Tom resettles his hat, at the same time allowing a large yawn to escape him. He embraces me, says “Bless you,” and goes out into the frosty, star-bright evening. When I return to the kitchen to tidy away the tea things, I find Mrs. Wilson at the table looking into an empty cup.
“Reading the leaves,” she says. “I do like emblems.”
“Fortune telling? Well, Nana and I once had our teacups read. I was going to rise to a great challenge in the middle of my life, the woman said, and she was annoyed when we both immediately got the giggles. When I was a toddler, I was afraid to step off the pavement onto the grass, that’s what a bold adventurer I was. And still am. No, I’d much rather not know what’s coming, if it can be known. It’s almost sure to be nasty or frightening, or both.” Here I am referring, of course, as Ethel and I both know, not to the search for employment I must soon come to grips with, but to that other matter at the back of my mind.
“But have you no curiosity?” she wants to know.
“Not about myself. I know me too well. Which means I can pretty well predict my own future. Besides, it’s safer not to know.”
“Nothing is safe. Surely you know that.”
“Oh, you’re wrong there. Some things are. Minding your own business and keeping out of other people’s, for example. All that. It’s the only safety there is.”
“Certainly most things are risky; even dangerous. Is that a good reason to refrain from doing them?”
“The best reason in the world, if you ask me.”
“You poor creature,” says Ethel with sincerity. Her voice is gentle, but there is a faint note of contempt in it none the less. I frown. And after an uncomfortable moment – it is our first disagreement – she vanishes.
I lie in bed next morning before daybreak, arms folded behind my head, and think hard. I think about standing for hours peeling skin off chickens and whacking a cleaver through their pinkish bones at six dollars an hour. I think about emptying ashtrays and walking three Pekes for Miss Waterman. Light slowly filters into the room. I wonder quite seriously whether praying might help; or perhaps a confession of sin. “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts …” and here I sit up. I go to the cupboard and fumble in the pocket of my old beige cardigan. There is the curled-up label reading “Handmade for Devices and Desires, Queen Street West.”
Some hours later I am walking along Queen Street past shops selling used comic books, wicker furniture, pets, shoes, furs and hamburgers. This is a part of the city so unknown to me it might almost be a foreign capital in some exotic corner of the globe. The illusion is heightened by the astonishing number of African and Oriental faces I encounter. Amid all the urban grind and clutter of traffic, a sudden thaw has created glittering sidewalk puddles and a chitter of birds. Glad of the excuse to loiter, I slow down, searching shopfronts for the right number. At a red light, I wait beside a toddler in a winter space-suit, holding the hand of its mother, a melancholy Pakistani in boots and leather coat, under which the gilt hem of a sari trails wistfully. A truck cutting the corner short sends a spray of filthy water over her, at which the toddler laughs with delight. The mother and I exchange a rueful smile.
Before I am really ready for it, Devices and Desires presents itself. It is a double-fronted shop with one window full of implements and materials for sewing and knitting; the other stocked with finished articles – samplers, table linen, shawls and the like. Allowing myself no time to pause, I step inside. A pleasant smell of coffee and new fabric inhabits the place. So does a large number of people examining things in the boutique or standing around waiting to be served. The only staff on hand, though, seems to be a small, stout woman in a smock who darts among the customers in a distracted sort of way, talking all the time as if to keep the forces of chaos at bay.
“Yes, we have the fifty-four inch – you’ll need six metres to cover – now where’s that tape measure? – Yes, madam, I’ll be with you in just a – oh, bother that phone – I’ll just have to let it ring – now where are my scissors?” Reaching out, I lift a corner of the fabric for her and reveal the handles of a pair of scissors.
“They seem terribly short-handed here today,” remarks a woman at my elbow, unbuttoning her fur coat patiently. She extracts from a plastic bag a large piece of Fair Isle knitting which is in a state of extreme confusion. “This thing is driving me crazy, Mrs. Barnes,” she adds, raising it and her voice to catch the attention of the stout woman.
“Ah – yes – get to you in a minute – now my pen’s gone – my daughter’s usually here to help out on Tuesdays, but she’s – and my assistant’s got flu and can’t keep anything down – I don’t know –” She lifts both hands to her bushy grey hair and extracts from it with an air of pleased surprise a red ball-point pen. “Now your bill –” she says. “So sorry to keep you waiting,” she adds, looking at me in a hunted manner.
“Maybe I could help this lady for you,” I suggest, indicating the Fair Isle customer. “I know that pattern well.”
“Oh, would you – how very kind – yes, just coming,” and she darts off into the boutique.
I see at once what is wrong with the Fair Isle project. Swiftly ripping back I find and pick up two dropped stitches. “Aren’t you clever,” says a gaunt girl in a blue ski cap. She edges closer, opening a carrier-bag of her own. “Could you just have a quick look at my armhole? Something awful’s happened, only a midget could get into it, and I don’t know why.”
I take the sweater from her. “Ah, well. You’ve been decreasing one stitch every row instead of one every other row. That’s why. Pull it out and start again back here.”
Satisfied, both knitters depart. Quite a few of the customers have by now given up and gone home, and Mrs. Barnes in her desperate way trots to and fro dealing with those who remain. Eventually the two of us find ourselves alone in the empty shop. We look at each other amiably.
“Nice of you to help out like that,” she says. Now that things have calmed down, she is capable of finishing her sentences. Sighing, she lowers her broad bottom onto a stool. “Now what can I do for you?”
“You could use some of my work, I hope.” I grope in my bag for the small teddy bear bought weeks ago at the Yankee Doodle shop. As a sample of my handiwork I’ve knitted him a miniature duffle coat, using some leftover navy wool and a couple of toggles off an old jacket. Mrs. Barnes touches the small hood and patch pockets with an amused grin.
“Damn nice,” she says. “Sure. We take a fifteen per cent commission, of course, but if that’s all right – we sell a lot of gifts for brides and newborns – can you do that kind of thing? Shouldn’t be hard to agree on a price. People will pay very well for work like that. Otherwise, as you can probably see, I’d have gone out of business a long time ago.”
Without bothering with any polite denials, I tell her, “I crochet and embroider too.”
“Great. Bring your stuff along. And I often get orders for initialling and so on, if you’re interested.”
“I’m interested in surviving.”
She darts me a quick, interested glance. “Me, too. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Rowena Hill.”
“I’m Kate Barnes. Not in a rush, are you? Hang on a minute, then.”
A minute or two later she reappears with two steaming mugs of coffee. “My daughter’s getting married and she just can’t help me as much now; as for Judy, the kid’s always got something wrong with her, and I really need somebody –” I am much intrigued to discover that she is nervous, even slightly apprehensive of me. “I wonder if by any chance you’d be interested in working here three or four mornings a week?” she goes on, cramming both fists into her smock pockets. “For instance we get so many people coming in with knitting problems. I can’t turn them away, for the sake of good will, but the buggers take up so much time – and you obviously have the know-how and the patience. Pay twelve dollars an hour, if you’re –”
“Done,” I say promptly. To reass
ure myself that all this is actually happening, I sip my coffee. It is quite dreadful.
“Oh, that’s great. I’ve really needed somebody for weeks and it’s frazzled me half to death. Like to start Monday?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Right. Monday, then.” The door opens and three customers straggle in. “We’ll get everything organized then. I’ll need your social insurance number and your OHIP and all that – Yes, can I help you?”
I step out onto Queen Street in a state of euphoria. I am an employee with fringe benefits. I don’t know exactly what a social insurance number is, but I intend to find out, and get myself one. Cuthbert will know what to do. Down the wet pavement I stride, walking on air.
“So you’ve got a job,” says Charles. “I wish I could say the same.” He perches on the end of my sewing table with his usual well-meant but futile effort to seem at home anywhere.
“I haven’t seen you for ages!” I say cheerfully. “Where have you been?”
“Ah,” he says, looking thoughtful. “I only come along when needed, you know. What with this new interest in your life, maybe …”
“Are you surprised? I am, I can tell you. Imagine me in a shop, waiting on customers – talk about radical changes –”
“Radical?” he asks, raising his eyebrows quizzically. “You and I are not people who can change our essential nature, you know. That may be regrettable, of course; but there it is.”
“I guess to me even small changes are radical.”
“Which illustrates my point.”
“Yes, it does.”
“What are you making there?”
“Hemstitching some pillowcases for Mrs. Barnes.”
“Making things. Inaugural stuff. I like that. It’s vaguely encouraging. Well, I must be off to cut a ribbon or two myself. Nice chatting to you, Rowena.”
“Always a pleasure, Sir. My regards to your mother, by the way. Her name was mentioned in the courtroom the other day.”
He makes me a ceremonial bow. Then, with dignity, but swiftly, he fades and retreats towards the bedroom window. As I watch, hand lifted in farewell, he gracefully melts into the bright air, his ears lingering a second after the rest of him has vanished.
Sunday is a very slow and empty day, because I’m so eager to begin my new career. The house is quiet, the phone mute. I sit about, fidgeting from one room to another, unable to settle to my sewing. I gaze curiously at the faded upholstery of Edwin’s chair and the end of the kitchen table where he always laid his carefully folded newspaper, marvelling that these things remain while he is so totally and finally gone. I ponder this for some time. Until now I haven’t found it possible to think of him with any kind of detachment. But today for the first time I can consider him almost – though perhaps not quite – kindly.
I wander into the sitting-room again and look at the shabby books in their case. He always resented them (“Why have you always got your nose in a book?”), but perhaps that was an admission of loneliness. They were my defense and refuge, and they shut him out. The one item on those shelves that was his own was the prayer book. After a moment I take it out, and sitting on the edge of his chair, riffle idly through its pages.
It’s not the hypocrisy of his churchgoing now that strikes me, but the possibility that he sincerely needed his religion. The communion service, after all, is all about guilt. “We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings,” and all that. Yes, it would have been in church, if anywhere, that Edwin might have felt like making me an act of atonement.
But this prayer book is the new one Marion gave him for his birthday just five or six years ago. What happened to that little scuffed red one he used before that? He would never have thrown it away. It must be somewhere in the house … Yes, I remember now seeing it when I searched that old trunk in the basement in the days when Cuthbert was nagging me to look everywhere for a will.
Something gets me to my feet. More for something to do than for any clear purpose, I go down the cellar stairs and once more lift the domed lid of the trunk Edwin brought from his Ottawa home all those years ago. It’s rather sad that after that it travelled nowhere, but instead served as a sort of burial ground for transient domestic interests of his like home upholstery or do-it-yourself barbering. Here is a packet of yellowed letters to him in my untidy schoolgirl writing, together with some loose snapshots of my old, rounder-faced self in that long-ago park. I saw these on my earlier visit to the trunk, and tossed them aside. Now it seems to me rather touching that he should have kept them. I have no wish to look more closely at them – the whiff of orris-root I used to romanticize the notepaper embarrasses me now; yet somehow they humanize Edwin. They remind me how private his emotions always were, and how much more of him I might have known if –
But there is the little red prayer book, under Marion’s badge-covered Brownie uniform. Now those thirty married years are over, I can admit they included moments of satisfaction, even happiness – not many, perhaps, but some. Suddenly I see again Marion’s thin little six-year-old legs running eagerly up the path to the camp lodge. She was so impatient to begin the adventure of camp that she forgot to turn and wave goodbye to us, and Edwin silently reached for and took my hand. My eyes ache in the poor light. Out of somewhere there drifts across my mind Wittgenstein’s dictum: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” No doubt I have not been entirely fair to Edwin. Perhaps it would do me no harm, in fact, to ask somebody’s forgiveness for sins of my own.
I take the little red book upstairs and sit at the kitchen table to examine it. The binding is broken with long handling, and loose sheets of sallow India paper protrude on three sides. The flyleaf, foxed and creased with age, drifts free, and I catch it before it reaches the floor. Something is written there in blurred pencil. My breath snags in my throat and the words swim under my eyes: “I mean Rowena to have the Don Mills house.” It is signed Edwin John Hill and dated eight years ago. And it is a valid will. I know this because months ago Cuthbert lectured me on the subject. A signed holograph will, even one as rudimentary as this, is quite legal.
For minutes I stare at the pencilled words for clues to Edwin’s motives and feelings, but cannot find them there. The facing page in the book lists the moveable feasts of the church year. Bemused, I wonder what impulse made Edwin, perhaps at some pause in morning prayer, scrawl this statement of intention. It seems bizarre to be elated over such an enigma. Nonetheless, I go swiftly to the phone and call Cuthbert.
“My dear, how marvellous!” he all but shouts. “Yes, it’s perfectly valid … we can easily prove it’s his handwriting. Oh, glory, to think all along I had this gut feeling he left a will, and here it is!
“So now you can count on a roof over your head at least. First thing tomorrow I’ll apply for probate of the first will to be set aside. Then we apply for grant of probate to yours –” Here he gives a tremendous sneeze and adds, “I’ve got a filthy cold, but I’ll get this in the works first thing in the morning. The whole business will take a few months, of course, but what the heck – oh, I’m so pleased for you.”
But the joy in his voice tells me he is pleased for himself, too. And I don’t resent that in the least. This liberates him at last, and we both know it.
CHAPTER TEN
I’ve been behind the counter at Devices and Desires for a week now. It’s still rather a nervous business confronting customers, getting used to the stock, travelling in rush hour … It all seems not just to fill my time but cram it to overflowing. I find it a scramble to fit in my own household routine. It’s sometimes even difficult to find time for a peaceful bowel movement. And some of Kate Barnes’s scattiness may be rubbing off on me. I left my wallet on the supermarket counter the other day and had to run back to retrieve it. And now I come across a key in my kitchen that I don’t recognize at all. My own house key is on a ring. Where on earth have I acquired this one? Then I remember, and drop it into my handbag. Don’t forget, I
tell myself, to return this to the Wrights some time. Then I set out for the shopping plaza, this being my morning off.
Melting snow soaks the yellow grass and makes a blue glaze of wetness on the pavement. Not a leaf or blade of green shows itself yet, but the air feels faintly warm and smells of earth. Winter-pale people, still padded in their heavy coats, wait at the bus stop, turning their faces wistfully up to the sun. With cautious half-smiles they say things to each other like, “Nice change, eh?” and, “Thought it would never come.” Among them, with a slight jolt of recognition, I spot Mrs. Blot in the armour of a raspberry-coloured down coat that doubles her bulk and clashes with her blusher. The bus sweeps to the curb and gathers them all in, and I walk on.
At the corner of McKenzie Street, without any instructions from me, my feet pause. Well, after all, I think; why not? Just a brief look-in for old times’ sake, since the coast appears to be clear. After all, I haven’t seen him for a couple of months. I’ll just stay long enough to say hello. At his age, you never know – it might be the last chance. And perhaps that will get the old brute out of my conscience and my dreams.
The key turns with such reluctance in its slot that I think for a moment the lock has been changed. But Mrs. Blot has not carried the war that far. I step inside to find everything unchanged … the brooding silence, the smell of dust, the stuffy darkness that makes its own glum statement in the midst of the radiance outdoors. As always the place both intimidates and depresses me, because it seems to prove that time and circumstances can crush even a strong personality like Sebastian’s. I climb the creaking stairs calling his name into the stagnant gloom.
There is no answer, but I find him slumped in a bedroom chair, head back, exposing a ropy neck, eyes half closed. He is not asleep or even dozing, but his thoughts, whatever they are, appear to oppress him. A sour smell hangs about the room. The fingernails of his slack hands are yellow and broken. His beard, now raggedly thick and stained with food, gives him a helpless air that suggests suffering. When the hooded blue eyes open briefly they are quite blank. No recognition brings them to life; no intelligence moves there; no interest keeps them open. My heart begins to beat hard and fast, as if I have been accused.
A Serious Widow Page 23
