Way the Crow Flies (26 page)

Claire was dressed in baby blue, from barrettes to ankle socks. She carried a Frankie and Annette lunchbox suspended from her wrist like a purse. No one ever stays at school for lunch so Madeleine wondered what she had in there. Auriel passed a note to Madeleine that read, “Is she your long-lost sister?” They did look something alike. Dark brown pixie cuts, heart-shaped faces and small noses. Except Madeleine was taller and the new girl had blue eyes, shyly downcast. No one had yet heard her speak. She reminded Madeleine of a porcelain figurine—something lovely for your mantelpiece.

Mr. March shook hands with her father, then escorted Claire to her seat—he can be nice sometimes. The American dad hesitated in the doorway and waved to Claire. She waved back and blushed. Madeleine understood that. Finally her embarrassing dad left and everyone stared at Claire as she sat and folded her hands on her desk. And everyone—at least all the girls—noticed her beautiful silver charm bracelet.

Mimi, Betty Boucher, Elaine Ridelle and Vimy Woodley are in mid-protest on Sharon McCarroll’s front step.

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” says Vimy.

Sharon has invited them in but the ladies have only dropped by to welcome her, deliver an information kit and a plate of squares, and extend the formal invitation for the young woman to join the Officers’ Wives Club. Sharon was immediately endearing because she instantly asked them in, allowing them to decline vigorously. She’s a pretty little thing. Mimi is reminded of an actress … which one?

From the front porch it’s plain to see that the McCarrolls’ house contains the usual forest of cardboard boxes and errant furniture,
but Sharon is neatly turned out in pumps and a bright little short-sleeved dress, a
Willkommen
plate already graces the wall of the tiny front hall, alongside a commemorative plaque of her husband’s squadron at Wiesbaden, and the smell of baking is coming from her kitchen. Impressive, but not surprising in an American service wife. Their ability to march in and out on a dime and a blaze of home-baked, fully accessorized glory is legendary.

What is surprising—and the women will discuss this later—is that Sharon McCarroll is not what you would expect of a fighter pilot’s wife. Especially an American one. She is shy. Soft-spoken. She makes Mimi, and perhaps the other women too, feel … American.

“We’re just the Welcome Wagon.” Elaine Ridelle is in pedal pushers and tennis shoes, still managing to look girlish six months into her pregnancy.

“We aren’t here to see you put the kettle on, love,” says Betty. Betty unfailingly wears a dress—in this instance a crisp shirtwaist. Not due to any old-world view of proper female attire, but because she knows how to bring out the best in her figure, which is pleasingly plump. “Put a pair of trousers on me and I’d look like a beached whale,” she has said. Which is an exaggeration, but Mimi respects a woman who knows her own good and not-so-good points. Mimi herself is in a pair of lemon-yellow cigarette pants and a sleeveless white knit turtleneck.

“You’ve got your hands full enough already,” she says, handing her new neighbour a foil-covered Corningware dish, and before Sharon can object, “It’s only
a fricot au
—a lamb stew.”

Sharon is so young. Betty and Mimi are moved to take her under their wing, and Elaine says, “Do you and your husband golf, Sharon?”

At which Sharon smiles, looks down and half-shakes her head, no, and Vimy says, “Give the poor girl a chance to catch her breath, Elaine.”

“That’s okay,” says Sharon, a gentle Southern sigh in her words. Lee Remick, that’s who she reminds Mimi of.

Vimy says, “Here’s your survival kit, my dear, my number’s at the top and my house is over there.” She points up the street to the detached white house with the flagpole on its lawn. She hands
the young woman a binder and adds, “My daughter Marsha babysits, and that’s probably enough out of us for the moment.”

Mimi observes Vimy closely. Her manners, her ability to put others at ease; that is the definition of breeding, and a must in a CO’s wife. Mimi learned a lot from her mother and her twelve siblings back in Bouctouche, New Brunswick, but she didn’t learn what women like Vimy can teach her. Jack will one day be in Hal’s position, and Mimi knows she will have to entertain “wheels,” as Jack calls them, in her own home. She will be promoted too. The men all have to take exams and pass courses in order to qualify for advancement; the wives have to train on the job. Mimi notes how Vimy smiles graciously, and doesn’t shake Sharon’s whole hand, but instead lightly presses her fingers.

Of course, they all end up trooping into the little green bungalow, because Sharon insists—not in hearty tones, or with brash protestations of Southern hospitality, but by blushing and retreating to her kitchen, where she puts the percolator on and takes a pan of hermits from the oven.

“This is Bugs Bunny. He’s a rabbit.”

Laughter. Madeleine pauses. Silence, all eyes upon her. Mr. March has ordered her to go first. She has looked him in the eye and proceeded to the front of the class. Clean slate. Concentrate.

“I like Bugs because he speaks his mind,” she says loud and clear.

Laughter. She didn’t mean it to be funny. She’s merely telling the truth. Show-and-tell.
Just the facts, ma’am
.

“His favourite food is carrots and his favourite expression is, ‘Nyah, what’s up, doc?’”

Laughter. She can feel her face reddening. She consults her recipe cards, where she wrote her presentation in point form with the help of her father.

“He is wily. He lives by his own rules and he always gets away from Elmer Fudd. Once he dressed up as a girl and sang, ‘The Rabbit in Red.’”

Giggles.

She departs from her notes and sings tentatively, in Bugsy’s voice, “‘Oh da wabbit in wed …’”—a little soft-shoe—“‘yah-dah
dah-dah-dah dah-dah de wabbit in wed.’ And he put on false eyelashes and even, you know”—she spreads her fingers and makes a circular gesture over her chest; the class screams with laughter. She raises one eyebrow, twists her mouth like Bugs and improvises—“Falsies, I pwesume.” Rapidly now, can’t put a foot wrong, “Like the time he pretended to be a girl Tasmanian Devil with lovely big red lips?”—one hand behind her head, the other on her hip—“‘Well hello there, big boy,’ meanwhile he’s got a bear trap in his mouth for teeth, chomp!—‘Yowww! Yipe-yipe-yipe!’”

It is out of hand. Mr. March quells the merriment. “Enough mirth. You may sit down now, Miss McCarthy.”

Madeleine instantly sobers up, gropes for her recipe cards where they have fallen under Mr. March’s desk and returns to her seat. It’s just as well that she has been cut short. It means that she didn’t have to pass Bugsy around the class—standard operating procedure for show-and-tell. She doesn’t like the idea of everyone handling him—although Bugs probably wouldn’t mind. Nothing sticks to Bugs.

Grace Novotny has brought in a rag doll named Emily. It’s homemade. “My sister made it for me.” One of the sluts, thinks Madeleine involuntarily, then feels terribly sorry for Grace having a kind slut for a sister. Grace can’t pronounce the letter “r.” She says
sistew
.

Grace whispers something into the side of Emily’s soft dirty head, then Emily gets passed around. Some kids are openly mean, handling the doll with their fingertips, holding their noses. Grace doesn’t seem to register any of it. Madeleine holds Emily in both hands, not by her fingertips. Emily is grimy, but a lot of dolls are if they are loved. What if there is pee on Emily? There probably is if Grace sleeps with her. She is missing a felt eyebrow, her mouth is stitched in red wool. The effect is not of lips but of lips stitched shut with red wool. She wears a bikini, yellow polka dots like the song.

When Emily has been passed back to Grace, she tucks her in her arm and, without warning, starts singing, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-dot Bikini.”

There’s a difference between kids thinking you are funny, and kids laughing at you. The class is laughing as much as they did for Madeleine but it’s different, and Mr. March is not stopping them. Madeleine doesn’t find it funny but she tries to laugh in the way of
“you’re funny” as opposed to “you’re retarded,” in order to make the laughter okay, but it doesn’t work. She gives up and waits for Grace to finish. Luckily Grace doesn’t know all the words—she repeats the first line a few times, then sits back down.

Mr. March reads the name of the next person on the list, “Gordon Lawson.” Gordon, with his clean freckles and tucked-in shirt, shows and tells about fishing flies. It’s a relief even if it is terribly boring.

Jack takes a walk over to the Flying School. He plans to inquire about lessons for his son at the civilian flying club but he has an errand to do first. He heads down a corridor identical to the one in his own building, with its battleship-grey linoleum, until he gets to a door with “USAF Exchange Officer” painted in block letters on the frosted window. Through the half-open door he sees the USAF hat hanging on the halltree in the corner. He taps his knuckles against the glass. He expects to hear the usual hearty “It’s open,” and is prepared to extend his hand with a joke—something about IFF: identification friend or foe. Prepared for a super-friendly hotshot American pilot. But there is no sound. Instead, the door opens all the way and a young man stands before him. He salutes with the velocity of a karate chop and says, unsmiling, “Hello, sir.” He looks just about old enough to be a Boy Scout. Jack says, “Wing Commander McCarthy,” and shakes McCarroll’s hand. “Welcome to Centralia, captain.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“This is a robin’s egg.” Claire’s palms are cupped around a pale blue shell. It was in her Frankie and Annette lunchbox, nested in tissue paper. “It fell and I found it.”

Does she have an accent? It’s hard to tell, she speaks so softly.

“Speak up, little girl,” says Mr. March.

“I found it,” says Claire, and yes, you can hear a little sway to her words.

Claire goes to offer the blue egg to Philip Pinder in the front row, but Mr. March stops her. The egg is too delicate to be passed around the class. “Especially to the likes of Mr. Pinder.” The class laughs in agreement. Even Philip Pinder laughs. Madeleine is
relieved that Claire will be spared the agony of a broken robin’s egg. Mr. March is kind at heart.

Everyone wishes Claire would talk more, in her American accent, but all she says in conclusion is “I collect them sometimes.”
Sometahms
. That does it. At recess the girly-girls want to be her friend and several boys show off in her vicinity. Philip Pinder sings at the top of his lungs, “‘Roger Ramjet he’s our man, the hero of our nation, the only thing that’s wrong with him is mental retardation!’”

Cathy Baxter, the boss of the girly-girls and their skipping ropes, puts one hand on her hip and says fed-uppedly, “Philip,” and he squeals away like a racing car. Joyce Nutt, who is the prettiest, is her second-in-command. They all surround Claire to marvel at her bracelet. Claire doesn’t brag or say a thing, just holds out her wrist obligingly as Cathy goes through the charms one by one—

“Marjorie, don’t butt in.”

“Sorry, Cathy.”

Thus, while Madeleine can see the physical resemblance, she knows—heading for the swings, climbing on and glimpsing the shiny pixie cut in the centre of the small crowd below—that she and Claire McCarroll are nothing alike.

“The following little girls will remain after the bell”—and he consults his seating plan even though he knows everyone’s name by now—“Grace Novotny….”

Well that’s not surprising, Grace didn’t “tell,” she sang, and not terribly well.

“Joyce Nutt….”

Joyce Nutt? What did she do? She is one of the skipping-rope girls and they never get in trouble—

“Diane Vogel….”

Diane is also a skipping-rope girl, but not a bossy one. It seems she too requires improved concentration because, as Madeleine has just noticed, Diane has suddenly become a tortoise in spelling.

“And Madeleine McCarthy.”

After all her efforts at concentration, she is required to remain after three. Due to mirth. Her stomach goes cold. She showed off
and now she’s in trouble. And yet she wasn’t trying to show off. How do you tell the difference?

She and the others wait at the back of the empty classroom, ranged along the wall with the coat hooks, while Diane Vogel does her backbend up at the front. Mr. March spots her by holding her steady between his knees so that she won’t fall and hurt herself.

“Can you spell Mississippi, little girl?”

“Thank you, sir,” says Blair McCarroll as Jack slides a glass of beer to him along the bar at the mess.

McCarroll is, as Simon predicted, fresh-faced. His jaw has a freshly chiselled look, his profile clean and buffed. The hardness of youth is apparent behind the pleats and creases of his uniform, and in his neck rising from his starched collar, which has yet to wilt against any excess of flesh. The wings over his left breast pocket attest, along with a row of stripes, to his service as a fighter pilot. But in his manner there is none of the swagger of his trade. He has not seen fit to rumple his lapel, push back his hat, loosen his tie or look Jack in the eye with the force of a punch. A flush stains his cheeks at the slightest provocation.

“So what are you doing up our way, McCarroll?” asks Jack. “Going to learn to fly?”

The men laugh—two or three flying instructors here to welcome McCarroll, along with several non-aircrew officers from the school.

McCarroll glances down at the high gloss of the bar, then up again. “Well your pilots are some of the best in the world,” he says in his mild drawl. “I consider it an honour to help out with the training.”

A few men exchange looks, nod. Okay.

“You seem like a reasonable man, McCarroll,” says Jack with a grin.

“Please call me Blair if you like, sir.” He glances at the others. “And you all.”

Vic Boucher orders a plate of fried scallops. “Who’s going to join me?”

Ted Lawson says to Jack, “How about it, sir?
Einmal Bier?”

A fresh round is bought, they move to a table, work is discussed along with plans for the next formal event—a dinner and dance in
honour of the Air Vice Marshal from Air Training Command Headquarters, who is flying in from Winnipeg for Battle of Britain day. Jack groans inwardly at the thought of squeezing into his formal mess kit—his monkey suit. McCarroll will have no such problem; lean and anything but mean, he reminds Jack of a young seminarian. The kid is probably steady as a rock in the cockpit, perfect reflexes uncorrupted by bravado—the machines these lads fly nowadays are hair-trigger. Nothing like the old beasts Jack piloted.