Last Summer in Louisbourg (3 page)

Chapter Four

Justine turned out to be one of those people who could bounce out of bed in the morning with the energy of a wind-up toy. Andrea wasn't like that. She usually woke sluggishly, wishing she could sleep for another hour. Today she was glad her roommate was so alert. Andrea had a hundred questions. Where did they get their breakfast? How would they find their way to the fortress? She didn't even know what time they were supposed to start work.

They dressed, then Andrea followed Justine down the stairs to the dining room, where the ingredients for breakfast were spread out on a large table. There was no one else in the room. A few minutes later Roberta MacNeil cautiously opened the kitchen door and peered in. She had frizzy grey hair and wore a flowery apron around her ample waist.

“Good morning,” said Andrea, her mouth full of toast.

“So you're the new girl, are you?”

“Yes, I am,” Andrea answered, thinking that was a pretty dumb question. What would Mrs. MacNeil have done if she had replied that she'd been here for weeks?

Mrs. MacNeil had nothing else to say. She returned to the kitchen, leaving the girls by themselves.

“Never mind her,” whispered Justine. “She keeps to herself a lot.”

Maybe just as well, thought Andrea.

After breakfast they headed towards the fortress on foot. “You can't possibly get lost in Louisbourg,” Justine reassured her. “There's only the main street and then it becomes the highway and then it ends at the fortress.”

“How far is it?” Andrea wanted to know. She couldn't see any trace of the place. By then they had reached the edge of the town and there were no more houses or stores. The road ahead led through a forest of stunted spruce trees.

“Couple of miles. Couple of kilometres maybe. I don't know. I never have to walk the whole way. Somebody always picks me up,” Justine explained nonchalantly.

Andrea shot a sideways glance at Justine. A pick-up? Her mother had always told her never to get into a car with strangers. Never, ever. Not that she needed her mother to remind her. There were enough scary stories in the news to warn her of the dire consequences.

Less than a minute later a grey truck, driven by a middle-aged man, pulled up and stopped beside them. Justine greeted the man by name and climbed in, followed by a reluctant Andrea. After a few words with the driver about someone they both knew Justine, said, “Joe, this is Andrea who's starting work today.”

“Hello there,” Joe greeted her warmly. Andrea responded with an uncertain “Hi,” wondering who Joe was. Their journey didn't last long. The road ended in a huge car park. There were only a few cars in it at this time of the morning. They got out and walked towards a modern building with huge glass doors and a sign that said VISITOR RECEPTION CENTRE.

“Not that way,” directed Justine, as Andrea headed for the door. “We're not supposed to go in there. That's for the public. We're staff.”

Andrea followed her around to the side of the building, where a bus stood waiting with both doors open. Along with Joe and several other men and women, the girls filed in and soon the bus was heading down a narrow road.

“Doesn't anyone come to work in their own cars?” asked Andrea, thinking of Jackie's nifty little car from the night before.

“They don't allow cars anywhere near the fortress,” explained Justine. “It would spoil the look of things. See? There it is over there.”

Last night's rain had dwindled to a mist, out of which, on the far side of the bay, rose a fortress town from another age. Andrea could not take her eyes off the hazy panorama of gleaming slate roofs, tall brick chimneys, soaring spires, and massive grey stone walls. It was hard to believe that what she was seeing was a replica of a town that had stood here on this bleak, windswept peninsula beside the Atlantic Ocean nearly three hundred years ago. It seemed like pure magic to Andrea.

As the bus rolled along Justine chatted with another girl who was sitting across the aisle, a giggling conversation about someone who had recently cut her long hair short then dyed it hot pink. Andrea wished they would shut up. Their outbursts of laughter were spoiling her special moment. She continued to gaze out the bus window, enchanted by the vision of another world.

The bus stopped at a circular drive, and everyone got out and began walking along a broad pathway towards a wooden drawbridge that spanned a narrow river. On the far side Andrea recognized the Dauphin Gate, consisting of two massive stone towers with a huge wooden door between them. She had read that the original Dauphin Gate had been built to keep out the dreaded English. Andrea's ancestors had been English people who migrated to Newfoundland about the same time that the French were building this great fort in the New World. It gave her a strange feeling to realize that her people would not have been welcome here, that they might have been imprisoned or even killed. Why, she wondered, had the French and the English always been fighting? And why did they still seem to have trouble getting along?

The girls walked past two young men dressed in baggy blue-and-grey uniforms. Their role was that of eighteenth-century French soldiers, but they were still part of the twentieth century. One was sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup and the other was drinking Diet Pepsi out of a can. Their flintlock muskets were propped against the wall along with their tricorn hats.

“Hi, Dave! Hi, Jimmy!” called Justine.

“Have a nice day!” one of them replied.

“Break a leg!” added the other.

The girls continued along a gravel path beside the high, impenetrable wall that had once defended the people of this garrison against their enemies. How futile it seemed nowadays in a world full of aircraft and bombs and missiles. Yet how imposing it still looked. Andrea realized that no matter how many pictures one saw of a place, it was always a surprise when you finally got there. You could feel it then, as well as see it. Of course, the book of fortress photographs she had seen in her school library had not included the sound of the waves lapping in Louisbourg Harbour, the smell of salt water, or the wild voices of the seagulls. It took Andrea a moment or two to realize that something was missing. Then she got it. There were no power lines or telephone poles cluttering the horizon and no cars or trucks to dominate the scene.

They entered a labyrinth of orderly streets and stone buildings within the walls. Andrea had begun to imagine that she was sliding back in time, picturing herself as a resident of this place, when Justine stopped in front of a tall wooden fence and pushed open a well-disguised secret door.

“C'mon. Follow me,” she directed.

“What is this?”

“It's Lartigue House. It's where we get into our costumes.”

“What did you call it again?”

“Lartigue. It's named after the family who built the original house. All the houses here are named after the colonists who lived in them in 1744. That was the last peaceful year. After that the English attacked and things were never the same again.”

“Couldn't we look around a bit more first?” Andrea asked.

“We're not supposed to walk around unless we're wearing our costumes. Besides, you've got the whole summer to see all the stuff. You'll get bored with it soon enough. Just follow me.”

They entered an enclosed yard and walked around to the back door of an ancient-looking house. But it only looked old from the outside. Inside they found themselves in a large room lined with lockers—exactly the same kind that lined the halls in the school Andrea attended in Ontario.

“Mine's number ten and Jackie said yours is number thirteen,” stated Justine as she hastily pulled off her T-shirt and jeans and shoved them in her locker. She grabbed a long-sleeved white blouse from a hanger and wriggled it over her head. Then she stepped into an ankle-length, olive-green skirt that fastened with a drawstring at the waist. Finally she tied a cotton apron over the skirt. Andrea sat and watched as her roommate transformed herself into a maiden from another time.

Jackie Cormier arrived just then, carrying an almost identical costume. The only difference was that the coarse, woollen skirt was a faded shade of dark blue.

“These ought to fit you, Andrea. But I forgot to ask your shoe size, so I brought three pairs for you to try.”

“Size seven and a half,” said Andrea as she examined the unattractive shoes she would have to wear. They were flat, black slippers with a strap across the instep that fastened with a button, like babies' shoes. The toes were broad and square.

“How do you tell left from right?” she asked as she thrust her foot into one of them.

“You don't,” laughed Jackie. “They were the same back then. Believe it or not, poor people sometimes bought their shoes one at a time. Shoes used to be an expensive luxury for ordinary folks.”

“They still are,” Andrea remarked, remembering how much her new winter boots had cost last year.

“These aren't as comfy as sneakers, but you'll get used to them,” said Justine stoically as she buttoned hers. Then she helped Andrea into her costume. Andrea felt slightly ridiculous. There was something about long skirts that always made her feel like a little girl, as if it were Hallowe'en or she were making a game of trying on her mother's clothes.

“Very nice,” nodded Jackie approvingly. “You suit the role. Now don't forget your bonnet.”

Andrea had been fingering the white cotton bonnet. She was not sure which way it was supposed to sit on her head, and anyway she was hoping she could get away without wearing it at all. She didn't like wearing hats of any kind and this one was downright silly. It looked more like a large handkerchief than a hat.

“I bet you don't know why we have to wear these bonnets, do you?” teased Justine as she stood in front of the mirror adjusting hers.

“No, why?”

“Because we've got lice!” squealed Justine.

“The bonnet,” explained Jackie, “was supposed to keep the lice at home, if you see what I mean. Thank goodness we have ways to get rid of them nowadays. Apparently everybody had them back then.”

Voices and footsteps signalled the arrival of more people. A small boy and girl scrambled noisily into the locker room, followed by their mother.

“Good morning, Brittany. Good morning, Scott,” Jackie greeted the children.

“Sorry we're a bit late,” the mother apologized.

“We coulda got here faster, but Scott wouldn't eat his cereal,” grumbled Brittany, who had blonde pigtails and looked about eight years old.

“I did so eat my cereal,” protested her younger brother loudly.

“No quarrelling,” their mother ordered.

“Children, I want you to meet Andrea. She's going to be working with you,” said Jackie.

“Say hello,” urged their mother.

“H'lo,” they mumbled, glancing briefly at Andrea.

Andrea shook their hands and tried to look serious about her new responsibilities. The job she shared with Justine was the supervision of these, and other, children. Every day twelve youngsters helped to recreate life as it had been lived in 1744 in the Fortress of Louisbourg. They ranged in age from five to twelve and were members of a corps of junior volunteers who lived in nearby communities. Although they only “performed” during the summer months when the fortress was open to the public, they met regularly throughout the winter with instructors who taught them the children's games, music, dances, and handicrafts of eighteenth-century France.

Andrea and Justine were there to help them get into their costumes, to supervise games and lunches and snack times, to make sure they wore their capes on rainy days, and to keep track of the musical instruments they played, as well as the handmade dolls and the partly finished embroidery. Things had to keep running on time, whether it was the daily performance of a folk dance or being dispatched home on the bus at the end of the day.

The little girls wore costumes almost the same as those worn by Andrea and Justine. The boys wore white shirts with baggy pants, rigid wooden shoes, and black tricorn hats. Even the littlest boys had to wear those preposterous hats. Andrea wondered if she was going to have trouble persuading them to keep their hats on.

“It's the little kids who really bring this place to life,” Jackie declared, as several more of them arrived. “I know you're going to enjoy working with them, Andrea, but since this is your first day here I suggest you take a look around and become familiar with your new surroundings. Justine can show you about. I'll keep an eye on the youngsters for now.”

Nothing could have pleased Andrea more. Jackie was turning out to be a pal—one of those people who sensed what you needed before you got up your nerve to ask. Andrea put on her idiotic bonnet and buttoned her baby-doll shoes. The two girls quickly left the building and hurried out through the secret door in the fence.

Chapter Five

By the time they reached the centre of the town, the first busload of visitors had arrived. Andrea barely noticed them. She was absorbed by the atmosphere of this ancient town with its walled gardens, beckoning doorways, and quaint dormer windows. Except for the tourists in their modern summer clothes, she really did feel as if she had stepped back into another age. It took a while for her to realize that the tourists were staring at her as well as at the buildings. Of course. She and Justine were as otherworldly in appearance as the make-believe soldiers at the gate. At first she felt self-conscious. A young couple with a baby in a stroller paused to look her over. A pair of grey-haired women grinned at her and snapped a photograph. What was she supposed to do? Smile back or what?

“You sort of ignore them,” said Justine with a shrug. After one week on the job, Justine was already indifferent to the curious stares. “Working here is something like being in a play. We're part of the cast, but we're still ourselves, if you get what I mean. If somebody asks us a question we answer them, but otherwise we just go on about our business.”

Andrea followed Justine past a long, wooden building with neat, shuttered windows. “So, I hear you won a writing contest,” Justine remarked.

“Hmm-mm,” Andrea acknowledged as casually as she could, uncertain whether her achievement would make Justine admire her or hate her. “That's how I got this job. The winners were offered summer jobs with Parks Canada.”

“What a brain,” Justine said in a voice that was neither praising nor condemning.

“I chose to come here. It's where I most wanted to be. So, what about you? How did you get the job?” Andrea asked.

“I heard about it because one of my cousins worked here a few years ago. So I applied. I guess I got lucky, because they hired me.”

“Are you in French immersion?” Andrea asked.

“No, I want to specialize in science.”

“Do you speak French at all?”

“Sure I do. Back home just about everybody speaks French as well as English. My great-grandfather spoke only French, but I didn't know him because he died before I was born. Now, my grandfather, he switches back and forth between English and French. But my mom…Hey, look where we are! Perfect timing,” proclaimed Justine, abruptly changing the subject.

Andrea followed her down a lane leading into a yard, then in through the back door of a building. It was dim and warm inside and smelled delicious. This was the town bakery, known as the King's Bakery because the King of France had owned it, along with almost everything else in Louisbourg. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Andrea could see two men dressed in loose, white shirts and baggy pants, hauling loaves of fresh bread from an enormous stone oven. One of them was Joe, the man who had given them a ride earlier that morning. Joe was stacking dozens of loaves onto racks where they would cool. The other man poked a long-handled shovel into the interior of the great wall oven to retrieve more round loaves. They were twice as big as the loaves people buy in supermarkets now.

“Mmmm. Do I ever love the smell of fresh bread.” Andrea sighed.

“Joe! Joe!” called Justine. “Can we have some, please?”

Joe looked up and recognized them. His face, hair, and clothes were dusted with flour. He ambled across the room with two chunks of warm bread and gave them to the girls. “There you go, eating up all the profits again,” he chuckled.

“What did he mean?” asked Andrea as they headed down the street again, munching as they went.

“They sell this bread to the visitors,” explained Justine.

“Maybe we shouldn't be eating it.”

“Are you crazy? They've got tons of the stuff. They bake it every day. Anyway, I know Joe. I go to the same high school as his daughter. They're from L'Ardoise, not far from where I live.”

“Where else can we go?” asked Andrea, wanting to see as much as possible.

“Well…let's see…” pondered Justine. “We could go and look at the parade square. There might be some soldiers hanging around. Or maybe the stables…that's kind of fun. Or the storehouse. Wait till you see the storehouse. You know, back when people really lived here, they brought over absolutely every single thing they needed from France so they could live as if they were in a town back home. You'd think they were heading into outer space; as if there was nothing here that anyone could use.”

“So just what is that?” asked Andrea, pointing to an object in a doorway that had obviously not been imported from France in some other century.

“That? That's a movie camera. Did you never see one before? It's for making films,” replied Justine, giving Andrea a sarcastic smile.

“I know that,” Andrea laughed impatiently. “I mean, what's it doing here?”

“A bunch of people from away—from the States or England or some place—are making a movie. It's a story about the olden days. They got permission to film it here because, with all these authentic buildings and everything, it makes it look real,” Justine explained.

A nice-looking young guy, wearing black sunglasses, a plaid shirt, and faded jeans, emerged from the doorway, hoisted the camera and tripod onto his shoulder, and marched off down the street.

“Let's follow him,” suggested Justine mischievously.

Keeping a discreet distance, the girls scurried along the street and turned a corner just in time to see the cameraman disappear through an archway and enter a doorway. A few seconds later they quietly opened the door and went inside. They could hear footsteps ascending a flight of stairs followed by the sound of a door being closed. They waited for a few minutes and climbed the stairs. At the top the closed door bore a sign that said NOT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

“Heck, we're not the public. We're staff,” reasoned Justine as she cautiously pushed the heavy door open.

Andrea was not comfortable with Justine's boldness. She knew they weren't supposed to be there. She didn't want to get into trouble the very first day of her new job.

They found themselves in a large and elegant room that was a complete contrast to the pioneer atmosphere of the bakery. Here they were surrounded by antique French furniture embellished with silk upholstery and gilt. There was a large, multi-coloured oriental rug on the floor. Damask draperies the colour of rubies framed the elegant, tiny-paned windows.

“Hey, I like this,” whispered Andrea.

“It's the governor's suite,” said Justine in a hushed voice.

They could hear voices coming from the next room. They tiptoed to a doorway and peered in. The adjoining room was even larger and every bit as luxurious. At the far end, under a blaze of lights, stood a cluster of cameras and sound equipment, along with a group of people whose attention was focused on two actors, a man and a woman, who were looking intently into each other's eyes.

The man was dressed in a dark velvet jacket and a pale shirt with lace frills at the neck and wrists. His skin-tight white pants looked as if they would split if he sat down.

Perched on a dainty little chair, the woman was wearing a dress Andrea would have died for. It was made of some silky material the colour of roses and the long, puffed skirt cascaded over the floor. Her lace-trimmed bodice was cut so low in front that you could see…well, just about everything. Her hair, Andrea concluded, couldn't possibly have been real. It was as pale as a mushroom and piled up high in the shape of a haystack.

Andrea and Justine huddled together behind the folds of the draperies and kept as still as a pair of porcelain mice. They knew they weren't supposed to be there, but this was altogether too exciting to miss. A bearded man kept interrupting the male actor and making him say his lines over and over. At long last he apparently got it right because the gorgeous lady stood up, picked up her accordion-pleated fan, flicked it flirtatiously below her eyes, then glided gracefully away from her suitor and all the cameras and lights.

“That's a take!” called the bearded man who seemed to be in charge of things.

Andrea and Justine exchanged glances. Justine jerked her head in the direction of the door. This was obviously the right time to leave, while there was some commotion among the crew and the actors. They were nearly at the door when they heard a man's voice call out, “Hold on there!” They turned around to see the bearded man almost running towards them.

“Uh oh.” Andrea gulped.

“I'm outta here,” blurted Justine.

“Young ladies!” The man greeted them. “I want to talk to you.”

“Sorry,” Andrea apologized. “We just wanted to watch.”

“And you enjoyed watching us at work, did you?” he asked.

The girls nodded.

“Well, I was watching you…out of the corner of my eye. You looked rather…appropriate…just the way a couple of servants might look if they happened to be eavesdropping on a conversation.”

Both girls looked embarrassed. They really had been eavesdropping. And they had been caught.

“It just so happens we're looking for someone about your age and appearance to play a small role in this film. I don't know if this is your cup of tea but, in case you'd care to give it a whirl…well, here's my card. I'm the director of this film,” he explained in a rapid-fire British accent.

Andrea and Justine read the card, CHRISTOPHER GRUNDY, DIRECTOR, then looked at one another in amazement. They had expected a bawling out, at the very least.

“Well…thank you. That sounds…um…interesting,” said Andrea, who was too surprised to know what else to say.

“We'd have to ask our supervisor,” added Justine cautiously. “You see, our real job is to keep an eye on the little kids and help with the games and things, and wander around and look as if we lived here in the old days.”

“Precisely what I have in mind,” he agreed. He was a thin man with a thin face, and he wore a thick sweater of ivory-coloured wool. He pointed towards the busy crew. “That's my assistant over there. Let us know fairly soon if you'd like to be involved.”

Andrea glanced across the room to see a muscular young man in a black T-shirt coiling a length of black cable. He had a long pony-tail the colour of the fur on an Irish setter. He appeared to be sharing some sort of joke with the glamorous star in the divine dress. She didn't look quite so elegant now. She had taken off her outrageous wig and her own hair was a tangled mess. Meanwhile, the director was writing something down in his notebook. He ripped out the page and handed it to Andrea. “This is my assistant's name and phone number.”

The paper read, “Penny Goodman.”

“Penny?” questioned Andrea. “That guy's name is Penny?”

“I beg your pardon?” exclaimed Christopher Grundy. “I hasten to assure you that Penny is decidedly a female. There she is. Over there, beside the armoire.”

Andrea had been looking at the wrong person. Penny was a shapely woman in beige slacks, a navy turtleneck, and horn-rimmed glasses. She was busy writing something in a notebook on her clipboard.

”Oops,” laughed Andrea. “I thought you meant him, that guy over there, the one with the long hair.”

“No, no. That's Calvin. He's the gaffer. Do tell us your decision as soon as possible, won't you?” he said commandingly and then turned and walked away to rejoin his crew. Andrea watched him go, then her gaze drifted back to Calvin and his copper-coloured hair. It couldn't be his real colour, could it?

As they descended the stairs, Andrea asked Justine, “What's a gaffer?”

“Haven't a clue.”

The two of them hurried out of the building and rushed back towards Lartigue House. They didn't stop smiling. They could hardly believe their good luck.