The Dancehall Years Read online

  Thank you for coming, Mr. Fenn. I’ll talk the idea over with my parents. Percy stands by the door to see him out. Mr. Fenn was just getting comfortable, but Mr. Fenn sees he’s expected to leave.

  Percy turns to Ada furiously. Why am I being told about my parents by George Fenn of all people? Aren’t you looking out for them while I’m at work? This is a family matter. It’s not for outsiders. Ada’s trying to lift a poached egg from its simmering water, but the egg slits yellow blood and slithers back into the pan.

  Mom’s really busy, Dad, says Gwen.

  That’s not why Mr. Fenn wants to go over to Scarborough, she wants to say. Why does she have to be the only one who knows what Billy’s up against?

  Thank you, Gwen, Ada says.

  The door opens, and Mr. Fenn pokes his head back in. Oh, I should have told you. Isabelle’s been fired. Couldn’t concentrate on her work apparently.

  Fired! Gwen rushes across the room and lays her hands flat on the table. Grandma Gallagher sits bolt upright in her flaming coffin. They can’t fire her. She’s not kindling!

  It’s all right, Gwen, Ada says. Firing means when somebody loses their job.

  I heard she’s left the island, says George.

  We’re going to have to find a home in town for dad, says Percy sadly. This can’t go on. George Fenn waltzing in here with news about Isabelle as well? Can’t you keep track of your own sister, Ada? He pours himself a rum and coke and heads out to the verandah to shake his glass.

  26.

  It’s all the shadow people, Flora says when Percy comes in. Most of them have suitcases. They queue up for food and water, but nothing I feed them satisfies them. It was a mistake bringing you here, Mother. I didn’t mean to isolate you like this. Lyndon, catching Flora’s imploring look, manages brightly. We’refine. Werereallyjustfine.

  I’d be better if Eleanor were here, says Flora.

  Nobody thinks that’s a good idea, Mother, Percy says. (His father couldn’t be drunk but what then?) If you can’t get Dad out of the bath, how’re you going to manage? There’s a nice place I’ve looked at in east Vancouver, over on Grant St.

  How do you know I can’t get him in and out of the bath? Flora says. They are never nice places. Lyndon stays with me. I’ll get a lawyer if it comes right down to it. She would, too.

  What do you think of the idea of George Fenn coming by to help? Percy asks. She looks up, relieved. That’d be fine with us. Lyndon is shaking his head. Notim. Anybodybutim.

  What’s wrong with your voice, Dad?

  What if we tried it for now, Dad, says Flora. I could pay him whatever the going rate is. She’s never called him Dad before. He’s a good worker, she says. Now you get on, Percival, that eldest daughter of yours could use some attention.

  On masquerade day, when George has finished his moonlighting chores, he pulls the truck up to the Scarborough kitchen door where buckets of early apples are stacked on the back porch. When Flora asks him to get her more canning jars from the basement, he notices some boxes on a corner shelf. Reads the labels as he’s carrying them upstairs. FOR GEORGE FENN AS PAYMENT FOR WHAT WE OWE HIM. Bottles of preserves: plums, carrots, blackberries, turnips. There’s a note. This should be a start in settling our account. We never intended to accept this place as a gift. Please find enclosed our partial payment in kind. We will provide you with the equivalent every year as long as we live. Sincerely, Shinsuke and Noriko Yoshito. Oh, for heaven’s sake. George starts unfolding lids on other boxes. I can’t believe this.

  Flora holds a jar of plums up to the window. Someone’s way of getting through the Depression, I guess, she says, admiring the ruby light. Think there’ll be enough here to last you a while?

  I think there’ll be enough here to last me a while, he says.

  You have to say this for George Fenn. At least he laughs. Life, eh? Isn’t it something? he says. He’d better let up on Billy. He’ll take him on that fishing trip he’s promised over on the mainland up Gambier way.

  27.

  Now it’s Frances and Jeanette’s turn to clamber down the waterfall rocks below the white picket bridge and onto the balcony. Tablecloth on the rocks, yes. Strawberries, yes. The falls sparkling in the background, yes. When Frances reaches into the waterfall for the wine, she comes up empty-handed. Where’s the wine? It was supposed to be here keeping cool.

  What’re we celebrating?

  Us.

  I don’t need wine, Frances. You’re beautiful as you are.

  And on this beguiling day, when people can be whoever they want, it’s Jeanette who leans over to kiss Frances’s neck, then each of her eyes. She takes her hand and leads her up the accordion pleated stairs to a private slope of their own on the other side of the firs.

  Later, on the way to her shift at the beach, Frances sits on the causeway railing, tenderly stroking her own legs with baby oil.

  I want my money back, George. You led me on a wild goose chase.

  Her voice is so content he hardly hears her. How do you mean?

  The wine wasn’t there.

  Well, I put it there.

  Why are you laughing?

  I don’t know, he says. Strange bottles have been appearing and disappearing all day today.

  The dancehall is in the same spot it occupied when the Earth rotated around the sun last year. The doors will open, and a new crew will take their places like a change of shift. New arrivals come by boat; some might fall from the sky.

  Gwen lies awake listening to the music from the moonlight cruise Lady Alex as it steams into the cove. Time’s up, but she has nothing to show for it. If she’d been able to pick a few orchids, at least she’d have had a costume. Maybe she’ll go and watch the dancers anyway. She throws her shoes out the window, tucks her nightie into her slacks and climbs down the fire escape ladder. Has to heel in a starting line and take a run at the stairs to chin herself on the dancehall’s high back window ledge. Last time she did that, the dancers were all in windbreakers and slacks pulling each other in and out. Where were the dresses?

  Thick branches swirl and separate. Clouds blow across the moon that stands out like a coin you could swallow. The stars are orchids. At home in bed, the trees don’t sound as if the bough will break and down will come baby. Three chin-ups and retreats. She’s back in the bushes getting ready for a fourth try when the door opens and Dr. Stan crashes out, a cravat tucked into his white lab coat. His good hand misses the railing, and he topples over the edge, hollering and lurching. Can’t a fellow get a decent drink around here? Nothing in this goddam hollow log either, he says before he falls down beside it.

  Next thing you know, it’s Frances’s Jeanette who’s sitting on the railing, blowing smoke rings and sticking her finger through them. As if that’s something I would make up, she says to one of the men who came up with Aunt Evvie’s crowd. You should have seen his face when I went by the First Aid Station. I was the last person he wanted to see, I can tell you. She stubs out her cigarette.

  What’s she going to do? he says. Dr. Stan and Evvie are finalists for the Northwest Tennis Doubles Championships.

  I don’t care if they’re Siamese twins, says Jeanette. I know his wife. He’s from Quesnel same as me. She thinks he’s missing in action. The best thing that can happen to Evvie is if he plain disappears.

  More people appear in animal heads, princess hats, paper cups in their hands. Bang the weighted door open, congregate on the back porch. Hey, you back in the bushes. Come and have a dance. Gwen backs up the trail, turns and runs. Terrible things happen if she sneaks out when she’s not supposed to. If she can get back to bed quickly enough, no one will know she’s been gone. If she hadn’t snuck out, she wouldn’t have heard. If she hadn’t heard, it wouldn’t be true about Dr. Stan.

  One morning a few days later, her parents sit holding their tea-bags gingerly by the corners, dunking and redunking them in their cups. Whatever’s happened is so bad they haven’t even made tea in the teapot. The picture of Evvie and Dr. Stan
on the mantel above Grandpa Gallagher’s fireplace is gone. Her arm linked into his, curly hair cut short up the sides and raised on top like bread. Evvie’s at the door. What’s happened? she asks. Who’s died?

  It’s about Dr. Stan, Evelyn.

  What about him? I put him on the boat. He had to go down.

  Evvie, we have to tell you this. He’s married.

  He’s not. He couldn’t be. He would have told me.

  Well, he didn’t. And he is.

  She sits down.

  Now it’s Aunt Evvie who’s beside herself. One part has burrs and leaves tangled in its hair; the other stands erect and shocked, tight ening its stomach muscles. Life’s kind pairing that turned her into a grown-up because she had a boyfriend has withdrawn its kind favour. All it takes is one mistake to shame your entire family. When they stop the music, she has to pretend she likes the next man down the line from her real love and dance with him anyway.

  The next morning, Gwen and Leo sit on the ship log and sing their private song. Good-bye, I see you last time. They’re still so upset up at the cottage—they’re always upset up at the cottage—the two of them could drive the ship log all the way to Vancouver before anyone noticed. Part of Gwen has never been out to the dancehall in the middle of the night. A giant hand set the dancehall going like a top and the roof flung off. Everyone scattered like crabs when you lift their stone houses.

  Out in the new rowboat, Leo says that when the war is over, maybe they’ll find out that Dr. Stan really was a spy. That’s not it, says Gwen. He had to go away because he’s married to someone else.

  Is that why he took a different name?

  I think so.

  And someone blew his cover?

  I guess so.

  He could still be a spy, says Leo.

  One good thing. Billy hasn’t been bothering me any more.

  That’s good, says Gwen. If she says nothing about the deal she made with Billy, maybe she won’t be to blame for everything. She won’t have to worry any more about her parents finding out; they have enough to think about as it is. Maybe the war is going on around the other side of Millers point. They row over to see, but when they arrive, the war isn’t there. When they go down to Vancouver for the winter, Gwen leaves part of herself running around the perimeter of the dancehall, one foot in the dance floor, the other scootering the raised walkway. If she’d known, she would have waved at herself.

  BOOK III

  Coming Home

  28.

  August, 1945

  Racked with phlegmy coughs, Takumi lies awake in the night listening to the cries of a cougar that so far has escaped his traps. The shriek of what sounds like a terrified marten ripped apart in the dark. In the morning, he finds the print of a raking claw and a chewed deer carcass piled over with alder branches. It must be a cougar: the front paw marks splay wider than the back ones; in the mud, a longer streak where its back foot dragged. The sweep of a curved fifth mark that would be a tail. He’s heard large cats won’t attack from the front, so he’s carved a mask to wear on the back of his head: humanoid with lidless eyes and smooth skin. That way, the cat would be confused; if it does get around the front and charge, he’s hoping its weight would impale itself on his knife lashed to a stick. It’s a long shot: he’s never hunted a mountain lion before, let alone without a gun.

  His hair is long now, his skin leathery. His muscled limbs press forward into the hunt as he sets out, back to back with his mask. A faraway drone of a plane behind a bank of fog, probably on the other side of the peninsula. A scrimmage in the woods ahead, maybe the cougar slipped in front without his knowing. Screams any second that would be his own. He begins to twitch like a dog dreaming about a chase. A ricocheted crash as he thrusts his knife forward, praying the animal would die in a mass of heaving fur and flesh. Instead, a man in a torn Air Force uniform projects himself through the trees and lurches down the hill holding a badly injured side. Takumi reaches out to stop him from falling, supports him down the trail hidden along the hillside.

  Back at the shack, although nothing seems to be broken, the man’s in so much pain Takumi gives him his bed. It’s been so long since he’s seen another person, he cups his hand above his nose when he’s sleeping to feel the miracle of his breathing. He sits by the bed, turning one of the pilot’s wide strong hands palm up and lifts it into his own as if weighing it. When the bruised man wakes for a few minutes, he manages to spoon a few mouthfuls of mushroom soup into him.

  The stranger finally stays awake long enough to turn his head. How long have you been here? he asks. Some years, Takumi says, offering him another spoonful of soup. You were flying pretty low, he says, his voice hollow and scratchy.

  Too low. I was looking for you. The people in Sechelt figured they’d got rid of the loggers, and then there you were stealing a canoe and camping on the territory. They waited for a pretty long time for you to leave before they contacted the Gumboot Navy….

  Someone’s going to know where you crashed. They’ll be out looking for you.

  I don’t think so. I didn’t file a flight plan.

  Best to say nothing and keep his eye on the stranger’s every move. Would he turn him in if he owes his life to him? Every meal is building up credit. Still, it’s difficult to measure how much the debt is weighing on his visitor’s honour, and he can’t take a chance. He’ll have to hide the canoe, sneak away at night and leave everything again. At least he’s camouflaged his trail inland.

  Later, when Takumi is winding the canoe slowly up the stream with the pulley, he’s surprised to see yet another stranger coming up the trail. There’s a sailboat anchored in the bay. So this is the trick you’re using, the new arrival, a man in a captain’s hat, says. I couldn’t figure out why the canoe was heading up the stream by itself. Figured maybe it was a ghost canoe. I barely made it through the Skookumchuck. Had about a ten-minute window. It’ll be good to have some gas now that the war is over.

  It is? says Takumi. The pilot comes walking down the trail, out of bed for the first time. The visitor looks at the two of them. I guess you two are from the same tribe, eh?

  Pretty much, says Takumi and laughs.

  When the sailboater offers them a lift back down the coast, Takumi packs up in a flash, burying items that had meant the world to him the day before. Leaves a cache in the woods to come back for, and the carvings. Returns the canoe to the dock at the head of Sechelt Inlet before the trip down the Sound.

  He’d always seen himself coming home in the winter. The tide would be high, their house surer of itself because he’s longed for it every day. When he’s dropped at the wharf in the cove, the sky clears, and a low sun emerges behind a row of firs, lighting the raindrops on each branch. The hotel gardens are a shambles. Taking the path down to Pebbley beach, he cuts up the side trail to Millers, finally turns onto his own road and heads down his own driveway. Smoke from the chimney sets his heart beating high in his ribs; his mother likes to get the fire going early in the season. Maybe they’re back already. He must look terrible; the yachter gave him another sweater and a pair of old trousers, but they’re hanging off his frame. When he opens the door and calls in, an elderly gaunt woman with iron-coloured hair is standing in front of the sink.

  Yes? says Flora.

  Are my parents here?

  Your parents?

  This is their house, ma’am.

  George Fenn comes to the door, looks at Takumi as if he’d personally buried his sea-bleached bones and whoever’s standing in front of him has wired them back together and set them moving.

  Your kind are not allowed back on the coast, he says.

  Excuse me, Mr. Fenn. Flora steps in front of George, extending her hand to Takumi. She might have been saying the other day she didn’t know how she’d ever repay George Fenn; she would have been lost the day Lyndon collapsed and ended up having to go to the place in town, but nobody talks to anyone like that in her house. Even if she had allowed that the place sometimes felt as if it
were becoming as much George Fenn’s as it was hers.

  I’m Flora Killam, she says, wiping her hands on her apron. You’d better come in. You’re…?

  I’m Takumi Yoshito.

  Oh. Mr. Yoshito. I’m so sorry, but this house was put up for sale by the government. My son bought it for us.

  And your son is Percival Killam.

  That’s right, she says. It was so long ago now.

  Was it?

  Everyone thought you’d drowned. I believe someone tried to get a message to your parents.

  Where are our things?

  In storage in a shed at September Morn beach.

  I see.

  The next day, Takumi manages to catch a ride on a fishing boat out of Coal Harbour, crossing the border far enough from the coastline that they don’t have to bother with explanations. At the end of the pier in the small town of Blaine, the closest place he can be to Vancouver, he swings his duffle bag over his shoulder and heads down the line of canneries, turning onto the main street paralleling the low horizon of distant island mountains. On the other side of Drayton Harbor, flocks of swarming dunlins move as one over the sea, exhausting themselves trying to stay out of reach of lurking falcons. The tall Peace Arch rises north of the town, and the trees of Semi-ah-Moo Point outline the thrust of land across the bay. He presses his hand against the brick stores to feel the solidity of real buildings; that people can sit inside dark bars and casually take themselves for grant ed astonishes him. Large Victorian houses on expansive lots on long leafy streets. At the corner of Peace Portal Way and Boblett, there’s a Rooms Available sign on a gabled house that overlooks the railroad tracks and the beach. He takes a room in the back that feels as if no one’s lived in it before. Lonelier than he ever was in camp—at least the earth he slept on there felt like his own—he stays in bed for days, not caring if he ever gets up again. Isabelle’s part of the family who took over their house and no amount of lonely rationalization in camp will change that.