The Particular Appeal of Gillian Pugsley
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2 - 1931
Chapter 3 - 1946
Chapter 4 - 1946
Chapter 5 - 1946
Chapter 6 - Canada—1932
Chapter 7 - 2003
Chapter 8 - 1946
Chapter 9 - 1932
Chapter 10 - 1946
Chapter 11 - 2003
Chapter 12 - 1946
Chapter 13 - 1932
Chapter 14 - 1946
Chapter 15 - 1946
Chapter 16 - 1933
Chapter 17 - 1946
Chapter 18 - 1946
Chapter 19 - 2003
Chapter 20 - 1946
Chapter 21 - 1946
Chapter 22 - 2003
Chapter 23 - Date = forever and a day or two, 1946
Chapter 24 - 2003
Acknowledgements
About the Author
More
Title Page
The Particular
Appeal of
Gillian Pugsley
a love story
Susan Örnbratt
Copyright
Copyright © 2015, by Susan Örnbratt
The Particular Appeal of Gillian Pugsley
Susan Örnbratt
www.susanornbratt.com
www.lightmessages.com/susanornbratt
sornbratt@lightmessages.com
Published 2015, by Light Messages
www.lightmessages.com
Durham, NC 27713
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61153-111-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61153-112-1
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without the prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Dedication
For Grandma
I hope your poems have finally found their home.
Chapter 1
When I grow old, my prayer will be,
To find content,
In memories of how I tried as days sped by,
To do a little good –
A helping hand,
A kindly word,
A tear for tears,
A burden shared,
A load made less because I cared,
And hope reborn, where lived despair.
And when at last my youth has gone,
My memories dim, my story told.
I pray that peace will bless the days,
Still left to me when I am old.
Chapter 1
I have a magnificent obsession. One that hasn’t marinated or stewed but has been gobbled up faster than my withering body can digest. Life. If I look down at my crimson coat and scarf covered in Scotty dogs, I’m sure I’ll start to laugh. Who in their right mind would wear something so festive to such a dreary place? But my barometer always seemed broken when it came to expected behavior. And I wasn’t about to fix it for anybody, including this doctor.
Leaning back on his chair, the hospital wall behind him is stippled with pockmarks like a worn institution. But what I remember most clearly about this place was the joy in holding my granddaughter in my arms for the first time. I swaddled her in apple green pixies, getting a look of horror from the nurses’ station. But I glared right back as two sets of white clogs slunk behind the desk. They couldn’t see my granddaughter’s eyes light up with wonder the way I could. Of course, it was over twenty years ago; now I’m afraid I’m the one who needs to be swaddled.
I close my eyes for a moment trying to forget where I am, but the hum of his pager plucks me from my trance. Look at him sitting there. Now, I’ve seen my fair share of sulky lumps, but this doctor champions the lot. If he only knew what a grand life I’d led, I’m sure he’d be tapping his toes by now. Poor thing, trying to muster up the strength to tell me the worst.
“Mrs. Pugsley,” he says, clearing his throat and looking as though I am his one and only patient. I can tell because he’s flushed a warmer shade of pink and his eyes look as though they’ll well up at any moment. I couldn’t have asked for a kinder doctor. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
Suddenly I’m not so sure about him. Bad news doesn’t sit well with a name like Pugsley, as distracting as it’s always been. The first time I heard it, it jangled my nerves. Angus Stanley Spencer Pugsley. How cruel could a mother be? The poor scamp wouldn’t have a hope in a month of Sundays attached to a name like that. But I love it now and wouldn’t change it for anything.
“Perhaps you should get your things in order,” he says, not knowing what else to say. I’m sure he’s right, but I don’t know what my things are. I have this big nose of mine. That I know. Wherever I glance, left or right, I see its shadow pestering me. I wonder if it’s true what they say, that noses never stop growing, because mine is now far too unwieldy for my head. Angus’ really got in the way, I thought, toward the end. I sigh, my chest crumbling inside me. Angus… how I wish you were here.
A puff of air suddenly reaches my lungs, snapping me back to reality. But of course he isn’t around to help; he usually wasn’t. Angus preferred to be waited on hand and foot, bless his heart, but he wasn’t about to get it from me. The least he could have done was show a little discretion when he tried to get it from the likes of Charmaine Dipple. Good God, the way she flaunted her appendages. Well, good luck, I said to him, but he was back groveling within a week. I find it a wonder sometimes how I miss him so, but soon enough. Perhaps up there you can dote on me.
I feel myself on unfamiliar ground, walking away with an insidious gob of cancer feasting on my body. But I won’t spend another minute in that hospital until I set things straight. I suppose without knowing it, that’s what the doctor meant. A nasty chest cold it was when I walked in and a nasty chest cold it shall be. The family doesn’t need to know anything different… for the time being anyhow.
I walk along the sodden bricks to the car park with my arm coiled in my granddaughter’s in a country where I never thought would take my last breath. Granted, I wish I were walking to my fiery Mini Minor in the old country instead where Angus and I spent a number of years. Mildred was a loyal car and I always felt like a champion driving her. Even Leslie, the watchmaker in Ascot, would step onto the threshold of his shop just to eye my arrival. Oh yes, Mildred in her pearly white overcoat knew how to draw attention. Instead, this little pixie is kindly fetching me yet again. What Gilly wouldn’t do for me!
Although Gilly offers to come up, I want to be alone. My flat isn’t much, but it’s where her grandpa drew his last breath, and I want to feel near him. It’s been quite a day after all, and tired has come to have a new meaning altogether.
I plop into my cushy pink lounge chair and gaze over the other seven high rises that surround me. They all look the same—gray. Gray in a London that couldn’t think up a name for itself, so it has echoed the original’s for nearly two hundred years. I suppose it’s flattering really; truth is it made me feel at home instantly. I dare say I even take kindly to Canada
’s version of the Thames, snaking its way through all the names that are dear to me. Still, it’s not the real thing.
And it’s certainly not Ireland, my first home, apart from the weather today. But I see the balcony door hasn’t been washed for months. Yet if I squint my failing eyes to the rain now trickling down the railing, I can feel something resembling relief. I wondered when it would be my time. Now I have only weeks; months if I’m lucky. Just a cruel blink to sum up a whirlwind of eighty-nine years.
I don’t want to say good-bye.
I don’t want it to be the end.
I can feel my chest crushing my bony frame as I draw a breath. I never used to notice my age unless I looked in the mirror. But where I used to sashay, I now lumber; I’m afraid I can’t bounce back from this wobbler. All in all, I feel perfectly morbid, and I don’t think I like it. Angus would knit monkeys in his grave if he saw me like this.
It’s extraordinary how time flutters by. Another early autumn with the bluest of blue skies and I can’t imagine being anywhere else with my granddaughter. Three days, two and a half hours have passed, but I refuse to count. I’m on a mission here, and the fire sizzling underneath me isn’t doused yet!
“Here’s a good spot for us to sit, Grandma,” Gilly says while brushing some pine needles off a bench. “But watch your step.”
Springbank Park is full of benches by the water. And if you’re lucky enough, the odd rowing shell will glide by while ducks by the dozens take life at an easy pace. The number of times I’d walked past the old stone pump house only to be caught off guard by the sudden bellowing of a coxswain. It always riled me until I realized how much fun it looked.
“Yes, the Canada geese have been at it again, I see.” A smile curls up at the corners of Gilly’s mouth. The first smile I’ve witnessed since the news spread of my illness. My nasty chest cold didn’t fool a soul.
“Are you comfortable?” she says, her eyebrows now arched above her new glasses. The black rims suit her being such a pretty thing—her fair hair lying in folds on her shoulders.
“Of all people, you are the last person I want doting over me, do you hear?”
“I know. It’s just… well.”
“For a young woman who’s never been lost for words, I beg you not to start now. You are a writer, Gillian Pugsley, a woman of words and we share the same name for a reason. You are as stubborn as I am and don’t for a second let that go to waste. If you’re wise, it will serve you well. You must nurture this love of yours and no matter how many rejections those deplorable agents send, you must never stop writing.”
“It seems like only you believe I’m a writer, Grandma. Sometimes I wonder myself,” she mutters, lowering her chin.
“Look at me. Go on, look at me, Gilly. Do you wake up in the middle of the night thinking of words? Do you leave bits of paper all over your flat with new words or expressions scrawled across them? Do you go for walks then find you are beside yourself when you’ve thought of precisely the way to word something and you’re without a pen and paper on hand? You begin to recite the phrase over and over until you arrive home. And once you do, you sigh a great relief when you’ve managed to scratch it down as quickly as possible? Not because you have to. Not because someone is telling you to but because you can’t bear the thought of not getting it down on paper?”
Gillian wears a look of amazement in her eyes. “How do you know? It happens to me all the time.”
“My dear, you are a writer. You don’t need to be the next Margaret Atwood to tell a great story. You just need to read and write. The more you do, the stronger you’ll become. I didn’t have this same luxury. Good reads were hard to come by in my day, and writing was for the foolhardy. It certainly wouldn’t have put food on the table. In those days practicality was a necessity—especially during the war.”
“Are you telling me, you wanted to write, Grandma?”
I feel an ironic chuckle reach my breath. “If you recall, I said you were stubborn, as stubborn as me. It may not have been practical to write in my situation, a young woman caring for those around her, working too many jobs to count while the world was at war, but do you think for one moment that would have stopped me from writing? Not a chance.”
“I… I can’t believe it.”
“Dumbfounded twice in one sitting. Not a good sign my dear. But fear not, the words will come again.”
My eyes now travel the shoreline, enjoying the serenity of the river. And the sun makes the water glisten like a thousand green sequins tickling the surface. I was wrong to imply the Canadian version of the Thames was anything but lovely. Imitation or not, it has its own charm, narrow and the color of jade with magnificent oak trees nearly clutching the opposite bank. The odd leaf has changed color—yellow, red. Soon there will be too many to count. A lively selection of mallard ducks scurry toward a little girl who’s tossing hunks of bread into the water. Gilly reaches over to clasp my hand.
“Grandma, I don’t want you to go.”
“I know dear. That’s why I asked you to bring me here.” A curiosity springs into her eyes. Yes, my Gilly is back. “Please,” I motion to my handbag sitting next to her on the grass. “Inside you’ll find a leather folder. Will you give it to me, dear?”
I glance at the folder now resting on my lap. I still find the grouted pattern affecting, although others would consider it dull. Moreover, I can smell a faint tinge of the hide almost as though it were new. This big nose has its uses after all. Tracing the edge stitched in thin leather strips, I unlatch the hardware on the front.
“I won’t bother reading these to you. They’ve never had an audience. I’m afraid the words would jump off the page and run for the hills if I let them loose. But I know that if anyone can catch them, you can. They are yours now. Perhaps you can do something with them one day.” A tear begins to swell in my granddaughter’s eye, though I see she tries her best to draw little attention to it. “I could say that I have nothing of value to leave behind, or I could say that I have everything—a sublime tale aching to be told. Lay as they may be, these poems hide a grand story, a story of life and love. A story that will soon belong to you, Gilly.”
I thumb through the pages sighing, my fingers stiff from years of arthritis. But for the first time in weeks, I don’t feel the crushing in my chest. This breath gives me freedom, if only for a moment. I gaze fondly at my granddaughter who is whirling with emotions. I can see it as plain as day. My eyes travel downward, examining the wrinkles folding over my skin, my plum veins far too confident. My hands are withered, aged from writing and living the words in this folder—a folder that took a lifetime to fill.
I look into Gilly’s eyes—that tear now falling to her jawline. Her young, smooth hand replaces mine on the leather as she tucks it in her arms. Through another tear brewing, she suddenly looks quizzical.
“If I’m called Gilly all the time, why doesn’t anyone call you that?”
“Only one person ever called me Gilly,” I say, feeling myself drift into reverie for a moment. “I loved your grandpa. If ever there was a tattered slipper to grow old with, it was Angus Pugsley. But there was another… before your grandpa. He called me Gilly. My first love and in some ways a love that cannot be measured by time, a love that has never grown old.” There’s a long silence between us.
“His name was Christian and he came from a place you once visited as a child, yet far from where I grew up. A small town on the Bruce Peninsula, well… not much more than a harbor for fishing boats at that time.”
“Tobermory?” she utters, likely wondering how I’d met a Canadian in those days.
“That’s right.” I feel a smile working its way into my cheeks, and if I dare say, a playfulness in my tone. “Oh yes, Christian,” I sigh throwing my chin back, gazing up at the treetops that shelter the park. “I’d only ever told two people about him. I’m not sure why in retrospect. Perhaps it had something to do with the times or perhaps my father. It wouldn’t do to have the daughter of a promi
nent Irish Catholic architect bring home a Canadian fisherman. A colonist! I can hear him say. I don’t think I would have lived long enough to go to my next confession. I can hear the meddling church ladies now, tarnishing every last morsel of my delicious love affair, not that I gave a pickled onion what anyone thought—except Daddy. Ironically, I’ve always thought Father Kelsey would have approved. He was quite like Christian in ways, adventurous above all. Yes, I would have had his blessing, I’m sure, and a little slap telling me to go get him.”
“I never knew you were so feisty, Grandma,” Gillian says nudging my elbow, trying to look spirited.
“I wasn’t always eighty-nine you know.”
“Tell me more,” she begs.
“Our story—my story—is in these poems. I leave the rest to your imagination. After all, you are a writer. You might consider them a gift or a life sentence, knowing they will likely leave you with bags of sleepless nights, words and frustration churning in your head. But aren’t the possibilities glorious?”
Curiosity has snatched my granddaughter now. I see it in her eyes. I dare say I can almost see words fluttering down around her like soft snowflakes trying to find their place on the ground, arranging themselves into sentences. She lowers the leather folder to her lap. I know what she will do, what will drive her. She opens the little blue notebook tucked inside. I see my poems drawing her in. I remain quiet, yet somehow I feel my granddaughter’s words begin to unfold my story. Somehow I feel those fluttering words bring it back to life. She is a talent, that one! I draw another peaceful breath—no crushing. It feels lovely. I gaze once again at Gilly, the words around her now whirling into a fury, yet not a sound leaves her lips. Oh, how right I was about her. She’s getting my story spot on.
I may have left her dangling in ways, but the details will come. She looks up from the page and smiles, an understanding between us that no one else shares. And though our embrace is warm, it’s the first warmth my shivering body has felt in weeks. It seems to me that I’m unable to control my emotions after all. I feel a swelling in my own eyes now—something I’ve tried to avoid. What’s more, I feel incredibly close to this creature in my arms.