Stella looked frightened. “He’d hit you, Mrs. D.”
“The police can remove him, then.”
Stella put her hand on Ivy’s arm. “We need to settle our own problems.” She signed the form Ivy had taken from her briefcase, then shook Ivy’s hand. “I know you mean well.”
“Send him packing,” Ivy repeated, “then we’ll get Sylvie back to her kokum.”
Stan and Sergeant Stuart were standing beside the car when Ivy came out of Stella’s. Their worried looks disappeared.
When they arrived in town, Keith was in the bar chatting with a group of miners from the Helen Mines.
“Is it safe to fly?” Ivy asked.
“I wouldn’t fly if it wasn’t.”
“Keith will fly above the turbulence,” Sergeant Stuart assured.
“I’ve got family, too,” Keith said. “And I intend to get back to them.” Keith’s confidence was backed up by well-chronicled heroism.
Ivy stood quietly, trying not to worry while Keith knocked back his drink.
“Thanks for the round!” one of the men shouted as they left.
Keith glanced back with a grin. “Next time the chit’s on you.” He made a thumbs-up sign and put his arm around Ivy as he ushered her out the door and into the snowstorm. “You’re a plucky gal.”
Once in the plane, Ivy began to think about her pluck. “Pluck didn’t come easily, Keith!” she shouted across the engine noise. “My mother was confrontational. She didn’t know how to compromise. I didn’t want to be the same.”
“It was your mother’s pluck that turned the Galt Hospital around,” Sergeant Stuart said. “But it’s her integrity that I admire most.”
Keith laughed. “Hey, Sergeant Stuart, you sound smitten.”
“At sixty I don’t talk about love, but I do appreciate living in Mrs. Durling’s upper duplex,” the sergeant replied.
Silence prevailed as Keith dealt with an increase in turbulence.
CHAPTER 60
The flight from Wawa had been much shorter than travelling by train would have been. When they arrived in the Soo, the streets still hadn’t been cleared. So when Sergeant Stuart eased his car away from the airstrip, he drove slowly despite Ivy’s urging to go faster to get home to her girls.
“I hope Alice and Nora weren’t too much for Clara,” Ivy said as they neared Clara’s duplex.
“Your mother can cope with anything,” the sergeant said.
His further comments were cut short as they turned onto Hilltop. Clara’s duplex and Ivy’s house were entirely lit up, but it was Chas Greer’s car in Clara’s driveway that signalled to Ivy and the sergeant that something dreadful had happened.
They pulled up behind the doctor’s car, and Ivy dashed in. Still in her winter coat, Clara was lying on the front hall floor covered with a blanket.
“Granny was shovelling the walk,” Alice said, sobbing. “She said she wouldn’t wait for Sergeant Stuart. She wanted you to have a clear path.”
“It was her heart,” Chas said. “She wouldn’t have suffered.”
Dot was sitting on the stairs, trying to calm Nora.
Ivy pulled the cover back, choking as she spoke. “How could you do this, Mum? I had something I needed to say — that I love you.”
Sergeant Stuart knelt and put his arm around Ivy. “You didn’t have to. You showed it every day.”
Ivy stood and put her arms around Alice. “What happened, darling?”
“I was getting dressed to go out and help Granny when she fell. I tried to pull her by her coat into the house, but I couldn’t. I ran to Dr. Chas’s house, and he helped me bring her in.” Alice heaved through her sobbing.
“We’ll all mourn Clara,” Chas said. “She kept us on our toes.”
Lily and Barnaby came out of the kitchen where they had been preparing coffee.
“It’ll be a long night,” Lily said. They had both been crying.
“Our friendship started thirty years ago,” Barnaby said emotionally.
“Well,” Lily said, tears streaming down her face, “I guess I’ll be the battler now that Clara’s gone.”
Lily’s humour was a reminder that Clara was sometimes mad but never sad. “You don’t have time for that,” Clara would say to a moping friend.
“The coroner will be here soon,” Chas said. “Are you up to choosing an outfit?”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Ivy said. “I’ll speak with the girls. I don’t want them to watch the coroner remove Clara.”
Dot tucked Alice and Nora into Ivy’s bed, and Lily served coffee. It was too soon to reminisce. When it was two in the morning, Ivy said she wanted to be alone. Chas asked if she needed any medication, but Ivy refused.
After everyone was gone, Ivy stood at the French windows and looked at the blanket of snow illuminated by a full moon. She could feel Red’s arms around her waist as he talked about the garden they would plant in their new home. She could smell his pipe breath. Then she turned to see if Clara was in the chair where she normally sat. Loneliness felt like a second skin.
Alice was determined that Clara should be buried in the dress she’d worn to Ivy’s wedding. A mauve dress overlaid with lace didn’t seem appropriate, but Ivy respected the choice because the girls had spent so much time with Clara.
“I know this is what Granny would want to wear,” Alice said, as though Clara were still alive.
Ivy didn’t take Alice to the funeral home. She wanted to see her mother’s preparation herself. To her horror, the funeral director had put a considerable amount of makeup on Clara.
“My mother’s never worn makeup,” Ivy said to the person who had applied the stuff.
“Oh, then I’ll remove it,” the man said apologetically.
“I should do that myself,” Ivy said quietly. Alone in the room with Clara, she etched in her head the wholesome English face she would never see again. “I did love you, Mum, and I’m sorry I didn’t say that enough.”
She began to cry and moved away from the casket, which would remain open at the funeral. Seeing her mother motionless in her mother-of-the-bride dress, she recalled Clara’s pride at putting on such a grand wedding for her only daughter. At that moment, the funeral director came into the room to see if he could help.
“I’ll go home now and plan the funeral,” Ivy said simply.
CHAPTER 61
Clara’s fatal heart attack had occurred late on a Friday afternoon in 1952. By Saturday morning, a dozen casseroles and desserts had been delivered to the house with notes expressing heartfelt condolences. The road without Clara was frightening for Ivy. Who will look after the girls while I’m travelling? she thought with panic. Clara’s stolid presence had been Ivy’s insurance that Red could never take the girls if anything happened to her, but Ivy settled her fears with the realization that Hilltop neighbours had embraced Alice and Nora when Red left. They would run interference if he tried to take them away.
Despite her dark thoughts and grief, Ivy made arrangements for a visitation at the Mather Funeral Home from four to six on Sunday evening and the funeral at St. Luke’s Cathedral the following day. In the midst of people flowing in and out of the house offering help or just doing what they thought was needed, Ivy went looking for Alice and Nora. She started her search in the upstairs bedrooms, descended to the basement playroom, and finally checked the garage where in happier times Red had skinned the deer. They were nowhere.
“They weren’t dressed very warmly,” Lily said. “I saw them cross the street to Clara’s. Would you like me to bring them back?”
“No, I’ll go myself,” Ivy answered. There was a catch in her voice. “I think I know where I’ll find them.”
The door to Clara’s apartment was open, and Sergeant Stuart stood in the living room with a finger on his lips. Ivy entered quietly and tiptoed to the top of the basement stairs. The shelf adjacent to the stairs provided storage for Clara’s canned goods and cleaning supplies. A jar of Marmite and a can of Lyle’s Golden Syrup were th
e symbols that Clara remained British to the end. Alice and Nora were sitting on their coats, leaning against Clara’s steamer trunk. Alice was holding the forbidden rose and telling Nora the story of the little boy who wanted to be a gardener. Nora was wearing the boots marked “Billy” that had only occasionally been removed from the trunk. Ivy was overcome with love, noticing they were on the wrong feet.
Alice glanced up, her face stained with tears, as Ivy descended the stairs. “Can we put the rose in Granny’s coffin? She can take it to Billy.”
“Billy’s in heaven surrounded by flowers, but I’m sure he’d love to see his rose,” Ivy said. “Shall we put the rose in one of Granny’s lavender-smelling handkerchiefs? The flower’s very delicate.”
Sergeant Stuart drove Ivy and the girls to the funeral home in advance of the visitation. Ivy had expected they would have a few minutes alone with Clara. She was surprised that so many visitors were standing in the foyer, waiting for the affair to begin. Lily and Barnaby acted as hosts, and Alice and Nora stood beside them after seeing Clara. She seemed peaceful in an open casket, arms folded on her lap and unadorned with makeup. The most extravagant flower arrangement had come from the Pim Hill Children, each having signed his own name. There was a drawing of a dog paw on the corner of the card signed “Nipper” — Clara’s favourite of the Greer dogs.
Messages sent from out-of-towners unable to get to the funeral were reminders of Clara’s long life and varied paths. Di Shaw’s telegram recounted waving at Clara and young Ivy from the quay as their ship pulled away. Etta Iverson and her daughter, Katherine, Ivy’s best friend in Lethbridge, wired flowers with a note that made Ivy cry. “Your mother was the kindest person I’ve ever known,” she wrote. Miss Hobbs, the director of nurses at Royal Victoria Hospital, sent a humorous reminder of the probationer’s military-like regime under Clara. “Matron Durling was always one step ahead of our shenanigans,” she recounted. “I recall our indignation when she cut off the lower rung of the fire escape ladder.”
Ivy had pinned the notes to a corkboard so visitors could see the many hats Clara had worn. Condolences from the new headmaster at Shingwauk were the evidence that Clara had never severed her connection with the residential school. Dr. McCaig, who had retired, expressed high praise for Clara’s work integrating the Wawanosh girls.
As the visitors flowed past, most with anecdotes about Clara, Ivy was struck, as she was with the personal notes, at how diverse Clara’s life had been. Her mother’s bridge cronies, including the Rossiters, the new headmaster of Shingwauk, and three new doctors who had moved onto Hilltop while Ivy was at her welfare course in Toronto, expressed their admiration for Clara. The new neighbours hadn’t been on the street long before they discovered Clara — the “dog whisperer.” Ivy was touched that Irma D’Agostina, married now and living in the east end with her husband, who was a dentist, came to the funeral home. She spoke warmly of Clara, and Ivy realized that somehow Clara must have made peace with Italians.
William Martin, looking steady on his artificial leg, told Ivy he was now the caretaker of the Greers’ farm on St. Joseph Island. Ivy asked about William’s grandfather, Albert, and learned he had passed away. “Matron Durling was the only white woman Granddad liked. She was very kind to me while I stayed in her home until my leg healed.”
Ivy’s friends, who had spent so many happy hours touring the Great Lakes on the Ivy League, lingered after they went through the formal condolence line. They were planning to have a drink at the end of the visitation, which went on longer than the allotted two hours. The director of the funeral home assured Ivy there was no need to rush.
Before going to the Greers’, Ivy asked to have a few minutes alone with Clara. The Barnabys took Alice and Nora and went to wait in the parking lot. When they were gone, Ivy placed a hand on Clara’s forehead and lightly brushed back her wiry grey hair. “I’ll remember your sacrifices when I make my own,” she whispered.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank my husband, who read endless drafts only to find I disagreed with his comments. The encouragement from friends and family is what kept me writing when I wished to throw in the towel. Roberta Jamieson, a Mohawk of the Six Nations Grand River Territory and an extraordinary Canadian, read the entire manuscript to ensure it was neither racist nor appropriating a culture that wasn’t mine. David Staines, writer, literary critic, and editor, has faithfully read and commented on various iterations of Patchwork Society. I didn’t argue with David. Joe Kertes, former dean of creative arts at Humber College in Toronto, is how my writing career began, and I’ll always be grateful for his ongoing encouragement.
There are many people I can’t acknowledge because they’re no longer alive. I’m grateful for the personal letters of K.G. Ross given to me by his grandchildren. His personal accounts of life in the bush surveying hydro lines working alongside local Indigenous people was culturally informative. The cruel truth of the assimilation policy and what it did to our First Nations communities was gleaned from many public archives. Medical records, government records, truth-and-reconciliation statements, and documents from the Shingwauk project at Algoma University provided a trove of information for writing this novel.
Italians have a long history in Sault Ste. Marie, and Judge Ray Stortini supplied a rich source of cultural and social history in his two-volume personal account of Little Italy and its inhabitants. Personal interviews gave insight into the bootlegging industry that was often the only way families survived through the Great Depression years.
I’m especially grateful to Kirk Howard and Dundurn Press, who took a chance on my first book, Matrons and Madams.
Finally, I must thank my mother and grandmother post-humously for the brave lives they lived, which I have faithfully tried to record in my novel.
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