Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady

wouldn’t appreciate the difference. But seeing, no, feeling what Jack could do with musictold her that he was different, special, that a person didn’t get that good at something unless it was already part of him. And part of her. Surely only someone who already had beauty inside them could make such beautiful music. “He’s only a sailor because of the war,” she said. “You should hear him play. The sound goes right through you.”
    “So does cod liver oil.”
    “Oh Iris, don’t be vulgar. Please.”
    “Father rang this evening while you were out.”
    Vivian groaned. “What did he say?”
    “He gave me hell for letting you traipse about town on your own.”
    “I wasn’t traipsing. And I wasn’t alone. We were in a restaurant, having lunch.”
    “Five thousand Yanks in the colony, he said, and I’ve got to keep you away from all of them.”
    “Well, you needn’t worry. Jack isn’t a Yank and he won’t call again, I’m sure of it.”
    “Oh, he’ll call, all right. If he doesn’t, he’s worse than a Yank. He’s an idiot.”
    But he didn’t call that week or the next, and when she turned on the marconi on Saturday night it wasn’t the King’s Men doing the Voice of Newfoundland broadcast but another band, the Starlighters, and she thought, Well, then, that’s cut it. She stayed away from the K of C, resigned herself to spinsterhood. Shedarned socks, then read the twins two Beatrix Potter stories like a good aunt. When, on the third Sunday, she still hadn’t heard from him, she drove down to Ferryland with Iris and Freddie and the twins, eager to show her parents how stalwart she was being, hiding how broken her heart was. She never once mentioned Jack and neither did they. Daddy was either in his office mulling over his accounts or down at the wharf talking to the fishermen. Her mother looked anxious, but she wasn’t well. Vivian felt like an exile, home on a sneak visit, noticing changes and not approving of them, a new tablecloth, an electric heater, but knowing also that her opinions were neither sought nor welcome. It made her feel furtive and disdainful. Her younger brother, Walter, who had just turned sixteen, was considering going into politics when the war ended. He intended to help bring Responsible Government to the colony. “Don’t you think you should try voting first,” she said to him, “to see if you like it?”
    “Well, look who’s all la-di-da now she’s living in the big city,” Walter said.
    “It may seem big to you, Wat, but it’s not. It’s quite small, really.” She thought of Windsor as a big city.
    She supposed she was meant not to notice when Iris took their mother into the waking room to tell her about Jack and how they needn’t worry because he had apparently dumped her.
    Plenty of fish in the sea, her mother would say.
    Plenty of bigger fish to fry, Iris would add.
    On Monday, Vivian worked at Baird’s in the morning and went home at noon, saying she had a toothache. She ate nextto nothing, tea and toast, changed into her nightgown and slippers and stretched out on the sofa with the cushions around her and the blackout curtains drawn against the harsh sunlight. She loved Iris’s living room. It was exactly the right size, big enough for really comfortable furniture but small enough to feel cozy. It was the kind of room she would want if she were married. A living room should be lived in, she told herself, thinking of her mother’s waking room, which was opened only for funerals and when the Anglican minister came to tea. That made her think of Jack. She tried to read Thomas Raddall’s new book, Roger Sudden , but it didn’t hold her attention. Bigger fish, she kept thinking. But there weren’t, and anyway, Jack was a perfectly good-sized fish. Big enough to take her away from Newfoundland and show her how other people lived. She wasn’t like Iris, who had been off the island only once in her life and hadn’t liked it. For their honeymoon, she and