Chapter 49

Grace Mainwaring to Sally Henry May 2, 1938

… Maybe I have been moping lately, but I wish Mother would stop treating me as though I'm about to tie a lead counterweight around my neck and jump in the river. Lunch is almost over. I think I'll finish this after I get home from CRNB.

Maybe Mother has a point. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Cramp are well-known for sensitivity to other people's distress. Nonetheless, both were waiting for me and looking very concerned when I arrived at CRNB for the afternoon shift. Mrs. Cramp told me that I haven't been my usual chipper self lately. Apparently, when I'm not on the air, I look like I want to drown myself. "Alden and I understand what you and your husband are going through. We've had plenty of quarrels of our own, some of them even serious. Whatever is troubling you, you can confide in us."

"Like Hub was able to the first time his father ran for mayor?"

Mrs. Cramp winced. Her husband gave her a look that clearly said, "You're on your own."

"I'm sorry that I told May Bailey about your nephew's ambition to become a priest," she replied. "I know playing on her feelings about the Catholic Church to get her to withdraw her endorsement of Max was a terrible thing to do. I'm just as glad I failed."

"Have you ever told Hub or Max that?"

Mrs. Cramp looked at me regretfully. "I know I should. I promise I will if you tell me what's bothering you."

I searched her expression and her husband's carefully but could see no hint of insincerity or an ulterior motive. I admitted that accepting that Van would be going back to Spain hasn't made me any less angry at him. Mrs. Cramp understood. "I accepted a long time ago that Alden will never be able to see a clean tablecloth without dripping gravy on it. I still sometimes want to throw his cheap coronas in the fire again like I did the first time we had an argument over it."

"I do not drip," Mr. Cramp protested obviously nursing injured dignity. "Your gravy spoons are too narrow."

"They were my mother's," Mrs. Cramp retorted. "You always fill them to the brim and rush them to your plate so you can drown the roast in gravy. You'd think it was going to grow legs and walk away if you didn't."

"Maybe if your roast beef tasted less like genuinely cheap tobacco, I'd feel less like spooning gravy over it to hide the flavor."

Mrs. Cramp was mortally offended. "Hmmmph! Maybe you should just smoke my roasts."

At this point it was all I could do not to laugh myself silly. I raised both hands. "Enough. I'm sure this is an important subject to you, but my husband is about to go to war." Then the frightening thought that had haunted me for more than a year as I waited for Van to come home and that would soon be my constant companion again snuffed out all my amusement at the Cramps' squabbling. "He could be killed."

Mrs. Cramp immediately tried to comfort me. She assured me that that Van would make it through like he did the first time. I glanced up at Mr. Cramp. He was looking on grimly. "No, she's right," he interjected. "He could be killed."

I gasped. Mrs. Cramp protested in disbelief, but her husband raised his hand and spoke firmly. "No!"

I was too shocked to say anything. Mr. Cramp turned to me and his voice became gentle. "I've been to war. I knew a lot of friends in the trenches who had wives and sweethearts who meant everything to them. The memory of the love they left behind sustained them more than anything else. If these are the last days you ever spend with your husband, what do you want him to remember about them, that you spent them resenting him or that you both filled them with love while you still had the chance?"

From the Memoirs of Grace Bailey -

That question haunted me in the hours afterwards. So, did another. What did I want to remember about these days? That evening I let supper happen around me, contributing just enough to the conversation to hold up my end and no more.

Mother asked me afterwards if I was well. I seemed uncharacteristically subdued. I assured her that I was only trying to think through something complicated. There was no reason to worry. Of course, that only made her more anxious. "Is it something to do with you and Van?"

I managed to speak calmly. "I'll work it out."

"If you say so," Mother answered doubtfully.

Afterwards, I sat for a while in my room thinking. I glanced several times at the Rev. Seale's letter. He's been dead eleven years and I can still hear his strong midlands Scottish accent. "We must be good to one another in this brief life and trust that God will be good to us afterwards."

I struggled for a while with the question of what good might be. Then I looked at the photograph of my father smiling warmly out of a silver gilt frame on my desk and was transfixed.

Two thoughts flashed through my mind like bolts of lightning burning away all confusion. What if Mother had learned one week or one month earlier that her husband was going to die? What would she have done knowing that she had so little time left to be with the man she loved?

I put on my best scarlet pyjamas and walked across the hall to the guest room. Van was sitting in bed reading Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner. He looked up. I got into my camp bed. As I sat up, he leaned towards me hesitantly. I smiled at him and spoke one word. "Yes."

I have seldom had a kiss as beautiful or as satisfying as the one Van gave me then. After I had a moment to catch my breath, I mentioned that I didn't want to wait for him to come back from Spain for us to share more than kisses. Van didn't either. "We've both waited long enough for a second honeymoon. If you'll still have me, I won't go back to Spain before we stand alone in the sight of whatever god or gods there be and reaffirm our marriage to each other. All you have to do is say the word."

"I thought you didn't believe in a god or gods?"

Van shrugged. "I don't know if there are any or not. Maybe all there is on either end of life is the dark. If so, that's all the more reason for us to hold on to each other, to share light, love, and comfort, for as long as we can."

Leave it to Van to provoke romance and thought at the same time. I answered in the only way I could. "I know I may be foolish. I know I can't prove what I feel, but there is something in me-some hope, some belief-that tells me that there is light at the end of life."

"I hope and pray that you're right," Van responded solemnly. "All I know is that whatever is waiting for us at the end of life, I want to spend life itself with you."

The pure devotion in his smile was the twin of what I felt for him. There was only one possible answer I could give him. "I want the same thing. If you'll have me, I'll go on that second honeymoon with you. I will be your wife in everything that word means."

From the Journal of Maisie McGinty May 3, 1938

Grace and Van were so bright and cheerful this morning that I'm surprised they didn't chirp like canaries. Mrs. Bailey and I were flummoxed. She asked them if she was missing something. They admitted that they had talked out their troubles.

Things were better between them now. After visiting Toronto, they were going to a little hideaway resort in the woods Van knew of for a second honeymoon. When I asked what resort, Grace just grinned as though I had said something amusing and answered that if she and Van told us that, it wouldn't be a hideaway.

Afterwards, I admitted to Mrs. Bailey that she was right about them working it out. She just smiled like a kid pocketing a dead duck in a game of keepsies and remarked that "I have always believed that one of the reasons the Good Lord put so much emphasis on forgiveness in the Bible is that he knew it would come in handy for married people."

Next Week: Sunny morning. Where a soldier would follow.