Dragonholder

by Todd McCaffrey

  Todd, Gigi, Anne, Merlin

  Neither of those stories had been written back in 1958 when Anne went to her first Milford. While art may not imitate life, life was a major influence in Anne’s art. Her first story, about women impregnated by aliens was written when she was pregnant with her first child. Her second story, The Lady in the Tower was written when she had two children under six and a sixteen year-old refugee from the aftermath of the Hungarian revolution living with her.

  Anne McCaffrey, Gordon Dickson, Hal Clement, Ben Bova (1969)

  Her third story, The Ship Who Sang, was written almost as an elegy for her father. Anne was in good company, John Hersey had won a Pulitzer Prize for his fictionalized account of Colonel George Herbert McCaffrey, a.k.a. Major Santini, in A Bell for Adano.

  Built upon her Milford experience and poignant memories of her father, this story was Anne’s first special story. It is still special to her today.

  “Someone screamed when the dirt was shoveled back in. I’m told it was me but I don’t remember,” that is how Anne describes her father’s funeral. They played taps, the soldier’s song of evening — and Anne could never again hear taps without dissolving in tears. In the story, Helva sings that song as the last song the ship sang — her tribute to the fallen Jennan — and Anne’s tribute for her fallen father.

  It takes the sternest of wills or great acting to read The Ship Who Sang aloud from beginning to end without weeping. It was the first story of Anne’s that has ever been credited with saving lives — many people coming to grips with lost limbs have found solace and the courage to persevere in the stories of Helva, the ship who sang.

  Not everyone found The Ship Who Sang to his or her taste. When Anne’s husband — Wright — caught her crying one night, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve just killed my hero,” she replied through her tears.

  “Well, you’re the writer, you don’t have to do that,” he said.

  “No, I had to,” Anne replied, “that’s the way the story goes.”

  Wright left, shaking his head. It was a portent of things to come.

  After The Ship Who Sang, Anne’s writing career went on hold. First, the family went to Germany for six months, following Wright’s job. They rented an apartment in Düsseldorf while Wright worked with DuPont’s Public Relations department to launch Teflon as a new fabric. Anne decided wisely to put the two school-age boys into the public local school rather than try to locate some private English-speaking school. It worked out well — by summer the two blonde-haired boys were wearing lederhosen and acting like natives.

  Anne’s daughter Georgeanne was going on three at the time and stayed with her mother. Anne made up for it in the evenings — she had met a woman at the supermarket, Gisela Quante, who was willing to baby-sit and brush up on her English.

  Somewhere in the six months, little “Gigi” — she got her nickname from an uncle who said of her, “Such a gorgeous George.” — learned enough German that one day when separated from her mother at the local supermarket she could tell the clerks, “Ich habe meine Mutti geforloren.” — I’ve lost my mother.

  Anne, Gigi, Todd, Alec in Germany

  Gisela allowed Anne and Wright time to attend the very inexpensive German opera available. They had a marvelous time. Anne met a Canadian opera singer — a tenor — who took her on as a voice student.

  Voice? Well now we’ll have to go back more in time. In fact, to understand Anne you have to know something of her ancestors.

  A quick tour:

  G. H. McCaffrey on his high school graduation

  Anne’s father, George Herbert McCaffrey — we’ve already met him — was the only son of George Hugh McCaffrey. George Hugh was a Boston cop at a time when the Irish were just getting out of the ghettoes and the Jews were just entering. But George had integrity — he once arrested John F. Kennedy’s grandfather, “Honey” Fitzpatrick for electioneering — and the Jewish merchants on the beat appreciated the way that he would allow no shenanigans. They were so impressed that they took a collection to send his son, George Herbert, to Roxbury Latin School. George Herbert excelled and got a scholarship to Harvard. He graduated magna cum laude — with greatest praise. He was granted a scholarship for postgraduate work and the merchants added enough to it that he could work towards a Doctorate in Government — until World War One intervened.

  GH entered the war as a lieutenant and fought in the infantry of the 78th “Lightning” Division in France. After the war, he went to Poland to helped set up their government. On his return to Boston, he met Anne Dorothy McElroy.

  Anne Dorothy McElroy

  Anne Dorothy McElroy was the daughter of a New York printer/engraver who had fled to the States from Ireland via Scotland. While in those days there was only enough money to send her elder brother, John — who later married our favorite “Aunt Gladdie” — through college, Anne was educated well enough to be fluent in French and more than capable to add languages at will.

  While Mrs. McElroy always felt that her daughter married beneath her — after all, GH was the son of a policeman — Mr. McElroy did not share her views. And so, Anne Dorothy McElroy became Mrs. Anne McCaffrey.

  Mrs. McElroy felt her daughter had married beneath her.

  GH kept a reserve commission in the Army, attending drills monthly and drilling his own kids on the weekend. He was employed by the Commerce and Industry Association of New York, working on city and business planning. His doctorate, received in 1938, was on The integration and disintegration of Metropolitan Boston and is, we’re told, still being referenced in courses on government taught at Harvard.

  Before the Depression, his job moved him down to New York city and so the family bought a house in Montclair, New Jersey.

  Anne was the middle child with an elder brother, Hugh (“Mac”) and a little brother Kevin (“Kevie”). As children and long after, Mac and Anne detested the sight of each other. Fortunately, I’m happy to say that they reconciled one night when Anne was about thirty-five.

  Anne D. McCaffrey, Kevin, Hugh, and Anne (seated)

  It’s hard to say why they disliked each other so much, and Mac was certainly very contrite about the whole thing whenever I mentioned it to him, but it might have something to do with Anne’s description of herself, “I was a brat.”

  Anne, Hugh, and Kevin

  Anne says that she grew up with no friends and was rebellious at school and that her mother despaired of her ever finding a place in this world. Anne remembers that, as a youngster, she had few friends and took to dressing up the cat. Now this particular cat was Thomas cat who was a Maine Coon cat that the family had rescued. If you’ve read Decision at Doona you will probably realize that the tail-pulling Todd has more than a passing relationship to the cat-dressing Anne. And I think that the Hrrubans owe their existence in no small part to Thomas cat.

  Thomas was special. When the family first found him, he was in sad shape and wouldn’t eat. Anne’s mother tried tempting the cat with everything, finally going to the extent of a rare cut of beef. When the cat still wouldn’t eat, Anne’s grandmother McElroy scolded it, “You go right back over there and eat every bit.” And to everyone’s surprise but hers, Thomas did just that.

  Thomas would put up with young Anne’s dressing him in doll clothes and wheeling him around in a stroller until he would get fed up, jump out and shed all the clothes on the ground.

  Thomas was also friends with the next door neighbor dog. When they first met, Thomas showed Rookie his house and kitchen and the dog showed Thomas his house and kitchen — and they were inseparable. Thomas went so far as to convince Rookie to escort gruff old grandmother McElroy when she went out for her walks, because she was terrified of dogs — the Terhune collie would follow discreetly behind her keeping any of the neighbor dogs away.

  When the dog caught a chill and died, Thomas knew before the vet called Rookie’s owner. He rushed over to their house and was already comforting the lady of the house when the
phone rang.

  At the end of his life, Thomas had a stroke. He went blind and his back legs were paralyzed. He tried to cope for a while but finally it was too much. One day he pulled himself in front of Mrs. McCaffrey and rolled over, feet in the air — making it plain that he could endure no more.

  Thomas had a lasting impact on Anne — we grew up with cats as well as dogs all around us. Recently, Anne acquired a breeding Maine Coon cat in Ireland and now Dragonhold-Underhill is the home of many.

  Anne with Zeus and Zorro

  As with our dogs, our cats moved in and out of our lives. In our Windybush estate in Wilmington, Delaware, we had Touché, Tallabar — named in part after the previous cat, Cinnabar, and Silkie Blackington. Touché was a marvelous tortoise shell male who died very young, Tallabar was a multi-colored tortoise who later sired a beautiful orange marmalade male, “Maxwell Smart” — named for his great (lack of) intellectual prowess.

  Todd with Touché in Wilmington, DE

  Silkie was almost all black but she had the softest fur and the sweetest disposition. She sired three or four litters before we finally had her spayed. She got immensely fat but lived to the great age of fourteen. While she was officially Gigi’s cat, when we moved up to Sea Cliff, she split her nights equally between Gigi’s bed on the third floor and Anne’s in the back room on the first floor. Silkie had most of her litters in Anne’s first floor room.

  Did I say a quick tour? There’s more …

  Anne was introduced to books as a young child. Her parents read to her every night. Rudyard Kipling was a featured author — her father would read the kids “The Jungle Book” and “Kim” and declaim “Barrackroom Ballads” from down the hall when they were sick and had to be sheltered from bright lights. GH did not ignore Kipling’s poetry and Anne had no problem reciting “Gunga Din” from memory by the time she was in high school.

  The Depression was not the major trauma to the McCaffreys that it was to so many others in that era. Mrs. McCaffrey had “had a feeling” about the stock market a few days before the crash and had pulled all her money out. For the next few days GH had chided her foolishness — he got very quiet when the market crashed.

  “Feelings” or “the Sight” are common to the McElroy-McCaffreys. Anne’s grandfather McCaffrey (the policeman) — a man of robust good health — called the priest for last rites three days before his death. Anne’s grandmother McElroy — the one who scolded Thomas cat when he wouldn’t eat — had a more alarming encounter.

  When Grandmother McElroy’s sister, Anne, passed away Grandmother McElroy became obsessed with worry about how her sister would find the afterlife - this Anne having never been very happy in life. The best grand aunt Anne ever says of anything was, “Oh, it’s not bad.”

  Grandmother McElroy prayed so hard to know if grand aunt Anne was all right that her sister’s ghost appeared before her at the front of her bed, shawl tucked into her clasped hands. Shocked to silence by the manifestation, it was some time before Grandmother finally managed to ask the relevant question.

  “Oh, it’s not bad,” was the shade’s diffident reply. At which point, grandmother McElroy was so overcome by her success that she banished the vision and never dared use her abilities again.

  Anne and her mother were a team on “knowing” things. The first time Anne ever had the Sight was in the summer of 1938 when Hugh was in summer camp and GH was on maneuvers at Fort Dix. When the phone rang, Mrs. McCaffrey exclaimed, “Something’s happened to GH.”

  “No, it’s Hugh,” Anne replied. It was. He’d been rushed to the hospital with a dangerously inflamed appendix.

  Anne with brothers Kevin and Hugh, and mother Anne, January 1942

  Between the Depression and the Second World War, a major family tragedy befell the McCaffreys. Anne’s younger brother, Kevin, came down with an undiagnosed ailment. He began a long series of hospitalizations as doctors tried to diagnose the ailment. When they finally did, the news was the worst — it was osteomyelitis, an incurable infection of the bone marrow.

  No one knew if Kevie was going to live or die. GH turned down an active duty commission as a colonel in the infantry as the US Army grew in preparation for war. Mrs. McCaffrey stayed with Kevin at the hospital and Anne was sent to Stuart Hall school for girls. It had been established in 1844 as the Virginia Female Institute but was renamed in 1907 in honor of Headmistress Flora Cooke Stuart — J.E.B. Stuart’s widow. Stuart Hall was an excellent choice for the daughter of a military man.

  Before that, Anne was to experience something that would stick in her memory forever and influence all her future writing. She recalls:

  “Mother was a constant companion and nurse for him but the months when she didn’t know what Keve had, had drained her of energy. One night she asked me to sit up with Keve so that she could have a full night’s sleep. I was to wake her if Keve was too restless — the drugs sometimes had that affect.

  “I couldn’t have been more than thirteen for it was May. I was rather ‘puffed up’ to think that I could be allowed to help.

  “It was a weird night … with Keve climbing endless mountains in his sleep with his hands, and throwing his head from side to side. His swollen leg was secured so that he couldn’t injure it.

  “Then, fighting sleep, I remember praying to keep awake. I was grateful when the early morning light seeped through the curtains. The curtains stirred - and suddenly I felt a ’something’ — and Keve stopped his restless movements and fell deeply asleep. So deeply, at first, that I thought he had stopped breathing although I knew that he was all right. The ’something’ had reassured me about that.

  “Later that day when the doctor came, he said that the crisis he had been waiting for had passed and Keve would be all right now. But I knew already, the ’something’ had told me.”

  The ’something’ pervades her writing — never quite visible but always present. And always her style lets us know that no matter what the dangers, ’something’ will be watching over the characters in Anne’s books, and they’ll always make it through to the end.

  Kevin was very brave throughout his ordeal. Once, when he was being moved to a different hospital, the ambulance men hustled him back inside because a hearse was driving by. Kevin — who couldn’t have been more than twelve — told them, “Never mind, I’ll be there soon enough.”

  Years later, Anne was to honor his bravery in The Smallest Dragonboy — a story that has become her most published short story.

  Anne’s stint at Stuart Hall was set in motion on December 7th, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. She had been out riding — her mother had gifted her with the use of a horse for the whole month — and passing motorists had shouted out the news of the attack. She rushed home to find her father and mother listening grim-faced to the radio reports of the attack. GH immediately phoned Army Headquarters in New York and told them that he would serve in any capacity for which they felt him qualified.

  The Army accepted and in January he was posted to Moultrie Advanced Air Force Base in Georgia as the base’s quartermaster at his reserve rank of lieutenant colonel. Before he left, he paid a visit to Kevin at the hospital. At the time Kevin was in a full body cast in an attempt to treat the illness through immobilization. When her father left the hospital, Anne was shocked to see him in tears.

  Gruff, stern, and insistent were the qualities most remembered by his children. GH or the “Kernel”, as he was now signing his letters, was a disciplinarian of the old school. He was a precise, neat man who hated confusion and disorder. He had a dry sense of humor. He tended to be choleric but usually with cause. He had a graduated series of expletives — “Damn it”, “Goddammit”, and “Goddamitall to hellingone” — the severity of which indicated when the children should make themselves scarce.

  The “Kernel” was never seen crying. Except now — leaving a son he might never see alive again.

  Stuart Hall and Anne McCaffrey were not a good fit. A Northerner in a Southern school
was a problem in itself, a headstrong Northerner who was also a Catholic was a sure recipe for trouble with the Dean of Women. While Anne was allowed to attend Mass she was also required to attend the Episcopalian services in school. She learned more from the Padre than she had ever from a priest or a nun and that, coupled with her crisis of faith in a God who would allow small children the horror of total war and incurable disease, started her break with Catholicism.

  Stuart Hall was completely shocked when Anne insisted that she wanted to see the movie “Tarzan” in the nearby town. No chaperone could be found but her wish marked her even more as a “rebel.” (The movie did not live up to the books.)

  However, Anne was an honor’s pupil, allowed to wear the school seal, and performed in the choir and the theatre, taking the role of the Major General in “The Pirates of Penzance.” And, thanks to her Aunt Gladdie, Anne had a year of piano lessons.

  Anne had written her first story, “Flame, Chief of herd and track” when she was nine and her second in Latin class, “Eleutheria the Dancing Slavegirl.” At Stuart Hall she wrote poetry. Lots of it. Anne would spend hours pondering on the perfect pen name and sent several poems in to the magazines but none were ever published.

  At Stuart Hall that Anne had an experience that haunted her then, and profoundly shaped her future. The Kernel had been sent from Moultrie AFB to the Military Governor’s course at the University of Virginia. In May 1943, he disappeared — shipped overseas.