Howard Norman - What Is Left the Daughter

We each were issued a one-piece dark blue uniform with an accordion waist. Also dark blue caps with Harbor Assoc. stitched in cursive across the front. We were given galoshes, a rain slicker, thick sweater, insulated vest, five pairs of woolen socks and two pairs of waterproof gloves, and if you lost an item of clothing, Harbor Associates replaced it but docked the price from your next paycheck, no exceptions. I admit that sometimes I wore one of the pairs of socks or galoshes or a sweater outside of work, as part of my day-to-day wardrobe.

I don't know why I just used the past-tense "wore" when I should've used "wear," because I'm about to enter my eighteenth year as a detritus gaffer. In fact, along with Hermione and Tom, I'm a senior gaffer and have received an increase in salary — beginning at $18 per week — every year, plus there's the Christmas bonus. Philosophically speaking, in 1949 when I first landed the gaffing job, I remember feeling that I'd come up in the world from being in Rockhead Prison, but I'd come down in the world from building sleds and toboggans.

Considering what I do for a living, I realize it's a pretty awful pun to say that motion pictures are the one thing that buoys up my spirits. Nonetheless it's true. I trust that your mother told you that for fifteen years now, I've put $20 a month into a Halifax bank account under your name. But aside from that, motion pictures are my one sizable expense. With rare exceptions, I take supper at home, and I'm provided breakfast and lunch by Harbor Associates, except on Saturday and Sunday, but I seldom work weekends anyway.

From my first day back in Halifax, I wondered if Cornelia Tell would ever take up her own invitation to go to the pictures with me. And for four years, though I hadn't seen her, we stayed in touch. Letters and the occasional telephone conversation. My letters were all written on hotel stationery. She did visit Halifax a number of times, but did not telephone. Her choice, and her own business. But she'd always write and tell me which movie she'd seen, and then I'd go see it, too. Then I'd write her a letter and ask her what she thought of The Return of Monte Cristo or A Notorious Gentleman or Holiday in Mexico, which starred Walter Pidgeon and had Xavier Cugat and his orchestra in it. Or The Strange Woman, with my favorite actress of all time, Hedy Lamarr, who I thought was the second most beautiful woman in the world next to Tilda. All of those movies played at the Casino Theatre. I'd ask Cornelia's opinion of Nobody Lives Forever and The Show-Off. And I remember a sign out front of the Capital Theatre for Undercurrent, starring Robert Taylor and Katharine Hepburn (who grated on my nerves), that read NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN. The Shocking Miss Pilgrim with Betty Grable, Notorious with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, No Leave, No Love with Van Johnson. Believe me, Marlais, when I say that Cornelia Tell was generous with opinions about movies, pages and pages worth, on everything from A to Z.

Cornelia never once apologized for not contacting me on her visits to Halifax, and I thought, Well, when she's ready she will contact me, that's just the way she is. Finally, on the evening of January 8, 1953, she telephoned my room at my most recent hotel — the Glendale, on Hollis Street — and said, "I was thinking how about tomorrow, since it's a Friday and I could get weekend rates?" And so I met her at the Halifax bus station, her bus roughly ten minutes late.

I carried her small suitcase to the Dresden Arms Hotel, at 103 Dresden Street, where I'd arranged a room for her. We had supper at Halloran's restaurant on Sackville Street, and she caught me up on this and that news from Middle Economy. For whatever reason, Marlais, she did not mention you or Tilda at dinner. From ice water to dessert, it was as if we'd read each other's minds, that certain subjects should wait until later in the evening, when we could sit for tea back at her hotel. Toward the end of our meal, she reached into her handbag and took out a piece of paper on which she'd written the schedule of pictures then playing in town.

"Now, my preference would be 49th Parallel, a war movie," she said. "It originally came out in 1941 in the U.S., but for some reason it's only just got to Nova Scotia. Movies keep the war with us, huh?"

"I've never heard of it," I said.

"Let me warn you in advance — it's got a German U-boat in it."

"I've seen a lot of war pictures, Cornelia."

"I just don't want you to be put off this one and want to walk out. I go to enough movies alone. So I don't want to start out not alone and then suddenly it's the opposite, you know?"

"I wouldn't think of doing that."

49th Parallel was playing at the Casino Theatre, seven blocks from Halloran's, and had showings seven days a week starting at 1 P.M., including one at midnight. We arrived a few minutes early for the 7:15, and when I paid for the tickets, Cornelia said, "Why, thank you, Wyatt. I'd bat my eyes at you if I was thirty years younger." At the concession stand we each purchased a box of buttered popcorn, and Cornelia a box of bonbons, too. The usher escorted us until Cornelia said, "I'll sit right here, on the aisle." I sat next to her. The theater was quite crowded.

There was a Movietone newsreel to start things. This was followed by two Looney Tunes cartoons. One was a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd called What's Opera, Doc? in which Elmer sings in Wagnerian tones, "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!"

Then 49th Parallel came on screen. Look, it wasn't a great movie by any means, though it had a lot of witty repartee and such, and parts were truly laughable, like how the crew of the German U-boat— U-37— all spoke British English. I suppose they couldn't get authentic German actors for those roles, and why offer good money to the devil? But they might at least have required that the actors they did hire try their best to sound German. Maybe they thought even fake German accents were too painful to bear in 1941. Who knows?

Basically, what happens is, U-37 has wandered up the St. Lawrence River, gets thrown so far off course that it's finally stranded in Hudson's Bay — icebergs all around — where it's sighted, strafed and bombarded by Canadian planes, and finally sunk. Some of the crew is killed, but the captain and others manage to escape and hide out in isolated villages, on the lam, and from there the story contains all sorts of adventures. In the end, good triumphs over evil.

Like I said, I wasn't much taken by 49th Parallel. I do remember the first ten or so minutes quite vividly, however. U-37 torpedoes a passenger ship in the St. Lawrence. It takes survivors on deck, the Nazi captain questions a few, and then they are set free, sent off in life rafts. U-37 slices down into the water and disappears, and soon a rescue plane is seen approaching. Happy result — for those Canadians, anyway. Right then and there I realized that this incident depicted on screen would have had to take place before 1940, or maybe in 1940, because not long after that, U-boats didn't pick up survivors. I'd learned that from a newspaper article on the wall of my uncle's shed.

In the audience during 49th Parallel there'd been the occasional hissing and booing. And I heard Cornelia laugh and weep and say "Bastards" a few times. On the walk back to her hotel, I discovered she'd already put things into balance. "Well, I won't see that one again," she said. "But I got something from it."

It was only a movie story, so not entirely dedicated to the claims of fact, Marlais — I know that. And there was one particular line of dialogue that was definitely false to history, and to prove it you just have to look at a framed photograph behind the bar at Rigolo's Pub right here in Halifax.