Читать книгу Bird's Eye View - Elinor Florence - Страница 6

I awoke to the familiar rustling of poplar leaves. My bedroom lacked the view of brilliant grain fields sweeping away to the southern horizon, but I didn’t mind. In summer I preferred the coolness and the dim light, with the sound of the trees that backed up against the north side of the old farmhouse. They always seemed to be whispering secrets.

Outside my window, the breeze freshened and the whispering swelled as if a new piece of gossip had arrived. I opened my eyes and saw the brass pendulum clock on the wall.

Instantly I threw back the covers and sprang out of bed, already reaching for the skirt and blouse I had laid out on my chair the night before. Twenty minutes later I was pedalling my bicycle toward the town of Touchwood, four miles away.

It was a flawless autumn morning, but I didn’t even glance at the vast cobalt sky above me, bigger than half the world, or the great swaths of golden grain lying in the fields. I was too busy composing a front-page headline for this week’s newspaper.

“Canada Enters Conflict!” That was too long.

Perhaps “Canada Goes to War!”

Better yet, perhaps my editor would agree to a giant ninety-six-point banner: “WAR!”

Probably none of them. The man was not only lazy, but maddeningly unpatriotic. Still, there was always hope.

When I crested the east hill and saw a snowy pillar of steam rising from the morning train, I knew I was late. It was my job to open the office at eight sharp.

I stood on the pedals and coasted at frightening speed down the long slope toward town. The edges of the gravel road poured past me like twin grassy streams while I wondered how to convince him that here was real news at last.

Except that it wasn’t exactly news. Britain had declared war a week ago, after months of anticipation. Then our federal government pretended to deliberate for an entire seven days, just to prove that we were no longer under the royal thumb.

After practically holding my breath all week, I wasn’t even at work when the decision came. Our parliament had inexplicably chosen Sunday afternoon to proclaim war against the German Reich. I heard the news bulletin, along with the rest of the country, on CBC radio.

My bicycle whirled around the post office corner. Several seedy young men were sitting on the broad stone steps, wreathed in a cloud of cigarette smoke. One of them whistled as I tore past. I jumped off my bike while the wheels were still spinning in front of The Touchwood Times.

The newspaper’s name appeared in faded gilt letters on a grimy plate-glass window that hadn’t been cleaned in decades. When I pushed open the heavy front door, I heard the clatter of typewriter keys and saw the top of Jock MacTavish’s scruffy head above the heaps of newspapers stacked on his desk.

“Well, those morons in Ottawa have done it now!” His voice was always pitched as if I were standing on the far side of the street. “They’re going to deliver us up to the Limeys like lambs to the slaughter!”

“Sorry I’m late, Mr. MacTavish.”

He didn’t even glance up. “I’m writing an editorial, urging Mackenzie King to hold his ground! Nobody but the prime minister can stop the Brits from turning our boys into cannon fodder! Maybe, and it’s a thumping big maybe, he can stand up to the muckety-mucks running the show over there!”

“And what about the front page?” I tried to sound casual as I hung my cardigan on the coat rack.

MacTavish’s enormous tangled eyebrows bristled like cat’s fur. “I suppose you want a big splash about Canada springing to the defence of the Mother Country and all that malarkey! Well, you can put that idea out of your little head!”

“Mr. MacTavish, please! Every newspaper in the country will have the war on the front page!”

“Not this one. And the last time I looked at the masthead, it was still my newspaper!”

He began typing again, hammering the keys as if pounding nails. “You can run it on page two. The news will be as old as last year’s Christmas hat by Wednesday, anyway!”

While I poured water into the battered tin coffeepot, I wondered whether to try again, but immediately gave it up as a bad job. Jock MacTavish hadn’t been fussy about fighting for the British when he left Touchwood back in 1914. Four years in the trenches had hardened his dislike into stony contempt.

He was convinced that British officers had saved their own skins by sending in the black troops — including Canadians and Australians — when the situation looked bleak. Now he was determined to warn our readers, through the power of his old printing press, against what he called “The Brutish Empire.”

I handed over his coffee and went to my own desk. Dividing the room in half was a massive slab of glass-topped oak where customers stood to place an advertisement or purchase a subscription. Behind the counter, MacTavish hunched over his desk, partially hidden by his newspaper fortress, while I sat in the opposite corner, as far away from him as possible.

I had tidied my little nook and hung several photographs over the old rolltop, including one of King George and Queen Elizabeth taken during their recent train trip across Canada. I gazed up at the royal couple and mouthed a silent apology.

Although I couldn’t quite bring myself to say the words aloud, I secretly agreed with the letter-writer who had called MacTavish a narrow-minded, contentious old bastard.

For a few minutes I dwelled on the vision of newsrooms across the country, their reporters galvanized by the greatest news since the Great War had ended twenty-one years ago — three years before I was even born.

And here I sat, restricted to a story on page two, forced to listen to MacTavish sucking his coffee through his teeth with revolting gusto.

I vowed once again to get the hell out of Touchwood.