Chapter 63

Grace Mainwaring to Vanaver Mainwaring July 27, 1938

I hope this reaches you without too long a delay. I know it isn't easy to get mail to soldiers at the front. I know that I cannot imagine what you and your comrades are going through now.

You write of death as though it is something normal and familiar. To me it has always been a terrifying and unwelcome stranger. Only once in my life, when I contracted the Spanish influenza, have I been as close to death as you must have been more times than I can bear to think about. I was in such a delirium then that I couldn't understand what was happening to me.

As I read your letter, I share your thoughts and feelings across an ocean. Your voice is as clear to me as though you were speaking softly in my ear. Its warmth and gentleness are a comfort. For a few moments, I can imagine that you are close enough to me again to fold me in your arms and kiss me. Against all reason, I can make myself believe that in the space of a breath you will.

Grace Mainwaring to Sally Henry July 27, 1938

I know that you must be getting awfully tired of me telling you how lucky you are that your husband is safely with you and not on a battlefield, but that doesn't make it any the less true. At lunch today, Toppy was kidding Archie about how dead to the world he was when there was a baseball or hockey game on the radio. She's lucky that a sports widow is the only kind of widow she's likely to be in the foreseeable future.

I'm sorry to be so irritable about this subject. Seeing happy married couples didn't used to rub me so raw. It's just that three months ago I was so certain that it was my turn and Van's to have years and decades ahead of us to love and work and be happy.

Now comes the news that a battle has started on the front where he and his comrades are stationed. At least I have the column and my work at CRNB and as Mother's executive secretary to fill my time. I also have my family and good friends like you to care about me and don't think I'm not grateful. Without both, I'd probably sit at home going slowly out of my mind with worry.

Even so, it doesn't help that Mrs. Cramp asked me today how I stand having my husband go into battle again and again never knowing if he'll come back alive. If it were Alden, her nerves would be jangling like a fire alarm. My answer was rueful, but not, I hope, bitter. "I wanted an honorable man for a husband, and I got one."

Toppy and Archie each had good news. The new business that Rebecca's fashion segment has generated for Toppy's dress shop shows no sign of diminishing. Some of the new customers are from Pinebury and even Northbridge. Most are even coming back regularly. Toppy practically crowed when repeating a compliment from a Northbridge socialite about the quality and variety of her fabrics.

Archie is glad that he bought the soda fountain that was in the gazebo two summers ago and installed it in his drug store. Having it indoors makes it easier for him to make a profit than it was for the previous owners since he doesn't have to close up at the end of summer. It doesn't hurt that he hired Pritchard Flett as his soda jerk.

Pritchard has tried to take his mind off losing Rebecca by inventing new kinds of ice cream sodas-all of them delicious. Pritchard's sunshine special is fantastic-strawberries, pineapple, bananas and whipped cream on vanilla ice cream with just a dash of pineapple juice. I'd probably look like Sophie Tucker if I didn't ration myself to one a month.

You do have to admire that woman's refusal to apologize for her looks in her interviews and songs. I can still hear Van telling me, in that good-natured, mischievous way of his that makes me want to tease him right back until we end the conversation with a kiss, that we women underestimate men. "Of course, we find Sophie Tucker attractive. She's witty, energetic and loves life. When a woman has that combination, who cares about a few extra pounds?"

From the Journal of Honey Sutton Aug. 3, 1938

May Bailey's offer to fund a teacher to teach French in New Bedford High School was first on the agenda at today's School Board meeting. This proposal must be expensive. It's a good thing that sales of nickel from the Bas Lake Mine have been so brisk lately. The debate on whether or not to have a French course revived some of the animosities of 1917-18.

Mr. Grady actually used the phrase "one language and that English" which I haven't heard since the Ontario provincial government stopped enforcing Regulation 17 eleven years ago. Because of that action, teaching in the French language in Ontario schools is now permitted. That doesn't mean that Mr. Grady thinks it's a good idea.

He complained that twenty years ago French-Canadians used language rights as an excuse to shirk conscription while patriotic Canadian boys were suffering and dying in the trenches. Max objected as a Canadian who served in the armed forces in the great war. There were French-Canadians in the trenches too, and they did as much suffering and dying as anyone else.

At that point, Mother Bailey added that she remembered well her husband's service on the local exemption tribunal. He was stunned by the flood of young, fit English-speaking Canadians that came before him seeking exemptions from conscription, including two or three of the loudest complainers about slacking and cowardice by French Canadians in Quebec. Mother Bailey admitted that she had done her own share of complaining back then. Perhaps she had been intemperate, but at least she had the excuse of two sons at the front-in other words, every male in her family old enough and fit enough to fight.

Nobody missed her meaningful look at Mr. Grady. After conscription became law, he had fired, without cause, a loyal and reliable laborer with a wife and child to support and replaced him in his general contracting business with his unmarried younger brother. The younger brother was far from an improvement on his predecessor. Nonetheless, he claimed, with his older brother's affirmation, that the position was essential war work and that he, himself, was indispensable.

Mother Bailey conceded that some exemptions were legitimate-there was an urgent need for farm labor-but if that was the case in Ontario, then it was certainly also the case in Quebec. She looked like she was swallowing poison when she made that last statement, but she did it anyway. She may be stubborn about giving up long held views, but she will do it if the proof of their falsehood is too great to ignore. She never was afraid of facing unpleasant facts.

Mr. Grady coldly thanked her for her contribution to the discussion and asked Max if he had more to say. Max admitted that during the war he might have agreed with Mr. Grady about conscription, but since then he had come to see that trying to bully French-Canadian Catholics into becoming English-speaking Protestants promised nothing but endless strife. We should remember how that kind of behavior led to Canadians killing Canadians in the streets of Quebec during the 1918 conscription riots. Max didn't believe that any of us wanted anything like that to ever happen in Canada ever again.

He paused for a moment. Not a word or a sound broke the resulting silence. All the faces in the chamber were solemn, even Mr. Grady's. Then Max continued. He believed that Sir Wilfred Laurier showed the way forward during the debate in Parliament after the riots. "What he said then is true now. 'I say that the policy that alone can unite this country is a policy of conciliation, and an appeal to all the best elements in us.' While everyone else in Parliament was hurling recriminations about Canada's present, that wise old man looked towards her future. His successors put conciliation between Quebec and the rest of Canada into practice. Old wounds have healed. Cooperation has taken the place of coercion. Because of conciliation, Canada is able to face our dangerous and troubled times united."

"I think we all admire your eloquence, Mr. Sutton," Charlie Blaine interrupted, "But, perhaps, you could explain to the Board exactly how Mrs. Bailey's French course would benefit New Bedford's children."

Of course," Max agreed. "It's our turn now to face the future. The world is growing smaller. Passenger liners will take you anywhere on the globe. Pan Am has been operating passenger flights across the Pacific for three years and will soon be starting them across the Atlantic. The BBC World Service broadcasts to every continent. The world is coming to us. People who can communicate with it in its own languages will have a tremendous advantage in life. The children of New Bedford deserve that advantage. Teaching our English speaking and French-Canadian children to communicate with each other in each other's languages is a good place to start."

Max's confidence that the School Board wouldn't turn down an additional course that the school didn't have to pay for was fully justified. Mother Bailey's proposal was accepted. Mr. Grady was the only no vote. What the Board did next came as a complete shock.

Next Week: School board surprise. Soldiers at rest. Two loving parents. Citizen Baird.