Chapter 69
May Bailey to Jessie Buchanan Sept. 10, 1938
It was probably for the best that Grace has gone to Toronto to meet with Mr. Garnett at Seagate for her quarterly review of Van's business affairs. It might be good for her to be out of town even if only for a weekend. Hopefully, she will be a little less dispirited with new surroundings to engage her interest. Even the prospect seems to have helped. I think she actually got some sleep the night before she left. At least the circles under her eyes in the morning weren't as noticeable.
Grace Mainwaring to Sally Henry Sept. 12, 1938
… A change of scenery hasn't made me worry any less about Van, not after the news that he and the Mac-Paps are on the front line again and fighting for their lives. Seeing the business Van built up in the years before we met and being around the people who helped him do it only makes me miss him more. The liking and respect they have for him only brings home to me what I stand to lose if he never comes back.
Randolph Garnett is doing a fine job of keeping everything afloat. The sheer variety of the investments he looks after for Van is astounding. The solid course in the basics of investing that Mother gave me three years ago helps me to keep up with his review of the last quarter. So does my experience as her private secretary, but I still have to pay careful attention.
… Luc Gerrard is also in Toronto. He and Bob are planning strategy for the Conciliation Mining Company for the next quarter. They are optimistic about their prospects. All three of their mines are producing steadily and they have signed an agreement to develop a newly discovered lode of iron with the prospector who discovered it. I just wish that Hazel Shinwell wasn't one of their investors on that particular deal even if she has promised to talk to some of her connections in Quebec to get Duplessis' regime to ease off on the bureaucratic harassment of the Conciliation Mining Company operations there.
I don't deny that she knows more than any of us about the iron mining business. However, I don't trust her to just advise on the subject and enjoy the dividends. Bob admits that she offered to double her investment if he and Luc would refuse to recognize the union in the new mine. I couldn't be prouder of Bob and Luc for turning down her offer. They both promised to be on the lookout for skullduggery from her. I hope so. She might be offering honey now, but it may only be to disguise the taste of poison.
I reminded my brother and his partner of how she had forced the Landis family out of their logging business. They agreed that guiding the favorite son into a guaranteed-to-fail business venture in order to force him to recoup his losses by selling his vital shares of stock cheap was hardly a sign of trustworthiness. Bob assured me that he and Luc have no such weaknesses for her to exploit. Of course, she might just be trying to put herself in a good position to ask for our help with whatever scheme she might plan against her brother in the future. If she is, I would just as soon my family stayed out of that quarrel.
Luc is disturbed because he and his father are still on speaking terms. Hugo Gerrard sees his son's break with him to establish his own business as a heartless betrayal of trust-and respects him for it. He sees it as a sign that Luc is learning what it takes to be a good businessman. Luc loves his father but isn't sure that he wants that kind of respect.
I couldn't help wondering how Hugo Gerrard came by his devil take the hindmost attitude. Luc explained. His great grandfather, Alcee Gerrard, was a habitant with too many children for his small farm to support. One of his sons, Theophile, moved to Montreal and, eventually, started a tavern and a family. Theophile was content to be the jolly host at a popular gathering place and the husband of Luc's wise and thoughtful grandmother for over fifty years.
His oldest son, Hugo, was not so content with his lot. He wanted to be rich and powerful like the financial and industrial titans of his youth. He often criticized his father for lacking ambition. Luc defended his grandfather in their arguments on this subject by pointing out that he died happy and beloved by everyone who knew him. Hugo has never cared about being beloved and the excitement of the scramble for wealth seems to be all the happiness he needs.
When he bought a tavern of his own, he used it for different purposes, taking advantage of his customers' business gossip to do well in the stock market. With his profits, he bought more taverns and then a brewery and a distillery to supply them. Rumor has it that he obtained his first mining claim by staking a skilled card cheat in a rigged backroom poker game in one of his taverns.
Luc blames his father's underhanded business practices for the fact that he isn't married. Apparently, he was in love with a beautiful girl named Annette Cordier. "Her eyes were brown, not blue like yours, but they had the same warmth. I wanted desperately to marry her, and she felt the same way about me. Her father might have overlooked the fact that my mother was an English-Canadian Protestant-she did convert to Catholicism. However, he refused to ignore my father's connections to unsavory underworld characters. He viewed his constant efforts to ingratiate himself with the wealthy Anglo-Canadian families of Montreal and the Catholic Church at the same time as two-faced. Annette wouldn't go against her father. She married a pleasant young man. He'll be a-mid level purchasing manager until he dies or retires. They have two children. It isn't a grand romance, but they are content." Luc stared fondly into the fire. "She's started to develop a double chin and put on a few pounds around the hips, but her eyes are just as warm as they ever were."
I couldn't help sympathizing. I remember how hard it was to realize that Judd and I had drifted away from each other during high school or to accept after Del left that he was lost to me. I suppose that I should end this with some remark about how much Van means to me, but I am afraid to. Considering where he is right now, it seems too much like tempting fate.
Always your friend,
Grace Mainwaring
PS I didn't expect to walk into a marital disagreement between Ollie and Marjorie on my return to New Bedford. Marjorie wants to go back to work in the mine office now that Mother has agreed to offer her a job there. Her parents are willing to help out with Jacob and the new child when he or she comes. It won't be easy, but her sister more or less brought up two children on her own after her husband died. At least Marjorie has Ollie as well as her family to help her.
However, Ollie is reluctant. I stopped in at his garage during lunch to talk with him about it. He thinks that if his wife works outside the home, it reflects on his ability to provide. "What kind of man can't support his children unless his wife goes to work?"
This wasn't the first time I had seen Ollie doubt himself or the first time that the answer to his doubts was obvious to anyone who knew him. "A man who isn't to blame for the fact that we're in a depression and money is tight everywhere. A man with a big enough heart to want to open his home to a child who has none. A loving husband and father. No one who matters will think less of you or Marjorie for doing what you have to do to support your family."
From the Memoirs of Grace Bailey -
On September 21, 1938, after a week behind the front, Van and his comrades in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion came out of reserve for the last time. Along with the rest of the XVth International Brigade, by now reduced to battalion strength, they took a position on a line in the Sierra de Caballos. After throwing together makeshift defenses of sandbags and the rubble left by previous bombardments across the bare, sun-scorched hill they occupied, they settled down to wait for whatever came.
Whatever turned out to be the news that they and the rest of the battalions of the International Brigades would be relieved the next day. All the foreigners in the brigades were to be honorably discharged and sent home as soon as arrangements could be made to repatriate them. Before Van and his comrades could digest this welcome news, murderous waves of artillery fire came down on their heads. A savage infantry assault followed soon after all the way across the front of the XVth International Brigade. The Mac-Paps were driven from their first line, but after desperate fighting and a final air bombardment by the fascists held the second. At the same time, the battalions on either side, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and the British Battalion, were broken and sent fleeing.
The last battle of the International Brigades was over. Afterwards, the vacant-eyed survivors of the Mac-Paps, a pitiful few, looked down on a hillside carpeted with their own and the enemy's dead and wounded. That night, after being relieved, they trudged through darkness away from their last line down the back of the hill they had held with blood and heartbreak. At the bottom, they turned towards the Ebro.
Less than a week later, I answered a knock at the front door, mentally reminding myself to buy new batteries for the doorbell. The shock of seeing Marcel Castineau in his Western Union uniform standing on the front porch made me dizzy with fear. I have no idea why I didn't faint on the spot. Instead, I steadied myself and reluctantly took the telegram from his outstretched hand.
In two weeks: Death on a hillside. Ollie's wit. A haunted soldier.
