Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance by Lloyd Jones Read Free Book Online

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    Louise’s mother did what widows did in those days and opened her house to boarders and travellers. Two years after they laid the river boulder at her husband’s grave she ‘succumbed’ to the flu and was buried in a grave next to her husband.
    People said they hadn’t been especially close.
    The other headstones in the cemetery record the names of the kids Louise went to school with.These are more ‘memory stones’. The graves are empty since the bones of the boys she sat with in class at the Little River School are scattered in fields across Northern France.
    In 1915, two years after her mother’s death, Louise stood on the road leading out of Little River to watch the boys from her childhood ride out to the war in Europe. They all looked so pleased to be on their way.
    Boyd Robertson broke ranks to ride over to her. He bent down from his saddle to receive her kiss.
    â€˜Thank you, Louise. I won’t forget you,’ he said.
    When news of Boyd’s death came back, Louise liked to think of him reviving that kiss and taking it with him to his last breath. She hoped that when his moment came Boyd gave a sigh of satisfaction as though at the end of a meal and simply closed his eyes.
    She saw Royden Jackson searching for some fitting gesture. At the last moment he thought to take off his neck chain and hand it to his mother for safe-keeping. The hell-raising McCracken boys made themselves popular by handing their childhood toys— fishing tackle, a wooden boat on wheels, a teddy bear—to the small boys lining the road out of town. There were others she’d known to cry from a cut knee, or down at the beach to run from the jaws of a shore break with a look of white terror. Boys who believed in the undertow troll and who sweated in their beds at night when the wind in the eaves grew shrill.
    Davy McLoughlin’s tripod went with him to Europe and returned without him. The attached brown tag read: ‘This is the property of…’ The last Louise saw of him his face was filled with technical considerations to do with light and shadow. He looked like an angel.
    She saw the Nial twins ride out side by side. One pale eye each. One corner of a lipless mouth met the other. Limp brown hair held the package together. The face of their mother Audrey appeared flat and spread out.
    Everyone worried about the boys. Some more than others. For example, the McCracken boys were given every chance of surviving, even of taking over the world inside six months, while Bunny Sinclair, with his buttoned-up collar and red cheeks, might as well have worn a target on his chest. No one could see how he would get on away from his pigeons.
    Boyd was first to be killed. Louise stood in a group of people at the top of the street to see at which house the officer with his envelope of regrets would stop. Seeing it was Hilary Robertson’s, Boyd’s mother, people breathed out their relief and, silent and remorseful, stared down at the ground in their shame.
    A Quaker friend of Louise’s, Billy Pohl, was asked to locate Roydon’s father in the public bar. He walked up to Jackson and whispered that he had a visitor who wanted a word with him outside. ‘Well bring him in here!’ boomed Jackson. Billy leant closer to whisper, ‘The man is in uniform.’ Jackson went quietly after that. By the time he reached the door his face had sectioned off and different parts were trembling. Those he passed on the way to the door either closed their eyes or looked away. Billy stayed back. He thought he’d wait in the bar—though he didn’t drink in those days. The publican came out from behind the bar to close the curtains. Everyone braced themselves. Those who heard Jackson’s weeping never forgot the ‘sound of creaking ruin’.
    So these days Louise had company in the cemetery. She would sit by her parents’ stone and over there Jackson would crouch by