Condemned to Repeat

by Janice Macdonald

  To counter it all, I stuck a glass of milk in the microwave, drank down the warmed result, and went to bed.

  21

  --

  The next day, as soon as I was coherent, which for me meant showered, breakfasted, dressed, and moisturized, it was time to call the Fort. Luckily, there was now a year-round staff presence right on site. I explained my request and situation to the woman on the phone, who suggested I come down with identification, a copy of the contract with the Friends of Rutherford House, and $18, which was the standard admission fee for an adult for the day.

  She specified that there would be no professional interpreters available to me, as the only ones hired year-round were assigned specifically to school classes. There might be two or three volunteer interpreters on site, and therefore some of the buildings would have activity within them, but only until four o’clock, with the exception of the Selkirk Hotel, which was an active hotel with a bustling restaurant and bar for much of the year.

  This all sounded great to me, and I assured her I would be down to see her within the hour. Knowing I would be on my feet all day and outside a lot, I decided to opt for warmth over style. I loaded my laptop and camera into a backpack, along with a bottle of water and all the ID the Fort office would require of me, and tied up my runners. It was still mild enough for just a light jacket, so I pulled my jean jacket over the Superman hoodie I was wearing. I figured that my runners, with their air-pocketed arch supports and polymers, were so anachronistic to begin with that I didn’t need to worry about my Kryptonian leanings. Besides, the historic park reached into the ’30s as it wended its way back through history. Maybe they would find some connection to the Canadian boy who had drawn the Man of Steel.

  I took the train from campus to the South Campus station and after squinting at several small maps, determined which bus to catch down Fox Drive that would actually let me off before the bridge to the ginormous mall. I was glad I had taken the bus, since the walk to the Park gates from the bus stop was still about half a mile. I popped into the Fort office, a modern building set to the right of the train station that acted as the entry gate and gift shop. The woman I’d spoken with on the phone greeted me like an old friend and processed my application for “historical research visitor” efficiently. I was given a lanyard with a plastic ID pocket, into which she slipped the card she’d made, and which she told me to wear visibly. This would allow the interpreters to gauge that I was not a teacher accompanying one of the classes of students (they had their own ID), nor a guest of the Selkirk Hotel. Most of all, it tagged me “not an interloper.” I would be accorded access to all the open buildings. She said that if I could return the lanyard at the end of the day, it would be filed for a period of two weeks for my use.

  I wondered how many other scholars spent two weeks of their research time in a historical re-enactment park, but nodded and smiled and signed where she told me to sign. Eventually I was sent back down the path toward the train station, where in regular summer hours one caught the vintage steam train to ride to the far end of the Park, to be deposited at the glorious replica of the palisaded Fort. Visitors would begin their visit to Edmonton in the fur-trade era, circa 1854, and then make their way back through time toward the near-present, along 1885 Street, catch a tram on 1905 Street, turn the corner at 1920 Street, then head back, past the celebratory midway, and out through the souvenir shop. It was a great concept.

  However, at this time of year, the train apparently was not running. It was a good thing I had already shaved some time off the commute this morning. Instead of waiting for the streetcar with a group of very noisy nine-year-olds, I opted to walk backwards in time into the centre of the Park.

  The Ferris wheel and tents of the midway looked lonely in the late fall morning. As entertainment on the prairies in the ’30s wasn’t on anyone’s curriculum, they closed down early and were not part of any of the school tours. It was a pity, since the hand-carved horses of the carousel were things of beauty. I wondered, though, if they could compete with the high-tech, hand-held entertainments that today’s youth possessed?

  I moseyed down the boardwalk along 1920 Street. To my left, the first mosque in Alberta shone in the sunlight, while Mellon Farm to my right was dwarfed by the Blatchford airplane hangar, next to which was housed a model of Wop May’s famous bush plane. The newest addition to the Park was the replica of a movie theatre. Sarah Bernhardt and the Marx Brothers had toured through Edmonton on the Pantages circuit, and so it seemed fitting to have added the theatre, which soon became a cinema. The Park had commissioned a company from the States to provide a historical experience, complete with snow falling on the heads of the viewers, but most of the fun seemed to be watching old movies, which ran on the hour, and the occasional live theatre produced for short runs in the evenings. As it was right next to the Selkirk Hotel, a lot of people had been booking into the hotel, so they could enjoy a theatrical evening, drinks in the hotel bar after, and a slap-up breakfast the next morning. It was like getting away on vacation right in the heart of the city. All the fun, none of the jet lag.

  I turned left when I got to the hotel, heading south down 1905 Street. This was where I wanted to spend my time, where most of the buildings arranged by era were the actual buildings, trucked to the Park from their original locations. The old Rutherford House was somewhere up ahead on my left, according to the map I’d picked up in the train station. I passed the post office, pausing to take a picture of the fire hall and the china shop across the street. The Masonic Hall ahead of me had a short-order counter and tables set up on the main floor, in case visitors got hungry. Right now, I could see twenty-some children clogging the tables, filling out workbooks, wriggling around and generally making more noise than necessary. I didn’t think I’d ever get hungry enough to join them.

  The first house after the Masonic Hall was the Firkin House, the one that was rumoured to be haunted. It didn’t look haunted from where I was standing, but at any rate, determining its relative lack of ectoplasm wasn’t my mission. I was far more concerned with the house beside it, the original Rutherford House. The verandah would have been the biggest selling point for me, but I could sort of see how this house wouldn’t be quite majestic enough for the premier of the province, let alone the president of the university. This was a house that had been added on to two or three times, as I had learned from my research, but the signs were not readily obvious from the exterior. I walked through the picket-fenced gate and up the stairs, hoping the door would be open.

  It was unlocked and the interior of the house was warm, indicating that someone was stoking the fire and at work somehow within. The smell of molasses cookies was also wafting through the air from the back kitchen. Following my nose, or perhaps my stomach, which gurgled appreciatively, I was about to make my way toward the back of the house.

  “Hello?”

  “Good day,” came a small voice from the left and down around my knees. I twirled, startled to see a small, dark-haired boy dressed in a period costume of a boiled-cotton shirt, suspenders, knee pants with woollen stockings, and lace-up boots. He was on the floor, playing jacks, which I had thought was a girl’s game, but he was so dexterous and fast that I figured any girl competing would lose whatever she’d been betting. Seeing me, he scooped up his little metal game pieces and rubber ball, and stood in one fluid motion. The toys went into his pocket, and he thrust out his hand.

  “It is nice to see you. My mother is baking cookies, which should be ready soon. Would you like to see the rest of the House?”

  “Hi, there. Sure, I would love to see the rest of the house.” And so, with the smell of cookies drawing me back into memories of my own childhood, the boy, who couldn’t have been more than four or five years old, left the rather ornate parlour he’d been playing in and pointed out the library of the premier across the hall.

  We took the tortuously narrow stairs, which he assured me were very luxurious for the time, up to the second floor. I looked at h
im, trying to determine whether any of the cavorting and loud children down the road would have understood the word “luxurious,” let alone had the presence of mind and aplomb to use it in a discussion with an adult they had just met.

  “My name is Randy. What’s your name?”

  “Well, I am supposed to say Cecil, because that was the name of the Rutherfords’ son, but I don’t have a younger sister, so it seems sort of silly to pretend to be the family when we don’t fit the numbers. So I say my name is Jasper Peacocke, and I was named for the mineral, not the town or the hotel on 1885 Street. People always ask me that. Jasper Peacocke is my real name.”

  “That’s a real name, all right. Nice to meet you, Jasper. How old are you?”

  “I will be six this coming Christmas. And no, it is not essential for me to be in kindergarten with other children my age.”

  “It isn’t? I didn’t know that was compulsory.”

  Jasper sniffed. “Well, that is the other thing most people ask me—why aren’t you in school, little boy?” His voice took on the screeching tone of a raptor, and I got a sense of old ladies like large owls, swooping down on him.

  “What do you tell them?” I didn’t really care if he went to school or not, but there was something compelling about his intensity and seriousness that just made me want to continue to hear him talk. He was obviously precocious, in that way of bright children who spend the majority of their time with adults rather than other children.

  “To them I usually just say I’m not old enough yet and they leave me alone.” He looked up at me with a candid grin. “And then they usually get all freaky about my vocabulary.”

  I laughed. For a five-year-old, Jasper Peacocke had a pretty good bead on human nature.

  “Truthfully, the real reason is that my father is a cinematographer, and we travel a lot, so I haven’t gone to a playschool yet. My mother and I go along with him and have adventures and experiences wherever we have been. We are back home for a while and so we have been volunteering at the Park this summer, so I can learn about history, and develop communication skills.”

  “And become a killer jacks player.”

  Jasper nodded, acknowledging the compliment. “I am even better at hoop rolling, and a dead aim with a slingshot, but the Park administrators don’t care for that because they say it might inspire other children to commit violence.”

  I laughed, thinking of the various shooting games available to children outside the Park’s boundaries that were far likelier to incite anti-social tendencies.

  Jasper looked troubled, but I assured him I was not laughing at him.

  “This was Hazel’s room,” he intoned, as we stood in the doorway. Obviously, Hazel’s room held no interest for a young boy, in that it was decked out in Victoriana femininity. I am not sure it would be of interest to a young girl of the twenty-first century, either. Cecil’s room, on the other hand, awakened what sounded to me like a bit of hero-worship in Jasper.

  “Cecil went to war in 1916 with the British Royal Garrison Artillery. He was just married, but he served till the end of the war and then came home to Edmonton and became a lawyer. These were not likely his jacks,” he said, producing the little metal x figures from his pocket, “but he probably played with similar toys when he was young. He was born in 1890 and had a sister when he was three years old. I am an only child.” That last bit sounded a tad wistful.

  “Are people allowed to touch the things on display?”

  “In some rooms you can, but if there is a rope across the doorway, you are only allowed to lean in and look around.” He led me back down the narrow hallway. I could really see from the inside how the house had been added to. It didn’t have the gracious lines of its brick counterpart on Saskatchewan Drive. The hallway around the staircase was narrow and a little treacherous. A maid with too big a load of laundry could probably take a bad spill down the stairs if she wasn’t careful.

  Speaking of the maid, her room was the next one that Jasper showed me. Like the other bedrooms, once you descended a few stairs, this one too had a rope across it, but you could walk through to the back stairs that led to the kitchen and more divine cookie aromas. A trunk and other boxes took up part of the area, which had been created from the attic space above the kitchen add-on, as far as I could tell. Separated from the rest of the room by a small screen was a single metal bedframe that had been painted white, covered by a tired patchwork quilt with tucked-in hospital corners, and a battered suitcase under the bed.

  “Why is there a rope across this room, Jasper?”

  “I am not sure. That is an old quilt, and the fabric could rip if you sat on the bed, I guess. My mother had to mend a cushion downstairs that someone leaned against. There was no rope before, though.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before the mess. Now, be very careful because these stairs are hard to walk down for some people.”

  Jasper was leading me away from the maid’s room, toward the enticing smell of cinnamon and nutmeg. That wasn’t the only reason I was eager to follow him. I wanted to know what he meant by “mess.” We navigated the even narrower maid’s staircase and found our way into the kitchen. There, a woman with dark hair pulled back in a bun, and a coverall apron that reminded me of Hilda Ogden from Coronation Street, still couldn’t hide how attractive she was. She looked up at us with Jasper’s dark eyes and smiled at her son.

  “If you wash your hands, you can help me with the cookies, Jasper. Good day,” she nodded to me, somehow taking in that I had been adopted as a non-raptor. “I trust Jasper has been giving you the tour of the upper floor? This would have been the job of the Rutherfords’ maid, although Mattie Rutherford was reputed to be a very good cook and she definitely won ribbons at the summer fairs for her rhubarb relish and crabapple jelly.”

  “Hello, it’s nice to meet you. My name is Randy Craig, and I am actually working on researching material for Rutherford House, the newer one by the university. I came out here to see the ways in which the newer house was modelled on the Rutherfords’ first house. Jasper’s tour was terrific.”

  “Ah, well, then, you’re practically family,” she laughed. “Why don’t you have a chair and I’ll pour you a cup of tea to go with your cookies?” When I was about to demur, she hurried to add, “It would be so nice to talk to a grown-up who wasn’t looking after twenty-seven wriggling, bored nine-year-olds. They’ll be here soon enough, believe me.” Jasper’s mom, who told me her name was Nola, poured tea for both of us into spectacularly thin, large porcelain teacups that had a pearlescent sheen to them.

  “It’s a real lesson in opposites, working here. You have all this knuckle-reddening work, with no mod cons, and then you sip your tea in the most impossibly elegant teacups, and pin on brooches with semi-precious stones as a matter of course. I am not certain we came out the winners, we women of the next century.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t necessarily be the same people getting their knuckles raw, would it? I mean, houses these days don’t accommodate a maid’s staircase, although I guess there are live-in nannies and au pair rooms in fancier houses. But I mean, most people today cook their own meals, wash their own clothes, and do their own dishes, instead of relying on servants to do that for them.”

  “I agree, we have gotten rid of the servants, but with them, we’ve lost touch with the elegance. I don’t have anything this delicate at home from which to drink my tea, do you?”

  I thought of my old, weathered Kliban cat mug, and wondered whether it would qualify as a collectible, if not an antique. Regardless, it certainly wouldn’t match a Limoges teacup for elegance.

  “You make a good point. How did the Rutherford servants do, though, on the scale of Royal Doulton to tin mug?”

  Nola laughed. “Oh, I’m sure they were a lot closer to tin mug than we want to portray here. There is a huge egalitarian streak in Canadians that rebels against the concept of unfair treatment, I’ve noticed. For instance, have you been to the Fort today?”

>   I admitted that I hadn’t, but that I had visited in the past.

  “Well, if you’ll recall, there is a tiny door cut inside the big doors to the Fort, the ones that are usually open. When an interpreter tells people that the usual practice was to keep the inner doors closed and direct potentially hostile natives, who were coming to trade, to use the small door and trade through the iron-barred window, people tend to bristle with the unfairness of it all. And yet, they never seem to question the fact that the entire structure is built inside a massive palisade.”

  I laughed and reached for a cookie, noticing out of the corner of my eye that Jasper had commandeered the floor area in front of the warm stove and was munching contentedly on his second cookie, too.

  “I see what you mean. So, do you have to downplay the maid’s role when visitors come to Rutherford House here?”

  “Very few of them make the connection, to tell you the truth. A few of them have asked if that is where a maiden aunt or Mrs. Rutherford’s widowed mother slept, when they see the maid’s room upstairs.”

  “Oh yeah, speaking of the maid’s room, I noticed that it has a rope across it. Jasper was mentioning it didn’t used to, but that there had been a recent mess?”

  Nola shot a troubled look over to where Jasper was sitting and then back at me. I sensed she didn’t want to continue in front of her son, but I wasn’t certain why. Was she afraid of saying something that would scare him, or something to me that he knew to be untrue? I was even more interested in what her answer might be now, so decided to play along to make life easier for Nola Peacocke, and changed the subject to deflect attention from what I really wanted her to talk about.

  “I’ve been working on a website for the House to go along with their book about the centennial of the House’s being built. I went out to the Ukrainian Village, to get a feel for the girls who may have come to the big city to work in the private homes and hotels.”