Death Spiral (19 page)

Carole looked the bed over in the faint light coming in from the window. She was wearing a smart-looking sweater-and-skirt set. He could see that she’d freshened up her makeup before she’d come up the hill. Her unruly lock of hair was still in place.

“I missed you,” Wilf said.

Carole looked at him.

The bed turned out not to be too small, after all. Wilf made love as slowly and gently as he could, remembering the last time. As lovingly as he could.

Carole responded, gently, lovingly.

And once again they told each other that they loved each other.

Afterward they lay curled up together under the covers. Soon there was no light left and Carole fell asleep. Wilf could hear her soft breathing, feel it feathering across his cheek, and the touch of her naked belly pressing gently against his belly with each breath. Her absolute trust filled his heart.

Carole woke with a start. She gathered up her clothes, held them in front of herself and phoned her mother from the upstairs hallway just to say that she wouldn’t be coming home for supper, that Wilf was taking her out. Instead they stayed in and made supper together.

Carole had been in the McLauchlin house several times before, but only long enough to drop off or pick up some work. She knew that what she was doing was not proper behaviour for a legal secretary, she knew it was foolish and childish and stupid beyond belief. And she watched Wilf chopping onions. And she watched him steal glances at her stealing glances at him and then they’d both smile. And she’d never felt so happy in all her life. After supper Wilf built a fire in the study and turned off the lights. The reflection from the flames made the shadows dance. He spread a blanket over the rug and they sat there together as if they were camping. He touched her hand, her hair, her cheek. They made love. When they were finished they rolled themselves up in the blanket and rested. Carole kissed his forehead, his nose, his eyes.

“I went to Montreal,” Wilf said.

“When?”

“Before I went to Toronto.”

Carole moved back a little. Half of Wilf’s face was hidden in shadow, the other half seemed to glow from the fire.

“Why?”

“To see this doctor. A friend of mine. I was wondering if he knew what had happened to my eyes?”

“What had happened to your eyes?”

“I was blind for close to three months.”

Carole propped herself up on an elbow. “I didn’t know that. From when you crashed?”

“I’m trying to figure something out.”

“What?”

Wilf could see the piles of Nuremberg transcripts stacked up behind her. From his perspective their shadows looked huge on the wall. “There’s something going on.”

Carole leaned over and touched her forehead against his forehead, as if she didn’t want him to say anything more.

“Mr. Cruikshank. And the man in the woods. Not so much the way they were killed, but how they looked after they were killed.”

“Don’t,” she whispered.

“There’s these doctors being tried in Nuremberg. For experimenting with prisoners in the work camps. Freezing people to death. Cutting off their arms.”

Carole kept her forehead against his but she didn’t respond.

“I think there’s a connection. Somehow.”

She still didn’t respond.

“I’m the connection,” Wilf said.

Carole lay back down and stared up at the ceiling.

Wilf watched her for a moment.

“Carole,” he whispered. He kissed her cheek.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know. That’s why I got jumpy earlier today. I was sitting in this room and it struck me right down to the very bottom of my soul that it didn’t make any sense.”

Carole turned to look at him. “But that’s good.”

Wilf smiled. “Is it?”

Carole rolled over and wrapped her arms around his head and held him to her. He could feel his left arm slide over his hip and down his back. Flop uselessly there.

I’m a wreck, he thought.

“I’m not going home tonight,” Carole announced.

“Of course you’re going home. I’m all right now.”

“How can you be all right now?”

“Because of you.” He could feel her intake of breath. Her arms grew tighter. “I won’t talk about this anymore.” He could feel her tears, warm and slippery. “It’s gone,” he said.

Wilf drove Carole home at two o’clock in the morning, driving as smoothly and in as straight a line as possible to prove that he was a man in full possession of himself. Before she’d even get into the car she made him promise to come into the office that morning. She had to be there by nine o’clock. Wilf promised he’d be there shortly thereafter.

They pulled up in front of her house. The porch light had been left on. It looked like both a forlorn and a hopeful signal from her family. Wilf’s heart filled up again at the sight of it. At the very least, he’d taken on the responsibility to be kind.

He glanced over at Carole. She was staring at the light, too.

* * *

Wilf came into the office just before noon, carrying two take-out lunches he’d purchased at King Sun Lao’s Canadian Chinese Restaurant. They ate in Clarence’s office.

During that afternoon Carole was relieved to see Wilf chatting in a friendly manner with the few clients that dropped in, though she did notice that the clients seemed more curious about Duncan Getty and what went on out at Cline’s bush than the disposition of their own files.

What Wilf was noticing was a certain wariness creeping into people’s eyes, not that they blamed him in any way for Adrienne and her boyfriend or Duncan Getty. It was more that he’d been too close to those scenes of mayhem not to have picked up something disquieting and fearful along the way. And then of course, there was the astounding fact that he had some kind of eerie instinct for sniffing out and solving these things.

At five o’clock Carole and Wilf locked up the office and walked out toward Main Street. As they passed through the wrought-iron gate, Wilf suggested that this might be a good night to drive to Brantford, have a leisurely supper and then think of something else they could do. Carole said that she knew exactly what that something else was that he had in mind, and though it was a tempting offer it would be better if she went home and had supper with her parents. Though her mother wasn’t saying anything she was giving her funny looks. And her father seemed angry and grim, harrumphing about the house.

“Harrumphing?” Wilf said.

“I just should stay home tonight. I’m going to talk to mom about it.”

“About what?”

It was the middle of March and the weather had turned mild. Ice was melting off the roofs of the stores and streams of water were splashing down on the sidewalk and the days were lasting longer.

“Just that I don’t want her worrying about me. And that I want to be free to come and go. Just so she’ll understand. She just wants me to talk.”

“How about your dad? Does he just want you to talk?”

“Mom will talk to him.”

“I think you need your own place.”

Carole blushed a little. “I think you need your own place.”

“Okay.”

“I’m only talking. You’re going to Toronto soon. Remember?”

Wilf looked above the stores. The sky was turning red. “I’m not sure how keen I am on that anymore.” Or how capable, he thought to himself.

Wilf came into the office the next couple of mornings and stayed all day. Apparently Carole and her mother had had a woman-to-woman talk and all was quiet on that front. Wilf had been sleeping reasonably well with the help of his sleeping pills. And no more disturbing dreams.

“I think I’ll walk over and get this signed. It’s too nice a day to stay cooped up in here.” Wilf got up from his desk.

“That’s a little unfair, don’t you think?”

Carole had been pounding on her typewriter all morning but the piles of legal drafts surrounding her seemed to be growing rather than shrinking. And his father had called Wilf the previous evening. If everything continued to go well in court in Windsor he’d be back in the office by late afternoon the next day.

“I could type and you could walk over.”

Carole kept typing. “Can you type?”

“No.”

Carole had the idea that if she could only catch up with all her backlog of work Mr. McLauchlin wouldn’t know that she’d been in his house and was having an affair with his son. She knew there was a fatal error of logic in there somewhere but her fingers kept flying across the keys nevertheless.

“I’ll tell you what’s not fair.” Wilf was pulling on his coat by the front door.

“What’s that?”

“The lousy benefits these war widows are getting. Their husbands go off to serve their country, lose their lives doing it, and then the government is so damn parsimonious their benefits wouldn’t keep a mouse in cheese for a month. No wonder she’s had to sell her house.”

Carole kept typing. “Who are you talking about? Sylvia Young?”

“Her house closes at the end of the month. She probably needs the money to buy groceries.”

“At least she has a house to sell.”

“That’s a bit small-minded.”

Carole stopped typing and looked over at Wilf. He was leaning against the door with a disapproving expression on his face. They’d decided that this was the night they’d drive to Brantford for supper. Carole knew that that meant a hotel room afterward, and the truth was she’d been looking forward to it. Now she felt hurt and wasn’t sure. “I just mean there are lots of women in town worse off than Sylvia Young. She stays at home with one child, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, she does. And she has a house to sell. There are lots of women with two or three kids, they’re working six days a week in one of the factories and have nothing to fall back on.”

“I stand corrected,” Wilf said.

“It’s not that I don’t think they should get more money. They should all get more money.”

Wilf smiled. “I find it difficult working with you.”

“Why?”

“I can’t keep my mind fully on my work.”

Carole wasn’t ready to let go of her pique just yet. “Then a little fresh air might help,” she said, turning back to her typing.

The river was high and muddy and full of ice. The beginning of spring breakup. When Wilf was young he and his friends used to hang over the downtown bridge and watch the water rush under their feet. If they did this long enough and didn’t think of anything else, it would feel as if the water had come to a stop and the bridge was beginning to churn its way up the river.

Wilf leaned over the railing and stared into the water. It didn’t work. His eyes kept focusing on the pans of ice rushing by.

He walked on. As he approached Sylvia Young’s house he could see a boy standing on the veranda. He was a chubby kid and seemed a little cold standing there in just a windbreaker, light pants and bright white running shoes.

Rushing the season, Wilf thought to himself. It was all coming back. Every kid in town thought it was summer as soon as the snow began to melt. Time to get out the bicycles and the baseball bats. Wilf limped up the front walk. “Hi there,” he called out.

The boy remained standing by the front door. He looked frightened.

“Are you Mrs. Young’s boy?” Wilf climbed up on the porch. “Is there anyone home?”

The boy shook his head. Then he backed up, put his head over the railing and began to retch.

A smell like rotting eggs wrapped around Wilf, scouring his eyes, searing his nostrils. He rang the doorbell. The smell was even stronger by the door. “Mrs. Young! Mrs. Young!”

The boy retreated down the steps.

“Hey! Where do you live?” Wilf called out.

The boy pointed down the street.

“Tell your mom to call the fire department. Hurry up!”

The boy took off in a waddling run across the melting snow. Wilf gulped a fresh breath and tried the door. It was locked. He hurried off the porch looking for a side door. There wasn’t one. He rounded the back corner. Some rickety steps led into a small enclosed porch. He climbed them, pushed through the door into the fume-filled porch and immediately felt like gagging. “Mrs. Young!” he blurted out.

He grabbed for the inside door and pushed it open. A woman was sitting in an armchair, her head slumped over. Wilf took a chest-jolting breath, dropped his cane and moved across the kitchen toward her. She seemed to be sitting there under water; he couldn’t make out her face. As soon as he touched her, she slid off the chair.

Wilf had to breathe again, and when he did his lungs caught fire. He made a grab for the woman’s wrist and began to drag her across the floor. He reached the porch and fell down the outside steps. The woman slid down after him.

They sprawled out together in the puddled snow. Wilf turned to look at her. She lay there staring placidly back at him.

“I’m sorry,” Wilf said, panting for breath, taking air in as deeply as his aching lungs allowed. He struggled to his feet and climbed the steps again. Carole had said something about a child.