Eventually nearly everybody had gone about their own Halloween business, and I’d put Susie to bed and looked around Polly’s room at her books and her old dolls. I kept feeling that she would appear any minute, but she didn’t. Her presence was everywhere in that house—and yet she was gone.
I waited till today to go to the cemetery. It seemed fitting to visit Polly’s grave on All Soul’s Day. I wanted to get there while it was still light, so I hurried over as soon as I got home from school, looking nervously through the iron railings for ghosts. Suddenly the stone gateposts of the cemetery loomed up ahead of me. Beyond them, the road twisted into darkness.
After walking for half a minute I left the road and headed along a path that led off to the left, past gravestones that were newer and smaller than the Victorian monuments. I had never been in this part of the cemetery.
I looked over my shoulder. The shadows were gathering behind me. I thought I caught a glimpse of something flickering through the trees, but when I focused on it, it was gone.
The path led nearly all the way to the railings that bordered Sumach Street. When I got to the end, I turned right and counted ten big steps. I stopped in front of a newish-looking granite headstone. I bent over to read the inscription in the fading light.
Pauline Margaret Lacey
March 4, 1951, to April 8, 1963
May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
And underneath that was the outline of a bird with a forked tail, flying, wings outstretched. A swallow.
FREEDOM
Rose
I was expecting the swallow. Mrs. Lacey had told me to look for it.
“That was Ned’s idea,” she’d said. “When you see a swallow, it means that spring is coming, and with spring comes new life, and hope.” She smiled at me. “It’s too bad you never met our Polly. I think you two would have been friends.” Then she went back to yelling at the twins for eating too much Halloween candy, and I went home.
It made it so final, seeing her grave. I shivered.
Something pulled at my cloak and I whirled around.
It was the little girl who had followed me before in the cemetery when I’d first met Polly, the one with all the blond curls and the long white nightgown.
“Mama?” she said, reaching up her arms to me. “Mama?”
I felt the familiar panic and looked around wildly to see if there were any other ghosts coming. The cemetery was nearly dark now, and shadows stirred among the gravestones. I wanted to run for the gates.
“Mama?” she said again, her eyes filling with tears.
I held out my hand to her and she clutched it. Her hand was warm.
“Let’s go find your mama,” I said, and we walked slowly together along the lines of graves. The cemetery was full of shadows. Some were moving. Some were still. There was a whispering all around me, and I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the trees moving in the wind or from deep under the ground.
We came to a tall, black tombstone with a veiled figure on top.
“Mama?” said the girl, and a woman in a long black dress with ruffles around the bottom stepped out from behind it.
“Vicky,” she cried, and the child broke away from me and ran into her arms. Then they both faded away into the gathering gloom.
That wasn’t too hard, I thought, taking a deep breath and turning towards the cemetery gates. The whispering died away behind me, and I walked home, along the cemetery side of the street. It was okay.
The streetlights were on now. As I got close to Polly’s grave, I slowed down and peered through the railings. I could just make out the engraving of the soaring swallow, flying to freedom.
THE END
In the golden light’ning
Of the sunken sun,
O’er which clouds are bright’ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, “TO A SKYLARK”
In memory of Julia Poplove
1954–1991
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe my love of reading and writing to my parents, Graham and Evelyn Cotter. My father introduced me to C.S. Lewis and the Narnia books when I was seven; the description of the attics in The Magician’s Nephew captured my imagination and I have been looking for secret passages ever since. My mother held up a high standard of writing for me as I grew up, and even in her 90th year she kept her sharp eye for grammar mistakes! My parents always wholeheartedly supported my writing and I could not continue to do it without their help. My steadfast daughter Zoe kept me coming back to this book whenever I faltered, and her ghostly experiences as a child were the source of my original inspiration. And the generous funding from both The Canada Council for the Arts and The Ontario Arts Council made this book possible.
The Swallow is about friendship, and as I wrote it I was blessed with many good friends in Newfoundland and Ontario who listened, read early drafts, offered advice, fed me and generally kept me going in tough times. Frank Lappano and Sean Cotter gave me feedback on early versions, and Wanda Nowakowska was invariably gracious and affectionate whenever I asked for help. Robin Cleland’s uncanny insight into my characters helped enormously, and Anita Levin and Camilla Burgess believed in me and helped me find my way through the darker parts of the book. My “twin,” Laurie Coulter, has been a cherished source of cheerleading, professional perspective and laughter.
I would like to thank Sally Keefe-Cohen for her expert advice and Lisa Moore for her encouragement when I most needed it. Special thanks to Alison Morgan for being so attentive to my stories, both during that long ago summer in Warkworth and more recently! And I owe many thanks to my editor at Tundra, Samantha Swenson, whose patience, thoughtful suggestions, enthusiasm and skill has been much appreciated. Thanks also to Kelly Louise Judd for her spooky cover and to Leah Springate for her clean design.
And finally, I send thanks to my three Graces: Julia Poplove, Marjory Noganosh and Evelyn Cotter. Their spirits have echoed through my writing in this book, and I miss them.
The Swallow Page 20