The Quintland Sisters(9)
M. Dionne had vanished to the stables at the back of the property, but Ivy told me he’d spent almost an hour with Mme. Dionne and the priest that morning, arguing about all of the people in the house and what the medical bills would be. She’d eventually been forced to tell him that Madame needed to rest, and he had gone off in a huff.
Sometime in the afternoon there was a soft knock at the door, and it was a relief to open it and admit a sip of fresh air into our sweltering cave. Ivy had little Cécile in the crook of her elbow and was giving her some milk, and Nurse Clouthier had gone back to Bonfield, so I was the one to greet the visitors, opening the door by a slim crack and slipping into the breeze on the porch.
On the doorstep was possibly the most striking man I’d seen outside of a magazine or film. In his midthirties, I’d wager, perhaps older, he wore a white shirt that looked crisp and starched, despite the strength of the sun. He had thick black hair and a smooth complexion, tanned as if he’d spent the spring somewhere sunnier than Northern Ontario. His eyes were a warm brown, and when he spoke it was in a soft, measured tone. Everyone else who’d been disturbing us all day and yesterday had rapped too loudly or spoken in booming voices that were unsettling for the babies. This man knew better.
But he, too, I noticed next, had a camera slung over his shoulder, tucked almost out of sight behind his elbow.
“No photographers,” I said and was about to step back inside.
“Fred Davis,” he said quickly. “Please, miss. I’m a photographer from the Star. We’ve driven all the way here today with the equipment ordered by the specialist, in Toronto.”
I could feel his soft eyes taking in my birthmark, and, to his credit, he didn’t glance away.
“We have the tub, feeding tubes, the clothes, blankets, and I don’t know what else.” He stopped, waiting for me to find my voice. “Everything we’ve brought is for the quintuplets.”
Quintuplets! I had never heard the word. It sounded like something from Greek mythology, but I realized he was talking about the babies.
At the bottom of the rickety steps that led up to the porch stood two other men, both in their telltale bowler hats, and with them a woman, petite and pretty, in the white dress and cap of a nurse. At that very moment, Dr. Dafoe emerged from the curious crowd on the edge of the yard, his black bag in hand, pipe pursed in his lips.
He removed it as he approached the steps. “Davis?” he asked and looked from one man to another. The men at the foot of the stairs thrust out their hands, and Davis, quicker than you could blink, swung his camera to his face, pointed it at the doctor with the reporters, and started to click and wind, click and wind. The petite nurse smiled and bobbed her blond head, extending a graceful gloved hand of her own.
The men, after conferring with the doctor, headed back to their car. Dr. Dafoe gestured toward the senior M. Dionne, who was hovering nearby, and spoke with him briefly, apparently clarifying that these city men should be permitted access to the house. The junior M. Dionne, the babies’ father, was nowhere to be seen. I ducked indoors again, intending to tell Ivy about the handsome photographer from the Toronto Star, but to my surprise, Mr. Davis swiftly slipped in after me, shutting the door gently behind him.
Ivy had Cécile back in the wooden incubator again, so none of the babies were in sight. I watched Fred Davis blink as he took in the drab kitchen, his eyes adjusting to the dim room, roving over the sheeting we’d rigged around the stove, the clutter of equipment we’d tried our best to organize on the tables and shelving. Then his gaze came to rest on Ivy. She had turned away from the incubator, her cheeks flushed, her forehead creased with worry. She started when she saw the man behind me.
“Oh,” she said. “Hello.”
“Ma’am,” said Fred Davis. His eyes, which a moment earlier had been bobbing like a brook over everything in our makeshift nursery, now came to a halt on Ivy, as if snagged. He, too, was at a loss for words, finally managing, “It’s my great pleasure.”
Just then Dr. Dafoe stepped into the kitchen and beckoned Mr. Davis back outside with a wave of his undersize hands. Mr. Davis along with the younger reporter from the Star managed to wrestle their crates up onto the porch under the supervision of the older man, Mr. Keith Munro, also related to the newspaper in some way, who stood in the dusty yard barking out commands from behind a bushy, white mustache. The little blond nurse, named Jean Blewett, turned out to be a proper nurse who’d graduated from a college in Toronto. She busied herself ferrying smaller packets and boxes from the crates to the kitchen. Only when the men were done did she step primly into the next room to introduce herself to Mme. Dionne, Mr. Davis right at her heels. I hadn’t even noticed him taking up his camera again, but he managed to pop off a few photos of Nurse Blewett and Mme. Dionne, using a flashbulb because the light was so dull. This greatly upset Mme. Dionne, who I presume had never seen a flashbulb before—nor had I—and she started fussing and speaking in rapid French to the new nurse, whose blue eyes blinked. She couldn’t understand a word.
Claudette, the hired girl, must have gone to the stables for M. Dionne, because he burst into the farmhouse and started hollering at the photographer and reporters to hightail it off his property. Ivy told me he had been angry that morning with how the newspapers had written about him yesterday. This was the first time we’d seen him truly livid, spluttering with rage in a mix of languages, those strange, long earlobes of his—indecent somehow—quivering in indignation. Maybe I should have more sympathy for M. Dionne. His house is overrun with strangers, his other children dispersed among the homes of family and friends. No one in that part of the world has money to feed an extra mouth, let alone five—he must be looking at all this equipment and the nurses and be worried sick about what the bill will come to, let alone how he’ll support a family now doubled in size. But he really scared me then, shouting like a madman in front of the babies and his wife, now sobbing in her bed. Dr. Dafoe was angry too. I could see it. The doctor isn’t an easy man to read, but he, too, is likely feeling the growing interest in the little babies and the burden of keeping them alive.