Canadian Adventurers and Explorers Bundle. John Wilson
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Название: Canadian Adventurers and Explorers Bundle
Автор: John Wilson
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
Серия: Quest Biography
isbn: 9781459724730
isbn:
Phyl laughed. “Well,” she said. “It’s a better-kept secret than I thought. You don’t honestly think we could get up the way we do and cut trails in a skirt? No, we start off from home in skirts but we always wear bloomers underneath. Some girls even wear britches underneath. Anyway, we can’t be seen with anything like that, so we keep the skirts on over top until we’re past civilization, where we can take them off and cache them under a log or something until we come back. Then the skirts go back on, and we’re all ready for the streetcars and the ferry and for walking into the house.”
“Well, that makes sense. I couldn’t really figure out how you could do so much.”
“You know the really funny part?”
“No.”
“The worst thing is that when we cache our skirts, we lose our flexibility. We have to come back to the same spot at the end of the hike to collect them. Otherwise we can’t get home! Did you know that it’s against the ferry policy to allow women with bloomers on to the ferryboat? I’ve heard of a girl who had that happen to her. She came down at dusk, desperate to catch the last ferry from Lonsdale or else she would be stuck on the North Shore overnight and wouldn’t be able to get home until the next day Well, do you think she could find her skirt anywhere? She was running out of daylight and she came out of the bush a little west of where she went in, and in the failing light, she couldn’t quite recall where she stashed it. She finally gave up and jumped on the streetcar to get to the ferry dock. But they wouldn’t let her on the ferry. The purser told her that he was unable to accept her as a passenger unless she was appropriately dressed. So without her skirt, she lost her chance to get home that night!”
“That’s hilarious. I can just see some poor girl who’s miscalculated where she stashed her skirt turning over every rock and windfall desperately searching so she can run to the streetcar and not miss the last ferry. What a world we live in!”
“That never happened to me, but something really embarrassing did happen just a few weeks ago. We were on Dome1, and it was a regular club hike. I was climbing over a great big log. It was on a slope, and a little bit off the ground, and as I got over it, the elastic in my bloomers got hooked on a snag and hung me up. There I was, suspended in the air, and I couldn’t reach the ground. I was held up by the leg of my bloomers! Well, the boys all began to laugh, but eventually someone helped unhook me. I still haven’t lived that one down. It will be a while yet until something equally embarrassing happens to someone else and I’ll be out of the limelight.”
“Oh Phyl,” said Nina, as the two young women walked down the hill towards their streetcar stop. Remember at tea break I mentioned my two new patients? Well, one of them seems like someone you should know. I asked him if he knew you, but he said ‘No’ he didn’t, but that he had been away so long there were bound to be lots of new people in Vancouver.”
“What’s his name?”
“He told me his name was Don Munday. And he is a mountaineer! Just like you!”
“Don Munday – wow! He’s almost a legend at the club. He’s climbed all over Garibaldi and on Baker, and everywhere.”
“Well, he was wounded at Passchendaele. It’s a nasty one. A shell went clear through his left wrist and arm to the elbow. He won’t be climbing any mountains for a while yet. He’s got several more months of therapy – building up his strength. He’s a brave man. Did I tell you also that he was given the Military Medal for valour during the Battle of the Triangle at Vimy Ridge? Say, shall I introduce you sometime?”
“Yes. I’d like to meet him, I’ve heard so much about him. I hear he’s a little odd though – very intense. The way people speak, I’ve wondered if they are not just a little frightened.”
One morning as Phyl worked at typing letters for the officer in command and patient reports for the matron from her shorthand notes, she heard a shuffling across the room and there, looking in the glass partition door, were Nina and a patient. The patient, a small man with closely cropped brown hair, hung a little behind her.
“Come on in,” she gestured, signalling that it was all right to open the door and enter the office.
“Phyl, I’ve brought someone to meet you. It’s his first really big excursion since surgery, but as he claims to be a great walker – what better therapy could there be than having to walk the length of the annex to the Orderly Room?”
Unconsciously Phyl’s hand reached up to smooth back errant hair strands from her cheek. She smiled and rose to greet them. She pushed back the wooden office chair, then stretched across her desk and extended a hand.
“Hello, I’m Phyllis James. Nina mentioned that you were a new patient here. Pleased to meet you.”
“Yes, Don Munday is my name.”
“Although if you believe his charts, his name is Walter,” interjected Nina.
“Oh, that is easily explainable,” Don replied. “My complete name is Walter Alfred Don Munday, but when I registered for service, somehow they never got past my first name. Don will do. Pleased to meet you Miss James.”
As they briefly shook hands, Phyl thought it was a shame he was so pale. His lower left arm and hand was swathed in bandages and immobilized by his side. He had obviously lost a lot of weight. His cheekbones protruded sharply. In contrast, his eyes sunk beneath his brow. His blue eyes looked straight at her. Phyl saw the same look she saw in all the vets: a guardedness and avoidance.
He is still a long way from recovery, she thought. Physical wounds aside, he has the look of a lost man.
“I’ve heard about you at the BCMC,” she blurted out. “You’ll have to tell me some time about climbing on Garibaldi. I haven’t been yet – it’s hard to get the extra days off work.”
Phyl was extremely uncomfortable. Part of her was intensely curious to ask Don about the war and his wounds. She wondered if he would ever be able to climb again. The other part of her knew it was none of her business. There were so many men recuperating and each had his own horrible war memories. She was a little taken aback too. This small man didn’t look strong enough to have done everything she had heard of him.
“Well, it seems I’ll be here for a while yet, so maybe we’ll meet up and you can fill me in on all the club news. How is Tommy Fyles?”
“As busy as ever. He is still organizing all the trips, and leading most of them as well. We have a system. Are you familiar with Dunne and Rundle’s camera shop on Granville near Dunsmuir? Well, one of our members works there and they keep a special drawer in the shop just for the club. The weekend trips are all posted there. If you want to go on the weekend trip you go in and put your name down. Then they divide the names into messes, and you go back to find which mess you are in. It works out rather well. The list says what food you are responsible for bringing – enough for the four or five people in the mess. We all camp together and it’s wonderful fun. But I expect you know that already.”
“Well, I did most of my climbing with a few pals. We didn’t go in for the big crowds. Sounds like hiking is pretty popular now.”
During the summer of 1918 Munday continued his recuperation, which involved extensive massage and physiotherapy for СКАЧАТЬ