casino Theatre, seven blocks from Halloran's, and had showings seven days a week starting at 1
P.M.
, including one at midnight. We arrived a few minutes early for the 7:15, and when I paid for the tickets, Cornelia said, "Why, thank you, Wyatt. I'd bat my eyes at you if I was thirty years younger." At the concession stand we each purchased a box of buttered popcorn, and Cornelia a box of bonbons, too. The usher escorted us until Cornelia said, "I'll sit right here, on the aisle." I sat next to her. The theater was quite crowded.

There was a Movietone newsreel to start things. This was followed by two Looney Tunes cartoons. One was a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd called
What's Opera, Doc?
in which Elmer sings in Wagnerian tones, "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!"

Then
49th Parallel
came on screen. Look, it wasn't a great movie by any means, though it had a lot of witty repartee and such, and parts were truly laughable, like how the crew of the German U-boat—
U-37—
all spoke British English. I suppose they couldn't get authentic German actors for those roles, and why offer good money to the devil? But they might at least have required that the actors they did hire try their best to sound German. Maybe they thought even fake German accents were too painful to bear in 1941. Who knows?

Basically, what happens is,
U-37
has wandered up the St. Lawrence River, gets thrown so far off course that it's finally stranded in Hudson's Bay—icebergs all around—where it's sighted, strafed and bombarded by Canadian planes, and finally sunk. Some of the crew is killed, but the captain and others manage to escape and hide out in isolated villages, on the lam, and from there the story contains all sorts of adventures. In the end, good triumphs over evil.

Like I said, I wasn't much taken by
49th Parallel.
I do remember the first ten or so minutes quite vividly, however.
U-37
torpedoes a passenger ship in the St. Lawrence. It takes survivors on deck, the Nazi captain questions a few, and then they are set free, sent off in life rafts.
U-37
slices down into the water and disappears, and soon a rescue plane is seen approaching. Happy result—for those Canadians, anyway. Right then and there I realized that this incident depicted on screen would have had to take place before 1940, or maybe in 1940, because not long after that, U-boats didn't pick up survivors. I'd learned that from a newspaper article on the wall of my uncle's shed.

In the audience during
49th Parallel
there'd been the occasional hissing and booing. And I heard Cornelia laugh and weep and say "Bastards" a few times. On the walk back to her hotel, I discovered she'd already put things into balance. "Well, I won't see that one again," she said. "But I got something from it."

It was only a movie story, so not entirely dedicated to the claims of fact, Marlais—I know that. And there was one particular line of dialogue that was definitely false to history, and to prove it you just have to look at a framed photograph behind the bar at Rigolo's Pub right here in Halifax.

See, when
49th Parallel
begins, the camera zooms in on a map of Canada, and then the St. Lawrence River looms large, and then we see
U-37
cut the surface, sinister as all hell. While it cruises along, the captain tries to work up historical gloating and excitement—of a Nazi sort—in his crew. "You'll be the first of the German forces to set foot on Canadian soil. The first of thousands."

Yet if you study the black-and-white photograph in Rigolo's, you'll see three men in their early twenties standing at the bar having a grand old time, all happy-go-lucky and clinking mugs. They have fishermen's caps on. They are wearing thick fishermen's sweaters and looking directly into the camera. What's more, someone—the photographer, maybe, or the pub owner—has circled the face of the man in the absolute bull's-eye center of the photograph, his big round face, dimples, strong chin and eyes heavy-lidded from drink.

A line runs in ink from the circle down to the lower right hand corner of the photograph, where these words are written:
Nazi U-boat navigator Wernor Timm, U-69, the Laughing Cow, October
12
,
1939.
You'll remember, Marlais, the
Laughing Cow
had sunk the ferry
Caribou,
on which Constance had been a passenger.

I learned from the newspapers that before the successful crackdown on U-boats—before thick-link fences were submerged in the harbor—the German crews used to anchor offshore (some people said near Peggy's Cove) and make their way into Halifax. They went to pubs, movies and restaurants, telling everyone they were Swedes off a Swedish freighter, or Norwegians, or some such lie.

As it happened, this Wernor Timm had stepped out some nights with a Haligonian named Wilma Raymond. People had seen them together, but nobody would ever have known Timm's true identity except for the fact that on their last night together, Timm got drunk and told Wilma everything. He even proposed marriage! She refused him, and as she later said, "He stumbled out of my apartment and just disappeared into the streets."

Wilma Raymond was the niece of the bartender at Rigolo's Pub. She was horrified to discover the photograph her uncle had put up behind the bar. There was Wernor Timm, big as life! She was so ashamed of having consorted with a German U-boat officer it took her another few days to work up the courage to tell her uncle what she knew. Of course by that time the
Laughing Cow
was long gone.