At the mid-day meal, for the second day in a row, they celebrated the Armistice. Grandma had attempted, and succeeded, in baking a light and fancy Angel Food Cake. The mood in the house was joyful, even if Viola thought her cousin Ethel was acting a bit sulky and withdrawn. Viola guessed it was difficult to celebrate anything when your brother had been killed.
In the afternoon after lunch, Mildred knocked at the front door. Viola flew to open it and escorted her cousin in from the cold. But Mildred was not her usual flibbertigibbet self. She was solemn as she removed her gloves and hat and laid them on the vestibule table.
Mildred sat on the couch and waited for the family to assemble. “I’m afraid I do not have good news,” she told them. A telegram had arrived earlier that day at the Crosby home. Flight Lieutenant Edward Crosby, just twenty-five years old, had been killed.
“But the war is over!” Viola cried, looking around at the shocked and grim faces of her mother and grandparents.
Ethel folded over onto Mildred’s lap. Mildred smoothed her sister’s hair and relayed the details, as she knew them. A training accident in England, just eleven days before Armistice.
Viola felt a wave of guilt for the celebrating and joy she had felt earlier. So much death. She wondered if any of them would ever be allowed to be happy again? Her cousin, Gordon, another of Mildred and Ethel’s brothers, had been killed the same way just six months earlier. Brave soldiers, her cousins.
Cousin Ethel was inconsolable. She lay face down on the bed with her boots on, her pillow soggy with tears.
But it wasn’t long before Mildred had pried the truth out of her.
Ethel, Mildred’s baby sister, was, unbelievably to Viola, in the family way.
“Pregnant?” she whispered.
Mildred shook her head and bemoaned. It had been a mistake after their parents died to board Ethel out to Aunt Rose. The girl had gone wild. Ethel did not possess the self-control and reserved conduct of Viola. And Aunt Rose had not been keeping close enough track of Ethel, obviously.
Down at The Dominion Bank, a group of men, who somehow saw fit to sit this war out, had welcomed young Ethel into their quarters above the bank. Apparently, Ethel had been flouncing down there and entertaining the bankers, one in particular, upstairs in his bedroom, drinking whiskey and carrying on. Really! Viola didn’t know where Ethel had learned such shocking behaviour. Now Ethel would have to be sent away. Her life was ruined.
Mildred lamented to Viola as they left Ethel crying on her bed, “I’m running out of family.”
~
For a Remembrance Day post from another year please see, “Fruit Flies”.
