Thicker Than Water

by Bethan Darwin

  Beverley smiles at him.

  “I have an appointment out of town later this afternoon. I understand Cassandra has plans to take you to Niagara.”

  “Oh, news to me.”

  “Don’t you want to see our famous Falls?”

  “Of course, excuse me, I didn’t want to appear rude. I just wasn’t aware of the plans.”

  Chapter 25

  Tuesday, 29 October 1929 is a beautiful autumn day and Jean has been dispatched by Mr Wragg to harvest the very largest pumpkins in the patch. They grow all manner of squash at Parkwood – butternut, acorn, carnival and many others – to be used in soups, casseroles and stews throughout the winter months, but the giant pumpkins that Jean is now harvesting are grown specifically to be carved into Jack O’Lanterns for Halloween.

  Mrs Meikle excels at carving pumpkins and she and Jean will help the McLaughlin grandchildren with the carving later on. As they carve, Mrs Meikle will tell the story of Stingy Jack in her special, storytelling voice. She will describe how Stingy Jack invited the devil to have a drink with him but was too stingy to pay for his drink so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. But instead of buying drinks Jack put the coin in his pocket next to a silver cross so that the Devil could not change back into his original form. Later, Jack releases the Devil on condition that when he dies the Devil does not claim his soul.

  When Jack dies, God does not allow him into heaven but nor does the Devil allow him into hell. Instead the Devil sends Jack off into the dark night with a piece of burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with his lantern ever since, looking for a home.

  Mrs Meikle will tell the children how when she was a child in Scotland where pumpkins do not grow they would carve their Jack O’Lanterns out of turnips and rutabaga, which in Scotland are called neeps and swedes. And at the end of her story she will say as she always does, “So much harder to carve than these pumpkins, I can tell you, our poor wrists would ache all night on Halloween.”

  The children will put candles in the carved pumpkins and light them to scare away the homeless evil spirits that, like Stingy Jack, roam the Earth.

  Jean loves this time of the year, the line between fall and winter. The leaves on the trees are bright orange but not yet fallen and the days are still bright but the evenings darker. She likes the chill in the air and the smell of bonfire as she and the rest of Mr Wragg’s gardeners clear the outdoor gardens ready for their winter sleep, although there will still be plenty of work in the greenhouses to keep them busy until spring rolls around again.

  On the day the US stock market crashes, a day which will later become known as Black Tuesday and will cause a depression that spreads out into Canada and Britain and other parts of the world, Jean picks through the pumpkin patch, searching for the biggest and best. She thinks about how this time next year she and Idris will be married and she hopes that on the eve of All Saints Days in the future, she will have children of her own for whom she will carve pumpkins and tell the story of Stingy Jack.

  *

  For the second time in his life, Idris is told he must wait before he can be married. This time it is at the request of Mrs Meikle and Mr Wragg.

  “We want to make it a special day for you both, and Sam and Mrs Adelaide want that too, but Miss Billie is to marry Lt. Col Mann next August and everyone’s focus is on the family wedding and getting Parkwood and the gardens ready. Your wedding can be after that one. Waiting won’t do you any harm anyway, Jean is still only 18,” Mrs Meikle explains, briskly.

  Idris doesn’t follow the logic of why a servant’s small-scale wedding needs to come after that of Colonel Sam’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, even if she is the favourite. Known as Billie by all, because Sam had been convinced that his fifth child would be a boy whom he would name Billy, she is the best horsewoman of the five daughters and, according to Jean, the one who laughs the most. From what he has heard from Jean, Idris thinks Miss Billie is a fine woman and is sure that her fiancé, Clarence Churchill Mann of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, is similarly fine, but he also thinks that his and Jean’s wedding is no business of theirs. Nevertheless, Jean is more than happy to do as she is asked and so, therefore, is he.

  While they wait, Idris lives alone in the house that he worked so hard to finish before feeling able to ask Jean to marry him. He has no trouble keeping busy for there is always something to be done – building shelves or re-papering some of the rooms he did first when he was less practiced at the task or digging over the garden back and front – and if there is nothing to do at his own house there is always something to be done at a neighbour’s. Of all the houses self-built by immigrants, Idris’ house is seen as one of the most competently built and there is regularly a knock at the door from someone who lives locally asking for advice or assistance or just to be shown round.

  As Jean only has one day off a week, Idris calls into Parkwood most evenings after work for a cup of tea.

  “Don’t you be getting in the way of her work, now,” Mr Wragg warns.

  “She wouldn’t let me if I tried, sir,” Idris says with a wry smile.

  “Exactly what Mrs Wragg says about me,” Mr Wragg replies.

  On her days off, Jean and he plant the gardens out with plants that Mr Wragg collects for them at Parkwood – cuttings and seeds and divided bulbs. One entire section of the garden is reserved for vegetables.

  “Is there anything particular you would like to grow?” Jean asks him.

  “Some roses would be nice. Pink ones maybe.”

  Jean brings dozens of cuttings.

  “We’ll have every shade of pink eventually,” she explains. “From the very palest of pinks right through to the deepest cerise. I’ve taken cuttings from some orange and white ones too. The scent will be gorgeous and we shall have flowers from early summer right through to autumn.”

  About once a month or so, Idris forces himself to write home. He addresses his letters to all five of the Maddoxes in the Rhondda but only his mother writes back, on behalf of them all. Even with just the one letter needed to cover everyone, he finds the letter writing difficult. Having made the decision that he will never return home to Wales again, not even for a visit, he tries not to think about his parents or the Rhondda. Or about Maggie and Tommy and Davey. When he first arrived in Canada, one of the things he did before falling asleep each night was let his mind roam over the landscape of his old life. He’d walk over Clydach Vale mountain and check out his rabbit traps before looking down across the valley and the pitheads, and then up into the wide expanse of sky. From there he’d walk to his parents’ end of terrace house and out into the garden where his mother would be weeding and his father would be sitting on a chair, watching her as she worked, and drinking a mug of tea so strong it is orange, just as Dada likes it. He doesn’t do that any more. He misses it all less if he doesn’t think about it. The letter writing is hard because it means he has to think about them for a while.

  After he writes to his mother telling her of his engagement to be married to Jean, he receives a reply very quickly. His mother must have written back the very same day she received his letter, in the formal style she was taught at school.

  My dearest son Idris,

  Your father and I send our warmest congratulations to you and Jean on your engagement. We are delighted at the news, as are Tommy and Maggie who also send their very best wishes to you both. I was very sorry at the time when you wrote that you and Aeronwen had decided to end your engagement and I was worried perhaps you were more disappointed about that decision than you were prepared to reveal, but it is clear from what you write in your letters that Jean and you are far better suited. It seems that the two of you were always meant to be together, from the moment you met on the ship. This is a very happy day for the Maddox family!

  I only wish that we could travel out to Canada to join you for the wedding for nothing would please me mor
e than to see you again, my son. I see your face most days of course, whenever I see Tommy, but it is not at all the same, just as you and he are not at all the same. Seeing your face in his makes me feel the lack of you more keenly.

  I would also dearly love to meet Jean and see for myself the house you have built. Sadly, that is not going to be. Your father has not been well of late – he coughs a lot, from the dust, as many an old miner does, and whilst I do not wish to cast a shadow on your good news, the truth is he will not be able to carry on working underground much longer. Even if he could, we would not be able to afford to make the trip. I wish Tommy could stop working at the pit too, but there is little else in the way of work for men round here, and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I shall have to content myself with the hope that one day soon you may bring your family home, if not for good then at least for a visit.

  Other than you father’s cough, we are all of us keeping well. Davey is thriving and continues to be a delight. He is such a good boy, and bright as a button. He comes to me part of every day while Maggie attends to the rabbit traps and I like nothing better than having him here. I have finally been blessed with a child who enjoys gardening as much as I do. We spend many happy hours together out the back and it is just as well he enjoys spending time with his grandmother as Maggie is often away for hours at a time. She loves being up on top of that mountain almost as much as you did but she is also presently much taken with going to hear Mrs Elizabeth Andrews speak whenever she gets the chance. Mrs Andrews is from Ton Pentre and a member of the Labour party. She is the lady who is campaigning hard for pithead baths to be installed at every colliery so that us women can put our tin baths away once and for all. I too am in support of what Mrs Andrews is fighting for but I do not feel the need to travel the length and breadth of these valleys to hear her fighting for it in person.

  Maggie is a good daughter-in-law – hardworking, and a good wife and mother. She and I never have so much as a cross word. There is a sadness to her though, which I understand. I only ever fell pregnant the once too, but to the good fortune of your father and I, there were two of you. For Maggie it seems there will only ever be Davey. I shall have to look to you and Jean for more grandchildren, Idris.

  Please do write in greater detail about your wedding arrangements and of the grand house where Jean works and particularly about the gardens and the greenhouses. I would dearly love to know more about them. Our windowsill in the kitchen at home is such a great growing environment for seedlings, I cannot imagine the impact of an entire room of glass.

  Yours, affectionately,

  Mam

  *

  Despite the coldness of his fellow workers towards him when he first started at General Motors, or perhaps because of it, Idris gets promoted at work and is now supervising one section of the plant. The depression is impacting on sales of the McLaughlin Buick and the workers are often laid off for weeks at a time, before being called back whenever sales pick up a little and then having to work very long hours and at a backbreaking pace to meet orders. Despite the shame it brings, some families have no option but to claim relief.

  Idris hears the workers complain on a daily basis.

  “Better because it’s Canadian!” he hears them grumble, repeating the company’s advertising slogan. “But no good for the Canadians who work for the company, only the ones who bloody own it.”

  Sometimes when Idris is visiting Jean, the Colonel will summon him up to his study and ask for ten minutes of his time.

  “How are the men bearing up, Idris? Is morale good? This recession is tough on them I know.”

  Each time he is asked this question Idris hesitates for a second, the true answer on the tip of his tongue.

  Morale is poor Colonel, he wants to say, and there is much misery from low and irregular wages and the lack of a collective voice. Whereas here at Parkwood there appears to be no recession at all and you are getting central air conditioning installed ready for Miss Billie’s wedding and redecorating throughout.

  But he does not say this because it is not the answer the Colonel wants to hear and because answering truthfully would upset Jean.

  “Their workmanship is second to none,” is what he actually says. “It’s the reason why everyone wants a Dominion built car. Just like your father used to say Colonel – One Grade Only, and that the Best.

  Jean and all of Mr Wragg’s gardeners are working very long hours getting ready for the wedding, bringing the already impeccable gardens up to an even higher standard. They grow all the wedding flowers in the greenhouses – the flowers for the church, the table settings and for the bouquets and headdresses of the bride and her flower girls. On the day of Miss Billie’s wedding in August 1930 Parkwood has never looked more impressive.

  Jean is asked if she is willing to put on her parlour maid uniform one last time to help serve the wedding guests with drinks.

  “You’ve never seen anything like it,” she tells Idris when it is all over. “I can honestly say I have never seen anyone look as beautiful as Miss Billie looked. She had a long white lace headdress and the train of her dress was as long as you are tall Idris. The other McLaughlin sisters and adult bridesmaids wore white dresses too, all of them of the same design, and large floppy hats while Miss Billie’s mischievous little nieces had little bonnets, fitted tight to their heads. Colonel Churchill Mann looked very dashing indeed in full military uniform and he and Miss Billie laughed and smiled at each other all day long. It was just beautiful Idris, so very beautiful. And the gardens could not have looked better – they were exactly as Mr Wragg had planned they would look. “

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Idris says, “after the amount of work you all put in.”

  “Do you know Mr Wragg hand picked every single flower for Miss Billie’s bouquet, the very best blooms he has ever grown he said they were, and Mrs Wragg was the one who arranged the bouquet and tied it together? It smelled so gorgeous, I could smell the fragrance even when I was serving champagne cocktails.”

  “Champagne cocktails? What are they then?”

  “You take a cube of sugar and soak it in brandy and angostura bitters, then fill the rest of the glass with champagne. They made everyone who had one so giggly, more giggly than even the little bridesmaids.”

  Idris listens and nods in all the right places. Not that he isn’t happy for Miss Eleanor and Colonel Churchill Mann but because his only real focus is counting down the days until his own wedding.

  *

  Jean suggests they marry on her nineteenth birthday.

  “But that’s already a special day,” Idris says. “Wouldn’t you like a different special date for our wedding?”

  “No,” Jean says firmly, “It will be three years since we first came to Oshawa and three years since…well, you know, the reason why we came to Oshawa at all. I would like it to be a date with lots of good reasons to celebrate it.”

  “Then we shall make it so and marry on your birthday,” Idris pulls her towards him, wraps his arms tightly around her.

  *

  Idris is an early riser but he wakes even earlier than usual on his wedding day. He is happy to be greeted by another day of late September sunshine. He takes his cup of tea out into the garden and sits quietly for a while, watching the honey bees visiting the many flowers that Jean selected especially so as to attract bees – lavender, sunflowers and cornflowers and many others that Idris does not know the names of. The early morning sun is warm on his face and on his bare feet and he feels the warmth not only on his skin but in his heart, because today is the last day he will wake up alone in the house he built for Jean.

  He arrives far too early at the small Presbyterian church that Mrs Meikle regularly attends and where their wedding is to be held. He has elected not to have a best man.

  “You could ask Mr Williams?” Jean had suggested. “Or one of our neighbours? “

  “No Jean. It’s odd, but even though it’s not possible for all sorts of reasons for D
ada and Tommy to be here, they are the only two I would want for my best man and in their absence, I’d rather have no one at all.”

  He sits alone in the front pew of the plain little church and waits for Jean. He hears people arriving, greeting each other and chatting quietly. The church will be full in no time, because Jean and Idris now know many people in Oshawa. Their guest list includes the many neighbours whom Idris has helped and advised on building their homes and who are becoming good friends, the service staff and gardeners from Parkwood and their spouses and children and the very many members of the McLaughlin family, most of whom will be attending. Mr and Mrs Williams have travelled to Oshawa from Toronto to be here and Janet, who is Jean’s maid of honour, is bringing her adoptive family from Brockville with her. Idris sits with his head bowed, listening to the people of his new life file into the church behind him and he promises himself to only ever feel grateful for the people who are here rather than missing the ones who are not.

  Finally, the organist strikes up and the crowd of people rise to their feet, buzzing gently like the bees had done in the garden earlier that morning, in anticipation of the arrival of his bride. Idris waits for a few moments before turning to watch as Jean completes the walk down the aisle on Mr Wragg’s arm. She is wearing a three quarter length cream silk dress that Mrs Williams has made for her, copied from a picture in the Eaton’s catalogue that Jean had cut out carefully and posted to her. As is the custom, Jean has refused to allow Idris to see the dress before the wedding day but he knows that the lace at the throat of the dress came from Mrs Williams’ own wedding dress. Idris did not see Miss Eleanor McLaughlin on the day of her wedding, but it seems to him that there is no possible way on earth that Miss Billie could have looked a fraction as beautiful or as happy as Jean does walking down the aisle. The bouquet she carries contains some of her favourite flowers – gardenias and white roses– just as for Miss Billie, all grown and selected specially by Mr Wragg and carefully arranged and tied by Mrs Wragg that morning.