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The following is excerpted from Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page by Sandra Djwa.
The last part of 1943 and the first few months of 1944 were very difficult for Pat. In February she published a fine poem in Preview called “Paradox”:
let us stand here close,
for death is common as grass beyond an ocean
and, with all Europe pricking in our eyes,
suddenly remember Guernica
and be gone.
It is a sombre poem. The outcome of the war in Europe was uncertain; her father was now general officer, commander-in-chief, Atlantic Command, and was subject to the enormous stress of protecting Halifax and the North Atlantic; her brother was at sea and at the mercy of enemy submarines and Frank Scott had fallen in love with her and she with him.
Their love affair had started with a joke about wartime shortages. In the summer of 1942, when Scott was teaching at Harvard, Patrick Anderson had mentioned that the group should contact Scott about Preview business, and Page volunteered to send the letter. In his reply, Scott praised “The Stenographers,” which had recently been published. In her poem Page had signalled deep pain and vulnerability – Scott may have responded on an emotional level as his own personal life was vitiated. At the next Preview meeting, Pat had joked that if a man wanted to show his love for her he didn’t need to send roses or chocolates; what she really needed was typing paper for her poems. The next day – to her astonishment – Scott sent her a case of expensive paper.
They became lovers in the fall of 1942. I once asked Mavis Gallant, who had known both in Montreal in the forties, why the attraction? Gallant said that Pat was young and lovely: “She was so beautiful all the men were in love with her, dark hair and creamy skin like a camellia. It was her big eyes. She had large eyes, grey, clear, thickly fringed dark lashes. Liked her voice. Loved her poetry.” Of course Scott was attracted. And what about him? “Well, he was older, it was his work, he knew how to talk to a woman. And then there is the mystère de couple – he was a womanizer; it was the young-old thing, young women going through their married-man phase: but with them it lasted a long time.”
Journey with No Maps (October 2012 publication) is now available for pre-order. Click here to learn more.
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