by Plum Johnson
She describes the ship’s cabins as being “the size of a telephone booth,” with no bath and few facilities for drying diapers or mixing baby formula. Adults were required to dress formally for dinner and children weren’t permitted, so they had to be left behind alone in the cabins. Switching ships at various ports often meant organizing the transfer of luggage— trunks, suitcases, cribs, and pram—remembering to keep on hand enough formula and diapers for emergencies because there were none to buy in the ports. She’s saved a dog-eared pamphlet: If You Must Travel with Baby During Wartime. One of its helpful hints is that you can wrap soiled diapers in waxed paper and then tuck them back into your suitcase.
On our return to the Far East, in December 1949, we left the beautiful home that Dad had built on The Peak in Hong Kong and moved to Singapore, where Dad became manager. Mum was now pregnant with her third child—my brother Robin.
The house was bigger—it had its own tennis court—the climate less humid, the stores better stocked, the social life easier, and the pace more relaxed. In the Malay countryside expanses of paddy fields were plowed by water buffalo, and bullock carts with steep attap roofs lumbered past doll-like teak houses built on stilts with hand-carved fretwork designs around the windows. Fowl and goats roamed under the palms, and monkeys were trained to clamber up the trees to bring down the coconuts. In summer we flew to Fraser’s Hill, high on a peak near Kuala Lumpur, to find relief from the heat of the lowlands. It was surrounded by jungle and ancient forest, and the colonial government maintained a country club and golf course there.
Mum had a full-time Malay chauffeur, Soho. He dressed in a white uniform and took her to the American Club in the morning for swimming and mahjong, the Botanical Gardens for tea, and the Tanglin Club or Raffles Hotel for dancing in the evenings with Dad. I read about their friends, an interesting mix of journalists, authors, and influential politicians. Mum seemed happy that she could still get “the inside scoop.”
The political climate, however, began to heat up. One month after my brother Robin was born in May 1950, North Korea attacked South Korea and there was growing talk of a new war between the U.S. and China. As the year progressed, tensions between east and west drifted towards Singapore, too.
There were curfews at night. I read that whenever we drove up to Malacca, we went in convoys for fear of armed bandits. I have another flashback: a memory of taking a car ride down a winding mountain road. Daddy is in the front seat beside our driver and Mummy is in the back with Sandy and me, holding Robin in her arms. Suddenly Mum shouts, “Oh, God, Alex!” and shoves me down onto the floor. But I’ve already seen the burned-up car in the ditch with an arm sticking out. Daddy shouts, “Faster!”
In September, Mum writes that intruders attempt to smash through our living-room shutters late one night, and Mum and Dad begin sleeping with a big stick under their mosquito net—along with glass bottles of soda water that they’re told will have “a fine explosive effect” when dropped out the window onto the brick path below. But when a British soldier is dragged unconscious from a bus into a ditch and set alight by an angry mob, Mum becomes anxious to leave. Dad reluctantly agrees, thinking of it as a “temporary solution to safeguard the children until everything blows over.” He books passage for Mum on a ship leaving in January.
By November, however, tensions between Muslims and Christians have escalated, sparked by the famous Maria Hertogh case: the thirteen-year-old Dutch girl whose parents had been trying to retrieve her from her Muslim foster mother since their release from internment camps at the end of the war. Malay and Chinese mobs start killing Europeans on sight, and troops are called in. By December 12th, 1950, eighteen people are dead and almost two hundred wounded. Hundreds of vehicles are damaged and many buildings set ablaze. The American Consul advises all American citizens to leave immediately, but Dad tells Mum the evacuation order doesn’t apply to her: she’s British now, he reminds her, since she’s married to him.
Mum pays no heed to Dad. The very next day she packs hastily and bundles us onto the last plane out. With stopovers, the flight takes four days. This time she’s travelling alone with three young children, including Robin, who’s just an infant.
Dad was left behind. He spent Christmas alone in the big house, surrounded by unopened toys. Enduring two weeks of twenty-four-hour curfews, he had two servants sleep at the bottom of the stairs during the nights to guard against intruders. His letters are full of longing, enough to break my heart. He begins each one “To My Own Precious Wife” and signs them “Your Devoted Husband.” The following October, the British High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, is assassinated at Fraser’s Hill.
Mum arrived in Virginia just in time to see her ailing mother, who died shortly after. The large red-brick mansion at 500 West Franklin Street that had always been their city home in Richmond had already been emptied and sold, and the family traditions continued at Rokeby Farm.
It’s obvious from all her letters what a close relationship Mum had with her own mother—she tells her everything—and I’m envious. This must have been her expectation of me, too. It makes me wonder what Granny was like as a mother. She supported all Mum’s choices, like going away to college, going overseas during the war, and moving halfway across the world to live in the Far East with Dad. Mum was so independent and adventurous, in ways I had never imagined. How do I square this with the mother I knew, who was so intrusive, demanding, and possessive of me? Then I notice how many letters were written by Granny to Mum when she was a child. There are many letters written to Mum on her birthdays—her eighth, her ninth, her tenth—and it dawns on me: perhaps Granny was an absentee mother! Since Mum was her eighth and last child, I conclude that Granny may have spent much of Mum’s childhood away— travelling to doctors in New York and Boston, trying to find a cure for her eldest daughter’s diabetes. On these occasions, Mum would have been left behind with her father and siblings, achieving independence from her mother early, an independence that even allowed her to hold her wedding in England— without her mother there. Their relationship would have developed almost exclusively through letters.
Maybe Mum hadn’t wanted independence! Maybe she tried to reconstruct a relationship with me like the one she wished she could have had with her own mother. I always felt that I instinctively understood Dad, but these letters are helping me understand Mum, after pushing her away for so long. These are the puzzle pieces I had hoped to find. This is her diary.
My heart stops when I find this: My Darling Anne, I’m saving all your letters because I know your biographer will one day want them … your devoted Mother.
Am I my mother’s biographer? Do all daughters become their mother’s biographers, taking her history and passing it on to future generations? Writing letters was one of Mum’s greatest talents, and here is the record of her life. At the end of our lives, we become only memories. If we’re lucky, someone is passing those down.
All night the lake roars like a freight train. When I go to bed the waves are racing, flat and sleek, competing with each other for speed. The surface of the lake looks like a Venetian blind, with only the horizontal white lines of surf visible in the blackness of night. By midnight, ice pellets have started to fall and the waves become wide shovels, slamming the ice up against the shore with a thunderous force and spectacular spray. The waves shovel all night and are still working slavishly in the morning. There’s an ice shelf forming—an amazing phenomenon. It feels as if I’m in a bowl of white ice. From the verandah, I’m looking out at the lip, which curls over in front of the house like a prehistoric iceberg. It’s about eight feet high now and thirty feet deep and still growing its crystalline wall along the shoreline. Mum would have been clapping her hands. “Come see! Come see! It’s the best show on earth, and it’s free!”
Frosted beards of icicles grow from the windowsills and freeze-frame my views. When I describe them to Robin in an email, he writes back, “I hope they’re on the outside!” Later in the week, when the sun mel
ts their roots, I hear the giant ones plummet and shatter onto the brick path below.
Outside, the water in the lake is a deep viridian green. It’s lapping at the ice shelf and licking it away. Splotchy chunks of ice, glittering with crystals in the early sunlight, are floating away from the jagged-edged crust and a few brave ducks are paddling amongst them. The sky is sliced apart with white contrails and wispy, long-legged clouds are drifting past in the shape of dancing camels. I can never go back to being surrounded by buildings again, hemmed in and confined by man-made structures.
This house and its setting, Mum said, were “in her bones” … and they’re in mine, too. But I’ve spent so many of the past twenty years feeling trapped here and wishing for release that I hadn’t stopped to imagine what it would be like when it was all gone. Now I want a reprieve. Why do we have to sell it? Why can’t I die here like everybody else?
I speak to my friend Lesley on the phone, lamenting my pending loss of this beautiful landscape with its limitless horizon. She understands only too well; she grew up in similar surroundings.
“When you have an unobstructed view,” she muses, “something happens to the mind … it expands, doesn’t it?” Then she adds, “But if you look up, you’ll see the clouds. The thing about clouds is that they tell you how to live.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re always moving … and that’s what we’re supposed to do, too.”
Hong Kong Farewell
In early January, I find myself in the doctor’s office: Dr. Breen, my mother’s doctor. She gives me a warm hug and her thick brown curls brush my cheek. She asks how I’m doing. I haven’t spoken to her since the night Mum died, although once or twice I’ve seen her youthful figure walking briskly along the lakefront path in front of the house. I have a small blemish on my leg, I tell her, so I need a referral to a dermatologist in Oakville. She takes a look and decides it’s unnecessary; she thinks the spot will go away on its own.
“But let’s take a little social history,” she says and turns to her computer.
I answer questions like how old I am, when did I divorce, how many children do I have, how much exercise do I get, how much alcohol do I consume, and then: am I still smoking? Yes, I tell her, I’ve quit in the past but now cigarettes are my friends. Then I blurt out, “Of course, it’s a slow suicide—I know that.”
Dr. Breen has her back to me, typing, but when I say this, she stops. “Do you think about suicide?” she asks.
I tell her no, but I don’t want to live long enough to get dementia, like Dad. I’d rather die early, of a heart attack. Then I tell her that this past week I’ve been feeling a little depressed. I’ve been second-guessing my motivations for everything. Maybe isolating myself in Mum’s house is unhealthy, akin to pulling blankets over my head. I’ve been cutting myself off from family and friends. My world is shrinking and I’m strangely okay with this. But maybe I shouldn’t be?
When I leave her office I’m clutching a referral, not to a dermatologist, but to a therapist. I’m told that the intake secretary from the Adult Mental Health Office will call me to schedule it. When I get home, I vow to cancel. The thought of having to bring some shrink up to speed with what’s been going on in my life over the past twenty years fills me with fatigue. Besides, I think, I’m hardly worth their time: until recently, I’ve been feeling wonderful. Am I really depressed or just “lying fallow”—an artistic condition that usually precedes a period of great creativity for me. How can I tell the difference?
When Halton Healthcare finally calls, they tell me I’m in luck—there’s been a cancellation and they can see me tomorrow. I’m about to say “No thanks” when my brain stalls: wait a minute … why does that date have resonance for me? The anniversary of Mum’s death! How could I have forgotten? No wonder I’ve been feeling low this week. It seems too coincidental—almost preordained—so I decide to go.
The intake secretary, a soft-spoken woman in a lavender sweater, asks me a variety of in-depth questions, smiling as she speaks. She has a ten-page printed questionnaire on her desk and she circles things and puts checkmarks or lines through boxes. Her bright, lively eyes give no hint of judgment. She asks me about my physical health: whether I’ve ever had a head injury, any serious accidents or operations, and expresses surprise when I tell her the only thing I take are vitamins.
“We rarely see someone your age who’s not taking any medications,” she says.
She asks me whether I’ve ever taken drugs (no), how much alcohol I consume (not much), and how much exercise I get (lots). Then she asks whether there’s a history of suicide in the family. I answer yes—my mother’s brother Frank—although no one was ever sure whether he jumped or was pushed, and this was eighty years ago. She asks about my childhood: What kind of child was I? Shy? Happy? Gifted? What about my past careers, what I do now? When I tell her I’m an artist and a writer, she asks what I live on. I want to say “hope,” but instead I confess that I’m burning through savings from my earlier career in publishing. It’s a big stressor in my life. When I decided to follow my bliss ten years ago, I knew I’d have to give up luxuries. Dad was right: society doesn’t value artists, even though, when a civilization disappears, artwork is the only thing that survives. We dig up pots and statues and ancient wall murals and put them in museums. If it hadn’t been for Mum and Dad’s frugality, and what they’ve just left us, I’d be really worried about my future.
The secretary probes my parents’ marriage. “How would you describe it?” she asks.
I stumble for words. “Well … it was passionate … passionate in both directions.”
“Was it violent?”
“No,” I say, “I wouldn’t describe it as violent … I would say … um … emotionally intense.” I didn’t recall any physical violence between my parents, but I find myself making a conscious effort not to defensively cross my arms, remembering the letter I read only last night.
Sept. 28, 1949. Honolulu, aboard the ship S.S. President Cleveland. Dearest Mum, The other night, Alex got very irritated & started pushing Plum around for no reason, so I smacked him. He got so mad that he hit her very hard & she cried and cried. I tried to comfort her & explain that he was tired. Later, full of remorse, he told me he was sorry. I told him he should apologize to Plum, not to me. So he did—whereupon she looked up sympathetically & said, “That’s awright, Daddy, you didn’t mean to.”
“Did your parents drink?” she asks.
I find myself minimizing Mum’s alcoholism. After all, it started in the fifties—women in frilly aprons, evening cocktails and all that. Besides, she quit drinking when my brother Sandy asked her to. My memory flashes to all the empty gin bottles Dad had stacked up in the garage to make her feel guilty.
“She had a will of iron, my mother,” I tell her. “She smoked until she was eighty-five, but she gave it up each year during Lent. She chewed an empty corncob pipe instead.”
“Were there any weapons in the house?” she asks.
“Only Dad’s bamboo cane,” I say. “The one he disciplined my brothers with … I think one of them took it away to be framed.”
She asks me if I have hallucinations, hear voices, or see things that aren’t there, and rapidly strikes through the remaining boxes. Then she caps her pen and turns to me, smiling sympathetically.
“Do you think you need to talk to a grief counsellor?” The thought that I might be finally grieving had never entered my head until now.
As I pull out of the parking lot and head south, I look up into the cold, clear sky. Two large flocks of Canada geese are flying high above in their V-formation, one on either side of my car. They escort me all the way down Dorval Road, east along the Lakeshore, down Trafalgar Road, and straight home to the lake. Am I seeing things that aren’t there? I wonder what the psychiatrist would make of this?
As I drive into the boathouse, I think of how I’ve been navigating memories of the past, like stuffing myself in the hull of Dad’s boat a
gain—looking for ballast. It’s been a necessary process but now I know I’m ready to move on.
A few days later, in my old bedroom, I awaken with the gift of dawn. The radiant light warms my cheeks, and when I open my eyes, the whole room is filled with an orange glow. To have a perfectly round sun lift up over the horizon, directly outside my bedroom window, and pour gold into my lap fills me with hope and optimism.
In February, Alex phones to say she has some people who want to come back for a second look. They’d seen the house before Christmas and they can’t get it out of their heads. Once again I spend hours vacuuming and mopping floors, and once again I leave for the prescribed hour. But when I drive back their cars are still in the driveway, so I pull up on the street and wait. I wait and wait. After an hour, I think, Okay, that’s enough, and barge in through the boathouse door.
“Time’s up!” I shout.
Alex greets me in the pantry and introduces me to Clive and Hilary. Hilary is a pretty, petite blonde with a warm, engaging smile. Clive is a tall, dark, ruddy-faced Welshman with a black moustache and bushy eyebrows. His eyes are dancing, and I think, Uh-oh, this could be serious. He’s marvelling at the old built-in glass cabinets in the dining room and the wide woodplank countertops in the pantry and he wants to know the history of everything. By mid-afternoon we have an offer from Clive, but it’s too low. Victor doesn’t even want to respond.
“We have to view this as a conversation,” I reason. “It would be insulting not to respond.”
“We’re miles apart,” says Victor, “and I’m not prepared to give it away.”
“Let’s just shave a hair off and see what he does.”
Over the next twenty-four hours the offer goes back and forth, with Clive inching up and us inching down. Victor polls Chris and Robin to find out what their bottom line is. When Clive delivers his final offer, it’s tantalizingly close. We have no way of knowing whether he’ll move in or resell it, but the clincher for me is knowing how well Clive will care for this house. Alex tells us he has a reputation for beautiful restorations. More importantly, I feel Mum and Dad would have approved. We accept Clive’s offer with a long closing—June. This gives us four more months to say goodbye to Point O’ View. I paint another portrait—this time of Clive—but not until the deal is inked. One day, I take down Mum’s portrait in the pantry and hang Clive in her place: I’m finally pressing the “eject” button.