by L. R. Wright
“She prefers my brother,” said Cassandra. “But he’s in Edmonton, so she has to make do with me.”
This would have been a provocative and interesting remark, coming from a stranger. From a potential lover, it was disquieting. He made no response, and she said nothing more.
They drove to Davis Bay, where the main highway dipped close to the sea. Alberg parked the car, and they crunched down the gravel to the beach. They walked out to the end of a long wharf, passing amateur fishermen and kids in bathing suits who were running up and down and yelling, causing the wooden flooring to spring beneath their feet.
“Up that way,” said Cassandra, pointing northwest, “is Selma Park. It’s in the next bay. There’s a stone breakwater there. Have you seen it?”
Alberg nodded.
“There was a luxury yacht named the Selma,” she said, leaning on the wharf’s railing. “In the 1880s. It cruised the Mediterranean, sometimes with Edward the Seventh and Lillie Langtry aboard.” She grinned at Alberg. “Must have been fun, huh?” She turned back to the sea. “Anyway, the Selma went around the Horn to British Columbia eventually, I can’t remember why, and ended up plying the run between Vancouver and Powell River. The land near the breakwater was bought by the shipping line. They used it as a picnic ground for the steamship passengers.”
“It’s very handy,” said Karl, “knowing a librarian.”
“Actually it was George Wilcox who told me all that.”
They began walking back down the wharf toward the beach. But he stopped halfway and turned around to look out at the ocean, and almost due west, a clump of rocks protruding from the sea.
“That’s Trail Islands,” said Cassandra at his elbow. “In the winter you can hardly see the rocks. They’re covered with sea lions.”
He smiled, remembering his first sight of it.
The water was stitched with silent sails. He could hear the raucous murmur of powerboats. He looked far off across the water and saw on the horizon the mountainous outline of Vancouver Island, hazy in the distance.
They left the wharf and wandered north along the beach, which became sandier as they walked closer to the water. The evening was very warm; sunlight flashed from the sea, and when Karl half turned his back on it, he saw that there was a golden glow over everything.
They were walking close together, but not touching. The air was so filled with other scents—salt and seaweed and the pine trees they were slowly approaching—that he couldn’t tell whether she wore any perfume. He felt mildly helpless, a tourist. But he thought he probably didn’t look much different from anybody else on the beach. Except that he wasn’t wearing shorts. He hadn’t been able to imagine wearing shorts while meeting somebody’s mother.
Suddenly Cassandra began to run. He watched in exasperation as she pelted up the beach, her straw bag bouncing on its long braided straps, her skirts flying out every which way. If she thinks I’m going to chase her, he thought in disgust—she was a grown woman, for Christ’s sake. He glanced around in embarrassment, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention. A group of small tanned children ran in and out of the water, screaming. Some adults sat on towels on a big log, eating hot dogs. And still Cassandra ran, growing smaller as she increased the distance between them.
Finally she whirled around and bent to put her hands on her knees, catching her breath, he figured. She stood up and waved him energetically forward. He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he thought she was smiling. He began a slow, sedate jog, holding onto his dignity and his disapproval. She waved again, impatient. He jogged a little faster. The soles of his sneakers grabbed confidently at the gravel and tossed it behind him. He felt himself start to grin, and he ran faster. Cassandra urged him on with shouts and gestures. Soon he was flying up the beach. She grew larger and larger; he could hear her laughter clearly. When he reached her he threw his arms around her, panting, and her hands grabbed instinctively at his now sweaty back.
“Jesus,” he gasped, “I’m out of shape.” He was leaning on her; she pushed him away gently, smiling at him. His heart was thumping quickly and he felt triumphant.
“George Wilcox lives up there a way,” said Cassandra, pointing beyond the end of the beach. “I’d like to stop in to see him. He’s got a lovely garden. Are you game?”
Where the curve of the beach ended there were trees and houses that backed onto the sea.
“Isn’t it all private property, past here?” said Alberg.
She laughed. “Yes, but I don’t think anybody’s going to mind. Come on.”
They clambered along a much rockier, narrow beach that led behind lawns and gardens, some well cared for, some not. The sun was lower now, getting ready to drop behind Vancouver Island. Alberg wished devoutly, as he stumbled over the rocks, that they were back in his car, heading for his house, or hers.
“How much farther?” he called out, as they rounded a slight curve and came within the gaze of a middle-aged couple sitting in lawn chairs.
“Not far,” shouted Cassandra, who was some distance ahead of him, and she waved at the couple, who waved back, mildly surprised.
“Here we are,” she said a few minutes later. Karl caught up to her and stopped, panting and grateful. He took a few seconds to recover his wind and then looked curiously at George Wilcox’s house, set back about a hundred feet from the water’s edge.
A lawn sloped gently up to a garden buffered from sea winds by a low stone fence built across half the width of the property; some tall plants rose above the fence, swaying idly. Flowers grew against the house, and there were more next to the fences that separated George’s house from those of his neighbors. There was a small toolshed at the end of the lawn, to Alberg’s left. On the grass to the right, near the back door, sat a somewhat threadbare canvas chair and a small table. The large window which Alberg knew was in the kitchen, and the smaller one next to it, in the den, were veneered with gold from the slow-sinking sun.
Cassandra was advancing across the lawn toward the door. Alberg followed, ill at ease. She banged on the door.
George Wilcox opened it and looked at her in amazement.
“I hope you don’t mind,” said Cassandra. “We’ve come to see your roses.”
George’s gaze shifted to Alberg. “The Mountie,” he said. “You’ve brought the damn Mountie.”
“I’m not on duty, Mr. Wilcox,” said Alberg, furious now with Cassandra and with himself.
“Well, I can see that, can’t I,” said George, eyeing the two of them.
“He’s actually a very nice man,” said Cassandra.
“That may be,” said George, holding on to the door.
“We were walking on the beach,” said Cassandra. “At Davis Bay.”
George looked at Alberg. “You want to see my roses? I find that hard to believe.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. Wilcox,” said Alberg. He had thought of his hydrangeas and felt suddenly like a normal person. “Cassandra says you’re a gardener. I need all the help I can get.”
“What do you mean, help?” said George suspiciously.
“I’m living in a house in Gibsons with all sorts of things growing in the yard, and I don’t even know what most of them are, let alone what to do about them.”
“What house in Gibsons?”
“The one they call the directors’ house.”
George snorted. “That place has been going to rack and ruin for years, ever since the C.B.C. got its hands on it.”
“Well, I’ve got it now. I’m only renting it, so far. But it’s still my responsibility. And I’m not really up to it.”
George Wilcox joined them on the grass, leaving the door open behind him. He was wearing his gray sweater. It was dark enough, Alberg supposed, halfheartedly, to be taken from a distance as blue.
“You’ve got some dandy hydrangeas there,” said George, “if I remember the place rightly.” He shuffled over to the corner of his house, next to the neighbor’s fence. “These are hydrangeas,” he said, pointing to an e
normous group of shrubs about four feet tall. He reached into the middle of a bush and stroked a faintly blue blossom much larger than any on Alberg’s plants. “In a couple of weeks these will be so big,” he said, indicating with his hands a six-inch circle. “Blue, then purple-ish. Last the whole summer. You got these in your yard?”
Alberg nodded. “They’re growing along my front fence. I think they’re going to bring it down.”
“Damn things’ll grow into trees if you let them,” George agreed. “Cut them back. Be brutal. But don’t do it now. Do it in the fall, when they’ve finished flowering.” He moved on. “Now these, these are roses. Climbers. They grow up along the fence, you see that? You’ve got to tie them, though.”
“I’ve got some of those, too,” said Alberg. “I cut them back last week. Flowers and all, I’m afraid. They were about twelve feet high.”
“Climbers are a bit tricky,” said George, inspecting the leaves. “See this?” Alberg leaned closer. “Aphids.” He wiped them off with a gnarled thumb, stooped to wipe his thumb on the grass. “Climbers are tricky. Some of them like to be pruned and some don’t. If yours grow back and bloom again this summer, then they’re the kind that like to be pruned. If they just show you a lot of leaves, then you did the wrong thing. You did it at the wrong time, anyway, that’s for sure. It’s too late in the year. You can’t go hacking things down when the flowering season’s under way. It’s not natural.”
“I’ll remember that,” said Alberg.
“Instead of pruning them, you could have bent them down and tied them to the top of your fence.” He had begun walking across the grass toward the stone fence; he stopped and threw Alberg a curious glance. “You ought to get some books out of the library,” he said.
“I just got my card the other day,” said Alberg.
The sun was low and saffron in the cloudless sky. The sea had darkened almost to violet, and the air was golden. It was as though the scene had been lit for a photograph, Alberg thought, looking at the bent old man leaning over his vegetables and Cassandra leaning next to him, holding back her chestnut hair. They were absorbed in the plants which grew in the shade of the low stone wall. Yes, thought Alberg, the scene looks lit for a family photograph or a sentimental movie; there was an artful glow about it. The lawn beneath his feet was soft, springy, fragrant.
“I’ve got a couple more chairs around somewhere,” said George. “Probably in the toolshed. Why don’t you dig them out?” he said to Alberg. “I’ll go get us some lemonade.”
The toolshed was small and weather-beaten, standing on the lawn between the stone wall and the beach, under a wind-twisted arbutus tree. Inside, gardening supplies were arranged on shelves, gardening tools hung from large nails, a ladder leaned against the wall. There were also a small push lawnmower, a wheelbarrow, a large half-empty bag of lime, another of fertilizer, and a lot of odds and ends. Pushed into a dusty corner, Alberg found three canvas chairs like the one outside. He set up two of them in a semicircle with George’s, out on the grass, and placed the small table handy to them all.
Cassandra had gone indoors to help George. Karl stood on the lawn looking at the garden. He wondered how difficult it was to keep flowers blooming serenely against the side of the house; he liked their vivid colors. Behind him the sea washed upon the beach with a rhythmic, whooshing sound.
George came out, bearing, incongruously, an elegant crystal pitcher. Cassandra brought three ordinary glasses on a tray. George poured, a bit unsteadily, holding each glass over the grass so the spillage wouldn’t get on the tabletop. He was careful to pour the same amount of lemonade into each glass. He put the pitcher down carefully and sat, gripping the wooden arms of the canvas chair, and then rested his hands on his thighs.
He had told Cassandra in the kitchen that the crystal pitcher was forty-five years old, a wedding gift. She thought he looked weary and more stooped than usual, and wondered how long his strength could endure in the face of his loneliness. She wanted to touch his hand as it lay upon his thigh, but she didn’t.
“My mother grew a lot of geraniums,” said George. “And sunflowers, and hollyhocks. She probably grew more than that, but that’s all I can remember.”
They listened to the sea and welcomed the cooling brought by evening.
“Was your father a gardener too?” said Alberg, stretching out his long legs, crossing his sneakered feet at the ankles.
George looked at him for a moment. Alberg couldn’t read his expression. Then he looked away, and for a while there was silence, and then George began to speak. He looked at the grass as he talked, or at the white-cord tepee upon which the peas were climbing, and sometimes he shaded his eyes with a hand and looked out at the sun, still glinting from behind the hazy mountains on the horizon.
“There’s a lot of peace to be found in gardening. I didn’t discover that myself for years and years; just watched other people do it and wondered why they bothered. But I found out there’s a lot of peace in it. That might be something you’d appreciate, Mr. Alberg.”
Karl looked over at him thoughtfully.
“When you plant a seed,” said George, “it almost always comes up, and turns into a plant, and gives you flowers or something to eat. When you accidentally put a bulb in upside down—a daffodil or a tulip, for instance—it comes up anyway, most times, making a half-circle under the earth, heading for the sun it can’t see.
“Gardens are magical places. Marigolds all orange and gold bring exuberance and joy into your patch of earth, but if you plant them in with the vegetables, they also keep away the carrot rust fly. Picking peas, eating them straight from the pods—nothing in the world tastes as good.”
There was very little expression in his voice. Cassandra felt that he was speaking by rote and yet had an urgent need to say these things. She glanced at Alberg, who was looking out to sea, his feet outstretched, hands linked behind his head.
“You’ve got roses in your garden, Mr. Alberg,” said George. “Look closely at them, sometimes. Touch the softness of them, and smell the perfume, and see the shades of color—you won’t find that particular kind of beauty in anything but roses.
“Sometimes you get infestations of things; you’re in for a real battle, then. You can buy chemical sprays that choke your throat when you use them. Don’t use them, if you don’t have to. Wash the aphids away with soap and water.”
Cassandra, watching him intently, saw that he never looked directly at either of them. His white hair gleamed in the dying sunlight; she saw only his profile as he looked away from them, out toward his garden or the ocean.
“As you said, Mr. Alberg, you’ve got a responsibility for the plot of ground you occupy. You share it with lots of other living things. Your responsibility is to keep a balance out there, like nature does.
“Maintenance, that’s the thing to remember. Ten, fifteen minutes a day, that’s all it takes, once things are under control. More in the planting season, of course. And you’ve also got the spring and fall cleanups to do.” His voice fell away for a moment; they waited, wondering if he was finished.
“I like that part of it, though,” said George, heavily. “I like digging in compost, raking up the leaves, ferreting out the stones. Because it’s part of the tending of the earth.”
There were bees in his garden and birds in his arbutus tree. For a few minutes, when he stopped speaking, Alberg heard them clearly, above the swishing cadence of the sea.
“It’s hard to tell if your interest is genuine,” said George, and now he was looking straight at Alberg. “It’s hard to tell if you’re the kind of man likely to become a gardener.”
Karl cleared his throat and nodded.
George blinked out at the sea, and at the sun, which had almost disappeared. “It’s going to be another hot one, tomorrow.”
Alberg put two of the canvas chairs back in the toolshed and closed the door firmly. It had no lock. He joined Cassandra and George in the kitchen, where George was carefully rinsing out the
pitcher and Cassandra was putting the clean glasses away.
“What did you think of that lemonade, eh?” said George.
It was delicious, they told him.
“Came out of a can. Frozen stuff. You add three cans of water and mix it up.”
He walked them through the house to the front door; it was getting too dark, he said, to stumble along the beach over all those rocks. They paused before they left to thank him and say goodbye.
Alberg turned to follow Cassandra out the door, then turned back. He looked around the living room, puzzled.
“What’s the matter?” said George.
“You’ve changed something.”
George followed his glance. “Nope,” he said.
“There’s something different,” Alberg insisted.
“Nope,” said George.
Still Alberg hesitated, looking around the room.
“You’re imagining things,” said George quietly. “I ought to know. I’m the one who lives here.”
Alberg turned back to him. He grasped George’s hand; it was gnarled and knotty, but his grip was firm and strong.
“Your garden’s very beautiful,” said Alberg. “It seems to give you a lot of happiness.”
“It used to,” said George hoarsely, and pulled his hand free.
Alberg thought of his ex-wife, no longer his but at least alive. He thought of his daughters, no longer near but still his. He thought of the years he had to live before he would reach George Wilcox’s age.
“Where’s your daughter?” he said. “Carol; is that her name?”
“She’s in Vancouver. Lives near Stanley Park.”
“Do you see her often?”
“Sometimes. She lives in an apartment. I’m not fond of apartments.” He was clutching his hands tightly in front of him. They seemed to be trembling.
Again Alberg hesitated. He wanted to say something comforting, but this wouldn’t have been appropriate. It was an impulse with no genuine substance; he had known the old man for too short a time, under circumstances which had not been friendly, and suddenly realized now that he knew him not at all.
