by Vicki Delany
“This is a beautiful room, Moira,” Elaine said. “Different from the rest of the cottage.”
Moira looked around her, admiring the surroundings with an air of long established comfort. “This is my study so I’ve done it up to suit to my taste. The cottage itself belongs to the Madison family, of course, thus I have chosen to keep the rest of it in the style as chosen by my grandmother and mother.” Her brown eyes twinkled. “Saves family arguments that way.”
Pleasantries over, the old woman clapped her hands. “Now to work. Where do we start?”
Elaine pulled a tiny tape recorder out of her sweater pocket. “With your permission, I’d like to tape all of our conversations. Simply because I have a hideously bad memory and it’s easier than writing everything down.”
Moira nodded.
“Before I begin going through your correspondence, if you could give me a general idea of how you want the memoirs to be constructed, who your audience is to be, what you hope to achieve? That sort of thing.” Elaine pressed the record button and whispered the date. She placed the machine on the desk between them and pulled a small notebook for jotting down comments to herself out of the other pocket. Ruth slipped across the room and took a seat in the bay window.
“This is to be a book about me, not about my family. We are a prominent family indeed, but my father and grandfather and my brothers-in-law can be accessed in any moderately competent history of Canadian business. Am I speaking loudly enough?”
“Yes.”
“I want this to be the story of the life of one Canadian woman. I won’t pretend false modesty and call myself ordinary; these surroundings would make a mockery of that word. But I do hope that my life has something to say to women today. It is so hard to get women’s stories told and once told, heard. Stories of who they really are, not as appendages to their husbands’ careers. Do you know what Maryon Pearson said when asked about her husband’s success?”
Of course Elaine did. Maryon Pearson was the wife of the late Lester B. (called Mike), a much-loved former Prime Minister of Canada. But she knew better than to interrupt the flow of narrative.
“She said that ‘behind every successful man stands a surprised woman.’ I always liked that line.” Moira chuckled with a warmth that made her appear decades younger.
“I decided that as I have the money and leisure to tell my story the way I want it to be told, I would do so. Is that all right with you, young woman?”
“Perfectly all right. A great idea.”
“Of course, I can’t forget about my family entirely. I’ll tell you about the early years, how wonderful it was growing up in this place, having everything a young girl could possibly want, and then some. But most of all I want to tell you about the war years. Those wonderful, terrible years in London and Italy, and all the people I knew back then. And my years in Central Europe with the Red Cross and after that my work for Médecins Sans Frontières.”
Elaine looked up. “You were with Doctors Without Borders? How absolutely fantastic. But you didn’t mention that in your letter.”
“No, I didn’t. I thought it would be a nice surprise. I went to Zaire with them, in 1978.” She coughed lightly, then with more strength, until a fit of choking had Ruth rushing over from her seat by the window with a glass of water. She placed one hand on the back of Moira’s head and helped the old woman to take a sip.
“You’re too tired for any more of this,” Ruth said, sounding more nanny than assistant. “Let Elaine get into the storage room and read what she wants in the boxes. You need your rest.”
Moira lifted her right hand and hit the glass with enough strength to knock it flying out of Ruth’s hand. It struck the sharp edge of the desk and shards of glass and droplets of water flew through the air.
“Don’t you tell me what to do,” Moira shrieked. “I’m not a baby, do you hear me? Do you? I don’t need to rest five minutes after I’ve started. Go and clean up that mess and then leave us alone. I’m sure you can find something useful to do, if you put your mind to it.”
Ruth burst into tears and fled from the room. Elaine scrambled to her knees to pick up the sharp pieces of glass, more to hide her embarrassment than from any desire to be useful.
“Leave that,” Moira snapped. “Ruth will do it. I don’t know why I put up with her. Incompetent fool.”
Ruth chose that moment to slip back into the room, bearing pail and cleaning cloth. She gathered the bits of debris and mopped up the spilled water silently and efficiently. Her hands trembled.
“Where were we? Oh, yes.” Moira settled back into her chair. “I had scarcely begun talking to Donna, what with the arrival of my sisters and their families for the Labor Day weekend. So I am starting this from scratch. Tell me if I get too boring. I don’t have many letters saved from when I was a girl. Simply because there weren’t many. I lived with my mother and father. They sent my brother Ralph away to boarding school, but we girls stayed at home. There were four children. Ralph was the oldest, and my mother’s favorite. She absolutely adored that boy. Even all these years later I can remember how jealous I was at the fuss and attention Ralph got when he came home for school holidays. To my father and grandfather, he represented the future of the company and the family. Ralph would be trained to follow in their footsteps every step of the way.”
“Did you resent him?”
“No, I didn’t. Does that surprise you? I should have, but instead I idolized him. Everyone loved Ralph. He died in the war. So sad, such a tragic waste. My grandfather died the day after they got the news, and my mother was never quite the same again.” She breathed deeply and stared into another space and time. Elaine did not interrupt, but made a quick note to find out more about the doomed Ralph. Paragons were rarely quite what they seemed. Ruth finished tidying up and left the room. Moira missed her resentful glare, but Elaine didn’t. It would seem that she had made an enemy, through no actions of her own.
“And then there were the three girls. I came first. Moira, the willful one, my mother called me. Maeve arrived right after me, the attractive one. She was quite pretty, but never the stunning creature my family pretended. Of course, with our money, if they said a donkey was a great beauty everyone would have bayed in agreement.
“And Megan, the baby. The talented one. She played the piano. Quite well, actually. If she wasn’t so spoiled she might have achieved something in the world of music. Do you notice anything about our names?”
“They all begin with M. A coincidence?”
“Not at all. My mother thought of herself as a poet. She wrote quite a bit, although she never showed anyone her work. She burned everything not long before she died. I often think about the significance of that. That huge body of work, never seen by another soul. Tragic, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“She loved alliterations. I suspect she only married my father for his last name. She certainly didn’t love him. And she didn’t need to marry him for his money. Her family had quite enough of their own, thank you very much. Her name was Mary Margaret. But her last name was boring old Brown. After their marriage, she wrote or embroidered ‘MMM’ on absolutely everything—towels, stationery, linens. She would have loved to have lived to see the year 2000.”
“Why?”
“MM, of course. Roman numerals for 2000. Her family was of Irish ancestry. She liked the old Irish names. I can well imagine that my father had to put his foot down to avoid a son named Liam or Sean. But he didn’t have much interest in the girls, so she named us as she liked.
“I never remember a time when I got on well with my mother. My father, as suited our class and times, was a distant, almost mythical figure. What could I be but difficult? Sandwiched between Ralph, the sacred male child, and the beauty and the artiste.”
A frisson of excitement crawled up Elaine’s spine. She had taken this job for the chance to start a new life, get away from the city and the memories and the familiar haunts. Her career that once blazed with such p
romise had flat-lined, leaving behind it not the faintest signs of a pulse. She’d hoped that helping a rich old woman write her boring memoirs would give her a chance to breathe new air and come to some decisions. But maybe there would be a story here, after all.
Moira switched tracks so quickly Elaine almost fell off. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to be growing up between the wars. In the fabulous twenties. The strong, healthy child of a rich family. Only years later did I come to understand that not everyone lived like us. Or even like our servants, whom I did think of as part of the family, in my patronizing little way.”
Elaine thought of the difference between how Moira talked to Ruth and to Lizzie and herself, and that perhaps some things hadn’t really changed at all.
“Those years were simply absolutely, fabulously magical. Despite all the usual childhood fights and tantrums and bickering. We came up here every summer, immediately after Ralph arrived home from school, and we stayed until Labor Day. I was born in 1914, so I was a girl and then a young woman, what today they call a teenager, through the twenties. The best of all times, I often think. The twenties I mean, not my youth.
“Then came the crash of ’29. It scarcely made a ripple in our lives. We were all right. The family industries were diversified enough that we escaped the worst of the Depression. But all over the lake places were sold or closed up and neighbors and good friends never seen again. I had a dear friend, Lorraine Hamilton. The summer of 1929 we were all of fifteen. Surely the most perfect and innocent of ages. At least it was in our time, although I suspect it is no longer. We swore our undying friendship to each other, like Anne and Diana. We had simply devoured the Anne of Green Gables books that wonderful summer. When I wrote to her at Christmas she never answered and come the next season, their cottage was boarded up so tightly a cockroach couldn’t have found a way in. I never saw or heard of Lorraine again.”
She paused for a breath and looked around her in some confusion. “I seem to have misplaced my water glass, dear. And I am getting quite parched, all this talking. Could you call Lizzie and ask for a cup of tea. Push that button here and someone should answer.”
Elaine did as instructed and in the time it took a kettle to boil, Lizzie was kicking the door open, laden tray in her arms.
The cook poured. This time tea was served in thick mugs, one of which was a souvenir of Niagara Falls, and the other a testament to the World’s Greatest Aunt.
Lizzie noticed Elaine reading her mug with a disappointed frown. “Good cups and silver are for afternoon tea. This is morning tea. No ceremony.”
Moira gripped her mug as she thanked Lizzie. The tips of her fingers turned white and her arthritic hands shook, but she raised the quarter-filled cup to her lips and took a tiny sip.
“I can’t tell you, dear, how horrible it is to grow old. Helpless as a blind kitten is bad enough, but it is knowing that things will only get worse that is hardest.”
Elaine swallowed. “My mother always said that getting old is hard, but the alternative is worse.”
Moira threw back her head and laughed. Elaine was so startled she leapt to her feet and failed to catch her hostess’ mug before it hit the floor. The thick carpet absorbed the impact and the cup bounced away, unharmed. A bare dribble of tea seeped into the fibers.
“Oh, that is so true. I will remember that. When things are the hardest. Please pour me more tea, dear, I seem to have lost what bit I had.” She wiped her eyes with a scrap of tissue tucked into the sleeve of her T-shirt, but the smile died too soon. “There are times I wonder if the alternative might actually be better. That is why I want to work on these memoirs. So it is not forgotten when I’m gone. Just a touch, thank you.”
Elaine checked the tape. “You were telling me about when you were young.”
“Indeed I was. The parties, the dances, the picnics, the boat races, games on the lawn. The summers passed in an endless haze of fun and irresponsibility. My grandmother loved her garden with a passion and the property blazed with flowers all season long. We had a full-time grounds staff of three, here at the cottage, and that’s apart from the staff at the house. Can you imagine?”
Elaine couldn’t imagine. Her idea of a garden was two tomato plants stuck into plastic pots, struggling to survive out on the balcony.
“Ralph was always inviting school pals up for a weekend, or boys from other places on the lake. We had the grandest parties, and the boys absolutely swamped us, Ralph’s sisters, with attention. At the time, of course, I assumed the force of my sparkling personality attracted them. Now I know that being the oldest daughter of Frederick Madison was more than enough.
“You must see some of the wonderful photographs of those days. I’m sure they can explain it all better than I. Would you like to use our pictures in the book?”
“With your permission, it would add a great deal.”
“Take whatever you find, as long as you return it.”
“I will.”
“My father would come up for the weekends sometimes, and my grandfather a good bit more as he got older, but usually it was only we children with my mother and grandmother. Better that way.”
“Why?”
Moira looked startled. “What do you mean why? It just was.”
“If you want this to be an honest account, you have to tell me everything.”
“And you think there is something to tell?”
“Of course there is. Most children would welcome their father’s company, particularly when it was sporadic. When they don’t, I have to ask why.”
Moira sighed. She turned her head and looked out the window. A minute passed in total silence. Then the old woman took a deep breath, as if she was coming to some sort of a decision. “Because he was a bully and a tyrant. Because my mother hated him and did everything she could to stay out of his way. Because when he was here she spent the days locked in her room with a headache and a bottle of gin and the maids tiptoed around the place as if the smallest sound would bring it all crashing down around them. We lost at least one maid and one groundskeeper every summer. They would do something my father didn’t like, or be in the wrong place when he wanted to be there, and they would be sacked on the spot.
“It was easier the rest of the year, when we were at home in Toronto. The house was bigger, we had school, and Father didn’t normally come home until long after the children were in bed. We weren’t as close to the servants in the city, even if they were the same people. Things were different. If a maid was gone one morning, no one cared, another would be in her place by the afternoon.”
“Did he abuse you?”
“What an amazing question. Are all you young people so blunt?”
“I am not young, Moira, as I’m sure you noticed. And we are writing your memoirs after all.”
“Oh, I understand that it is quite the thing these days to display all your family’s dirty laundry for a good airing. But please remember I was a nurse, and in the army. Quite out of place for my class, I was. I do know the more sordid facts of life. But my father did not abuse me in any way, physically, mentally, or sexually. In fact, my father didn’t even know I was there. He must have sometimes wondered why the dining room chair was speaking. I was not a boy, nor was I pretty or talented. Ergo, of no consequence.”
“But you went on to do wonderful things. To get out in the world, and to make something of your life.”
“I did, didn’t I? And how shocked they were when I told them I had decided to study for a nurse. My mother once again locked herself in her bedroom with her beloved gin and my father forbade me to even mention it again. I suspect that he had already lined up a junior partner to be my husband. My great-aunt died in 1935. She never married and had no children, and so she left us three girls a bit of money of our own. A wise woman, my aunt.
“I was twenty-one years young. Old to go for a nurse in those days, but at last I had my own money, and all the wonderful freedom and independence it represented.”
El
aine scribbled notes as fast as she could. The tape recorder whirled away. This was great. Better material than she had dared hope for. “Tell me about your grandparents, on your father’s side. I’ve seen their portraits in the stairway. Impressive.”
“They are. My grandmother was a powerful influence on my life. My mother was somewhat…shall we say, uninvolved…in her children. She was happy to leave us to a succession of nursemaids and nannies. But Grandmother Elizabeth would step in and act as mother. Particularly over the summer when we were here, at the cottage. We weren’t quite as close when we were all in the city. We had our own house. Maeve lives there now. Megan and her husband have Augustus and Elizabeth’s home.
“Grandmother Elizabeth was the only truly caring and loving adult I had in my childhood, other than a stream of nannies. I loved her dearly. She died when I was still in Europe, after the war.”
Outside, Alan the gardener strolled past the big bay windows. A streak of mud ran down one side of his face and dead brown leaves were tangled in his hair. He carried a rake and shifted it to his left hand to wave cheerfully at the watching women.
