The Heart's War Read online

  The Heart’s War

  Lucy Lambert

  Chapter 1

  "When is Jeffrey supposed to be here, Eleanor?" my mother asked for the third time in as many minutes.

  She had the table in the kitchen all set. It was a good meal. I could smell it from the living room, where I sat on the antique settee and looked out the window onto Weber Street.

  Roast beef. Some potatoes. And a pie. It had taken an entire month's sugar rations to make that pie. Mom was so proud of it, so I could somewhat understand the tone in her voice as she asked after Jeff.

  "He should be here any moment, Momma," I called back. Was it to reassure myself, or her?

  The clock on the wall ticked and tocked the seconds away, getting closer and closer to six. I'd arranged with Jeff to meet at half past five. Where was that boy?

  "If he's not here in five minutes, we're eating without him!" Mom said, poking her head into the broad doorway that separated the living room from the kitchen.

  As always, I couldn't look at anything but the silver in her hair. Three years ago, in 1914, it had been all black.

  That awful war seemed to be leaching the life from everything. If it went on much longer, I thought that the hair might begin falling out of her scalp.

  I smiled at her, forcing my eyes away from her hair to her face, which also had a few new wrinkles to it.

  "He'll be here, Momma. You just wait."

  She rolled her eyes at me and disappeared back behind the door to check on the food. I huffed, then reached down and tugged at my skirt. It was old, from before the war. The blouse was slightly newer, but wearing in the elbows.

  All the cotton went to the war, for uniforms. I didn't begrudge the soldiers over in France and Belgium their clothes, but if something didn't happen soon, I'd have to wear my woolens by the time summer rolled around.

  The spring breeze was crisp as it came in through the open window. It was always crisp here in Berlin... rather, "Kitchener" it was now called, after some English lord. I kept forgetting that, even though the newspaper on the coffee table talked of nothing but that awful referendum, and the name change.

  I shivered as I thought of the men in army uniforms who'd marched down the streets that day. They hadn't let anyone out of the house who they thought would vote against the measure. The paper said they were from the 118 Battalion, and they were mad that so few of the boys from the city had signed up.

  And then there was that Conscription Act that the Prime Minister had pushed through...

  I was so happy that Jeff hadn't gone over.

  The breeze pushed the paper over to the next page. It said that some man named Currie had taken over the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Europe. Below that was a list of the dead and wounded.

  A knock on the door broke me from the ruminations. Quickly, I stood, patting at the curls I'd put in my hair so that it seemed to bounce off my shoulders.

  "Coming!" I called out, my feet pattering against the floorboards.

  The sound died as I stepped onto the rug by the front door. Little puffs of dust came up around my feet. I'd have to remember to take care of that before Mom saw.

  Through the window set in the door I could see Jeff. My smile faltered. His lips had pressed into a thin line. Even though he was almost twenty six, three years older than me, he still had some baby fat on his cheeks, but even his youthful looks did little to dispel the anger apparent in the lines that had formed around his green eyes.

  His shoulders seemed hunched under his grey jacket, and his eyes had fixed on some unknown point in another world.

  I opened the door.

  "Jeff! Where have you been?"

  "Yes, Jeffrey, where?" Mom called out from the kitchen. I could hear the plates and cutlery tinkling and clanking as she hurried to get everything set for Jeff.

  Jeff's eyes focused, then, bringing him back to the world.

  "May I come in?" he asked.

  "Yes, yes, of course! Supper's ready, just wait and see what Momma's made for us..."

  I stopped as Jeff came in and stooped to unlace his shoes. He had something gripped in his left hand. I frowned.

  "What are those there?"

  He jerked as if I'd slapped him. He didn't look up from his shoes. Slowly, the flesh on the back of his neck turned red as he flushed. Was it embarrassment or anger that colored him like that?

  Had he brought me flowers? I hadn't gotten a good look. If so, why then did he tremble? We had been seeing each other for nearly a year now. There was no reason to be nervous.

  I felt a blush of my own coming on as I thought of our last day together. He'd brought me out for a dance. He'd kissed me, then. His lips had been warm and soft against mine. I'd wanted him to kiss me some more, but his mother had come looking for us.

  After slipping off his shoes, Jeff stood facing away from me.

  "They're nothing. Can we eat?" he asked, giving his jacket a sudden, savage jerk as though a wrinkle had just insulted his family's honour. He hurried into the kitchen, me right on his heels. That red flush to his skin had only seemed to deepen.

  Excitement tickled at me. Flowers! He'd picked me some roses a few months ago from the public gardens in Victoria Park, pricking himself in the process. I'd had to bandage his finger. I'd felt so close to him, then. Thinking on it now, my thoughts go more to how he smiled as I helped him take the thorn out than with the flowers themselves.

  He moved to sit at the table and hide his hands, but Mom saw him.

  "Jeffrey? Are those feathers?" Mom said. She'd turned from the old iron stove gripping the pot of potatoes, a red cloth around the handle to keep from getting burned. She had a gleaming spatula in the other hand, ready to scoop the food onto a plate.

  Again, Jeff flinched like he'd been struck.

  I didn't understand at first. Why would Jeff have feathers? Certainly not to give to me. I didn't even like birds. Mom had had to get rid of her parakeet when I was five, since its incessant chirping would make me cry at all hours of the day and night.

  Last summer, Jeff had taken me in his family's Model T to Port Elgin for a day at the beach. All the seagulls had frightened me so much that he'd had to coax me from the car, smiling and joking all the while.

  "Some women from Toronto were waiting by the factory when I got out. They gave them to me and all the other guys who came out..."

  Jeff worked at the Lang textile and tannery building. The pay wasn't great, and with the shortage of men the hours were long, but it was honest and good work. They were making uniforms for the boys in the army.

  Mom dropped the spatula and brought her hand to her mouth. My lips parted. They had gone dry, so I licked them as I looked between Jeff and my mother. What was the matter? Why had some women given my Jeff feathers?

  I put my hands on his shoulders, ready to comfort him. He shrugged my hands away.

  A deep anxiety started bubbling up through my stomach. Something was wrong. It had something to do with that awful war. I knew it. The whole world had been dragged into it already. Even though the shells dropped over in French fields, we could still feel the conflict's effects all the way across the Atlantic. I thought of Mom's pie, and how we'd done our best to conserve our sugar rations for it.

  "What is it? What do they mean?" I asked, taking my seat at the rectangular table. Mom had put the white tablecloth over it, and it draped over my knees.

  "They mean I'm a damn coward," Jeff said. His fingers squeezed tightly around the group of long, white feathers. He seemed to have four or five clutched in his fist.

  "Jeffrey!" Mom said. She never liked language like that. She'd broken my father of his habit of swearing in the house two years before he'd died.

  Jeff looked bashful, then, glancing at Mom and then d
own at his plate.

  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Winters. But it's true."

  "You're no coward, Jeff..." I said, reaching across the table to grab his hand. He seemed so angry.

  Then he lifted his eyes, and I felt that heat of his anger wash over me. My hand stopped its progress on the table as he pulled his away and hid it on his lap under the tablecloth.

  A few strands of his short blond hair, normally slicked back, had strayed out over his forehead. I wanted so badly to just brush them back into place, as though putting them where they belonged would somehow assuage that hot anger that seemed to waft off him.

  "I'm not?" he said.

  "No..." I started.

  "Of course I am! We all are. Everyone who hasn't joined up yet is a coward and a traitor. That's what those women said. Lord, why haven't I gone over yet?"

  I thought then of 1914. England, the Mother Country, had declared war against Germany. All her colonies had as well. The recruiting stations had been full those first few weeks as young men flocked to them, ready for some grand adventure.

  They'd even torn down the statue of the Kaiser that had stood for so long in Victoria Park. I could remember the splash Wilhelm had made as he hit the lake. The water had soaked everyone.

  Jeff had wanted to join, then. Him and a bunch of his friends. But his Mennonite mother had talked him out of it. Last year, he'd wanted to join again. It had taken both his mother and my pleas to keep him from the station.

  "You're not a coward, Jeff," I said, trying to sound as soothing and reassuring as I could, even as my heart hammered against my ribs so hard that I thought it might burst from my chest, "It's not your war. We're safe here in Ber... Kitchener."

  Jeff leaned back in his chair. My mother had gone silent. The spatula clinked quietly against the pot as she ladled the last of the potato onto the plate. Another cool breeze wafted in through the window. This time, it sent a shiver up my back. I rubbed my arms at the sensation of cold against them.

  "We're all cowards," he said, looking down at the feathers. They seemed to shudder in his tight grip.

  I couldn't deal with this. Not now. How badly this evening had turned out, I thought. I stood up so suddenly that I had to reach quickly to keep the back of my chair from crashing against the glass doors of the china cabinet. Jeff didn't even look up, and my mother just went stiff for a second as I stormed from the room.

  In the living room, I grabbed the paper from the table. It was still on the page about conscription, with the casualty figures in another column.

  Back in the kitchen, I threw the paper down on Jeff's plate. I stabbed my finger at the columns of numbers.

  "They had to prove they weren't cowards, either. Is proving that you’re brave worth your life? Because I believe that if you could talk to any of these poor men, they'd tell you it wasn't for them. It wasn't for their families, either."

  Shelley Clarkson two doors down had lost her brother at some place called Flanders in Belgium not that long ago. I had gone over to see her after hearing. She'd lost all her color, and she had seemed dead on the inside. Hollow, like there was nothing in there supporting her any more. I slept badly that week; all my dreams nightmares of getting a letter telling me Jeff had been killed.

  Just thinking about the memory strengthened my resolve. I prodded my finger against the list labeled "Casualties." A list of lives reduced to numbers, a cold calculation of the men who'd been hurt or killed trying to win some glory and prove how brave and not cowardly they were.

  "Look!" I said. When I saw his eyes crawl over that list, I continued, "Do you want to be there? Just another digit. Well, I tell you, I won't hear it. You have people who love you here, people who need you here. If you were hurt or... or killed, how do you think I would... or your mother would feel?"

  Tension like static electricity filled the kitchen, practically crackling in the air. It took me a moment to realize that I had my breath held. I couldn't hear either my mom or Jeff breathing either. We were waiting, all of us, on Jeff's reply.

  The air started going stale in my lungs, tickling and prickling at the bottom of my throat. I could hear the tick-tock from the clock on the mantle in the living room, keeping a running count of the seconds we spent standing there in tableau, like some painting, perfectly still, yet full of life and conflict.

  Finally, Jeff nodded. He dropped the feathers on the table and grabbed my pointing finger. The muscles and tendons in my hand relaxed at his touch as our fingers wound together. He patted my hand and looked up at me.

  "You're right. It's not worth my life," he said. It seemed only half sincere, but I was willing to take it.

  I thought I could feel tears in the corners of my eyes, trembling, ready to tumble down my cheeks to ruin the sparse makeup I'd applied earlier. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to keep them back. Leaning down, I kissed him on the forehead.

  When I opened my eyes, I put those stray strands of hair resting on his forehead back into place.

  I could tell that this wasn't over. It felt like everything had returned to normal as Mom brought the plates of roast beef and potato over to the table, laying them down on white doilies she'd made herself. The smell of the pie wafting through the house as it cooled on the window sill above the sink lulled me as well.

  But I knew this wasn't the end of it. I could tell from the way Jeff's eyes glinted, from the way his smile seemed a little forced, from how he kept glancing down at those feathers.

  It was okay, though. I knew that so long as I had any say in the matter, he wouldn't be going. He'd stay here in Berlin... Kitchener with me.

  Chapter 2

  The next day was a Friday. Jeff and I were to spend the evening with his mother for supper. He'd told me he wanted to take me to see a movie at the new theatre that had opened on King Street, just up from the Kaufman factory where they made boots and shoes. He wouldn't tell me what picture we were seeing yet. It was exciting. I'd only seen one movie so far in my whole life.

  Jeff met me down at the Bauer building, which was technically in Waterloo, the adjacent city. I worked there as a seamstress six days every week, putting together many of the uniform pieces that Jeff and his coworkers made at Lang.

  His mother lived in the end unit of a group of brown-brick townhouses up on Victoria Street, back in Kitchener. It was about a half hour walk in the cool spring air, and I didn't mind at all.

  The trees planted along King Street, and in the lawns of the houses along the street, were pregnant with buds. I thought I could see little telltale spots of bright green where the baby leaves struggled to burst out into the sun. Spring was my favourite season. Even in the midst of that war, I loved the feeling of all that new life just straining to burst out across the face of the city.

  It was impossible to be sad or upset. We walked down the sidewalk hand-in-hand. Jeff was so handsome when he smiled. He had perfect, straight teeth that seemed to sparkle in the sun. His eyes smiled and sparkled as well. Especially when they turned to look at me.

  Again, I thought of that brief kiss we'd shared at the dance. It had been short and sweet, but it haunted me. I didn't know why. Perhaps it was because it had been stolen right from under the nose of Jeff's mother, who'd done her best to keep her eye on us.

  Forbidden fruit was always the sweetest, I thought with a smile.

  "What are you smiling at?" Jeff asked, his own smile growing so that it made dimples in his cheeks.

  "Nothing," I said, feeling the heat of a blush rise up my body. I hoped he wouldn't be able to tell in the sunlight.

  Jeff's mother was a kind woman, if a little old fashioned. She loved her son very much. I knew she was quite fond of me, too. Lately, she'd be constantly dropping little hints and questions, seemingly innocuous. But they all pointed to one ultimate query that I knew she desperately wanted to ask but couldn't, due to her propriety: When are you going to marry my son?

  We got to the tall Kaufman building at the corner of King and Victoria. A police officer blew his whi
stle, the shrill noise breaking through the din of the traffic as he waved his arms to direct the cars and carriages. I could smell the rubber from the factory. It was an acrid odor, but I didn't mind. We crossed the street so we'd be on the correct side of the road and went left down Victoria. The road sloped gently upward.

  We passed by the long, tall Lang building where Jeff worked, which had a much more distinctive odour from the tanning process. There at the main gate, I could see the women. They had dresses on. Each one clutched a handful of feathers that they handed out to any man who was clearly not too old or too young to enlist.

  "Come on," I said, trying to hurry us along. I felt sick to my stomach thinking of the way Jeff had looked at those feathers.

  One of the women started to approach, a feather already gripped in her outstretched fist, ready to hand it to Jeff.

  "Go away!" I said to her as she came close.

  She sneered at me, and her face twisted in disgust like she was about to be sick when she looked at Jeff.

  "Coward! Leaving your countrymen to fight for King and Country without you!" she called after us.

  Jeff's hand gripped mine tightly, and his walk became stiff as his shoulders hunched.

  "It's okay," I whispered to him, returning his squeeze.

  Thankfully, we passed by quickly. Jeff seemed to do his best to ignore the scene. He'd left the feathers on my mother's table when we'd finished supper. I had taken them out to the backyard and burned them.

  Our pleasant walk ruined, I tried to hurry us along. Soon, we came to his mother's townhouse. The long series of connected buildings took up the entire block, and the dark brown brick was the color of rich earth. My mouth watered as I smelled the cooking. What had his mother made for us? I wondered.

  The front door let out onto a small, covered porch. Jeff's mother kept a rocking chair there. She liked to watch the people walking by on busy days. She was considerably older than my mother, and came from a semi-wealthy background. She could probably easily afford sugar and other niceties in those awful times.

  Jeff led me up the stairs and opened the door. The smell of the cooking grew, and saliva squirted into my mouth. I forgot all about the women and their feathers as we went in and Jeff took my spring jacket to hang beside the door.