It was a strange, exhilarating, wonderful, frightening week. A great effort had been made to gather all the family for Great-Aunt Nomi’s seventieth birthday in 1945. It was the first time they had all tried to get together since VE Day. How disappointing it was, to find it raining the first early August morning.

At breakfast Jean saw a crowd of cousins, first, second and third, their wives and some husbands, her parents, uncles and aunts. Jean’s brother could not come. He was represented by his wife, Cevie, and her months-old baby. Cevie was a few years older than Jean, but much prettier.

Jean listened to the talk around the table. It was the usual sort of thing. About Japan, when it would all be over, speculation and commiseration. No one really knew anything. Jean held her sticky piece of toast and jam carefully and studied Frederick. It was the first time she had seen him since his wife left him. It was the first time she had seen him since her one visit to the hospital, which did not go well. She realized he was in pain, and his anger, which she could almost taste, was not meant for her, particularly. But it still hurt. She knew her jokes were stupid, but she couldn’t say what she really wanted to say to him. It was impossible. Or was it?

A few weeks later, in writing made clumsy by splints, he wrote her a formal note of apology for his behaviour. And now he was here. As Jean watched, Cevie put together a plate and took it over to Frederick. Fredrick sat by himself on a bench in the corner, bad, burn-scarred side to the wall. His hair had come back in clumps on one side. He was still tall and strong looking. He was already smoking. Jean had a package of cigarettes in her pocket to give to Frederick. Frederick used cigarettes to fight his new-found fear of flame several times an hour.

“Enough!” Aunt Nomi declared, surprising Jean from her thoughts.

“This is a holiday, free from the news. We have had enough war. You hear? No talking about it and no papers, no listening to news broadcasts over the radio! My house, my rules.”

The rest of that day, Jean wandered from one group to another, and in the afternoon went for a walk. On her walk back from the village, she met her grandmother and mother also walking.

“We picked up a Times,” her mother said, “don’t tell your great-aunt.”

All that day, Jean had no chance to be with Frederick. She left the box of cigarettes in his room while he was elsewhere. She did not include a note. At dinner, she tried to get a seat near Frederick, but Cevie took it. Jean ended up sitting between a five year old she didn’t recognize and Grandfather.

“Let’s play tennis tomorrow,” cousin Madge said. “Can we?”

Madge was an impossible to dislike cousin, one with whom Jean was sharing a room. Only Great-Aunt Nomi and Frederick had their own rooms.

“I don’t see why not, if the rain holds off,” Aunt Nomi said about the tennis.

“The only thing is the ants,” Madge said, “I went to have a look at the court earlier, and there are some big ant hills.”

“Someone take a kettle of boiling water out, then. Get rid of the beasts,” Cevie said.

“They’re ants, not tigers,” Jean muttered.

“Eh?” said her grandfather.

“Please pass the salt,” Jean said.

Was Frederick smiling at her?

“You’ll have to come to play with us, Freddie,” Madge said, “Be my partner.”

“If we’re going to play tennis, then we should play with the best matched teams,” Cevie said. “My backhand pairs with Fred’s forehand perfectly.”

“I don’t think I’ll play,” Frederick said.

“Oh, but you have to! You’re one of our best players!”

“It’s nice of you to say that I was.”

“But you still should be!”

“I don’t think I’ll play at all,” Frederick repeated.

“Come on now,” Uncle John said, “Nothing happened to your legs and that hand has healed nicely.”

Frederick was certainly not smiling anymore. “I won’t be playing tennis,” he said, “Thank-you.”

Leave him alone, Jean thought.

Jean was not very good at tennis.

“Could we have the radio?” Grandfather said. Aunt Nomi glared. “For music,” Grandfather said hastily.

“Oh yes,” Cevie said, “Let’s dance!”

Cevie danced with Frederick, until her baby began to cry, and Cevie took it away to tend to. The second day, grey sky again. Cevie again fetched Frederick his breakfast. More walks, more rain, some desultory card games.

That evening, after dinner, the family began a chess competition. It was a tradition for which Grandfather was responsible. You won or you were eliminated. Jean was worried; while she had won in the past, she had not played for quite a while. She sat down across from her first opponent. She fumbled with the pieces, and knocked one of her bishops off the table. She won the first game quite quickly, despite her nerves. Then her second, against Madge. Jean had to wait a few minutes for her third opponent.

It was Cevie. Jean didn’t know that Cevie played chess, but now that she was playing against her, Jean would have to win. A frown was on Cevie’s face, but Jean just watched the game. Jean won. She won against Grandfather, who resigned earlier then he should have. Then she was in the final game, and her opponent sat down across from her and it was Frederick. She opened by moving the white queen’s pawn forward two spaces on the board and he immediately mirrored her.

She looked up. He was watching the board, head tilted to bring his good eye to bear on the problem. They played. They played for almost an hour and a half. The family wandered about around them. Fredrick hissed as he let go of his last moved piece. Jean competently moved her castle to checkmate his king.

“Hurray for Jee-jee!” her mother clapped.

Jean blushed. Does she have to call me that now?

Fredrick said, “Again?”

They played a second time, ended in a stalemate. The room was emptying, people moving off to bed.

“Tennis tomorrow,” Cevie said, “As soon as someone gets rid of those ants.”

“Once more,” Fredrick said.

A bubble of hope was growing in Jean’s body, somewhere near her diaphragm. It was making it hard to breath.  “Yes,” Jean said.

“How many moves can you see ahead?” Fredrick asked.

“Three, sometimes four,” Jean said. “Not so many.”

“The same,” Fredrick said, “Only possibly they are different moves.”

The third game, Fredrick won. “No!” Jean said. They were alone in the room now, and Fredrick rubbed at his forehead.

“You’ve given me a good headache,” he said.

“Knock knock!” said Jean.

“Who’s there?” she said in a deeper voice,

“Theresa!” she continued, “Theresa who? Theresa messenger for you!”

Frederick looked at her blankly.

Don’t you remember? You had a book of jokes, I was ten or eleven. We read through it all, and then we made up our own. You were twelve or thirteen. It wasn’t that long ago.

“I can put this away,” Jean said, “and get the lights. What time is it?”

“Late,” Fredrick said, “Good night, Jean.” He got up and left the room.

Jean dropped half the pieces on to the floor as she tried to cram them all back in their case at once. Holding a knight, she realized she had not wished Frederick good night in return.

After putting the game away, and taking a gulp of beer from a discarded glass, Jean stood in the hall outside the door to Frederick’s room. She dared herself to knock. Just to say good night. That was all. She imagined him lying in bed in the dark, the ember of a cigarette moving in the dim as he smoked. Could he hear her standing here? Did he have nightmares, night memories? Did he relive the bombing of his ship, the fire that tried to kill him?

Jean stood in the hall. Then a door shut loudly and voices floated through the night. Jean walked away, to the room she shared with her girl cousins. She tried not to choke aloud on the bubble that had worked its way up to her throat. When it was quiet again, a different door on the hall opened, and another young woman stepped down the way. When this woman reached Fredrick’s door, she did not hesitate, but turned the knob and went in.

And then it was the next day, the strangest, most wonderful, frightening day of the week. The next morning at breakfast, Cevie’s eyes were slightly puffy. “Baby kept me awake,” she said, although Jean hadn’t heard any baby fussing. Cevie got herself a cup of tea and walked past Fredrick in his corner without speaking to him.

“You look tired,” Jean’s grandfather said to Frederick.

“I didn’t get much sleep,” Frederick said, and Jean felt guilty.

Mid-afternoon Frederick took a kettle of water out to the tennis court. Jean followed. He poured near-boiling water over the hill of ants. A wave of water, dirt and dying insects washed around their feet. From the house, her mother, returning from the village, was calling to them. The ant foragers lucky enough to be outside at the time of their small catastrophe gathered. They rushed forward to the puddle’s edge, retreated, tried again to reach their home, turned back again.

“Poor little bastards,” Frederick said gently. He put the kettle down on the grass and took out a cigarette and lighter, raised them, and flinched at the flame.

Behind them, Jean’s mother called, “Come hear the news!”

But there was nothing in the world that could draw Jean away. Softly, scarcely breathing, Jean took the lighter and cigarette from Frederick’s yellowing fingers. “Let me,” she said, and lit the cigarette for him. His lips parted and Jean placed the cigarette between them. For the briefest of moments, her finger brushed along his jaw.

“I wish…” she said.

“I am still married.” He said, “You are my cousin. It wouldn’t last.”

“Anything is possible,” Jean said. The commotion at the house was growing louder, and yet seemed very far away.

Frederick said, “Why did the egg cross the road?”

At first Jean didn’t know what to say. She stared at him. He waited. From the house, Jean’s mother cried, “They’ve dropped an atomic bomb on Japan!”

“Why?” said Jean.

“Because it was cracked,” Frederick said.

And now Frederick most definitely smiled.

# # #

Kilmeny MacMichael lives in western Canada’s Okanagan Valley, where she writes flash and short fiction. She has been published in Anti-Lang and online with The Ilanot Review, Watershed Review, Sleet Magazine, and other publications. Read more here: https://kfmacmichael.wordpress.com/

Photo: Jachym Michal