Fall on Your Knees (14 page)

The little girls always cross the threshold with a sense of awe, for Kathleen’s room is a temple of sophistication. Its shelves are lined with every girls’ book you could ever think of, from
Little Women
to
Anne of Green Gables
. Its walls are plastered with pictures of great artists and beautiful underthings cut from magazines.

There is a picture of a man with wild hair and a flying necktie, pouncing upon the keys of a piano. This is Liszt. Kathleen is in love with Liszt. Kathleen says even his name sounds like a romantic sigh. Mercedes and Frances breathe the name to each other as a kind of all-purpose adjective for everything divine: Jell-O, fresh bed linen, Mumma’s molasses cookies, all are wonderfully “Liszt!”

There is a picture of a beautiful dark woman in a wide hat and an old-fashioned dress cut low, with a rose in her lap. This is Maria Malibran. “La Malibran,” Kathleen says dramatically, “the greatest singer who ever lived.” Kathleen has told Frances and Mercedes the tragic story of how Malibran went out riding on the wildest horse in the stable. She fell, caught her foot in the stirrup and was dragged over stones for a mile. She got up, powdered her cuts and bruises and sang that very night — beautifully, as usual. Then she died of a swollen brain and “she was only twenty-eight.” Mercedes always says a little prayer to herself for Malibran, while Frances tries to put the pretty lady in the picture together with the idea of her being dragged with her head bonking along. It’s terrible.

There is a big poster of “the woman of a thousand faces” — although in the poster she has only one. Her name is Eleonora Duse. She has burning dark eyes and piles of black hair. Daddy sent it to Kathleen from England before he went to the Front. Duse is “the greatest actress who ever lived.” In the poster, she stands inside the front hall of a nice house. She is wearing an overcoat and her hand is reaching for the doorknob. The poster is for a scandalous play called
A Doll’s House
. Daddy sent it with a letter, “to remind me not to get married and wreck my career,” Kathleen has explained. Mercedes can’t understand why Kathleen would not want to get married and have babies like Mumma, but Kathleen just snorts, “Marriage is a trap, kiddo. A great big lobster trap.”

Every evening when Kathleen opens her door and grudgingly admits them, Mercedes and Frances wait in obedient silence for five endless minutes, after which Kathleen proclaims her homework finished. Then there are just too many treats to choose from.

Often all three of them wind up lying on their stomachs on Kathleen’s bed, chin in hand, going through a priceless issue of
Harper’s Bazaar
, picking out fashions and accessories “for those in the know”.

“That’s me,” says Mercedes, and Kathleen reads the description. “‘A saucy confection of pale mauve crêpe de Chine touched up with rosettes of pussy-willow silk.’”

“Chic,” says Mercedes wisely.

“Très chic,”
says Kathleen.

“I’m that one.” Frances points and Kathleen obliges. “‘She lost her head over this good-looking and comfortable pair of corsets from La Resista. The lacy brassière has the unmistakeable Paris hallmark.’”

Frances giggles and echoes, “Brassière!”

Even though there’s a war on, there’s still plenty of fashion pouring out of Paris — although according to the magazine the designers only keep it up for the sake of their poor seamstresses, who would otherwise be out of a job.

Kathleen teaches her sisters to mimic the effects of rouge by pinching their cheeks, and of lipstick by mercilessly biting their lips. “‘Beauty is a powerful weapon,’” she reads, at once sarcastic and enthralled. “‘To Fashion’s Throne must the free untrammelled girl be brought for sacrifice.’”

The sisters invariably dine at Sherry’s on Fifth Avenue, where Kathleen greets them in a French accent, “Good evening,
mesdemoiselles
, what would you like? We have Caviar on Toast, Vol au Vent of Sweetbreads, Brandied Peach Tarts and Green Turtle Soup. Or would you prefer Jellied Tongue?”

It’s not all frivolity, however. Kathleen is religious about reading Lady Randolph Churchill’s series on the war,
By the Simmering Samovar
. The sisters all hold their breath when they come upon a picture of a French casino that’s been converted to a hospital. No … Daddy is not there.

And Kathleen always reads aloud the latest instalment of a racy story while the little girls listen, mystified, and gaze at the illustrations over her shoulder: “‘
Go!
You are nothing but a brute!’”

Kathleen eagerly awaits every issue of
Harper’s Bazaar
that Mrs Foss of the Orpheus Society passes on to her, and she savours them with a combination of delight and disgust. For example, there is one picture that Kathleen has cut out for her wall just in order to remind herself that philistines are not confined to her own hometown — they can even be found amid high society: the photograph is supposedly of the great Geraldine Farrar singing
Carmen
at the Metropolitan Opera House of New York. Yet in the foreground sits a boxful of Astors admiring each others’ jewellery. It had never before crossed Kathleen’s mind that people might go to the Opera out of anything but a passion for opera. “Let that be a lesson,” she thinks, vowing, “When I sing, no one will be allowed to look anywhere but at the stage!”

There always comes a point when Kathleen flings the
Harper’s Bazaar
across the room and declares herself “fed up with frippery and foppery and the silly chits who fill their heads with all that rot!”

“Rubbish!” Mercedes agrees.

“Foolish burn bottoms!” seconds Frances.

“Frances!”

Mercedes is always shocked and Kathleen always laughs.

Then they return hungrily to fairy-tales and
The Bobbsey Twins
.

Women of Canada Say, “Go!”

I used to walk the sidewalks in Nova Scotia town
,
There was a man came down, his face was bronzed and brown
,
He told us how King George was calling each to do his share
,
He offered us a khaki coat to wear
.
He told us how the call had gone far over land and sea
,
And when I heard that speaker’s word
,
I said, “Why, that means me.”

MARCHING SONG OF THE 85TH OVERSEAS BATTALION, CANADIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

His notes arrive quite regularly, on standard military postcards.

Dear Missus,

All is well. Do not worry. Love to the girls.

James.

Nothing is ever blacked out — James never writes enough to give anything away. Materia’s heart leaps at the mail because His Majesty’s gratitude and regret come on a card of the same size. She tears open the envelope, looking for the black border, but it’s never there.

In spring of ’16, Mrs Luvovitz shows up at Materia’s kitchen door with little Ralph in tow. The tables are turned, Mrs Luvovitz is crying. Here, here, come in, sit down, cuppa tea. She slumps over the kitchen table, Materia shoos Ralph away — he hovers in the door with Mercedes and Frances, who wonder what’s wrong with Mrs Luv. Mrs Luvovitz reaches out without looking up and clasps Materia’s hand. Her boys are going, Abe and Rudy. They thought she’d be proud, they’re real Canadians.

“Don’t worry, they gonna be back soon,” says Materia.

For all the papers say there’s bound to be a breakthrough any day; the stalemate can’t last for ever.

Mrs Luvovitz blows her nose, scrapes her face with her hanky. “I know, I know, you don’t understand, we have” — and crumples once more — “we have family there,” her voice creaking upward. “My mother is there —”

“Your people in Poland, they got no fighting in Poland.”

“Benny’s are in Poland, my people are German.”

Materia hugs her while she cries just like a child. Her boys will be fighting their own flesh and blood. The Luvovitzes are real Canadians, and the Feingolds are real Germans.

Near the River Somme in summer 1916, there are several innovations: Canadians have helmets, and rifles that fire most of the time. Germans have machine-guns. July 1 the British plan is this: a million shells to cut the Boche wire. Shoulder your seventy-pound pack as usual. Go over the top. Walk towards the German lines, they’ll all be dead by now. Keep walking till you hit Berlin.

In four and a half hours, fifty thousand Britons and Canadians are shot. That afternoon, the British plan is revised: do everything as before. But this time, run.

Abe is killed walking. Rudy is killed running.

Neither of them killed any Germans.
Aleihem Ha’Shalom
.

July 2, 1916
Dear Missus,

All is well….

Mrs Luvovitz never recovers. She functions, has to, she has her youngest son, she has Benny. And there’s Materia, a child still really, I remember when I found her on the cliff, what would she do without me? She took the news about the boys very hard. Materia’s husband will probably be killed, a blessing, God forgive me, I don’t know why but he scares me. Benny says that’s prejudice. It isn’t. It’s superstition. There’s something not right, I can’t prove it, I can feel it. I may be
meshuga
, one thing I know, I’ll maim my son Ralph before I let him go to a war, I’ll nail his feet to the floor.

It’s begun to sink in on two continents. Younger sons are being dragged away from recruiting stations before they can say, “Sixteen, sir, honest.” Everywhere, the youngest have suddenly become the eldest.

None of this is what Materia intended.

Ypres: gas — at least it kills rats too. Passchendaele: it doesn’t matter if you can swim.

Dear Missus,

I am fine….

Summer of ’17, Number 12 Mine, where James worked, explodes. Sixty-five dead. The war has created a boom in the Sydney coalfields. Full employment, lower wages, and strikes forbidden by law, coal being vital to the war effort. Production has been stepped up, airways left shut, gas building up. Number 12 was always bad that way. Materia plays at many funerals, and ponders James’s luck and her own stupefying sins.

To whom can she confess? Not to her dear friend, Mrs Luvovitz. She tries to tell the priest. “Father forgive me for I have sinned, I brought the war.” But he tells her she’s guilty only of the sin of pride; “Say the rosary three times and ask God for humility.” So Materia goes unabsolved. She visits the cliff every day in her mind and every day she swan-dives off it, weightless for a moment, feeling the slim girl she used to be, then the sudden satisfying impact of the rocks. It’s where she belongs, she craves the caress of the violent shore, to come alive like that once more in a clash of stone and then to die. Peace. But she has her little girls, and suicide is the unforgivable sin.

In the fall of 1917, Our Lady appears to three children in Fátima, Portugal, and tells them three secrets, the third of which remains a Vatican secret to this day. But Materia knows what the third secret was. It was this: “Dear children; I sent the Great War in order to shield, a little longer, the body and soul of Kathleen Piper.”

Dulce et Decorum

Now we wear the feather, the 85th feather
,
We wear it with pride and joy
.
That fake Advertiser, Old Billy the Kaiser
,
Shall hear from each Bluenose boy
.
Where trouble is brewing, our bit we’ll be doing
,
To hammer down Briton’s foes
,
With the bagpipes a-humming, the 85th coming
,
From the land where the maple leaf grows
.

85TH OVERSEAS BATTALION, CEF

It must mean something, there are so many of us — never have so many sacrificed so much for so little. It must mean something, otherwise there would not be this parade; there would not be this royal inspection, these brassy buttons, these slender wounds in the earth across Europe, these sturdy beams holding back the tide of mud and human tissue, this meticulous network of miniature mines, these lice, these rats, these boots returning unto dust, these toes lying scattered about my feet, like leaves, like fallen teeth.

James has spent three years in a narrow strip of France and Flanders, dodging snipers in order to collect the dead and comfort the dying. He is not a medic, he just volunteers a lot. Wiring parties, digging parties, reconnaissance parties, one big party. The streamers, fireworks and ticker tape that sent them off are nothing compared to the bright bits of men that sail through the air and festoon the remaining trees here in the land of permanent November. These decorations will stay up for years.

Chloride of lime to kill the stench, cordite to kill the lice, whale oil to keep the feet from rotting. Fifty-four days at a stretch in the flooded mass grave of the living but he never complains. James has prolonged the lives of so many men that he has been mentioned in dispatches several times. Originally he was recommended for the Victoria Cross, but as the Great Adventure dragged on his brand of “conspicuous gallantry” reflected poorly on the war.