Note to file. Patrick McGowan C.P.R. Ottawa-Orleans Fri Oct 11, 1957, 19:00. Andre Petrowski Ottawa-Orleans Sat Oct 12, 15:30. Both Orleans-Ottawa Sun Oct 13, 14:15.

The train moved with a hypnotic rhythm, passing the last of the squat bungalows on the outskirts of Ottawa. Ahead lay the timeless expanse of Ontario countryside, now bedding itself down for the winter already in the air. The later train was less hectic without commuter crowds. The half-empty car had an air of slumber, as most passengers were settled in for the longer trip to Montreal – some civil servants finishing a week of meetings, ready to return to their families – others headed for Dorval Airport, in anticipation of an early flight the next day.

The train always brought back memories of Patrick’s first trip with his brother Michael years earlier, much longer from Quebec City, after meeting Uncle Gaspard on their first arrival to Canada. Everything seemed newer, on a larger scale, prosperous, the way Ireland had not. In the Ottawa Valley, the farms stretched out for great distances, fields groaned with hay piled into bundles. The houses were rooted, solid with roofs made of material more permanent than thatch. The land, not an inhospitable maze of outcrops and bog, was rather fertile and yielding to the point of being bounteous. Never mind that Canada had been in the depths of what they called the depression at the time – Ireland, at least the rural parts, lived always in a precarious, season-to-season existence. Perhaps the more astute farmers might have noticed a few years of lower prices for their crops, but the Irish had mastered the art of making do.

And truly, Uncle Gaspard’s and Auntie Rose’s industry and frugality had made a life for him that could hardly have been possible back in County Cavan, even when his mother had been alive. It had been his older brother who had been marked out by the priests as a possible candidate for the seminary, something Michael viscerally rejected. The rhythms of the farm, and especially Uncle Gaspard’s workbench and tools better suited Michael’s character than any book learning. That turned out to be Patrick’s particular gift, opening doors to him he did not even know exist – doors that took him to McGill University with an aptitude for mathematical sciences which came almost effortlessly.

The train slowed as the houses of Orleans crowded closer to the tracks. The whistle had been blowing for a few minutes as signals clanged and flashed out their warnings at level crossings. The buggies and old jitneys of the 1930s and 40s had mostly been replaced with more powerful and shapely cars of the modern age, the age of luxury, the age of prosperity. And now, the space age.

Stepping off the train, Patrick sighted down the platform in the direction of the unpaved parking lot. He saw the large form of the light blue Impala sitting quietly, waiting for his arrival. Alison stepped forward from the old station house and waved as he moved towards her, carrying only a small overnight bag. He looked with a twinge of nostalgia at the figure, once very familiar to him – they grew up almost as siblings together – marvelling at her bloom into womanhood – her years at University of British Columbia had smoothed the rough edges of the tomboy he had once known.

As he came closer, he noticed she had her hair wrapped in a kerchief, which conjured up a flood of memories and associations. Alison in a kerchief – this could mean she was in the kitchen, rolling out pie shells, or had her hair in curlers, or that she was on her way to church, or that she was visiting the shops on the main street of the small town, or that she had the roof of the convertible down. But tonight it meant simply there was a chill in the air.

She stepped forward and offered her cheek for Patrick to kiss, first one, then, methodically, the second – a nod to her French-Canadian heritage. “You’re not dressed warmly enough,” she observed, taking his wrist and steering him through the station house, its stove stoked to warm the few passengers waiting for the train in the opposite direction.

“You’re right,” Patrick said, stopping outside the door to turn up his collar to the evening breeze. “’Tis a lazy habit from living downtown: moving from building to building without even noticing the change of season.”  He stopped to take in the freshness of the air around him. The burst of cool air jarred his dormant sense to a new alertness. He bristled at the unaccustomed scents in the air around him – spruce that lined one side of the darkened parking lot, and further out, the last of the hay in the fields.

“The apples are now off the trees. Michel has the pressing in full swing. I’m glad the season’s almost over. The exertion takes its toll on Maman. I can tell.”

Patrick slid into the passenger seat of the wide car. Well suited for moving around the open countryside, as it had been for years. But not especially suited to the narrow lanes of By-Ward Market, which had become its more recent haunt. “Grand you could get time off to help,” Patrick said, noting that Alison was not going to start the car immediately, rummaging through her purse for a cigarette. He took out a lighter, waited for her to place the cigarette into her mouth, before lighting it for her.

“You don’t want one?”

“No, thanks. I almost never do.”  He placed the lighter back into his pocket and settled into the seat. “Sorry I couldn’t help out this year. They’re almost killing us at the office. Ministers and Deputy Ministers are burning the midnight oil, as you can imagine. No one slacks off. They hardly had to say it. All vacation cancelled.”

“Of course. It’s the same at the paper. The typewriters are clacking away full speed. Not that anyone knows what to write about. Just so long as they write something.”

“And you. Are you not hot on an assignment?”

Alison pushed the smoke noisily through her lips, turning a slightly disgusted glance towards Patrick, immediately regretting since her plight was not his fault. “The Ladies’ Page angle on Sputnik?  You must be joking. What would that be?  Mrs. Khrushchev and Mrs. Eisenhower’s fashion choices as they stand beside their husbands making speeches?”

“So I can expect a feature on the Orleans Fall Fair in Saturday’s edition?”  Again she shot him a glance; this time he did deserve it, if only for being right when he shouldn’t have. She stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray, started the car, shifted it into reverse and moved jerkily away from the fence that overlooked the quiet and darkened tracks. Then apologetically, eased through the gate and onto the road leading back through town.

“Have you been keeping an eye on my room?”  And as if the question had been rhetorical, continued. “I appreciate you getting the room for me. I wasn’t enjoying the commute. The traffic is really quite formidable in the morning.”  Alison had become Patrick’s neighbour, in a rooming house not far from the University of Ottawa, where she was now part-time lecturer. “I’m becoming a city girl, ever since Vancouver.”

“Why didn’t you stay?”

“I really didn’t feel I could leave Maman alone at Avalon.”

“Michel’s close by.”  She nodded, more as if to say you don’t really know about these things – men can’t.

“Is Andrei still coming?”

“I’m expecting him to. He’s caught up in the same whirlwind as everyone else. Thankfully Sunday is still sacrosanct.”

Alison reached to switch on the radio. “The newscasts will be finished for the evening. I need calming music. It’s like there’s nothing else to talk about, except Sputnik, Sputnik, damned Sputnik.”

The Five Satins crooned In the Still of the Night. “I’m looking forward to meeting your friend. What’s the forecast for tomorrow night?”

“Cold and clear.”

Patrick sat quietly at the desk, alone in his old bedroom. The late afternoon light filtered through the lace curtains that were a feature of most of the windows in the house, a legacy of Aunt Rose’s Galway heritage. In front of him was an album full of postage stamps. As a young boy he had been given one of those world albums you give to children, in hope they might find a pastime to train their thoughts, and teach them something of international geography. He had set that aside and lost interest many years previous. This album had been his Uncle Gaspard’s. It had been given to him after his Uncle’s Death in 1943. Unlike the haphazard and shapeless collection of Patrick’s childhood album, this one was unusual in being very focused. If you looked closely, you would see the stamps were almost exclusively Canadian. The earliest featuring the youthful silhouette of Queen Victoria, progressing through her long reign, then finally morphing into similar silhouettes of her successors. Along with them were recognizable Canadian figures, such as General Wolf, Thomas d’Arcy McGee, MacDonald and Laurier. But what was particularly odd about this collection, was the repetition of the same stamp, sometimes page after page, not in a pre-printed album, but on blank hingeless binder pages that are used by more experienced collectors. Uncle Gaspard’s main interest was not in the stamps, but rather in the cancellations overprinted on the stamps at the time of mailing. Page after page, mostly of King George V, Uncle Gaspard had collected stamps cancelled with recognizable place names that marked the location where the stamp had been posted. All the big cities were there, from Halifax to Vancouver. But the real prizes were the more esoteric place names of smaller towns. Towns with historic significance, such as Rivière du Loup and Grand Prairie. Farming towns such as Tillsonberg and Brandon. Exotic locations, from Yarmouth to Yellowknife featured in pride of place.

Patrick had tried to keep up this collection, largely through visits to specialty stores in Ottawa and Montreal. He carried them forward to later monarchs, up to the present series: a youthful silhouette of Elizabeth II, resembling, at least in Patrick’s mind, the smooth, soft-featured visage of his cousin Alison. Some of the more recent stamps he had posted himself, during his recent sojourns to the high arctic. Coppermine and Frobisher Bay. He touched momentarily the stamp cancelled in Coppermine. He had waited until the clerk had cancelled it by hand, with care so the name would be visible on the stamp. He had fond memories of his time in Coppermine. Not so Frobisher Bay. It had been apocalyptically cold, as if the permanent ice sheet had been just piling itself up on the horizon, withering you with its unending gale-force winds.

The door opened behind him. Patrick didn’t even have to turn to see who it was. The familiar footfalls of his aunt were enough to announce her presence. Rose touched his shoulder, looking with a fond moment of recollection at the pages of the old album. “Still keeping Gaspard’s collection going, are you?”

“Adding a few recent ones.”  He pulled a few stamps from an envelope he had brought with him, letting them spill onto the desk. “David Thompson, cartographer and explorer.”  His finger moved to a smaller, stamp, with a globe and microscope etched in blue. “IGY. The International Geophysical Year.”  He flushed a moment with pride. “That’s what has us so busy and fired up these days. Scientists around the world.”

“Well, I can’t tell you how impressed, and proud we are of your accomplishments. You’ve left us miles behind in the things you do.”

He turned, wanting to say something reassuring to his Aunt, but he recognized some of her patronizing tone, as if she only half-believed what she was saying. “Oh, I’m not to suppose I’m just fulfilling your and Uncle Gaspard’s plans for me?”

“You chose your own vocation. Or at least, it chose you.”  She watched as he inserted the new stamps into the blank spots at the back of the album. “Any more trips up north, or can we look forward to your company on Sundays for a bit?”  Sunday dinner was the highlight of Aunt Rose’s week; she never failed to instil guilt if he missed any, even if it meant moments important to the advancement of his career, such as time at the weather station in Coppermine.

He closed the album and turned, feeling a momentary flood of memories triggered by the nearness of the apron tied at her waist – today’s not the full-length apron she used for housework and cooking in the kitchen, but a half-length one. And if you looked closely at the pattern, you could see the carefully chosen material honouring the symbols of her Irish-Catholic heritage: stylized Celtic crosses, trimmed with white linen lace. Starched and spotless for the company that was in the house. “No, I’m here for a while. No plans.”

She turned to turn her body in the direction of the door, conscious of the noise of the guests filtering up the stairs from the first floor. “You will come down and help keep the guests company?”

“Yes, ‘tis my party after all. I’ll get the radio set up in a jiffy. We’re still a few hours to sunset.”

He meant to get up and follow her, but her body had stopped, blocking him from rising in the chair. “Listen, ‘tis grand of you to arrange for the room for Alison. I miss her, of course, but she leads a busy life these days. You’ll keep an eye on her for me, will you?”  The request had a note of irony. It had often been something said to Alison, as she was charged with looking after Patrick when they had been younger. She and Michael had been older, and held responsible in a way Patrick had never been. Until now.

Descending the stairs, Patrick heard the sounds of the old piano coming from the parlour. He recognized it as one of the tunes Alison often played:  Chopin, but oddly, it didn’t sound like Alison’s playing. Not that he could put his finger on how he could tell, the playing wasn’t better or worse, just a different sense of timing. He looked into the parlour, seeing that it was in fact Andrei seated at the piano. Alison stood beside him, following along with the sheet music as she listened. He recognized something of the same stance her mother had just taken with him back at Patrick’s desk a few minutes before. Since bringing him to Avalon, Patrick hadn’t had the opportunity to introduce these two formally, so he was glad they were able to find each other amid the crowd of neighbours and relatives that had been gathering. He looked at Alison’s stance, the way she had tilted her head, pulling her long black hair away across to one side. He wasn’t sure what she’d make of Andrei, but judging by her body language, she was intrigued by the slightly exotic Slavonic stranger who had suddenly appeared at the farm.

Trying not to disturb Andrei’s recital, Patrick moved quietly beside Alison, who noted his coming, but still intrigued by Andrei’s interpretation of something that was so familiar she played it by rote. Her head nodded faintly along with the time signature and the two applauded and commented encouragingly once he had finished the final coda.

“I see you two have met. My apologies for not introducing you properly,” offered Patrick

“Your cousin was kind enough to let me play the piano. I am afraid I am very rusty. I get very little opportunity to practice.”

“Well, ‘twas fascinating to hear your rendition of that piece. ’Tis one of the standards around the house. Queer how different it can sound, really,” Patrick said, looking at Alison and noting her approval of the performance.

“Nocturne number four,” Alison said, returning the sheet music back to the first page. “We thought it would help set the mood for tonight’s festivities. You two must be stoked. I know I am.”

“After a week of nothing but Sputnik in the newspapers and on the radio, I hope it won’t be anticlimactic,” Andrei said, trying not to sound weary of a topic that had dominated his thoughts for a week.

“But this is so momentous,” Alison chimed in, still infected by the enthusiasm that had gripped the wider public.

“Yes and no.” Andrei said, conscious that he was in danger of becoming a bore, but not quite able to suppress himself. “Purely mathematically, these are things that have been possible, and quite simple on paper, since the time of Isaac Newton.”

“Then why did it take so long?”  Alison looked at the two, as if not comprehending their nonchalant attitude.

“This represents a major step forward in missile guidance, more than anything. It is, certainly, a significant engineering feat.”

“But why is everyone talking about mankind entering the space age?  Doesn’t Sputnik signify something more significant – epochal?”

“Not so much Sputnik,” Andrei said, “but the missile rocket that boosted it into orbit.”  This drew a warning look from Patrick, as if Andrei was saying things he really shouldn’t, although nothing that had not been said in the more penetrating newspaper articles which had appeared the previous week. “But I shouldn’t be so negative. Your cousin is right,” acknowledging Patrick’s look. “It’s less of a surprise to us than it was to most of the rest of the world. Both the Americans and Russians were planning a satellite for next year. The Russians were eager to be first. They like to plan little surprises for their friends. Maybe it helps to know Russians.”

“What about you?” Alison said turning to Patrick. “Is this really just another day at the office for you two?”

“Well, we’ve been to a lot of briefings. Everyone in the Ministry is as worked up as everyone else. I think what disappoints us, is how little scientific information comes out of the launch. ‘Tis really not much more than a tin can whirling around up there.”

“Really?”

“You’ll see tonight. They put a simple radio transmitter in it. As near as we can tell, it doesn’t do much more that say I’m here. They would’ve furthered my research a lot if the transmitter did a frequency sweep. ‘Tis little more than an alarm clock.”

“But if the satellite is not that interesting,” Alison said, her journalistic intuitions beginning to wake up, “then the real story must be the booster rocket.”

Andrei cut her short, regretting what he had said. “Perhaps I had spoken out of turn. We shall see what there is to see, tonight after the sun goes down.”

Alison eyed him in a momentary silence, suspected that he had clammed up, the way insiders do when conversations go places they shouldn’t. “I want to take a picture tonight, if I can. Is that possible?”

Patrick shook his head. “There really won’t be much to see. It’ll look like just another star. Brighter.”  He turned to Andrei, aware Alison was hoping tonight’s satellite-gazing party might well be a ticket out of the Ladies’ Pages. “Perhaps Andrei has a better idea; he’s the star-gazer. What do you think Andrei, is there a way to get a picture of the satellite?”

After a few moments in thought, Andrei looked at Alison. “Yes, it might be possible. It will appear like a meteor, and move across the sky in a direction opposite to the stars. You would need a tripod, a very wide-angle lens and a long exposure. Point the camera west and open the shutter for the full 240 seconds.”

“That’s easily enough. But would Patrice’s telescope not work?”

“On the contrary, you need the widest possible angle you can get. You’ll only get one exposure before it disappears in the east. Use the slowest black-and-white film canister you have.”

Patrick looked at his watch – it takes a licking, and keeps on ticking – noticing the last of the direct sunlight had disappeared from the treetops. “Maybe we should go out and get ready for the big shew.”

“The really big shew,” Alison chimed in.

Outside, Avalon, the big house loomed up against the darkening sky. The name Avalon referred both to the house and the farm, being plucked fancifully by Alison’s grandparents from the old Breton mythology books. Neighbours and Alison’s extended family had congregated, mostly in a tight cluster around the harvest table, which Aunt Rose had filled with snacks. She had been baking for the previous two weeks, including butter tarts and apple pie slices. Cheddar cheese and apple cider fresh from Michael’s press rounded out the menu. Michael himself was notably absent from the crowd. The warmth brought by the afternoon’s sunlight faded quickly and the evening’s chill took hold. A few crickets chirped out the last of the season that was, while the heavy covering of leaves on the ground heralded the season that was coming. Collars were turned; jackets zipped more tightly against a slight evening breeze sweeping across the orchard, stirring its gnarled branches audibly. Crossing to a clearing, chosen for its view of the western horizon, Patrick and Andrei began their final preparations of fine-tuning the short-wave radio. It wasn’t even a particularly fancy model, as you might expect if you had known Patrick’s hobbyist nature. Just a radio that looked like nothing more than a slightly oversized home radio. One with a few more dials, if you looked closely, and perhaps a longer antenna. Drawn by curiosity, the small crowd slowly trickled across the yard, leaving the harvest table, if only for a few minutes. Patrick had set up a telescope, more as a prop for photos, if anyone had thought to bring a camera. Later in the evening, for the benefit of the children in the group, he would train it on the crescent moon that would rise shortly in the east. But first, Sputnik was to be the main attraction.

When enough of the group had assembled, Patrick took his place beside the radio and directed everyone’s glance westward. The radio crackled with what seemed like nothing more than static. Suddenly, people became impatient. Or maybe anxious. Or apprehensive. The mostly rural crowd were more used to barn dances and fiddle music, than anything that might come from the city’s radio emanations. Patrick raised his arms to silence the murmur of the voices. “Welcome everyone. And thank you for coming to our Sputnik watching party. I sincerely hope you will remember this moment. It is historic, I need not tell you. Everyone’s been seeing the newspaper articles for a week now. We’ll hear the satellite signal on the radio before we see it. We should hear the signal any minute now. A few minutes later the satellite will appear as a faint light rising up from the south-west, and trace an arch across the sky,” his arm moved in an approximate arc, “and disappearing below the horizon in the southeast. We’ll have approximately two minutes and forty seconds. Then it’s gone. So I suggest you stay focused and be as observant as you can for that time.”

“What about the telescope?” One of the neighbours piped in.

“It won’t help. I brought some binoculars, if anyone wants to try. But even they won’t really help. The satellite is very small,” he gestured the size of a basketball with his hands, “and very far away. The binoculars will only make it appear brighter. We have a fine clear night, so we should be successful. It’s polished very finely and will be reflecting the sunlight, which is why we have to watch at this time of night.”  He paused for a minute, to listen to the radio, which still crackled away in an eerie radio silence. “I assure you, the satellite is very much less sinister than some commentators have made out. It’s not taking pictures. Not looking at you. And it’s not listening to our radio broadcasts.”

Suddenly, a collective gasp went up from the small crowd. And then silence. The sound, which was now familiar to everyone from the week’s radio and television newscasts became audible on the shortwave. Beep, beep, beep. Only that. Nothing more. All eyes turned expectantly to the west. A hush set in, fueled by the dropping temperature and apprehension from recent media hysteria.

Patrick looked around for Andrei, but noticed he had left the small cluster and was over beside Alison, who had set up her camera and tripod, as per Andrei’s instructions. She had chosen a place as far away from the farmhouse lights as possible.

“There it is!” An exclamation of voices piped up from the crowd. “I see it. There.”

Patrick followed the farmer’s gesture. Sure enough, a light was rising quickly and distinctly from the western horizon, launching itself into the center of darkness of the night sky over their heads. The signal from the radio was clear, strong, sharp. There was no mistaking that sound. Although it had been rebroadcast all week, the crispness of the direct radio signal was chilling. The light faded, then reappeared, then faded.

“Why is it flashing?”

“It’s tumbling.”   The silent crowd collectively holding its breath, as the moving light tracked rapidly across the night sky, then began its methodical descent towards the western horizon. Many suddenly had recollections of science fiction movies they had seen at the border drive-in, or perhaps the stories of flying saucers and Martians that occasionally appeared on the back pages of the Ottawa newspapers, usually on slow news days.

Once it had disappeared, the crowd stayed transfixed for a few moments longer, held in thrall by the sound from the radio that still beeped the familiar tone despite the satellite no longer being visible. Patrick looked across to Alison, who had tripped the shutter release, finishing the long exposure she wouldn’t see until she could get to the darkroom on campus.

The crowd looked at him expectantly, as if something more might still happen. “I’m afraid that’s the show. Short, but I hope impressive enough for you to remember this moment. I’m very thankful to you for sharing it with us.”  It didn’t take long for the crowd to dissolve into smaller clusters and conversations, and trickle back to the harvest table.

Aunt Rose came from her place beside some of the neighbouring farmers and their wives. “Well, I must say, I ne’er expected to live through a moment like this. ‘Tis like something out of Buck Rogers.”  She sensed there was now something of a feeling of let down in Patrick’s countenance, like the moment the rollercoaster ride was over when she had taken him to the summer exhibition. The radio had now gone quiet. He reached over and switched it off to silence the static. “Do you really think it’s not sinister?  I must say, I felt a chill when it was flashing across our heads.”

“Just a solenoid and radio transmitter. Not much more sophisticated than this thing. Hard as it is to believe.”  He tapped the old shortwave radio his uncle had given him during the war, so he could listen to the news broadcasts from England.

“They say the Ruskies are not very sophisticated.”  Rose was repeating a convenient old folklore truth, perpetuated from earlier times in the century, and echoed in the more reactionary elements of the establishment and media. Meant, no doubt, to calm fears amid the rising tide of alarmism over recent atomic one-upmanship. Patrick marvelled that the Russians themselves had, in their way, played into that stereotype with the simplicity of the satellite. First, yes. But laughable as a scientific device. Unless he was missing something.

He nodded in agreement with his Aunt’s statement. “The Americans would have put on a better show. There’s more to the science of outer space than simply being there.”  He tried to sound reassuring, but couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something, something he should be able to see more clearly, but was only a nagging feeling deep inside. And perhaps his Aunt was right. The nagging feeling was nothing more than a fear that some sinister Martian creatures were lurking in the bushes.

Alison and Andrei stood alone in the porch light, just outside the mudroom door. The yard and farmhouse were now empty of the evening’s visitors, who had returned home to eat the suppers their wives had been preparing all afternoon. If the radios were tuned to anything, it was Fibber McGee and Mollie. Acknowledging that the night air would be cold, Alison had changed from her afternoon frock into charcoal slacks and a jacket with a dark fur-collar trim. Andrei opened the pack of his cigarettes, offered her one, which she took with a habitual self-consciousness that her mother might be watching, and waited for him to spark the flint on his lighter noisily.

“Patrice and you were at McGill together?”

“True,” Andrei said, trying to look gallant pocketing his lighter and drawing the cigarette to a spot not far from his right cheek. “We were in classes together, mostly mathematics. And partners in science laboratories.”

“Are you from Montréal, or Ottawa?”

“Not really. I grew up in Timmons.”

“But you have traces of a European accent?”

“True, I could never completely lose the accent. My parents were from Poland; I grew up in a house that spoke mostly Polish.”  He said this with a faint air of regret, as if it was a handicap that followed him wherever he went. He hoped no one would notice, even though everyone did.

“How did they get to Timmins? There must be a story behind that.”

He drew pensively at his cigarette, never sure how much of his family history he should reveal, in part because it was convoluted, in part because it was politically loaded in certain circles. “They left Poland after the First World War. The tanks had devastated their district so badly, they had to flee to Danzig. Then, after the war, things became crazier, so they followed certain relatives to Canada. They had no idea where Timmons was, but it was a boomtown when they arrived, so they just settled in, and prospered along with everyone else.”

“Do they still own the farm back in Poland?”

Andrei momentarily cast his eyes aside in despair, as if this was the question that was hopelessly complicated. “Yes. And no. They have a deed and will which give them title to the land. But it’s been so long, who knows who’s there now. The civil authorities have changed three times since. And the place is under Russian occupation. Although you’d never know it, my family’s name is on the list of the local nobility.”  He stopped, not wanting to fully lay out the implications of that last statement. He knew he had a bad habit of talking compulsively.

“Wow, I really should have my notebook and pen with me.”

“True,” sensing on the opportunity to shift the conversation to a new direction, “Patrick tells me you’re a journalist.”

She flashed an impatient look at him, always filled with ambivalence when confronted with that word. She led him across the darkened yard, conscious that her mother was in the window, washing the dishes. They moved in the direction of a big old maple tree that loomed over that part of the yard; an old swing hung from one of the lower limbs. She sat on the swing, with her back to the window, becoming less self-conscious of the cigarette in her hand. Almost from habit, she pushed her foot against the ground and set herself into a gentle motion.

“Journalist is a grandiose term for what I write. It’s not much more than glorified fashion advice, something to fill in the columns between the ads from Simpson’s and Eaton’s.”  She could see Andrei was mesmerized by the sight of her on the swing. She leaned back to increase the arc. With exertion, she could get herself quite high and fast, the rope forming a long pendulum of over twenty feet. “I went to university in B.C. and studied all the right things. But journalism is a man’s world. I see now that I was une idiote to think otherwise.”

“Why is that?”

She continued to let the swing move with its own gentle motion. “Oh well. They have notions about themselves. What they do. Where they do it. Mostly in hotel lounges, late at night. Sports locker-rooms. Battle-front reporting. Places not appropriate for ladies.”  She learned not to place too much irony on that statement, in other circles she often had to cast herself as one of the ladies. The tomboy inside her might secretly rebel, but she knew her feminine mystique had its own value.

“I don’t think you should give up hope.”

“Nice of you to say. Not many think it, let alone say it. Even my old teachers. University was just a place women of a certain class went to find a respectable husband. But you know that.”  The moon was now quite high, and bright; its light was caught in Alison’s dark eyes and hair, giving her an almost angelic glow. “If not the satellite, what is it about the booster rocket that’s so interesting?”  She pulled the fur trim of the collar of her coat closer around her neck. “You can tell me. I’m not asking you to reveal any military secrets. I’m curious what all the fuss is about. Why Eisenhower or Diefenbaker have yet to make a statement to the press. They must be scared of something?”

“It’s no big secret, really. It’s very simple. Almost like a magician’s sleight of hand. Watch the pretty satellite, meanwhile you don’t notice that a rocket capable of putting a satellite into orbit is also capable of hitting a target halfway around the planet, with precision pinpointing.”

“Anywhere?  You mean like Washington?”

“Mathematically, where it lands is an arbitrary point. It could be anywhere.”  Alison drew pensively on her cigarette, then realizing it was almost at the filter, discarded it. She nodded, looking into his eyes, sharing a moment of recognition. “It’s getting chilly. Perhaps we should go back inside,” Andrei said, once again sensing that he should cut the conversation short.

Back in the house, they passed through the mudroom and into the kitchen. Rather than seeing Rose in front of the pile of dishes, they found Patrick doing the last batch in the sink. The mound they had seen earlier had been washed, dried and shelved. All that was left were the glasses. “It’s nice of you to relieve Maman. Let me dry,” she said, reaching for a towel.

“No, I’m near done here. We can let them dry overnight.”

“Suits me,” Alison said, not wanting to look too housewifely in front of Andrei, and slightly amused at the spectacle of domesticity her cousin was putting on. She half wanted to wrap an apron around him – that was one of her favourite jokes, but she took pity on him, seeing that he was just about to finish the last few dishes in the sink.

“You get a marvellous view of the stars from here,” Andrei said. “With a good telescope, you must be able to see nebulae and galaxies.”

Patrick placed the last glass into the drainboard, pulled the plug in the sink and let the suds swirl down the drain. “We can. It’s amazing how much you can see, even with my small telescope. I’ve gotten in the bad habit of thinking of astronomy as radio astronomy these days. But the planets are still fun to watch when they’re up.”  The three moved out of the kitchen and into the family parlour. “What were you two talking about out there?”

“Oh, satellites and rockets,” Alison said noncommittally. Andrei couldn’t suppress a slightly guilty look in his eyes. “Nothing that’s not front-page news.”

“Do you play chess?”  Andrei said to Alison, noticing a chessboard set up on the table, with the pieces positioned from the last game that had been played.

“A little. I can’t keep up with the wiz kid anymore,” she said nodding at her cousin.

“Allow me to try a demonstration.”  He cleared the pieces from the table, then set up a few in the position of an end-game he had been studying from a book recently. The few pieces were evenly matched. “It’s your turn to make the next move.”

Alison looked at the pieces, in an unusual configuration: so evenly matched that she wondered how it would be possible to end in anything but a draw. Without anything like a plan, she moved the bishop forward, still trying to maintain a defensive perimeter around her king. Then, without even acknowledging he had done anything unusual, Andrei took the black queen which had been removed from play and placed it in a square directly attacking her king. “Check,” he said, with a deadpan face. She looked at him, stunned that he would make such a flagrant transgression of the rules. Her queen was nowhere in sight. “Three moves to mate.”  He said, now allowing an impish grin to creep across his mouth.