Free Double Talk by Patrick Warner Page A

year-by-year bit more deeply into the abandoned water tank at the end of our garden. In that tank I had defeated Rommel at El Alamein and later halted Panzers advancing through the Ardennes.
    Other times, I threaded a path through the briars at the bottom of Mrs. McDermott’s garden, on my way to my favourite tree, a tall mountain ash. Thirteen hand-holds — I could have climbed it with my eyes closed — to my perch in the topmost fork. I often stayed at the summit of that tree for an hour, lighting cigarette from cigarette, crewman in a crow’s nest, registering the timber in the living trunk, and the relentless movement of the earth below me. Somewhere beyond — where the sun stubbed itself on the grey ashtray of the horizon — was my destination.
    Newfoundland, Newfoundland. The word washed through my mind, dragging with it a phosphorescent trail of wonder. Was I really going to leave behind everything I knew and loved to go there? Well, yes, for a while, but I would come back again. Newfoundland, Newfoundland. I had looked it up on a globe. It was Spam pink and small as a postage stamp. I read in a musty encyclopaedia that it had world-class fishing grounds, the Grand Banks, and that the island was mostly forested. Uncle Wallace, who had lived there for ten years, sometimes included snapshots along with his Christmas card. The only things that stood out from those snaps were the cars — they were big like those on American television shows — and the houses, which always seemed to be half-buried in snow, like toy houses partly removed from their packing.
    What did I really know about the place? Sometimes the emptiness of my vision struck me with terror, but more often I was content to sit in contemplation before that almost blank canvas. It was enough that Newfoundland was wild and pink and smelled of fish. And that it was foggy. Too many facts might slow my momentum.

Violet Budd
    Violet thinks getting pregnant will be easy. Over the years, she and Brian have used a grab bag of contraceptive devices: rubber caps, condoms, spermicidal foams, pills, and, on one notable occasion, a sandwich bag cinched with an elastic band. All they have to do to set new life in motion, she thinks, is to stop taking precautions. So she takes it personally when, at the end of their first month of rowdy bare-back sex, she experiences an unmistakeable mood swing, finds herself on her hands and knees at the kitchen cupboard, trying to decide if she should arrange the pots by size or by metal alloy.
    â€œWe need to get more scientific about this,” Brian says, meaning Violet should visit the peeling clapboard façade that is Planned Parenthood. Which Violet does the following Tuesday, finding it much the same as she had found it when she first arrived in St. John’s: dingy, prone to leaks and doing its best to remain anonymous. Everything, Violet thinks, that Dr. Holly, with the help of insufficient government funding, has made it.
    â€œViolet! Hello. How long has it been?”
    Violet grins, tries to decide what, if anything, about Dr. Holly has changed. Her tightly clipped curls have turned white and she has lost some of her roundness, but otherwise she looks the same. She still prefers an old cardigan and jeans to more formal doctorwear. Dr. Holly once told Violet’s class that she wanted physicians to stop treating all aspects of a woman’s reproductive health as an illness. “Part of the challenge is to create a more welcoming environment for women. In France,” she said, “a gynaecologist’s office is more like an apartment.” When she said this, Violet pictured a kitchen drawer full of stainless steel specula.
    â€œHolly, hi.” Violet says. “Gosh, it must be ten years.”
    A moment later Dr. Holly is hugging Violet, who registers simultaneously the pressure of small breasts against her ribcage and kneecaps against her thighs. Short of torso and long of