by Alan Cumyn
But the world was crowding her little kitchen. The news of the massacre at Guernica in Spain had been out for only a few days and was still fresh in our minds.
“How can the Germans sit in good conscience on the Non-Intervention Committee and commit acts like that? And those poor people in Bilbao just waiting to be slaughtered,” Dorothy said. Mola and his insurgents were narrowing in on the Basque town by then, and the newspaper was full of the British and French effort to ship out the civilians in time.
“It’s the largest refugee evacuation since the Belgians in 1914,” I said.
She stubbed out her cigarette and gazed at me, some of the memory of what we’d just been up to still in her eyes. “I don’t want your wife cursing me for you being late again.” I suppose I appeared in no hurry to move off. “Is there something else you need to tell me?” She looked at me in her way, her eyes like the flat head of a screwdriver prying up a lid. “You are very silent these days, Mr. Crome.”
I took a sip of my tea and avoided her gaze. “I, uh . . . I will need to take a few days off next week. My cousin is coming to visit with her family. From London.”
“You have a cousin in London?”
I nodded, and felt the warmth of the cup — a delicate, feminine thing that did not fit my hand. She blew smoke across at me. I lit a cigarette of my own, and the heat of the afternoon — unusual for late spring — began to drain a little more quickly.
“She’s, uh — I visited with them in the war,” I said, trying to keep the hesitation out of my voice. “Just for a week. And now . . . she’s visiting back.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Margaret. And she has three children now, and an insufferable husband.”
“And just this slight mention of her turns Mr. Crome’s face into a radish,” Dorothy said. When I did not smile, her own face paled. “Oh,” she said then. “Should I be worried about this cousin Margaret?”
My silence stretched unbearably.
“I see,” she said, and sat back and examined the edge of the table.
“It isn’t what you think,” I said finally. “I love you, and I’m sorry for never saying it. I’m sorry for this skulking and hiding and sneaking around. I want to make it right. I did have feelings for Margaret — I do have them — rooted like old teeth. But it was a long time ago. And now my brother Rufus is dragging her to my house to visit and I will need to take a couple of days.”
“What did she do to hurt you?”
I stubbed out my cigarette then, stood and carried my teacup to the sink. Dorothy rose too, hesitated, then held me from behind, her thin arms strong as binding wire.
We simply stood together for the longest time, and then I had to go.
Eighteen
I borrowed a hay wagon and a draught horse, Charles, from my neighbour Mr. Bretton, a crusty old farmer. Together Michael and I drove slowly along Mill Road, the great beast’s hooves slapping the gravel and his occasional snorts punctuating the afternoon air. It was an indecisive sky, cloudy to the east and grey, with some blue promised from the west. The hills were hunkered down in shadows, keeping their own secrets, and it was a bit cool for the end of May.
Michael maintained a running commentary. “There are three cousins,” he said. “Alexander and Martha and . . . who is the third cousin?”
“Abigail, I think.”
“Do I have any other cousins?”
“These are cousins once removed from you.”
“Why are they removed?”
I did my best to explain it, and he frowned until I stopped talking.
“But do I have any other cousins?”
“No. Your Uncle Rufus and Aunt Vanessa have no children yet.”
“Well, when are they going to have children?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have they been married a long time?”
“Ages.”
“They should have children by now!”
“Don’t ask them about it,” I said. “It’s private.”
Instead he asked to drive so I stood him up in front of me.
“Gee up!” he called and snapped the reins. Charles maintained his plodding pace as he pulled us up the hill towards the station.
“What time is the train coming?”
“Ten minutes after two.”
“And what time is it now?”
I showed Michael my watch. A belching truck rattled past us, shaking so much I expected pieces to fly off. Even Charles raised his head.
“Where’s the little hand?” I asked, looking back at the watch. Michael pointed to it. “What’s that number?” Michael frowned. Charles crested the hill and we could see the train station — completely deserted — below us in the distance.
“Almost one o’clock!” Michael announced after much prodding and discussion.
“We’ll park Charles in the shade here. Look, there’s some grass for him to nibble on.”
After we got down Michael spent some time walking around Charles’s enormous legs and patting the huge muscles, while Charles sniffed the scraggly grass at the edge of the lot.
“Is Alexander the oldest?” Michael asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Why were you and Mummy fighting?”
Michael was on the other side of Charles and I couldn’t see his face.
“We weren’t fighting.”
“Yes you were. All last night.”
“No. Just for a little bit.”
“Mummy was crying.”
“Let’s sit on the bench by the track and see if we can see the train coming.”
Michael petted Charles some more, but when he saw I’d left he ran after me. We walked through the quiet little station, then sat on the bench on the platform. Michael looked north up the line, the direction from which my Montreal train always appeared.
“They’ll actually be coming up this way,” I said, pointing south. “From the United States.”
Michael gazed down the tracks, then asked again why his mother and I had been fighting.
“Parents do, sometimes. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“But I can’t sleep when Mummy cries.”
As I was grasping for what to say to him, he got up and ran the length of the platform, threw a rock across the line and into the woods, then ran back.
“Are we going to have a war?” he asked. “The man on the radio said so.”
“Nobody knows for sure.”
“What if the Americans attack us?”
I laughed. “The Americans haven’t attacked us in a long time.” I ruffled his hair. “It’s the Spanish fighting each other, across the ocean. There are all kinds of different groups — factions they’re called: monarchists, communists, fascists, anarchists. But there are also Italians, Germans, French, Russians,Moroccans, people from all over the world. Even some Canadians are fighting there. It’s like a little world war all on its own. What most of us are worried about is how to keep the fighting just in Spain. Because Spain is in Europe, and it won’t take too many more sparks to make the whole thing go up.”
“Like the fire in our house?”
“Think of everybody’s house on fire. Think of fire falling from the sky and burning all the roads and fields and houses and barns and buildings. All the cities, everywhere people might live and work. You think of Mummy crying last night. Think of everybody’s Mummy crying most of the time. It’s the very worst thing, and we’re just waiting for it to start again.”
I thought I heard the train then and looked down the line, but it was still too early. Michael asked how much more time, and so we looked at my watch and figured it out. Then he ran back to Charles and grabbed handfuls of grass and fed them to the great horse, calling back to me every so often.
I looked down the line again. I remembered the first time I’d arrived at this station, years ago, with a rucksack and fishing gear, set for a weekend lark away from the big city. My train rounded the corner and blasted straight through the
little station and on past by a quarter mile or more before finally stopping, then backing up sheepishly. Surely that’s how Margaret would arrive, I thought. But her train wouldn’t stop at all — not for this little town, not for me. She would sail on by and up the line.
Even now I couldn’t really believe she was on her way.Yet then there she was, a distant figure of a woman in a long beige skirt, short jacket and blouse, her hair well-hidden beneath her sensible travelling hat. The children crowding around her were her size or larger. The boy, Alexander, looked stretched and awkward, already taller than his parents — and me for that matter — and the girls were in flowered hats and white dresses. Her husband Henry, in a bowler hat, struggled with two large suitcases. He looked noticeably older than the stringy youth I’d met twenty — no, twenty-one — years ago. His face was puffy and slack, his shoulders rounded nearly into a stoop, and even with his hat on I could see that most of his hair had gone the way of his youth. Rufus appeared from behind in a black coat and took one of the suitcases, and Vanessa towered beside Margaret and said something that set them both laughing.
I could hardly make my feet move towards them.
“Is that them?” Michael asked. He had come running with the first train whistle, but now was sidled against my leg, clenching my thigh.
“No need to be nervous,” I said, and hoisted the boy onto my shoulders. Margaret had seen me by now and stood staring in my direction.
She held herself erect but seemed hollowed out, her eyes even larger than I remembered, her face quite white, her shoulders thin as a cabin door.
“Which one is Martha and which one is Abigail?”
“Let’s find out.”
Rufus intercepted us before we could reach the main party. “Michael, what a huge man you’re becoming!” he said and he reached up to shake the boy’s hand. I started to lift Michael off my shoulders, but he resisted so he stayed there as the others were introduced. Alexander’s cheeks blushed pink as a girl’s, and his handshake was soft. The two girls stared openly up at Michael, and then the older one, Martha, said, “I told you he was very small!”
Henry put down the suitcases and clasped my hand and said something about the air being extraordinarily fresh.
My eyes were on Margaret and hers were on me. She extended a gloved hand, not to me but to Michael. “Cousin Ramsay,” she said. “My, how you’ve grown. And you have two heads now!”
“You’re the lady in Dad’s paintings!” Michael blurted.
We all were silent through a cavernous moment.
“Well, thank God!” Margaret said, finally looking me in the eye. “I was worried you might have forgotten me.”
I left Rufus to organize the baggage while Michael and I went to get Charles and the hay wagon. As soon as Martha and Abigail saw the means of transportation they raced over to greet Charles, broadcasting their excitement. Even Alexander got over his embarrassment and came down off the platform to pat Charles’s hard-muscled flanks. I told them to be careful far more often than was necessary — Charles could have trod through a maternity ward without harming anything — and found myself focused on getting the luggage aboard. I felt as nervous and clamp-jawed as any adolescent. When Margaret’s trunk appeared I insisted on lifting it myself, without help from Rufus, and shushed him over comments about my arm, and then nearly whacked young Abigail on the side of the head turning the blasted thing around.
It weighed enough to be full of water.
On the way back to the house Rufus sat beside me and talked on and on about his trip to London, which had been months ago. Everyone else sat in the back or stood by the wooden rails. Martha and Abigail exclaimed over every fascinating inch of the journey — the flies buzzing around Charles’s ears, the sparkle of river water as we rode over the bridge, the boarded windows of the dusty stores along Mill Road and beyond. Every few moments I could hear Margaret affirming, questioning, answering them in a practiced, motherly way.
I concentrated on the driving, as if Charles might bolt at any moment and start leaping fences to our doom.
“How has your work been?” Rufus asked. “Have the advertising contracts started to come back?”
“A little bit,” I said vaguely. It had been years since we’d seen one another. He looked unaffected by passing time.
“Any magazine work? Book covers?” “Calendar stuff,” I said. “It pays the bills.”
When we reached the house I unloaded quickly and then insisted on returning Charles and the wagon right away. Lillian appeared at the door in her apron. My heart slipped when I saw the fatigue in her face and the strange colour in her cheeks. She’d put on some sort of rouge, I realized, which she never used and which made her look like a fading, out-of-costume stage actress. I hurried Charles and the wagon down the lane and did not hear Rufus’s introductions or what kind words Margaret had for my wife. At Bretton’s farm I insisted on towelling off and brushing down the huge horse myself. He had raised something of a sweat, and I needed to compose myself before facing these English guests.
The walk back was about a mile, and I didn’t know if it was hunger or nerves that so unsettled my stomach.
When I reached the house they were all seated in the meadow, at a long table of cedar planks I’d slapped together the summer before for outdoor meals. The edges of a white tablecloth waved in the breeze and the table was overflowing with bowls of food: boiled beef and cabbage, carrots, mashed potatoes, fresh bread, rhubarb preserve, plates of butter and pitchers of lemonade. There were even flowers at both ends of the table: daisies and lilies and dried Queen Anne’s lace.
When Margaret turned at my approach I became intensely aware of the smell of Charles on my clothes and hands.
Lillian was intent on serving the children, who all sat around her.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to wash up,” I said, and retreated into the house. From the kitchen window I watched them. Margaret, in the middle, seemed to be orchestrating the conversation, turning now to Rufus and Vanessa, now to Lillian, to the children, laughing sometimes so gaily I could hear her voice all the way up at the house.
I cleaned myself, changed my shirt and trousers, and finally returned to them.
The chair that had been left for me was opposite Margaret. Almost everyone else had finished a full plate of food, although Margaret had taken only a small amount and it was barely touched. Alexander was chomping through what must have been seconds. Just as I was seating myself Margaret said to him, “Please, dear, this is not a wolf feast!” He looked up guiltily but could not manage to slow down.
“What a marvellous lunch, Lillian!” Margaret enthused, and then she turned her gaze on me. “Married to a cook like this, I’m surprised you haven’t ballooned in your middle age, Ramsay.”
I smiled lamely. Lillian seemed not to have heard the compliment. Margaret turned her considerable wattage towards her. “I understand you’re from this area, Lillian? And your father lives nearby?”
Lillian stiffened. “My father died two years ago.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Margaret looked around at Rufus, evidently the source of the bad information. He appeared sheepish, as if just now remembering that he’d been unable to attend the funeral.
Lillian passed around a bowl of sliced beets. An awkward silence settled over the table while Rufus threw apologetic looks in every direction and Lillian stared hard at her hands.
I chewed my food. “Mr. McGillis lost his health after the bank took his land. We all miss him.” Lillian still would not look up. “How is your health, Margaret?”
“Oh, let’s not speak of it,” Margaret said quickly. “The doctors are panicking a bit about my heart. The less said about it the better, as far as I’m concerned. I so wanted to go on this trip before Alexander is completely grown and the family begins splitting apart. It happens so quickly. We have very little time, any of us really, when you think of it.”
Henry passed the bread to her. “Darling, you should eat.”
&nbs
p; “Look at what I’ve got on my plate already!”
“Mummy almost made us miss the coronation!” Martha said. At Margaret’s reproving glance she said, “You did. The first passage tickets you bought were for four days before the coronation. And then you said we couldn’t change them. We had to beg you!”
“Yes, and for all that what did you see?” Margaret asked. “The backs of most of the crowd.”
“We saw the horses and the guards and the big parade and all the flowers. And we heard the King on the radio!”
“We heard him too!” Michael burst in. “Remember,” he said to his mother, “he was all the way across the ocean. And he said so too. It was the first time!”
“I read the most transfixing account of the ceremony,” Rufus offered. “The shafts of sunlight streaming through the ancient windows at Westminster Abbey just as the King was being crowned!”
Margaret was now eating something. She gazed at me and for a moment we might have been miles away, quite alone. I wondered if she remembered — that touch of her hand in Westminster Abbey on my first day in London, when I’d gone so suddenly cold and dizzy wandering in that great tomb.
It was like hot water cutting through ice, that touch.
Now Vanessa was speaking. “I’m afraid I really don’t understand this British and Canadian fascination with royalty. It’s a symbolic function anyway. Poor Edward has run from it into the arms of his Mrs. Simpson. He couldn’t seem to get away quickly enough. Why all this gushing over an outdated and expensive institution? Of course I’m only an American, and we overthrew the monarchy over a century and a half ago.”
It was Henry’s turn then, and as he talked — about Cromwell, and poor beheaded Charles I, and how important pageantry and pomp were to the British psyche and the strained bonds of the Empire itself — I couldn’t keep my gaze from settling on Margaret. She seemed not to be listening to her husband at all, but had her eyes fixed on the butter dish beside my plate — or perhaps on my hands near it. She looked thinner and more pale than I remembered, leeched of some layers of vitality. Yet in that light she seemed an entrancing counterfeit, at least, of the woman she had been.
