by André Alexis
The first sightings of the town’s ghosts came shortly after Barrow Mansion had been turned into a museum, in the 1950s. After that it was easy to find men and women who swore they had seen ‘Mr. Barrow’ wandering the mansion’s corridors. By all accounts, the ghost was as baffled as the townspeople. It sometimes wandered the mansion with (according to witnesses) a knife or a fork or garden shears protruding from its chest. These ghostly apparitions were traumatic for those who experienced them, but they were a boon to the town itself: the mansion attracted the curious and the skeptical, all of whom came from places like Wallaceburg or Timiskaming or even Saskatoon to see the house and its spectral occupants for themselves.
No doubt, Barrow’s reputation for ‘prickliness’ came with its ghosts. The people of Barrow, most of whom were of English stock, were neither gregarious like hard-oilers from Petrolia nor voluble, like the inhabitants of Bright’s Grove. They were quiet, not much given to talking with strangers. They were not unfriendly to those who came to see the mansion, but they were cautious and their caution was taken, by those who’d come to see the ghosts, for ‘attitude.’ And yet the townspeople were capable of great warmth and generosity. On Barrow Day, for instance.
Barrow Day was a celebration of the town’s founding. All visitors were welcome. The day began with masses said in the town’s churches. Then there was a parade, a banquet and, finally, a fête in a gravel pit to mark the end of the festivities. Those who found themselves in Barrow on June 15 were almost inevitably overwhelmed by the generosity, passion and drunkenness of the townspeople. On Barrow Day, when something of Barrow’s ‘earth spirit’ surfaced, the town’s mood belied its reputation for reticence and reserve.
Barrow Mansion and Barrow Day were two of the town’s mysteries. There is a third, but one can’t talk about Barrow without first mentioning an aspect of the town that is less than mysterious but that was, for Father Pennant, just as affecting as ghosts and parades. That is, the physical beauty of the land on which Barrow lay.
Barrow was the quintessence of southern Ontario: low hills, thick scrubby woods, farm fields sprouting corn or grain, grey barns, farmhouses, maples, elms, weeping willows, apple orchards, the dark brown earth, alfalfa for the cows, acres of grazing land for sheep or horses; the smell of it: sweet, acrid, nasty, vegetal; robins, blue jays, scarlet tanagers, cardinals, hummingbirds; thistles, pussy willow, clover, Queen Anne’s lace, dandelions.
The land around Barrow was that aspect of the world one would willingly worship, if one were a pantheist, say, or a pagan, as opposed to a priest.
On his second day in Barrow, Father Pennant rose at five. Lowther had been awake for some time and had prepared a breakfast of apple-cinnamon pancakes with back bacon. He had grated the apple himself and had timed it so that the bacon was hot when Father Pennant sat down, but there was little sign that the kitchen had been used. Everything had been cleaned up by the time Father Pennant ate and, shortly after he finished, it would have been difficult to show he had eaten at all. His dishes had been washed, dried and put away.
The early service was well-attended that morning. There were at least twenty-five people at the low mass, most of whom came to get a look at the new priest.
After the mass, few stayed to talk. Those who did did not stay long. The day and the world called. But Father Pennant had the impression he’d been deemed acceptable. No one had been unfriendly or dubious or overtly critical. He had made a good beginning, surely. But just to be certain, Father Pennant spoke to Lowther, who’d attended.
– How was it?
– It was good, answered Lowther. Your voice doesn’t shake as much as Father Fowler’s.
– That’s not a ringing endorsement, Lowther.
– No, Father, but this was low mass. It’ll be different when you sing.
There were a number of visitors to the rectory that day. It was sunny and warm. You could feel summer approach. Which, perhaps, explains why two women brought mounds of Jell-O in which the preserved remains of the previous summer’s strawberries and raspberries were suspended. Another parishioner brought cherry pie and an angel food cake so airy it clung to Father Pennant’s front teeth as soon as he bit it. There were plans for an official welcome. It was to take place the following Sunday. But those who came to the rectory on Father Pennant’s second day were the ones who could not resist seeing him sooner. Here was the man to whom they would confess the darkest things. It was important to feel him out. Mrs. Young, for instance, after she had watched him eat a piece of her macaroni pie, quietly asked what he thought of adultery.
– It’s a sin, answered Father Pennant.
– Yes, but I wonder where it is on the scale of things. Is it worse than murder?
– No, said Father Pennant, but all our sins are interconnected. One is the road to another.
– I never thought of it that way, said Mrs. Young. I’ll be sure to tell that husband of mine what you said.
Then, looking at him meaningfully, she asked
– Did you like the macaroni pie? It’s my mother’s recipe.
The morning was busy and then, following the afternoon mass, there were even more people to meet, more food to sample: a pear cake, a honey and plum cobbler, an apple crumble. In a matter of hours, Father Pennant had a strong sense of his parish. It was as normal as could be. And here again, he felt fortunate. It would be a pleasure getting to know those who’d been too shy or too busy to approach him early on.
The day’s only sour note came from an old woman named Tomasine Humble. Her hands constricted by arthritis, her thin body like a knotty stick under a thick yellow dress, her white hair held stiffly in place by hairspray, she was not in a good mood, or perhaps she was in the best mood her ailments permitted. When someone asked if Father Pennant had enjoyed a piece of cake, he’d answered
– Yes, very much.
But Tomasine had muttered
– Not on your life.
and smiled when he looked at her inquisitively.
When someone else mentioned the good weather they’d been having, Father Pennant answered that he was looking forward to exploring the countryside in spring, to watching the gardens bloom. Tomasine Humble then said
– Not much point in that. You should be taking care of souls, not gardens.
– I can do both, surely, Mrs. Humble.
– We don’t know what you can do at all, she’d answered.
– Well, I hope I won’t disappoint you.
– You’ll disappoint me. There hasn’t been a priest yet who hasn’t disappointed me.
– Perhaps I’ll disappoint you less?
– I live in hope, young man.
With that, she had turned away, her point made, apparently.
Despite Mrs. Humble’s warning that the soul, not the earth, was his proper domain, Father Pennant spent the last hours of his first afternoon exploring the countryside around Barrow. He was driven about in an old Volkswagen by Lowther, who also acted as his guide. Everywhere the earth was coming back to life: here, a scarlet tanager, like a tongue of flame, alighted on a telephone wire; there, at their feet, a shrew scampered for cover. The earth, which has only two words, intoned the first of them (‘life’) noisily, with birdsong, the gurgle and slap of rushing water, the suck and squelch of the ground itself. Not that its other word (‘death’) was banished. As they walked in a field, Father Pennant spotted a small clearing over which bleached animal bones (ribs, skulls, backbones and limbs) were strewn. Among and through the bones, young grass grew. It was like an open ossuary.
– What’s this? asked Father Pennant.
– I’m not sure, said Lowther. Maybe someone dumped the remains of animals they didn’t mean to trap. Poachers, most likely.
The most impressive thing they saw that afternoon, however, came as they stood by George Bigland’s farm admiring the violets and thistle. They were on their side of the barbed wire when Father Pennant saw, in the distance, a dark sheep. It was followed by others and still oth
ers until, after a while, it was as if a wave of sheep, baaing and crying out, were subsiding in their direction. The sheep, their fleeces dark with dirt, seemed aware of Father Pennant’s and Lowther’s presences. They pooled about on the other side of the fence, hundreds of them. Then, curiosity satisfied, they dispersed, going off here and there to eat the short grass.
Lowther was an ideal guide to the fields. He knew the names of all the birds, grasses and wildflowers. As Father Pennant was himself an amateur naturalist, his respect for Lowther grew. It grew immeasurably when he discovered the sheer breadth of Lowther’s learning. Lowther seemed to have read everything and his memory was extraordinary. He could, if asked, recite reams of Coleridge and Shakespeare, Dante and Hopkins. He was modest and self-effacing, but there was also something slightly disturbing about him. Why should such an evidently talented man be satisfied working at the rectory? How did he support himself? What was he after, exactly? It troubled Father Pennant to think this way about a man with whom he felt a kinship, but it was like finding a gold ring in a back garden: you had to wonder to whom it belonged.
Then, too, there was the angularity of Lowther’s thinking. As they were driving to Petrolia and talking about southern Ontario, it emerged that Lowther did not like to speak of the past. He insisted that what had been was a distraction from the here and now. To Father Pennant, this seemed a clear contradiction. The past was the place from which Coleridge and Hopkins reached us, no? Lowther was steeped in the past, wasn’t he?
– You must be right, Father, but I don’t think of it that way. A tea bag comes from somewhere, but tea exists when you pour hot water on it. I’m steeped in the present.
– Yes, but what about tradition and the people who came before us? You and I wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be talking, if it weren’t for what came before us.
– I’m sure you’re right, Father, but I don’t see the contradiction. The past has no meaning, absolutely none.
– Hmmm …
As they drove over the dirt roads and along narrow lanes, stopping now and then to admire a farmhouse or a striking vista, it seemed to Father Pennant that his companion was trustworthy, more or less, but Lowther Williams was also difficult to read.
Anne Young, who had asked Father Pennant about the relative weight of adultery, was not afraid her husband had been unfaithful. For one thing, John Young was as lazy a man as she could imagine. Though he was still handsome and desirable at sixty, he was not the kind of man to take on the work of planning, calculating and deceiving. He might commit adultery, but only if there were very little movement involved. Besides, he loved her, and she was sure of it. They had gone through so much together: childlessness, hard times, deaths and, most importantly, the adoption of his sister’s daughter, Elizabeth. In these crises he had been all that one could have wanted from a husband. And loving him the way she did, there was no question she would be unfaithful. He was the only man she had ever slept with. Not that she hadn’t been curious, from time to time, but she was curious about all sorts of things and you would no more find her with another man than you would have found her drinking a glass of Cynar, that greenish, artichoke liqueur her neighbours had brought back from Italy.
Adultery was on her mind, though, because she had seen Robbie Myers with Jane Richardson, and Robbie Myers was her niece Elizabeth’s fiancé. If he was not, technically speaking, ‘adulterous,’ there was almost certainly a serious name for his behaviour.
Elizabeth had come to stay with them under the worst circumstances. She was the daughter of John’s sister, Eileen, and one summer, seventeen years ago now, Eileen had asked if they would mind taking care of Liz while she and her husband went off to Europe for a romantic holiday. Childless themselves, Anne and John adored children, so they had happily accepted. But Elizabeth’s parents had drowned when their ferry sank somewhere between Piraeus and Naxos. It was a tragedy on a number of fronts. John was, of course, devastated by the death of his younger sister and her husband. And then she and John were bewildered to find themselves entangled in legal proceedings to determine who should take care of the child. And then there was the three-year-old Liz, a strange little puzzle. They did not at first know how to tell her that her parents had died, but when they did tell her, it was as if the child could not or would not understand. For months Liz would calmly ask after her parents, as if she were asking after clothes she’d misplaced. Reminded that they were dead, Liz would go back to her toys and remind the dolls and fuzzy bears that their parents had died.
– Your mother and father are dead, she would say to each
of them.
For all of that, she grew up to be a normal young girl, whatever ‘normal’ was when it had its hair cut. A shy child, she had opened up at school, making friends easily at St. Mary’s Primary School. From there, they had the usual problems with her. Liz questioned everything they did or said. For a time, she insisted they were not her parents and so had no authority over her. For a very long time, they could not get two words out of her. She would mutter at them on her way in or out of the house.
Then came Elizabeth’s interest in boys. There were the ‘wild years’ with Michael Newsome, the ‘dull years’ with Matthew Kendal and now, finally, there was Robbie Myers. How grateful Anne had been that Liz had settled on a genuine country boy, one whose family owned a farm just outside of Bright’s Grove.
As far as Anne was concerned, dealing with young love was the most difficult aspect of parenting. John regarded ‘boys’ as belonging to Elizabeth’s private life and refused to get involved. (Did he even know the difference between Michael Newsome [black jacket, slicked hair] and Matthew Kendal [baseball in spring, hockey in winter]?) John was unconditionally loving, and that was fine, as far as it went, but Anne would have preferred to feel a little of his steadying hand where Liz’s boyfriends were concerned.
Anne herself was too involved, albeit discreetly, to be impartial. She identified with Liz. She worried Liz would misstep, would end up with a good-for-nothing townie who’d waste his life drawing a paycheque from Dow Chemical and pissing it away at the Blackhawk Tavern. She wanted more for Liz whom, after all, she really did think of (and love) as a daughter. If it came to that, it sometimes seemed to Anne that Liz’s relationships were more important to her than they were to Liz herself.
Despite her better instincts, despite John’s sombre advice, Anne had, in the past, allowed herself to feel for this or that boy. It had broken her heart, for instance, when she learned how unfair Liz had been to young Matthew. But then, who had asked her to talk about her hopes for Liz and Matthew’s life together? And who knows if her enthusiasm hadn’t, in the end, turned Liz against the boy? She had sworn she would not allow herself to care whom Liz brought home, had sworn to remain above it all or beyond it, as John did. So, although this business with Robbie Myers would have been difficult for anyone, it was even more so for her, because she had vowed to keep out of her niece’s affairs.
But what had she seen, exactly?
She had gone to Sarnia to find cloth for the new drapes she would sew for the living room. As she sometimes did when she was in the city, she allowed herself to eat at the Lucky Dragon along the strip. It wasn’t only that she liked Chinese food; it gave her an indefinable thrill to eat beef with black bean sauce in a big city. So, there she was in the Lucky Dragon, at a table by the front window, when whom should she see in the parking lot outside but Robbie Myers. Her heart lifted. She genuinely liked the boy. He got out of his truck, walked around to the other side and opened the door for … Was that Jane Richardson? Yes, Fletcher Richardson’s daughter: dirty blond, thin, wearing a leather jacket two sizes too big. Thank God the two did not come into the Dragon itself. It would have been humiliating to face them. But why? What had they done? Nothing explicit or illicit, not that she had seen. But you didn’t have to catch people at it to know there was something between them. It was in the way Robbie had opened the door and helped her down, the way they had walked away tog
ether. That is all she had seen. Robbie Myers had helped Jane Richardson down from the cab of his Chevy. But that was enough for an attentive person. It had occurred to her – no use denying it – to follow the two wherever it was they were off to. But she had not. Instead, she had stayed in the restaurant, unable to enjoy her food, wondering if what she had seen was innocent or not.
During the days that followed, she had been as discreet as possible. She had not spoken of what she had witnessed. She had asked only two bland questions:
– Was Robbie in Sarnia the other day, Liz?
and
– Liz, are you still friends with Jane Richardson?
There was nothing more she could do without meddling. She would have to bite her tongue and observe. It was either observe or investigate. That is, snoop. As she considered snooping a vile habit, she did not snoop.
It isn’t as if Elizabeth was unaware that something lay behind her aunt’s questions. They were asked in such resolutely bland tones, it had been like hearing a mortician speak. Besides, Elizabeth was sensitive to any mention of her fiancé, and though she had not thought of Jane Richardson (Robbie’s first love) in a while, hearing Jane’s name brought more than an inkling of the connection between them.
Despite her aunt’s careful nonchalance, Elizabeth had been spooked.
When she was thoughtful, as she often was in these months before her marriage, Elizabeth liked to walk. She walked along the fence of her uncle’s sod farm, whatever the season, but in spring she was comforted by the new grass, the spluttering sprinklers and the sight of the far trees, the point at which she would usually turn back for home.