“Would you teach me how to drive?”
“Drive! A car? What on earth for?”
Cathryn grasped Isobel’s hand and cried, pleading and girlish. “For fun! Oh please, Izzy!”
Isobel was not an accomplished driver herself, but she could hardly disappoint Cathryn. Her friend’s blind faith gave her confidence enough, so that Saturday noon she cranked the old Ford to life and drove the bumpy logging road to the end of Granite Point. She thought she was getting close to Cathryn’s house when the road dipped to a low spot curving near the lake. Across the bay she could make out the end of the point and the cottage tucked in under the cliff. The ruts of the road were muddy here, even in the dry weather. At this low spot there was a wooden dock with a long cedar-strip canoe resting upon it. The cottage was only a few hundred feet away by water, but the road inclined sharply to swerve off into the woods, growing more rugged and narrowing until the pines towered in an arch, obliterating all sunlight but dusty shafts. Isobel knew she was getting close only when she recognized Cathryn’s red bicycle leaning against a tree.
She pulled up to the parking slope. If there hadn’t been another vehicle parked there to define the edge, Isobel might well have landed the Ford directly on Cathryn’s roof. The wide timber structure was barely visible below, flanked by white pines and camouflaged by moss padding the cedar shakes. The roof was gently speckled, and only the broad chimneys at either end discriminated the structure from the terrain. Isobel descended a narrow set of steps carved into the stone and at the bottom found herself on a path of flag stone leading alongside the cottage. All hues of lichen had attached themselves to the log exterior, and orange mushrooms sprouted next to the foundation.
The steep gables and oddly placed windows reminded her of a fairy-tale book she’d had as a child, Gnome’s, wizard’s, witch’s lair, all who enter here beware…
Isobel’s foot caught as if grabbed and she shrieked. When she looked down to see her ankle snagged by Virginia creeper, she laughed and untangled the vine.
Once someone had attempted a garden along the front of the cottage, but wild cinnamon ferns and sumac had taken over. A bright wave of sweet woodruff thrived in the sour earth of pine needles, and a raft of bergamot drifted toward the door. The slender clematis on the stone pillars of an arbor was shouldered to the side by a rigorous curtain of climbing wood rose.
She knocked timidly at the thick door, fully expecting it to be opened by some crone, but a delighted Cathryn wearing a bright blouse and carmine lipstick popped out to greet her in a tight hug. She looped her arm through Isobel’s and swept her inside.
“There you are!”
The entry was weighted on one side by a heavy winding staircase with banisters and rungs of twisted willow; the floor was cold slate. Three tiny coloured windows above the door let in shafts of bottle-green light.
“What an odd house, Cathryn.”
Cathryn laughed. “Just wait, I’ll take you on a tour.”
She led Isobel through the low kitchen, its ceiling branded with blackened rings above each gaslight, the wooden walls painted a shiny vanilla that reflected the aqua linoleum. A corner of screened windows framed a table laden with stacks of books and a vase of marsh cinquefoil.
The dining room paralleled a long porch with wicker chairs all painted a dull brown. An adjoining living room was nearly consumed by a stone fireplace the length of one wall. Two horsehair sofas and several rocking chairs were placed around the hearth.
Isobel felt something tickle through her sandal and jumped back. The bearskin rug at the edge of the hearthstone was massive. Glass eyes peered into the firebox, and its yawn was crowded with yellowed teeth as long as Isobel’s fingers.
“It’s all right, Izzy. You can step on him if you like. Can’t bear to myself. Ha.”
All the windows in the house opened upward to attach to the ceilings with hooks, so that reflections of the outdoors and interiors met in wavering grids overhead. The logs of the interior walls had gone dark and were dotted with beads of clear pine sap, hardened orbs that held reflections of reflections.
There were two empty first-floor bedrooms connected by a small parlor with twisted twig armchairs. Off the parlor was another set of stairs within a shaft of cabbage-rose wallpaper, a tight bower leading up.
The first upstairs room was large, its windows facing the lake. An immense carved bed was softened by a damask coverlet and a half-dozen finely embroidered pillows. Cathryn’s scarves and necklaces hung from the empty canopy frame, and a trunk at the foot of the bed opened to a mound of books.
Isobel picked up a framed wedding picture from the bureau. Cathryn and Liam were linked on the steps of a cathedral, a dozen attendants flowing behind. Two priests and a bishop stood well off to the side, as if fearing to tread on the endless gown coming like a flood from the recess of the vestibule.
“Good Lord, Cathryn, that dress!”
“Yes. It was something.”
She laughed. “You can believe my shoulders ached pulling the thing. That aisle seemed endless! After the wedding Liam nearly had to ride one of the horses, there was barely enough room in the carriage for me and the train.”
Isobel touched the frame. “And your groom, how handsome, he looks so… ”
“Happy? Yes, Liam was happy. In love then.”
She flashed a grim smile of her own, shrugged, and slipped out the door. Isobel followed her down the corridor of doors opening to four smaller, slope-ceilinged bedrooms, all furnished with willow headboards and bare, grey-ticked mattresses. Clear glass oil lamps near each bed emitted a smell of clean kerosene, and the pale yellow floors were evenly dusted with a powdery chaff sifted in through window screens.
Cathryn had been breathily singing out the rooms as they went through the house. “Parlor, big porch, stairs, this room, that room, bedroom, bedroom… ”
When they reached the tiny hall off the upstairs corridor she sang, “Other porch, husband!”
At the sound, Liam Malley turned from his fly-tying table in the far corner of the screened porch.
Cathryn’s husband rose, ducking to avoid a rafter, as Isobel came forward to shake his hand. She had never seen him close-up and was immediately struck by his unusual colouring, eyes of startling blue fringed by thick lashes the same shade as his blue-black hair. His skin was white save the steely sheen where his whiskers had been closely shaved. His features were young, as if he were a great overgrown boy, but his mouth was old, the lips withheld. When he smiled it seemed a weighed decision.
Isobel spoke first. “Hello.”
He remained silent, his wariness was palpable. His hand dwarfed Isobel’s, but his touch was tentative, as if her hand were an egg.
He sat back down to his task.
Isobel cocked her head, unable to tell whether he was gruff or simply shy.
She mentioned the warm weather they had been having, and Mr. Malley nodded solemnly without looking up. “No good for trout.”
After a long pause he added, “All right for a picnic, though.”
Isobel smiled at him, puzzled. He seemed misplaced in the cottage, his bulk too awkward for the space. A bear in a rabbit warren. He turned in his chair and reached for his pipe. As he tamped in the tobacco he seemed to relax.
“I’ve seen your husband around, Mrs. Howard. We’ve never met, though. He’s the tailor, isn’t he? Makes the uniforms for the mine’s brass band?”
“Yes, he does.”
“And you, you make hats?”
Isobel shrugged. “Just starting again. Your wife’s been a great help to me.”
He raised his brow at Cathryn through a plume of smoke. “She spends a lot of time in the shop. That’s good, that’s fine. Keeps her occupied then, doesn’t it? Idle hands and all that.”
He peered in Cathryn’s direction, but she folded her arms suddenly and turned to the window. Liam inclined his head, and when he spoke it was as if he only had half his attention to spare. The rest was trained on Cathryn, ev
en though he no longer looked directly at her.
“Yes. Can’t have too many hats, can you?”
He suddenly looked down as though searching the surface of his table.
“I hope not.”
Isobel turned to Cathryn, but she was still focused out the window. She pointed beyond Liam’s shoulder. “What a lovely setting you have here. Just look at that stone.”
Great outcroppings sloped gradually from the house to scallop into the water.
Liam looked up, a mild shift. “You know that stone?”
“No, I don’t.”
“That’s Ely Greenstone.”
He rolled his r on the word green. “We’re very close to the Laurentian divide. Have you been to see it?”
Isobel shook her head.
Liam pulled out a chair and nodded for Isobel to sit. She settled onto its edge. Cathryn leaned on the sill, rapt on some point outside.
“You should, y’know. It’s a sight. The divide is really a fold, a great folding of the crust of the earth. Exposed all the root rocks of former mountains round here.”
“Former mountains?”
“Sure, all the Saganaga granite, the quartz shelves.”
Cathryn laughed nervously. “Oh, not a geology lecture!
Really, Liam, you’ll bore our poor guest to tears.”
He ignored her, becoming more animated as his sentences were peppered with words that sounded very much like desserts to Isobel, peneplain, strata, cherty. He talked about the Knife Lake sediments, slates, impure quartzites, volcanic tuffs. “Agglomerate ten thousand feet thick, this very house is sitting on it.”
Cathryn was suddenly behind Liam, hands on his shoulders, patting him to silence. “Next thing you know he’ll be dragging us over to Giant’s Ridge for a field trip.”
“Oh, I don’t mind, it’s rather interesting… ”
Cathryn swept around Liam, and as she passed him he reached out to touch the small of her back. She did not stop but motioned Isobel up from her chair. “Up, up! Enough for today, class.”
She took a curt bow toward her husband. “Professor.”
She led Isobel to the door. “Let’s get going on that picnic, Izzy. We don’t want to miss a minute of this glorious sun!”
At the second mention of a picnic, Isobel glanced curiously at Cathryn, who warned a silence by pressing her lips. She made a tight face toward the chair where Liam sat and backed stealthily down the hall.
Isobel turned at the doorway. “Ah, it was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Malley.”
“Same here.”
He picked up a tiny hook between tobacco-stained fingertips. “Mrs. Howard?”
She turned back. He nodded to the hallway. “You’ll take care with her.”
“Pardon?”
Isobel waited. Cathryn’s voice came from far down the hall. “Ta, Liam!”
Isobel stood, thinking he might explain, but he didn’t, only looked her in the eye once before turning away, suddenly intent on the window Cathryn had glued herself to earlier, searching the landscape as if to find what had held her attention so long.
Downstairs, Cathryn took a wicker hamper from the counter and pushed Isobel neatly out the door.
Jostling along in the car, Isobel asked, “A picnic, Cathryn? You didn’t tell him where we’re really going? That I’m teaching you to drive?”
“Goodness, no. He’d only fret. Besides, what’s wrong with having a little secret?”
“Secret?”
Cathryn took a silver case from her bag, opening it toward Isobel. “Cigarette?”
Isobel tightened her grasp on the wheel as the car bumped into the ruts. “Perhaps later, after our picnic.”
All her life she had embraced an abiding distrust of horses, water, and any mechanical device larger than a sewing machine. Why Cathryn, or anyone else for that matter, would want to drive a car for pleasure was a full mystery. Isobel had learned how to drive only out of necessity and after twenty years still shuddered at the sound of ignition.
She had decided the safest place for Cathryn to learn would be somewhere well out of the way where they could cause no one harm, just in case.
“Perfect!”
Cathryn clapped her hands together and hooted as they drove through the gates of the Cypress cemetery.
After they parked Cathryn insisted on peeling back the vented hood to examine the valves and pistons. She even reached in to feel the warm cables and pipes, tracing them to see how and to what they connected. Unlike Isobel, she didn’t seem at all frightened of the smelly engine and its black rumblings.
“Oh look, Izzy, this must be the carburetor!”
Isobel backed away and sat down to watch from a distance, jumping up after realizing she’d settled on a tombstone. Cathryn leaned into the car’s open hood.
Isobel pulled at quack-grass engulfing the limestone angel on a child’s grave. The hood of the Ford crashed back into place and Cathryn calmly wiped her fingers, stuffing her blackened handkerchief nonchalantly into the pocket of her immaculate skirt. She called out to Isobel, who had moved down the long row of headstones to tidy another neglected grave. Cathryn cranked the starter herself and when the engine rattled to life she threw her hands up in triumph. Jumping in behind the wheel, she motioned wildly and yelled, “C’mon, Izzy, or I’ll go without you!”
Cathryn tested the brakes, pressed the clutch, and put her foot to the accelerator. The car lurched a few times and veered from the road into the grass. Isobel covered her eyes, regretting their location. “Please, please, please don’t hit anything.”
“Anyone, you mean.”
They bumped back onto the lane and then they were moving, Cathryn steering through the narrow road between grassy plots and mausoleums. Shifting was difficult, but by midafternoon Cathryn was slipping fluidly from first gear to second with hardly a jerk. “Why, it’s just a rhythm! That’s all there is to it, Izzy. It’s as easy as swimming or making… dancing.”
After the lesson they laid out a blanket and ate their lunch under a canopy of aspen. Cathryn was flushed with her triumph and ate quickly, crumbs from the Cornish meat pasties dusting her blouse. “After lunch we’ll try the open road, Izzy. I can’t wait to use fourth gear!”
Isobel dropped her head, moaning.
“Now. Don’t be such a ninny.”
Cathryn pulled a bottle of wine from the hamper. “Here, this might buy you some courage.”
“Where did you ever find that? Not here in town?”
“Oh, no, madame.”
She turned the dusty bottle so Isobel could see the label. Chateau Alsace, 1922. Working the corkscrew into the bottle, Cathryn frowned into the hamper. “It’s from our cellar back home.”
“Is this another secret?”
“Do you mean did I tell Liam I was taking a teeny bottle of wine?”
The back of her hand flew to her mouth in a theatrical swoon. “Oh my, I do believe I forgot!”
Isobel looked into the basket. “And you’ve forgotten wineglasses too? No matter.”
She tipped the bottle toward her lips. “We’ll make do.”
Cathryn scanned the graves. “You see that headstone, Izzy, the one with all the swirly lines in it? Do you know what kind of flower is growing there?”
“No.”
“Saponaria. Isn’t it pretty?”
Isobel peered at the grave, but Cathryn nudged her shoulder and pointed in another direction. “And see over by the pond, that white cluster of blossoms? That’s called grass-of-Parnassus. Isn’t that a name?”
“Sounds like a line from a dirty limerick. You can see that from here?”
Isobel squinted.
“Oh look, Izzy, blue gentian!”
“Since when are you the botanist?”
Cathryn shrugged. “Since… since I’ve started to take notice.”
At the far end of the cemetery, a stooped figure parked his wheelbarrow and began chipping lichen from the base of the stone pillars supporting the iron g
ates. The sound reached the women’s ears only after his hammer and chisel were lifted, a delay between the retreating glint of metal and the grating sound on stone. Cathryn watched the man at his task for a moment before musing, “What happens in the gap, I wonder?”
“The gap? You mean the silence?”
“Yes, the silence, the gap in between. If noise can delay itself, what else might be floating around out there that doesn’t reach us right away?”
“Such as?”
Isobel kicked off her shoes and began stripping a dandelion.
Cathryn lit two cigarettes and handed one to Isobel. “Oh, emotion, for instance. Something that is felt for you by another person, say anger, or even love. What happens in the time it takes for you to realize it’s there?”
Isobel thought about this for a moment and was about to speak when Cathryn pulled her skirt up over her knees. “What wonderful sun!”
She began to unbutton her blouse with one hand. “I’m going to get some colour.”
Isobel took in Cathryn’s peach silk chemise and noticed the fine embroidery at its V. She felt a sliver of envy. It had been years since she wore anything like it, anything daring.
She picked a bit of tobacco from her tongue. “Dangerous daywear, Cathryn.”
Isobel glanced over toward the maintenance man. “It’s a dangerous day, Izzy. I’ve learned to drive and now I’m going to sunburn my back.”
As Cathryn rolled over, Isobel noticed a pearlish cord running through her flesh, a wide scar just over her collarbone, silvered with light.
“What’s that on your neck?”
She reached quickly to touch it. “Oh, my surgery?”
As her fingers drummed over the mark, alarm fluttered across Cathryn’s face, and Isobel had an image of a dark curtain falling.
“My, I’d almost forgotten it. I had a little cyst there. Maybe the sun will fade it.”
She reached for the wine, and when she turned back she was smiling again. “More anesthetic, nurse?”
Across the cemetery, the maintenance man lifted his head, as if hearing distant birds. He put down his tool and shaded his eyes to peer toward the noise. Loons? One of the marble angels at the base of the far knoll sported a broad-brimmed straw hat, its long ribbons ticking in the breeze. Beyond the statues, two women reclined under the trees, half-sitting, propped on their elbows. Thin strips of smoke rose from the cigarettes in their hands. The man was upwind, couldn’t make out what they said, heard only a singular cough and the audible wails of laughter as the women fell out of sight behind the tall grass.
These Granite Islands Page 12
