Patchwork Society
Page 14
“Who are your neighbours?” Irma asked.
“I don’t know,” Ivy lied. She had never brought Irma home.
Although it wasn’t what Clara had intended, by keeping Ivy in town, Ivy saw much more of Red than she would have had he been at Batchawana on weekends. In fact, she saw him every day. The Hilltop house was closed in but much had to be done. Ivy and Red used large canisters of putty or plaster as chairs. Red smoked his pipe, contemplating what was next on the plans, while Ivy dreamed of the house-warming party she would throw.
“I brought up the subject of leaving RVH with Miss Hobbs,” Ivy told Red as they sat on their improvised seats.
“All I’ll say is don’t change your mind.”
Clara had battled alongside Dr. McCaig and Reverend Hives for a new school, albeit arriving well after the meetings with the government began in 1929. She no longer expected the children to be enthused. A new school didn’t return the youngsters to their communities. Nevertheless, the official opening of the new Shingwauk took place in the afternoon of October 3, 1935. Despite the absence of dignitaries, the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides were in their uniforms, and the children, thanks to Mrs. Aalto, were spanking clean. The only politician to attend was local MP Henry Hamilton, who had been involved in the plumbing modifications to keep the boys and girls apart. Others in attendance included the bishop of Algoma and other clergy. The opening of Shingwauk was Clara’s last day. She was exhausted.
CHAPTER 35
Ivy returned to Montreal after her summer vacation at Batchawana with a conflicted heart. Clara had made many sacrifices to ensure she could go to the best nursing school, and Red was offering her the home she had never had. She and Red corresponded regularly, and once a week they talked on the phone. This had to be arranged in advance, since the telephone in the nurses’ residence was used for emergencies only. In December, Red made a trip to Montreal to give Ivy an engagement ring, knowing she would have to leave it in her drawer. He wanted to formalize their engagement, though it was too soon to announce while Ivy was still a student at Royal Victoria Hospital.
In February, Miss Hobbs wrote to Clara that Ivy, after much thought, had decided to leave RVH and return home to the Soo. Clara, hoping to convince her daughter otherwise, got on the train to Montreal. Ivy wasn’t yet twenty-one and was still considered a minor by the hospital.
As Clara disembarked at Windsor Station, she remembered it was here that she had received the sad news of Alistair Harwood’s death. She had been on her way back to Lethbridge after spending three weeks in England with her family. The telephone booth from which she had called the Galt Hospital to inquire about the mayor was still in the same corner of the station. The words he died in your apartment, Matron were forever etched in Clara’s memory. Ivy’s decision to quit nursing school felt like another death.
Climbing into a waiting taxi, Clara headed to the hospital. As the car drove up University Avenue, she recalled her loyal friend, Francis Newbury. He had graduated with honours from McGill and had gone on to train at Royal Victoria Hospital. His first post as a doctor was at the Galt. He moved on after a few years, but a statue of him on horseback stood at the front entrance as a reminder of his medical pioneering. He had removed the first appendix at the Galt. Clara wondered what he would have said about Ivy’s leaving. He had once described her as a lovely little girl, in his letter recommending Clara for the position of superintendent of the Galt Hospital — his alma mater, as he put it.
Clara called Miss Hobbs to say she was just leaving Windsor Station. Walking down the corridor to the director’s office, Clara breathed in the familiar hospital smells. Her former student still had the same bright blue eyes and warm smile.
“How have you been?” Miss Hobbs asked.
“I retired from the residential school last October. I teach a course to the nursing students as a volunteer.” Clara chuckled, and Miss Hobbs did, too, when she quipped, “I haven’t been reduced to pushing the auxiliary cart yet.” Clara had been known to get impatient with the high-handed volunteer ladies at the Galt.
“Let’s talk about Ivy,” Miss Hobbs said, motioning Clara to sit down. It seemed the tables were turned, with the director now advising Clara. “Your daughter’s been an excellent student, but her heart isn’t in the hospital. She seemed quite lonely when Miss Mitchell left. They were opposites but very good friends.”
Clara let out a frustrated breath she had been holding. “Ivy’s fiancé, Red Donnelly, was spoiled by his family after his kidney was removed when he was sixteen. He’s used to getting his own way. Six months isn’t too long to wait, to let Ivy qualify.”
“You’re treating this as a contest, Mrs. Durling, with Ivy as the prize.” Miss Hobbs could see in Clara’s face how losing her job as superintendent of the Galt Hospital had taken its toll. “Let’s bring Ivy into this conversation.”
Ivy must have been listening outside the open door because she came right in. Clara was overwhelmed to see her daughter in uniform. Ivy’s soft blond hair was rolled into a chignon under her cap.
“Tell your mother how you feel,” Miss Hobbs urged.
“I feel I’m reliving my childhood.” Ivy avoided her mother’s hurt gaze. “Red has built me a home. That’s what I missed growing up.”
“But you had security,” Clara said. “I put you in the best situation I could after the war. I’d lost all but you, Ivy.”
“And I’ve benefited, Mum, from all that you provided. Red calls me his social asset.”
Miss Hobbs tried to lighten the atmosphere with a slight laugh at Ivy’s comment. No one spoke then until Miss Hobbs broke the silence. “Mrs. Durling, you’re a widow, I’m a spurned bride, and your daughter’s engaged. Whatever happens to her, she’ll manage. I have faith in your daughter, and I don’t believe we’ll have another war. Ivy will — as they say in the storybooks — live happily ever after.”
“Miss Hobbs, thank you for your kindnesses, especially when I reacted so badly in surgical operations,” Ivy said, shaking the director’s hand.
“You were at your best with patients,” Miss Hobbs said. She wished Clara good luck in her retirement and walked them to the door of her office. Clearly, she felt emotional to lose Ivy.
Back in Ivy’s room, Clara helped to pack her daughter’s trunk, which would be delivered to the train in the hospital truck. She hesitated as she hung Ivy’s uniforms in the closet and then started to cry.
Ivy put her arms around Clara. “We’re not packing a coffin, Mum.”
They were to catch the train the next day, and Clara had booked a double-bedded room at the Windsor Arms.
When they were settled in their hotel room, Ivy said, “Red brought me here a year ago for dinner. We almost knocked over a bottle of wine. What was it like courting in your day?”
“Much the same, except we drank ale.”
They stayed up talking, and Clara realized she had spent little time chatting with her daughter. “What are you going to do in the months before the wedding?”
“Understand Red’s business. Have you ever heard of ferrocement?”
Clara sighed. “We can talk about cement tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 36
The house on Hilltop was built and ready to move into when Ivy arrived back in the Soo in mid-February 1936. She and Red chose the first Saturday in May as their wedding date. The next twelve weeks were a whirlwind of preparations. Ivy and Clara bustled around, dealing with guest lists, engraved invitations from Henry Birks in Toronto, room reservations at the Windsor Hotel for out-of-town guests, and choosing a dining room for a luncheon reception to follow the ceremony. Clara buried any hard feelings toward Red, and with renewed energy, prepared herself for the wedding of her only daughter.
Percy Paris, the dean of St. Luke’s Anglican Church, would perform the marriage ceremony. Ivy attended a round of teas and showers before the wedding, and Jessie Rossiter offered to entertain the out-of-town guests on the eve of the wedding while the family members gathere
d for the rehearsal dinner. She had already sent a request for hors d’oeuvres to her mother in Toronto.
Jean, now married to Rupert Nesbitt and living in Vancouver, was thrilled to be Ivy’s matron of honour. Red asked Max Laird, his classmate at the University of Toronto, to be his best man. Ivy had never met Max but knew he was a member of Red’s geology club. Barnaby was touched to the core to give Ivy away.
“You can’t wear a pink wedding dress,” Clara said, distressed at Ivy’s choice from a New York catalogue. “It will bring you bad luck.”
“The dress isn’t pink,” Ivy insisted. “The colour is lilac.”
Ivy fussed that the church would be surrounded by dirty, not-yet-melted snow in early May.
“We wanted to be married in May,” Red said. “Shall we postpone the date?” When Ivy looked stricken, he added, “I think I have an inelegant solution. I purchased blown insulation equipment in Montreal. It’s the first of its kind in Northern Ontario. The men have been trained to use the heavy machinery on cellulose, which is heavier than paper.” He suggested they might hide the dirty snow in festive confetti.
“I’m marrying such a smart man,” Ivy said during a practice session on the property of Donnelly Building Materials. Shooting confetti got many chuckles from Red’s employees.
“We’ll be able to insulate houses much faster and with fewer men,” Red said as the men laughed.
As more and more wedding guest acceptances came in from Lethbridge and Calgary, Ivy understood that her mother hadn’t been disgraced.
Red had ensured the house would be furnished before the wedding day. He had purchased a dining room set, including a sideboard, a carving table, and two settees from an estate auction. “You’re the Mistress of the Mansion,” he teased as Ivy arranged items from her white shower in the linen cupboard.
She looked forlornly at her empty dressing closet and joked she would have to go on a buying spree.
“Well, we’re going to be in Chicago,” Red said. He was visibly happy that Ivy had come home.
The night before the wedding, Jean stayed with Ivy. The prenuptial dinner had ended early, and Red drove them home.
“Forty-seven Hilltop Crescent,” he said proudly as he dropped the girls off at the couple’s future home.
Ivy gossiped with Jean late into the evening until Clara crossed the street to say, “Ivy needs her sleep.”
The next morning, Clara woke the girls with a tray of Ellen Donnelly’s cheese biscuits and coffee made in a fancy double pot that Ivy had received as a wedding gift. Jean served as hairdresser and manicurist.
At ten o’clock, Jack arrived in Red’s roadster with the top up. “Can’t mess the bride’s hair,” he said.
Lily came with her blue Rambler to drive Clara and Jean. She had already dropped Barnaby off at the church.
A carpet had been laid on the cleared path from the street to the church entrance. The snowbanks of late-spring snow were covered in a soft blanket of white confetti. Ivy could see Bob Snelling, one of Red’s senior workmen, who was crouched on the north side of the church. Bob returned her appreciative smile as she entered.
Ivy was careful not to see Red as she waited in the foyer. That was another of Clara’s superstitions. She always tried to jump over sidewalk cracks and had never walked under a ladder. However, she believed the tragedies in her life were God’s will and not bad luck.
Ushers had seated Ellen and Clara near the front. Some of Ellen’s relatives moved to the bride’s side of the church to balance the number of guests. The moment the organ played “The Wedding March,” all eyes were on the bride at the back of the sanctuary.
“Thank you,” she whispered to Barnaby, taking his gloved hand. He rarely used his prosthesis, but for this occasion he had put it on and purchased a fine cotton glove to cover his artificial hand. Ivy walked down the aisle, smiling and moving at the wedding pace she had practised the night before to Bach’s “Arioso.”
Red and Max looked handsome in their morning suits. The mothers were beaming and crying. The moment Ivy joined hands with Red, she knew a new life had begun. They said their vows, and a soloist from the church sang Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” which Clara thought too Catholic but Red loved. The recessional, Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” rang out from the organ. Ivy — now on Red’s arm — walked with a livelier step than she had on her way up the aisle.
Once in the car, Red kissed Ivy on the mouth unabashedly while Jack drove them to the hotel.
“I love you, Red Donnelly,” Ivy said.
“Mrs. Donnelly, I love you, too.”
At the wedding luncheon, the season demanded overcoats, and there was a lull before the receiving line began while guests deposited their outdoor wear with a hatcheck girl. Neither Clara nor Ellen was loquacious, and the queue moved along smoothly. Clara hadn’t spared on the food. To satisfy her British roots, she put a hip of beef and Yorkshire pudding on the menu. Her daughter had argued that was too heavy for a noontime meal, but they remained on the menu card. Ivy loved lobster in the Newburg style, and that had seemed to her more appropriate for the time of day. Barnaby had insisted on providing the wine, and Ellen and Jean arranged the table flowers.
Barnaby deferred to Lily for the speech to the bride. While an unconventional choice, she had the guests both laughing and crying. Midway through the speech, she paused, then, for shock value, said her son had been kidnapped while horseback riding with Ivy. She interrupted the resulting table gasps to ask Teddy to stand up.
“We found him,” she said to joyful laughter.
Guests from Lethbridge had been placed among the Soo invitees to make for more interesting table conversations. Leading the chatter was Etta Iverson and her daughter, Katherine, Clara and Ivy’s closest friends while they were living in Lethbridge. Katherine was at art school and not yet married. She embellished the terrifying tale of Bob Glimp, the American union organizer who had kidnapped Teddy when he was ten years old and riding on horseback with Ivy. Etta then jumped in to describe how Clara had returned the getaway car after knocking Bob Glimp out. “The scoundrel never did get the ransom,” Etta said, “thanks to Clara’s bravery.”
Then Dan MacIntyre, never at a loss for words, entertained the guests from the Soo with his tale of Albert Martin. He went on to make affectionate fun of Clara, who had threatened to wash his mouth with soap if he didn’t stop cussing in front of the other patients.
The luncheon ended at three o’clock, and guests were invited to Hilltop to view the presents. Ivy embodied her role as hostess as though she had been entertaining all her life. Growing up in the adult world of a hospital had honed impeccable manners. The perusing guests asked the inevitable question: “Where are you going on your honeymoon?”
“Nowhere for the moment,” Ivy replied. “We plan to travel by boat in July to enjoy the blues and jazz clubs in Chicago.”
PART THREE
Brief Harmony
CHAPTER 37
Finally alone in their living room, Red stood behind Ivy with his arms around her shoulders as they gazed at the blanket of snow covering the garden. Reflections from the late-afternoon sun had turned the snow orange as far back as the ravine before it disappeared below the horizon.
“As soon as the ground thaws, my men will bring digging machines to stir up the soil,” Red said. “Then you can plant your flowers. We should put in a hedge to shield us from the street.”
“That will block my mother’s view. She loves looking at the city across our property.”
Red chuckled. “Once she’s seen me naked, she won’t be looking this way.”
“Mum was a war nurse. She’s seen plenty of naked men!”
“None as good-looking as me.” Red kissed Ivy on the mouth to stifle her reply, and they both laughed.
Ivy was quite pleased to have many antique pieces of furniture in her new home. “How did you find such lovely items?” she asked Red while putting her wedding dishes into the beautiful burled walnut sideboard.
“Is that why there’s a Plummer Memorial Hospital?” Ivy asked.
“Yes. The hospital’s a legacy of the family’s importance in the Soo.”
Once the wedding bounty had been unwrapped and put away, Ivy sat at her antique walnut desk from the Plummer estate, situated in front of the French doors, to write the obligatory thank-you letters. “I think I should send a thank-you note to Sir James Dunn,” she said thoughtfully.
“What for?” Red asked, settled on the sofa beside Ivy with a book.
“Just as our guests arrived at the Windsor Hotel, Sir James was in the lobby castigating the chef. He was furious that his porridge had been served cold that morning. He threatened to buy the hotel and fire the man he was berating. His tantrum added colour to our solemn ceremony.”
“In what way?”
“Our guests thought Sir James was invited to the party. I imagine they’d never encountered a knighted person before.”
“Well, that’ll be the most interesting ‘compliment’ Sir James ever receives,” Red commented.
“My mother thinks you’re a great catch,” Ivy said, gazing lovingly at her new husband on the sofa.
“Hmm … makes me sound like a fish!”
In the summer of 1936, an extreme heat wave moved across North America. Ivy and Red were packing for their delayed honeymoon to Chicago when they received some disappointing news. Exacerbated by the intense heat, violence erupted in the entertainment district of the Windy City, and it seemed prudent to cancel their trip. Married for only four months, Red was still trying to understand his bride. They had both agreed to postpone their honeymoon until spring or summer, once the good weather had arrived. He was as disappointed as Ivy at the change in plans. However, he chuckled at how she expressed her disappointment.