by Sophie Duffy
‘It’s my sister’s name too,’ Orville says. ‘My kid sister, back home in Labrador. Wes has never met her but she’s around your age. Funny, eh? Two Philippas Wes has never met.’
We make half-hearted smiles and murmurs. Then I ask the question no-one has asked.
‘Where is Helena?’
‘At work,’ Orville says with a note of longing. ‘In a book store down town. She’s not home till six.’ He checks his watch. ‘Wes, you need to get back to school.’
‘Sure, Dad,’ he says, getting up, not needing to be asked twice, going round the table and then bending and kissing him on his still-lush fine head of hair. ‘It was nice meeting you,’ he calls over his shoulder as he leaves, already putting on gloves and a toque of his own (which, it has to be said, isn’t any better on him than on Bob).
‘He’s a good kid,’ Orville says. ‘Comes home everyday for lunch just so’s I’m not on my own.’
We listen to this good kid retreat down the hall, close the front door and we all wish he was still here, a distraction. I concentrate on Helena’s ring on my finger, twiddling it round and round in an attempt to loosen it.
‘I could call her if you want,’ Orville suggests after an awkward pause. ‘I’m sure she could make an excuse to come back. Her boss is real considerate.’
‘Helena always has considerate bosses,’ I say and Bob flushes the colour of prawns for sale on a hot summer’s day in Torquay harbour.
‘That would be good,’ Bob agrees. ‘I mean, we could come back another time. Or maybe we could go and see her.’
‘Sure, why don’t you do that? I can call you guys a cab if you want?’
Orville looks relieved to be able to hand over responsibility for us to his wife. He looks relieved at the prospect of our imminent departure from his home. But he doesn’t look like he hates us, which is what I’ve always assumed. Instead he seems a little embarrassed, guilty perhaps, even sad. Maybe his accident has taught him that life is capable of changing in a second. A lesson I learned a long time ago.
We are back inside another taxi, shuttling us for ten minutes or so from Helena’s home to Helena’s place of work. It drops us right outside Jabberwocky, a small second-hand bookshop in a back street downtown, old-fashioned but respectable and, for all her longings to be modern and with-it, I can see this is the sort of place Helena would love to spend her days. As I would. For unlike Bob, my mother and I love to be surrounded by books.
Bob hands over more Canadian dollars and then we are left standing in the cold, snow whistling around us, weighing down the branches of the trees that line this quaint avenue that is so far from Bob’s News.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘This is it.’
As if I need telling.
This time I take the lead. I stand for a few moments studying the shop window with its rather clever display of Agatha Christie’s before I push open the door. I keep my head down until Bob is inside too, shutting the weather out, standing next to me, stamping his boots on the mat.
There are rows of books in here (obviously, being a book store) but they are packed so tight, so high, that you can’t see through them, beyond them. You have to walk around the stacks and down the rows to get a feel for the layout, to find your way around, to make your way past the counter, the ancient till, the man writing in a ledger, looking up and smiling a welcome, saying, ‘Hello, can I help you?’
You have to strain yourself to hear Bob’s reply as his voice is now almost all cough. But you still can’t see anyone else, no other customers, no woman who can pass for your mother. No woman in her prime with smart clothes and accessories. No lipstick. No high heels. But if you turn the corner at the back of the shop, you can at last see someone who might pass for her, but she is obscured by the trolley of books beside her, so you can’t be certain. There is a copy of Madame Bovary in her hand, which she is about to push into its place on the shelf. There are glasses perched on the end of her nose. Her fine dark hair, no hint of grey, is piled on top of her head. You will see her look up at the sound of footsteps. A double-take. Eyes opened wide in wonder. A jaw dropped. Madame Bovary crashing to the floor, the pages rippling open.
‘Philippa? Is that you?’
Her voice is deeper than I remember. Years of countless cigarettes. I want to make my own voice loud and clear. I want it to ring out across the battlefields but all I can manage is a mouselike: ‘Yes, it’s me, Philippa.’
She pushes her glasses up onto her head, takes a step towards me, puncturing Madame Bovary with her heel. Then she stops and takes a deep breath before reaching out for me. I go to her. I am in her arms and the smell of her – perfume and smoke – turns back the clock, wipes away the last decade, shrinks me back to a little girl again. A little fat girl with ribbons in my hair. A hundred brushes a day.
I shut my eyes and feel her holding me, awkward and tense but strong and firm. Then she lets go. I hear her give out a small gasp. I turn to the place her eyes are now focused and there is Bob. I don’t know how long he’s been standing there but he can see as clearly as I can that Helena is crying.
‘You brought her,’ she says, breathing hard to try and control the sobs. ‘I always hoped you would.’
Bob stays still, stays firm.
‘You could’ve come back, Helena,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t up to me.’
‘I know… I’m sorry… I couldn’t… ’
The considerate boss is now also crammed into the row of books with Helena, Bob and myself.
‘Would you care to take your friends out the back, Helena?’ he enquires softly, handing her a hanky. ‘I’ll make you all tea.’
She smiles at him, grateful, and I can see that Helena has tried her hardest to replace Bob. But we both know – Mother and me – that that is quite impossible.
Half an hour later we’ve drunk tea, we’ve explained our visit to Orville. She’s smoked two cigarettes whilst explaining Wes. And it is as I expected. She found out she was pregnant with Wes soon after arriving in Canada. She’d had a difficult time with him, as he was a sickly child. Orville was away most of the time, modelling. And then, as she was getting on top of things, she had a visit from the police late one night, informing her that Orville had been in a near-fatal car crash out in New York State.
‘I’m sorry, Philippa.’ She takes my hand, squeezes it tight. ‘I should’ve told you. I was stupid not to… I suppose I thought it was best this way. You had Bob.’
She smiles at him. The lines around her mouth disappear.
‘You had Bob and I thought you were better off with him. I still think that. Really.’ She squeezes my hand even tighter so I think she might crush it, break my fingers. But it is somehow a comfort to feel the ring she left for me all those years before dig into my skin. I know I am really here, in this moment. ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.’ She says this so quietly I hope I’m not imagining it.
She does look happy. She’s lost that edginess she used to carry around with her, along with her Consulates and lipstick. The edginess that she could pull out of her handbag at any given moment. I’m not stupid enough to think she’s only just discovered happiness now, having finally seen me after all these years. I am not confusing happiness with relief. Helena’s state goes deeper than relief. Far deeper. It is a contentment with her life in Canada, despite the accident and the changes that it must have brought them all. Despite the fact she never sent for me.
And I think of all the things I could be saying. All the things I could be shouting. But it doesn’t matter. I am here with Helena when she could so easily have been killed in that car crash that took away the use of Orville’s legs. When for all I know she could’ve been as dead as Albert Morris or Lucas. As dead as my baby that never was. Helena is alive and living a life without me. And, knowing that, seeing that for myself, is alright. I don’t want to ask if I can move into the condo and play big sister to Wes. I want to have my holiday, go to Niagara, spend some time with my mother and then leave her
here while I go back home with Bob. Back home to Wink and Andy and Captain. I want to see Cheryl. I want to see Auntie Sheila and Linda. I even want to see Bernie. And, now the memory is beginning to fade, a little, I want to see Terry and Clive and even Christopher Bennett because they are part of my life. My home. So I have nothing else to say. I only want to listen to her talk about Toronto, to Bob recounting tales of Torquay and its residents that make Helena smile wistfully. That is enough.
At last, when Helena has stubbed out her third cigarette, she says she’d best get back to work, though I like to think she would have stayed much, much longer, talking, listening. Bob and I go through the rigmarole of hats and gloves and coats all over again and then Helena walks us back through the shop, to the door.
‘How long did you say you were here for?’ She brushes the drips from my shoulders, without thinking what she is doing.
‘Just a week,’ Bob says. ‘There’s the shop… and Wink… ’
At Wink’s name, Helena has to blow her nose again. But then she forces some deep breaths on herself, conjures up the strength of her old friend across the ocean, strong despite her wheelchair and her hastening decline, and makes herself say difficult words.
‘Why now?’ she asks. ‘I mean, why did you decide to come now?’
Bob looks at me, waiting to see if I’ll answer this question. But I don’t feel the need to tell Helena. I might be happy to see her, happy to hear why she’s been absent from my life, but I don’t feel the need to tell her about my latest loss. That experience belongs to Bob and me. He is the one that will pick up the pieces.
‘Bob thought it was time,’ I say.
‘Thank you,’ she says, turning her attention to him. She lightly touches his arm and his face melts in a way that it has never done with Linda.
That night I banish all thoughts of Norman Bates and my Cavalier. I focus on Wes and Orville and Helena. I am back in their living room that overlooks the tree-filled park, sitting on the sofa, reading the lists pinned on the notice board, picking up the papers strewn across the table, breathing the cigarettes and perfume of Helena. My mother.
We’ve arranged to see Helena again the next day for lunch but our plans are going to have to change. Bob is having a bad night, swinging between vomiting and heavy bouts on the toilet. I give up trying to ignore the disgusting noises in the end and turn on the radio which I’ve only just discovered, also built into the headboard along with the light (what other gadgets are hidden in there?).
When Bob too realises he’ll never manage any sleep, he says: ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it to see Helena today.’ He looks miserable. Forlorn. Like the bottom has fallen out of his world (when actually the world has fallen out of his bottom).
‘You can still go,’ he says. ‘Ed’ll put you in a cab.’
Yes, I could still go but it won’t be the same without Bob there beside me.
And I do go. I am put in a taxi by Ed, I have lunch with Helena in a diner round the corner from Jabberwocky and she tells me about Wes, she tells me about Orville’s new business (he runs a kind of male model agency from home) and I tell her about school, about the shop, about what I hope to do in the future. But I don’t tell her everything. And she probably holds things back from me too. But I can’t help feeling a sense of history. Just the two of us. After all these years. It was never easy then. Somehow it is easier now.
Afterwards, she gives me a hundred dollars (A hundred dollars? Think of it as pocket money back payment.) and tells me to go shopping. To have fun and give Bob a chance to rest. She’d come with me only she has to go back to work. She points out the best shops within walking distance and gives me details of a bus that will take me all the way back to the motel when I am done (presumably because she still has little confidence I’ll be able to stop a taxi dead in its tracks the way she can).
I have a surprisingly good time on my own, feeling much more adventurous than when I went to London and rode the tube with Raymond – though I don’t actually manage to spend more than a few dollars on souvenirs, including a must-have racoon’s tail and some postcards, one of which will be for Miss Parry. When I eventually return to the motel, there is a note from Bob pinned to the door, telling me to sit with Ed for a bit while he catches up on sleep. So I spend the next few hours with Ed, hat on his head, Labatt’s in his hand, watching the hockey and the bad American actors. And of course, my favourite, the ads, wondering if there might be an old one of Orville’s.
Bob is up and about the next day but looking ashen and wiped-out so we don’t go far. We can’t see Helena as she has to take Orville for a hospital check-up. But we do make it to a travel agents where we book a coach ride and an overnight stay in a hotel. We are going to Niagara!
The following day we visit a museum and traipse through a shopping mall where every other shop sells ice hockey gear. Later, Helena and Wes join us for afternoon tea in a hotel lounge. I remember the white gloves she used to make me wear. The ones I mislaid up the chimney. I remember Lucas shouting, ‘All scream for ice cream!’ She must remember too because she catches my eye. But we don’t mention his name for that would open a box of memories that have been hidden in the attic for far too long.
Then we say our goodbyes and arrange to meet one more time, after our tourist trip, before we head back to Britain.
I’ve seen pictures of Niagara in books. I’ve watched the film with Marilyn Monroe. And – perhaps because I’ve grown up beside the sea and know what water can do – the unstoppable power of the Falls has always frightened me. But not enough to prevent me from witnessing this sight myself. I used to imagine the almost-deafening crash of the Falls from one great lake to another. The spray hovering above like great billowing clouds of smoke. The thundering water. But I am not prepared for seeing it – this wonder of the world – in winter.
Bob and I stand at the rails, staring in awe. The water still continues to fall on and on like it has done for thousands of years. But at the edges, there are frozen formations like monsters trapped in ice. There is even a bridge of ice that you can imagine stepping onto and walking across the river, crossing from Canada to America. But it is enough to stand there, to see the weird ice-shapes, the water crashing, the frozen spray clinging to the trees and lampposts all around us.
‘Did you know in 1848 the residents of Niagara woke up to a deafening silence?’ Bob is reading from a guide book, loudly, so he can be heard above the boom of the water, and through the parka covering my ears. ‘The falls had dried up by some freak of nature. Further upstream the Niagara River had frozen and prevented the falls from working properly. When the ice began to thaw, the falls once again thundered and the residents could breathe easy again.’
Bob gives up on the guidebook after this; the wind howls off the river and the snow hits us horizontally in the face. But it is more than the impossible weather; he is speechless. So am I. We will never see anything like this again.
Our final morning. We are getting ready to meet Helena for a last coffee in yet another diner, the Lakeside Grill, somewhere near the CN Tower (which Bob and I have yet to see the top of, as it has so far been enveloped in clouds). Just as we are putting on our boots, there’s a knock on the door.
‘It’s probably Ed,’ I say. But when I open the door it quite clearly isn’t.
‘Hello,’ Helena says. ‘I thought I’d better come now in case I lost my nerve later.’
‘Lost your nerve?’
‘I wanted to make sure I said goodbye properly this time.’
She comes in and then fumbles in her handbag for something – hopefully not her old edginess. Probably her cigarettes.
‘I got you this,’ she says.
She hands over a book. But not any old book she could’ve plucked off the shelf at work. I sit on the bed and savour the present for a moment. I can't remember ever opening presents from Helena though I must’ve done at some point when I was little. Those memories have been replaced with memories of Bob’s presents. Wink
’s presents. Cheryl’s and Linda’s and Auntie Sheila’s. I can only ever remember the handful of cards and letters from Helena. They are kept in my top drawer, wrapped in a yellow baby shawl, every curl and loop memorised.
‘Go on, Philippa, open it.’
She is sitting on the bed next to me. So close I can feel the cold coming off her coat. I can hear a slight crackle and wheeze as she breathes in and out. I can smell her cigarettes and perfume.
I carefully unwrap the tissue paper, peeling back the Sellotape so I won’t rip it. I think I am about to lose my grip that has been so tight the last few days when I see what is inside: the best book in the world: The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss.
‘It’s a first edition,’ Helena says. ‘I picked it up during a house clearance, years ago. I always knew I wanted you to have it.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. I look up at her green eyes, her red lips. ‘I wish I had something to give you.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she says. ‘You don’t owe me anything... ’
Her tears are just waiting round that corner.
‘… Everything I’ve ever done… however awful things might appear… it was… it was because I loved you… even if it hasn’t always seemed that way.’
You can say that again, is what I think. But I don’t say it. There is no point. I’ve flown across the ocean and now I know I don’t want Helena back. She hasn’t been kidnapped or held against her will. I don’t need to enrol the help of the British High Commissioner. She doesn’t need to be rescued. Helena is staying here. And Bob and I are going home.
We settle our bill with Ed who takes it upon himself to give me a (grizzly) bear hug.
‘Take care of yourself, Philippa, eh.’
Then he turns to Bob. ‘And don’t forget… if you’re ever in the Cirencester area, be sure to look up Ken. Tell him he owes me a beer.’
He thumps Bob on the back so hard I think he might topple over, felled like a giant tree. After the Falls, Ed is quite possibly the closest we’ll get to the Canada of my dreams.