Janette Turner Hospital Collected Stories

by Janette Turner Hospital

  “It was the wife’s parents, you see.” Jack Hamilton cleared his throat. “First her father last Easter, and now her mother’s gone. Left us their house up country, you know. Huge place, family antiques, death duties, taxes, you know …” He spoke in a rush. “Had to sell one of the properties.”

  Well of course the others knew … a death in the family, something like that.

  The Hamiltons, naturally, had investigated the possibility of selling the country house instead, but there was the problem of moving the furniture. “Very expensive, you see,” Jack Hamilton said. “We inquired. Believe me, we inquired. And then again it just didn’t seem to fit here. Belongs in the other house, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh well, in that case. Yes, yes, of course. Can’t be helped.” Ada Watts was unexpectedly onside, catching the sofa off guard. It made a sucking noise between her legs. “I tell my boys: those Queen Annes get moved from here over my dead body and you can tell your prissy wives: don’t think I won’t know, when I’m gone. The Queen Annes stay. As long as the house does.”

  The Hamiltons, with a surge of relief and warmth, spoke of how greatly they would miss the neighbourhood; and Bessie Cotter, sorrowful, commented on the improbability of a new owner looking after the rhubarb properly. Yes, the Hamiltons sighed. Leaving the garden was the worst.

  “It takes a crisis. As my Harold used to say.”

  “Your Winston.”

  “Eh?”

  “Your Winston. Harold was your brother.”

  “If Harold and Winston were here, they’d keep an eye on the rhubarb.”

  Bessie Cotter announced with a hint of tartness: “Mr Cotter will keep an eye on it, won’t you, Arthur? Remember how you used to mow the Watts’ lawn for them because Winston was always away with the horses?”

  “I’ve known you since three weeks after Noah came out of the ark, Bessie Cotter, and you haven’t changed one bit. Never could resist putting in your two cents’ worth.”

  “She came out of the ark flashing those hams,” said Arthur Cotter in a ruminative mumble, thinking aloud. “Winston bait. Poor chap could never keep his eyes off her garters.”

  There was a stunned hush, followed by a gust of laughter from bare-thighed Ada Watts.

  “It takes a crisis,” she said. “We should have been doing this for years.”

  Yes, they all agreed. Yes. Such a good neighbourhood.

  And who, Ada Watts wanted to know, were the buyers? Could they hope for kinfolk, or must they fortify themselves against a further siege of students?

  No. Not students. An elderly couple.

  An elderly couple! Wonderful!

  “Anyone we know?”

  The Hamiltons didn’t think so.

  “Moving here from somewhere else? Retiring?”

  Yes, probably retiring. The Hamiltons were not sure.

  “I’m so glad for the rhubarb. And your roses. Such a relief, only two people moving in. We were rather worried, you know, Arthur and I.”

  Well, actually … more than two, perhaps. The agent had said something about a married son and a married daughter …

  “Good gracious! All in the same house? Very odd, isn’t it?”

  Yes, a bit unusual perhaps.

  “University people?”

  No. The Hamiltons thought not. A restaurant, they believed. Family business. Something like that.

  Well, at least a family. Six people. It could have been so much worse.

  Not six exactly, the Hamiltons confessed. The young couples had some children.

  “How many children?”

  Five in all, they believed.

  Mrs Phillips concentrated on her tea, swallowing hot sweet comfort. Ada Watts leaned forward and jabbed the air with one of her canes. “What is the name of these people?”

  Mrs Hamilton looked mournfully at her husband who looked at his hands. “We couldn’t help it,” he said apologetically. “We haven’t even met them, you know. Agent arranged everything. Property taxes due on both places, you know. We had to have the money. They met our price. There was nothing we could do.”

  Mrs Phillips proffered her teapot. “You mustn’t think anyone is blaming you. These things happen.”

  The cane rapped out the question again: “What is the name?”

  “The name is Wong.”

  “I knew it! I knew it!” Ada Watts gave a snort, part triumph at being undeceivable, part battle cry. “The Wongs, I suppose? Own half the real estate in town!”

  Yes, the Hamiltons admitted forlornly. Those Wongs.

  Ada Watts gyrated between her canes into an upright position. “First the Frisbees, now the soy sauce!” She stumped toward the front door and turned to admonish them all with one of her canes. “They’ll tack on dormers and annexes, you know. They’ll turn your house into a jigsaw puzzle. We won’t see the block for boarders and parked cars.” She pounded the hallway carpet with her cane. “They are trying to buy us all out, of course. First they’ll drive us crazy, then they’ll drive us out. Well, we shall see who gives in first! We shall see who the survivors are! Lovely seedcake, Mrs Phillips. We must do this again.”

  The crocuses came and went, and then the moving vans, and then the lilacs. The summer annuals would last for months and so would the Frisbees and footballs. And so would the music. Forever, it seemed. If you could call it music. A cacophony of stereo decibels and drums and shrieking voices and bass vibrations that invaded the house even through the storm windows, setting the delicate nerves of the harpsichord on edge. Of course, Mrs Phillips reminded herself, with students it would have been exactly the same. Their kind of music. She simply had not had to deal with it stuttering up through the floorboards before, attacking the very ground she walked on. Thump, thump, vibrate. She would rather share her stairwell.

  She spoke to the Cotters over the back fence as they both clipped off the last of the wilting peony blossoms and staked their tomatoes.

  “I think I am going to buy a condominium after all.”

  “What’s that you say?” Arthur Cotter asked, his hands full of mulch.

  “A condominium. It’s their radio. I simply cannot live with it. I’ve sealed up all the windows and I can shut out the sound, but I can still feel it.”

  “They’re in our tomatoes too, you know. I’ve got something for it.”

  “No, no. The radio. I’m going to move, I think.”

  Arthur Cotter cupped his ear toward her. “Can’t quite catch …”

  “Says she’s going,” shouted Bessie Cotter. She explained: “Doesn’t have his hearing aid on when he’s gardening, you know.” And shouted again: “She’s going. She can’t stand the Wongs.”

  “The what?”

  “The Chinese family!” Bessie Cotter shouted into a sudden lull in the disc jockey’s voice that boomed from the Wongs’ kitchen window. “She can’t stand them!”

  “Oh no really!” Mrs Phillips was dismayed, glancing over her shoulder. “They’re very nice people. I’m sure. It’s just their radio.”

  “The what?”

  “Their radio!” she shouted.

  “Radio doesn’t bother us too much,” Bessie Cotter said.

  Deafness, thought Mrs Phillips, has its advantages.

  Mrs Phillips was unable to sleep. She understood why the music was called rock. She felt as though an avalanche of impermeable matter were pummelling her nerve ends. She got up and put on her robe, made herself some hot milk with cinnamon and honey, sat in her living-room and tried to think.

  Around midnight, when everything was finally quiet, she tried the harpsichord. It had been jarred badly out of tune. She worked with silent absorption, timing it. She began to play Vivaldi. She began to feel at peace. Life was manageable after all. One simply needed to make adjustments.

  She heard a car swing into the neighbouring
driveway, heard a babble of talk and laughter. The son and his wife were given to partying. Mrs Phillips smiled benignly and played Vivaldi. To each his own life.

  Then it came at her again, that intrusive insistent rhythm, that rude music. One o’clock in the morning. It was too much. She put her forehead against the keyboard and wept.

  By dawn, after a tossing dream-riddled sleep, a solution had presented itself to her. She would simply visit her new neighbours and ask them very politely to turn their music down. A reasonable request, surely. People were rational. It was natural to want to get along with one’s neighbours. There was no reason why they would refuse. Why was she shaking so? Why were her palms wet and cold?

  After her second cup of coffee, she put on a light jacket and combed her hair. But her legs felt as though they were just testing themselves after a long illness and she had to sit down again. Too much coffee perhaps. She put on the kettle and made a pot of tea. She drank a cup.

  Now, she told herself firmly, as she did on Sundays before visiting her aunt in the nursing home. This has to be done and that is all there is to it.

  Outside it was clear and sunny and the Wongs’ front path was a curious mosaic of mushrooms and roots spread on swathes of cheesedoth to dry in the sun. The old Mrs Wong, a tiny figure, was sitting cross-legged beside the path, taking up one by one the gnarled root-like things, doing something to them with her fingers.

  “Good morning,” said Mrs Phillips hesitantly, disconcerted by new irregularities.

  The old lady looked at her and nodded several times.

  “I wonder if I might have a word with your son perhaps? Or is it your son-in-law?”

  The old lady nodded rapidly again and went on doing things to the roots.

  “Ah, could you … could I? … Shall I go to your front door?”

  She was wondering how to negotiate the mushrooms and reach the front steps without damaging anything. The old lady offered no suggestions. Mrs Phillips tiptoed gingerly between the roots and reached the porch. There no longer seemed to be a doorbell, though a set of wind-chimes dangled down from the door-frame.

  “Should I … do I tap the chimes?”

  “No use talking to my mother,” said a voice through the suddenly opened door. “She doesn’t speak any English.”

  “Oh! Actually, it was you I wished to speak to, Mr Wong. You are the son, I believe?”

  “The son.” He laughed loudly, in a high-pitched nasal way. “Yes indeed, ma’am. I am the son.” His laugh sounded Chinese, but his voice sounded local. Home grown. And slightly snide. No different from her own son’s. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering …” She hated the way her voice quavered. “I have a small request. I don’t like to make a fuss, but I wonder if you wouldn’t mind playing your radio more softly, especially at night. Much more softly, actually.”

  He stared at her, his eyebrows puckering. “It’s a free country, ma’am.”

  “Yes, of course it is. But we do … in this country, that is … we do try to respect each other’s rights. We have very different tastes in music, you see. You people …”

  “What do you mean, we people?” he demanded belligerently.

  “I mean: you people who like rock music …”

  “I was born in this country same as you, lady. You feel you have special privileges?”

  “No, of course not, Mr Wong. This is quite uncalled for. I was only asking if it is necessary to have your radio quite so loud …”

  “You been across the road to speak to those students about their stereos?”

  “Well, no … not yet … because I keep my storm windows … But if their sound carried … if they kept me awake after midnight …”

  “I’ve got more right than those students, lady. I’ve got legal title to this land and they’re just tenants. My tenants, as it happens. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  He closed the door.

  Mrs Phillips felt decidedly unsteady. She leaned on the porch railing and sank down to sit on the top step. She put her hands to her cheeks and realised that she was weeping. It was not the sort of thing she approved of in public but she did not seem to be able to do anything about it.

  I shall have to leave of course, she thought. The world of high ceilings and harpsichords and sweet neighbourhood silence was irretrievably lost. She had outlived it. It could not be transplanted to a condominium, it was as outmoded as gas lighting. Well, she had survived other losses.

  She realised with embarrassment that old Mrs Wong was staring at her.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Crying here on your step. It’s an upsetting time for me.”

  Then she remembered that Mrs Wong did not speak English. What formidable isolation, she thought. How long has she been in this country? Thirty years, if the son was born here. At least thirty years.

  “How have you been able to stand it?” she asked aloud. “Whom do you speak to? What have you lost?”

  The old lady suddenly began to talk, earnestly, rapidly, in pell-mell Chinese. It seemed to Mrs Phillips that she spoke of ancient courtyards and green rice paddies and granary floors. Of bound feet perhaps, and of family shrines.

  Mrs Phillips moved down to the bottom step. “Of course,” she said, “as long as we are alive nothing is completely lost. In here and in here” – she touched her own forehead lightly, then Mrs Wong’s – “it is still complete.” She formed a sphere with her hands. “Everything still exists whole for us.”

  Mrs Wong nodded vehemently, smiling. She patted the ground beside her. Mrs Phillips hesitated a moment. (She had never sat on the ground.) She kneeled instead, as though she were about to prune her roses, and began to help with the roots, breaking them into fragments with her fingers.

  Waiting

  Mr Matthew Thomas owed his name and faith, as well as his lands, to those ancestors of lowly caste who had seen the salvation of the Lord. (It had been brought to South India by St Thomas the Apostle, and by later waves of Portuguese Jesuits, Dutch Protestants, and British missionaries.) Now, heir of both East and West, Matthew Thomas sat quietly in one of the chairs at the crowded Air India office, waiting for his turn. It was necessary to make inquiries on behalf of a cousin of his wife, and although his wife had died ten years ago, these family obligations continued. The cousin, whose son was to be sent overseas for a brief period of foreign education, lived in the village of Parassala and could not get down to Trivandrum during the rice harvest. Mr Matthew Thomas did not mind. He had much to think about on the subject of sons and daughters and foreign travel, and he was glad of this opportunity for quiet contemplation away from the noisy happiness of his son’s house.

  It was true that he had been waiting since nine o’clock that morning and it was now half past three in the afternoon. It was also true that things would have been more pleasant if the ceiling fan had been turning, for it was that steamy season when the monsoon is petering out, and the air hangs as still and hot and heavy as a mosquito net over a sick-bed. But the fan had limped to a halt over an hour ago, stricken by the almost daily power failure, and one simply accepted such little inconveniences.

  Besides, Mr Thomas could look from the comfortable vantage point of today back toward yesterday, which had also been spent at the Air India office, but since he had arrived too late to find a chair it had been necessary to stand all day. At the end of the day, someone had told him that he was supposed to sign his name in the book at the desk and that he would be called when his turn came. Wiser now, he had arrived early in the morning, signed his name, and found a chair. He was confident that his turn would come today, and until it did he could sit and think in comfort. Mr Thomas was often conscious of God’s goodness to him in such matters. All the gods were the same, he reflected, thinking fondly of the auspicious match which had just been arranged for the daughter of his neighbour Mr Balakrishnan Pillai. Lord Vishnu; Lord Shiva; the A
llah of his friend Mr Karim, the baker; the One True God of his own church: all protected their faithful. He did not dwell on paradox.

  God was merciful. It was sufficient.

  The problem which demanded attention, and which Mr Thomas turned over and over in his mind, peacefully and appraisingly as he might examine one of his coconuts, concerned both his married daughter in Burlington, Vermont, and the white woman waiting in another chair in the Air India office.

  Burlingtonvermont. Burlingtonvermont. What a strange word it was. This was how his son-in-law had pronounced it. His daughter had explained in a letter that it was like saying Trivandrum, Kerala. But who would ever say Trivandrum, Kerala? Why would they say it? He had been deeply startled yesterday morning to hear the word suddenly spoken aloud, just when he was thinking of his daughter. Burlingtonvermont. The white women had said it to the clerk at the counter, and she had been told to write her name in the book and wait for her turn.

  This is a strange and wonderful thing, he had thought. And now he understood why God had arranged these two days of waiting. It was ordained so that he would see this woman who came, it seemed, from the place where his daughter was; so that he might have time to study her at leisure and consider what he should do.

  He thought of Kumari, his youngest and favourite child. What did she do in Burlingtonvermont? He tried to picture her now that she was in her confinement, her silk sari swelling slightly over his grandchild. A terrible thought suddenly presented itself to him. If she had no servants, who was marketing for her at this time when she should not leave the house? Surely she herself was not…? No. His mind turned from the idea, yet the bothersome riddles accumulated.

  She was in her third month now, so he knew from the four child-bearings of his own wife that she would be craving for sweet mango pickle. He had written to say he would send a package of this delicacy. Dear daddy, she had written back, please do not send the sweet pickle. I have no need of anything. I am perfectly happy.

  How could this be? It was true that her parents-in-law lived only five kilometres distant in the same city, and her brother-in- law and his wife also lived close by, and of course they would do her marketing and bring her the foods she craved. Of course, they were her true family now that she was married. Even so, when a woman was in the family way, it was a time when she might return to the house of her father, when she would want to eat the delicacies of the house of her birth.