by Katie Munnik
Outside the hospital, the afternoon was hazy, and the road filled with fast cars and buses. When my hospital contract came for the agency, I thought the road name completely romantic. Côte-des-Neiges. The side of snows. It had been the name of a long-ago village, sitting halfway up the hillside, looking down on Montreal. It must have been where the winter snows piled thickest, I thought, finding it on a map. There was a cemetery, too, called Notre Dame des Neiges, which made my heart almost break with a cold kind of loneliness. Now, walking the road every day to the bus stop after my shift, it was the width that held my eye. So very Canadian. So much space for anyone that wanted it. If I could pick up Aberlady with my fingers, all her crow-stepped roofs and whitewashed houses, the little kirk and the ancient trees, if I could carry her here and lay her down in this wide-open road, how much room would she take up? How little. With my back to the hospital and the mountain behind, there was no horizon here and so much space.
But Aberlady was moon-far away, remote and removed. Or rather, I was. I was the one who had done the leaving, after all. Gave my notice in an insufficient letter to Dr Ballater, and shuffled off. Sold my car, bought a ticket and packed my trunk full of nursing textbooks and uniforms, too – though of course they were the wrong ones. Matron soon set me straight and ensured I had the correct hem-length.
A bus pulled up to the stop and I ran down towards it, waving to catch the driver’s attention. He waited and laughed when I stepped up into the bus.
‘Every day, I get a running nurse or two,’ he said. ‘All the pretty nurses. It’s a good route.’
I forced a half-smile and found a seat towards the back. The windows were open and, as the bus pulled away from the kerb, the air felt surprisingly cool. It was often crowded in the late afternoon, but that day there weren’t many folk on the bus. Summer holidays, perhaps. Everyone away at cottages, spending time by the lakes. Some of the nurses had been talking about cottage weekends, which sounded delightful. Canoes and campfires and hikes in the woods. Everything I might have imagined, but not yet found. Early days, I thought. There would be plenty of time.
When I’d told my parents about my Canadian job, Dad had asked if that meant I was turning down Dr Ballater.
‘Of course, she is, Stanley, and it’s no bad thing,’ Mum said. ‘He hasn’t tried anything with you, has he? Has he been pestering you?’
‘No, nothing like that. He’s been a gentleman. He’s just not … It’s not … It’s hard to explain.’
Dad cleared his throat. ‘You want an adventure,’ he said, softly.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Yes.’
Mum didn’t return to the question after that, nor did she try to talk me out of anything. Instead, she helped me make lists of things I would need, even things I would like: novels, toffees, nylons, a pair of white sunglasses. We went into Edinburgh to go shopping and she didn’t ask me how I’d made my decision or what I was hoping to find. She bought me a book about North American wild flowers and, walking out of Woolworths, tucked her arm through mine and grinned. She even suggested we go to a café for a spot of lunch, somewhere young, she said, and modern. But I knew she’d also brought along sandwiches in her handbag and I said we should eat them in Princes Street Gardens. Walking past the gardener’s cottage, she told me about the air raid shelters erected there early in the war.
‘It’s strange to think about all that now,’ she said. ‘How dangerous everything felt and how every effort was made to make safe places for everyone.’ She squeezed my arm again, and we found a bench where we ate our lunch. I hoped that she wouldn’t speak again about Dr Ballater or ask any more questions. I didn’t want to defend him, but I couldn’t explain, either. I’d been shocked by the whole episode. Knocked for six. I decided then I wouldn’t tell anyone else about Dr Ballater. About George. I would give him that much. No more stories or questions or hypotheses. I would let him be. Like my mother, I’d keep mum.
She’d always been good at that. A cultivated quiet with no need to talk everything through. It really wasn’t necessary, was it? It was enough to be still together. Without words. Without shouting or slammed doors. All that unnecessary bluster.
I’d been good at bluster when I was twelve. Slammed the door and stepped into the rain. I only had my cardi on and that didn’t matter then. I didn’t even care. I just needed out. I’d hop on a bus and go somewhere, right? Only it was Sunday and I had no money, so no. Hitchhike, then? But I never had and, likely as not, I’d know the driver – or worse, he’d know Mum. Then it would be over. I’d be right back at that kitchen table and she still wouldn’t be saying anything. I could tell when something was up. I wasn’t stupid. And the way they were keeping the radio off and not letting me see the newspaper. It had to be about the Bomb. I knew it was. Ever since I’d read that article about Nevada and Las Vegas and Miss Atomic Bomb. And the mushroom clouds like opening umbrellas and the costumes they made girls wear in the clubs and the Dawn Bomb parties and Atomic cocktails and I got so angry and I couldn’t sleep. I tried to talk to my parents about it, but they wouldn’t listen. They didn’t want to hear. Maybe they were just as scared as me. Or more scared? They acted guilty, as if they were to blame. As if all this fear was something they made and silence was a way of keeping it down. That door-slammed afternoon, the radio had been on and Mum suddenly – fiercely – shut it off and looked at Dad with something like excitement, something like fear, and I asked if it was the Bomb or another war or what, but she wouldn’t talk. She bloody wouldn’t talk and I stormed out and slammed the door.
I crossed the road and then the bridge and headed out to the sands. The tide was far out so there would be a good walk, and I didn’t care how far I went. Wondered if I could live out there, even just for the night. Would that be possible? Not in this rain. It was easing off, but even a drizzle would make for a miserable night. It might be different if it were dry. I could stretch out under the sky and sleep on the sand. I’d see the stars, and the moon, if I was lucky, and then the larks would wake me up. They were rising now before me as I walked. Flying straight up out of the wet grass. Strange joy, as Dad would say. He always said that whenever there were larks. That’s when I heard him on the path behind me; his paced footsteps, his whistled tune.
‘Mind if I chum you to the shore?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Silence is good. And this is a good place to be silent.’
But he kept whistling and quickened his pace to keep up with me. A hare leapt out and for a moment, it sat frozen on the path and I saw the yellow of its eye, the quick black circle taking in the world as it crouched with long ears, black-tipped, flattened, and then it erupted and ran. A lolloping stride escaping into the grass. In the quiet after it was gone, Dad picked up his tune, humming this time.
I didn’t mind. Really, I didn’t. It was fine that he was there. That he thought to follow me. It was fine.
Oh June, like the mountains I’m blue –
Like the pine, I am lonesome for you …
At least he wasn’t asking questions. Or being silent. I kept walking out towards the sands and he kept on with his tune. It was an old Laurel and Hardy number. Probably predated them, too, but it was their song as far as Dad was concerned. Sometimes he swapped Jane for June if he was singing when Mum was around.
… in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia
On the trail of the lonesome pine.
I hoped he just kept with the song and didn’t start with the slapstick to get a laugh. I wasn’t in a laughing mood. The wet sand was hard under my feet and the rain stopped as we walked towards the sea. Dad quickened his pace now and it felt like he was the one leading the way, which was just fine by me. I didn’t mind.
‘Thought we could go and take a look at the submarines. Think the rain has washed them away yet?’
They sat about a half-mile from the high tideline out by Jovey’s Neuk. Two wrecked subs that had been there as long as I could remember. Forev
er or something like it – though probably only since the war. There were fair-sized holes in both of them and the subs themselves weren’t that big. Mum warned me not to go out here – not all the way out on the sand at least. She’d rather I stayed closer in, maybe picked flowers round the Marl Loch. She’d rather I didn’t wander. But it was okay with Dad. He trusted me.
We walked across the sand together, our shoes wet through though there was only an inch of sea water on the sand. It was rippled and dimpled with puddles and the bay kept draining away. Further out, we saw the marks that seals make when they pull themselves back to the water. We almost missed the wrecks and had to veer left and in towards the shore, too. Their ribs stood out like something hungry.
‘Not big, were they?’ Dad said. ‘Hardly seems like there’d be space, but four men would crew each of these. Volunteers, I mean. You couldn’t make a man climb in.’
‘I’d hate it.’ My voice sounded rough from yelling and I wished it didn’t.
‘They probably did as well. But they did what needed doing. That’s what they would have told themselves. But it must have been hell. Cold and condensation. And all the way up to Norway. I couldn’t have done it. Not my field, of course, but there’s no way.’
I thought he was going to say hell again and I waited for it. Then he laughed, but not like it was funny. He laughed with a seal’s cough, I thought, or a mouth full of sand.
‘Did you know that the engine they used in these XT subs was the same engine they used for a London bus? Gardner Diesels. Bet you didn’t know that.’
‘No.’
‘Well, now you do. Look at that. You just got cleverer. I know, not funny. But that’s why I followed you out here. I used to come out here myself when a laugh wouldn’t work. Sometimes you need the space, don’t you?’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at the sky. ‘Listen, chum. It’s not about me, is it? This door-slamming tick of yours. About me and your mum? Because if it is, I want you to know that people jump to conclusions and talk rot when they don’t understand and maybe when they are scared, but we’re solid. We always have been. And your mum just needs quiet sometimes. Like you need space. I know you get angry and have questions and all, but she’s doing her bit and her best, too. She’s holding us together, you know.’
After this, he was quiet, and I was, too. We mooched out to the second submarine, squelching our feet in the mucky sand. I kicked the side and there sounded a dull thud. Above us, a skein of geese cut across the sky, and Dad raised his arms as if he was holding his gun, but he’d left it at home and they were flying too high anyway. I wondered what he’d do if the powers that be managed to get the bay pronounced a nature reserve. Less goose on the table, I’m sure. I teased him about that on the walk back and he pulled a grimace, then picked up his tune again.
And I can hear the tinkling waterfall
Far among the hills
Bluebirds sing each so merrily
To his mate in rapture trills
They seem to say ‘Your June is lonesome, too,
Longing fills her eyes
She is waiting for you patiently
Where the pine tree sighs.’
Before I left Scotland, Dad told me about the whales found a thousand miles from the sea. Not in Montreal itself, but even further inland near a place called Cornwall where the river was island-strewn and slow. I asked how they’d managed and he laughed.
‘Fossils, my dear. Ten thousand years old. They were found by men digging clay for bricks half a mile from the railway station and two hundred feet above sea level. White whales, I think. Proves the story of the long-drained sea, but then so does the clay. It’s quick clay, tricky stuff. Formed under the oceans and riddled with salt. With the tides gone, the clay dries out, the rains wash the salt away and it shifts. So cracks appear on buildings or suddenly, a whole hillside slips away. Sometimes, fossils emerge that way, too. Sometimes, they’re dug up intact.’
I wasn’t sure why he told me this. A token fact to ease my way into a new country. And a nod to what he knew, who he was. Clay and old stone, deep time and soil. It could have been that. But later, walking through Montreal looking up at the skyscrapers, a new understanding started to surface. Above me, the half-moons of hotel windows, the ribs of towers rising, and under my feet, things still hidden.
Was I the fossil-hunter then? Or the whale?
7
PIDGE: 2006
MATEO WAS STILL AT WORK AND I WAS MAKING SALAD when she called. Slicing cucumbers and preserved lemons, pitting green olives. When I picked up the phone, I could smell their sharpness on my fingers.
Felicity’s voice was so quiet I thought she was ill, but she said no, it was only sad news. She’d had a phone call that afternoon from Scotland. One of the elders from the kirk in Aberlady was working through Gran’s address book, wanting to let her friends and relations know.
‘Kind of him, wasn’t it? Not to leave it up to a lawyer or someone, but to get in touch personally. He said the funeral was yesterday. Prearranged. It seems your grandmother sorted it all out ahead of time. She didn’t want … a fuss.’
‘Would you like me to come?’ I asked.
‘Here? No, no,’ she said. ‘No, I think not. I’ll be fine. It’s just I haven’t seen her in a while. I … I don’t quite know what to do. Now. What to do now. That’s it. I don’t know what to do now.’ She let go of her breath, and I could see her, standing in the farmhouse kitchen, her hair falling forward to curtain her face. She paused, and I could see her hold her hand up to her mouth, her long fingers, the blue of her veins. Outside the window behind her, another evening was beginning, a greying sky above the trees, the lake still and growing darker.
‘I’ll come,’ I said. ‘I can take some time off work. Someone can cover for me.’
‘No.’ She sighed again, and I waited. ‘I just wanted you to know. There really is nothing to be done, but I thought you should know.’ She told me Bas sent his love, and Rika, too. The snow was melting and mud beginning to show between the trees. They’d started tapping the maples. The beginning of another year. She said she would be fine.
‘I know,’ I said, softly.
‘Yeah. I know, too.’
When Mateo came home, I cooked fish and he opened a bottle of wine. I opened the window, so the kitchen wouldn’t get hazy, and to the east, I could see streaks of light. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what they were. They looked like scratches or tears on the surface of the sky. I watched as they changed, brightened, grew longer and strange. Then I saw they were only vapour trails catching the last light of the setting sun. I thought about picking up the phone again and calling the camp to tell Felicity about them. She’d like that. On the other hand, she might think I was checking in, prompting or trying to get her to say something else. Better let her be. I’d tell her when we spoke next, I decided, and then it struck me she might be thinking similar thoughts, out beside the lake. That she couldn’t pick up the phone to tell her mother about the bright things that caught her eye. Not this evening or in the morning or later. She had to let her be.
At the bungalow, I’d decided to sleep in the front bedroom because that wasn’t where Felicity and I slept. We were always given the back bedroom – her room before she left, now stripped and painted white. Felicity said that she’d asked her parents to do it – to make it neutral – when she left. She’d wanted to close a door like that. To make a fresh start.
Even so, the double bed with its nubbly white coverlet was utterly Felicity to me. The pillows might have only just been shaken out, the sheet folded over. If I lay down, I would feel her hands soothing my spine, her hair warm beside me and, in the morning, tangling over me so I’d wake laughing. I would be a child again, too young for this empty house, and I knew I’d never sleep for her whispered stories, her gentle questions, and my own held answers.
In Gran’s room, I told myself the clock would be soothing, the photographs interesting, and the knick-knacks would leave no space for g
hosts. The wash of the sea would sound like wind in the trees at the camp or like trucks on the highway in Ottawa. But, inevitably, I slept fitfully. Maybe the smell of her soap never quite let me settle. Maybe I was just overtired. A little after dawn, there were birds in the garden and I started to compile an inventory in my head.
The books. The photographs. The rag rug. All the boxes on the shelves. The letters. The things in the shed. The kitchen things, too. The teacups. The small jars. I might have slept again, thinking through the shelves and counting, but the blue glass cake-stand on the top of the cupboard brought Felicity’s voice close.
‘It was just this colour, wasn’t it, Mum? Do you remember that? The blue moon when I was wee?’
I was sitting with two cushions wedged beneath me as she took it from the shelf. The collar on my new dress was itchy and wrong, but I held Granny’s coffee mill tight between my knees, turning the crank to grind the beans. Granny sat beside me, the pen in her hand paused over a sheet of white paper.
‘Goodness, Felicity. I’m surprised you do. It was a very long time ago. Be careful with that, dear. It was a wedding present.’
‘But the colour was just like this, wasn’t it? Don’t you think?’
‘Hmm. I hadn’t made that connection before. I always wished it were green, which was more fashionable back then. Auntie Jean wouldn’t have known that. She must have purchased it in Jenners, I suppose. Imagined it sitting in pride of place in my matrimonial home. That was the sort of thing the Morningside aunts said.’
‘I don’t remember it at all,’ Felicity said.
‘Well, when you were small, I didn’t have much cause to use it. Too hard to make cakes on the ration. And people didn’t come around then. At least, they didn’t come here.’
‘Well, they will come tomorrow,’ Felicity said.