I'm a sodding fool and I know it. Everyone knows it – Kate, Kate's father, Gladys, even that jerk with two first names Russell Joseph knew it. Girls like me don't get to have feelings, we just watch as they happen to other people. I've known that for a while. Girls like me, we can't have feelings, and girls like Kate Andrews are the reason why. They hold your hand, rub your neck, sing to you, and then tell you you're disgusting.
I have to say, I wasn't expecting that. I just, I didn't think. I guess that's the point. I wasn't thinking, I was feeling. Like I said, that's where the trouble starts. I ran out of that joint as fast as I could go. No idea where I was going, just away. Away from my own stupidity, away from the shame, away from Kate. I roamed about for a bit, but there comes a point when you have to go home. So home I went, and there he was, leaning against the wall by her door, smug as anything. How did he get here so fast - did she send for him? Am I really so revolting to her that she would rather go back to that man and a life of misery and abuse, than stay here with me? I didn't believe it – just last night she told me that she would have jumped out her window before she went with him. I still don't believe it.
"You take your claws out of your daughter, or I'll see to it you can't walk straight". I couldn't help it – I may have mucked things up, but I still promised her she'd be safe here. Betty the goddamn hero, that's me. "You have no right to come barging in here."
"Yes he does" she said. She'd packed and dressed, leaving. He was just outside, waiting. There was no shouting, no force, no sign of a struggle, nothing to make me think she didn't send for him. "What kind of life is it? I make things that kill people, I debase God's gift, sing in dens of sin. I drink, smoke, consort with deviants". But this isn't her. I knew it. She loves singing in that club, she loves the factory, whatever she thinks of me. The words didn't sound like her, and the way she glanced back at her father confirms it.
"Please Kate, don't leave." I was crying, and didn't care. She looked as if any moment she might start too. "I love you." I had imagined saying that so many times, but none of even my wildest imaginings had ever brought me close to this. Had her father not been there, how differently might that have gone? I could have talked to her, persuaded her the kiss was a mistake driven by a fit of bourbon induced insanity. But I felt her father pull me round, grasping my already bruised shoulder, turning me to face him. And then the sting of a backhand to the face knocked me into the wall. Off balance, I heard her father shouting, "Tell her, Marion!" and then, finally, the words that stopped me dead. "I don't want this anymore, and I never wanted you". Later, as I heard the other girls come back, I dragged myself out of that hallway and back into my own room where I lay crying until morning.
"What happened to you?" Gladys looked concerned, and I knew she knew what I a fool I am. What a sodding, stupid fool. "Kate left. I don't know where, and that's the way she wants it". I looked down at my bag, away from Gladys, because I was working on not crying again. Girls like me don't get to have feelings. It's my new motto. If I repeat it enough, perhaps it'll be true.
"The big promise. That we might actually get the things we want. What if it's a lie?" It is a lie, I know that. Especially when the thing you want, doesn't want you back. The thing is, all through shift I couldn't stop thinking about what Gladys said, "I'll help you find her, make sure she's okay". And the next day, and the next, almost every waking thought was for Kate – where she was, what she was doing, and most of all, how I was gonna find her. My first stop was to Chet's studio – if that's how her father found Kate, I figured it couldn't do me any harm either. Before you give out an address, you want to know who's asking, right? Well, turns out I was right. He might take dirty pictures for a living, but, like I told Kate, Chet's not a bad guy. I got a name, and a town, and we were off down south.
So here we are. Hanging around under a streetlight in St Thomas – 130 miles down from Toronto, barely still in the country. Turns out, it wasn't too hard to find her. I mean, in a place like this, there aren't many street preachers with red headed daughters with voices like that. So I got off the train, and into a bar, and just asked. Simple as that. Didn't explain nothing and wasn't asked to. Yesterday evening, as we were looking around, I saw her and her family at the corner of this park. Her father's shouting was kinda hard to miss, and then I heard the singing. I recognised the song, it was one she'd sung a lot when she first came to VicMu. It was pretty enough, and I'm sure the words are very wholesome, but it wasn't a patch on the way she sang with Leon. I should have gone up right then and told her that. But I was having too much trouble not to feel too much, and that's not the point of this trip. I want her to know that just because I'm a fool with uncontrollable feelings, doesn't mean she has to be stuck in her old life. I owe it to her to tell her that.
And so we're back tonight, on the same corner. It's about ten o'clock, and across the street, I can see her family choir lined up. They're outside a bar the soldiers like and her father is going on about the demon drink. I haven't got a proper plan, every time I try to work out what I'm going to do, I think of reasons it wouldn't work. Gladys is growing impatient beside me, working herself up to stir up problems again. I stub my cigarette out with my foot and speak, "Tell you what, Princess. You go speak to her – she won't wanna see me". Gladys is a better choice – less emotional, less involved. Less likely to do something irreparably stupid.
"Betty" she says, and my name is drawn out, frustratedly. "Just go!" and she pushes me, gently, towards Kate. I stumble slightly down the kerb, and I see that the movement has drawn Kate's attention, and her father's. He's changed the tone of his preaching now – he's shouting more fervently, pointing at me as he comes across the street in my direction.
"Come with me," he is shouting, "and I will show you the judgement of the great harlot who sits on raging waters". Well, that's not right anyway. I'm from the prairies, I don't go near water. I'm nearly across the street, and Gladys is close behind. Kate's father lashes out at me again, catches the same spot above my eye which hurts like crazy, but this time we're in public and there's witnesses. Kate takes a step forward before she can stop herself and soldiers leaving the bar see what's going on and head in our direction too. They don't know what's going on - they just see a man hitting a girl in the street. He's pulled off me, and there's a crowd of them round him - I can't see what's going on, but I can't think it's anything good.
"Kate," I begin, before I am interrupted by a boy, a brother I assume, "Her name is Marion". I ignore him, "Kate, I - I just wanted…" I can't finish the sentence, my feelings are too close to the surface. Come on McRae, I scold myself, think not feel.
"Kate," Gladys steps in, "we just wanted to make sure you're okay. You left so suddenly, people were worried". I've got myself back together, thinking now, and I say the words Gladys and I planned on our trip down here. "We wanted you to know that there's a job for you at VicMu, on red shift, and a place at a boarding house down the street. Leon has new music for you. Just because I'm a fool, Kate, doesn't mean you have to be one too".
The soldiers have let Kate's father go now, and he's suddenly there next to us. His hat has gone missing, as have the top buttons on his shirt. His coat is dirty, and there are damp patches on the shoulder where he has been on the floor. If I didn't know better, I'd feel bad for him. If I didn't know how he treated his daughter, but Gladys and I had both seen the scars, and knew, without a doubt, that feeling anything for him other than contempt.
This time, he doesn't try to move me from his daughter. He doesn't even look at me, or Gladys. He just stares at Kate, and hold out his hand. "Marion," he says, softly, "it's time to go". She looks at me, at Gladys, at her father, and back at me. As she glances between us I see that in her hair she is wearing the pin from the Sandy Shores dance. The pin she wanted, but I bought. For a moment, like in the hallway, I think she's going to speak, or cry, or both. She doesn't do either, just turns away and follows her family. This time, she doesn't even say goodbye.
Sharing a room with Gladys Witham is not something I ever thought I'd do. Yet, here we are the two of us. I know she heard me crying in the night, and yet, she hasn't said anything. Unlike me, she is packed and ready to leave. She helped me find Kate, made sure she was okay. That was our deal.
"Look, Princess", I say, "you go. I can't go just yet. I just – I need one more day". I know what Gladys' face must look like behind my back. She sits on the bed next to me, touches my head. "Betts," she sighs, "you can't hide here. It's expensive, and Lorna will only give you so many days off. Besides, blue shift is lost without you". In my head, I know she must be right. But those damn feelings, always so close these days, those feelings tell me otherwise.
"She's right" says a voice from the doorway, "after all, you are the face of Victory Munitions". As I turn, Kate is standing there, with a suitcase in her hand.
Think, McRae. Girls like you, don't get to have feelings.
"There's a train," Kate says, "for Toronto". She holds out her hand to me, not to Gladys, or both of us, but to me. I must be too slow for her, for she crosses the room in three steps and takes my hand in hers. "It's in 50 minutes", she says. "If you come now, we can still make it".
For the first time I allow myself to feel hopeful that, whatever Marion said, Kate Andrews might not think me so disgusting after all.