Mystical Rose by Richard Scrimger

Author:Richard Scrimger [Scrimger, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-67487-4
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2001-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

Soldiers die away from the field of battle. Traffic accidents happen in wartime. Soldiers on leave are still subject to the laws of chance and human nature. They die at the hands of careless drivers and jealous husbands and stick-up artists. They slip in bathrooms, get bitten by mad dogs, and succumb to fatal diseases. They get caught in machinery, burn to death, and fall out of things from great heights or at high speeds.

A policeman with a round red face sat on the chesterfield in our living room, holding his cap in his hands while he told me what had happened to Robbie. An embarrassed policeman. I would have been in shock, I suppose, worrying about whether I should offer him tea or a drink. Wondering about the correct reaction to tragic news.

This is what the policeman told me.

Robbie and young Sam were crossing Queen Street in front of City Hall around ten o’clock that Thursday night. Sam had been here to dinner — he was a shipmate of Robbie’s, another sub-lieutenant. A nice young man from a small prairie town who wanted to see a bit of Toronto before going back to the ship. He had eaten an extra portion of macaroni and cheese, and an extra slice of canned meat. Harriet had eyed him all through dinner, fourteen years old she would have been, swooning with everyone else over James Mason and Lew Ayres. I suppose Sam did look a little bit like young Dr. Kildare.

Queen Street was empty at ten o’clock at night, except for a car with a very drunk man at the wheel. The car was stopped, and the man was trying to close a door that didn’t want to stay closed. He tried with the window down and the window up, and every time he slammed the door shut it opened again, and he fell out of the car. Robbie and Sam — his full name was Sam Howe, he ended the war as a captain with a medal for valour — were waiting for an eastbound streetcar. They watched from the corner stop, applauding, as Sam told it later, at Robbie’s funeral, when this unnamed drunk man finally got the door closed from outside the car. Realizing his situation, he ran around, but the door on the other side of the car — the only other door — was locked. He swore cheerfully, ran back, opened the driver-side door, got in, closed the door after him, and fell out when it banged open. The man lay on the pavement, his sides convulsing as he laughed.

Robbie and his friend decided to help. Sam got into the car and started the engine. Then he got out, and together he and Robbie bundled the man into the driver’s seat. Then they slammed the door and stood back as the car lurched forward. A successful operation, only Robbie’s coat was caught in the locked door. And as the car went forward so did he, knocking on the window to attract the man’s attention.

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