The End of Music Page 3

  Joyce was glad for the interruption, and took the opportunity to shift away from Frank and the pressure of his hand against her back. It was 1952 and she had a new home. A place so new that almost everyone lived at the airport’s edge, in military barracks refashioned as apartments and hotels. A few modest bungalows housed the families. It would all be abandoned when the permanent town site was ready.

  All of this Joyce had known when she arrived, thanks to letters from Gloria and a film Father Coles had shown on one of the days when he brought his projector to school. What she discovered on her first night out was the spirit of lawlessness that must have been left over from the war years. The dance floor lights were kept low. People drank as much as they liked. Women wore perfume and men leaned into their necks to sniff it. She liked Frank, but after two verses and a chorus of “Blue Moon,” she had decided there was no good reason to leave his hand on the small of her back.

  A barman was mounting a chair to close the window, to shouts of encouragement. The horn player with the microphone kept talking, sweat shining on his rosy face. Other fellows in the band were sipping the drinks they kept at their sides and calling to friends in the crowd.

  “They’re not smart,” Joyce whispered to Gloria.

  “Smart how?”

  Joyce shook her head. She had expected something more in line with Father Coles’ film. In the dark of the small classroom in Cape St. Rose, with the damp smell of mitts and boots drying over the wood stove, the film had trumpeted “a prosperous Newfoundland in a prosperous Canada” and “a people ready to embrace the future.” It showed nets bulging with fish, rivers jammed with logs, a mighty waterfall, and grinning, black-faced miners heading underground in cages. Music swelled and stirred, putting the island in motion, fish squirming and water rushing and lights shining from the miners’ hats. Gander had been identified as “a thriving hub in this new era of trans-Atlantic travel.” A huge airplane climbed into open sky. There were paved roads with cars, and women browsing racks full of clothes, and men in an airport tower talking into microphones while they gazed at the far horizon. Most intriguing was a glimpse inside a spacious home, where a man carved a great roast of beef while his wife ushered children to the table, all of it in the glare of electric lights.

  At the end of the night, people lingered in the lobby. Rain slapped at the door and trickled under it, making a stream down the middle of the floor. Frank went to find a ride. Gloria wiped her brow and pulled at the V-neck of her wool dress, flapping it for air. For all her adventures, she didn’t seem much different. She had been just a few days finished school when she left Cape St. Rose, her letters to Joyce filled with thrilling reports from St. John’s. Gloria doing her commercial certificate at Prince of Wales College. Gloria getting steno work at the American base, full of young men, then at Job Brothers, where it was all local fellows, and married, then at the phone company, where her supervisor made “shocking advances.” Gloria finding a husband and moving to Gander, because the new airport needed young people with skills and smarts.

  All the while Joyce had been working at her father’s store, stocking the shelves with fat pork and slab cheese and kerosene, or in the cellar, salting a barrel of livers to make cod-liver oil.

  Now that she was here, she suspected she could catch up in no time.

  In the glare of the lobby, whiskey racing in her head and under her skin, Joyce felt different about the band, more open to the music. The words of the songs had lodged inside her. They made her want to fall in love and have her heart broken. She wanted to risk everything for a man, or toy with him and refuse him, or walk out on him and slam the door.

  Frank came through the door, his black curls holding rain drops. “They’ve only room for two,” he said, gesturing to the car behind him. “I’ll be back to see you home.”

  “No, I’ll be fine,” said Joyce.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Frank.

  “Really.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Stay with your wife.” Joyce squeezed Gloria’s hand and kissed her damp temple. She looked like she might be sick. “Night, love. Thanks so much.”

  The car pulled away, headlights flashing in the window. Behind the swinging doors to the bar, there was loud, sputtering male laughter, and a voice shouting, “Get out of it with your friggin’ and foolin’!” A woman next to Joyce tut-tutted and her escort hid an embarrassed smile.

  A soaked head poked in from outside. “Room for one more out here,” the man said, and looked at Joyce. “Miss?”

  Joyce dashed for the pickup. The street was all muck and she’d ruin her shoes. But what odds. Ugly old pumps. She’d get paid soon enough.

  A hand reached from the cab of the truck. “Up we go, missy.” Someone slammed the door behind her. Joyce sat next to a man who said, “Come on, Eric. Let’s get the fuck out of this.”

  It was the trumpet man from the band, the one who appeared to be leader, beginning each number with the rhythmic snap of his fingers. Where Joyce grew up—a town hardly known for its delicacy—men tried not to swear in the company of strange women.

  “Not a bad time tonight, eh?” he said. “Not like that Pan-Am party, though. My God, they went wild that night. I told the fellah on the bar, you just keep the drinks coming.”

  “Huh,” said the driver, guiding the truck onto the paved road and swerving around a monstrous pothole.

  “And what was that smell in the cloak room? Someone and their lady friend must have got lost in there, eh, Eric?”

  “Hah,” said the driver, and muttered something Joyce didn’t hear.

  She was meant to be shocked. So she said, “Perhaps it was those suits you wear. Ever get them cleaned?”

  Trumpet Man erupted in a wheezing laugh, his belly expanding. He was bigger than he looked on stage. “Yes. Old tux gets quite the going over. Good deal of sweat and blood.”

  He turned and looked at Joyce for the first time. “You’re that girl danced with Frank Tucker half the night.”

  Joyce already sensed the imminent departure of Frank and Gloria from her life. The effort required to maintain the connection would be wearying. She nodded to the black hard-shell case in Trumpet Man’s lap.

  “How did you learn to play that thing?” She was thinking of the long, aching note he held at the end of one of the last songs. The song was about falling asleep alone and dreaming of a lover who went away.

  “Here and there. A Salvation Army fellow showed me a good deal. The Sally Anns are where you go for brass. I believe he thought he might convert me to the cause. But there was never much chance of that.”

  “You’re at the hotel, then?” asked the driver. “The Airlines?”

  “Yes, thanks,” said Joyce. They were on the main road, reversing the route she had walked earlier. Wind and rain blew hard across the runway, shaking the truck.

  “Do the airplanes fly in this?” she asked.

  “They fly in anything,” said Trumpet Man.

  “That song you did, the one about drinking coffee all night.”

  “‘Black Coffee.’”

  “You forgot the words.”

  “Christ, didn’t I though?” The wheezing again, and his cigarette ash dropped on her coat. “That’s a woman’s song really. We need a proper girl singer. You ever sing?”

  “Church choir.”

  “Never seen you in choir.”

  “Back home.” She had been good enough that Sister Marie gave her “O Holy Night” for midnight mass one year. But Joyce had been so nervous that she cracked on the high note.

  “Well, now. Perhaps you’d like a turn with us. Give them something to look at, eh, Eric? ”

  “Huh,” said the driver.

  “This is the fellah what holds it all together,” said Trumpet Man, elbowing the driver. “Without Eric at the piano she goes off the rails entirely.”

/>   The driver didn’t acknowledge the compliment. Joyce looked out her window into the black rain. She said nothing more until they pulled up to the hotel, where she stepped into the mud.

  “Thank you.” She tried to direct her voice to the driver. All she could see was a dark profile topped with little swirls of hair.

  Trumpet Man leaned out the door, the porch light shining off his red cheeks and crooked red nose. Everyone here was red, it seemed. The whole town overheated with late summer and drink and dancing.

  “See you to the door?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” The rain had eased, leaving her rumpled and damp.

  “Where are you working?”

  “Trans Canada Airlines.”

  “TCA? Wait till Dennis Shea gets a look at you. Tight little operation over there.”

  The door slammed. The pickup sprayed mud and drove on. A gust of wind cut across the denuded landscape, rattling shutters on the boxy hotel. Pinpoints of light—she now knew they marked the runways—brought a little crawl of sadness to Joyce’s stomach. Was it homesickness? She was never going back there.

  //////

  She lifted her foot, but it barely moved. She yanked at it, then tried to kick it free. Her leg bounced off something hard and sharp. Joyce gasped and opened her eyes.

  “Dad?” The word dry in her mouth.

  Wait. Was she with someone? The warm pressure of a boy next to her.

  There was no boy.

  “Marty?” Her throat closed around the word.

  Joyce wouldn’t panic. Surely Marty would be coming to help.

  She pushed the sheets away. The leg wasn’t trapped at all. Up on her elbows, she wiggled it and drew her knee in, freeing the foot from the metal bars of the bed frame.

  In the blue shadow of the room she recognized the door, the open closet, the mound in the other bed. She sat up and placed a palm where her back had been. Soaked through. Mopped her face and neck with a hand, spotted the glass on the bedside table and drained the tepid water. Stood and pulled the window blind.

  The aircraft couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards away, wet and silvery white, blinking and humming. It was flanked on either side by a truck and what appeared to be a long, snaking jeep. Puddles shimmered in the dark of the runway.

  A rustle and squeak from the other bed. Rachel sat up and yawned, gathered curls and dropped them behind her shoulders.

  “What were you dreaming of just now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Joyce.

  “You were talking a good bit.”

  “A man, maybe. A fellow lying next to me.”

  “Mmmm,” said Rachel. “Wrapped all around you.”

  “I was wrapped around him, I think.”

  Rachel stood and turned on her lamp. They stared out the window, side by side, half expecting the airplane to move any second.

  “They can see us,” said Rachel, breath stale with tea and smoke and sleep.

  Most of the tiny windows were dark or hidden in shadow. But Joyce saw a few faces turned in their direction. One wore glasses. Another—a woman, probably—drank from a cup. Another looked out, then disappeared.

  “Marty would be appalled,” said Joyce. “Showing my bedclothes to the world. He’d lock me in my room. Then he’d die.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Brother.”

  The airplane rocked in the wind, clinging to its little wheels. Propellers whirred to a blur and slowed to a halt, as if preening and settling in for the morning.

  “Think you’ll ever get on one of those?”

  “I hope so,” said Joyce.

  Rachel shook her head. “Imagine being in that thing, above the clouds when the motor gives out.” She picked up an alarm clock and tilted it to the light. “Won’t get back to sleep now.” She groped for cigarettes at her bedside and offered the open package to Joyce.

  They were silent for a minute or so. Joyce wanted more faces in the airplane windows. A man rubbing his bristles because he hadn’t shaved since London. A French woman in an exotic hat. Maybe a darkie from the States.

  “You have brothers?”

  “Four,” said Rachel. “And three sisters.”

  “They keep tabs?”

  “Hardly. I don’t say Joe would know me if he passed me in the street.”

  Rachel puffed and exhaled. She had a good three or four inches on Joyce, and could have been pretty. But she wasn’t built for a tall frame. Her skin pulled tight around her eyes and mouth, giving her a severe look.

  “Is your brother so awful?” she asked.

  “Marty? Always suspects the worst.”

  “Do you give him cause?”

  “Not much. Not until last summer. Stayed out all night with a fellow.”

  “Oh, yes? Did you lose your virtue?”

  “Misplaced it for a bit. Went swimming naked. That was the best part.”

  “Your poor brother.” Rachel giggled. “Must have been beside himself.”

  “I did it to spite him as much as anything. Do you know the fellows in that dance band?”

  Rachel shrugged. “I work so many nights. They gave you a run home last night, didn’t they?”

  “Not before I took them to the edge of town.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Behind the American side. Isn’t that the place? For a bit of fun?”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Seriously?”

  Joyce smiled. Took a moment to stub her cigarette in an ashtray on the windowsill. “No,” she said. “Just fooling.”

  Rachel gave her a shove. “Holy mother,” she said.

  “So I needn’t worry about everyone knowing my business around here,” said Joyce.

  “Right down to your dirty drawers and how they got that way.”

  //////

  Joyce found the employee entrance and waited, as instructed in the letter. The letter was on Trans Canada Airlines letterhead. She carried it in her purse.

  The eight o’clock shift change scattered people every which way. They wore coveralls or airline uniforms or shirtsleeves, and headed across to the hotels or out to the main road and towards the little houses that showed their peaked roofs behind stands of birch and spruce. A few hung about smoking, or walked the border of the tarmac, rubbing night-shift eyes in the morning sun. Joyce watched the women. Some strode with purpose, shoes snapping. Others looked exhausted. Her legs itched under her wool skirt.

  The skies were quiet for the moment. Three hulking aircraft sat silent, far from the terminal. Nothing beyond them except the low-cut woods skirting the runway. A dark scribble on the horizon.

  A short, baby-faced blonde hurried past.

  “Hat! Hat!” she said to Joyce, reaching up to tap her own.

  “Sorry?”

  “Cripes, you’re the new girl, aren’t you?” She stood with her feet splayed and flipped a page on the clipboard in her hand. “Phyllis? No, Joyce. What are you doing in winter kit?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You don’t have a summer uniform? And your hat. Come here.”

  She took Joyce by the sleeve and pulled her into the shade.

  “See here,” she said, and pulled a compact from her bag. Joyce flipped it open and watched in the mirror while the blonde circled behind. Hands appeared and changed the angle of her hat, realigning the pins with thick fingers. The nails chewed ragged. “If the men catch you with the wrong tilt, they’ll make you recite some awful limerick. It’s one of their filthy games.”

  “I was told to see Mrs. Power?”

  “Gert. That’s me, I’m afraid. Look, the shift schedule is gone to pieces, so I haven’t much time. But you’re a bright girl, eh? You’ll catch on.”

  The blue sky put Joyce in mind of a song, t
he one about telegraph cables on bending highways and skiing on mountainsides. Whatever it was. The music from the dance nagged at her. What odds about Frank Tucker or a couple of fellows in a truck—men of that ilk were as common as rain, and about as mindful. But the songs had shaken her, making the world sound more beautiful than it was.

  Inside and blinking away sunspots, Joyce found her new workplace hardly appropriate to the dashing business of air travel. Mrs. Power showed her the ladies’ with its cupboard of sanitary products. The coatroom. Supplies. Assigned her a rusted locker with a stale, powdery smell and a dead housefly on the shelf. Into the crowded, windowless warren of desks and offices for a rundown on how to write up a ticket, read a flight strip, and check a passenger manifest. (“Don’t worry. It’ll come to you.” ) Unsmiling women squeezed past, dressed like Joyce but in lighter skirts and short-sleeved blouses. Too much rouge or foundation. Men pecked two-fingered at typewriters, squinting through fluorescent gloom. They made phone calls, barked technical gibberish—“…backed up at blue jay…That’s all we’ve got on four-check”—yanked at their ties, and noted Joyce without looking up from their work.

  “New girl, Gert?”

  “Send her over here, Gert.”

  The women were all on their feet. The men all sitting.

  After tracking down her badge and nametag, Gert gave her a final once-over—“By God, you’re a lovely girl”—and led her out to the ticket counter. Joyce paused before the sudden space, the concourse with its echoing voices and electric hum. Gert gave her a half-second before touching her elbow. She was all St. John’s. Probably the eldest of a big Catholic brood, keeping the rest in line.

  Joyce was left with a frowning woman named Mary.

  “I hope you’re better than the dumb tit they gave me last week,” said Mary.

  “We’ll see,” said Joyce. Told herself not to flinch when aircraft roared overhead. She touched her hair, which had been brushed until it gleamed, and tugged her jacket.

  A man appeared before her, looking through smudged glasses and a straggly grey beard that reached all the way up to his eyes.

  “Can you tell me, please, how long we’ll be stopping?”