"Hey, fellas," Hermione said, "let's stop in and take a look."
After a few deep draws, Hermione tossed her cigarette in the gutter and Tom and I followed her into the gallery. It was one big room painted white. There were five floor lamps and three woven rugs, the attempt being to make it like somebody's living room. There was a sizable crowd, people milling about, the women quite gussied up, some of the men wearing tuxedos. Fashion-wise, Hermione, Tom and I certainly stood out. There was a table with a white tablecloth, wine glasses, bottles of wine. "This is a fancy event," Hermione said.
"At least we didn't just gaff in sacks of fertilizer, like last week," Tom said, "or this gallery might've quickly lost some clientele, eh?"
"I didn't know you spoke French," Hermione said to Tom. "Isn't 'clientele' French?"
Tom looked at a wall of photographs. "Here I'm forty-five and still hoping to find a wife," he said. "But the women in these photographs are all taken."
"I bet that's where the word 'brides' comes in," Hermione said, grinning and handing Tom a glass of wine.
There were fifty-five photographs on exhibit. First thing I looked at was a chronological sequence consisting of four photographs, which followed a particular British woman — most of these war brides were from Britain, a smaller number were from France, a few were from Italy and Holland — from the moment she stepped from the gangway of the Pasteur, a luxury liner that had been converted into a warship, to her first meeting with her future husband, to their wedding, to being carried over the threshold. The caption to this sequence was "British sweetheart to Canadian wife in less than an hour."
Everyone on our crew had seen thousands of women at the rails of ocean liners —Aquitania, Mauretania, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, Ile de France, Lady Rodney, Pasteur—we'd looked up at them just hours before they became legal brides on paper. We'd seen military personnel escort each woman down the gangway and onto the dock — some had children with them — their baggage carried by soldier escorts, too. It was dignified.
I wandered about and came to a photograph of a woman looking lost and bewildered, with a forced smile if ever I saw one. The caption read, "Pale homesickness will soon give way to rosy blush of love as war bride meets love of her life." When Hermione joined me in front of this photograph, she read the caption and remarked, "Now, you ask me, that woman left the love of her life in — where's she from?"
"Edinburgh, it says."
"Look at her face — I'm convinced of it. She left the love of her life in Edinburgh."
"How can you tell?" I asked.
"I can tell," she said. "I look at that photograph and you know what I wish her? I wish her some kindness and possibly children. Here she's traveled to Canada — seasick at least half the nautical miles, probably — and what's she in for? Imagine stepping off that ship and spying some bloke at the dock only bears a slight resemblance to the photograph he'd sent, and thinking — probably it's like a screaming prayer in the head: Please, God, don't let that be him!"
"You figured all that out from just this one photograph, right?"
"Okay, I suppose I had a predisposition, you might say."
I liked Hermione a lot. She was good, honest company. "I'm going to get a carrot stick with cream cheese, Wyatt. I'll meet you by that big picture over there," she said.
It was the largest photograph on exhibit. In it, a doctor posed facing the camera. He stood next to a woman, about age thirty, who looked humiliated and proud in equal measure. She also stared into the camera. The doctor was holding a stethoscope to her chest, though she had on an overcoat. The caption read: "With great care, Dr. Roald Ivy lovingly treats a French immigrant as if she is already a Canadian citizen."
Hermione stepped up and said, loudly, "My God, that's Mona!"
"You know this woman?" I asked. I inspected the woman's face closely.
"Tom!" Hermione shouted across the room, drawing lots of attention. "Tom, come over here!" As Tom walked over, Hermione touched her friend's face on the photograph. "Tom, this is Mona d'Ussel! This is my friend Mona d'Ussel! She's my neighbor," Hermione said, "catty-corner from me on Bliss Street."
"So you say," Tom said.
I thought Hermione was going to give Tom every nasty word just for doubting her. But she said, "All right, let's go to her house. Right now."
"What about Rigolo's?" I said.
"Rigolo's is open till one A.M.," Hermione said, buttoning up her rain slicker.
"Looking at this photograph," Tom said, "one thing I know for certain. Dr. Ivy here's a quack. He can't hear her heartbeat through that thick an overcoat."
"I'll take that under consideration," Hermione said. "Next time I'm in the market for a personal physician, it won't be Dr. Ivy."
The rain hadn't let up in the least, but Hermione was determined to show us what was what. She was fuming at Tom, and made me walk between them the whole way to 45 Bliss Street, which was about ten blocks. "This is Mona's house," Hermione said. "As you can see, my own house is over there across the street."
We stepped up onto the front porch and looked in through the living room window. There were at least twenty women in the living room and dining room. It looked festive. There was a gramophone turned up loud, a female voice singing in French. Some of the women were coupled up and dancing.
Hermione knocked on the door. The woman who answered was clearly Mona d'Ussel, except add all the years to her photograph. But there was no doubt it was her. "Okay, I apologize," Tom said.
"Oh, Hermione — hello!" Mona d'Ussel said cheerfully. She seemed a little tipsy. She had on a beautiful dress. Pearl earrings. "I'm so sorry, Hermione, but I cannot invite you and your friends in. I've even sent my husband off to the movies." Her accent was distinct, and she was more than cordial. "You see, it was my turn to have the meeting of our little club, and everyone's about to sit down for a late dinner. Please forgive me."
We heard someone calling Mona back to her party.
"Mona," Hermione said, "I work with these two fellows. Wyatt and Tom, meet Mona d'Ussel."
"Tom, Wyatt, I can't invite you in," Mona said.
"We just saw your photograph in the art gallery, Mona," Hermione said. "The boys here wanted to meet a famous person."
"That doctor — in the photograph?" Mona spit on the porch. "Not a nice man. And now I'm permanently stuck with him. When I learned the photograph existed, I tried to buy it so I could destroy it, you see. But it wasn't for sale. Now that day in my life — my first day in Canada, the day I met my husband — it's no longer mine alone. I might as well be stuffed in a museum."
"I'm sorry I mentioned it, then," Hermione said. "What kind of club is meeting here, may I ask?"
Mona's face brightened a little, though she still seemed upset. "Oh, all of us are French war brides," she said. "The War Brides of Halifax Club. There was a newspaper article about us."
"I missed it," Hermione said.
"Had you seen it," Mona said, "you would have learned that we've met every month for years now. Some of us are no longer with our war husbands — well, that's what they're called in Britain, anyway. Some of us are still with our husbands but wish we weren't. And some of us are still married and satisfied. We've all become great friends."
"Look, I apologize, Mona," Hermione said. "I feel stupid for just dropping in out of the blue like this."
"Out of the blue in the terrible rain, yes?" Mona d'Ussel said.
"Well, goodbye, then," Hermione said.
"You're not French and not a war bride, Hermione," Mona d'Ussel said, still apologizing. "Otherwise — of course!"
She closed the door, and as we stepped off her porch, Hermione said, "Well, I'd much rather be in there than in Rigolo's Pub with you clowns."