“Why don’t you sit here, Grandma,” Gilly says while removing a copy of A Man in Uniform, Let me Count the Ways from her sofa then fluffing up the back cushion.
“When did you start reading such trash, Gilly?” I ask with high hopes.
“A friend loaned it to me, so I thought I should at least give it a chance.”
“Darling, I was hoping you’d say today and because you wanted to.” I glance at her with my nearly hairless eyebrows arched high. “Don’t ever try to impress anyone, especially me, or be something you’re not. If you want to read a bit of rubbish occasionally, then do so. I’ve been known to bathe in my fair share of Petunia Petal books,” I say winking. “Some of the greatest lessons can be learned from the seediest of tales, I can promise you. If they leave you with nothing more than a good itch, then no harm done!” Gilly looks at me sideways. “What?”
“Just when I thought I had figured you out,” she says, “you throw me for a loop again.”
“Has anyone ever told you, you speak like one of my white-haired Euchre partners?” I say grinning.
“Where do you think I got all these old-fashioned expressions?”
“Well, I always did want to be a wrangler.”
Gilly laughs while fetching one of those… throws… I believe she calls them. They’re everywhere, and far too many pillows. But everyone is entitled to at least one obsession.
“Honestly, Grandma, I don’t think you’re quite right in the head,” she says smiling. “What other grandma says things like that?”
“I suspect the ones who know better.”
A moment later an overhang with cut timber and some kindling out back snatch my granddaughter from me. I’ve always had a pinch of the past whenever a fire needs to be started—a day that smuggles a twinge of fear into my thoughts from time to time whether I want it to or not. Even now the word “kindling” from Gilly’s lips makes me worry for her. Of course it’s irrational. If only I could watch over her for the rest of her days. The crumbling in my chest strikes me yet again, but I have time to hide it before she returns.
As I spy the room, Gilly has set up two TV tray tables in front of the sofa. I haven’t seen these in years and could never understand their appeal. It bothers me to think she might not take time to appreciate a good meal, savoring the surprises that come with trying a new spice or relishing an accompanying conversation. Though I suppose if she wants that, she probably scoots along next door to Kate’s silver spoon. Ever since she joined our family, Kate’s enjoyed spoiling Gilly almost as much as I do. Of course, I only spoil at select times. It’s much better to earn your way through life. The best thing I can do for my only grandchild is see to it that she can do for herself. And it’s working! Mind you, Kate’s such a lovely person and though the going was rough in his first marriage, my son seems to have found the right woman for him. I know because dramatics and my son were never a match. He’s so like his father—easy-going, takes a digging machine to get him stirred up. My son always felt hemmed in by the city, too. The farm suits him just as it suits Gilly, always has.
The lovely part of it all is that my granddaughter is as down to earth as her father and proud to board horses, only one of which is theirs, apart from Ballerina, of course. She makes no pretense about money. Yes they have it, but she needs to work hard for her bit, too. Even Kate enjoys a good dig in the dirt. Granted, without the land, part of which they hire out, and the horses they board, they’d be scrounging, I’m sure.
“How’s the soup, Grandma?” she says, breaking me from my trance.
“Delicious. Kate worked hard on it all morning.” I notice my granddaughter looking at my hand shaking. Drawing the spoon to my mouth, it clangs lightly on my dentures.
“Can I get you anything else? Some bread, maybe?”
“Now, Gilly, stop doting. You know how I feel about that.”
“I’m sorry,” she says turning to the fire.
I admire her handiwork. “You light a good fire,” I say nodding.
“I like them. I’m happy this house has a fireplace.” Gilly rises quickly to check that the screen in front is right then sits back down. “Do you remember when we all used to go camping up at Benmiller when I was little?”
“How could I forget? Those were some of my favorite times… with you,” I say lowering my eyes.
“Whenever Dad would ask me to help with the fire, you’d always collect sticks with me and make a game of it. I never knew at the time you were trying to teach me math.”
“No, dear, I think it was you who was trying to teach me maths. Something I’m completely hopeless at, always have been.” Just as the words leave my mouth, I begin to feel a little warmth radiating from the hearth. It takes forever to heat these old bones.
“What I remember most,” Gilly says, “is curling up in the tent while you told me a story.”
“Yes, a tent I could barely crawl into. Why do you think your grandpa and I would stay in that caravan? You know, the old tent-trailer that folded up and down like an accordion, the one your father had lying around for centuries? I’ll never forget the musty smell as though it had been folded down and put in the barn when it was still wet. On the other hand, getting down on my hands and knees in your little tent wasn’t exactly duck soup. Sadly, a poppet at seventy-something I wasn’t.”
“Maybe not, but you were great at making up stories. The way you’d hush me whenever a sound left my lips. You’d make me listen to whispers coming from the fire just outside and ask me if it was the crackling of birch bark or if the others were trying to be quiet. Then you’d make up some grand story of how they were plotting to capture the wind queen who swept through the forest only once every four hundred years and that’s why they needed to whisper. And every time a breeze flew past our noses the next day, it was in preparation for her next visit, and no one would ever know what that meant.” Gilly smiles. “While other little girls were being told stories about ladybugs and pansies, I was always being told adventures that should have sent me running the other way.”
“But they didn’t, did they?” I say auspiciously. “They always kept you begging for more. I knew you would be like that, the day you were born.”
“Like what exactly?”
“Curious.”
The fire swells suddenly like the climax of a symphony, causing a loud burst between the logs. There’s nothing as full of life as a fire, the way it mesmerizes people, surfacing the tiniest of memories until it decides to snap them out of their daze. I love that jolt of electricity to my heart every time. Perhaps when the time comes, I should request a blaze next to my hospital bed.
I know the day Gilly is talking about, and why it has stuck with her since childhood. Gilly was only six or seven at the time, but summer after summer she begged her grandpa and me to come. “It’s a family place,” she’d say. “And we’re all family, right?” A woman doesn’t forget such words or days like that. It’s strange, the way I can’t remember less than a minute later if I plugged in the toaster then blame myself for leaving it in all night when I actually did nothing of the kind. Yet I can remember every detail of a day that happened too many years ago to count. There’s something puzzling that happens to the brain after giving birth. I’m sure it didn’t come with old age. Still, I remember that evening differently. Only a child would pull out the bits that are worth summoning forward again and banish the rest.
After a terrible row between Gilly’s parents, I thought the wind queen could blow through the forest picking up the path’s ground chips and specks of dirt and churn them into a whirlwind so they could once again fall softly into place. Perhaps it would rid the forest of nasty tongues in the process.
The wind queen was brilliant and should have appeared earlier in the day when we were all by the falls at Benmiller. Well, all of us except Angus. He was napping in the caravan. Gilly had ballooned her beach towel in the air, letting it settle on the flat rock while I unfolded my chair. It wasn’t until I sat down that I noticed
how the clouds looked like terraced rice fields in the sky. I remember because I couldn’t take my eyes off them.
Truth is, the conservation area is lovely there, filled with what I’ve always imagined are the tallest pine trees on earth. And the camping sites were always well kept, so we were happy to join on weekends. It makes me smile to this day how Benmiller’s signpost declares it “Ontario’s West Coast.” And rightly so! The shores of the Great Lakes are nothing if not coastal. The only missing ingredient is the smell of salty sea air. I do miss that… even today.
The area has always reminded me of Ireland, with its wide chuckling stream, masquerading as the Maitland River before emptying into Lake Huron. I’m quite right, the way it laughs like a cheeky leprechaun past old men dressed to their necks in fishing waders, scooping them up as though they were buoys. If I close my eyes, I can see them now, a dozen men fly-fishing on a Sunday morning as we drive past with our caravan—their heads nearly bobbing in the water.
All the same, the best spots on the river are where it’s carved through rock as old as me. I wish bath water would rush over me, smoothing my skin the way it leaves the rugged river valley polished underneath. It’s a playground for anyone who knows how to breathe. How could it not be with scads of waist-high waterfalls that leave one flapping around like a salmon during migration? That feat alone is worth the drive.
Unquestionably, it was the gripping sky that day, the antithesis of the roar below, that drove me to lie on the rock beside my granddaughter. As we held hands, gazing up at the sky, I told her that if she drew her index finger to her lips and softly shoooshed herself, the roar of the waterfalls would fall away, and everything would become silent. With a deep breath, so deep she could feel it in the pit of her stomach, life would become a vision.
“What am I looking at, Grandma?” she said.
“Can’t you see that little man up there with the white lampshade on his head working very hard in the field?”
She studied the clouds earnestly, a little squeeze between her eyes. “No, I can’t see him. Where is he?”
“Look harder. He’s there between puffs sixteen and eighteen.” From the corner of my eye, I could see her lips moving, counting every terrace, one… two… three… and so on.
“There he is, Grandma!” she shouted. “I found him.”
“Shhhh,” I cooed winking. “He needs peace to work.”
“Oh...” my granddaughter sighed.
From the same corner of my eye, I could now feel her gaze on me.
“I love you, Grandma,” she whispered.
“I love you too, dear.”
And when the sky finally drew her in, I turned my head her way then smiled, squeezing her hand just that little bit tighter.
I don’t know how long we stared at those puffy fields of rice in the sky, but it was long enough to drown out the squabbling of her parents down the way. And for that, I was grateful.
That evening Gilly’s mother pushed it too far. I hadn’t raised my only son to fall prey to a negative beast like that. Not for a minute longer would I sit and listen to that garble, and I most definitely wouldn’t allow my granddaughter to suffer under a forked tongue. I scooted Gilly to bed at once, and nearly pulling it out of its socket, I left behind my evil eye glaring at my son, for he was the fool putting up with it. He knew I meant business, and thank God, there’s such a thing as a last straw. She was gone within a week.
“Grandma,” Gilly asked while tucked in her sleeping bag that night, her head lying on my chest. “Why does the wind queen want to sweep through the forest past us?”
“To get rid of the dirt, dear.”
“You slept with me that night,” Gilly says crinkling her brow, having just recalled. “I remember I fell asleep in your arms. You never left me, did you?”
“No… I didn’t.”
A tender expression fills my granddaughter’s eyes. “You never do,” she says, her lip turning up at the side.
I pat her hand. “Life is better now, isn’t it? And sometimes stories and books are all that we need to take us away. Isn’t that right?”
“But your stories,” she says curiously, “I remember thinking you should write them down. You could have put together a fantastic anthology.”
“What do you think I am doing now with my poems, having given them to you?” A silence grows thick between us. Somehow I know Gilly is deep in my story by now. “Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing by that window there till all hours? You don’t think I’m awake, do you, dear? But I am, and I know you want from me what I can’t give you.”
“What are you talking about, Grandma?”
“The answers,” I sigh. “You have a packet full of questions I’m sure, but I’m proud of you for not pressing. The poems are yours now, just as I had made clear before. You are creating an anthology of sorts, only you are weaving my poems into something much more meaningful, aren’t you?” Gilly doesn’t say a word, but I can see in her eyes that it’s true. “There’s plenty you already know, and it’s enough. The rest needs to come from you.”
My bowl finds itself empty—a good place to end this conversation. Mind you, I could almost lick it clean, Kate’s such a good cook. My appetite will dwindle soon and even her thoughtful gesture of cooking all of my favorites will stop working. I suppose an IV will soon syphon nourishment into me instead of Kate’s hearty soups.
I sigh again, my chest squeezing into a knot. This time it has nothing to do with my cancer. I have a feeling Gilly suspects I’m holding back. But she can’t know. Even to this day, seventy plus years later, I remember that day as though it was written into my skin like a tattoo. No matter how hard I scrub, it won’t go away. I can’t let her learn the truth from me. She needs to find out through her own creativity, through her own writing. As grim as that day was, as savage as it felt, it’s the greatest gift I can leave her.
Chapter 8 - 1946
It started the moment we met,
Long hours through summer we shared.
In dreamy content, we grew as one,
Our love then quickly declared.
Being together was all we desired,
Then one day our drifting was past.
We had only been skimming the shallows of love,
We are now fathoms deep in its clasp.
But the end of the story is yet to be told,
May years create memories to graze.
Gently as we grow old together,
Till we come to the end of our days.
Chapter 8
1946
Three-legged flag? Christian gazed out the window of the aircraft wondering what the emblem meant. It had been a shaky flight since he left Southampton, but he was grateful there was a flight at all. He’d expected to roam the moors of the North, closer to the Scottish border, before coming anywhere near Gilly. And here he was just two days into his journey, plus his week across the Atlantic, of course, headed to the place where she’d stood for a photograph. Though there was no guarantee she’d still be on the island, it was a start and there was bound to be someone who knew her.
The captain had announced their descent, although Christian couldn’t see anything yet through all the cloud-cover. He rubbed his neck while glancing at a passenger across the aisle, noticing the woman’s tight grip on the armrest, her head pressed against the back of her seat. He could understand her nerves; he had them, too, but for very different reasons, he figured. He could feel a knot inside braiding itself into something even tighter and tiny shocks nipping at the tips of his fingers. Doubts crept into his common sense again—he squashed them flat when he pictured Gilly’s smile.
Christian turned his head toward the rumble of the engines as the plane dipped into the clouds. He hadn’t been at such an altitude since his time in the Air Force, and it felt freeing. All those doubts soared behind him in the plane’s contrails as he now committed to only favorable thoughts. Just below the propellers, an island dressed in a patchwork of green on gre
en came into view, each square lined with hedges or stone walls. The coastline was rich in the blackest of blues with spots of emerald. While rocky shores and a sliver or two or three or four of sand hinted to tread wisely. He would heed its warning, for he hadn’t a clue what he was walking into. From what Christian could tell, the Isle of Man hadn’t been trampled on the way Hampshire had. And that sent a rush of comfort through him, knowing Gilly had been there.
The plane had arrived at Ronaldsway near Castletown, and Christian was able to take a coach directly to Port St. Mary. He was already finding people to be different here, less guarded perhaps, than in the Hants. No wonder! He’d have been guarded, too, if someone had butchered his home. No. He couldn’t blame them in the least. What’s more was their ability to get back on their feet and still find a way to laugh. Look at the Spooners and that wine bottle tree. Christian shook his head. There was without doubt spirit lurking in these parts.
Christian arrived around four o’clock and checked into a small inn facing the inner harbor. Christian could see straight away the pride the owner took in this place and smiled when he noticed the three-legged symbol on a plaque hanging on the front desk. It wasn’t the first he’d seen either. This town was crawling with them. In some ways it reminded him of the spirit of Tobermory.
The inn was sandwiched between a pub and a barbershop, but the owner explained that because of rationing, the pub’s hours were greatly reduced, so if he “fancied a pint,” he’d have to wait until dusk. A beer sounded perfect, actually, and it gave Christian time to look around town a little. He first went to his room, thankful that it was on the ground floor. He was tuckered from the journey and wanted to lie down for a few minutes. The room was simple with a washbasin on the dresser next to the bed and a sizable wardrobe on the opposite wall. He’d have to share a washroom with the other guests on the floor, but he didn’t mind. He wasn’t even sure there were any other guests. The place was quiet and the friendly owner seemed grateful for his business.
The Particular Appeal of Gillian Pugsley Page 10
