The Piano Maker (11 page)

That same day some other Canadian unit dug a field-gun position a hundred yards behind the house, and sometimes in the nights to come, she and Claire would stand at the window and watch as shells roared overhead and then set the world on fire.

Enemy shells were landing ever closer, and the interlocked fronts sawed back and forth – seven kilometres from the factory, ten, twenty, then ten again. Flares exploded into white light in mid-air and sank back to earth on small silken parachutes. They drifted before the wind like brilliant stars, and some would come as far as the millpond and drown with quick puffs of smoke.

A month later Nathan returned with three covered Bedford trucks, and within hours the wood was brought down from the barn loft and loaded onto the truck beds.

He told her he now had excellent contacts in Britain and Canada, and through them he’d been able to arrange transport to Canada for the wood.

“For free, Helen. It’ll be part of the ballast in an empty troop ship going back. Bricks and your wood. It’s going to a piano and organ factory in Ontario. The ship will dock in Halifax and the wood continues by rail. And there’s more, Helen. I can get you and Claire to England. We’ll have to leave in the morning.”

“
Tomorrow
morning?”

“Yes.”

She said she’d think about it.

“Think about it? You’re beginning to sound like your mother. What is there to think about? I am offering to save your lives. Sooner or later this stretch will be the front itself, and I have seen what happens to cities in the front line. They become rubble. Caves and corpses and rats.”

“How much will they give us for the wood, Nathan? I’ll pay you a commission, like I said.”

“Never mind that. I’m glad I can help.” He looked at her and grinned and offered his hand. “Friends, Helen. Last time I still had hopes, I don’t know why, but I’ve given up. You can go on loving your dead Pierre, and you and I, we’ll just be friends from now on. All right?”

She shook his hand happily. “How much money will they be paying us, Nathan?”

“A few thousand Canadian dollars. They need to see it, and then they’ll mention an exact amount.”

“How much in francs, more or less?”

“That’s hard to say, because who knows what the franc is worth now. They want to see the charts as well. Don’t forget them.”

“All right. And listen, Nathan. I wonder if you could make some inquiries for us. A little while ago we had a French-Canadian captain billeted here. His unit was moved, but if possible we’d like to keep in touch with him.”

“Keep in touch? What for?”

“For Claire’s sake. He was very nice to her.”

“A captain? What was his name?”

“Xavier Boucher. He was a battery commander.”

“All right. I’ll see what I can do.”

That same evening one of the trucks took them past army tents to the squire’s lodge. Outside one tent they saw Nathan with some Canadian soldiers, playing cards. He looked up and waved.

At the lodge they sat with Juliette in her apartment: Juliette on the bed, Hélène on the only chair, and Claire on the floor. One of the two windows was broken, and the glass had been replaced with cardboard. For furniture there was only the bed and the chair and a rug from Juliette’s mother, a small desk with two candlesticks, a vanity with an untrue mirror, an armoire, and a few pictures on the wall.

Juliette saw her looking around, and she smiled and said, “The bare essentials, Hélène. It’s interesting how little one really needs and how everything else can come to feel like a burden.”

“Juliette,” she said. “Nathan has found a way to sell our wood for us. And he wants us to leave with him, tomorrow morning. I’m still undecided. The trucks would drive to the coast, and a ship would take us to England. You could come with us.”

Juliette sat with her thin shoulders back and her hands in her lap. Her nails were manicured, and Hélène could see that she’d rinsed her hair in the purple dye for which
the chemist had been making the effervescent powder for years and selling it in sachets for a centime.

She smiled at Hélène and shook her head. “No, dear. Thank you, but no. You are still young, and our Claire here is just starting out. If only for her sake, the two of you should leave, and if Nathan is offering you a chance to escape and turn the wood into money, you must take it.”

“And you?”

“I’ll stay, of course. At my age I’d much rather be here than be a refugee in some English city where I’ll never belong. I can see the end of it, Hélène. It was interesting at times but long enough, really, and this is how it should be. I think you know what I mean.”

“Nathan says the front is coming closer. Their shells may soon be reaching the city.”

“Perhaps.”

They sat a while longer. Light flickered through summer trees out the window. Distant explosions.

“But what are you going to do?”

“Do? I’ll continue to cook for the Father. Farmers still bring him food. He’s a decent man who may even believe what he preaches, but he doesn’t expect me to. So we get along fine. And I’m writing again. At the moment I am writing a poem about light, how it changes and how all things look different then. It’s one of my better insights and I keep coming back to it. It won’t go anywhere but that’s all right. I’ll be fine, Hélène. I’m not worried about a single thing.”

They sat in silence while the finality of all this sank in.

After some time Juliette said kindly, “You should go, Hélène. Before it gets dark. Claire, sweetheart, take your mother home. You need to pack.”

That night a shell struck the barn and it burned for hours, with timbers and walls collapsing and flames and sparks dancing high. She and Claire sat on the side of the bed they’d been sharing again, looking out at the inferno. Claire, who’d been so good and courageous most of the time, wept and said it was all so very terrible and would it never end.

“It will end one day, sweetheart,” she said, and held her close. “It will. It most definitely will. I promise you that.”

In the morning they were on the second of the three trucks leaving the factory yard. Nathan was at the wheel and Claire sat between them. He was whistling softly, not with any real sound, just his breath curving tunelessly over his lips.

At some point when Hélène could not stand it any longer she snapped at him and asked him what there was to whistle about. He stopped.

“But you and Claire are safe now,” he said. “The war is over for you. Isn’t that something to be happy about?”

At Boulogne-sur-Mer they lined up for food at a Canadian field kitchen, and they sat on benches made from ammunition crates in a tent by the harbour wall. They ate
fish cakes and rice from mess kits with folding spoons among hundreds of soldiers coming and going. Troop carriers lay at anchor and landing craft went back and forth.

Back at the trucks she handed Nathan her mother’s drawings for the various piano models. He unrolled one and looked at it and shook his head.

“In such detail,” he said.

Not far away engines started up and whistles blew and soldiers were forming a line.

“Nathan,” she shouted over the noise. “This wood is top instrument grade. It’s exceptionally valuable. And the wood and these sketches are all Claire and I have. Please tell me again what’s going to happen.”

“It goes as ballast in an empty ship to Halifax and from there by train to Ontario. They’ll examine it and give us a fair price. The same with the drawings.”

“I see. Nathan, I hope you won’t misinterpret this, but do you think I could have a written record of this deal? I appreciate your offer to do it for free, but I’d like to give you a quarter of the money anyway. Please accept it, it’s better that way. I’m going to write up the details of the transaction, and I’d like you to sign it.”

“I can’t do that, because of the War Materials Act. Why not just trust me?”

“I do trust you. God forbid, but what if something should happen to you?”

“You are not listening. With a piece of paper like that I’d be incriminating myself, and you. Shipping private
cargo for sale. Your wood goes as unlisted ballast, so just be glad and trust the situation. Okay?”

“Not really. I have nothing to show for this deal. Couldn’t the ship’s captain give me a receipt?”

“The ship’s captain. Of course not. Be sensible, Helen. And speaking of being sensible: I asked around but I couldn’t find out anything about your captain and the French-Canadian unit.”

“Nothing at all? No one knew anything?”

“No. Or if they did, they wouldn’t say. It’s war, Helen. And now Claire and you better get your bags out of the truck. We’ll be boarding soon.”

IN THE MORNING FRESH
snow covered the street and all the roofs. Smoke rose from chimneys everywhere. It rose and blew sideways from the tin stack on the roof of what she knew by now was David Chandler’s leather workshop.

At nine o’clock, Claire arrived with breakfast for two on a tray. She kicked off her boots and took off her coat and then they sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee and eating soft-boiled eggs and toast with strawberry jam.

Claire said, “I wrote the exam, and now I have maybe as much as three weeks’ leave. But there’s a paid intern position I applied for, and if I need to write some sort of follow-up paper, they’ll telephone me. In that case I’d have to go back. By the way, I paid for the tickets from the special account like you said, and I took out another one hundred dollars and brought it for other expenses. Is that all right?”

“Of course it is.”

“Is there an attorney in this town?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked anyone yet.”

“I’ll make some calls.”

“The church office is ice-cold, so maybe do it from the telephone exchange. It’s just past the Dominion Bank, and then you could stop in there and cash a cheque I’ll give you so I can pay my bills here. They’re all being very helpful. The priest is giving me this apartment in exchange for providing the church music. I’m just living on savings now, but I’ll find a way to earn money again.”

“I’m sure you will. Now tell me again what the policeman said.”

“Just that there was new evidence and the case was being reopened. That’s all.”

“Can they do that, once it’s dismissed?”

“Apparently so. A lawyer will know all that.”

Claire left, and just an hour later she was back. She put a bank envelope on the kitchen table, took off her coat and then looked at her notes.

“One attorney I spoke to in Annapolis Royal said he remembered the case and it interested him. He said it was basically an
autrefois acquit
. A double jeopardy. He said there are very few exceptions that permit a retrial for murder. Wrong in law is one, and fresh evidence is another.”

“Has he defended a case like this before?”

“I asked him that, and he said no. He said they’re rare because of the strict exceptions. But procedurally they are no different from any other murder case.”

“All right. Can he find out what the new evidence is?”

“Once he’s taken on the case, he’ll be in a position as your attorney to act on your behalf. He thinks the trial will be fairly soon. In a few weeks, maybe even before Christmas, with the circuit court that’s booked to come through.”

Later she was at the piano in the church for her regular afternoon practice session. She played Gabriel Fauré, and people whose faces she knew by now sat in pews listening, and more came in and took seats. The girl from the foundry office came, and so did David Chandler. He was carrying a brown paper bag and he settled into a pew and held the bag on his knees. She played on. It was exceptionally still in the church and the piano in its new place sounded wonderful. It also gave her a better view of the front of the church past the open lid, and to her right a wider view of the congregation.

Near the end of the piece, Claire came in and sat down next to David Chandler.

She played “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and there was not one cough or shuffle to be heard in the church. Once she’d established the melody she started from the beginning
and, guided by the fine lyrics, expanded it into a circular ballad of her own spontaneous creation.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone
.

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago …

From the moment they were on that Bedford truck leaving the factory yard, she and Claire were homeless. Refugees. Émigrés was the kinder notion, because it suggested an act of choice. They travelled to Portsmouth on a British ship taking back wounded and to return with more soldiers for the slaughter. Most of the way they kept to the deck because of the horror everywhere below. When the Isle of Wight came into clear view, she was at the railing next to Claire.

In Portsmouth the harbour was filled with soldiers in brown uniforms and shallow tin hats. They formed restless groups, grinning and joshing each other like excited boys off on a school trip, but then all movement stopped and they stared as the wounded were carried off and men with firehoses flushed decks and holds. Pumps came on and water foaming with blood and vomit gushed from the sides of the ship into the harbour.