Читать книгу The Beleaguered - Lynne Golding - Страница 12

Chapter 4

THE KNITTING CLUB

The declaration of hostilities that brought an immediate call to arms for men brought a no less immediate call for women. In the case of women, the call was for arms, or more particularly, for their arms and their hands. Though feminine hands could be put to many useful pursuits in support of the war, among my family and friends the initial pursuits revolved around sewing and knitting—neither of which appealed to me in the least.

As local militia regiments began to parade, waiting for their eventual muster, the president of the local Women’s Institute sent a telegram to Colonel Sam. It announced the willingness of the Institute’s members to immediately commence the creation of housewives (small cases to hold needles, thread, and other sewing notions), holdalls (shoulder bags to carry personal possessions), and stomach belts (that would similarly carry personal possessions, although at a different body location), all items found particularly useful by the local men who had fought in the Boer War. Replying through his director of clothing and equipping, Colonel Sam expressed his appreciation to the ladies of Brampton but advised that such items, should they be required, would be obtained through government contracts. He would gladly advise them if their services were required at any point in the future.

The Brampton women did not await his further advice. They knew nothing about the director of Clothing and Equipping’s contractual processes, but they knew about men. They knew that those men Colonel Sam had committed to send overseas would have two feet, two hands, a chest, and a head, and they knew that those appendages would need to be kept warm and dry. Before the end of August, the Women’s Institute, in conjunction with other charities, began the efforts that would eventually see the women of Brampton sew or knit over forty-seven thousand items for the men at the front. In achieving this, the Institute accepted the kind offers of time from some women, extended “invitations” to ladies who had not yet offered their time, and pressed into action women and girls who had not otherwise made offers or accepted their kind invitations.

Mother’s involvement in the effort came primarily from her membership in the local branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. A supportive, although not a strident member of the WCTU, Mother had always been a willing foot soldier, occasionally hosting meetings at our home, participating in letter-writing campaigns, and contributing goods to support fundraising efforts. By 1914, the work of the WCTU in Peel County was largely complete, since the county, like hundreds of others in Ontario, was by then dry. Aside from suppressing any efforts to repeal the designation previously achieved by a vote of the electors and exposing to the authorities occasional illegal sales that came to their attention, the members of the WCTU were without a cause. With determination, they took on the challenge of keeping our men at the front warm. It would be some time before the WCTU members learned that the fighting men they sought to keep warm in their barracks and trenches with wares they worked so hard to make were being further warmed with shots of the liquid they had worked so hard to banish.

The prospect of joining her fellow WCTU members in sewing for the men overseas suited Mother well. She was, after all, an excellent seamstress, sewing nearly all of the clothes she wore and those worn by Ina and me. She knew that she was a far better seamstress than she was a letter-writing advocate for temperance. Sewing for the enlisted men suited Mother for another reason as well: she could participate in the activity without making any declaration as to her support or lack thereof for the war effort. No matter which camp one fell into (and to be clear, there were very few in the opposition camp), one wanted our enlisted men to be kept warm and dry. In sewing for the men, Mother did not have to be more supportive of the war than was her husband.

Mother assumed that I would share her enthusiasm to support our men and so invited me to join her at a party the Institute was hosting one afternoon in the third week of August. It would be the first of many such parties, all to occur on Thursdays. My summer days were usually occupied in part attending at-home teas or other social outings with my mother. Looking on this suggestion in the same way, I was initially indifferent.

“What kind of a party is it, Mother?” I asked. It was not a question of evaluating the invitation. Generally, I took the suggestions of my parents as instructions. It did not occur to me to reject my mother’s invitation. I wondered if the party might involve making bandages or packing up cigarettes. I recalled hearing that the Women’s Institute organized parties of this nature during the Boer War.

“It’s called a cutting-out party. We’re going to assist in the sewing of warm shirts for the men to wear under their uniforms.”

I looked at her, dumbfounded.

“It’s quite easy, really,” she added.

“Mother,” I said slowly, “you know that I can’t sew.”

“Yes, you’ve told me that for years, although goodness knows I began sewing when I was much younger than you, reapplying buttons, simple mending, even sewing straight lines with the machine.” I could feel my temperature beginning to rise. She changed tacks. “But in this case, you will not need to sew. Others will do the sewing.” The panic within me began to recede.

“All you need to do is fold the fabric in the right way, lay the pattern on the folded fabric, and then pin the three layers together and—”

“Pin the pattern on the fabric?” I interjected. My temperature began to rise again.

“Yes. Pin it. Using straight pins.” Sweat began to form on my brow. “First you will pin the pattern in place, likely applying ten or twelve pins per shirt shape, firmly pushing the sharp pins through both layers of fabric and the pattern, and then bringing them up the other side.”

I rested my chin on my fist. There was no other way to keep my neck erect.

“Then you use the large sewing shears, cutting the two layers of fabric as close as you can but not over the pattern.” I moved my hand from my chin to my mouth. I was not sure I could keep my dinner down.

“Then you pull out all of the pins and put them into the pin cushion so that—Jessie, where are you going?”

I ran to the kitchen, through the pantry, and up the maid’s stairs to the bathroom on the second floor.

“I’m sorry your dinner didn’t agree with you,” Mother said fifteen minutes later as I lay on my bed across from the bathroom. With Ina away in Winnipeg, I felt that I could truly call this bed that we ordinarily shared “my” bed. She was wiping my forehead with a damp cloth.

“Mother, I won’t be able to go with you to the cutting-out party tomorrow,” I said. “I won’t be well enough.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m sure it’s just something you ate. By tomorrow you’ll be as good as new. You’ll see.”

But it was not just something I ate. The fear I had of sewing shears, needles, straight pins, and pincushions was nearly pathological. It was also a secret—one of the few secrets in our family that was mine to keep. It arose on a summer day when I was six years old, also on a late August day, just before I began school. Bob Parker, the superintendent of the Peel County Jail, or the “Governor” as he liked to be called, took it upon himself once a summer to disgorge to the local teenagers the circumstances that led to the incarceration of one of the jail’s inhabitants. The clarity of his oration and his penchant for details made his macabre accounts a highlight of the teenagers’ summers. In addition to filling a good two hours of time on a summer afternoon, they provided the boys with an opportunity to demonstrate their bravery to a girl of their liking (the accounts never scared them) and the girls with an opportunity to sit closer to a boy of their liking (perhaps even taking his hand or arm). The Governor looked forward to the narrations as well, since they gave him an opportunity to describe to these near adults who were the offspring of the local ratepayers and hence his employers the depraved men he kept from their midst.

The recountings were not intended to be heard by young children. My father forbade me to listen to them. But on that sunny August afternoon, I succumbed to the entreaties of my friend Archie to hide behind the jail’s concrete steps, located just down the road from our home, and listen to the Governor’s account of the first occupants of Alderlea, the Italianate villa-style mansion, constructed in 1867 at the top of a hill that once included the lands later known as Gage Park. It was from that account that I learned of Mr. Gilchrist’s contributions to Brampton’s many churches, including the donation of the stone for the Presbyterian Church—a credit to which Mother took such great exception.

In addition to learning about its original owner, Kenneth Gilchrist, Esq., a businessman, politician, and philanthropist, we learned about one of his employees and that employee’s two children. The employee, an Irish immigrant, came to Brampton in 1873. He was immediately hired to serve as the Gilchrists’ gardener and mechanical man. Within a few months, he had married the Gilchrists’ seamstress. They were married less than a year when he lost her in childbirth. The father and the two boys continued to reside in the mansion, working as groundskeepers and mechanics, until the owners decided to redecorate and replace all of the drapery made by the boys’ deceased mother. The father bought a two-storey building not far from Alderlea. From its street level, they would operate a mechanical business fixing iron works and engines. They would make their residence on the second floor above the shop.

The father’s plan only partly came to fruition. The dreams of the elder of the twins were haunted by his mother, who in his nightmares forced him to watch her sew. He realized that he could not leave the mansion. He agreed to stay on to carefully dispose of the draperies his father could not. But the nightmares did not abate. In his attempt to satisfy the mother that haunted him, he was driven to one act of depravity after another, initially abducting an eight-year-old girl from outside the local Anglican Christ Church and forcing her day after day to sew for him in the Alderlea attic. After a year of this torture, she killed herself with the large sewing sheers he had inadvertently left in her unsupervised space. Attempting to replicate the heinous exploit, his second victim died before being delivered to the attic. He was found out, captured, and jailed. In the process his clothes were torn. After confessing the intimate details of his life and his deeds to the Governor and announcing that his twin brother would take up the cause he was forced to abandon, he asked to be provided with some thread, pins, and needles in order that he could repair his clothes before facing the gallows. When the Governor next came upon him, his prisoner was dead, the straight pins puncturing his heart, like pins in a cushion.

The account would merely have been the subject of my nightmares had I not been personally acquainted with one of the surviving subjects. Although the Governor did not identify his prisoner or the prisoner’s family members by name, I had no doubt who they were and where the father and surviving son lived.

Suffice it to say that I made no great contribution to the war efforts at the two cutting-out parties I attended. My hands were too shaky to hold the pattern in place, my fingers too clammy to push the pins through the pattern and fabric, my breathing too frantic to hear the instructions, and when my skin turned more shades of green than my Aunt Lil had in her entire wardrobe, I was on each occasion sent home. My contribution to the war effort would have to take a different form.

* * *

While my mother was an excellent seamstress, she was merely a fair knitter. In our family, we never had more sweaters, scarves, hats, or mittens than we strictly required, and the workmanship of those we had would never have been awarded prizes at the annual fairs. My mother’s fingers, so precise at the keys of the piano and organ, failed her when it came to manipulating knitting needles, where they seldom followed the knit, pearl, skip, yarn over patterns she tried to follow. Her tension was not even. Her colour choice was poor. Frequently, our sweaters had one sleeve wider than another, were too baggy at the bottom, and too tight at the top. Dropped stitches that could barely be discerned when the garment was worked on became gaping holes with repeated wearing and washings.

Nonetheless, determined that none of our boys should have cold feet on her account, Mother began to knit socks. She was not alone in this. Whereas prior to the commencement of the war, a Brampton woman could happily sit in a parlour, a sitting room, or a veranda holding only a cup of tea or glass of lemonade, that became seemingly impossible by September 1914. Unless one was at a fancy soirée or at a dining room table, nearly every woman seen sitting would be seen knitting—usually socks, in various stages of completeness, supported by three short double-ended needles and a fourth one working its way into the position of one of the other three. For four years, the click-click-click sound of working needles accompanied nearly all of our conversations.

As for me, I recognized the difficulty one would have puncturing one’s epidermis with a knitting needle—even the small knitting needles that produced socks. There was not, to my knowledge, a cushion that would support protruding knitting needles. I had never heard or read about the death of a man by knitting needles. Nonetheless, I was no more inclined to knit for the sake of our men than I was to sew.

I was not the only woman in our family who refused to knit or sew for this great cause. It was an aversion shared by my Aunt Rose, father’s youngest sister, although for entirely different reasons. She had become a widow four years earlier on the death of James Darling, her much older husband, a successful businessman, local politician, and active community member. He left her and their two children, Hannah and John, well provided for.

Though Aunt Rose wore the black widow’s weeds that were to be her uniform for the remaining years of her life, in most other ways she defied the stereotypical image attributed to widows of the time. In part this was due to her relatively young age. She was but forty-three when the sad status befell her. As a child, that age seemed quite advanced to me, but there were few among her peer group who claimed a similar situation.

She was also distinguished by her intelligence, particularly concerning financial matters. People about the town frequently spoke of it, although, again, as a child I did not see it. In fact, my perception was just the opposite. My earliest memories of my aunt were of her arriving at our house carrying an extra joint of meat, an extra basket of apples, an extra bolt of fabric, all purportedly delivered to relieve her from the errors she had made in her own purchases.

Most atypical about her persona was her strength of character. She refused to be dependent on others. She rarely sought their opinions, and when they were provided without solicitation, she was only occasionally guided by them.

Following Uncle James’s death, my father briefly and happily assumed the role as the male head of her household. Father was confident that the death of James Darling would leave Rose dependent on him for guidance on matters financial, political, and familial—a position he desired to hold. In this, he was severely disappointed. Within days of the commencement of her widowhood, it became clear that while Aunt Rose was prepared to receive her brother’s advice and opinions, she felt no compunction to accept or agree with them. The improvement in my father’s humour and the more generous approach to life he assumed on his brother-in-law’s demise were dissipated measure for measure with each step my aunt took toward her own independence.

Aunt Rose’s intelligence and self-confidence that proved a disappointment to my father were a marvel to her husband’s executors. They proposed that Aunt Rose sell the large house on Wellington Street in which she and her two young children resided, his bakery business, and the numerous investment properties her husband held in and around Brampton. The family home was large and its upkeep prohibitively expensive, to their way of thinking. As for the businesses and investments, the revenue that could be garnered by more passive investments could, in their view, generate a more stable income from which she could support herself and her children. Aunt Rose would hear nothing of it. She and the children would remain in the large home. She would keep the bakery business and the farms just outside of Brampton, trusting them all to competent management.

In fact, those businesses produced enough income not only to support Aunt Rose and my cousins, John and Hannah, but also enough to allow her to make additional investments. As the years went on, Aunt Rose developed quite the reputation as a buyer, seller, and mortgagee of Brampton real estate.

“Rose, don’t you want to join the other members of the Women’s Institute in their efforts to bring comfort to our men?” Mother asked. We were sitting on the lawn side of the L-shaped verandah of Aunt Rose’s home. Hannah and John were playing tennis in front of us. As usual, Hannah was winning.

“No, I am not!” Aunt Rose said with great conviction. This was not the first time the two sisters-in-law had had this conversation. “With my resources, I feel I should be making a greater contribution to the war effort. I know many women have only time to devote to the cause, but I have been blessed with other resources, and I think I would be of more use to the war effort if I properly employed them.”

Any talk of her greater resources—which my father took to mean the money and capital that had once been her husband’s—made my father uncomfortable. “What the deuce do you plan on doing, Rose?” Father asked. “You can’t buy an army.”

“No. I can’t do that. But I can help create the things that an army needs.”

“Are you going to become a munitions manufacturer?” Father asked sarcastically.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I just might.” We looked at her in astonishment.

“Really, Rose, I don’t think one can equate the baking of bread and pies with the manufacture of army shells,” Father said, referring to her bakery business.

“No. Of course, I know that. I won’t manufacture them myself. I am considering going into partnership with an existing Brampton manufacturer.”

“Heavens. What on earth could be produced for the war in this town?” Father asked, incredulous. “We manufacture footwear here, but I understand the contract to supply boots has been awarded to a company in Montreal. We make furnaces.” In this he was referring to the Pease foundry managed by John Thompson, the father of my friend Jane. “I don’t think they’re going to need furnaces at the front.”

“Exactly,” Aunt Rose agreed. “But maybe one of those manufacturers would like to produce something required by Colonel Sam. If so, their factories are going to have to be converted. I have the capital to help them make the required changes.”

“Surely the government will pay for that, Rose,” Mother offered. “What would they need your money for?”

“That’s just it. The government will not pay for the conversion of the factories. To be awarded a contract, you must prove that you have the capacity to make the goods; only after that will the government consider awarding you a contract. I have looked into it.”

“What if you convert the factory—say, the Pease foundry into a factory that can make bullets, and after you do that, you are not awarded the government contract?” Father asked. “Or you get the contract and then the war ends before the contract is complete?” It was October. Barely three months into the war, it was no longer expected to be over by Christmas of that year. It was hoped it would be over long before Christmas of the next.

“That is a risk. A big risk. But that is the risk that business people across the country are taking. They are being compensated for that risk in charging higher than usual prices. If I invest in those enterprises, I will charge higher than usual interest rates.”

No one knew quite what to say to that.

* * *

It was knitting—the bringing together of strings of yarn to form a warm and useful piece of apparel or houseware—that nearly tore apart the relationship between me and my best friend, Jane. It started when we returned to school in September 1914. Jane I were then in senior third form, the beginning of our second year at Brampton Central School, our “middle” school, a large school to our minds. Covered in brick, it was an oddly shaped building, reflecting the numerous additions that had been made to the original two-storey, six-sided structure built in 1855. In 1868, two single-storey wings were added, flanking the original structure to the east and the west. With over five hundred registered pupils, it was not surprising that in 1914 another wing was being added.

The school was almost the same distance from my house as the Queen Street Primary School I attended for the first four years of my education. But the middle school was located north of my home, on Alexander Street, just off Main Street. I was able to walk to and from it twice a day far from the intersection of Queen and George Streets, far from the Kelly Iron Works Repair Shop that housed the father of the vile boy who had abducted the two young girls and far from its stoop and the twin brother of the vile boy, a man-boy of indeterminate age, who grunted and gesticulated at me—and only me—every time I passed his stoop. While Scary Scott’s treatment of me was not a secret—others had noticed it—only the two of us knew why he singled me out, a young girl with long, brown, curly hair like that of his deceased demonic mother. The two other people who knew were dead. One was the vile man in the jail who before turning his heart into a pincushion said his brother would become the vessel to continue their mother’s maniacal mission to abduct young girls with curly brown hair. The other was my friend Archie, who took the secret with him to his grave.

Though I no longer required the accompaniment of a friend as I walked to and from school, I was rarely without it. My neighbour and oldest friend, Frances, generally walked with me the first half of the way to our middle school. At the midway point, the corner of Main and Nelson, we were often met by our friend Jane, who would always assume a position on one side of me. Frances, who had walked by my side to that point, would continue on the other side of me, unless the sidewalk became too narrow, at which point Frances would fall in behind Jane and me. The reverse occurred as we walked home from school, Jane and I always in front until we arrived at Nelson and Main, Frances beside me if space allowed. The placement rules were unspoken but well understood. I was certain that Frances, who had been my devoted walking companion the prior four years, thought nothing of it.

Jane took up the knitting of scarves just before we returned to school. She considered the hobby a particularly delightful way to make a contribution to the war effort. She loved gathering different colours and textures of wool and organizing them in what she called “cheerful but masculine” stripes. So taken was she with the pursuit that she suggested at one point in early September that we organize a school knitting club.

“We can meet after class in one of the school rooms. We could knit together for an hour. Think how much we could contribute to the war effort,” she said. She was in no way deterred by my lack of enthusiasm for her suggestion.

“Aren’t there enough women knitting in the town?” I asked. “Maybe we could contribute to the war effort in another way? I heard that during the Boer War, women rolled and packed cigarettes for the fighting men. Maybe we could do that.”

She looked at me as though I was quite queer. “You’d rather work with smelly brown tobacco than pretty soft wool? And who would want the cigarettes? None of our boys smoke.”

That was true. But the older men did—men like my father and uncles. Some men smoked during the Boer War. Surely, some men would smoke during this war. While Jane was not enamoured with the suggestion, it was enough to end the conversation about the knitting club—at least for a time.

My hopes to entirely quash the notion were put asunder by the admission to our class at the beginning of October of a new student. When Elsa Strauss walked to the front of our class to introduce herself, I was immediately struck by the thickness that exuded from every feature. Her ankles, covered as they were in black stockings, bore no definable shape below her mid-calf grey A-line skirt. Her arms completely filled the sleeves of her cream-coloured, collared blouse. The wool vest she wore added thickness to her chest. But the thickest features by far were those on and around her face. Her eyes were big, with heavy lids; her nose was pudgy; her lips were full. The only features of her face that did not seem thick were her ears, which were merely big. Their extraordinary protrusion from her skull was noticeable but highly useful, I soon learned, as they worked in combination with the thickest feature of all: her long, dark blond hair. Elsa seemed to be in constant competition with her hair, pushing it as she spoke behind one ear and then the other, generally losing the fight to control it. I wondered that her hair was not tied back—perhaps its volume defied even that. The entire effect, though, was not unpleasant. Her features, so different from the slight figures held by Jane and me, were attractive in their own way on her tall, sturdy frame.

In a voice that initially quivered she told the forty students in our class that she was from Shelburne, north of Brampton, where her father had been a potato farmer. Their move to Brampton the day before had been precipitated by his appointment as the chief vegetable propagator at the Dale Estate. Her family was living in an apartment on the top floor of the old Haggert Iron Works building at Nelson and Main Street, above the Main Street facing Brampton Dairy. She had one brother, Wilfred, who had volunteered for the first contingent on the first day volunteers were accepted. Having completed basic training at Valcartier, including a great deal of marching and working with muskets and bayonets, he was at that moment on his way to England.

As Elsa spoke, I thought of Jane and her introduction to our class two years earlier. Jane and her brother Douglas had just moved to Brampton from Toronto. As the two stood at the front of our class introducing themselves, I had a premonition. This girl Jane, then a complete stranger to me, and I would become the closest of friends. My home would be hers, and hers mine. We would attend university together. We would stand up for each other when we each wed. We would be godmothers to each other’s children. We would spend our twilight years together, two otherwise lonely widows. As Elsa spoke, I had no similar premonition. From the moment she uttered her first words to us, I determined that I liked her little. With each passing day, I liked her less.

In this it appeared I was not alone. As Elsa walked by my desk on her way to hers at the end of my row, Ricky Dyck, who sat next to me, turned to Allan King, who sat behind him. “Do you smell sauerkraut?” Ricky asked, fanning away the air in front of his face.

“It’s revolting,” Allan replied, sniggering. It was a refrain and a gesture that they were to repeat on a near daily basis.

Jane, full of empathy for the new student, felt otherwise. She sought Elsa out at both morning and afternoon recess breaks that first day. The three of us stood together in the large schoolyard behind the school while Elsa went on and on about her brother Wilfred, how he had stood in line at the barracks for three days waiting for the doors to be open to those wanting to enlist; how proud his parents were of him; what he looked like in his military uniform.

When Elsa was not telling us what Wilfred did, she told us about what Wilfred said. “You have to serve your country, that’s what Wilfred says.” “One can’t show fear in the face of the unknown, that’s what Wilfred says.” “Activation without preparation is the surest means to defeat, that’s what Wilfred says.” I was hard pressed to think of someone I had never met that I found as irritating.

I told my family about Elsa later that day. We were in the sitting room, Father and Grandpa each reading the afternoon newspapers, Mother knitting as she waited for our meal to finish cooking. Millie had just dropped by to pick up some cut-out fabric with which to assemble shirts. She came in “just for a minute” and sat down on the little sofa beside me. I was glad to see her. Ever since Jim went back to school in September, we had seen her less. The reason lay not just with the burden of his studies but with the part-time job he had commenced in September with Dr. Mahoney, a dentist in Weston, a town southeast of Brampton. Father thought the experience of working every Wednesday afternoon and all day Saturday would be beneficial to Jim’s future career as a dentist practicing in association with him.

For as long as I could remember, Father had punctuated his sentences about his future dental practice as one that would be shared with Jim. There had been no need to hope for that matter. It was a fait accompli. Father’s hope with respect to the practice was that it would one day be an association of three: Father, Jim, and my cousin, John. On that front, some hope was required. Father was not able to exert his will upon his nephew in the same way he could his son.

If the cost was not an object, Father might have sent Jim away to Philadelphia to obtain a further degree in dental studies, following his own educational trajectory. But cost was an object. Father had barely been able to afford the four years of tuition and board expended thus far on Jim. He could not afford a fifth year in the United States. Furthermore, it was well understood that every year Jim spent at university delayed the day that Ina could commence her university studies. As a young man, Father worked hard to put his three sisters through normal school, thus qualifying them to become teachers before they wed. He would offer his daughters no less.

“But why can’t Jim just practice with Father?” I groused to Mother when I learned that the arrangement with Dr. Mahoney would deprive us of Jim’s company on Friday evenings and during the day Saturday. I did not consider asking the question of Father. Doing so might be construed as questioning his judgement. One did not question Father’s judgement.

“Jim and your father are going to practice together for the next twenty years or more,” Mother said as we stood in the kitchen canning tomatoes. “Your father thinks it will be good for Jim to gain experience with someone else before they begin their practice together. It’s just for eight months. After Jim graduates next April, he will be living back home again—or at least,” she said, looking around to be sure that no one could hear our kitchen conversation “—at least he will be living in Brampton again.” As much as I wanted to see Jim every day, I actually hoped that he would not be living at home again. By that point, he and Millie would have been sweethearts for three years. Mother and I hoped they would become more than that when Jim completed his education.

“I see you’ve been active with the council,” Father said to Millie, pulling his pipe from his mouth and dropping the newspaper.

“Oh, yes. We know that the mayor and the council want us to increase our employment numbers. They also want us to employ more men on a full-time basis—provide them all with a living wage, as they say. We’re doing our best, but it’s hard to both increase the number of employees and increase the hours we give to all of them. The flower industry has been hit as hard by this economic downturn as many other factories and businesses.” The Canadian economy, which had been so strong in the first decade of the twentieth century, had begun to decline in the second. Although Brampton, with its growing manufacturing base, was less impacted than some communities, by 1914 it too was experiencing a downturn.

“Maybe the war will help you out in this area,” Father said. “Nothing like a war to kick-start an economy.”

“You may be right. We’re making a few other changes in light of the war.” Millie was very knowledgeable about the Dale Estate. In addition to being a member of the Dale family, she worked in its business offices.

“I know you are,” I said proudly.

“What do you know, Jessie?” Millie asked curiously.

I then told Millie and the rest of my family what I knew about Elsa Strauss, her potato-growing father, and his new position at the Dale Estate.

“I guess there are no secrets in this town!” Grandpa exclaimed.

There are a few, I thought, looking at him.

* * *

Although I did not particularly like Elsa Strauss, she was soon to be one of my constant companions. On her second day of school in Brampton, Jane invited Elsa to walk home with us. Since the building Elsa lived in was situated at the very intersection where Jane joined and left Frances and me, she was with us the entire time Frances and I walked with Jane. Initially, as we walked along Main Street, Jane in the lead, Frances behind, I was able to maintain the coveted position beside Jane. Jane and I turned our heads while walking to hear Elsa tell us the latest news from Wilfred: how he had embarked on the SS Tyrolia at Quebec; how the ship had been escorted by cruisers throughout its voyage to England; how he had exercised two hours each day on the ship. “You have to be in shape to fight in France, that’s what Wilfred says,” Elsa intoned.

But when the subject of our walks began to change, so did the order of our pairings. As we began to discuss not what was being done by those in the first contingent but rather what we at home could do to assist them, Elsa began to jostle me to a position behind her. For these discussions, she fully required Jane’s attention, and Jane fully desired to provide it.

“We should do something to help the fighting men,” Elsa agreed when Jane raised the subject. “Wilfred and the men would so appreciate receiving a little something to comfort them. Perhaps we could take up a collection and buy some chocolate for them.”

“Chocolate. That sounds nice,” Jane said, turning her head toward Elsa then walking behind me. “Much nicer than the cigarettes Jessie suggested.” The notion was greeted by gales of laughter from Elsa and Frances. I looked down at my walking feet.

“I was thinking of something that would require a little more personal involvement,” Jane said. She had the avid attention of Elsa and Frances. “I was thinking that we should send the men scarves; scarves that we ourselves knit.”

“That’s a great idea,” Elsa said, pushing her hair behind her ears as she moved ahead of me. “I know that Wilfred and the men would appreciate receiving scarves we make. We could make hundreds!”

“Exactly,” Jane said, stopping and looking fully at Elsa then directly beside her. Frances, who nearly bumped into Jane, had the good sense to question the number.

“How would the four of us make hundreds of scarves?” she asked. Four of us, I wondered. Frances had never knit anything in her life, and she knew that I had not either.