Louise's Crossing Read online

  ‘I know just the place. I spent a few days here waiting for transport the last time I sailed from the States,’ Gil said. ‘It’s called the Galway, and it was well stocked with whisky. It had a wonderful rabbit pie and chips, too.’

  Mr Smit looked at his wife, as if asking for permission to join the men.

  ‘You go on ahead, Beste; we’ll join you later,’ she said. ‘The girls and I will be looking for a tea parlor. We want a fireplace too!’

  ‘Maybe they’ll have croissants,’ Corrie said. ‘With jam.’

  ‘I wonder where the officers go when they’re ashore,’ Alida mused.

  Smit fixed his elder daughter with a steely gaze. ‘You stay with your mother and sister,’ he said. ‘No arguments.’

  ‘You’d think I was a child!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You are a child,’ he answered her. Alida sulked, looking out to sea with her bottom lip stuck out and her arms crossed.

  ‘I’m going to find a bookstore,’ Olive said. ‘I’ve read the book I brought already. Have you seen what’s in the so-called ship’s library? Westerns! Zane Grey and Hopalong Cassidy! Why do the seamen read so many Westerns? I’ll bet none of them have ever been on a horse in their lives!’

  My only goal was to buy a couple of pairs of wool socks and wool mittens.

  Olive and I agreed, depending on how long we could stay ashore, to join the men at the pub for a meal of rabbit pie and chips after our various excursions. You would think we were going to Paris, we were so excited.

  The master, who was sitting at another table with Ensign Bates and his second mate, must have heard part of our conversation. He rose and came over to our table.

  ‘Would you mind if I join you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Gil said.

  The master pulled out a chair, turned it around, and sat with his arms crossed over the back. ‘I couldn’t help but overhear you,’ he said.

  ‘What time will you be allowing us to go ashore?’ Alida asked.

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ he said. ‘But no one will be going ashore in Halifax except me and several of my officers.’

  I’m sure surprise and disappointment showed on all our faces. Poor Mrs Smit actually covered her face with her hands. Ronan looked as if he’d lost his best friend. He would have to wait weeks longer for that pint. I had hardly taken off my kid gloves since I’d gotten on this ship and now I didn’t expect to. They were already ruined by salt spray. I’d need to throw them away once I arrived in England.

  Gil was furious. ‘You can’t keep us from going ashore!’ he said. ‘There’s no reason!’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ the master said. ‘And I don’t have to explain why. But I will. Halifax isn’t safe for tourists, or for shore leave for our seamen, for that matter. The port is overwhelmed. It can’t handle the troops, ships or workers it already has. If you did go ashore, you’d never get into a restaurant or a pub. And it’s dangerous – the city is packed with the kind of people who prey on tourists and seamen on shore leave. Even the harbor’s full; we can’t even drop anchor there.’

  ‘You’re going ashore, dammit,’ Gil said, under his breath.

  ‘Yes, I am. Chief Pitts, Ensign Bates and I have to fill out forms at the port and the chief steward is going to stock up on supplies, if he can find any.’

  The Smits had gone below, so Olive, Gil, Ronan and I went out on deck, but not before hearing from a seaman going off watch that it was seven degrees above zero outside. We knocked ice off the rails before grabbing them to hang on as the ship maneuvered near the shore. The coastline looked empty, cold and bleak. From a distance, the town of Halifax was gray and industrial-looking, consisting mostly of warehouses, cranes, piers and a harbor packed with all kinds of ships, from destroyers to cruise liners confiscated by the government for troop transport. The others went below while our ship cruised to an inlet to drop anchor. I stayed for a few minutes to watch a brightly lit freight train chug around the inlet, its whistle making that familiar lonesome, homesick sound. Occasionally, it would stop, its whistle sounding in a long burst, to pick up cargo or passengers to take to the port, where longshoremen would empty its freight cars and load them on waiting ships.

  On my way back amidships, I saw Grace and a seaman smoking, sitting on one of the many wooden cable spools that were scattered around the deck, which Olive had started to call ‘the deck chairs’. The seaman was the young red-headed man I’d seen boarding the ship at the last minute at the Navy Yard. When he saw me, he tossed his still-glowing cigarette into the ocean and rapidly walked away, his head down. I guessed he wasn’t supposed to be there. I didn’t blame him; Grace was such a pretty girl. She moved aside to give me room.

  ‘Cigarette?’ she asked me, holding out her pack and Zippo lighter.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘Smoking makes my throat sore.’

  She nodded, looking toward the Nova Scotia shore while inhaling a deep lungful of smoke.

  ‘Just three weeks until we get to England,’ she said. ‘I love it there.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, surprised. ‘Even with the bombing and rationing? Have you spent much time there?’ I was so looking forward to living in London, despite the crushing work that awaited me, not to mention the deprivations and bombings. I’d wanted to go to Europe ever since I could remember and this was likely my only chance.

  ‘I had a three-week layover in Liverpool – you know, in between ships. It was like a different world.’

  I knew what she meant. England wasn’t segregated.

  She tossed her spent cigarette overboard and jammed her hands into her pockets.

  ‘I would love to live there after the war. I guess I’m not much of a patriot,’ she said. ‘Are you terribly shocked?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I would think the same way if I were you.’ Madeleine, Dellaphine’s daughter, had said many times that she wanted to live in Paris after the war, where she could be as free as Josephine Baker. Her mother scoffed at the idea. To Dellaphine, it sounded like a fairy tale. ‘You know,’ I said to Grace, ‘you can talk to me about anything. I’m on your side.’

  I had given up any tolerance of segregation, despite my upbringing, after I moved to DC. Washington was teeming with people from all over the country, all over the world. I’d seen things I never knew existed. Like men dancing together and holding hands at a private party. One of my white colleagues was engaged to a beautiful mixed-race woman from the Caribbean. And one of the academic experts in the Research Section of OSS was a woman with a PhD. She lived with another woman in a ‘Boston marriage’. Madeleine had graduated from the best colored high school in the city and had a good job with the Social Security Administration.

  From what I’d seen, colored people could do anything white people could do, and why shouldn’t they keep right on doing it?

  ‘When I was in Liverpool, I was quartered in a women’s boarding house,’ Grace said. ‘The landlady was so nice. It wasn’t just colored – there was an Indian lady, and the other three were white ladies who worked at the port. They were all from London. The Indian lady let me try on her saris – they were beautiful. We all ate dinner together and everything. We could go into any tea shop and order tea and scones whenever we wanted to. And sit with the audience at the cinema instead of in a balcony.’

  I said nothing to discourage her. Eleanor Roosevelt was leading a movement for equal rights for colored people, but it would be a long struggle. Grace stood up to go. ‘Mrs Pearlie, you won’t tell anyone what I said, will you? About leaving the United States.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said.

  Talking to Grace made me wonder how the world would sort itself out after the war. It seemed very unlikely to me that things would go back to the way they were, as Phoebe and Henry had insisted nostalgically.

  I joined Gil, Ronan and Olive in the gangway down below, where we chatted, putting off returning to our berths where there was nothing to do except lie on our bunks and try to stay warm.
The next three weeks promised to be just as cold and bleak as this day. I already had cabin fever and I couldn’t for the life of me think of how we’d all pass the time ahead of us.

  ‘Look,’ Gil said, ‘I’ve got two bottles of Four Roses bourbon. I’m happy to share it. And a deck of cards. Can everyone play poker? Let’s have a poker party after dinner.’

  ‘I’m in,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a pint of gin.’

  We agreed to meet after dinner in Ronan’s cabin for drinks and cards. The plan lifted all our spirits. You’d think we’d been invited to the party of the century!

  The shore party must have returned because we saw the master, Tom and Popeye at the officers’ table at dinner.

  Olive and I were fed up with Blanche. So her husband was dead – lots of women had dead husbands and they didn’t sit by themselves at dinner rather than taking a spot at a table with people who were willing to be nice to her. Me, for example. So Olive and I marched up to her table, where she was sitting by herself as usual, and plunked our trays right down. This did not improve Blanche’s demeanor.

  ‘Sitting with the suspected murderess?’ she said to us. ‘Is this your good deed for the day?’

  ‘People might not think you’re a murderess if you acted like a human being sometimes,’ Olive said to her.

  To our surprise Blanche smiled. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But it’s so difficult. Everyone on this ship has heard about Eddie’s death and how I was a lousy wife and maybe even killed him. I just want to hide until I get home.’

  ‘You can’t hide here. There’s not enough room,’ I said. ‘Might as well mingle and try to have some fun. And I know how annoying it is to hear that. I’m a widow, too.’

  ‘You are socializing a bit, though, aren’t you?’ Olive said, winking at Blanche.

  ‘It’s not what you think. Tom and I are friends. On the voyage over, when Eddie died, he was the only person who was nice to me.’

  Dinner was pretty good. We had sliced turkey and gravy – real turkey, not canned – the usual mashed potatoes, green beans and fresh baked rolls. Butter instead of margarine. Chocolate pudding for dessert. There were always bowls of apples on the table so you could take one for a snack later. I figured about ten days from now our meals would be less appetizing as the cooks switched to powdered eggs, powdered milk and margarine.

  The three of us avoided serious subjects and talked about the movies we’d seen and the books we were reading. Like me, Blanche was an Agatha Christie fan. She said she had an entire shelf devoted to her books in her room at her parents’ home in Winchester and had Evil Under the Sun autographed when Mrs Christie was at Harrod’s once. Her favorite was Death on the Nile, but mine was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. To our surprise, Olive had read all the Agatha Christie books, too. For some reason we had thought she was too serious to waste her time on detective fiction.

  While we waited for a messman to clear off our table, I noticed that Blanche wrapped up her dinner roll, which she had left on her plate, in a napkin and stowed it in her purse. Then she leaned across the table and took two apples out of the bowl of fruit on the table.

  ‘I get hungry at bedtime,’ she said, noticing our stares. ‘There’s so much time between dinner and breakfast.’

  After we’d finished coffee and dessert, the master stood up from his chair and rapped on the table. We quieted, eager to hear what he had to say.

  ‘As you know,’ he said, ‘my officers and I went to Halifax today to verify our orders. We were told that most of the ships we’ve been traveling with will part from us tomorrow and join a fast convey. It’ll head north to resupply Iceland before it arrives in England. We’ll connect with a slow convoy in St John’s and take the direct route to England. We’ll be traveling at a speed of seven knots and we should reach Liverpool in nineteen days. We’ll have air cover and warship escorts the entire way, but I want you to understand that this is still a dangerous journey. Most of the German submarine activity takes place off the west coast of the British Isles these days, but lone wolves still surface often in the center of convoys. And as I am sure you have noticed, the weather is nasty, and it will be worse on the open ocean. Once we leave St John’s, you must wear your life jackets at all times, day and night. No exceptions. Any questions?’

  He was met with silence.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You may go.’

  I was pushing my chair to the table, preparing to leave, when Tom came up to me. He handed me a paper bag. ‘This is for you,’ he said, looking a little embarrassed. ‘Blanche said you were pretty desperate for these.’

  To my joy, I pulled out thick wool mittens and two pairs of wool socks and clutched them to my chest. ‘Thank you! I don’t know what to say!’ I turned to Blanche. ‘I didn’t think to ask anyone to look for these. Thank you!’ Blanche just shrugged, looking embarrassed.

  ‘I was lucky,’ Tom said. ‘The stores are almost empty. But I ducked under an awning to avoid a gust of snow and saw these in the display window. They would only sell me two pairs of socks and I got the last of the mittens.’

  Ronan’s room was a double berth, which meant there was a second bunk above the first and a little more floor space than in the single berths. Olive and I sat cross-legged on the bottom bunk. Gil and Ronan got their suitcases from the storage closet and upended them, using them as stools.

  I’d brought my pint of Gordon’s gin with me and some of Dellaphine’s pralines. Olive donated a can of peanuts and Ronan a bag of potato chips – or, as he called them, crisps. True to his word, Gil produced a bottle of Four Roses. No one wanted to drink gin straight but me. Which was just fine: my bottle would last longer.

  Because of the master’s warnings, we weren’t the gayest group ever, but it was better than being alone in our cabins. We parceled the snacks out on paper napkins and poured our drinks into glasses borrowed from the wardroom.

  ‘These pralines are delicious,’ Olive said.

  ‘The cook at my boarding house, Dellaphine, made them.’ I was instantly awash with memories of my two years in Washington. The good ones. My new friends, my lover Joe and my work. And making my own living. That was the best part. I hoped that after the war I could continue to do that. Like most government girls, I was employed for the duration of the war. I could be out of a job within days of the Allied victory and unable to find a new one, since men leaving the military would get preference for the jobs that were available. That’s just the way it was. Women were expendable. They could always go back to keeping house. Which meant I might need to return to my parents’ home to live. And work in the family fish camp, frying up bluefish and hushpuppies. I gulped down half my glass of gin. I wished I had an ice cube or two, but when I tasted the gin it was as cold as it could be without being frozen solid. It quickly worked its way through my body until I felt almost warm. And less worried. I would do my best to find a job with some permanence before the end of the war. And a woman friend of mine at OSS, who was a college professor at Smith before the war, had said she would help me finish college if I wanted.

  And how could I complain when so many European women had lost their homes, livelihoods and loved ones? The fate of the Jews of Europe was catastrophic, and rumors abounded that millions had been executed in concentration camps. I remembered my dear friend Rachel Bloch, a French Jewish woman I’d met in junior college. She’d just barely escaped France to Malta with her children after her husband joined the French Resistance. I liked to think I had something to do with that, although I didn’t know for sure.

  I should be ashamed of myself for whining. Instead, I thought about my future. My plan was to have a good job, my own apartment and a car. Maybe that was as much a fairy tale as Grace’s desire to live in England, but I was going to work as hard as I could to make it come true.

  Ronan finished his glass of Gil’s bourbon and smacked his lips. ‘That’s good stuff,’ he said. ‘Even if it’s not Irish.’

  Olive took a sip of her bourbon cautiously, then anothe
r. ‘I usually don’t drink anything but sherry.’ She swallowed another mouthful. ‘This isn’t as sweet as sherry. It’s kind of raw. I like it.’

  ‘So,’ Ronan said to her, ‘you’re a nurse? What kind of nursing do you do?’

  ‘Surgical. I assist surgeons during operations.’

  ‘Really,’ Ronan said, looking surprised. ‘That’s class. Why didn’t you tell us earlier?’

  Olive shrugged. ‘I’ve learned not to mention it. Surgery makes people squeamish. And there are still people who think women don’t belong in an operating theatre at all.’

  ‘What about you?’ I said to Gil. ‘You said you work for a rubber company?’

  ‘The American Rubber Company. We make tires for airplanes. Our factory has quadrupled its production since the war started; we can hardly find enough workers to fill our contracts, even with half of our workforce women. I’m going to England to sign a new contract. This is my third trip in two years.’

  We finished our snacks and refilled our drinks. ‘If we’re going to play poker, we should do it now, before we get too soused to think,’ Gil said. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a deck of cards. ‘What shall we play for?’ he asked. ‘Nickels? Dimes? More than that?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Olive said, ‘I’m not playing for money. I work too hard to waste my pay gambling.’

  ‘How about just pennies?’ Gil said. ‘It’s no fun if you don’t bet real money!’

  ‘I can’t afford to lose money gambling,’ Ronan said. ‘I’m a poor man. I’ll probably spend my last penny the morning before I die in the afternoon.’

  I was relieved. I didn’t want to play for money either. ‘Louise,’ Ronan said, ‘I’ve got a big box of matches in that drawer there – can you reach it?’

  I could, and pulled the red, white and blue box of Victory matches out and handed it over to him. He divvied them up between us. Gil wasn’t pleased, but he shuffled the deck anyway.

  ‘Draw poker, deuces wild, OK?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s all I know how to play,’ Olive said.

  Olive and I sat cross-legged on the bunk facing each other. Gil and Ronan perched on their upended suitcases. Gil dealt into the space on the bunk between Olive and me. I had a miserable hand, even more miserable after I discarded three cards and drew three more. Ronan and Olive folded soon after I did.