There was an Old Woman

by Howard Engel

  “And he’s assembling a group of properties around Brogan Street. Why?”

  “He calls it the ‘Backstreet Revival.’ That’s his way of saying that he’s going to revitalize the space between Queen and James. He’s going to build new stores along the north side and try to force the St. Andrew Street property owners to fix up the backs of their places, add rear entrances to their stores and so on. The centre of the project is an office tower that will go up as high as the city will let him build. It’ll be the highest building on the peninsula, higher than Brock’s Monument. We’re talking big bucks, Benny.”

  “Is Morella in this all by himself?”

  “Steve doesn’t work any other way His is a private company. That way there’s no annual general meeting, no chairman of the board, no public access. That’s the way he wants it.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Steve? He likes to pretend that all this hasn’t happened to him. That he’s still unspoiled by his money. It’s true in a way, but, come on, get real, he’s loaded. He can buy and sell half the town. He’s always been a loner, but since Sue Ellen left him, he’s become a hermit crab.”

  “Sue Ellen?”

  “It was a messy divorce, Benny. Few years ago. That’s when Claudia, their daughter, moved out. Put herself through law school. Bright kid, but she has a thing about fathers. Who’s to blame her, after what Steve tried to do to Sue Ellen and then what Sue Ellen did to Steve.”

  “Are you writing a soap opera, Martha, or are you playing games with me?”

  “Word of honour, Benny. I wouldn’t kid you. Sue Ellen took a very fat half of Steve’s assets when she left town. He’s still as bitter as a February frost about it. Claudia’s coming home helped, but not much. He goes away in the winters when he can. He likes buying vineyards in France and Italy. That’s his way of easing the pain. Ha! But I think he’s still around. Myrna Yates said she had lunch with him a couple of days ago. What’s this all about, Benny?”

  “Oh, it’s just some work I’ve been doing to bribe the caretaker at my office to fix the toilet. His old girl-friend owned the property that lies between Foley’s and The Nag’s Head.”

  “Whoever inherits that property will be able to make a very good deal with Steve Morella. He’ll practically give whoever it is a blank cheque. The Oldridge place is the lynchpin in the whole ‘Backstreet Revival.’ And you say Liz Oldridge was your caretaker’s girl-friend?”

  “You know Kogan? Liz and Kogan were like cake and custard.”

  “More like old tea leaves and carrot peelings from what I hear.”

  “Scandal’s red tongue has been wagging, Martha. Kogan did his best to save her, but he couldn’t get around Ramsden’s stranglehold on her safety deposit box. And there’s not going to be a criminal prosecution.

  “Aw, Benny, you know the law as well as I do. Coroners can’t go around pointing the guilty finger any more than I can tell you where Scarp Enterprises is going to start buying its next batch of peach orchards for a commercial development. It ain’t done, you little rascal, and you know it. One thing I’ll tell you for no extra charge: watch out for Thurleigh Ramsden. He’s a street fighter and a dirty one!”

  “You’re a gold-mine, Martha. Why don’t you come into partnership with me?”

  “On the principle that two can starve as easily as one? No thanks. Myrna Yates doesn’t pay me enough, God knows, but it comes regular. I’ll take regular over enough any day.”

  “Well, if you ever think of moonlighting …”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Martha, how would I go about meeting Steve Morella?”

  “He still spends an hour a week in his flagship store.”

  “Across from the Lincoln?”

  “Uh-huh. Mondays between two and three. He thinks it keeps him in touch with his roots. Go figure.”

  “I’ll remind him of the time my brother, Sam, and I tried to get him to divide ten cents’ worth of French fries into two paper cones.”

  “You had a nickel each, right?”

  “Yeah. We presented our proposition to him, he thought a moment, then said he wouldn’t be able to do it. A second later, he brightened and said that he would be able to give us a toothpick each, which was just as good. He had a fine head for business even back in those days.”

  “You remind him of that story and he’ll throw you out! He doesn’t like jokes, Benny. He’s a sunny sort of fellow, but not given to jokes. Jokes confuse him, make him uneasy, pull the rug out. He doesn’t like that.”

  “Okay, I’ll keep my mouth shut. More coffee?”

  “I have to be getting back. But you stay, Benny. You don’t have to sit through a board meeting for the next three hours. Myrna won’t let me smoke. Life is one living hell!”

  ELEVEN

  The Kingsway Hall was a second-floor walk-up auditorium that I thought had disappeared years ago because of fire regulations. I came up one of a double set of stairs that led the way from the entrance on Ontario Street. The steps groaned as I climbed them and the hundreds of empty chairs watched as I crossed the floor. There were exit doors at the back, one marked with a cracked red glass, and two fire extinguishers on opposite sides of the wide room. A small stage formed the focus of attention at the front with a huge Union Jack pinned to the backcloth and an upright piano to the left. It was deeply out of tune. Each note found an echo an octave above and below it as I struck a key. The keyboard cover had been fitted with a hasp and padlock which had been broken off, leaving the dark mahogany around the lock scarred. I could see them trying to keep people away from illicit playing on the instrument. Perhaps they should invest in some kind of meter to regulate and record all users. Maybe there might be extra time for excellence or time off for discords.

  On the piano I found a song sheet that contained “Rule, Britannia,” “The White Cliffs of Dover,” “Over There,” “There’s a Long, Long Trail Awinding,” “Let the Rest of the World Go By,” “The Maple Leaf Forever” and a few more ditties from the past. The meeting was scheduled to begin at seven o’clock. It was just half an hour short of that now. I always liked to be able to spy out the land ahead of time when I could, just to get the feel of the place. I still had time to get a fast bite to eat. As I lifted my head above the piano, I saw a figure standing in one of the two archways at the top of the stairs to my left. It had been moving when I saw it, but, on catching sight of me, it stopped and then ran back down the stairs. What I could see of the face told me two things: he hadn’t expected to run into me and he didn’t want to be seen lurking about the meeting rooms of the Guild of the Venerable Bede.

  On my way down the same stairs, I wondered why Orv Wishart—for it couldn’t have been anyone else— wanted to spy out the site of the meeting. Was he doing his own private investigation when he could have hired me? He could have hired Howard Dover too. We all have to make a living.

  Still chewing on this, I found a place on St. Andrew Street with a huge anchor in front of it. It had belonged to one of the schooners that used to be pulled through the canal that still ran behind the stores on this side of the street. The man behind the counter made a very tidy chopped-egg sandwich for me to go with the vanilla milkshake. Outside, I could see the entrance to the Kingsway Hall. When the lights came on, it looked like a theatre from the 1940s, with tiny bulbs outlining the triangular pediment over the entrance. I decided to let things get moving without me. I didn’t want to create a distraction.

  I sipped slowly on my straw until it protested noisily. Again I was craving a Player’s, but I accepted a cough candy instead. I’d been off the weed now for several years, but I had not been able to substitute a cough candy habit for the old habit. It wouldn’t take. I paid my bill and crossed the street again. Three elderly women with blue rinses were talking in front of the entrance. I held back until they’d preceded me into the hall.

  A quarter full, the hall looked emptier than when I’d been there half an hour earlier. The three old women who had come in
ahead of me had lost themselves in a group of a dozen or so others, some wearing hats. Against the back wall, a clutch of elderly men, one in a wine-coloured cardigan with darned elbows, gossiped among themselves like teenagers as they watched the women take chairs near the front. A light had been turned on so that now the flag on the stage was brightly illuminated. A portrait of Her Majesty the Queen had been set on an easel near the piano. A portly woman in a blue lace dress with a blue underslip was rummaging through music she’d taken from an old-fashioned music roll. I took a seat at the back not far away from the old men with their sparse hair and lusty eyes.

  Thurleigh Ramsden came into the room wearing a carnation in his buttonhole and waving to the assembly. He blew kisses, especially at the front rows, and shook hands with the pianist, rather as though he meant to give a lieder recital. Instead, he asked us all to rise and he led us in singing the British national anthem. His steady baritone carried above the fluty voices of the women. The sound filled the room, bouncing off the patterned tin ceiling, lifting the hearts of the assembly. “God Save the Queen” was followed by “The Maple Leaf Forever,” an anthem I’d not heard in over a decade. The group seemed to know half a dozen verses. I began to feel like I was in church where it’s blasphemy to skip verses to get to the end faster. Again, Ramsden’s voice carried above all the others. I joined in for the first verse with what I remembered, but listened in to a vaguely recollected account of what happened at Queenston Heights and Lundy’s Lane. For a moment, I thought they sang that here our fathers “bravely fought and no one died” but I think I got that wrong. It must have been “and nobly died.”

  When the singing was over, we took our seats again and listened to Ramsden’s welcoming speech. He spoke in a firm, ingratiating voice that testified to his ease in these surroundings. It didn’t take him long to get to the inquest. That was what the audience was waiting for; he didn’t disappoint us:

  “They have tried to crucify me, my friends. They have tried to nail me to the cross of their evil natures. They have dragged the name of me and my family through the mire of their spite, and dishonoured the memory of our friend, that dear lady, whose cheerful face we all miss in this company here tonight.” He looked around the room to see how his words were sinking in. It was easy to see that he felt on home ground; he knew these people and he played on them like Rostropovich on his cello. He went on to suggest that the causes of his problems were all inspired by the local media baroness, Gladys Ravenswood, through the Beacon and her TV and radio stations. “With her harping on me every day for weeks this has been a scandalous political witch-hunt! The Ravenswood woman is in the hands of the communists and pinko fellow-travellers who are a continuing menace to the British way of life we brought with us from the old country. Elizabeth Oldridge, our dear departed friend, understood this. She refused to have the Beacon inside her house, and, as you know, she couldn’t abide the degraded nonsense that passed for news reporting on the radio and television stations controlled by the Ravenswood interests. She told me herself that that woman was the very incarnation of the Evil One. I don’t know about that, but I’m not the only one who has referred to these last few days as a witch-hunt.

  “We all loved Liz Oldridge. She was our dear friend. Now that she has been taken from us, we must remember what lengths the Reds will go to to brand me a villain, to pillory me and my family. Between you and me, I want you to know that I’m not going to take this lying down. I’m in a fighting mood and I have briefed my legal counsellors to proceed on any breaches in the law that have occurred. We can’t let these people get away with flouting the God-given rights of true born Englishmen!” Here the audience broke into spontaneous applause, which brought an ingenuous grin to Ramsden’s bland face. His prominent front teeth fairly glittered with pride. It was easy to see why the old ladies liked him. He was Liberace wrapped in a Union Jack.

  I looked around and now cursed my position at the rear. The old boys to my right were enjoying the show; the women leaned forward in their plywood chairs. When Ramsden talked about a recent visit to England and described the royal regalia in the Tower of London, there was hardly a breath drawn in the hall. And when he mentioned that he had actually stood by the graves of the faithful canine companions of the Queen, an ant’s step might have been heard. “I stopped there, with my head bared for a few moments and thought about Susan and Sugar and Heather, the favourite corgis, and how they knew nothing of Her Majesty’s exalted station, her untold wealth and power, how they loved her simply and sincerely in their fashion. I thought how privileged we are, at this distance, to know that she is informed, that she cares and that she applauds our meeting here in this fellowship of the Guild of the Venerable Bede.” He went on and on. I tried to follow the drift of it, but his thoughts weren’t all that clear. It was as though he was dieselling on on the power of the sound of the words alone. He was a proud turkey-cock, tidy, except for his shoes, which still showed signs of standing close to the graves of the departed royal corgis.

  When he finished talking, he introduced Maureen McAlpine to lead the singsong. He shook her hand again, as the woman in the blue lace dress turned to see the faces. She brought down her plump hands on the keyboard with a great thumping chord and we were off to the races with “There’s a Long, Long Trail Awinding.” I joined in and the words I didn’t know, I faked.

  Later, when the white styrofoam cups had been collected and the empty platter of cookies had been passed back to the makeshift buffet on the stage, I moved closer to hear Ramsden in conversation with his supporters.

  “Well, Ingrid dear, you ring me at my office about that. I’ll get the details from you and call the mayor. This has got to be stopped!”

  “It goes on all night long! Well, at least until after eleven.”

  “It’s shocking. Leave it with me and I’ll see to it.”

  Another woman took Ramsden by the hand and said something I failed to catch. “Thank you, Vi!” he said. “I’ll tell you, it has been harder than anything I’ve known. You can’t fight fair with people like that. But I can’t make myself stoop to their level, Vi, I can’t.”

  “You always were a straight shooter, Mr. Ramsden. That’s what Walter, my dear Walter, used to say.”

  “A dear, well-loved man, Vi. Well, he’s God’s soldier now, as the bard says, isn’t he?”

  “You said a mouthful when you said that,” Vi admitted and Ramsden patted her liver-spotted hand and arm. I moved in closer still.

  “Mr. Ramsden?” I said, trying to get his attention. But a heavy woman with her hair moulded into a cascade of tight unnatural curls got his attention first. I watched Ramsden listen, nod agreement and let his eyes wander over the woman’s ample bust.

  “Mildred, that’s just not so!” he said. “The papers have got things wrong from the beginning. I’m too old to believe they’re going to change their tune now. If you ask me, I think someone should retire Mrs. Ravenswood to a home. There’s no end to the parade of her malice, dear. None!”

  “Mr. Ramsden?” I tried again.

  “Yes?” He looked at me with suspicion. There were no other men asking questions. Even around the coffee urn, the men had stood in a group that the women ignored. “Are you one of us?” he asked. “Are you one of the happy few?”

  “I was tempted by the power of the music which I heard from downstairs.” I was sure my lie wouldn’t be challenged. He didn’t look like he had kept an eye on the comings and goings very carefully.

  “Yes, we love the old songs. And this is a haven where they may still be heard. You must give us the pleasure of your company at our Christmas meeting next week. Maureen will undo herself with all of the beloved old carols. Did I get your name?” I liked his command of the language.

  “Cooperman. Ben Cooperman.” Ramsden’s face fell as though I’d said Herod or Pontius Pilate. Of course, I may be sensitive.

  “Yes, Mr. Cooperman. I’ve heard something about you, haven’t I?”

  “I can’t think
what, Mr. Ramsden. I haven’t been to a meeting of the guild before.”

  “Someone pointed you out to me at the court-house. Look here, I won’t be harassed in this way! I suggest you finish your oatmeal cookie and leave as quickly as possible.”

  “Chocolate chip,” I corrected. Ramsden’s eyebrows went up as though I’d flung hot coffee in his face. He took me by the arm and began pulling me down the aisle.

  “Hey! Let go!”

  “I want you out of here!”

  “This is an open meeting! Nobody stopped me coming in!”

  “The meeting’s over. This is now a private party and you are not invited! Most assuredly not invited!” Ramsden had me at the top of the stairs and I was getting mad. I kept crunching tiny clods of dried mud that came from Ramsden’s shoes, giving me the feeling that the floor was on his side as I nearly tripped. The open mouths around me looked like fish in a tank. I felt I had to make a stand, or I would be pushed down the stairs. I tried to get a hold on the handrail. I could feel it bend as my weight hit it. I found my footing and leaned back in Ramsden’s direction.

  “Just a minute!” I protested. Ramsden went over backwards above me as I turned into him. Maybe he didn’t expect even a feeble counter-attack. Anyway, he was down on the floor with all the women suddenly groaning, like I’d hit him or something. Immediately, he began pulling himself away from me, sliding in the dust and in his own clods of earth, away from the lethal terror of my famous right hand, which, incidentally, I was holding out to him to help him to his feet.

  “You get away from me!” he said. “Get out! You’re not wanted here!” By now he was supported by the stack of chairs he had pulled himself up to.

  “This is ridiculous!” I said. “Get up yourself if you don’t want help.”

  “I don’t need help from you or your kind!” he said.

  “And what kind would that be?” I prompted. I didn’t know whether he was being racist or whether he thought I was one of the Ravenswood myrmidons. Like a surprised beaver concluding a yawn, Ramsden’s jaw, which had been hanging slack, snapped back into place.