Dazzle Patterns

By Alison Watt

Beginning the day of the devastating Halifax Explosion of 1917, Dazzle Patterns is an unforgettable story about resilience, the power of art, and the casualties of war.

Halifax, 1917. Clare Holmes, a flaw checker at the local glassworks, is saving up for passage to England, to work for the Red Cross and be near her fiancé, Leo, who is fighting in France. But one normal Thursday morning, a deadly explosion in the Halifax harbour shatters the city – and Clare is caught up in the blast.

As Clare struggles to recover from her injuries, she stumbles upon the School of Art, where she finds solace in drawing, and a mentor who encourages Clare’s burgeoning artistic ambitions. But how can one be an artist when the whole world has gone mad? When her own city is half-destroyed? When she’s not sure if Leo will ever come home?

Meanwhile the city, weary from the seemingly endless war and torn apart by the devastating explosion, is wracked with fear and mistrust of foreigners. Clare’s new friend Fred, a glassmaker from Germany, is pulled into a web of suspicion, causing Clare to question everything she thought she knew.

Dazzle Patterns is an unforgettable story about resilience, art, and the casualties of war, abroad and at home. With extraordinary vision and clarity, Alison Watt’s remarkable debut novel brings the past to life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Freehand Books
• Release date: Oct 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781988298191

Alison Watt

Alison Watt is a writer and painter. She works and teaches out of her studio on Protection Island, near Nanaimo, BC, and leads workshops internationally (alisonwatt.ca). Originally a biologist, she has an MFA in creative writing and is the author of The Last Island: A Naturalist’s Sojourn on Triangle Island, winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, and Circadia, a poetry collection. Dazzle Patterns is her first novel.

Book preview

1

FRED STARED INTO THE ORANGE GLOW, turning the blowpipe, waiting for the precise moment to pull it from the molten crucible. The glass was sluggish this morning. The fire not hot as it should be. The Halifax factory hadn’t had good coal since the war started. Fred turned the pipe again, drawing more glass into the gather.

His father had taught him that glass depended on the coal that fed the kilns as much as on its sand. Both had to reach just the right purity and density. An eddy of worry. Maybe the sluggishness wasn’t the fire. Maybe it was him.

Fred had been eight years old when, after a year of begging, he was finally allowed to spend the hours after school at the glass workshops in Lauscha with his father, rather than in his mother’s kitchen. His mother had been kneading Schwarzbrot the first day he ran out the door and across the snowy fields to the factory. She’d hugged him hard and kissed him, smelling of yeast and butter and sadness, leaving floured handprints on his cheeks. He was her only child.

Little Freidrich found his father seated at his bench, the faded cloth of his dark blue work pants stretched over his knees as he pulled an apple wood block from the bucket of water beside him. It’s not just the raw materials, Freidrich. Steam rose from the block as his father shaped the white-hot glass in its cup. At the time, Fred had thought of his father as old. He had been only two years older than Fred was now.

Yah, his father addressed the emerging bowl, rolling, rolling, dipping the block again in the water. It’s the man.

Freidrich, sitting on the bench, knees bumping his father’s as he kicked his skinny legs, wasn’t interested in men. He was a little German boy, only interested in trying glass-blowing himself, entering the mystery of creating beauty from grains of sand.

These ones, his father waved the block at the factory around him, who think they can be masters overnight … they will never be good glass-makers. He returned the block to the pail. Do you know why, Freidrich?

Freidrich had moved to the furnace, warming himself. He was hoping that if he looked like he was listening, his father would let him blow in the pipe. Because they think they are in charge. Eingebildet, bigheads. His father rose, still turning the pipe, The glass tells you what it needs. You have to listen.

His father would leave Lauscha, leave Germany, seven years later because men of lesser skills, from more influential families in town, would be given master status over him.

Before he could stop himself, Freidrich stepped towards his father, reaching, just to touch the glass below where his father’s left hand held the magical blowpipe. Heat seared his fingers.

Nein! His father threw his pipe on his workbench, the glass dropping onto the sand floor. He grabbed Freidrich’s hand and plunged it in the pail, wetting his sleeve to the elbow, while Freidrich’s tears tracked his floury cheeks. He had cried not only from the pain, but because he felt that his father had already considered him hopelessly eingebildet.

How young his father had been in those years, just before arriving in a new country with his family. How filled with ambition and optimism he must have been to teach small Freidrich that the nature of a glass-blower was as vital as sand and coal. And now, years later, despite his father’s disappointments, those words rang true.

The gather was cooling. Fred took it to the glory hole furnace where he would reheat it, return it to the perfect state between liquid and solid. A small dark man pushed past him. Kraut, the man said under his breath as he angled his pipe into the furnace, the orange light reflecting off his smeary glasses.

Fred’s blood rose. His back tensed as he turned to his bench. He fell into concentrated focus, the motions he knew by heart, by hand, by smell and touch, and his anger fell away. He read the glass, watched without thinking, how it moved on the end of his pipe, the minute draining of red heat; he felt its urgency, the precious seconds ticking like the quickening of a new pulse. The glass was ready — Fred could feel up the length of the pipe its eagerness to take form. A small breath to open the belly of the flask … he lifted the pipe to his lips, an eye on the light playing the glass as it thinned.

2

CLARE HURRIED DOWN the wide hall of the glass factory lined with open workshops. Her stop at the Red Cross, her talk with Mrs. Beddow, had made her late. It also now made the factory seem a dingy, grey set. A stir of excitement — as if she was breathing fresh air and not the factory fumes of ash, oil, and hot metal. Soon she would be leaving it all behind.

Men barely looked up as she passed, but the boys stared, some shyly, some cockily. Most of them were small. They were not supposed to be younger than fourteen but the ones with soft faces, thin arms, and bony shoulders under their cotton shirts had probably lied, especially if their fathers were dead or overseas.

Clare turned to the nearest team: Wilf, a young man, pale skin pitted with acne scars; Percy, a wiry older man who had worked there for years; and a red-nosed boy she didn’t recognize, perched on a wooden crate, his lips drawn thin with concentration, small ears pressed close to his newly shaven head. When Percy stepped towards him and pushed the knot of glass on his pipe into the hinged mould, the boy snapped it shut. Percy blew air down the pipe then broke it away and the boy opened the mould, pulled out the bottle with tongs, set it on a low bench, and returned to his crate. Then it was Wilf’s turn to load the boy’s mould with fresh glass. Rumour had it that Wilf had been an apprentice glass-maker before the war. When he came home, he went into the bottle shop and never left. It was said around the factory that his hands weren’t steady enough for glass-blowing, though the only hint of his injuries was the stiff right leg that slowed his movement from the furnace to the boy. The three worked silently as if in a trance, a fluid circular choreography from which a new tonic bottle emerged every minute.

Jack Bell strode towards Clare. Did you sleep in this morning? His eyes peered at Clare out of a narrow face, made longer by the fact that his hair had retreated to a small grey tuft, threaded with a few red strands on the top of his skull.

I’m sorry, I missed the trolley. I’ll stay later today.

Jack grunted. For a moment Clare worried that he might reprimand her, or worse, ask more questions.

I’ll just get on then, she said.

I’ll walk with you. I’m going to shop eight. Jack fell in step beside her, his gruffness sliding away. How’s that lad of yours, Leo is it?

I got a letter yesterday. But it was written a month ago.

I hope they’re better at delivering bullets than mail, Jack said.

And Ross, any news?

Jack Bell smiled, showing the gaps in his molars. My nephew? He made it to a gun emplacement, got a grenade in. Killed five of the blonde brutes at once. He’s been recommended for a gold bar. Wish his mother was alive to see it.

She would have been proud, Clare said. Ross’s mother was Jack’s sister. When she died of a strange wasting disease, Jack and his wife had taken in her boy.

Ross had grown into a clumsy young man with a large nose and milk-blue eyes. Jack had insisted he start in the glassworks last year. Clare could see, when she passed the workshop, how he had struggled to keep up with the younger boys. He’d seemed bored and was accident prone, constantly dropping pieces.

One day, passing his workshop, Clare heard a mighty crash. She glanced in the doorway to see Ross, ankle-deep in broken bottles. A tall shelf lay face down on the floor.

Jack, who had been checking inventory in the workshop, whirled on the boy. For Christ’s sake, Ross! Jack pushed the boy backwards to the door of the workshop. Clumsy lout.

Ross had stood inert, his arms dangling at his sides. I’ll clean up.

Get out, Jack hissed, you’d probably break the bloody broom.

The boy caught Clare’s eye, his big doughy face miserable. The next week he’d enlisted.

JACK STOPPED AT A SHOP DOOR. This was the only shop where men still made hand-blown glass. He motioned for Clare to pause. She felt a stab of irritation. Each time he wandered from his office, bored with paperwork, she’d noticed he searched for an audience.

Four gaffers worked between furnaces in silence, shaping the glass on benches, returning to glory hole furnaces to reheat the glass; blowing, reshaping. The heat that made the men’s foreheads bead left circles of sweat under the arms of their shirts. It warmed Clare’s face.

As Jack watched the men, Clare sensed how much he missed the work. She glanced down at his hands, which were twitching as if anxious to hold the blowpipe. She had noticed his hands when she came to ask for a job at the glassworks the year before. He’d caught her staring at the scars, old burns.

I didn’t always work in the office, he’d said, splaying his trembling fingers. Don’t have the steadiness anymore.

Clare’s attention was caught by a tall, fair-haired man, moving with wary tenderness between the furnace and his bench. He moved gracefully, as if he were part of the tear-shaped flask he created.

It was improbable to her, this breathing of molten liquid into solid form, the smallest gestures shaping the glass into something you could fill, drink from, hold in your hand.

Do you know what most people don’t realize? Jack said.

Here it comes, Clare thought impatiently. What was it about her that drew people into soliloquys? You’re a good listener, Leo had said, his hand travelling from the small of her back up her spine, to linger lightly on the back of her neck. She felt the tingle even as she stood there. She supposed what he said was true. She had never been encouraged to talk much about herself. That wasn’t what her people did.

We’d all still be living in caves if it weren’t for glass. Jack said, without taking his eyes from the furnaces. It wasn’t that she minded Jack’s lectures. But the cold walk from the trolley stop had chilled her and she wanted to get to the packing room, the radiator under her bench, the light flooding in from the long windows. The warm chatter of the girls.

On her first day Jack had taken her to the yard at the back of the glassworks, where the sand, shipped from Boston, was piled. He’d plunged his hand into it. Quartz crystals. Nothing else will make perfectly clear glass. The white sand ran like sugar between his fingers, polished facets shimmering.

He had led her to the packing room then, where the girls checked the glass for flaws and packed it in straw-filled crates. He’d held up a sapphire-blue glass pitcher. Here, he pointed at the seam, is where you check, to make sure the seam is fused properly.

The other girls in the shop had continued their work. Geraldine, an Irish girl from Truro, who lived in Clare’s rooming house and had suggested she apply for a job at the glassworks, smiled, sharing a quick glance with the other girls.

Any of the other girls could have shown her how to find the fine cracks, the almost invisible bubble that would expand over time, until suddenly, when someone picked up a glass or set a vase on the table, it would shatter.

THE TALL FAIR GLASS-MAKER sat at the bench, rapped the pipe, and cradled the flask in a pad of wet newsprint in his other hand, as it broke free of the pipe.

Jack ran his fingers over his head as if searching for the thick red hair which must have grown there once. Windows, reading glasses, lenses, telescopes, microscopes. We wouldn’t be able to see the planets, the cell. He hitched up the pants sliding down his thin frame. From the simplest ingredients. He swept his arm around the factory. None of this, our technology, our society, would be here without it. He set his jaw grimly. We can’t let it fall into the hands of barbarians.

Barbarians? Clare was still watching the tall glass-maker, who had set down his flask and risen to gather new glass on his pipe. Despite his long limbs he moved efficiently, almost elegantly about his work, avoiding eye contact with the other men.

The Huns, Jack snapped. His gaze settled on the man Clare watched. Jack nodded towards him, tense-faced. New man, Baker. He’s making scientific glassware for us. I’ve asked him to come to the packing room. He’s to bring all his work for checking before it’s packed.

Clare gave Jack a puzzled look. Normally they didn’t check the hand-blown work.

Don’t trust him, Jack pushed his fists into his pockets. He’s on probation.

CLARE HURRIED ON to the packing room, still thinking of her early morning talk with Mrs. Beddow. It was Clare’s second meeting at the Red Cross office. During the first one she’d had to convince them that she was sure she wanted to go to England. This time she had to convince them that she did indeed have the money for her passage, which she had saved up over a year at the glassworks. She would travel cheaply on a supply ship. But she’d be closer to Leo.

THE GIRLS IN THE PACKING ROOM clucked in mock disapproval when she appeared at the door.

Did you have an assignation? Jenny gave her a wink and an elbow as she reached into a barrel beside Clare and lifted high an amber goblet. More glass — clear, pale, green, red, blue — lined open shelves above the bench. Maybe a quick cuddle with that handsome cadet who asked you to dance last weekend?

The pale mid-winter faces of the other five girls seated at their benches turned to her avidly. Only Geraldine carried on primly with her work.

Yes, in fact. But up close, in the morning light, I could see that he was covered in spots, Clare said. Jenny giggled. Clare leaned forward and paused for effect, And when he tried to kiss me, he stuck his tongue almost down my throat.

Eeeww, go away out of that! Geraldine said.

The sun rising through the windows at the far end of the long room cascaded over bottles and butter dishes. Coloured shadows spilled onto the bench and stained Geraldine’s face as she turned a jug, searching for flaws.

Clare could have told them the truth. That she was planning on leaving Halifax, joining the Red Cross efforts in England. She would work in the rest homes, doing whatever she needed to do to be closer to Leo, to be there in case anything happened to him. She was strong, she had assured Mrs. Beddow. She could work in the kitchen, or in the gardens. She could even drive. She drove the carts and sleighs at home on the farm. How different could driving a car be?

How do you feel about emptying bedpans? Mrs. Beddow had asked her.

The girls would feel betrayed by her taking it into her head to make such a dramatic exit. Already Geraldine was suspicious she was up to something, with her mysterious meetings, and had been badgering her. Well, she’d tell her later today, when they were on their way home on the trolley.

There’s a new gaffer, Clare said, Fred someone.

How old is he? Geraldine set down her bottle and pulled a lipstick tube from her smock. She leaned towards a freshly silvered mirror propped up on the workbench and began applying scarlet lipstick. Her widely spaced pale green eyes looked back. The lipstick was livid on her pale face. She tugged at a short piece of wiry, sand-coloured hair and shoved it under a hairpin.

I’m not sure, Clare said. He was starting to bald but he didn’t seem old. She pictured him, quick and light on his feet. Maybe early thirties.

Is he single? Is he handsome? Molly said eagerly.

Or does he have a face like a bag of spuds? Geraldine said.

Single? How would I know if he’s single? Clare said. Handsome? I’ll let you decide. Jack’s sending him here with his work for checking.

Why on earth would he do that? Geraldine screwed the top back on her lipstick and tucked it in her pocket, where she found a humbug. She pulled it out, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth.

Clare shrugged. Apparently, he’s on probation. Looks harmless enough, but something about him has got Jack het up. She sat down beside Geraldine, pushing close, into the smell of her peppermint humbug.

Clare leaned towards the mirror and studied her oval face and dark eyebrows with a serious gaze. Leo had written her that it was her eyes he remembered when he thought of her. Her pupils rimmed with gold, he said, splintering into grey-green irises, the colour of the winter sea at Arisaig, he said.

Geraldine pouted her red mouth and turned back to her work. She picked up a sugar bowl, etched with a starflower pattern. Hattie, she took a long suck at her candy, got a letter from Ronald the other day.

The girls sat up, alert.

You remember him, that enormous boy with the ginger hair? From Yarmouth? The girls drew closer. The one she brought to the harvest fair?

Clare remembered Geraldine’s friend Hattie curled in his lap like a child on the hayride, his big feet in their army issue boots, ankle-deep in straw, his hand disappearing under her skirt just above her bony knees.

He proposed just before he left, Geraldine said. Hattie read me his last letter. Geraldine closed her eyes and recited in a husky voice, running her hands over her neck and breasts and wrapping her arms around herself. "I am hungry to feel my arms around you again dearie. When I return, can we meet in some quiet place where we could go off by ourselves? Tell me how you picture it? I can almost feel you trembling. If it was summer I’d want to go to the pond behind the barn, where we could lie down, hidden behind the willow branches. If it was winter I’d want to be alone in a room with all the curtains drawn and the door locked so I could look at you and love you without anyone intruding. What do you say girly dear?"

This last question was barely audible over the shrieks of her audience.

As the laughter died away, they became aware of a man standing at the open door. It was the one Clare had watched in the glass-blowing shop. He stood with a box of glassware in his arms, all grace gone, looking awkward.

I’m to show you my work.

Clare felt suddenly sorry for him. His tense face revealed he had no idea what these innocent-looking girls would make of him the moment he left. I’ll look at them. Clare stood, moving down the bench to her own spot.

He carried his box to her, and set it down with exaggerated care. Then he pulled a chair from a corner. Fred Baker, he said and dropped his long frame stiffly onto the chair.

The girls turned back to their work, Geraldine and Molly checking glass and the others wrapping and packing the glass into wooden boxes, each casting glances from beneath downcast eyes.

Clare faced the man as he passed her scientific glassware, distilling flasks, columns, beakers, and tubes, which she held to the light. The backs of his hands were covered with pale golden hair. The fingernails of his left hand were even and short, his right uneven. Ah, so he lived alone. He smelled of sweat and shaving soap, the same brand as her father’s. She turned the glassware, embarrassed for him. His work was very fine. Humiliating to have it checked by a mere flaw girl.

She handed the last one back. I don’t see any problems.

They must be perfect. His eyes were the clearest blue.

Yes, she said.

They would be useless otherwise. The chemical reactions will not proceed properly …

The room fell silent. The man got up, wiped his hands on his apron, then clasped them and gave a little bow. Well. Good then. I’ll just, uh, get back to the shop.

WELL, WHAT DO YOU THINK is his secret? Geraldine said slyly as they watched his retreating back. Weak lungs, contagious diseases, hidden deformities? There’s got to be some reason he’s not in France.

Maybe he’s just too old, one of the others said.

He’s awful stiff, Jenny, a girl with ruddy cheeks and a fat bun pinned at the nape of her neck, said.

Got a poker up his arse, Molly said, gathering in her small features, which already seemed too closely concentrated in the middle of her face. And then, bored with the topic of Fred Baker, Lordy, I’ve got the cramps today, she moaned, pressing her hands on her belly.

These women were so different from the farm girls Clare grew up with. They laughed out loud, mouths wide, and read Harper’s Bazaar. Sometimes they dropped their voices and talked about how in the big cities women had relations with anyone they chose. How they had ways of making sure they didn’t get in a family way, getting a hold of things you couldn’t get in Halifax. Once, Jenny brought one of those contraptions back from her cousin in New York. She’d pulled it out of her smock pocket and the rest of them had leaned in, the smell of Molly’s liberally applied L’Heure Bleue perfume, sent to her by her brother in France, rising from her cleavage.

Looks like something a kitten would drink milk out of, Geraldine had said as they greedily examined the soft rubber bowl, poking it gingerly, until Molly grabbed it and started twirling it on her index finger. The device slipped off and Jenny caught it. She laid it meticulously back in its leather case, explaining, as if to children, "You just stick it, you know, up, so that it’s snug, like a little cap."

How shocked Clare’s mother would have been. There’s no reason for you to busy your hands down there! Ada had said sharply one night when she was tucking Clare under her starburst quilt. Clare, eight or nine, had been exploring the mysterious folds and openings between her legs. When her mother caught the scent on Clare’s fingers, a look of embarrassed distaste had passed over her face. She’d yanked Clare’s nighty down and tucked the blankets in tight around her, with Clare’s arms outside the covers. Clare had waited until her mother’s heels tapped downstairs before she continued to explore.

CLARE PICTURED LEO and hurriedly opened a barrel of water glasses, clear, unadorned, the sort she drank from every day on the farm. They warmed as she turned them and reflections swam into her vision. A figure formed — a man so distant, so small she could not see his face; an arm budded from the figure, lifted and dissolved. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, refocused with will, searching for flaws, the hairline cracks where the glass would one day shatter. She worked quickly through the barrel, with little mental effort. When Clare was at loose ends after Leo enlisted and left for training in Halifax, she found a room at Rose’s boarding house for herself. It was Geraldine, the other boarder, who had told her about the job a year ago; she had explained that flaw-checkers were always women. They were much better than men. And Clare had proved adept at finding even the smallest imperfection. The trick was not to look too hard, but rather, to turn the glass, let the light reveal what was concealed.

As she worked, Clare’s thoughts returned to this morning’s talk with Mrs. Beddow, who’d sat behind her desk, a short, square woman, the waistband of her dark whipcord jacket done up to the last buckle hole. You’ll be a very long way from home. She had levelled her gaze at Clare, planting large hands on her hips.

Clare had had a hard time not staring at the dark hair on Mrs. Beddow’s upper lip.

I’ve lived away from home for almost a year. She would have to go home to Grafton soon to tell her parents. She was dreading the scene with her mother. You’ll be a very long way from home.

Restless, Clare set her glass aside, got up, and walked to the long windows at the room’s end. It still gave her a little thrill to stand and look at the dense life spread out below her, as if by coming to the city she had finally joined some greater flow, a river that might take her somewhere surprising.

She pushed her hand into her apron pocket where she had put Leo’s latest letter. She would read it again today in some dusty corner, without Geraldine’s peppermint breath on her neck, insisting that she read the naughty bits aloud. Clare lingered over the memory of his words: The memory of that day in the hidden corner of the gardens, the thought of holding you again …

Would he be in a tent this morning, with a dozen bunks crowded around a tiny stove? She watched him throw back his wool blankets, sit up, and swing his legs onto the floor. Did they issue pyjamas in the army? Shorts? Would he be naked? She flushed, feeling the heat of his skin under his uniform shirt, the ropey muscles of his back and arms. But, of course, it wasn’t morning in England. It would be, she calculated — late afternoon, almost dark.

Frost pressed the window glass. The sun had just cleared the thin membrane of sea fog, catching the black-and-white dazzle pattern of a supply ship, turning on its anchor, in answer to some wind or tide, facing east, the direction it would be steaming, out of Halifax and into war. Her pulse quickened. Soon she would be on her way across that ocean.

A GREAT ORANGE BALL shot up from the harbour below, and into smoke rising from a moored ship. Several retorts. Gunshots? An engine of sound rolling up from the harbour. Clare’s own distorted reflection as the window billowed inwards like a transparent sail. Everything shattered, even screams.

SHE WAS THROWN INTO BLACKNESS and delivered almost instantly back into the sound of falling glass, like the roar of a tide. Searing light burning in her left eye, her eyelid drawing back from a hot blade. Someone bending over her, Oh my god … A hand hovering over Clare’s eye as if to pluck it.

Don’t touch me! Clare screaming, scrambling to her knees, hunching into herself, wiping her bloody face. Something in her eye.

Glass, Geraldine’s horrified whispering. A piece of glass. Oh god, it’s stuck in her eye.

Around her, the others as if nailed to the floor, awash in Fred Baker’s perfect flasks and beakers.

A COAT! Geraldine’s voice. The girls staring at a large red stain on the front of Geraldine’s smock. Thrusting her hand into the pocket, she pulled out a flattened tube of lipstick, smashed it to the floor. For Christ’s sake, someone give me a hand! Geraldine, hauling Clare to her feet, which collapsed under her.

Clare leaned into Geraldine who half walked, half dragged her through the vanished window into the frigid wind, warm blood running between the fingers of her hand cupping her left eye, her right eye wide open.

A huge pillar of smoke bloomed like a black flower high over the city. Pieces of steaming metal strewn around the yard. The roof of a house across the street had collapsed. Flames licked out the front door. A woman, wearing what looked like her husband’s boots and wrapped in a flowered curtain, ran past them screaming, Andy! Violet! You get back here right now!

The black tower of smoke boiled outwards, fireballs shooting up into it, blanching grey then white, shining in the sunlight, pushing slow motion against an absurdly blue sky.

What in God’s name? Geraldine’s hair somehow undone, loose down her back.

A man struggled to hold a carthorse’s halter tight while the animal pawed the rutted road and rolled the whites of his eyes.

Clare swayed against Geraldine. The day turned darker. The cloud covered the sun, the entire sky. The carthorse brayed and pushed backwards against his cart.

Fritz’s got us! There’ll be another bomb any minute. They’ll want to finish us off! Ernie Ryan, one of the glass-makers, raced by, shouting, one shoe on.

Men and boys kept pouring from the factory, dirt from the shop floors stuck to bloody hands and faces. A shirtless man leaned on Fred Baker, who was still in his shirtsleeves and apron.

We need help! Geraldine called.

Empty your cart! Fred shouted to the cart driver, a moustached man with a large head perched on a thin neck, around which was wound a tartan scarf. The man turned from the roiling mushroom cloud, and looked uncomprehendingly at Fred, then at his cart, still piled with frozen fish, staring at the sky.

Fred jumped onto the cart kicking fish, and flinging it in great armfuls,

Reviews for Dazzle Patterns

[icolford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reviewed from advance reading copy. Alison Watt's moving and elegantly written novel, Dazzle Patterns, is set at the time of the Halifax Explosion, which took place on the morning of December 6, 1917, when a munitions ship collided with another ship in Halifax Harbour, killing and injuring thousands and completely obliterating the city’s northern district. Clare Holmes, a young woman working in the glassworks, is injured—as were countless others—by a window shattered by the blast. A co-worker and master glassmaker, Fred Baker (a German immigrant who anglicized his name), is commandeered to help the injured and takes Clare to the hospital. Clare, alone in the city, longs for her fiancé, Leo, who is fighting in France. Clare and Leo grew up together in rural Grafton, in the heart of Nova Scotia farm country, which is where her family still lives. Clare returns home to recover, but quickly tires of her mother’s smothering attention and anxious solicitude and, seeking independence, returns to the devastated city at the first opportunity. In the meantime, Watt takes us to France, where Leo is dealing with trauma of his own, narrowly surviving the darkest days of a brutal war, toiling in pervasive damp and filth. When he is captured by the Germans, and then escapes and finds refuge on a farm outside the occupied zone, his life changes forever. Back in Halifax, another thread of the story follows Fred Baker, whom some suspect unreasonably of harbouring German sympathies, as his life becomes closely intertwined with Clare’s. With the glassworks closed, Clare and Fred sign up for art classes, and over several months of frequent interaction a relationship that was always mutually supportive deepens, and a tentative and trusting intimacy springs up between them. Alison Watt, an artist, is a careful and observant writer who brings her interest in the visual experience to her debut novel. The writing is filled with memorable phrases and stirring moments of great beauty, particularly regarding the interplay of light and dark and the affect of the natural world on her characters’ moods and emotions. Her three main characters—Fred, Clare and Leo—are full-blooded, multi-dimensional individuals whose fates and struggles matter. The writing is understated. Watt the author has a light touch, evoking the historical setting with the subtle and effective deployment of period detail. Despite the tragic detonation that sets the story into motion, Dazzle Patterns does not attempt to blow the reader away. Instead it quietly seduces, drawing you into its world until you realize that there is nowhere else you would rather be.