by Vicki Delany
He grinned from one flapping ear to the other. “I would love to. Thank you.”
“Good day.”
“Good evening.”
He wrote to her the next day. A simple note, explaining that he had enjoyed meeting her and that the mechanic in town, retired from Grant’s father’s aircraft factory, was sure he could have the bicycle back into shape in no time. His leave had been cancelled and he had to return to his unit. He would write again.
And he did. He wrote regularly, long letters in his cramped, nearly impossible to understand handwriting. Nothing about the war or news of his fellow pilots but full of his hopes and dreams, and before long she could read his handwriting as easily as that of her own mother. Several times a week, she wrote back. The Battle of Britain was over, but even so he had a dangerous job, and she tried not to worry.
Moira threw herself into her work. She thought of Grant Summersland often, and every time the memory of his awkward, smiling face popped up she made the effort to push him out of her realm of consciousness. And every time she failed. She kept his letters hidden at the bottom of her dresser, folded neatly under her rough underwear.
Chapter Seventeen
“You look tired today, Moira,” Elaine said. The old woman had a bright silk scarf, patterned in the most delightfully exotic shades of turquoise and ocean blue, wrapped around her neck. But the beauty of the fabric could do nothing to countermand the paleness of her complexion or the dark shadows under her ancient eyes.
On Monday, Thanksgiving Day, recovering from the enormous dinner, the plentiful drinks, and games late into the night, Elaine had slept in and missed her run as well as breakfast. She scrambled out of bed with barely enough time for a fast shower and a quick rub of her hair with a towel, before dashing down the stairs to meet with Moira, only to find the old woman setting into her study, and Ruth fastening the top buttons on her crisp white blouse. Full of apologies for being late, Lizzie scurried in with coffeepot and mugs.
“A bit too much making merry, as Mr. Dickens would say,” Moira chuckled. Her brown eyes were thick with fatigue and the delicate skin encircling them was even more cavernous than usual, if that were possible.
“I have plenty that I can do, what with going through the boxes and all, if you’d like to have a rest day.”
Moira nodded. “I am rather weary. Yesterday was quite exhausting. If you don’t mind, I’d like to spend my morning reading. Reading always relaxes the body as it stimulates the mind, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I certainly would.”
“At my age, I’m grateful that I still have my eyesight. Although not as excellent as it once was. I was famous for my eyesight in my youth. I’ll tell you about it one day. Ruth, where is my book?”
“Here you go, Miss Madison.” Ruth passed the latest mystery bestseller, a special edition in large print.
“That’s a great book,” Elaine said.
“I always read English police procedurals. I’ve only been back to England once since the war and that a long time ago. And now, sadly, it’s too late for me to do any more traveling. But these books tell me that it has changed greatly, and yet in many ways not much at all.
“Ruth, would you please be sure and ask Alison to spare me some time before she leaves this afternoon. I have some things to discuss with her.” Moira adjusted her reading glasses and bent her gray head over the book. Patches of pink scalp were visible through the thin hair.
Dismissed, Elaine and Ruth left the room.
Elaine took the opportunity she’d been waiting for to examine the paintings and photographs in the main areas of the building in greater detail. Her interest wasn’t merely casual; she carried her notebook with her and made rough notes on which pictures she would like to have photographed for inclusion in the book and appropriate captions. It wasn’t possible, but she would love to use every single one of them. Material for another book perhaps? She filed the idea away for future reference.
She stopped before the portrait of Moira’s grandfather, Augustus, the one that had so captivated her the first time she saw it. She paused almost every day to look at it. She debated including his likeness in Moira’s memoirs. She didn’t want anything to distract from Moira; it was, after all, her story. But the force of this man’s personality had affected his family and everyone around him. She jotted a note in her book.
“Quite the collection, eh?” Her hand jerked and dragged an ugly scratch of ink across the page. Dave and Kyle stood behind her. She had been so engrossed in thoughts of the intimidating Mr. Augustus Madison that she didn’t hear them coming down the hall.
“He’s quite the ugly bugger,” Dave said, nodding at the painting. “Imagine wearing a tie so tight you can’t hardly breathe. No thanks.”
“What are you doing here?” Elaine asked. They had frightened her, and she was embarrassed at the sharpness of her tone.
“Not going to steal the family silver, if that’s your worry,” Dave said. His lips turned up as he were making a joke, but the amusement didn’t reach his eyes.
Kyle smiled at her. “Never mind my pal here.” The look he gave his companion wasn’t entirely friendly. “He takes offence at almost everything.” Kyle rubbed a hand through his hair. It hung in thick dreadlocks past his shoulders and was pulled off his face by a cheerful yellow bandana. A tiny silver hoop sparked in each earlobe, making an amazingly attractive look, like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. “I’m sorry we startled you. We’ve come over to help Alan cut down a couple of dead trees and chop them up to dry for firewood. Lizzie’s making us a snack and I wanted to look at the paintings.”
“They are quite good, aren’t they,” Elaine replied. “This is an A. Y. Jackson.” Trying to be friendly she pointed out a tiny oil trapped in a frame much too large and overpowering. “A member of the Group of Seven. They’re the most famous of Canadian painters.”
“I’ve actually been to an art gallery once or twice,” Dave interrupted. “And I didn’t mistake the door of the men’s bathroom for a painting. Ain’t that fuckin’ amazing?” He turned on his heel and marched off toward the kitchen.
“I’m so sorry,” Elaine said as they watched Dave leave, his shoulders set in a stiff, angry line. “That was incredibly patronizing. Should I go after him and apologize, do you think?”
“I doubt it would do any good.” Kyle smiled down at her, his teeth brilliantly white against the black skin. She was tall, but he was much taller, lean and hard muscled.
“And before we go any further,” he chuckled, “perhaps I should mention that I also can recognize a Group of Seven masterpiece when I see one.”
“I’m sorry.” Elaine stumbled over the words. “I spoke…I thought…without….”
“No matter. Which one do you like the best?” he asked, placing one large paw gently under her elbow. Without applying any pressure at all he guided her to where he wanted her to stand. “This is my favorite, over here. But you have to get back a bit to truly appreciate it.” He pulled her across the passageway, to stand with her back almost flush against the wall. “This painting only comes to life from a distance, don’t you think? This hall is much too dark and narrow for a proper display. A couple more feet and the color of the trees would practically jump out at you. These paintings are wasted here. Not only the famous ones, but that picture over there.” He pointed out a more modern painting, a delicate watercolor depiction of flowers growing in spring sunlight and a woman’s straw hat, lying forgotten in the fresh, yellow-green grass. It was a beautiful picture in itself, but it spoke volumes about loneliness and abandonment. “That picture should be in a public gallery, so the artist can get the recognition he or she deserves.”
“The artist must be the same person who did the picture of the moose in winter in Moira’s study. The signature is the same, and the styles are similar. Have you seen it?”
“No. I’ve never been into the study. Can you sneak me in one day?”
Elaine laughed. “All you have t
o do is ask Moira. You know she likes you.”
“Kyle, are you coming to eat or what?” Alan bellowed from the end of the hall. “Let’s go, man.”
“I do odd jobs for Alan and Moira,” Kyle said, “so I can spend some time in the house. Dave wants the money, but I need the art. Talk to you later.” His deep voice rose. “Keep your shirt on, Al. That wood isn’t going to get up and walk away if we’re a few minutes late.”
After Kyle had gone, Elaine studied the sun speckled painting for a long time. Kyle was right: it was dreadfully out of place in this dark hall filled with a mixture of Canadian masters and ancient family photographs. She promised herself to try to find out more about the artist.
***
In the early afternoon, Lizzie climbed the stairs to the loft with a tray of turkey and cranberry sandwiches, iced tea, and homemade cookies. Phoebe had provided the music today. Something loud and modern that Elaine tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore. They were crouched over another basket of letters. These appeared to have been written by Moira’s mother, Mrs. Mary Margaret Madison, to her husband, Frederick (she never called him Fred or Freddy), during the war years. Fortuitously, Mr. Madison had saved them all and returned them to his wife at some date. He’d spent the better part of the war traveling between Ottawa and Washington, negotiating defense contracts and arranging the shipment of war supplies. How Elaine would have loved to have letters from him, full of the minutia of wheeling and dealing in the instruments of death. But he didn’t write to his wife often, and the few that she had saved said not a word concerning business. Her letters to him were mostly family and household news, monotonous in their mind-dulling trivia. The maid who had quit after putting on a good deal of weight, all of it around the abdomen. The ineffectual, aged man pressed into service after the head gardener and all his staff departed to join the war effort (the best roses I have ever had, so perfectly fabulous this year, I fear what is to become of them without due attention. Let us pray this nasty war ends soon). Elaine set Phoebe to the task of scouring through the household accounts and minor gossip (It has been noticed that since Bradford Connaught left to join His Majesty’s service, his younger brother, Jeremy, has been paying a great deal of attention to the lovely young Mrs. Connaught) searching for a useful scrap of news of Moira or the family’s perspective on the progress of the war.
Judging by Phoebe’s chuckles and groans, the girl was enjoying the job enormously. It would be great if a future historian were being inspired right before Elaine’s eyes.
“She seems such a dimwit,” Phoebe said at one point, lifting a letter, crackling with age, to read aloud. “Mary Margaret, I mean. But then, listen to this: ‘My dearest friend and neighbor, Roberta Armstrong, I am sure you remember her, received news today that her only child, Richard, has been killed in a training incident in Halifax. Can one begin to understand her grief? The dear boy hadn’t even left the safe shores of Canada. Roberta is devastated beyond belief. We are blessed with four healthy children; what can it be like, I wonder, to have only one precious child and then to lose him, so young and full of promise unfulfilled? I rushed over to offer her what consolation I could. Precious little, I fear. By the time I arrived that hopeless gaggle of sisters of hers had descended, dragging along that perfectly hideous Reverend McLeod and they were all carping on about God’s will and in a better place. Such Tommyrot. I made fast work of them, I must say. As I pushed them out the door, I dared to ask Mr. McLeod that if death is so to be welcomed, then why don’t we all rush to embrace it the moment we can stand straight enough to wield a kitchen knife’.”
Elaine laughed out loud. “It’s well worth it, poring over all the household records and accounts of endless tea parties, to come across a gem like that. Beneath the almost-impenetrable façade of respectability, we finally have a rare glimpse of Mary Margaret as she was.”
They worked on for a few more hours, until Elaine’s knees were complaining fiercely and Phoebe was sneezing non-stop.
“Enough for today,” Elaine said, rising to her full height, joints protesting every inch of the way.
“But this box is so interesting,” the girl protested, stifling another enormous sneeze. “Mrs. Madison, my great-grandma, really wanted to do something for the war effort. But all they’d give her was the job of knitting endless piles of socks. She keeps asking Frederick what’s happening in Ottawa, so I think that he’s not bothering to write to her much. I wonder if he was having a bit of fun on the side.”
Elaine shook her finger. “Don’t speculate without the facts, Phoebe. Never, never. And even if we found proof of paternal hanky-panky, it would have had no impact on Moira, so far away. Keep focused, that’s my first rule. If you get distracted by everyone’s story, you’ll never end up with one worth telling.”
Elaine picked up the letters that she’d put aside as ones to read in more detail. Phoebe switched off the CD player and unplugged the electric heater.
“What time are you leaving?” Elaine asked, pulling the guesthouse door shut behind them. “It’s close to three o’clock.”
“Not until tomorrow,” Phoebe replied. “I was supposed to be going back today, with Uncle Elliot, Aunt Alison, and Brad, but they changed it to tomorrow, something about the traffic. Suits me. I’ve enjoyed helping you. Can I come back up next weekend, and do a bit more?”
“I need all the help I can get. I had no idea when I agreed to start this project that there would be so many letters to plough through. But I’ll provide the background music from now on, okay?”
Phoebe only grinned.
They parted at the bottom of the steps: Phoebe to put in a bit of time on an assignment—she had mentioned in a voice brimming with lack of enthusiasm that she was studying psychology at university—and Elaine to go for a walk in an attempt to clear some of the cobwebs out of her head.
She pulled on her coat and gloves and, full of familiar, welcome thoughts, walked out onto the deck. There was nothing Elaine loved more than to spend a day going through boxes of old letters. In the mounds of chaff there was usually a grain of wheat waiting to be found. A phrase or a word or an unguarded thought that provided insight into the true soul of the writer. She thought of herself as a prospector, sifting through tons of ore to find the speck of gold inside.
Thankfully she was a historian today, while there were still letters to read. What the scholars of the future would have to work with, studying a people who jotted only their most instant, superficial thoughts onto a computer and then deleted even that the moment it was read, she hated to contemplate.
The sky was a robin’s egg blue, the color matching the pristine waters of the lake. The month of October was passing. Most of the trees had lost the best of their glory; only a few scarlet or golden leaves still clung bravely to nearly bare branches. She breathed in deeply, drinking the heady aroma of crisp, clean air, decaying vegetation, and lingering traces of last night’s wood fire.
She walked up the driveway towards the road. In the distance Hamlet and Ophelia were barking their stupid heads off. Cornered a stray tennis ball, no doubt. Elaine sucked in the fresh autumn air and felt the crunch of leaves underfoot. Someone, probably Alan, had long ago removed the snake corpse from the driveway. Elaine pulled a thin, broken branch off an overhanging pine tree and broke it into sections as she walked, enjoying the crisp snap of the dead wood as it broke under her fingers.
Eventually she turned and reluctantly headed back to the cottage. The sun that had been so warm a few short minutes ago disappeared behind a bank of heavy, black storm clouds. The probing touch of an icy wind crept under the collar of her coat. Under a patch of ancient white pine, a dark shape shifted and tried to form substance, like black smoke an instant before breaking into flame. It hovered in the crisp autumn air, as indistinct as fog rolling over the lake in the early morning, or sunlight shining through falling snow. Elaine slowed to a stop, her head moving to the right of its own accord, her heart accelerating to a rapid pounding in a fraction of a
second. Her skin prickled with that sixth sense of knowing that someone was surreptitiously observing her. She watched in return, tightening her heart and her fists in preparation for flight.
Before she could move, either to run backward screaming for help or forward yelling in defiance, she hadn’t yet decided which, the shape dissolved into nothing. Behind the spot where it had been, a red squirrel dashed down the oldest of the trees, a precious nut clenched in its tiny jaws. Elaine heaved in relief, cursed herself for her over-active imagination, gripped her coat collar tightly around her neck and ran down the path, while her heart settled back to its normal rhythm. Warm yellow lights were flickering to life in the kitchen, a buttress against the gloom of the evening and the primitive forest.
Chapter Eighteen
Several months, and much correspondence, passed. The nurses were kept busy outside of their regular duties. Day after day, they marched the Suffolk countryside, now awakening to spring. Wearing battle dress of baggy brown trousers and jacket, and carrying their full kit: small pack, large pack, a respirator, a tin helmet, water bottle, suitcase, and purse. The nurses were abuzz at what all this activity could mean. They had been stationed in Bramshott for almost three years and most of the nurses, like the soldiers all around them, were anxious to be on their way. As was Moira only a few short months ago. Now she lived in fear that they would be gone before she saw Grant again.
But they were still marching the neat, hedge-lined roads of southeast England when Moira received a letter with news that had her heart racing. Grant had a few days’ leave and invited her to go bicycling with him the following Saturday. She rushed about in a mad flurry to exchange duty rosters. She had never before tried to get out of a shift and was always agreeable to switch with any nurse who asked. It was no trouble finding someone to take on her Saturday workload, and (just in case) she arranged for a Sunday replacement. Of course the first person she asked hurried to relay the news to the others and good-natured speculation flew through the hospital.