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

his boy’s cross. Audrey Nial would pile blue geraniums between two white crosses. If she had leftovers Louise got those. Mrs McLoughlin was always good for a piece of fruit cake. Often it was Jackson with a bag of sweets; Jackson holding out his white paper bag to Joy or Audrey or whoever else happened to be visiting. That was grief ’s good side.
    It was Billy Pohl who caught her crying at the cemetery one afternoon. Billy told her he wasn’t pushing anything at her—but she might think about coming and sitting with his Quakers.
    â€˜And do what, Billy?’
    â€˜Nothing. You just sit and be quiet.’
    Quiet had a roof and it had walls around it, and you could sit inside of it. She had never thought of silence as a place. One of the Friends, Tom Williams, told her, ‘The place is in your heart, Louise. Everything else is just clutter.’
    By November 1916 there were only two boys of enlistment age left in the district. Billy Pohl and Henry Graham. No one wanted them dead. On the other hand, those who had lost boys were heard to mumble…People wondered how the Quakers could pray for those foreign boys that their own boys had gone halfway around the world to shoot. It didn’t make much sense when you thought about it—especially to those who had already lost their own.
    That might have been the end of it but for a rumour that the recruitment office at Egger’s ‘cut and shave’ was soon to close. All the important news flowed through Egger’s—wool prices, coal volumes, marriages, deaths, births, and, significantly, which boys had still to sign up.
    White feathers were sent Billy and Henry in the mail. People weren’t shy about making their thoughts known either and often within earshot. Billy Pohl heard himself described as ‘death’s guide’. The association wasn’t so unreasonable. The first thing the officers did on arriving at the station at Little River with their envelope of condolences was look around for Billy Pohl. Billy was the station guard and knew where everyone in town lived and the shortest route to any house. So when grieving families played back the moment their lives took an unforgettable turn there was the clipped figure in uniform, and there in the background stood Billy Pohl.
    On 10 December 1916, Billy Pohl and Henry Graham received letters of official notice that they had been called up. The letter asked them to present themselves at Egger’s. Tom Williams went along to speak on their behalf and to explain the ‘mix-up’. Billy Pohl and Henry Graham hadn’t signed up for anything. Without a word the Recruitment Officer opened his drawer and retrieved two sheets of paper and dragged his finger down to the line with Henry and Billy’s forged signatures. The meeting had been reasonably amicable up to now. Tom Williams told the RO , ‘You might as well know you can place a rifle in their hands but I can tell you right now they won’t shoot.’ Royden Thompson’s grandfather was in the chair. Two other men as well sat waiting with magazines open in their laps listening to the snip, snip of Egger’s scissors. It was perfectly obvious to all what had happened.
    Louise came home to find Billy and Henry and Tom Williams in her kitchen. There was an air of gloom. Billy sat chewing his nails. Henry with his head down, scrutinising the floorboards. She did not need to be told the outcome. She boiled some water. She set out some cups and saucers. She poured the tea. Finally, she said, ‘I know a place. A hiding place.’ There was a cave her father had once pointed out to her. It was five miles outside town. You could stand above it, right over its lip, without knowing what lay beneath you. From the sea it looked like a half-closed mouth; but that was from a moki reef half a mile out. One moment there was the sheer beauty of all that sky and sea and the next you were struck by a