Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“Is going well,” he murmurs, sounding flustered.

“What about Xang and Yia Pao there?” The camera pans to the man and his son before returning to Brid and Josef. “How are they adapting to life in the north?”

“Going well,” he repeats. By now he looks rather ill.

“Riveting commentary. What about you, Lenka?” Brid looks toward the camera and cocks an eyebrow. “Any reaction to the rumour that Yia Pao’s sweet on you?”

“Cameraman must not talk,” insists Lenka’s voice, and the scene abruptly ends.

The reel is miraculous. The sounds that come to Maggie as she sits before the editing machine in the barracks emanate not from an audio cassette but from the film itself. Super 8 has taken a leap forward, leaving the silent era for the age of talkies. No longer will she need to labour at synching voices and images. When Fletcher presented her with the new camera during his last visit to the farm, he was eager to point out this advance, so enthusiastic that she worried it was a sign he still wanted to get back together. Later, she overheard him talking to Brid about the dating pool in Boston and decided it would be all right.

The next shot traces the horizon, capturing buds on cherry saplings planted last summer and spared from the fire, while in the background lie the foundations of the old house, cordoned off by a chain-link fence. The camera moves more slowly than if Maggie were shooting, and at first she assumes it’s due to Lenka’s inexperience. Then she wonders if Lenka just has a different way of looking at the world, more leisurely, contemplative. At such a pace, what might she notice that Maggie misses? When faced with a shot of herself walking down the driveway to the mailbox, Maggie is forced to study things at Lenka’s speed, and to her surprise she discovers that the limp she gained from the fire is barely noticeable now.

Once the reel comes to an end, she stretches and yawns. The others won’t be back for an hour, having ceded the barracks to her so she can work at the editing machine for the afternoon. From the direction of the new house comes the intermittent bang of hammers. The walls around her are decorated with finger-painted pictures of eggs and rabbits in preparation for Easter, and the area near the door is tracked with mud from little boots. Now that the place is in the middle of a construction zone, the floors are never clean, and there are weeks to go before it’s over. Two little children and three adults living in one room with only makeshift dividers to mark out separate spaces for them. Even life last summer was uncluttered in comparison. Maggie wonders what George Ray will make of things when he arrives next week.

Not for the first time, she imagines him watching the film she has put together. Could it be that she’s hoping to please him with it? Perhaps that’s why she lent the camera to Lenka so easily after feeling so possessive of the previous one. Maybe a part of her wanted to be filmed and put up onscreen for George Ray to consider along with the tree buds and other things of vernal beauty.

She shouldn’t have such thoughts. He hasn’t given any sign that he’s coming back to be with her. The one time they talked on the phone, it was to confirm the details of his contract. In his letters, he has told her of trying to work things out with Velma, and he has said that if he could find a job in Newcross that paid half as well, he wouldn’t be coming to Canada. But the letters’ tone was strangely impersonal, as if someone was reading over his shoulder while he wrote.

She shouldn’t waste time mulling it over. Given his situation, she can’t expect anything. A married man, a father, one who lives half the year in another country. He and Maggie won’t have time alone together anyhow, at least not until the house is finished; they’ll be sharing the barracks with Brid and Yia Pao and the kids. But there’s plenty of room if one doesn’t put much stock in privacy. Even with five of them, they fill only half of the long dining table. Eyeing the vacant end of it at meals, Maggie has sometimes imagined going next door to invite Frank Dodd for dinner. The last few months, she has often seen him shovelling his driveway, but there has been no sign of Lydia, and Maggie wonders whether she’s still in California or back with her mother in Toronto. Maggie hasn’t forgiven her for the graffiti; perhaps eventually she’ll manage it. One day the girl and her father could be sitting there with the rest of them.

It shouldn’t seem necessary to fill out the table, though. Whenever Maggie has felt a return of the summer’s worry about needing more people, she has staved it off. This time they’re going to do things differently. She doesn’t know exactly how; she has no grand vision, no great plans. There’s only a desire for the people who are here to make a life for themselves, ragtag bunch that they are.

Attaching another reel to the editing machine, she hits the switch, then watches Yia Pao and Lenka as they squat by a wooden pallet that holds a stack of terracotta bricks. Yia Pao is drawing in the mud with a twig, sketching out a diagram of the kiln he’s going to build. He traces a curving line to show Lenka how heat will move through the chamber. Then he adds two stick figures beside the kiln and whispers something that makes Lenka laugh. A moment later she apprehends the camera’s presence and waves it away.

Yia Pao never appears bothered by Maggie’s filming. He neither mugs nor shies from it, seeming instead to take for granted that what they’re doing on the farm deserves to be recorded. In the same way, whenever Maggie talks of expanding the garden and selling vegetables at a stand on the highway, he nods in full expectation of success. He doesn’t worry that they’ll never stop depending on Fletcher’s charity and goodwill. He’s sure her father’s insurance money will come through soon. It would be tempting to attribute his optimism to the contrast between his life now and the one in Laos, but Brid is just the same. Ever since leaving the hospital, she’s been manic with industry, confident they’re going to make things work. Maggie wonders if she’s the only one who worries that all Brid’s energy might come with some future cost.

It’s a shame to be so doubtful. Brid’s happy, after all. She doesn’t seem to mind that there has been no word from Wale, no trace, no news of a body to identify in the Vientiane morgue. She never even speaks of him. Sometimes Maggie fantasizes about going to Laos and trying to find him, maybe even travelling to the mission and asking about her father, but it would be too dangerous and she suspects she wouldn’t discover anything. Even if she were to see the refugee camp, the river, and the jungle trail with her own eyes, they wouldn’t give her what she really wants: a glimpse of what her father was thinking in his last moments; whether his mind went to his family or to God, whether he looked back on his life with remorse or gratitude.

Across the barracks, the telephone starts to ring. When she says hello, she hears George Ray’s voice. He has never called before, and she’s a little embarrassed by how glad she is that it’s him. Then she thinks of the expense and offers to phone back.

“It’s all right,” he says. “I can’t speak long.”

“Is something the matter? You’re still coming, aren’t you?”

He laughs. “You sound as though you are eager for me to be there.”

“Well, I am,” she says, feeling caught out but glad of it. “I know we’re supposed to be professional with one another now, but I can admit that I want to see you, can’t I?”

“Yes, of course. I want to see you, too. Why do you think I’m ringing like this?”

“Are we making a mistake?” she asks. “I mean, with you spending the summer here?”