"No need to apologize," I said.
"Well, there is a need," she said. "But I don't know. I just don't know. I don't know what they said to each other. And the truth is, I heard about the bridges the same way everyone else did. On the radio."
I set down the telephone on its cradle. But Reese rang me right back.
"You asked me a question, Wyatt," she said. "Now I have one to ask you. Am I correct in thinking you hold a poisonous grudge against me? That's my question. Do you hate me because you believe Katherine and Joe jumping off those bridges was somehow my fault?"
"And what would it matter to you if I did hate you?"
"I don't expect sympathy. I don't deserve it. But I've gotten a lot of nasty letters — unsigned, by the way, a lot of them. Good Christian judgments, but they don't sign their letters."
"Sounds bad."
"Just please answer my question."
"I hated you and hated what my parents did. But no longer. Let's leave it at that."
"All right. That's something at least. Thank you."
"Ten thousand Haligonians reading about it. How was I supposed to get any peace about what happened? I still don't know how to find any peace about it."
"In my own small way I was happy for you, Wyatt, that your aunt and uncle took you in. That you didn't get hounded."
"It's not like life didn't have other things in store."
"Yes, I know. I read the newspapers. The murder of that German student was on page two. And there was your uncle's name. There was your name. And I thought, My God, that's Katherine and Joe's boy."
And that was the third-to-last time I spoke with Reese Mac Isaac.
The second-to-last took place on the evening of November 9, 1962. Halifax had recently experienced one of the nastiest storms in memory. It lasted a good three days. Gale-force winds, hail, rain and sleet. There had even been bulletins warning of water spouts — water spouts were bad news, and I recall being told that in 1940, a member of the gaffing crew, Paul Syberg, was a victim of a water spout, which more or less ambushed a tugboat he'd been working on. It whirlpooled, flung him overboard and nearly capsized the tug.
On one of the relatively calm days during the November storm, my crew took the opportunity to get some gaffing done — taking precautions, of course — and Hermione Rexroth and I had been assigned to the waters close by Pier 21. The Cascania was tied up at the pier. Hermione commented on just how high up on the Cascamos hull the waves had pasted slick ribbons of kelp.
In her spare time — she wasn't married — Hermione was something of an historian of Pier 21 and of immigration in general. "The harshest thing, to my mind," she had once said to me, "the most shameful? It was a long time before Jewish displaced persons — refugees, orphans, all that — were welcomed to Canada. Here we fought the war, Canada did, but the government wouldn't take in the people who had it worst. Well, the War Orphans Project — what, 1947, thereabouts? That allowed Jews in — if I have my numbers right, between 1947 and 1949, about eleven hundred Jewish orphans and fifteen thousand Jewish refugees were allowed in."
"That's all good deeds there," I said.
"Finally — sure," she said. "But it was late. Very, very late, Wyatt. Besides, Halifax wasn't all saints in other ways, too. If you go up to the sporting club, corner of Gottingen and Gerrish? You'll find JEWS NOT ALLOWED stenciled by the front gate. Sure, they've since scrubbed it. But look closely — it's legible. Same for the public swimming pool, Northpark and Cornwallis."
"Jesus, look right now at all those people on the gangway," I said.
"All Hungarians, according to the newspaper," Hermione said.
"And listen to the bagpipes," I said. "Rain or shine for how many years now? A piper's always there to greet every ship."
"I'd bet that those Hungarians, for better or worse, have never heard bagpipes before."
I couldn't figure out the reason, but all that day I'd battled a terrible headache, sometimes to the point of blurred vision. And late one afternoon, I threw up my hands to fend off what I thought was a seagull, but it wasn't anything. With that incident, I should've called it a day. Instead, I said, "Hermione, let's take an hour break, all right?" We rowed over and tied up to a tug that had escorted the Cascania, climbed the ladder on deck and had hot tea with the four-man crew, fellows we knew well, and it was a blessed reprieve from the biting cold. From the wheelhouse, all of us watched immigrants — suitcases in hand, children alongside, sleet sticking to hats and scarves — move slowly down the gangway. It must've been the headache having its strangest effect of all, plus the sleet somewhat obscuring the view, the steam out of the tug's galley pipe, too — I don't know what all — but, Marlais, I thought I saw your mother moving slowly along the gangway, and a girl of about sixteen, which would've been your age at the time, was huddled against her.
Of course, Marlais, it wasn't you and Tilda. Of course not. It was some kind of mirage, you might say. Hermione noticed my expression and said, "Wyatt, you don't look so well, my friend." I said I thought I'd better see a doctor. I lay down on a cot below deck, covered by a coarse blanket. Believe me, you have to be bone tired to be able to sleep on a tugboat next to an enormous ship, a hundred seagulls complaining by the minute, the tug's engine running. Yet I did sleep. I didn't even wake when the tug tied up at Purdy's Wharf. Hermione had to wake me. She climbed down, got into our boat and rowed it in, and I went directly ashore and walked home. I couldn't shake the mirage out of my head, though. I mean, Marlais, it was the strangest thing.
I was still rooming at the Homestead Hotel, and when I stepped into the lobby, no doubt looking more like a rain-soaked dog than a human being, I didn't glance left or right but instead marched straight to the electric lift and took it up to my room, whereas normally I would've taken the stairs. I soaked in the bathtub, the water as hot as the hotel could possibly make it — tenants had recently complained — and then got dressed in trousers and a shirt that I'd ironed myself. When the telephone rang, it was Reese Mac Isaac. "Wyatt," she said with some alarm, "didn't you even notice? Your friend Cornelia Tell's in the lobby. She's been there at least five hours, Wyatt." I rang off and hurried down the stairs to the lobby. In the corner, on a sofa near an enormous potted plant, Cornelia was asleep under her coat. Her overnight bag was on the floor at her feet.
I lightly shook Cornelia awake. "Oh, Wyatt, thank God you're here," she said. She sat up and took my hands in hers. "Our Tilda died in Denmark, Wyatt. It was sudden and I don't know from what."
"Was she ill?"
"All I know is what the wire said. Tilda passed two days ago and is buried in Copenhagen."
"Wire sent from whom to whom?"
"Sent from your daughter to the post office. Reverend Witt happened to be posting a letter. He signed for it."
Cornelia fell into a kind of exhausted sobbing, then said, "You know, Wyatt, all the time she was growing up — and she half grew up in my bakery, eh? — I'd look at Tilda and think, She'll never leave Nova Scotia, not our Tilda. And now she's permanently in Denmark, of all places. Goes to show what I know, doesn't it? Shows what I know, which is nothing."
I tried to contact you, Marlais. I made every possible effort to get in touch. I hadn't before, but I did then. Cornelia gave me your address — did my wires arrive? Did my letter arrive? They couldn't have sufficed, but did they ever arrive?
In time I learned that Tilda had died on her way back from posting the first payment for the Learn Your Library program in Copenhagen, a six-week course, taught in both Danish and English, for people interested in becoming librarians. Cornelia also told me that, a few weeks before she died, Tilda had been in hospital for an infection of the lining of her heart.