by Vicki Delany
Nothing in Moira’s life had prepared her for the days after Dieppe.
Canadian General Hospital Number 15, Bramshott received the worst of the Canadian wounded from that vain, ill planned, heroic, and foolish raid. Moira had wished for some excitement in the daily hospital routine, and now she bitterly regretted that wish. The nurses and doctors worked around the clock, snatching what bits of sleep they could when they could no longer keep exhausted eyes focused at the task at hand.
There was one young man in particular, from Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal, whom Moira remembered for a long time. His accent was French Canadian but his last name and soft red hair spoke of an Irish ancestor who had landed long ago upon the shores of Old Quebec. He had lost both legs and his right arm. Claude was his name, and Moira sat by his bedside longer than necessary after changing his bandages, whispering sweet words of encouragement into his ear. He looked to be all of eighteen years old.
“Maman,” he cried out one night. He had taken a turn for the worse and raged with fever. “Écrivez à ma maman , s’il vous plaît.”
Moira’s high school French was barely up to the task, but she was desperately afraid that Claude wouldn’t live until morning. Fortunately she found a sister who had a French grandmother, and the two women sat long into the night copying a letter to Claude’s mother.
He was still alive in the morning, and as the days passed Claude got stronger and stronger. Before she would have believed it possible he was being wheeled about the wards in his makeshift wheelchair, and doing what he could to cheer up the other patients, many much less seriously wounded than he.
As soon as the doctors considered him to be ready for travel, Claude, and the other seriously wounded and maimed, were packed off to a ship heading home to Canada. As he was being pushed out of the ward by a man with half his face wrapped in bandages, Claude gestured for a stop before Moira, standing by the door with the rest of the duty nurses to wish the men a good trip.
“Merci,” he said.
Many years later Moira enjoyed a rare holiday in Montreal, touring the narrow streets of the old city on a brilliant summer’s day. She caught a glimpse of a man in a wheelchair, enjoying a pastis at a sun filled sidewalk terrace, close to the Nelson monument. His knees were wrapped in blankets, one sleeve pinned across his rough woolen sweater. She hesitated, wanting to go forward, but afraid to intrude. As she stood in the square in the warm sunshine a young woman, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, the very age Claude himself had been when Moira knew him, walked out of the building and resumed her seat. A glass of white wine waited for her. A granddaughter?
Moira bought a posy of purple violets from a street vendor and sniffed deeply as she continued her walk down to the water’s edge.
Chapter Fifteen
Early Sunday morning, the day before Thanksgiving, a couple of leaky rowboats carrying a group of modern day hippies invaded the cottage. Elaine was returning from her run as the boats pulled up to the dock.
Six people clambered out: three women, two men and one tiny girl, carefully helped over the gunwales of the rowboat. The women wore colorful knee- or ankle-length cotton dresses, and wool sweaters, and the men were dressed in an assortment of tattered pants and rough jackets. Male and female alike, most of them wore their hair long, either in a mass of thick dreadlocks or thin and straight, but covering all the colors of the human spectrum. One of the young men was black: the soft, beautiful color of the lake at midnight when clouds obscured moon and stars, the shade of rich velvet in a fabulously expensive evening gown.
They saw Elaine watching from the path at the bottom of the deck and raised their hands in greeting. She waited while the group clambered up the path.
“Hi.” The woman leading the child reached Elaine first and held out a hand, clean but work-worn with ragged cuticles and nails cut to the quick. “You must be Elaine, come to write the memoirs. Good for you, women’s history needs to be told.”
One of the men, the white one, and the only one of them with short hair, rolled his eyes behind the woman’s back.
“Rich or poor,” the woman continued. “The females of any family have to fight to have their voices heard.”
“Uh, can I help you?”
“I’m Rachel, and this is Dave and Jessica and Kyle and Karen. The girl is Willow. Say hello, Willow.”
The child mumbled and stuck her hand into her mouth. She wore a rather odd arrangement of overlarge wool sweater, tattered jeans and brand-name children’s running shoes. But everything, from her clothes to her face and hair so pale it approached white, was clean and sparkling.
“We’ve come to wish Moira a happy Thanksgiving,” Kyle, the black man, said.
“Isn’t it a touch early for a social call?”
The women’s light laughter was as delightful as ceramic chimes swinging in a strong wind. “We’re sure that Moira has been up for absolutely ages,” Rachel said. “In fact, if truth be told, we thought this might be a good time to avoid running into her stuffy relatives.”
“Stuffy, stuffy,” the child chanted. She spied a chipmunk searching for an overlooked acorn amongst the piles of leaves blown onto the path, and set after it, leaning eagerly forward, her tiny, quivering body balancing on the edges of her toes.
The group climbed the stairs up to the deck. Elaine could only follow. The white boy, Dave, gave her a wide smile, but one that didn’t reach his eyes.
“I’ll see if she’s able to receive visitors.” Elaine pushed her way through the crowd.
Chipmunk forgotten, Willow clambered up the steps to join them. Finger back in her mouth, she followed Elaine through the deck doors and Elaine didn’t quite know how to stop her.
In fact, she didn’t know how to stop any of them, and the somewhat disreputable bunch followed her into the drawing room.
“Nice place this,” said Kyle, sinking into a huge brown leather chair, as soft as butter left out on the kitchen counter on a hot summer’s day. “I’ve always thought so.” He ran his hand over the fine leather, worn and cracked with age.
There was no need for Elaine to fetch Moira or anyone else. The voices of their visitors had carried and the Madison Matriarch emerged from her study in her wheelchair. In the absence of Ruth, the chair was being propelled by its motor. Moira approached her guests with a broad smile and outstretched arms. Willow flew into their embrace.
“My dear friends. To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” Moira patted her lap to encourage Willow to clamber onto the wheelchair for a ride.
“Only to wish you a happy Thanksgiving, dearest.” One by one they lined up in a neat row to kiss Moira on her wrinkled old cheek. She beamed from ear to ear, delight consuming the dignified old lady. Only Dave stood apart, arms crossed, gazing out the window.
“Sit, sit,” she said, waving at empty chairs. “And we can visit for a bit. Elaine, please go down to the kitchen and ask Lizzie if she would be so kind as to provide coffee and sweet rolls and anything else she can rustle up.”
Elaine did as she was bid. No doubt these were the people camping out on the island, about whom Moira and Charles had argued so vehemently.
The scent of fresh coffee announced that Lizzie was hard at work. It was Thanksgiving Sunday and the cook, like cooks everywhere, be they paid help or loving mothers, had a heavy day ahead of her. The largest turkey Elaine had ever seen sat on the table. Breadcrumbs, celery, onions, sage, apple slices, butter, piles of walnuts, and a single egg waited to be magically transformed into fragrant stuffing.
“We seem to have a sudden influx of visitors. A strange looking group have arrived in rowboats, and Moira’s invited them all to breakfast.”
Lizzie sighed. “As if I don’t have anything else to do. Now breakfast on the fly. I was hoping to get the stuffing mixed and the vegetables peeled before the family stumbles down demanding to be fed.” Grumbling, she pulled packages out of the freezer and juice from the fridge. “At least the coffee’s ready. Help yourself.”
“W
ho are they?” Elaine asked, pouring herself a cup. “Can I help?”
“We’ll need a tray set up with coffee things, glasses for the juice, toast in the toaster and jam and marmalade on the tray. There’s a larger coffee maker on the top shelf to the left. We’d better get it started.
“Heaven knows,” Lizzie said, finally, in answer to the first question. She pulled a honeydew melon from the bottom of the fridge and set about cutting it into thick chunks. “They arrived in the summer. Said they were looking for a place to stay for a while. Moira happened to be in town, on one of her rare shopping outings, spoke to them, and ended up offering them the use of the island for as long as they’d like. You’d think she, of all people, would show better sense.”
“I’ve seen their fire.”
“I’m convinced she did it just to get up Charles’ nose.” Lizzie threw back her ponytail and began laying cinnamon rolls out on a baking sheet. Elaine wondered from where they had been conjured up. Intended for the family’s breakfast, perhaps? “And it seems to have worked, hasn’t it? But it’s still only early October. What they’ll do when winter settles in, I can’t imagine.”
“I didn’t see a cottage over there,” Elaine said, searching through the well-stocked cupboards for juice glasses.
“That’s because there isn’t one. They’re camping, that’s all.”
“But they have a child with them!”
Amber stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing sleep out of her eyes and looking quite fetching with her hair all tossed from the pillow, wearing a yellow silk bathrobe thrown open over a pair of shortie Mickey Mouse pajamas.
“You’re up early,” Lizzie said.
“I forgot to pull my curtains closed last night so the light woke me and then I heard voices. Do we have visitors? Um, smells nice. Coffee?”
“Do you think I should offer scrambled eggs?” Lizzie waved one hand towards the coffee pot, deep in thought. “Start the coffee in the big urn, will you, Elaine? Beans are in the freezer. We have plenty. I guess I will.” She pulled eggs out of the fridge and began cracking them into a white ceramic bowl.
“So the rest of the family isn’t too happy about these interlopers?” Elaine asked, doing as she was told.
“Not half,” Lizzie laughed. “Charles and Megan and Maeve don’t have a charitable bone in their collective bodies. Moira isn’t charging these people rent, so what good are they?”
“What people?” Amber asked, adding one spoonful of sugar after another to her coffee. “Are you talking about the people camping out on the island? Are they here?”
Lizzie checked the sweet rolls in the oven. The air in the kitchen overflowed with the aroma of cinnamon and warm butter, fresh yeast and the best coffee. It smelled so wonderful that Elaine wished she could crawl inside it and remain there, enveloped forever in a scented heaven. Crashing back to Earth, she helped Lizzie fill a utilitarian wooden tray with glasses and plates, knives and forks and serving spoons, butter and pots of jam and marmalade.
“But what are they going to do, come winter?” Elaine asked, hoisting the tray. “Surely they can’t camp out there much longer?”
“That’s for them and Moira to decide.” Lizzie placed the smaller coffee pot onto a second tray, already occupied by an assortment of mugs. It would do while the bigger pot got going. “God help me if she invites them all to stay here. Although it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Amber, you can help Elaine. Take that other tray.”
“But I’m not dressed.”
“Well, get dressed, quickly. These are breakfast visitors. Don’t worry about hair and makeup, just put on a pair of jeans or a track suit and you’ll look fine.”
Elaine carried the first of the trays into the drawing room, Lizzie going first to open doors. Moira was laughing at a joke, while Willow snuggled into the old woman’s lap.
“I never wanted to marry,” Moira said, rubbing the tousled head, “and I have no regrets about that. But I do believe I have missed much by not having grandchildren.”
“I’ll be your granddaughter, Moira,” Willow said, her thin voice brimming with sincerity. “My real grandma lives in Victoria. That’s really, really far away.”
“They do her the world of good, I’ll say that for them,” Lizzie whispered. “You start serving coffee and juice. I’ll be right back with the food.” She cleared the tray with practiced efficiency and scooted out of the room.
“This is so kind of you, Moira,” Karen said, helping Elaine distribute the mugs of coffee and glasses of orange juice. “We really did come over only to wish you a happy Thanksgiving.”
“I know you did, dear. But my grandmother taught us that one had to feed and water one’s visitors. Sort of like plants, she said. If you want friendship to grow it needs generous doses of hospitality.”
The young man with the short hair stopped in the act of adding countless brimming spoons of sugar to his coffee and again rolled his eyes.
Elaine held out her hand to take back the mug. “You don’t have to drink that. If you’re not comfortable with Miss Madison’s hospitality, I’m sure you can wait outside and enjoy the weather.”
Only Kyle and Rachel were close enough to hear. Kyle threw back his handsome head and roared with laughter. Dave gave Elaine a sly grin over the rim of his cup. “Nice coffee this.” He walked to a far corner of the room to admire the artwork.
“Sorry about that,” Rachel said. She was strikingly beautiful, tall and thin. Her red hair was tied into dreadlocks swept behind her head and caught in a bright blue scarf shot with gold threads. Her complexion was flawless and her cheeks glowed pink, either a residue of the chill outside or the warmth of the drawing room. Green eyes trimmed with long black eyelashes brimmed with intelligence and sensitivity. She dropped her voice and whispered to Elaine, “Dave can be a mite touchy, but he means no harm, I assure you.”
A wave of delicious scent heralded the arrival of warm cinnamon buns, scrambled eggs, and more coffee carried in by Lizzie and a hastily dressed Amber.
Rachel rushed to clear a space for the tray. “Really, Lizzie, you needn’t have gone to all this trouble.”
“No trouble at all,” the cook said. She snatched a cinnamon roll off the plate for herself before the others had a chance to decimate them.
The guests dug into plates of cinnamon buns dripping with white icing, fluffy scrambled eggs, and whole-wheat toast accompanied by homemade jam, chunky with fruit. Willow hopped down from Moira’s lap to politely take her place in the line-up. Lizzie collapsed in a heap in a chair with a cup of coffee and her roll. Elaine took that as a sign that she could also help herself.
Dave turned from the painting on the wall to look at the food. He caught Amber watching him and grinned like a tiger first catching the scent. She smiled softly and did not turn away.
“Are you all quite comfortable, out there on the island?” Moira asked. “It will be getting cold soon.”
“It’s great.” Karen licked cinnamon sugar off her fingers. “The best time of year to be outdoors.”
“Don’t worry about us, Moira,” Kyle said, throwing her a huge smile. “We’re more than comfortable. That island beats a crummy apartment in Toronto.”
“I’ll have a piece of toast,” Moira said to Willow as soon as the girl finished her own breakfast. “Will you fetch it for me please, dear? And I need some help with cutting it up, can you do that?”
Willow rushed to do as she was asked.
“What on earth is going on here?” The drawing room doors flew open and Charles stood there, large, formidable, and in charge, his timid wife, and a sheepish Ruth, cowering behind. “Hardly a time for social calls, I would think.” He wore a dressing gown, an elaborate Noel Coward affair of red satin and trimmed collar.
“Oh, do sit down, Charles,” Moira sighed. “Coffee is ready.”
“I don’t want coffee, Moira. I want to know what these people are doing here. Ruth came and woke us, to say that these people were bothering you.”
R
uth cowered behind Charles, trying to appear insignificant.
“No bother, Charles. There are my friends. Ruth rather over-reacted, as she sometimes does, didn’t you Ruth?”
Willow cut a sliver of toast, added a touch of jam and offered it to Moira. The old woman accepted it in her gnarled hands and gently nibbled off a corner.
“Regardless, we have a busy day ahead. Lizzie in particular.” Charles glared at the cook. “Should be attending to her own duties.”
Lizzie glared back, but rose to her feet lazily. “On me way, gov’,” she said in a parody of an English accent. “Time to black the stove and wring the turkey’s neck. ’ope the fool thing’s dead this year, ’ad a ’orrible time last year, wot with chasing it all over the yard with me ’atchet.”
She stopped in front of Moira. “I’ll clear the dishes when everyone’s finished,” she said in her normal voice, and left the room. For a large woman she moved with incredible grace.
Dave tore his eyes away from Amber. “Isn’t Moira the owner of this property?” he said, trying to look as if he wasn’t at all aware that he was stirring up trouble. “Free to invite guests as she wants?”
Charles sputtered. Kyle put his hand onto Dave’s arm. “Let’s finish our breakfast, eh?” He whispered something that Elaine couldn’t hear and pushed Dave backwards. It was gentle shove but it threw the other man off balance.
“Time to be going,” Rachel trilled in a cheerful voice as false as a politician at an all-candidates debate. “Thank you so much for the wonderful breakfast, Moira. I’m pleased to see you looking so well.”
The group moved as one toward the French doors leading onto the deck. Willow was confused at the sudden change of atmosphere, but she bobbed along behind.
“Please come visit again, Willow,” Moira said. “How about dinner tomorrow night? We’ll have lots of leftovers because all my family will be gone.” She grinned at Charles, the edges of her sharp brown eyes turned up like those of a particularly malicious cat.
“Okay, that’ll be great. I love turkey.” Karen grabbed Willow’s arm and yanked the child out the door.