Years later, in America (not Canada, though Tilly ended up there, and worked on a farm, and married a farmer, and had, at the moment of her last letter to Bea, three boys), she would be reciting “Humpty Dumpty” with Janie and find that there—in the big white egg, the smashed white shell—was her father. As a child, Bea had coaxed splinters from the fingers of the neighbors’ children and carried the widows’ groceries upstairs. She liked looking after people; it came naturally to her. But her own father?
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men.
His forehead was too broad, his body too big, his mind too breakable, not like the china cups he prided himself on packing well, but in the way of something cracked beyond repair. He did not try to do kindnesses for other people, hardly ever. He did not try, as far as she could tell, to help himself.
Still, I asked you to come, ask me to stay.
“Suit yourself,” her father said.
M
AKING HER WAY
through it, toward it, along New Bedford’s sidewalks, Bea felt at first as if it were a carnival. There were Boy Scouts with banners, women in cross-strap aprons singing rounds, a clown—or no, Uncle Sam, his nose clown-red—on stilts. Along the street, fire trucks and loudspeaker trucks inched along, and just inside the entrance to Acushnet Park were rows of kiosk games where you could throw beanbags at airplanes or sponges at submarines, and there was a garden plot in a big raised box—
Plant a Seed, Feed a Nation—
and a brass band playing a bright march. Children darted, people laughed, popcorn popped and was passed out in paper cones for free. The scene reminded Bea of nothing so much as the feeing fairs at home, where there’d been rides and music and dancing exhibitions, and once an elephant on a tightrope, though it turned out later to be two circus men in a clever suit. Her parents had met at a feeing fair, her mother in from the country looking for factory work, her father selling Forfar bridies at the pastry stand, and you ate the meat at the center but threw away the pastry, as the men’s hands—the women’s too—were dirty from work. “It looks like a carnival,” her mother had explained to her once, “but it’s where you go to find a job.”
The week before had been a claustrophobic inside time, the weather rainy, Janie with mumps (where she had gotten them, nobody could figure out), Mrs. P. with a head cold. Bea had spent the week inside nursing Janie and had not seen Smitty, though he’d sent a note in with Helen and Dossy inviting them all to the Civil Defense Exhibitions, with a special p.s. to her:
B. there!
Now, Janie was finally herself again, pleased to be out though tired of Bea, and Bea ready for a bit of air herself. Stewart had driven them to the bus, then gone back to fetch Mr. and Mrs. P. and take them all the way to New Bedford in the car. Now he was pushing Mr. P., and Dossy and Helen were forging on ahead as Agnes struggled to keep up, and Mrs. P., in her wide-brimmed platter of a hat, was turning this way and that: They’ve really outdone themselves, this is quite a production!
Bea held fast to Janie’s hand. It was not often that the family went out all together, but it was the day before Mr. P.’s birthday, and this, he said, was all he wanted as a gift: to go to the exhibitions and take everyone to supper afterward, “my treat” (what was not his treat?). Bea was in her blue silk dress again. At the dance, Smitty had liked it. Would he notice? Would she even find him among the throng? She had put Janie in a white smocked frock and done her hair in ribbons and ringlets, though most of the girls they passed wore simple smocks or sailor suits with britches.
“This way”—Helen looked at her program—“for the demonstrations,” and they all followed her; such confidence she had, hatless with her hair in a high bun, her long legs striding, and Dossy behind her, laughing, happy, though later that evening she would complain of a headache and start to weep and say she wished she hadn’t gone.
Lined up for inspection were army vehicles, and in front of them signs—“Peep Weapon Carrier with Mounted 30 Caliber,” “Cargo Carrier”—and beside the signs, on a stand, a toy-size model of the vehicle. “Oh, Charlie would think this was over the top!” said Mrs. P., as if her son were a little boy still. In his youth, he’d made model after model; they still took up several shelves in his room in Grace Park. At each exhibit, soldiers were posted, clean-shaven, doing their best to stand at attention. Some had sweets for the children in their rucksacks. Others gave out paper flags on toothpicks; Bea slid one into Janie’s hair. The men from the base were here somewhere, most of them were, though a few had stayed behind on guard. “If I were a Jap or Hun in Buzzards Bay,” Helen had declared too loudly on the bus over, “today’s the day I’d make my move, for sure.” Smitty was here, though he had neglected to tell them in the note precisely where he’d be or what he’d be doing, and now she wondered if this had been on purpose, for there were pretty girls scattered everywhere like candy, younger than she was, more decked out, laughing louder. Already she was sweating through her dress.
“Hand. Stay close,” she kept instructing Janie, and even Mrs. P. had been concerned enough about the crowd to come up with a plan if anyone got separated: Meet at the leaflet table of the air raid warden’s demonstration site at four o’clock. “
The war
,” boomed a deep voice over a loudspeaker on a slow-moving truck, “
is being fought on our own doorstep as well as abroad. We need more volunteers in many lines.
”
“I thought I might roll some bandages,” said Mrs. P. when the voice had moved on. “Just for a few minutes—there’s a table down that way. Come with me, Helen and Dossy. We’ll catch up.”
Before Bea could answer, she was off, Janie straining after her. “No,” Bea told her firmly. “You stay with me.”
One by one, their group diminished: Mr. P. and Stewart stopping along the way to inspect equipment and talk to soldiers, the big girls following their mother to the Red Cross tent, until it was just Bea, Agnes and Janie, and then Agnes took up Janie’s other hand and they went along that way, their own tight chain—past a massive searchlight operated by remote control, past a War Bonds table, past a group of girls tying rags together in a long chain—for tug-of-war, or something more practical? Janie tried to stop, but Bea and Agnes pulled her on. On the map on the back of the printed program, there was a
Storytelling & Crafts Tent for Our Youngest Citizens.
This had become their destination, and while Bea could not make heads or tails of the map, Agnes thought she might know which way to go.
And so it was not at all by intention that they ended up, the three of them, near the gas mask demonstration. It was, it seemed, the crowd that took them there, the swell of it, its buoyant, nervous energy. Each time Agnes tried to move them one way, they got jostled or shuffled or distracted by the next exhibit, until Agnes had turned north to south and then, somehow, dropped the program, so that not only were they separated from the others, but they also had no idea where they were. Later, Bea would wish they had asked directions, gone back to the edge of the green, sat down and had egg sandwiches (she had packed them at home but forgotten to bring them), or found the Youngest Citizens tent and heard a story about ducks.
At first, she was not sure she was really hearing someone call her name:
Bea, Beatrice! Hey there! Over here!
“It’s Smitty!” said Janie, tugging toward him, and then there he was, dressed to the nines, his khaki uniform pressed, his necktie out. He’d gotten a haircut, scrubbed his nails. He was
handsome
; it was the only word for him just then as he stood there smiling at Bea, like a soldier in a musical revue.
“Found you,” he said, out of breath. “And just in time. I’ve been looking out for you—so have some other fellows. Where’s Helen? Henry’s had his eye out.”
“With her mother,” Agnes said. “Henry knows to leave her be. The child is barely sixteen.”
“Sixteen? That’s all? Is that right?” He looked at Bea.
“Barely sixteen,” she confirmed.
“Her birthday was in June,” said Janie.
“Hmm.” Smitty smiled. “The social committee. She does seem older than that.”
Agnes had, Bea knew, spoken to the P.’s about Henry after the dance. Helen had not come home that night until three in the morning; Agnes had waited up. Soon thereafter, Mr. P. had gone to the gate when Henry was on guard duty and had a word with him (Bea would have gone straight to Helen, but the girl’s parents were afraid of her and thought—perhaps rightly—that if they told her no, she’d act out even more). The P.’s asked Agnes and Bea not to tell, and Bea hadn’t told a soul, not even Smitty. She’ll only get wilder, Mrs. P. had said, if she knows we’re tracking her whereabouts. Apparently Helen had told Henry she was eighteen, heading off to Smith College. “At least that’s what Henry told my husband,” Mrs. P. had said. “If it’s true, she’s asking for trouble, and if he made it up”—fat chance, thought Bea—“I trust him even less.” Another family might have come right out and told their daughter to stay away from a soldier four years her senior—but the P.’s were not another family. At least, said Agnes, they were giving some attention to the child’s behavior.
“So listen, ladies,” Smitty said. “Battery B’s gotten in on the gas mask demonstration. I wasn’t sure till the last minute—they keep us guessing so we’re ready for anything—but we hit the jackpot. This one is first-rate.”
“What will happen?” Bea asked.
“You’ll see.” He bent toward Janie. “I’ll get you an ice cream after, doll, all right?” He tipped his cap at Bea. “Nice dress.”
Her eyes found her feet; by the time she could look up again, he was gone.
DID SHE THINK THE DEMONSTRATION
was real? Of course she did not. Did it terrify her, someplace wrapped and wordless in her gut? She had been Janie’s age during the Great War. Her mother had kept her safe and kept her safe again, but still she remembered the air raids, the zeppelins passing over, the churches and infirmary filling up with men who were not from there, while all the men from her town—finally even her father—went off to war. Now, as the smoke poured forth, Bea found herself trying to pull Janie and Agnes away from the scene, and then, when the crowd would not part for them, piling her body on top of Janie and pulling Agnes down along with her, until the three of them tumbled—somehow, they did, all wrapped together—into their own rough heap at the feet of the crowd, which briefly gasped and parted to make way, then turned its attention back to the spectacle. On the grass, Beatrice covered them, her best friend and her baby. She could not tell where her body left off and theirs began.
When she finally lifted her head, it was because Janie was crying and Agnes was poking her in the ribs. Somewhere above her, she heard laughter coming through a long tunnel, and she looked up to a goggle-eyed green insect stretching out an arm.
“Need a hand?” said a muffled voice, and then the creature lifted off its mask and was a soldier, a tall, broad-shouldered boy, red-faced, spike-haired, grinning; he looked familiar, but he was not, to her relief, Smitty.
“The demonstration’s over,” the soldier said, and let out a high-pitched, girlish giggle. Then he lowered his voice. “Sorry if it spooked you, ladies. I guess we did our smoke screen pretty well!”
“No,” said Agnes, pushing past Bea and getting up. “No, we’re fine. Excellent work, sir,” and she had Bea by the arm now, she had Janie too. “You’re fine,” she said to Bea, brushing her off, but Bea did not feel fine; her dress was dirty, her mind torn up.
“I thought . . . ,” she said slowly to Agnes. “It seemed . . .” She looked down. There was Janie, not crying any longer, but rather staring at Bea as if she’d never seen her before.
“You
hurt
me, pulling me down like that,” the child said.
“I was protecting you,” Bea said instinctively.
“It was
fake
.” Janie plucked at the grass on her dress. “They did it on purpose.” She turned to Agnes, tears starting down her face again. “Right?”
“Of course.” Agnes pulled out a handkerchief for her. “Bea was just playing along. You’re supposed to get down low. It’s what you do in a fire drill. Same thing here.”
Janie looked around. “Where’s Smitty? He said he’d buy me an ice cream.”
“I don’t know.” Bea tried to hide her disappointment. “They’re busy today.”
“Where’s Mummy?” Janie asked with sudden urgency. “And Daddy? Where
is
everyone?”
Bea looked at her watch: 3:30. “Seeing the sights, like us. We’ll pay a quick visit to the Youngest Citizens tent and then we’ll find them at our meeting point at four o’clock.”
As they started to walk away, the men laid down a second smoke screen, but this time Bea was far enough away and prepared enough that she could turn and watch. From a distance the smoke was almost beautiful, curled and blue and rising—and not real, anyway (it smelled of fire but also of something sweet like shaving cream, and had no heat). And there were the men, wandering through it, first with their gas masks in their hands, then putting them on, hat over head, hands on masks, fingers adjusting, pulling levers or pushing buttons. Though it was hard to see through all the smoke, it looked difficult, whatever they were doing, and there must have been forty men, maybe more, all fumbling and arranging at the same time, all disappearing into their masks.
“Battery B! Ashaunt Point! Best of the best!” she heard someone call, and then, in front of her, a soldier was waving—to her, or someone just behind her, or the crowd.
“Wave.” Agnes raised her hand, and Janie’s too. “It’s Smitty. Go on!”
Bea lifted her arm, but by then the soldier was gone, the smoke clearing, the crowd applauding, the loudspeaker voice starting in about searchlights—“
pierce the darkness up to a distance of twelve miles . . . eight hundred thousand candlepower”—
She dropped her hand down; her arm felt heavy, prosthetic. Did a gas mask really help you breathe or just give you a small green tent in which to die? It was at that moment that her heart cracked open for Smitty and—like a sea creature flaring forth, then muscling in—coiled tightly closed.