Patrick sat alone in front of his shortwave equipment. He was getting ready to check in and monitor his usual channel. Once again, instead of the usual North American voices, he heard chatter in a mix of European accents and dialects. He looked again at the dial, noticing it was on the same channel it had been left on previously. He looked at his communications log. There had been nothing after his last entry. He made note of the time and frequency again and listened for a few more minutes; there was nothing particular about the chatter, except that it was an overseas frequency. He looked around at the other contents of his desk, to see if anything looked like it had been disturbed. Nothing seemed to be. He cast his mind around as to what papers he might have left in his absence, but could think of nothing. He cast his mind briefly to the landlady’s husband. He was a reclusive character, who kept his distance from the boarders for the most part. On the rare occasion, he and Patrick would talk. They had immigrated from England after the war. Occasionally he found hockey a tolerable substitute for Football, which he missed no end. During the intermissions, Patrick had learned he had been in the RAF during the war. But he seemed to keep his stories well hidden, as if perhaps he was still bound by a security oath, or the memories were too sensitive to recall. Of everyone else he knew, besides Andrei, he was the one who’d know how to use the equipment. He didn’t like the thought of broaching the subject with either – especially Andrei who was under ridiculous career pressure. Even the hint of an aspersion and he’d end his days as a high school math teacher in somewhere like Nepean or Gloucester. But he had the nagging feeling that there was some potential security breach he needed to be more vigilant about. In fact, he was probably under obligation to report the incidents. He then considered the prospect that he too might end up as a suburban science teacher.

He switched the radio back to its usual channel and signed himself in. None among the voices were any he was looking for. After a few minutes, he heard a light tap on his door. “Come in,” he said, recognizing Alison’s tap, with none of the gregariousness as if she and Tracy had been on a tear.

“Quiet evening?” Alison asked, entering, and looking at the figure sitting solitarily in the dim room, lit only by a lamp beside his bed.

“Checking in to see if any of my contacts are on air. No one yet.”

She sat on the side of the bed and listened intently to the chatter, trying to discern the cross-conversations that were going on in alternation. She picked up a small frame sitting on his nightstand. She looked at the black-and-white photograph under the light. To the left of the photo was Chantel. Hard to tell how old she was; she was in a parka, with a fur-trimmed hood pulled over her head. Some of her long back hair streamed in front. She looked to be the youngest in what might have been a family grouping – probably extended and mostly men. There was snow on the ground and they were posing in front of a Hudson’s Bay trading post. They all grinned hopelessly at the camera, as if the notion of them being the subject of a photograph were completely preposterous. “Do you ever hear from her?”

“No, I’ve written a few letters via General Delivery, Coppermine. But they came back six months later, stamped undelivered.”

“Show me, where’s Coppermine again?” She walked over beside Patrick, who had turned the volume down on the radio, but was reluctant to turn it off completely. It was coming to his usual time to be on-air. She looked at a large map of the Dominion of Canada taped to the wall in front of his desk. He had to stand and reach across the desk, pointing to a dot high on the map in the Western Arctic. “And where does she live?” The memory prod was uncomfortable.

He traced a vague circle in the vicinity south of Coppermine and to the east of Great Bear Lake. His finger touched the shore of Great Bear Lake. “They winter in the forests around Great Bear Lake, hunting and trapping. Their main staple is bannock and pemmican. In the Spring, they move east across the Coppermine to meet the caribou herds on the barren lands. Fish becomes the main meal. She was an excellent student. She liked Aesop’s Fables.”

Alison touched his shoulder, not fully aware of how strong the emotions were still for him. The notion was a puzzle to her as well. How can someone who had received a good liberal education, who might have had academic and career prospects ahead of her, return to a simple life on the land? Although it’s probably not fair to call it simple. “Listen, I know you two were close for a while. But you can’t keep clinging to something that’s now just a collection of memories. I know how some men can be, when they form attachments. There’s someone I knew from high school. He still comes snooping whenever he knows I’m around Orléans, as if it was fated for us to marry. Life’s not like Tess of the d’Urbervilles. It’s really not.” She didn’t like playing the big sister, or lecturing him. “Listen, I need some fresh air. I was thinking of taking a run up to Camp Fortune. You up for a spin? Get you away from these four walls for a while. Help clear your thoughts.” He reached over and switched off the radio equipment.

The big car lurched into the darkness of the Interprovincial Bridge, leaving the lights of Ottawa behind them, into the more subdued glow of Hull, then the darkness of the countryside beyond. The radio picked up the drone of the top-30 hit parade, with the same few songs and artists monopolizing the airwaves in close rotation, until you almost couldn’t stand them anymore. Doris Day and Frank Sinatra held court alongside Elvis Presley and Fats Domino, as if there were no distinction between their music genres. I found my thrill, on Blueberry Hill…

“Listen, I hope I didn’t stir up too many memories. You certainly have your store of adventures in your life; she’s one of them.”

“’Tis not that,” Patrick realized that he was in a funk and having a hard time shaking it. “I’m apprehensive about packing for Goose Bay. It’s a military contract and I’m really not thrilled about that. Since the Americans have become so involved, they’re snooping into every detail with a magnifying glass. More forms, with more questions, and more questions, and more questions. I regret not turning them down at the onset. Now the machinery’s in motion, it can’t be stopped.”

“Are they still suspicious of Andrei?”

“Well, they are. I keep telling them it’s completely absurd, but they keep working at it like a dog that won’t give up a bone. He’s nowhere near anything secret anymore, but it’s like they’re convinced they’ll find something if they look hard enough.”

“They don’t have anything about you, though?”

“Maybe they know all about Mamma’s Fenian sympathies. But unless they were stationing me in Fermanagh, that’s nothing to them.” He let the sounds from the radio, and lights flashing from the passing street lamps lull him hypnotically. “You didn’t find anything at Andrei’s? I mean, I supposed you snooped when we went for the Chinese food.”

“No story there,” she almost said I’m afraid, but realized she’d run afoul of Patrick’s loyalties. “The only thing that looked even remotely suspicious were those postcards with cryptic notation on the back.”

“That’s chess notation. Bishop takes King Pawn 4.”

“With someone from Czechoslovakia?”

“Mathematics really is international. And so is chess. Chess, and warfare are wholly two different things.” Patrick wanted to ask more about the romantic side of their acquaintance, as if Alison might be able to dispel lingering notions about the aspersions of homosexuality that had been raised. But he didn’t really want to hear Alison’s answer, or set her following a different scent.

At Camp Fortune, there was a small auberge. The table d’hôte was closed by the time they got there. But they could still sit by the fire and order a glass of house wine; or – which was the real treat – a small collection of the Québec apple ciders. This had been Alison’s destination all along. She marvelled at the subtlety the makers were able to get from the apples using fermentation – a highly secretive process guarded in families for generations. If anything might make the orchard viable again, it would be this. She looked at her glass with relish. “What did Becky want, when she came the other day?”

“There’s no keeping secrets from you, I can see.”

“Oh well, you know how things are at Mrs. Wallace’s: the walls have ears.”

“She wanted to talk about Tracy: her prospects for tenure track.”

“Did you get the same speech? I think we all get it sooner or later. About how marriage improves one’s prospects considerably.”

“I don’t see how ‘tis their business, really.”

“Well, you know how it is. University faculties are a small town in themselves. They make their own rules, we live by them.”

“She seems to think Tracy has very bright career prospects. She’s doing well under your tutelage, from what I can tell.”

“It looks like they’re setting a mantrap for you. I’d watch myself very carefully.”

Patrick had ordered the same cider on Alison’s advice, looking at it thoughtfully. “You’re right about this. It has a nice mellow flavour. Do they use special apples?”

Alison shook her head. “It’s something they do in the fermentation process. It’s called malolactic fermentation. It takes away the malic acid.”

“You keep warning me off Tracy, yet it seems like she’d make someone a grand wife. And I don’t really see other prospects in the wings. It would solve a few problems.”

“Well, marriage has to do more than solve a few problems. There has to be passion. I think if you two had that, you’d have noticed by now. Besides, I like to think you have a long way to go still in your career. I’d hate to see you stuck in a small town like Ottawa, when the wide world is opening itself to you.”

“Tracy’s invited me to her place for supper.”

“Did she say she’ll cook?”

“I think so.”

“Don’t set your expectations too high.”

Outside the auberge, they took a stroll through the village. Their footsteps crunched in the crisp snow. The lights of Ottawa stretched out to the south in a shimmering sea. Behind them, perched on the mountain, the light from the Camp Fortune transmitter flashed. It was newly constructed, giving the city’s radio and television stations a much wider footprint, spreading their signals far into the small towns of the Rideau Valley. “I feel like there’s been someone coming into my room when I’m not there. Do you never see Mr. Wallace on the second floor?”

“Oh?” Alison chimed in with a musical note that faltered just a little at the end.

“Is it you? I mean, there’s nothing really to hide in there. ’Tis only, with all the fuss over security, it has me a little spooked.”

Alison scooped up his arm, as if she could buy off any transgression with a little coquetry. “Well, I’ve been meaning to tell you. It slipped my mind this evening. But I should confess,” a feeling of relief settled onto Patrick’s shoulders, “Juan was interested in seeing your equipment when I mentioned it to him. I didn’t think there was any harm. There was someone back in Cuba, back in his home village, he wanted to contact. He was even able to speak to his mother. Someone went and got her.”

“You were there when he used the radio, and knew what he was saying?”

“I was in the room with him, the whole time. I swear. I mean, he spoke in Spanish. But I could tell it was his mother by the tone of their voices. I shouldn’t have, without asking you. That was wrong. I’m sorry. Any harm done?”

“No harm done, I guess. Please don’t again. I’ll probably disconnect it soon, store it back at the farmhouse. How close are you and Juan?”

“We’re friends. I have contact with him through some of the union functions. We’ve gone on a few dates, I mean. Nothing serious. He’s thinking of moving back.”

“I thought you said he was black-listed.”

“I think he has ways to get back onto the island under the radar. He hates the winters here. I think he wants to lay low for a while and spend time with his family.”