Waiting for Time Read Free Page B

the well-groomed, confident woman who, just minutes earlier, had whirled through fall sunshine admiring the world.
    “I buried it with him. I think that's what Saul would have wanted—don't you?” Charlotte says—she who never hesitates, never makes a false step. Pretending to be unaware of her daughter's anger she returns to the drawer, pulls a folded piece of paper from a file. She looks smug, as if she has read Lav's thoughts, as if producing this scrap of the past negates all she has concealed.
    “Here—this might be what you need. Anyway, it'll have to do. It's all I have—all I ever had—relating to David Andrews—David Andrews!” Charlotte repeats his name, the echo of a memory flits across her face but is gone before Lav can catch its essence.
    “I don't even remember what he looked like—but then, I didn't know your father well.” She passes Lav a single sheet of pale blue tissue, brushes invisible dust from her dress and goes to sit in a chair across the room.
    It is a short letter, written on one side of the paper and folded to make its own envelope. It is addressed in green ink to Mrs. David Andrews, c/o Mr. and Mrs. Ki Andrews, Cape Random, Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland. Below the address two black-smudged marks indicate that the enclosed message has been read and censored by the War Bureau of Great Britain.
    Lav unfolds the limp tissue and reads aloud: “My Darling Lottie.” An unexpected salutation. She glances up, hoping to see some acknowledgement of this younger self, this darling Lottie, on her mother's face. But Charlotte sits unsmiling, detached. Her daughter might be reading yesterday's newspaper or a discarded shopping list.
    I know my darling you must have had a rough crossing. I did not dare tell you how rough it was going to be. But now you're home and it is such a comfort to me knowing you're there. I am sure Mamma and Pop will take good care of you. There is no safer place in the world than the Cape. It makes me feel better just to think about you there—looking out to sea from my room or walking up the beach behind our house. Sometimes I wake up thinking this is all a dream—or one of them stories poor old Sollie Gill used to read out to us in school. I wish it was. Tell Sollie I spoke kindly of him, that will tickle him.
    Here at [a small hole has been razored out of the letter] we are still training and still all together but will probably be split up soon. The Limies have great sport making mock of the way we people talk and the things we do not know about. We Newfoundlanders can hardly wait to get them in boats—then they will see what we are good at! Tell Cle I said he is not to join up.
    Tell Mamma I misses her meals. We're getting whale meat every second day. They calls it something else altogether—but that's what it is—whale meat. Jim Way says it must be stuff harpooned before we was born!
    I think about you all the time—about being with you on the Cape when this is all over.
    Love, David.
    It is more than Lav had expected—much more. Her hand holding the blue paper begins to shake. She can see him—a boy, almost a child—tongue between teeth, considering each formal sounding word, scratching each round careful letter in green ink on the blue paper—probably both borrowed.
    She reads the letter again, slowly. She feels old, tired—she is old—thirty-seven—infinitely older than this homesick, lovesick boy.
    “Who was Cle?” she asks.
    “His younger brother. Cle had already gone in to St. John's—lied about his age and signed up. That letter took five months to get from England to the Cape. You'd already been born and your father was probably dead by the time I read it.”
    “I see.” She waits, hoping her mother will say something more. She doesn't. “Why did you leave?”
    “Anyone in their right mind would have left.”
    Their business together has been attended to. Charlotte drops the empty folder into a wastepaper basket. “Keep the letter if you