The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel Read online

  Dedication

  For Joe

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  The boy had been laughing under the clouds on a flat gray sea as his father sang an old and funny song about all the fishes climbing upon the seaweed trees. But then the sun broke through in a banded stream that coursed across the water to their boat. His father stopped singing and stopped rowing and looked about. And the boy stopped swinging his legs beneath his seat and looked about as well. His hair ruffled in the breeze. All around them the sun revealed water dancing in a way not firmly lashed to the here and now. It mesmerized the senses, suffusing everything in its catchy-caught ripples upon the open water, so that there was nothing but the dance.

  His father drew in the heavy oars, and the sound of their smooth, worn wood slipped into the boat. The light was golden against the floorboards. The spangled sea was so bright they could not tear their eyes from it—rippling, flickering, drawing them in. His father drew the boy toward him without taking his eyes off the silver sea. The boy turned between his father’s long legs and rested a small hand on his father’s knee. His father circled him with his arm and felt the boy’s heart beat into his hand.

  In all this world there was only the gently rocking boat and dancing water. All time—past, present and future—gathered and expanded and released. There were no boundaries, and there was no fear of being without them.

  The boy wanted to reach out to catch the water’s dance, but more than that he wanted to remain forever leaning lightly against the rough wool of his father’s shirt, with his father’s hand resting against his chest.

  They stayed like that, the boy and his father, until a wide breeze blew over the boat, and his father said quietly, “We have witnessed God’s beauty, had an encounter with the Divine.” Or maybe that’s only what he thought. What he may have said was nothing at all as the breeze freshened and a deep blue returned to the water, and the waves grew rougher and stopped shimmering. He took up the oars and shoved them through the wooden pins. The boy turned and hopped back up on his seat. His father pulled in long smooth strokes and sang once again of all the fishes in the sea climbing upon the seaweed trees.

  ONE

  February 1st, 1917

  Western Front, France

  Angus MacGrath unbuttoned his greatcoat and leaned back against the one tree left on the bank of a river he did not know. Not far downstream, a private, standing waist-deep in the river, squeezed a bar of soap between his hands. It shot upward, and four or five other soldiers lunged for it, splashing and falling over themselves. Their uniforms, boots, and rifles lay in a heap by a jagged row of blackened tree stumps. Under a weak early morning sun, bands of mist rose from the cold river, occasionally engulfing the soldiers so that they took on a dream-like quality of white arms and torsos appearing and disappearing.

  Above the river on a low stone bridge sat the engine of the troop train where, a day into their journey, it had lurched to a stop, unable or unwilling to carry on. Sunk between endless flat fields, the tracks ran east-northeast toward the Front. Angus flipped open his old pocket compass for confirmation, for comfort, really, and slipped it back in his pocket. He figured they’d be on the march soon, the engine still on the bridge.

  While repairs were attempted, the ranks milled about the train, grousing over the delay, but grateful for it all the same. And for the sudden break in the weather. Housed in drafty huts in a camp thick with mud near Le Havre, most of them hadn’t bathed since they’d crossed the Channel and arrived on French soil five days earlier. Those in the river were taking up a challenge. “Baptism and bless me!” one shouted, wading in. “Sweet Jesus, it’s freezing!” cried another, plunging in after him. In the train, the owl-faced ranking officer drank steadily from his flask.

  Like Angus, the boys in the river and those cheering them on from the bridge were fresh recruits from battalions broken up after training in England to be bled into existing battalions. Most would join the 61st. But Angus had been singled out and reassigned to replace a dead lieutenant in the 17th Royal Nova Scotia Highlanders—a decision no more random than any he’d encountered since joining up. If there was one thing Angus, now Lieutenant MacGrath, had learned, it was that there was no predicting how things would turn out. Of all the predictions he might have made, himself as an officer in the infantry was not among them.

  In the state of suspension between the world as he’d known it and the absolute unknown, Angus considered the interplay of light and mist, the hazy edges, blank spaces and mute eddies at the river’s edge. Above him, the sky turned a gauzy gray, and a fine rain fell. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

  Rain. It had been a constant in the collected bits and pieces of the past few months. It had slicked the deck of the ship that carried him to England and slanted in rushes off the tents in the camp where he’d held a rifle for the first time, adjusted to the heft and length and balance of it, and where, surprisingly, he’d found he was a good shot. And where, not surprisingly, he’d found a heady release in charging straw-filled burlap bags, bayonet plunging into their sodden bellies.

  Rain and rage. Rain and regret. He’d been sent over with assurances in a letter from Major Gault to a Colonel Chisholm that he’d be a cartographer. In London. Behind the lines. But Gault was unknown to Chisholm, and there being no shortage of cartographers, Angus had been dispatched to the infantry, where shortages were never-ending. “The infantry?” A chasm of disbelief had opened up.

  “You heard me,” Chisholm’s adjutant had snapped. “You can bloody well draw terrain maps on the field. Meantime, the infantry can use your other skills—the ones you’ll get soon enough.”

  And get them he did, with the rest of the 183rd, in an onslaught of rain that left bedding heavy and damp, uniforms drenched, and the camp awash in mud. Good preparation for the Front, he was told.

  Rain had dripped steadily into a bucket by the major’s desk the day Angus was told he’d been promoted to lieutenant. “Your education is one thing,” the major had sighed. “Not orthodox exactly, with time in divinity school, but nothing in this war is orthodox. This is a citizen army, and we—”

  Can’t be too choosey?

  “What I mean to say is that combined with your age and maturity—and the fact that you’ve been a captain of, what was it, a cargo vessel? In the Maritimes?” He tapped his pen on the desk.

  “Coastal trader. Nova Scotia, yes sir,” Angus answered. Small schooner, crew of three, nothing grand, he might have added.

  “Understand you were headed for cartography.” The major coughed, put the pen down, picked it up again. “Look, you seem to have your head on straight. You’re steady, well educated, and Sergeant Campbell thinks, as do I, that you’ll be well placed as a first lieutenant.”

  Campbell? Campbell the bulldog had recommended him? That ver
y morning he’d slapped up glossy photos on an easel, depicting in revolting detail just what a bayonet could and should do. Disemboweling men was quite another thing from ripping through straw targets. When he’d closed by saying the pictures were of Allied soldiers, he had men frothing for revenge. Head down, Angus had not joined in. Aww . . . squeamish? Campbell had mocked. Angus had known better than to reply. Squeamish was the least of it.

  “Well?” the major asked impatiently. “First lieutenant. What have you to say to that?”

  Angus had had little to say. Lieutenants were as expendable as the rank and file—more so. They dropped like flies, leading the charge. His education was hardly the preparation called for, but at thirty-four, age he did have. “Maturity” was a kind way of putting it. What did he think? He was astounded and afraid. How exactly did one grow into the hope of taking another man’s life?

  All that was left to say was, “I’ll do my best to honor the regiment. Thank you, sir.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” the major said, turning back to his paperwork. But then looked Angus in the eye and said, “I’m sure you will, MacGrath.”

  Standing outside on the rickety steps, Angus wasn’t so sure. He turned up the collar of his coat against the heavy mist. “Lieutenant MacGrath,” he repeated softly. That night, the rain’s steady drumming took on the beat of a cold rain on the Lauralee’s canvas. It called up the rush of her bow wave curling and falling back, the lull of it transformed to repetitive regret.

  Three weeks after his promotion, on leave in London, the rain stopped and the skies suddenly cleared. All around him black umbrellas came down, were shaken and folded. People were smiling, and the puddles, shimmering on gray flagstone, took on the pale blue of the sky and caught the reds and blues and whites of the Union Jack in a child’s hand. Without effort, Angus reproduced the image in a quick sketch in a pub, right down to the fragmented reflection. He wanted to memorialize blue sky in case he never saw it again, he’d said to the amusement of his fellow officers. The drawing was in charcoal.

  Now, as the men hopped about in the cold and toweled off with an army blanket, Angus let that memory of color and reflected sky engulf him. Allowed himself the luxury of going further back—to the tall white house on the hill above the bay, and the low-roofed sheds behind it, to the sharp smell of turpentine, the twist of sable brushes in the dented tin can, the paint-splattered floorboards. And on down the hill to the stony beach where seaweed draped over itself in the low tide and where Hettie Ellen, hair coming loose in the wind, leaned against a boulder, watching Simon Peter skipping rocks with ease, one after another, three, four, five skips. And beyond them to the Lauralee, nodding at her mooring, bright work gleaming in the last, long rays of sunlight.

  Idealized images, every one. Angus knew it. He dealt in such images, after all. Could paint them, could sell them. And had. Idealized or not, they flooded through him in all their tender beauty—fragile strands of memory which even the faint crump of distant artillery could not touch—until it did, and the memories spun out and away, replaced by the unadorned image of his father, slumped at his desk, unable to comprehend how Angus could have turned against him.

  ANGUS WAS RIGHT about the train. And the march. He fell in with the rest of them and they marched fifteen miles to a railhead, arriving worn and hungry. Another troop train headed to the Front was expected, they were told, in less than an hour. Chunks of bread and fruitcake were passed out. A young soldier named Mueller fell over—with exhaustion, it was thought, or too much fruitcake. But he was burning up with fever.

  The promised train arrived. A space was cleared in the aisle so Mueller could lie flat. Angus helped him drink from his canteen and called for a blanket to put under his head, then found a seat next to a young lance corporal who said not a word. The train clacked on. Angus reached for a cigarette and pulled out the picture of Ebbin. He’d shown it to just about everyone he’d met, an automatic gesture that along with the words “Ever seen this man?” led to nothing, until he’d begun to feel as tattered at the edges as the photograph. In London, he’d finally bought a leather sleeve to keep it in. “Your brother?” people would ask, studying it. “Brother-in-law,” Angus would patiently explain. Angus, a head taller, with dark hair and darker eyes, bore no resemblance to the carefree, light-featured Ebbin, but “brother” might indeed have been as accurate. In the picture Angus stood, rope in hand, to the side of Ebbin on the deck of the Lauralee. A photographer named Klein from the States, dressed in a suit, tie askew, juggling cameras and tripod, had taken the picture and many more of Snag Harbor and the islands, hoping to turn them into picture postcards. Angus, just back from Yarmouth, was tying the boat up at Mader’s when Ebbin strolled down the wharf. The photographer instantly wanted Ebbin in the picture. Only too willing, Ebbin had hopped aboard and slung Angus’s duffel bag over his shoulder in the pose of a seaman home at last, though he was a bad sailor and prone to seasickness. Hence his grin and the wry smile on Angus’s face. The photographer wanted more pictures and suggested a sail, with Ebbin at the helm. You come along, too, he’d said to Angus as an afterthought. Ebbin had laughed out loud. Suppose we buy you a drink instead, he suggested. It’s the safer course, trust me. The photographer had readily agreed. There was a better photo, a portrait of Ebbin in uniform taken a year later, but it was this picture that Angus had chosen to bring with him.

  He slipped it back in his pocket and conjured up Ebbin waving his arm in a wide arc on the gangway of the troop ship with an enthusiasm that had vanished from his letters the minute he’d hit the Front. Ebbin Hant, on the brink of promise.

  “Off to save the world from the Hun,” he’d said, chin up, at the crowded Hant family dinner in Chester one Sunday in 1915. “Signed up yesterday.” He’d tousled the hair of the nearest young half-brother, but grew serious when he caught his father’s eye. At the head of the table, Amos Hant adjusted his great bulk. Chatter died out. “Well, boy, you go ahead,” Amos said slowly. Angus shot a look down the table at his own father, Duncan MacGrath, his boyish face grim.

  Amos pounded the table with his ham-like fist. Plates jumped. Cider splashed. “Go ahead, by God! Blast them to Kingdom come!” He stood. “To Ebbin! Make us proud!” He raised his glass and looked round the table. “To Empire, God and King!” he bellowed.

  Duncan spun a salt shaker in half-circles on the table. Hettie Ellen sat back as if she’d been shot. Everyone else, children included, raised their glasses. Stood up. “King and Country!” they said. “To Ebbin!” Ebbin cocked his head, then rose himself. “To Canada!” he said, and emptied his glass.

  Angus reached for Hettie’s hand, limp at her side, but she didn’t return his squeeze and pulled away as war talk took over, as pot roast and vegetables were served up and plates passed hand to hand down the long table.

  Elma Hant, at the opposite end of the table from Amos, excused herself to the kitchen. Angus found her leaning on the table, her raw-knuckled hands spread before her, head bowed. “Not to mind me,” she said, pushing away and straightening as he entered. “I’ll get over it.” She was a big woman, broad and tall. She looked out the window, slowly folding a towel. “I may not be Ebbin’s real mother, God rest her soul, but . . .”

  “Ebbin can take care of himself,” Angus said.

  She heaved her shoulders. “I suppose . . . Done it well enough up in the Yukon, out West.” She shook her head and met his eyes. “How’s Hettie going to manage, is what I want to know—her brother off to war? Did he think of that? And Amos. What’s to become of him if something happens? If you’d ever seen the care he took with them two as babies when he’d come to pick them up at night, scrubbing the dirt off his hands afore he touched them. Tying up their bonnet strings . . .”

  Amos Hant’s thick fingers fumbling with bonnet strings made Angus say, “The war will be over soon.”

  “They say by next Christmas, don’t they?” She shot him a hopeful look. “Or was that what they said last year?”

  “
They did, but it’ll be over soon.”

  “That’s right. Long before the younger boys are of age.” She recovered herself and said, “Now. What do you need?”

  “Only a fork.”

  She wiped her nose and opened the cupboard drawer. “Well, that’s one need I can fix up straight away. You never ask for much, Angus.” She placed a fork in his palm and folded his fingers over it.

  Late that night, back home in Snag Harbor, Angus watched Ebbin jump out of Zeb Morash’s truck at the bottom of the hill road and saunter up to the house—a dark silhouette against the moonlit water until the black spruce closed in behind him. He tried to imagine Ebbin in uniform, but couldn’t for the life of him see him succumbing to regimentation, yes sir, no sir, at the bottom of the heap.

  An hour before, in the upstairs hallway, with Young Fred’s head drooping on her shoulder, Hettie Ellen had begged Angus to change Ebbin’s mind. He’s already signed up, Angus told her. There’s no changing that. She wanted him to try anyway. Thirteen years into their marriage, she remained as much Ebbin’s sister as Angus’s wife, a fact Angus accepted as part of the bargain, a price to be paid.