He picked up my rifle from where it had fallen and shoved it into my arms. I wiped the spit off my cheek and straightened up, trying to pretend I had some measure of dignity. “No need to be insulting, soldier. Time to teach these Jerries a lesson, eh?”
He spat again, fortunately this time aiming at my feet.
One of the Italian boys, Christ, he couldn’t have been more than ten, had skipped out into the enemy fire and scooped up Turnbull’s rifle. He lugged it back into the building and smiled at me, muttering incomprehensible words as he brandished the weapon, trying—and failing—to look fierce.
Oh, God, I thought. The damned fool of a boy expects me to do something.
The fire was gaining on us. The back way was impassable. The roar of the flames and stifling smoke filled our world. The old women alternately prayed and howled in terror, the injured woman moaned softly as she struggled towards consciousness, the boys screamed their defiance, and the girl looked at Ralph with wide-eyed awe. Our men were ready, balancing their rifles, waiting for Ralph to give the word. No one paid any attention to me.
“We have to go,” Ralph said, his voice low and steady. He spoke in French to the boy with the rifle. Of course he didn’t understand the words, but the child knew their intent. “Keep firing as we move,” Ralph said. “Make them keep their heads, and their guns, down. You there, what’s your name?”
“Jones, sir.
“I want you to carry the injured woman, Jones. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you can, try to keep something covering her wounds. But don’t stop to do it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“McNeill, Watson, and Kowalski. Surround the women and kids. Drag them out of here if you have to. And protect Jones. I’ll be in front. The rest of you spread out behind us. Are we ready?” He looked at each one of us in turn, as if the strength of his will alone was enough to carry us through the gates of hell.
The old women clutched their shawls and murmured prayers under their breath, but they knew what was happening and by the tilt of their heads and thrust of their chins I knew they’d follow Ralph Madison right past those gates.
He pried the girl’s fingers off his pants and passed her hand to one of the women. A real man doesn’t go into battle with an undernourished five-year-old female clinging to his leg.
The heat from the fire was all around us. Another portion of the ceiling collapsed in an inferno of screaming wood and howling flames. We had to leave by the front door, and leave now, if we were to leave at all.
Ralph and some of the unassigned soldiers went first, followed by his phalanx: three solders surrounding the women and children, Private Jones carrying the woman with no hands as if she were a huge rag doll, and the boy, gripping the unfamiliar rifle, about to be inaugurated as a man. Last, and most certainly least—me.
There were more of them than we’d expected. Many more, coming at us from all sides. As well as the snipers we knew about, a new group had burrowed into the rubble across the street.
A bullet caught Ralph full in the chest. He went down. His girlfriend wrenched herself out of her grandmother’s grip and collapsed to her knees at his side, keening like generations uncounted of women before her.
I screamed in terror. If Ralph was dead, what hope remained for the rest of us? I fell, collapsing onto the two black-shrouded women as I went down. One of them was stretching out her hand towards the girl.
The men stood their ground, some through sheer bravery, some because what else could they do—the building behind them was completely enveloped in flames. They might have made it, had they not gone back for the old women and the children, overcome by paralyzing terror. The boy had thrown away his rifle, and like the child he was he cried his fear into his grandmother’s chest.
The girl caught a bullet in her arm. Open mouthed, she stared at the blossoming red stain. Watson scooped her up. But he stood immobile, the sobbing body gasping in his arms. He didn’t know where to go.
Jones made a break for the right, still carrying the wounded woman. The Germans let them go.
I heard the rapid rattle of gunfire and then I saw the blessed sight of a group of Canadians advancing towards us. Moving cautiously, they crouched in the shelter of blasted buildings and mountains of rubble, but kept up a continual stream of fire against the German in the tower.
The sniper must have been leaning over, trying to get a good shot—heroic idiot—when the bullet found him. He drifted to the ground, turning over and over as he passed through the air, only to hit the ground with a dull, boring thud. The life force exited his broken body with a sigh and a whoosh.
The older Italian boy cheered.
Then our soldiers were all around us, bending over the dead, comforting the women, praising the children for their courage. Other than Jones, who staggered back to us under the weight of his now conscious, screaming burden, I was the only man left standing.
I don’t really remember what I thought when I realized that. Ralph was trying to breathe through a wound in his chest, black blood soaking the front of his shirt.
Watson lay over the girl. Dead. He’d provided a shield for her body with his own. She struggled up from underneath him and fell to Ralph’s side sobbing her heart out, until someone pulled her away and gathered her up. The men were all dead or dying, except for Jones, who watched me with angry eyes as the medics crouched over the woman with no hands.
Ralph was still alive. Gasping pain with every breath, his lifeblood soaking the ground around him. Our army had retaken the town; the enemy was well out of the way. An ambulance made it into town, the bright Red Cross a beacon of hope against the dark masses of rubble. Quickly they bundled Ralph into it. His admirer tried to follow, but strong arms held her back until a medic reached her side.
The ambulance pulled away. One of the old women grabbed me by my arm and broke into a stream of Italian.
One of our rescuers spoke a fragment of broken Italian. In later years, when I had the presence of mind to wonder why I was never exposed, I realized that the boy thought his command of the language was much better than it actually was. Otherwise, surely he would have asked for help with the translating. Instead he communicated with the two old women by himself, nodding furiously as they waved their arms and babbled into the wind.
“She thanks you,” the would-be interpreter told me. “She praises the greatness of the Canadian army and all the men who have come over the seas to fight for freedom against the forces of tyranny.”
I had my doubts that the old woman said any such thing. They would have been better off left to escape from the rubble of their homes by themselves, rather than dragged into a death trap by the heroic Ralph Madison.
Had I not been standing quite so incredulous at that moment, the bright light of a camera bulb going off would have had me diving for cover.
The man behind the camera stepped forward. He was dressed in army fatigues, but with no emblem or rank or division. He gripped my hand tightly.
“It’s a wonderful thing you’ve done here, Lieutenant.” His uniform was Canadian but his accent pure Dublin. He turned and nodded to the group of civilians, sitting on a hill of rubble. A Canadian medic was wrapping the girl’s arm in lengths of bandages. Jones followed wordlessly as the woman with no hands was carried into a second ambulance. Neither of the old women or the children seemed much concerned about her. Perhaps they didn’t know her.
The two old women sat on either side of the little girl. They were quiet now. Stoic almost. Passing their strength through to her. The older boy sulked at having had his rifle taken away.
“Canada won’t forget what happened here today.” The newspaperman grinned at me, and scribbled in his notebook.
I hitched a ride with the next ambulance leaving for the FSU where they’d taken Ralph. By the time I got there he was dead.
For some reason they decided I was a hero. The fool of an interpreter had misunderstood the old women’s mutterings, and then the newspaperman’s photo and story got into print, and from then on events had a life of their own.
There was certainly a hero that day, but it was Ralph Madison, not me. All of them, in fact, were heroes. I’ll never forget Jones, carrying that woman as tenderly if she were his own sister or mother. Watson, falling on the little girl. All of them were heroes.
But not me.
I took their George Cross, not knowing how to say no.
I wondered why I never heard from Jones, the only other Canadian survivor, about what had happened. Found out a long time later that he’d been killed a few days after. The younger woman lived, at least to get past the casualty clearing station. Though what kind of a life she would have—an Italian peasant woman who could play the piano but had no hands—I never wanted to consider.
When the war ended I wrote to Ralph’s parents in Toronto. They were delighted to hear from me. They invited me up to their family cottage on Lake Muskoka and even sent me a train ticket.
I swear to God, I actually expected that the sister I’d met in England and then again in Italy, Moira, the Nursing Sister, would be there. I planned to tell her what had really happened. I rehearsed my words all the way up north on the train. She would understand. How fear can turn a man’s bowels to ice water so that he can’t move. And then how humiliation makes him stand silent and ashamed when he should speak out. I wanted only to pour myself on her good graces and tell her that her brother was the hero, not I.
But Moira wasn’t there. Still in Europe, her mother told me with a sigh. No time for her family any more. Always such a selfish girl.
Perhaps even more than that day in Italy, I’m ashamed that I allowed Mrs. Madison’s bitter words to pass without comment.
I had never in all my life been to a place as beautiful as the Madison summer home. After the unspeakable horrors of Italy, and then France, I truly had found peace.
Moira wasn’t there, but Ralph’s other sisters were. Maeve and Megan.
I loved Megan from the moment I saw her, and I don’t want you to think otherwise.
She was all that I had longed for, in England, in Italy, and later in France: pure and lovely and untouched by human tragedy. She would never become, I swore right there by the side of that sparkling blue lake, an old woman covered in a black shawl scratching through rubble in search of the remnants of her life.
I loved Megan, and I love her still. And she has always loved me. Her family welcomed me because they thought me to be someone I was not.
But not my Megan.
The coroner’s inquest was quick and decisive. Accidental death, she pronounced, and that was the end of it. Megan’s body was released for burial, and the family prepared to gather at their home in Toronto.
Once again Lizzie pulled out bread and sandwich ingredients and set about preparing lunch for the journey. Moira would travel to the city, but she insisted that she could stand to be away from her own home for two nights only. She would attend the funeral, but then return north the next day. Megan’s son, Charles, was dispatched to fetch Moira along with Ruth and Amber. Phoebe had already left with Charles, her grandfather. Her parents had cut short their Hawaiian vacation to get back for Megan’s funeral.
Charles the younger was practically the image of his father and namesake. The same emaciated body, long gangly limbs, face bones so prominent that the flesh appeared to have been slapped on as an afterthought. But he had none of his father’s reserve, and he greeted Lizzie and Alan like old friends, and shook Elaine’s hand with warm enthusiasm.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Stoughton.” Elaine said the time-honored words.
“Thank you. But Mr. Stoughton’s my father. I’m Charlie.”
It was early afternoon when he arrived, and he accepted a beer in the kitchen before packing the car up and heading back to Toronto. Lizzie’s sandwiches were piled in the center of the old oak table, and the big teapot was full. Hamlet and Ophelia lay on the floor, edging forward just in case someone dropped a scrap or two. Moira and Ruth joined Lizzie, Alan, Amber, Elaine, and Charlie at the table. From next door they could hear the sounds of hammering as a work crew finished replacing the fire-damaged roof of the old guesthouse, now storage shed.
Footsteps on the stone path, the excited babble of a child, and the kitchen door flew open to admit Willow and the rest of the islanders.
Lizzie got up to make another round of sandwiches and more places were made at the table.
“Well, we’re off, Moira,” Kyle said. “I’m glad we caught you. We can’t thank you enough for your hospitality.”
“My pleasure.”
“If not Lizzie’s,” Rachel said.
“I live only to serve,” Lizzie answered, placing a glass of milk in Willow’s hands.
Charlie was introduced and heart-felt sympathies expressed all around.
“Where’s Dave?” Elaine asked.
“Said he’s not coming with us,” Kyle said.
Amber looked up, sharply. “What do you mean, he’s not going with you? Where’s he going?”
Kyle mumbled into his sandwich and the women fussed over their own food.
Charlie drained his glass, refused a refill, and pushed his chair back. “Time to be on the road. I’ll go and pack the van. I brought the van. Better to get the wheelchair in, Aunt Moira.”
“I’ll give you a hand.” Alan tossed a crust of bread to Ophelia, earning him a dark look from Lizzie and an equally fierce one from Hamlet.
“Have you got your bags ready, Ruth?” Elaine asked. “I’ll help you bring them down.”
“Thank you.” Ruth treated Elaine with brittle reserve; Elaine sensed that jealousy still tugged at her, but the open hostility had faded.
Moira’s chair was bundled into the back of the van, and she was settled stiffly in the front, seatbelt tucked firmly across her concave chest. Ruth sat in the back. Alan, Lizzie, and Elaine stood in the doorway, preparing to wave goodbye. The dogs had been locked in the kitchen for fear they would try to follow Moira all the way to Toronto. The islanders had their own transportation packed up and ready. To no one’s surprise, it was an old Volkswagen Kombi. The type that had taken many hippies down the road to Woodstock.
Alan had run his hands lovingly over the surface. “You keep this in good shape, buddy.”
“It’s my baby,” Kyle said, proudly. “It’s got to see Rachel and Willow to the West Coast. We’ll drop Karen and Jessica in Toronto first.”
“Good luck.”
They gripped hands tightly.
“Where the heck is Amber?” Charlie leaned on the horn.
“I’ll see if I can find her,” Elaine said.
She heard voices in the kitchen. Sure enough, Dave had appeared. He gripped Amber’s arm and both their faces were tense and red. A duffel bag lay at his feet.
“Everything okay here?” Elaine asked, smiling brightly as people usually do when coming across an uncomfortable situation.
“Fine,” Dave said. “This is a private conversation.”
“Actually, Elaine.” Amber pulled her arm away. Finger marks were outlined against the pale skin. “Dave was just on his way.”
“Fuck off, lady.”
“Pardon me,” Elaine said, “I didn’t quite get that.”
“Please, Dave. Don’t make this too difficult. I’m telling you to leave,” Amber said. “I’m going to my great aunt’s funeral and I’m not coming back.”
“If you don’t want to walk to Toronto, Dave, you’d best be moving. The van is about to leave,” Elaine said.
His look was so full of venom she almost took a step back.
“Amber, do you want me to call Alan and your uncle Charlie?”
“No need. I’m sure Dave understands me. Don’t you, Dave? I didn’t intend for you to think that I was inviting you to live here. I’m sorry if you did. I’m going home.”
“All right. Give me your number, and I’ll call you.”
“No, Dave, I don’t want you to contact me, please. Can we just go now?”
“You bitch, you said….”
“I wanted to like you, really I did.” The tears streamed down her face.
Dave’s hands were clenched into fists at his side and the blood vessels in his face were about to pop. Elaine flexed her fingers and prepared for a confrontation. Like she could do anything.
“But I can’t deal with all the anger you have inside. Against my family. Even against me. You’ve had a hard life. But I can’t excuse it any more.”
Amber turned to Elaine, her chest heaving with great sobs. Her pretty face had turned ugly, soaked with tears and mucus. “He called Great-Aunt Megan ‘a crazy old bitch who deserved to die because she was a waste of space.’ And then he said my grandma would be next. Go away, go away.” Amber ran out of the room.
“Time to be on your way, Dave. If you’re lucky, your friends will offer you a ride. Though why they bother is beyond me.”
“Bus is leaving, man.” Kyle crossed the room and picked up Dave’s duffel bag. “If you want a lift I can take you as far as T.O. But then I got places to go.” He held out his spare hand. “Come on, man. You don’t want to walk.”
Dave threw Elaine a venomous look, shoved Kyle’s hand out of the way, and stalked out of the kitchen.
She smiled at Kyle. “Thanks.”
“Our problem. We brought him.”
By the time they were back outside, Amber had settled in the back seat of the van beside Ruth. She had stopped crying and stared into her lap. Dave climbed into the Kombi, his face like a thundercloud.
The engines started almost at the same time and with much waving and tooting of horns they drove down the long driveway. Willow’s little face was pushed up against the back window. She waved almost as enthusiastically as did Moira in return.