Fred beamed at his father. “Tell Gus about the war and your airplane.”
Uncle Bob obliged, and Gus listened carefully, his eyes wide. Uncle Bob’s voice rose louder and louder as he lost himself in the memory, and Dorothy watched his fist move forward, left, forward, right, shifting in front of him as if he were holding the control stick of his “Canuck.” When at last the doomed enemy plane crashed dramatically into the sea, everyone yelled hooray, and Uncle Bob puffed his chest, pleased with their reactions.
He was a flight instructor now, but back then, he had served with distinction as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. Fred loved to remind the girls that Captain Robert James Wilson was on the short list of Canadian flying aces, having shot down sixteen enemy planes.
Dash, who they still called Margaret back then, adored her uncle and hung on his every word. She had wanted to fly her whole life, so when Uncle Bob started to tell his pilot stories, she got stars in her eyes.
Dot loved Uncle Bob, too. Her favourite thing about her uncle, andthe only part of him that didn’t intimidate her, was his dashing moustache, its ends waxed to a curly perfection. She was impressed by his exploits, of course, but she was confused. She was almost certain he had told them that he’d shot down fourteen planes, not sixteen. But surely he knew best. She must have simply forgotten. She was only five, after all.
In Dorothy’s view, though, Uncle Bob lived in her father’s quieter shadow. Her father was a gentle man with a thin, out-of-fashion pencil moustache and a postwar habit of constantly checking a door or window. His smiles were quick and self-conscious, and he had very few visitors outside of family. But beneath his understated exterior, he radiated intelligence, and when he did get into a conversational mood, Dot listened to every word. He was, as her mother fondly said, very good at working with his hands, and he kept a small woodworking table in the backyard shed. Two years before, he’d built the sisters a dollhouse for Christmas, complete with tiny furniture, and her mother had sewn two perfect little dolls to fit inside. One had blond hair and wore a grey dress to match Dorothy’s favourite. The other had dark hair and a bright emerald dress, since green was Margaret’s favourite colour. A year after that, her father constructed a bookcase for Dot’s burgeoning collection of books.
Uncle Bob might be a flying ace, but her father didn’t have to fly a plane to be a hero in her eyes.
“Tell usyourflying stories, Daddy,” Margaret prodded, and Dot felt a twinge of betrayal. He had flown? Had he kept his history secret from her?
But her father only chuckled, his pale cheeks flushing. “I wasn’t a pilot, Margaret, dear. You mustn’t think I was one of those brave lads. No, no.”
“But you were in the war,” she insisted. “Did you go in airplanes?”
Sometimes Dot thought Margaret was altogether too bossy.
“Yes, I did, but I was not a dashing pilot like your uncle. My job was to sit in the airplane and transmit locations through my Marconi.”
“Macaroni!” Margaret cried, delighted. Beside her, cousin Fred guffawed.
“No, dear,” her father said patiently. “Marconi.”
“What’s that?” Gus asked.
“Marconi was the name of my radio. Operating it was not nearly as exciting as what Fred’s father did.”
Dot leaned forward. Her father rarely spoke about himself, so this was a rare treat.
“Your dad is being too humble,” said Uncle Bob. “You should be proud of him. He held a very important position as a telegraph operator for the Royal Flying Corps. He saved many, many lives by sending locations from the airplane to the military. With that information, they were able to direct artillery fire to that position. He also…” Uncle Bob consulted his brother, and Dot noticed her father scowling slightly. “Well, he wrote regularly to your mother, keeping her happy.”
Dot was intrigued. “How did you do that with the fire, Daddy? If you were in an airplane, how did you tell them?”
“I tapped the coordinates in Morse code, and they reached the receivers on the ground. For example, if we saw a munitions cache, I would do this.”
He tapped his middle finger rapidly on the table in an unpredictable rhythm. To Dot, it sounded like there was a purpose to the uneven taps, as if they were trying to say something.
“Do that again, Daddy!” So he did.
She gaped at him in wonder. “What’s the tap tap tap? What’s it saying?”
“You heard that, did you, my little genius? That is Morse code. It is a different kind of language made up of a series of dits and dahs. Each letter of the alphabet has its own pattern. Listen. I’ll show you your name.” He tapped once slowly, then twice fast. “We call that a dah, then two dits. That is the first letter of your name, Dorothy, which is…?”
She sat up straight, staring at his finger. “D! Do more, Daddy! What’s an ‘O’?”
He tapped three times again, but evenly, and a little slower. “Dah-dah-dah is ‘O.’ When you write it down, it is in dots and dashes.”
“What’s an ‘M’?” she wanted to know. “For Margaret.”
“?‘M’ is dah-dah.”
She beamed at her sister, catching on right away. “Your name starts with dah-dah!” Margaret looked interested, but she was not caught up in her sister’s excitement. “Will you learn with me?”
Margaret’s mouth reluctantly twisted to the side. “Okay.”
