FIVE
You see the suffering of children all the time nowadays. Wars and famines are played out before us in our living rooms, and almost every week there are pictures of children who have been through unimaginable loss and horror. Mostly they look very calm. You see them looking into the camera, directly at the lens, and knowing what they have been through you expect to see terror or grief in their eyes, yet often there’s no visible emotion at all. They look so blank it would be easy to imagine that they weren’t feeling much.
And though I do not for a moment equate what I went through with the suffering of those children, I do remember feeling as they look. I remember Matt talking to me—others as well, but mostly Matt—and I remember the enormous effort required even to hear what he said. I was so swamped by unmanageable emotions that I couldn’t feel a thing. It was like being at the bottom of the sea.
“Kate?”
I was looking at his knees. My knees were thin and brown and knobbled. Matt’s, extending from his shorts, were at least twice as big around.
“Kate?”
“What?”
“Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Look at the map. It isn’t far, see? I’ll be able to come and visit you. It isn’t all that far. D’you see?”
There were fewer hairs on his knees than on his thighs or calves, and the skin was different. Creased, from bending. I had no hairs on my knees at all, and the creases were smaller.
“Look at this, Kate.”
We spent a lot of time here, sitting on the sofa. He and Luke were working for Mr. Pye again, but in the evenings he took me back to the ponds, or if it was raining or too late to go to the ponds, he sat with me and talked about what our new lives would be like and how we would get together. I listened. Or I tried to listen. But there was a whirlwind howling through me, and it made it difficult to hear.
“We can work it out,” Matt said. “There’s a scale here, see? It tells you how many miles to an inch.”
It wasn’t a very good map. New Richmond, which was the nearest town to Aunt Annie’s farm, wasn’t marked on it, but Matt had asked Aunt Annie to show us where it was and then he took a pen, and although you weren’t ever supposed to write in books he put a dot in the right place and then printed the name, New Richmond, very neatly beside it.
We were all to stay on in Crow Lake until Luke went to college and then the four of us, Aunt Annie, Matt, Bo, and myself, would travel east together. Matt and Aunt Annie would come to Rivière-du-Loup with Bo and me and stay there with us for three days while Bo and I got used to our new home. Then they would leave us, and travel on to Aunt Annie’s farm.
In the meantime, Calvin Pye was desperate for help and Aunt Annie said there was no reason why the boys shouldn’t earn a bit of money. She did not intend me to hear her tell them that it would also help Bo and me get used to not having them around.
“Put your thumb against the scale, Kate. That’s right. Now look. That first joint of your thumb, from there to there, is about a hundred miles. See? Now lay it against the map. Look at that. It’s not much more than a hundred miles, is it? A hundred and fifty at the most. I’ll be able to visit you easily.”
He talked, and the whirlwind howled.
“Who’s this?” Aunt Annie said. “Kate? Who’s this coming down the drive?”
“Miss Carrington.”
“And who is Miss Carrington?”
“My teacher.”
“Oh,” Aunt Annie said, sounding interested. “She looks young to be a teacher.”
We were sitting on the veranda, topping beans. Aunt Annie was of the school which believed that useful work was the best remedy for any ill. She made me talk. She was better at it than Matt because she was more ruthless.
“Is she a good teacher? Do you like her?”
“Yes.”
“What do you like about her?” Blank silence.
“Kate? What do you like about Miss Carrington?”
“She’s nice.”
And then I was spared
Similar Books
