by Ed Kavanagh
But in the first week of December we noticed some odd developments at Foran’s. One morning I saw that a load of birch junks had been stacked by the side of the house. When we went sliding that afternoon, a clothesline had been erected. Boards covering two of the groundfloor windows had been removed and curtains appeared. A storm door was hung. And everything had happened as if by slight of hand: we never saw a soul. The only clue to the activity was the track of a horse and sled leading from the road to the house.
One evening we saw smoke wafting from the chimney, and a golden light flickered at the edges of one of the curtains. Suddenly the new door swung open.
We froze, enthralled, until a long-haired ginger cat bounded onto the stone step where it glanced at us, then began washing its face and whiskers.
Ruth said there must be ghosts in the house, but Sean kicked at the snow and rolled his eyes.
“Ghosts wouldn’t have a fire. They don’t get cold. And I never heard tell of a ghost who had a cat—not a live cat anyway. And sure that one’s not even black.”
“Well, what’s goin’ on then?”
“Simple. Someone’s after movin’ in.”
“Into Foran’s? Sure it’s only an old barn. That’s where Pat stores some of his hay.”
True. It was tightly packed against the cracked top-floor windows.
“I think it’s ghosts,” Ruth said.
Ruth and Sean argued all the way home. But the mystery didn’t last long. At supper we learned that Pat Foran had come by our house that morning when we were in school. Father had been stacking feed bags in the barn and now George and Winnie were filling him in.
“Pat’s worried half to death,” Winnie was saying. “And I can’t blame him. Oil lamps and a rusty old Maid of Avalon stove, and the whole top floor blocked to the rafters with hay.”
“And God only knows the last time that chimney was used,” George said. “Never mind cleaned. One spark . . .”
Winnie laughed. “But you know the funny thing? You know what she said when Pat brought all that up? ‘What odds?’ she said. ‘If anything happens I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.’”
“She sounds a character,” Father said.
George nodded. “No doubt about it. But it’s her land, her house. I suppose she can do what she likes—even at her age.”
“Who?” Sean asked.
“Annie Foran. Pat’s aunt.”
“Great-aunt,” Winnie said. “And Foran’s her maiden name. She married a Dooley.”
“That’s right,” George said. “Annie Dooley. Anyway, she’s after movin’ home to the road and she wants to stay in the old house. That’s where she grew up.”
“Where was she before?” Father asked.
“Up the Shore somewhere. She taught school, I believe. Dooley was a fisherman. She married him—oh, years and years ago. Probably sixty, seventy years ago. Win, where did Pat say they lived?”
“Aquaforte.”
“So it was. I knew it was a good distance. Her husband died a few months ago and she made up her mind to move back here. Don’t ask me why. I always heard Aquaforte’s a nice enough spot.”
“She’s all by herself?” Father asked.
“Just her and her guardian angel.”
“Why don’t she just stay with Pat?”
“That’s what he said! She’s more than welcome. But Annie wouldn’t hear of it. She said her father built that house, she grew up in that house, and she wants to die in that house.”
“You sure she’s not a bit crazy?” Father said. “How old did you say she was?”
“Pat didn’t know, but she’s got to be close to ninety.”
“Every bit of it,” Winnie said.
Father shook his head. “An old lady like that, down there all by herself—and in December month.”
“Never mind December,” George said. “What do you think it’s gonna be like in February?”
“Well, you know what I figure?” Father said. “I figure she’s gonna get her wish—and probably sooner rather than later.”
Winnie smiled. “But you got to give it to her—she’s all guts.”
“All something,” George said.
Winnie pulled the cosy off the teapot and began pouring the tea. “And stubborn . . . Pat said he was gettin’ hoarse tryin’ to talk her out of it. He even had Father Walsh up, and the priest himself could not make a dent in her. She got her mind made up. Even brought home a good bit of her stuff from Aquaforte: tables and chairs and dressers and all kinds of old pictures and knick knacks.”
“All jammed into the few old rooms she pestered Pat into fixin’ up for her,” George said. He poured tea into his saucer and blew on it. “Pat figures he’ll see how long she sticks it out. In the meantime, he’ll keep an eye on her. He asked if we would too, seeing we’re the handiest.”
Father nodded.
“Do you know her, Mom?” Ruth asked.
“No. No one knows her anymore—except the old people. Mrs. Densmore probably knows her—or did. But Annie’s been gone for years and years—long before I was even born.”
“Her family were some of the first to come up this way,” George said. “Pat says they weren’t long from Ireland. The mother and father even spoke the old language. They were in Town first before they came here. I don’t know what they were doin’. Anyway, they ended up on the road and cleared a lot of land.”
“Cleared a lot of Pat’s land,” Winnie said.
“So they did. People weren’t afraid of a bit of work back then.”
“But the parents died young—youngish, anyway.”
“Make no wonder!” George said. “They probably froze to death in that friggin’ house! Anyway, according to Pat, Annie was home a few times for visits but I never met her.”
“I’d heard about her,” Winnie said. “Pat would mention her every now and then.”
George grunted. “So she’s down there now, all poked away by herself. I don’t know what she’s gonna do to keep herself busy.”
“She got a cat,” Ruth said. “We saw it. So at least she got a bit of company.”
Sean laughed. “Ruth thought Annie was a ghost.”
“Well,” George said, “Ruthie might have had the right idea. The poor woman’ll probably be a ghost soon enough.”
“She’ll shift out of it when it gets too cold,” Father said. “If she got any sense at all.”
“We’ll see.” George shook his head. “But she’s a queer hand. Comin’ back here after all these years. Paying no mind to the priest. She’s certainly got her own way of doin’ things.”
Winnie sighed. “Anyway, Pat’s going to keep an eye on her, bring her down a few things every couple of days or so—make sure she don’t starve or freeze to death. I’ll run down when I gets a chance. And Father Walsh said he’d look in on her, too. Please God, she’ll be all right.”
When the Foran house had been vacant we had used the meadow at will; now, with a “queer hand” like Annie there, we weren’t so sure. But her hill was too tempting to abandon, so whenever we went sliding we gave the house a wide berth until we were well below it. Then we’d steal to the centre of the meadow, always keeping an eye out for any movement—ghostly or otherwise—from Foran’s. But for the first week or so, the only signs we saw of our new neighbour were wood smoke and her ginger cat.
If there was work in the Thirties, you took it—even someone as young and scrawny as I was. Many evenings after supper I walked the half mile down the road to Hickey’s farm where I hunted eggs, fed chickens, mopped floors— any little job Mrs. Hickey would set for me. I even helped with mucking out the barn, although being so puny I did little of that. The work didn’t seem important. Mrs. Hickey just wanted to give a few coppers to a girl who had lost her mother and baby sister. We were all poor, God knows, but I was Townie poor—the worst kind. As a benefit, Mrs. Hickey got someone to talk to—she was a great talker— and I was perfect because I was too shy to interrupt.
And that’s
where I was coming home from that first night. We were in the freeze part of the freeze-and-thaw. I remember the brilliant stars, the stillness, the stinging cold pushing its way through my thin coat, through my thinner dress and stockings. As I rounded the turn by Murphy’s barn I heard it . . . faintly at first. A sound on that frigid December air, floating but substantial, as if the sound were taking corporeal shape, curling and stretching like a cat on air that seemed to draw it ever higher, so it seemed as if it would never fall, just keep reaching, stretching for the stars like some gorgeous balloon. Music. I stopped and tried to determine where it was coming from. And that’s when I looked down into Foran’s Meadow and saw lamplight in the south window of the house. Wood smoke drifted from the cracked chimney, and the music, lilting and weaving, seemed to be rising with the smoke. I don’t know how long I stood there, but I listened and watched until the music finally faded. Farther up the road I turned and looked back: all the windows had gone dark.
That was the first time, and I still wonder that I could hear it. The house, after all, was quite a distance from the road. Of course it was quiet in those days, peaceful, especially in the country and especially on still nights. Maybe it was something about the December air that kept the music aloft. Or maybe the hollow at the top of Annie’s field formed a natural amphitheatre, pushing the music skyward and holding it there. Whatever the reason, long after her lamp had died, it seemed I could still hear the ebbing echo of the music.
Eighty years ago. But the images of that night are still burned into my mind: the frosty air; the sky flecked with stars, brushed with starlight; the moon sitting low on the horizon, the tips of the spruce and fir caressing its milkwhite edges. And then looking down into Foran’s Meadow to hear that sound, that sinewy, lacy line of music rising like a prayer from Annie’s crumbling old house. Somehow it sharpened the world, brought everything into stark focus, made me feel as if I could reach up and taste the stars.
When we passed Foran’s on the way to school the next morning, I told Ruth about what I’d heard. We stopped and stared down at the house.
Ruth turned to me, wide-eyed. “Did it sound scary?”
I wrinkled my forehead.
“You know—scary?”
Ruth, I think, was still hoping for ghosts.
“No. It was beautiful.”
“Was it like jigs and reels that Francis Ruby plays at the dances?”
“Kind of, but prettier.” I struggled for a description. “The notes were . . . longer.”
“What was it played on? An accordion?”
I was embarrassed to realize that I didn’t know. Somehow the sound had transcended any particular source.
“I . . .”
“Well, was it a piano?”
I was pretty sure it wasn’t a piano. The nuns were always playing the piano. And would she even have room for a piano?
“I don’t think so.”
“A tin whistle?”
“No. The sound was more . . . velvety-like.”
“Well, maybe it was a violin—a fiddle.”
That was it.
“Yes,” I said. “A fiddle.”
Over the next week or so I heard the music again. Never in daytime, only at night when I was coming home from Mrs. Hickey’s. And there were some nights when I was disappointed, when I looked down into the meadow to see the house afloat in darkness, wreathed in silence. But when I did hear it, I’d stop and listen, picture a fiddle in an old woman’s hands. Unlike Ruth I had never thought it could be anything else. I had never met that woman— had never even seen her—but somehow I always knew it was Annie who was playing. As ethereal as the music sometimes was, it never sounded supernatural—otherworldly. It always sounded of this world. I could picture her hand drawing the bow across the strings: I imagined a gnarled hand, sprinkled with spots and splotches. Perhaps a stiff, arthritic hand. But definitely a human hand.
Ginny, Annie’s ginger cat, was a bit of a roamer. Sometimes when we were going sliding or on our way back, she’d prance over the snow toward us, although she was careful not to come too close. But soon she began to stray farther afield. Who could blame her? There was absolutely nothing around the house, surrounded as it was by a snowy desert, to perk a cat’s interest. Nothing to explore or chase. And so she soon abandoned the stone step for adventures far beyond the boundaries of the house and meadow. I would sometimes see her up on the road, sometimes as far up as Handy Pond, slinking along a ditch or stalking black-capped chickadees.
One Saturday morning Ruth and Sean and I were walking around Annie’s house on our way to the hill. For some reason I was straying even farther behind than usual. As I drew opposite the house, kicking up snow ghosts, biting ice from my mittens, I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to hear the music again. Without thinking, I turned and headed for the house, keeping a sharp eye on the door and windows for any movement. When I was about fifty feet away, I stopped and listened. I even pulled my cap off my ears so I might hear better. But the house was quiet. I watched for a while, and was just about to give up and carry on down the meadow, when the door opened and Annie herself appeared on the doorstep. I froze like a setter on point, not taking my eyes off her, hoping she wouldn’t bawl at me to get off her property. But at first she didn’t even notice me. She pulled her old yellow cardigan more tightly around her, then she cupped her hands and began calling, “Ginny! Gin! Ginny!” She was a small woman but her voice was clear and strong.
Annie scanned the meadow and, turning, saw me staring at her. She stared herself for a moment. Then she called, “Have you seen my cat?”
For some reason I couldn’t answer.
“I said, have you seen my cat?”
She waved me over but I didn’t budge. I looked for Ruth and Sean but they had disappeared down the hill.
“Come here to me. I just wants to ask you something.”
I approached. But not too close.
“What’s your name?”
I finally found my voice. “Ivy.”
“Ivy, have you seen my cat?”
“No.”
“Well, what are you doin’ now? You got time to go look for her?”
“Where is she?”
Annie looked at me blankly.
“I don’t know, girl! She’s after straying away somewhere.” “Oh.”
“Well, can you or can’t you?”
“Okay. Sometimes I sees her up on the road. Maybe she’s up there.”
“What do she be doin’ up there?”
“Huntin’ birds. Chickadees.”
“The little murderer. Have a look, will you? I haven’t seen her since I put her out this morning. And if you finds her, bring her back. She won’t bite you or claw you or anything like that. She don’t mind people picking her up. She’s only an old sook.” Annie stepped toward me. “What’s that you’re draggin’?”
“My slide.”
“That’s a queer kind of a slide.”
“My dad made it.”
“Did he now? Were you goin’ slidin’? Sure go on for a while first if you wants to.”
“That’s all right. I don’t even like slidin’ all that much.”
“No? Well, see if you can find her. I don’t want her killin’ birds or gettin’ tore up by dogs. Are there any big dogs around?”
“Some.”
“Sacred Heart. Well, if you calls to her she’ll probably come. Her name’s Ginny or Gin or Ginger—anything at all like that. She’s not particular.”
“Okay.”
“Good girl.” Annie turned and went back inside the house.
I’d like to say that I immediately ran off in pursuit of Ginny. That after a long, arduous search I finally found her, confused and scared, threatened by a pack of German Shepherds that I heroically chased off, that she jumped gratefully into my arms and I bore her triumphantly back to Annie. The search was much duller. I wandered up and down the road and looked in all the likely spots. But I didn’t see any sign of Ginny and neither
had Ruth or Sean when I joined them on the hill an hour or so later. They were both impressed, though, that I had seen Annie, had actually spoken to her.
“What’s she like?” Sean wanted to know.
I shrugged. “Just a woman.”
“Is she right old lookin’?” Ruth asked.
“Not right old. But I didn’t see her real up close. She don’t sound old. She sounds just normal.”
Sean looked disappointed. “Did she say anything about us slidin’ in her meadow?”
“She never said we couldn’t. She even told me to go slidin’ first if I wanted to.”
“She just wanted you to find her cat?” Ruth asked.
“That’s all.”
We stayed for another half-hour, occasionally glancing around to see if we would see Ginny. But the cat was more resourceful than we thought. Later, when we passed the house, we saw that Ginny had made her own way home and was sitting regally on the step.
We soon resumed our old route past Annie’s house, and I would sometimes see movement behind her windows— the flash of a hand or face, a ruffled curtain pulled back at the corner. Annie, I learned, was quite watchful herself.
Then one morning, when I was walking by, I was startled by a rapping on her window. I looked over to see Annie’s long-fingered hand beckoning me. In a moment she had opened her door and come to the corner of the house.
“Come in for a minute. I wants to ask you something.”
I tingled with nerves and excitement, but both feelings were almost immediately cancelled by curiosity. I followed her inside, expecting the house to be freezing cold and to smell like a barn. But as soon as I stepped through the vestibule I was almost knocked over by a wave of heat. There was but one big room, as if a wall had been removed. The result was what they now call an open-concept: part sitting room in front, part kitchen in the back. An east door led to what was probably her bedroom.