Patrick entered the small room in the Grad Students Dorm, which already seemed fully occupied by the three animated bodies inside. The noise of their talking and laughter was heard well down the hall. He noticed the winter coats were piled haphazardly on the small chesterfield and so added his to the heap. The centre of the room was occupied by a card table, around which three bachelor types were seated, potato chips already half-eaten. Patrick picked up a bottle sitting beside Russell, “American Beer, who brought that? Genesee!” He made a face, looking around to see if there was an alternative.
“Better get used to it, they bring it up by the boatload.”
Before him was the team of assembled engineers and scientists, all recruited for a top-secret research project and all destined for extended stays in Goose Bay. All had met previously at various seminars and colloquia. Patrick took his place at the empty seat. Not far from his ear a radio droned out the latest pop hits. Elvis was in heavy rotation, but already word was around that he would be drafted to active service at any time. There was no denying that Don’t be Cruel had a compelling rhythm driving through the song.
Jimmie, the host, dropped a beer bottle noisily beside Patrick, none of the room’s occupants was drinking from a glass. But before suppressing his disdain sufficiently to raise the bottle to his mouth, four shot glasses and a bottle of rye landed noisily at the centre of the table. Jimmy took his place astride the folding chair, slopped the whiskey into the four glasses with a single motion, took up his glass, raising in the gesture of a toast. “Gentlemen, I give you a toast to the stratosphere, outer space, our own special privileges and prosperity. And dames with big boobs. Not necessarily in that order.” And he downed the contents of the glass in a single swallow.
Kenny took up his glass, raised it in the same gesture and cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, to the broads we’ve left behind, to the broads we’re leaving behind and to the broads we’re going to leave behind.” He likewise downed the contents of his shot glass.
It came to Patrick’s turn. “Gentlemen, a health to our reigning sovereign, Good Queen Bess, as lusty a wench as e’er there was.” Hear hear rang back from the corners of the table approvingly.
Russel was the last. “Gentleman, I give you Samuel Bronfman, rum-running and his fine Canadian whiskey.”
“Jeeze Russel, what kind of toast is that?”
“Well, I am married. Should drink a toast to my wife?”
“Is she coming with you?” Jimmy asked. Russell shook his head not. “Well then, you’ll be single like the rest of us. Stop being such a wet rag.”
The glasses and whiskey were removed to make room for the cards, while the table was given a cursory wipe by Kenny’s sleeve. He took the deck of cards and began to shuffle methodically. “You’ve been up north, Paddy boy. Tell us, who’s better in the sack: the Indians, or Frenchie girls?”
Patrick took a swig at his beer, picked up the cards that had arrived in front of him. “Are you sure this is a complete deck? I’m not seeing any aces.” He discarded three. “At minus fifty, with the lights out, under the covers, the difference hardly matters.” The second set of cards that arrived didn’t help. He set his cards aside. “But I’ll tell you what, boys. Stay on the good side of the Indian girls, they’ll have you skinned, butchered and fed to the dogs before you knew what happened. “
The old farmhouse kitchen was spacious and well lit. The appliances and counter space harkened to earlier times when the bunkhouse was full of seasonal farmhands needing to be fed. Rose took three aprons from the inside of the pantry door, handed two around, slid one over her neck and deftly tied the strings behind her. The counter spaces were apportioned out into three stations: one with bushels of washed apples at the ready beside the sturdy-looking combination corer and peeler. A second station was furnished with a sharp knife and premixed measure of sugar and cinnamon. The final station had small mounds of pastry dough lined up, ready to be rolled into pie shells – butter makes the batter better. Alison and Tracy waited for their final orders from the kitchen boss.
“This looks like too much for the church supper,” Alison steeled herself for a hard afternoon wrestling with the old peeler – a specialty of which she had been groomed since childhood. She worried about Tracy and the sharp knife – Tracy was a city girl and not nearly so adept at kitchen tasks. Even Alison felt conscious of how little time she spent in the kitchen these days, dividing most of her meals between the rooming-house dining table, college cafeterias and hotel lounges.
“Some will be for the harvest supper. The rest will be sold during the craft sale,” Rose said nodding everyone to their workstations. “Normally we have four of us, which makes it a real assembly line. But my usual helpers are all busy at their own crafts and wares.”
Tentatively Alison fitted the first apple down onto the corer, steadying her hands for the first tentative turns of the crank. Rose set to work rolling out the first shells, placing them with a deft movement of the wrists into pans, which were stacked and pre-greased. “How are things going at the newspaper, pet?” Rose started the conversation rolling, which was an essential part of the work process – spirits must not be allowed to flag.
Alison looked out of the window, across the barnyard onto the orchard beyond. A dusting of snow sat on the ground and in the bare branches. Flocks of starlings swirled among the trees, looking in vain for shelter from the wind that brought sure news that winter would soon arrive. Her mother was well-meaning, but perhaps not astute in her choice of topics. Alison had been hoping the afternoon at Avalon would help her clear her head of thoughts of work. Today was the day of rest. “They want to send me to Chicago, for an Interior Design show.”
“That sounds exciting.”
“Well, it should be. It’s huge: a major industry event.”
“You don’t sound enthused.”
“I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m a glorified ad copywriter.” She looked with dismay at the peels that were not coming off in one strand. “I’ve been looking at stacks of trade magazines, thinking of what angle I should take with my articles. I know what they want me to write – something about modern living in a modern home. But something else keeps nagging at me when I flip through the pictures. It’s like the scenes are taken from dollhouses. They’re manicured and sterile. If there’s a window, there’s no laundry hanging on the line, or trains passing by belching diesel smoke. Or pulp mills discharging effluent into the river.”
“Life has its messy moments,” Rose said with her arms covered in flour dust and hands caked with bits of dough. Tracy too was spattered and sprayed with apple juice, and beginning to draw the interest of the cluster flies who were as much permanent residents of the house as anyone else. “But we’re also entitled to our fairy-tale dreams on occasion, surely?”
“If it was just that, I wouldn’t feel pangs of conscience so much. But there’s something deeper and more sinister. Something hypnotic, disempowering, exploitative.” A brief moment of satisfaction came across her as she had remastered the technique of getting the peel off in a single twist, falling onto the waiting newspaper at her feet. She too was now feeling flies buzz around her ankles and wished she had worn slacks, despite her mother’s disapproval. “What I’d really like to write about, although they reject the proposal every time I submit it, is the secret little epidemic of tranquillizer pills that has broken out, which nobody seems to notice. Not here in the country, but in Ottawa, the ladies pass them around like kids with candy.” Tracy gave a brief smile of recognition. “I’ve tried them. It’s pure escapism. And very seductive. The only thing is, whoever is prescribing them, and dispensing them, seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that they’re addictive.”
“Or maybe not,” Tracy added in.
“But they won’t hear of me writing a story like that. And none of the editorial writers wants to pick it up. And that’s how I feel as a writer – like consumerism has become the new opium. The new religion of the masses.”
“If you feel so conflicted,” Tracy finally picked up the conversational thread, “why not quit the newspaper and concentrate on teaching?”
“That’s almost as bad. I’m not much more than a Home Ec teacher dispensing advice on how to be a good wife and mother. Sometimes I have romantic notions of working in a factory – but that’s just silly. Anything that pays well automatically becomes men’s work.” Her hand was moving with an almost automatic rhythm at the apples, which were now disappearing from the bushel at a discernable rate. And don’t get me wrong, I still love journalism. The only thing is, I really need to be somewhere like Palestine or Egypt. That’s where the real stories are coming from now.”
“I hope they don’t send you there, it sounds like a very dangerous place to be,” Rose said with a tone of motherly concern.
“Too dangerous for a woman: it’s what they all say. Even my most supportive colleagues, in the quiet of the hotel lounge over drinks.”
“So, what else would you do?” Tracy asked, a little surprised to hear Alison’s new-found ambivalence to teaching. She felt like she had a sister-in-arms, who was now flagging in the fight.
Alison nodded her head in the direction of the window. “Sometimes I think I should come back, take a more active hand in running Avalon. It pays the bills and gives Maman change for the collection plate. But if it were to become a going concern again, we’d have to replant most of the trees. Modern pruning and trellising techniques would make them much easier to pick. The trouble is, even if we got our costs way down, even with protective tariffs, we’d still not be competitive with New Jersey. They’re killing us on juice. Then there’s the varieties. We have almost even acreage of Courtland, Northern Spy and Empire. All good for this climate. But it’s the sweet apples people want now. I see the kids and mothers reaching for the Golden Delicious. They hoover them off the shelves. I think of them as candy, not apples. But c’est la guerre.”
The sounds of the three women working rhythmically at their task filled the room. A stack of pie plates filled with crust was piled at the ready for final assembly. The oven was now coming to it’s proper temperature, warming the kitchen noticeably. “Well, perhaps it’s not my place to say. Or perhaps as the mother in the room, it is. But the way I feel about it is this. I was young once, too, and had my share of men coming around to pay court. I remember those days well and fondly. But there’s something unreal about it all. People your age” – the implication being unmarried, “are a little like a travelling vaudeville troop coming through town. They see the sights, even meet some of the townsfolk. But they don’t really participate in the life of a town. What they do is make-believe with costumes, makeup and lights. ’Tis not real life.” She rolled out the pastry in a moment of thought, as if she wasn’t saying what she really wanted to say. “I feel like something’s missing in what you are saying. You’re like a field that’s sitting fallow, wondering what it’s for. No mystery there. Life will start springing up, if you let it. And let me tell you, you won’t have to worry about life not being messy enough. Once there are children around, and husbands, life gets plenty messy. And very real.” Rose brushed her arm across her face, intending to push away the flour, but only adding more. “So ends my sermon for this Sunday, ladies. You may take it for what it’s worth.”
