Now about clothes — I wouldn’t worry. If you come down a few days ahead of our sailing date, we can find some things for you. Leave it to me. I don’t imagine there’d be too much in Linden Ladies’ Wear that would be all that “chic” on the promenade deck of the Genoa Princess. Lewis is now working on an itinerary and it looks as if we’ll be visiting Rome, Florence and Venice. Just imagine, Clara!!! Four months from now, we’ll be in Rome. We’ll have lots of time to look around for your count or duke or prince. Why settle for anything less than a prince?
Love, Nora
Friday, April 17
The entire village is listening to the drama of the three trapped miners in Nova Scotia. The poor men are two miles beneath the Atlantic Ocean and have been down there now for five days. That is so hard to believe. After listening to the radio news this evening, I lay in bed seeing those men in all that darkness, breathing coal dust with the weight of the ocean above them. I suffered an attack of nerves there in the darkness and had trouble breathing. I have had these attacks before, but never one so acute. Finally, I had to turn on the bedside lamp. Slept then for a while. Children too are caught up in this drama and Milton made himself the most popular man in Whitfield, among the schoolchildren at least, by bringing a radio to the school. This afternoon we all listened to the announcer describing how the rescuers are trying to reach the men.
Monday, April 20
The miners are still alive and are actually being fed soup through a tube that has been threaded down a hole. Amid so much gloomy news these days, this is a remarkably heartening story.
Thursday, April 23
After 240 hours underground, two men (one of them a doctor) have been rescued. It was the most exciting event I have ever listened to. Assigned a composition for the pupils in Senior Second. Asked them to write on the rescue of the miners and the role that hope and courage play as qualities in daily life. When I told Milton, he was so taken with the idea that he decided to assign the same to his Senior Fourth. We decided we would give prizes to the winners.
135 East 33rd Street
New York
April 25, 1936
Dear Clara,
Have you been following the story of the miners up in Nova Scotia? Wasn’t that something? I’m so glad they got those fellows out. It was in all the papers down here.
Speaking of stories, Evelyn has come up with a wonderful idea for the show while we are off gallivanting in Europe this summer. And maybe it would be a good idea if you didn’t mention this to anybody in Whitfield, because we want to make the show as realistic as possible. What’s going to happen is that Alice will suffer this minor accident (actually she is going to slip on the library steps and fall, hitting her head). She loses her memory and wanders away. Our dependable down-to-earth Alice just wanders away because, of course, she is not herself. Where has she gone? Everyone in Meadowvale is looking for her. What has happened? Has she been harmed? These are some of the questions listeners are bound to be asking themselves while you and I are having fun in Europe. Then Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim hire a private detective to find her. He turns out to be a handsome guy, but a bit of a scamp, and, of course, Effie falls for him.
By the time I get back, Alice will be found, just how and where we don’t know yet, neither does E., for that matter. Then Alice will have to untangle Effie’s affair with the private detective. Dr. Cal, of course, will help her. Everyone now thinks that Alice’s disappearance will be a great boost for the summer audience, which tends to drop a bit. It turns out that going away in July may be the best thing for the show thanks to Evy’s imagination. So, can I please ask you not to say who you are going to Italy with? Maybe you could tell people you are travelling with an old friend from your Normal School days or something. I hate to ask you to fib like this, but I’m sure you understand. It’s just that people take the program so seriously that we have “to keep their illusions intact,” to quote E. Hope you’re well and looking forward to this summer as much as I am.
Love, Nora
Whitfield, Ontario
Sunday, May 3, 1936
Dear Nora,
Fear not, sister. Your little secret is safe with me. The ladies of Whitfield can look forward to a summer fraught with delicious anxiety over Alice’s whereabouts while you and I and Mr. Mills cavort in Signor Mussolini’s land. Actually, I haven’t yet told anyone that I am going to Italy, but when I do I will say that I am travelling with a group from my Normal School days, class of 1922. We are the ones who, after years of frantic searching, have yet to find husbands and are now not likely to (alas); to console ourselves we are going to Italy to gawk at churches and galleries and eat ice cream. How does that sound? You must not for a minute worry about asking me to fib. I am really capable of the most outrageous lies, and there is something undeniably intoxicating about deceiving the Ida Atkinses of this world.
Our spring has been cool and damp and I long for sunlight and warmth. But everything is greening and rather wonderful. Yes, all of us listened to the Moose River Mine cave-in and it was heartening when those men were saved. A bit of good news for a change. All one hears on the radio these days is the threat of another war in Europe. I hope Mr. Mills is right about things over there. Best as always,
Clara
Saturday, May 16
“Let us talk about happiness,” I said to Marion this afternoon. She had come around with some cake for me. Mother Webb, it seems, had been baking all day. Pies and cakes and tarts, a veritable bakery’s output. So Marion had brought some of her mother’s cake and I was grateful. I made some tea and we sat at the kitchen table. A nondescript day of cloud and showers. Happiness had been on my mind for days: its various aspects, its defining elements and so on. Why are some people happier than others? Could happiness more or less depend on one’s disposition? A beggar, for example, may be cheerful and a wealthy man morose according to their temperaments. Even so, circumstances must surely play a role. Unless you are a madman or a saint, it would be hard to be happy if you were deprived of warmth and shelter and food; if you were in constant pain or had no expectation that matters would improve. All this was going through my mind when Marion came by, making her way along the hall, punishing my floorboards with her preposterous tread. Her dark bangs were damp from the rain and she looked both pitiful and lovely sitting down beside me.
“Let us talk about happiness,” I said. “What makes you happy, Marion?”
Her beautiful dark eyes widened at once in wonder and alarm. What was Clara up to now? Was this another of her little games? Honestly, Clara, I never know how to take you. I could see that statement in her face. And why wouldn’t she be suspicious? How many times since childhood have I been cruelly playful with her?
“Let’s write a letter to the Prince of Wales,” I remember proposing that one listless summer afternoon on the veranda steps. We were twelve or thirteen. Together we would write a letter to the handsome young prince who would be our next King. A look of adoration in Marion’s eyes. “Oh yes, Clara, let’s.”
Her job was to make a list of questions for the prince, and she sat all afternoon beneath the maple tree with her paper and pencil. I went into the house and Father asked me to do something; I’ve forgotten now what. But when Marion showed me her questions, I only shrugged. By then I had lost interest or perhaps even forgotten about the project.
“I don’t want to do that now. When you really think about it, Marion, it’s a stupid idea.”
I’m sure I said something like that before her crushed and tearful look.
It was hardly surprising then to watch her slowly weigh my questions this afternoon. “What do you mean, Clara? I don’t get it.”
“There’s nothing to get,” I said, helping myself to another piece of matrimony cake. “It’s just a simple question. Well, maybe not so simple,” I said.
“What in the world are you talking about?”
Yes! What in the world was I talking about? Besides, I already know what makes Marion happy.
— singing in the choir of Whitfield United Church on Sunday mornings
— the novels of Ellen Glasgow and A. J. Cronin
— Rudy Vallee crooning “My Time is Your Time”
— “The House on Chestnut Street,” “Just Plain Bill,” “The Goldbergs,” “Vic and Sade,” “The Fleischman Hour”
— sitting in the kitchen with me on Saturday afternoon eating matrimony cake
I then told her that I was going to Italy this summer with some old chums from Normal School.
“Gosh, Clara. Italy!”
“Yep.”
“I’d be so frightened to cross that ocean.”
“Me too.”
“Then why are you going?”
“Just for the hell of it.”
“Clara, really!”
Monday, May 25
Dear Charlie,
It’s a year now to the day. Remember? No, of course you don’t. How could you be expected to remember fifteen minutes from a busy year? Oh, you may vaguely recall ____ing some woman in a ditch by the railway tracks, but so what? It wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last, will it? But I remember, Charlie. I remember that cool sunlit spring day and you walking towards me along the railway tracks and the boy with his bad eye and broken shoe. You came upon me like that, and I remember how you burned my wrists with your grip as you twirled me around in that grass. And now I am wondering how many others like me will lie awake at night and curse the hour you wandered into our lives?
Who will it be today? I see a fifteen-year-old girl and the farm where her father has hired you for a few days. And don’t you get along well with the family! You’re such a polite and amusing fellow. “He’ll be all right if I tell him what to do.” The words of the girl’s father to his wife. They let you sleep on an old sofa in a corner of the barn.
“Why this is just fine, Missus. Don’t you worry about me. I’ll just be as snug as a bug here. It’s all a working man needs.” And the girl is taken with you, isn’t she? She’s not very bright and she hasn’t any friends and she likes to have you around. She likes your kidding when she’s feeding the chickens. “The Exhibition! Sure I been to the Exhibition. Why, Thelma, you should see the rides they got down there! They got a Ferris wheel. You ever seen a Ferris wheel, Thelma? Why it must be the biggest in the world. And you know what, Thelma? I worked on that Ferris wheel last summer.”
You can charm a simple girl like Thelma, can’t you? And when all is said and done, you’re not such a bad-looking fellow when you’re scrubbed up and wearing a clean shirt. That wide monkey mouth is always full of jokes and stories. And today Mr. and Mrs. have gone into town for the afternoon. You watch the truck go down the lane, and then you watch Thelma at the clothesline, rising on her toes to pin the sheets. And isn’t that a pretty sight, the backs of those bare legs and the round little rump in the cotton dress! Why, yes it is, and when she is finished you call out, “Come down here for a minute, Thelma, I got something to show you.” And here she comes, wary but fascinated too. And you show her the little bird you whittled from a stick last evening. “Look at that now! Isn’t it pretty? I wish I could make it sing for you, Thelma.” That line surely beguiles the girl, and before you know it, the tomfoolery begins.
Everything starts with the tomfoolery, doesn’t it? The banter and the laughter and the tickling. “I’ll bet you got a funny bone somewheres, Thelma. I’ll just bet you have. Now where is that old Mister Funny Bone? Where is he hiding?” So Charlie’s courting dance begins and just listen to Thelma’s laughter. And why not? Somebody is paying attention to her. A little harmless fun on a spring afternoon when there is no one else around. “Give us a little kiss, Thelma. You’ll like it. You just see if you don’t.” That prying wheedling voice and those bony wrists of yours. Around and around and around you go there in the dust of the farmyard. And how in the world did things come to this pass? There you both are on that sofa in a corner of the barn, the dusty sunlight in the doorway and isn’t that just a glimmer of fear now in Thelma’s eyes? She wasn’t quite counting on this, was she, Charlie? Being pulled down on the musty old sofa next to you? But the line has been crossed, hasn’t it? The line was crossed when you stood there looking at the backs of her bare legs ten minutes ago. And you are not a man who takes no for an answer, so we might just as well get on with this, right, Charlie? “There now, little girl, it’s going to be just fine. You’ll like it. We’ll have some fun here, yes we will. Oh my, look at this now. Yes, yes, I’m gonna ____ you, Thelma, and you’re gonna love it. Yes, yes, you will, you pretty little thing.”
Do you know what you are, Charlie? You are a grief-monger, purveying sadness and remorse across the land. In my dreams, I have seen you bent across this girl or someone like her, and I have brought the axe down upon your skull (waking once with such a cry because my hand had struck the wall). Oh, in my dreams I have done you in, Charlie, murdered you with mattock or coal shovel, dragged your body into bushes where only flies and maggots would ever find you. Yet none of this will happen. You will die a peaceful man in some far-off year (say 1977), a skinny frail old fellow in a charity ward, fussed over by the nurses who love your joking manner. That’s how it will end for you, Charlie. There in a narrow hospital bed with clean sheets, surrounded by attentive women who see only “a sweet old guy who always has a smile and a story.” But not all your stories get told, do they, Charlie?
Saturday, June 27
Where has the last month gone? Yesterday was the end of another school year and now I am ready for my summer adventure. Ida Atkins stopped me on the street this afternoon. She crowds you so when she talks. The rankness of her breath. Spring onions from her garden for lunch.
“I’ve heard of your holiday plans, Clara, and I’m delighted for you. Perhaps an evening next fall you’ll tell us all about your trip. I’m sure the ladies would enjoy hearing about it.”
What did I say to that? I may have agreed to speak to the Women’s Auxiliary or the Missionary Society. Something. It was all a bit indeterminate. The woman flusters me so. But what of that? It’s weeks and weeks away and today is my birthday. Today I am three and thirty as the poets used to say. My life must be half over now and what have I accomplished?
Whitfield, Ontario
Sunday, June 28, 1936
Dear Nora,
It’s ages since I’ve been in touch. What are you up to these days? I hope that all is well and that our travel plans are still in force. By my reckoning (as you can tell, I am already adopting the argot of the seafarer), three weeks from today we should be aboard the Genoa Princess, outward bound for Naples. If this be but a dream, please so inform me. If it’s all true, I am planning to leave Toronto on Tuesday, July 14, arriving in New York the next morning. Is that all right with you?
Clara
135 East 33rd Street
New York
Saturday, July 4, 1936
Dear Clara,
I am really sorry not to have written before. Honestly, I don’t know where this spring has gone. I even forgot your birthday!!! I’ll make it up to you when you get down here, believe me. We’ll go on a real shopping spree. I have been awfully busy with the program and then it seems that Lewis has to say goodbye to just about everybody in New York. So a lot of people have been taking us out to dinner or throwing parties.
I have been a little preoccupied lately (another reason I haven’t written, I guess). These days I sometimes don’t know where I stand with Lewis. Not perhaps the best situation to be in when you’re planning a holiday with somebody. Boy, am I glad you’re coming along. I’m not suggesting that Lewis and I are breaking up or anything, but there is no denying that things are a little unsettled at the moment. I have told you about his sharp tongue and I recognize that he is a very intelligent man and has mixed all his life with brainy people. I told him right off the bat that I was not the college type, and he accepted that. I have always said that you have to accept people for what they are and not for what you think t
hey ought to be. And I have never pretended to be anything other than what I am. Everything else between us has been wonderful, especially you know what! That part has been just fine.
It’s when we are talking about things that sometimes there is trouble. Lewis can be damn cruel. Mind you, I knew that from the first day when I had lunch with him in the cafeteria at Radio City. But he was always pretty good about saying sorry and how he didn’t mean it and I could accept that. But he can be really mean! The other night at this restaurant, we were sitting around after dinner with some people talking about this movie and I said how much I enjoyed it. All right, it was a corny movie. I could see that, but it was also kind of sweet and had a nice story. Well, that set His Lordship off, believe me. He started going on about how “Nora, of course, is in the sentiment business with her little radio show” and all that. I just got up and left. He came out and I was waiting for a taxi and he said, “What are you doing embarrassing me like that in front of my friends?” Imagine! Embarrassing him? What about me? I said to him, “I’m not taking any more of your guff about my job, Lewis. If you don’t like what I do for a living, too bad.” I guess we made quite a scene there in front of the restaurant. Anyway, I went home by myself. I was in tears. He phoned the next morning and apologized, blamed it on the drinks, and that’s part of it, of course. He’s usually okay when he’s not drinking, but put a couple of whiskeys into him and look out. So we made up, but that’s just an example of the kind of thing that sometimes goes on between us.
Clara Callan Page 15
