by Alice Munro
“Morning is dawning and Peer Gynt is yawning—”
I whispered, “What?”
“Nothing,” Ollie said. “That’s what he’s playing.”
I made him spell it. P-e-e-r G-y-n-t.
I should learn more about music, it would be something for Wilf and me to have in common.
The weather has suddenly got hot. The peonies are full out as big as babies’ bottoms and the flowers on the spirea bushes are dropping like snow. Mrs. Box goes around saying that if this lasts everything will be dried up by the time of the wedding.
While writing this I have had three cups of coffee and have not even fixed my hair. Mrs. Box says, “You’re going to have to change your ways pretty soon.”
She meant because Elsie Thingamabob has told Wilf she’s going to retire so I can be in charge of the house.
So now I am changing my ways and Good-bye Diary at least for the present. I used to have a feeling something really unusual would occur in my life, and it would be important to have recorded everything. Was that just a feeling?
GIRL IN A MIDDY
“Don’t think you can loll around here,” said Nancy. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Ollie said, “You’re full of surprises.”
This was on a Sunday, and Ollie had rather hoped he could loll around. A thing he didn’t always appreciate, in Nancy, was her energy.
He supposed she’d be needing it soon, for the household that Wilf—in his stolid, ordinary way—was counting on.
After church Wilf had gone straight to the Hospital and Ollie had come back to eat dinner with Nancy and her father. They ate a cold meal on Sundays—Mrs. Box went to her own church on that day and spent the afternoon having a long rest in her own little house. Ollie had helped Nancy tidy up the kitchen. There were some thoroughgoing snores from the dining room.
“Your father,” Ollie said, after glancing in. “He’s asleep in his rocker with the Saturday Evening Post on his knee.”
“He never admits he’s going to sleep Sunday afternoons,” Nancy said, “he always thinks he’s going to read.”
Nancy was wearing an apron that tied around her waist—not the sort of apron worn for serious kitchen work. She took it off and hung it over the doorknob and fluffed up her hair in front of a small mirror by the kitchen door.
“I’m a mess,” she said, in a plaintive, not displeased voice.
“It’s true. I can’t figure out what Wilf sees in you.”
“Look out or I’ll bat you one.”
She led him out the door and around the currant bushes and under the maple tree where—she had already told him two or three times—she used to have her swing. Then along the back lane to the end of the block. Nobody was cutting the grass, this being Sunday. In fact there was nobody out in the backyards at all and the houses had a closed-up, proud, and sheltering look, as if inside every one of them there were dignified people like Nancy’s father, temporarily dead to the world as they took their Well Earned Rest.
This did not mean that the town was entirely quiet. Sunday afternoon was the time that the country people and people from the country villages descended on the beach, which was about a quarter of a mile away at the bottom of a bluff. There was a mixture of shrieks from the water slide and the cries of children ducking and splashing, and car horns and toots of the ice-cream truck and the hollers of young men in a frenzy of showing off and the mothers in a frenzy of anxiety. All of this thrown together in one addled shout.
At the end of the lane, across a poorer, unpaved street, was an empty building that Nancy said was the old icehouse, and beyond that was a vacant lot and a plank bridge over a dry ditch, and then they were on a road just wide enough for one car—or preferably for one horse and buggy. On either side of this road was a wall of thorny bushes with bright little green leaves and a scattering of dry pink flowers. They didn’t let any breeze in and they didn’t provide any shade, and the branches tried to catch his shirtsleeves.
“Wild roses,” Nancy said, when he asked what in tarnation these were.
“I suppose that’s the surprise?”
“You’ll see.”
He was sweltering in this tunnel, and he wished that she would slow down. He was often surprised at the time he spent hanging around this girl, who was not outstanding in any way, except perhaps in being spoiled, saucy, and egotistical. Maybe he liked to disturb her. She was just enough smarter than the general run of girls so that he could do that.
What he could see, at a distance, was the roof of a house, with some proper trees shading it, and since there was no hope of getting any more information out of Nancy he contented himself with hoping they could sit down when they got there, in some place cool.
“Company,” said Nancy. “Might have known.”
A dingy Model T was sitting in the turnaround space at the end of the road.
“Anyway it’s only one,” she said. “And let’s hope they’re nearly through.”
But when they reached the car nobody had come out from the decent one-and-a-half-story house—built of brick that was called “white” in this part of the country and “yellow” where Ollie came from—to claim it. (It was actually a grimy sort of tan.) There was no hedge—just a dragging wire fence around the yard in which the grass had not been cut. And there was no cement walk leading from the gate up to the door, only a dirt path. Not that this was unusual outside of a town—not many farmers put in a sidewalk, or owned a lawnmower.
Perhaps there had once been flower beds—at least there were white and gold flowers standing up here and there in the long grass. These were daisies, he was pretty sure, but he could not be bothered asking Nancy and possibly listening to her derisive corrections.
Nancy led him through to a genuine relic of more genteel or leisurely days—an unpainted but complete wooden swing, with two facing benches. The grass wasn’t trodden down anywhere near it—apparently it was not much used. It stood in the shade of a couple of the heavy-leaved trees. As soon as Nancy had sat down she sprang up again, and bracing herself between the two benches she began to move this creaky contraption to and fro.
“This’ll let her know we’re here,” she said.
“Let who?”
“Tessa.”
“Is she a friend of yours?”
“Of course.”
“An old-lady friend?” said Ollie, without enthusiasm. He had had plenty of chances to see how prodigal Nancy was with what might have been called—in some girls’ book she might have read and taken to heart, it probably was called—the sunshine of her personality. Her innocent teasing of the old fellows at the mill came to mind.
“We went to school together, Tessa and me. Tessa and I.”
That brought up another thought—the way she had tried to set him up with Ginny.
“And what’s so interesting about her?”
“You’ll see. Oh!”
She jumped off in midswing and ran to a hand pump close to the house. A lot of vigorous pumping started. She had to pump long and hard before any water came. And even then she didn’t seem tired, she kept on pumping for a while before she filled the tin mug that had been waiting on its hook, and carried it, spilling over, to the swing. He thought from the eager look she had that she would offer it at once to him, but in fact she raised it to her own lips and gulped happily.
“It’s not town water,” she said, handing it to him. “It’s well water. It’s delicious.”
She was a girl who would drink untreated water from any old tin mug hanging over a well. (The calamities that had taken place in his own body had made him more aware of such risks than another young man might have been.) She was something of a show-off, of course. But she was truly, naturally reckless and full of some pure conviction that she led a charmed life.
He wouldn’t have said that of himself. Yet he had an idea—he couldn’t have mentioned this without making a joke of it—that he was meant for something unusual, that his life would have some meaning to it
. Maybe that was what drew them together. But the difference was that he would go on, he would not settle for less. As she would have to do—as she had already done—being a girl. The thought of choices wider than anything girls ever knew put him suddenly at ease, made him feel compassionate towards her, and playful. There were times when he did not need to ask why he was with her, when teasing her, being teased by her, made the time flow by with sparkling ease.
The water was delicious, and marvellously cold.
“People come to see Tessa,” she said, sitting down across from him. “You never know when there’ll be somebody here.”
“Do they?” he said. The wild idea occurred to him that she might be perverse enough, independent enough, to be friends with a girl who was a semi-pro, a casual rural prostitute. To have remained friends, anyway, with a girl who had turned bad.
She read his thoughts—she was sometimes smart.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything like that. Oh, that is absolutely the worst idea I ever heard. Tessa is the last girl in the world—That’s disgusting. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. She is the last girl—Oh, you’ll see.” Her face had gone quite red.
The door opened, and without any of the usual prolonged good-byes—or any audible good-byes at all—a man and woman, middle-aged, worn but not worn-out, like their car, came along the path, looked towards the swing and saw Nancy and Ollie but didn’t say anything. Oddly enough Nancy didn’t say anything either, didn’t call out any lively greeting. The couple went to opposite sides of the vehicle and got in and drove away.
Then a figure moved out of the doorway’s shadow and Nancy did call out.
“Hey. Tessa.”
The woman was built like a sturdy child. A large head covered with dark curly hair, broad shoulders, stumpy legs. Her legs were bare and she was wearing an odd costume—a middy blouse and skirt. At least it was odd for a hot day, and considering the fact that she was no longer a schoolgirl. Very likely it was an outfit she had once worn at school, and being the saving type she was wearing it out around home. Such clothes never wear out, and in Ollie’s opinion they never flattered a girl’s figure either. She looked clumsy in it, no more and no less than most schoolgirls.
Nancy brought him up and introduced him, and he said to Tessa—in the insinuating way that was usually acceptable to girls—that he had been hearing lots about her.
“He has not,” said Nancy. “Don’t believe a word he says. I just brought him along out here because I didn’t know what to do with him, frankly.”
Tessa’s eyes were heavy-lidded, and not very large, but their color was a surprising deep, soft blue. When she lifted them to look at Ollie they shone out at him without any particular friendliness or animosity, or even curiosity. They were just very deep and sure and they made it impossible for him to go on saying any silly polite things.
“You better come in,” she said, and led the way. “I hope you don’t mind if I finish my churning. I was churning when my last company came and I did stop it, but if I don’t get at it again the butter might go bad on me.”
“Churning on Sunday, what a naughty girl,” said Nancy. “See, Ollie. This is how you make butter. I bet you just thought it came out of a cow ready-made and wrapped up to go in the store. You go ahead,” she said to Tessa. “If you get tired you can let me try it for a while. I just came out to ask you to my wedding, actually.”
“I heard something about that,” Tessa said.
“I’d send you an invitation, but I don’t know if you’d pay any attention to it. I thought I’d better come out here and wring your neck till you said you’d come.”
They had gone straight into the kitchen. The window blinds were down to the sills, a fan stirring the air high overhead. The room smelled of cooking, of saucers of fly poison, of coal oil, of dishcloths. All these smells might have been in the walls and floorboards for decades. But somebody—no doubt the heavy-breathing, almost grunting girl at the churn—had gone to the trouble of painting the cupboards and doors robin’s-egg blue.
Newspapers were spread around the churn to save the floor, which was worn into hollows on the regular traffic routes around the table and stove. Ollie would have been gallant enough with most farm girls to ask if he could have a go at the churning, but in this case he didn’t feel quite sure of himself. She didn’t seem a sullen girl, this Tessa, just old for her years, dishearteningly straightforward and self-contained. Even Nancy quieted down, after a while, in her presence.
The butter came. Nancy jumped up to take a look at it, and called on him to do the same. He was surprised at the pale color of it, hardly yellow at all, but he didn’t say anything, supposing Nancy would chide him for ignorance. Then the two girls set the sticky pale lump on a cloth on the table and beat it down with wooden paddles and wrapped the cloth all around it. Tessa lifted a door in the floor and the two of them carried it down some cellar steps he wouldn’t have known were there. Nancy gave a shriek as she almost lost her footing. He had an idea that Tessa could have managed better by herself but that she did not mind giving Nancy some privileges, such as you would give to a pesky, charming child. She let Nancy tidy up the papers on the floor while she herself opened the bottles of lemonade she brought up from the cellar. She got a chunk of ice from a corner icebox, washed some sawdust off it and bashed it up with a hammer, in the sink, so that she could drop some into their glasses. There again he didn’t try to help.
“Now Tessa,” said Nancy, after a gulp of lemonade. “Now it’s time. Do me a favor. Please do.”
Tessa drank her lemonade.
“Tell Ollie,” Nancy said. “Tell him what he’s got in his pockets. Start with the right one.”
Tessa said, without looking up, “Well, I expect he’s got his wallet.”
“Oh, go on,” said Nancy.
“Well, she’s right,” said Ollie. “I’ve got my wallet. Now does she have to guess what’s in it? Because there isn’t much.”
“Never mind that,” said Nancy. “Tell him what else, Tessa. In his right pocket.”
“What is this, anyway?” said Ollie.
“Tessa,” said Nancy sweetly. “Come on, Tessa, you know me. Remember we’re old friends, we’re friends since the first room of school. Just do it for me.”
“Is this some game?” said Ollie. “Is this some game you thought up between the two of you?”
Nancy laughed at him.
“What’s the matter,” she said. “What have you got that you’re ashamed of? Have you a smelly old sock?”
“A pencil,” said Tessa, very quietly. “Some money. Coins. I can’t tell what value. A piece of paper with some writing on it? Some printing?”
“Clean it out, Ollie,” cried Nancy. “Clean it out.”
“Oh, and a stick of gum,” said Tessa. “I think a stick of gum. That’s all.”
The gum was unwrapped and covered with lint.
“I’d forgotten that was there,” said Ollie, though he hadn’t. Out came the stub of a pencil, some nickels and coppers, a folded-up, worn clipping from a newspaper.
“Somebody gave me that,” he said, as Nancy snatched it up and unfolded it.
“We are in the market for original manuscripts of superior quality, both poetry and prose,” she read aloud. “Serious consideration will be given—”
Ollie had grabbed it out of her hand.
“Somebody gave me that. They wanted my opinion, whether I thought it was a valid outfit.”
“Oh, Ollie.”
“I didn’t even know it was still there. Same with the gum.”
“Aren’t you surprised?”
“Of course I am. I’d forgotten.”
“Aren’t you surprised at Tessa? What she knew?”
Ollie managed a smile for Tessa, though he was hotly disturbed. It was not her fault.
“It’s what a lot of fellows would have in their pockets,” he said. “Coins? Naturally. Pencil—”
“Gum?” said Nancy.
&
nbsp; “Possible.”
“And the paper with the printing. She said printing.”
“She said a piece of paper. She didn’t know what was on it. You didn’t, did you?” he said to Tessa.
She shook her head. She looked towards the door, listening.
“I think there’s a car in the lane.”
She was right. They all heard it now. Nancy went to peek through the curtain and at that moment Tessa gave Ollie an unexpected smile. It was not a smile of complicity or apology or the usual coquetry. It might have been a smile of welcome, but without any explicit invitation. It was just the offering of some warmth, some easy spirit in her. And at the same time there was a movement of her wide shoulders, a peaceable settling there, as if the smile was spreading through her whole self.
“Oh, shoot,” said Nancy. But she had to get control of her excitement and Ollie of his off-kilter attraction and surprise.
Tessa opened the door just as a man was getting out of the car. He waited by the gate for Nancy and Ollie to come down the path. He was probably in his sixties, thick-shouldered, serious-faced, wearing a pale summer suit and a Christie hat. His car was a new-model coupe. He nodded to Nancy and Ollie with the brief respect and deliberate lack of curiosity he might have shown if he was holding the door for them as they came out of a doctor’s office.
Tessa’s door was not long shut behind him when another car appeared at the far end of the lane.
“Lineup,” Nancy said. “Sunday afternoon is busy. In summer, anyway. People come from miles away to see her.”
“So she can tell them what they’ve got in their pockets?”
Nancy let that pass.
“Mostly asking her about things that are lost. Valuable things. Anyway, to them valuable.”
“Does she charge?”
“I don’t think so.”
“She must.”
“Why must she?”
“Isn’t she poor?”
“She’s not starving.”
“Maybe she doesn’t very often get it right.”
“Well, I think she must, or people wouldn’t keep coming to see her, would they?”