The End of Music Read online

  Joyce knew she had it coming after a trio of air force men waltzed through the gate without proper boarding passes. She shouldn’t have been working departures in the first place. Rushed over at a moment’s notice to cover for Mary, who rushed home to cover for her husband, who was at the hospital with a finger bitten nearly clean off by one of the youngsters. The flight was called and the three airmen got through while Joyce was still rifling through the clipboard, looking for the passenger manifest.

  She thought she might get away with it until Moncton telexed that they had been delivered three RCAF fellows now demanding passage to Montreal for the weekend, without so much as a ticket between them. Gert waited until shift change before calling Joyce in.

  “Documentation,” said Gert, snatching a piece of paper from her desk and shaking it before her. “You know bloody well, Joyce. Paper, boarding pass, ticket, waybill. Something. You know it’s not our job to ferry those boys to their girly clubs in Montreal. Next time you tell them the war is over and they don’t have the run of it anymore.”

  Joyce went straight from Gert’s office to her locker and slipped out the side door, eyes averted. She was in no mood for the banquet at Gleneagles, even with lobster on the menu. Anyway, there was no time to mope, as the boys were gone ahead to set up and she was due by seven.

  It was a big cabin, newer and nicer than Deadman’s or Spruce Brook, with a higher ceiling and shiny tableware. Good, solid tumblers and hefty ashtrays that didn’t upend when you crushed your butt in them. A banquet for management from Anglo-Newfoundland Development, and a dance for the whole staff. The workers and their wives gathered at the doors during pineapple upside-down cake, waiting for the doors to open. Joyce’s mouth was dry and her tone thin. But she was mostly on the mark. When all hands were good and soused, Roland on the saxophone did his little routine of coming next to her and wrapping a hand around her waist. The fingers wandered up her ribs while he climbed a scale on the horn, until his instrument blared a high, urgent note and he brushed her breast a quick paw before scuttling back to his music stand. Men roaring and women tut-tutting on the dance floor.

  Gleneagles had no piano, but Eric came along anyway and sat in on drums for a few songs. He bought Joyce a whiskey at the end of the second set, and sat with her at a corner table. When a small, grey-stubbled man came by to bus the table, Eric introduced him.

  “This is my brother Aubrey. What are you doing here tonight, Aub? A few extra dollars, is it?”

  “A few extra dollars,” said the brother, who looked much older.

  “Are you still down at the sawmill?”

  “Oh yes, it’s all lumber this season. A good deal of it headed out your way.”

  “Houses going up all summer in Gander.”

  “Not so much the pine as the birch.” Aubrey propped a full tray against his skinny hip, and hardly noticed when the glasses and beer bottles wobbled precariously. “No end to the birch coming through. Like shit through a goose.”

  “Mind language, Aub,” said Eric.

  “Sorry, miss.”

  “It’s alright,” said Joyce.

  “Some days they wants it rough, some days dressed,” said Aubrey. “So you got to be on your toes, see?”

  “And is it still the two women running it?”

  “Missus Murphy and Chippy Steele,” said Aubrey. “They got me up to nine dollars a day, so I calls it fair. Hard old maids, mind you.”

  “You’d do better with Bowater, I imagine.”

  “Bowater got Joey John superintendent, and I don’t like his manner. I might go over to Point Leamington or Badger, catch on with a logging camp.”

  “Miserable work, that. Miserable pay.”

  “The union will put it to rights, I figures. Smallwood’s a union man, see? So it’s good for unions. Anyway, I calls it fair, what I gets from Chippy.”

  They were three songs into the third set when the crowd started calling for a man named Myrick. “Come on now, Myrick!” they shouted. “Tell us a story, Myrick!”

  Gordon indicated that the band should stand down. Joyce went to pee. When she came back a man was at her microphone, telling a laboured tale about a lady with a wooden leg. His rubbery face was remarkable, twisting into grimaces of agony and surprise. The crowd roared. He continued with rhyming stories about dead goats and buckets of squid and Lacey Simms losing her bloomers in a gale and how Edgar Mouland nearly went mad trying to work the pocket grinder down at the mill. This went on until well after the bar closed and the lights were up, until a flushed man with scars around his mouth started in on a recitation called “Pisspot Pete.” He was interrupted by several others, who said the tale wasn’t fit for mixed company. This seemed to break the spell of the room, and people began drifting to the door.

  Eric offered Joyce a ride back, with a short detour to drop Aubrey at the road down to Appleton. The prospect of hanging about for the train was exhausting, so Joyce got in the truck and sat between the brothers. For a few minutes they drove silent, Aubrey breathing loudly through his mouth and dabbing his nose with a rag.

  “Thought about starting my own operation though,” he said, as they bumped and rattled in the dark.

  “What kind of operation?” asked Eric.

  “Sawmill. In Glenwood.”

  “How would you do that, Aubrey?”

  “Cobble it together. There’s ways.”

  “Don’t be at that, Aubrey. Take a steady pay packet at Bowater or ANDCO.”

  Aubrey took a mouthful from the bottle he had been holding between his thighs. “I don’t much care for this, though. Whatever it is.” He held the bottle to the light of the dashboard and squinted. “Spur Cola.”

  “It’s what they drink in St. John’s.”

  “No doubt,” said Aubrey. He rolled down the window and tossed the bottle. “I don’t know that anyone expected that music you were playing.”

  “They danced,” said Joyce.

  “They danced, yes.”

  Aubrey had them stop at a trail only he could see. The night swallowed him.

  “Did you ever see the like?” said Eric, reversing the truck to go back the way they came. “‘Start my own operation.’ Bloody fool.”

  They backtracked to the main road, drizzle picking up, and Eric talked of his family. “Seven brothers. Five of them still in Placentia Bay at the salt fish or the herring or whatever they can manage.” He shook his head. “They can have it.”

  It became hard to talk as Eric picked up speed, the truck rumbling and kicking up gravel, rocks ringing sharp off the underside. They hit the airport road, freshly resurfaced, with a jolt and a satisfying purr of asphalt. Runway lights blinked through the trees out Joyce’s window.

  “Come for a drink,” said Eric.

  “At this hour?”

  “What hour is that?”

  “It’s late.”

  “No harm in it.”

  “There’s nothing open.” She gripped the door handle and leaned toward it, as if she could direct the truck. But they were already past the hotel and turning towards the airport.

  “Well, I’m going for a drink,” said Eric, as he pulled to a stop at the terminal.

  Joyce sat listening to the ticking of the engine, watching the rain blur the windshield. Finally she climbed from the truck and caught up to him inside. “I suppose you find this funny.”

  “Not at all. A nightcap is no laughing matter.”

  Their voices echoed down the terminal concourse, which was silent except for the buzz of overhead lights and the distant skitter of a telex machine. Bodies were scattered about, slumped in chairs or sprawled on benches. The only one awake was a skinny girl behind the coffee counter with a paperback.

  The leather-padded door to the Big Dipper was shut, its small oval window dark. Eric thumped a hand on the door. A sleeper sighed. The coffee girl shifted on he
r stool, coughed and turned a page.

  “We should go,” said Joyce.

  A bolt released and Parsons the bartender let them into the empty bar. Eric nodded and asked for two Scotches. Parsons didn’t look especially happy, but he set his mop in a corner, bolted the door behind them. Eric directed Joyce to the nearest table.

  He said that he and Aubrey had gone to California during the war, working the sawmills and box factories. “Should have stayed down there. They were desperate for men. Aubrey’s problem is he’s too proud to work for another man for very long. This foolish notion to start his own operation. He’ll starve.”

  “My father would never work for another man.”

  “I don’t mean to disrespect your father. But Smallwood got the right idea. You get the experts in here, Europeans, Canadians, to show us how it’s done. You get your steady pay and baby bonus and the old age. Never mind scraping by with your own fishing boat or your own sawmill.”

  Joyce held the first sip in her throat and felt it down to her toes. She had been shivering all the way home from the damp. Parsons mopped around them. Apart from Eric’s drink order, the two men had not exchanged a word.

  “Newfoundlanders, see? They hardly know there’s a world out there.” Eric stared into his glass. “Most places it’s the same five families staring up their own behinds for the past two hundred years or more.”

  There was a spill of change on the bar. Parsons counted up the evening’s take, mumbling numbers as he flicked coins into an open palm.

  “Those two women must be turning a dollar, though,” said Joyce.

  “What women?”

  “Your brother said he works for a couple of women. They have the sawmill in Appleton?”

  “Yes, well, we’ll see. The Bowaters could run them out of business just like that if they chose to.” He snapped his fingers on that.

  It seemed to Joyce that if the sawmill women were paying Aubrey nine dollars a day and the lumber was coming out as fast as they could make it, they must be doing alright.

  The coffee girl stared at her paperback, sucking at her teeth as if to dislodge something. There would be gossip, but Joyce suspected she was already being talked about. She didn’t doubt that Gloria talked about her all the time. Gloria loved gossip, and always laced the barest facts with the most salacious speculation. Then she would say, “Shame on me for even saying that, for even thinking it,” and shiver with pleasure. Joyce saw now that she’d never be rid of Gloria, and so never completely rid of Cape St. Rose.

  Outside, Joyce insisted on walking home.

  “Walk? Nonsense.”

  “It’s just around the corner.” The drizzle had stopped, and the air felt mild compared to the cold of the truck.

  “Alright then,” said Eric, tossing his keys in his hand. “Now look here, maybe we could do this again, only at a more decent hour? On Thursday? Payday and all. What do you say?”

  “No,” said Joyce. But her feet wouldn’t move beneath her until she gave the honest answer. “Yes.”

  “I could see I was winning you over,” said Eric. “Just a matter of time. Ha.”

  It seemed like a long time since she had spoken the word with any kind of conviction. “Yes,” she said again, because it sounded so good, with its affirmative hiss at the end. Then she started away at a good pace, the porch light of the hotel already in sight.

  9

  The basket of assorted jams is a mistake. Six small jars nestled in straw, with a package of biscuits and a veil of pink cellophane. Carter holds the basket in his lap, eyes smarting from the glare of the morning sun as a cloud of snow lifts and sweeps over the car, hard grains pelting the windshield. The drive to Toronto was going fine until Isabelle decided to pass a bus. Now they’re trapped in the middle lane, hemmed in by transport trucks on either side.

  He tries to recall the label on each jar. Pomegranate, apple, blueberry, lavender. There’s a dark one, blackberry or black currant, and a green minty one. Carter pictures Leah scooping jam in the morning, her hair wrapped in a towel. He was supposed to visit her at her apartment. She called last night and said she was in hospital due to a bowel blockage, and insisted he come regardless. She sounded good, though her voice was tight and gave some of her words a childlike squeak.

  He has prepared his case on behalf of the music. Last night he listened to the Mozart again.

  The transport trucks work in tandem, racing ahead and dropping behind, as if they find great sport in keeping a Suzuki hatchback stuck in the middle. Sam is mostly silent in the back seat, watching videos on Isabelle’s phone. He occasionally cackles, and the phone makes the whooshing sounds of something moving at great speed. Isabelle will drop Carter at the hospital and take Sam for his check-up with Dr. Hurley. They used to dread these trips. The fifty-minute drive. How the doctor twisted his brow and pressed the stethoscope to Sam’s chest. The yawning silence as he listened. But now the visit is routine, and the doctor has suggested they can soon stop coming altogether. The electrical pathways are secure. The tubes and valves robust. Though the gallop remains, Sam’s heart beats without the ragged slips or swishes that signal trouble. The dread has receded to join the other fears wrapped into the core of their days.

  It’s a poor choice, bringing fruit jam to a bowel blockage.

  “Can I leave this with you? Maybe I’ll just chuck it?”

  “Bring it,” says Isabelle, doing a shoulder check. “It’s something. Anything to brighten up a hospital room.”

  “I know what they’re up to,” says Isabelle, as the lead truck kicks up another wave of snow. “He’ll give a little extra gas any second now.” As if on cue, the truck roars with acceleration. Isabelle does a shoulder check and brakes hard for a moment. There’s the blare of a horn behind them. But there’s daylight on Carter’s side, an open slot in the left lane. They fill the slot with a quick jerk of the wheel and another pump of the brakes. They’re free. It doesn’t even feel dangerous.

  //////

  The man in the next bed is worse off. He’s young. Averts his eyes as Carter enters, ashamed to be sick and in pyjamas while his peers are out in the world, staring at phones and driving too fast and talking loudly in bars. The tendons on his neck ought not to stick out like that. One of the tendons seems bent, as if it recently collapsed. Carter flinches at the thought and a nurse pulls a curtain around the young man and there’s Leah just beyond the curtain.

  She tells him about the three stages of chemo and radiation coming up. Then a break and another three stages.

  “It’s metastasized to a couple of places, so they’re picking targets. Like back here.” Leah taps behind a shoulder. “Shrink the tumour so I can breathe better.”

  She extends a hand to catch the shaft of sunlight from the corner window. Her complexion has a yellow hue, like the inside of an apple. The lines on her face are deep but familiar. They always showed when she sang, when she climbed the register or held long notes. Now they’re permanent.

  “So this latest problem,” says Carter. “It came out of the blue, sort of?”

  “Monday afternoon. Kevin gave me a hand.” Her voice runs aground, the words trapped in her throat. Carter stands—he’s been in the chair at the end of her bed—and lifts the plastic cup from the bedside table. Holds the straw for her. She swallows and he feels the effort of it, the Adam’s apple crawling up her neck and descending. “I have to drink more water. They said if I was better about drinking water I might not be here.” She points to the dangling bag on its rack, with the tube running down and into her forearm. Its liquid is clear, but doesn’t look like water. Carter imagines a sugary gel.

  She’s still fighting it, jaw clenched and eyes fixed at the foot of the bed. He returns to the chair and looks away so she can finish the fight in private. Kevin must be the old Irish boyfriend from North Bay, back in the picture. Or maybe there’s a new Kevin. Carter knows little
about Leah’s life and relationships, though he’s revealed much of himself in the years since their divorce. During her first bout with cancer he would drive into Toronto to sit with her. Emboldened by his new relationship with Isabelle, he talked too much, and apologized to Leah for interrupting her life and derailing it with music.

  He certainly hadn’t planned to talk about how Ronnie died while he and Isabelle watched a ridiculous French movie. But it came out. He’d been sitting with Leah, listening to her talk about treatment and pain. Laying a hand over the nipple, she’d pulled one side of her robe open to show the red crescent of her radiation scar. This prompted him in some way, and he started talking.

  When he’d finished, she said, “You remember the movie so well.”

  “What?”

  “The way you describe it. The colours and the actors singing. The heartbreaking scene at the end.”

  “It’s just this weird movie we saw.”

  “You spent as much time on it as the whole rest of the story.”

  He didn’t go see her for a long while after that, not trusting himself around her.

  Leah touches the basket of jams on the bedside table, pressing her fingers against the cellophane to get a better look at the labels beneath. “That was a nice story,” she says. “The one about the woman you met travelling. That album saved my life, or whatever she said.”

  “Yes.” Carter was searching for a way to introduce the topic. “It’s for people like that. We should get it out there.”

  “Get what out there?”