A Bird in the House (8 page)

Aunt Edna was wearing her coral sweater and grey pleated skirt, and I thought she looked lovely, even with her apron on. I always thought she looked lovely, though, whatever she was wearing, but if ever I told her so, she would only laugh and say it was lucky she had a cheering section of one.

“Hello, kiddo,” she said. “Do you want to sleep in my room tonight, or shall I make up the bed in the spare room?”

“In your room,” I said quickly, for this meant she would let me try out her lipstick and use some of her Jergens hand-lotion, and if I could stay awake until she came to bed, we would whisper after the light was out.

“How’s
The Pillars of the Nation
coming along?” she asked.

That had been my epic on pioneer life. I had proceeded to the point in the story where the husband, coming back to the cabin one evening, discovered to his surprise that he was going to become a father. The way he ascertained this interesting fact was that he found his wife constructing a birch-bark cradle. Then came the discovery that Grandfather Connor had been a pioneer, and the story had lost its interest for me. If pioneers were like
that
, I had thought, my pen would be better employed elsewhere.

“I quit that one,” I replied laconically. “I’m making up another – it’s miles better. It’s called
The Silver Sphinx
. I’ll bet you can’t guess what it’s about.”

“The desert? Buried treasure? Murder mystery?”

I shook my head.

“Love,” I said.

“Good Glory,” Aunt Edna said, straight-faced. “That sounds fascinating. Where do you get your ideas, Vanessa?”

I could not bring myself to say the Bible. I was afraid she might think this sounded funny.

“Oh, here and there,” I replied noncommittally. “You know.”

She gave me an inquisitive glance, as though she meant to question me further, but just then the telephone rang, and I rushed to answer it, thinking it might be my mother or father phoning from Freehold. But it wasn’t. It was a voice I didn’t know, a man’s.

“Is Edna Connor there?”

“Just a minute, please,” I cupped one hand over the mouthpiece fixed on the wall, and the other over the receiver.

“For you,” I hissed, grinning at her. “A strange man!”

“Mercy,” Aunt Edna said ironically, “these hordes of admirers will be the death of me yet. Probably Todd Jeffries from Burns’ Electric about that busted lamp.”

Nevertheless, she hurried over. Then, as she listened, her face became startled, and something else which I could not fathom.

“Heavens, where are you?” she cried at last. “At the station
here
? Oh Lord. Why didn’t you write to say you were – well, sure I am, but – oh, never mind. No, you wait there. I’ll come and meet you. You’d never find the house –”

I had never heard her talk this way before, rattlingly. Finally she hung up. Her face looked like a stranger’s, and for some reason this hurt me.

“It’s Jimmy Lorimer,” she said. “He’s at the C.P.R. station. He’s coming here. Oh my God, I wish Beth were here.”

“Why?” I wished my mother were here, too, but I could not see what difference it made to Aunt Edna. I knew who Jimmy Lorimer was. He was a man Aunt Edna had gone around with when she was in Winnipeg. He had given her the Attar of Roses in an atomiser bottle with a green net-covered bulb – the scent she always sprayed around her room after she had had a cigarette there. Jimmy Lorimer had been invested with a remote glamour in my imagination, but all at once I felt I was going to hate him.

I realised that Aunt Edna was referring to what Grandfather Connor might do or say, and instantly I was ashamed for having felt churlishly disposed towards Jimmy Lorimer. Even if he was a cad, a heel, or a nitwit, I swore I would welcome him. I visualised him as having a flashy appearance,
like a riverboat gambler in a movie I had seen once, a checkered suit, a slender oiled moustache, a diamond tie-pin, a dangerous leer. Never mind. Never mind if he was Lucifer himself.

“I’m glad he’s coming,” I said staunchly.

Aunt Edna looked at me queerly her mouth wavering as though she were about to smile. Then, quickly, she bent and hugged me, and I could feel her trembling. At this moment, Grandmother Connor came into the kitchen.

“You all right, pet?” she asked Aunt Edna.

“Nothing’s the matter, is it?”

“Mother, that was an old friend of mine on the phone just now. Jimmy Lorimer. He’s from Winnipeg. He’s passing through Manawaka. Is it all right if he comes here for dinner?”

“Well, of course, dear,” Grandmother said. “What a lucky thing we’re having the pot-roast. There’s plenty. Vanessa, pet, you run down to the fruit cellar and bring up a jar of strawberries, will you? Oh, and a small jar of chili sauce. No, maybe the sweet mustard pickle would go better with the pot-roast. What do you think, Edna?”

She spoke as though this were the only important issue in the whole situation. But all the time her eyes were on Aunt Edna’s face.

“Edna –” she said, with great effort, “is he – is he a good man, Edna?”

Aunt Edna blinked and looked confused, as though she had been spoken to in some foreign language.

“Yes,” she replied.

“You’re sure, pet?”

“Yes,” Aunt Edna repeated, a little more emphatically than before.

Grandmother Connor nodded, smiled reassuringly, and patted Aunt Edna lightly on the wrist.

“Well, that’s fine, dear. I’ll just tell Father. Everything will be all right, so don’t you worry about a thing.”

When Grandmother had gone back to the living room, Aunt Edna began pulling on her black fur-topped overshoes. When she spoke, I didn’t know whether it was to me or not.

“I didn’t tell her a damn thing,” she said in a surprised tone. “I wonder how she knows, or if she really does?
Good
. What a word. I wish I didn’t know what she means when she says that. Or else that she knew what I mean when I say it. Glory, I wish Beth were here.”

I understood then that she was not speaking to me, and that what she had to say could not be spoken to me. I felt chilled by my childhood, unable to touch her because of the freezing burden of my inexperience. I was about to say something, anything, however mistaken, when my aunt said
Sh
, and we both listened to the talk from the living room.

“A friend of Edna’s is coming for dinner, Timothy,” Grandmother was saying quietly. “A young man from Winnipeg.”

A silence. Then, “Winnipeg!” my grandfather exclaimed, making it sound as though Jimmy Lorimer were coming here straight from his harem in Casablanca.

“What’s he do?” Grandfather demanded next.

“Edna didn’t say.”

“I’m not surprised,” Grandfather said darkly. “Well, I won’t have her running around with that sort of fellow. She’s got no more sense than a sparrow.”

“She’s twenty-eight,” Grandmother said, almost apologetically. “Anyway, this is just a friend.”

“Friend!” my grandfather said, annihilating the word. Then, not loudly, but with an odd vehemence, “You don’t know a blame thing about men, Agnes. You never have.”

Even I could think of several well-placed replies that my grandmother might have made, but she did not do so. She did not say anything. I looked at Aunt Edna, and saw that she had closed her eyes the way people do when they have a headache. Then we heard Grandmother’s voice, speaking at last, not in her usual placid and unruffled way, but hesitantly.

“Timothy – please. Be nice to him. For my sake.”

For my sake
. This was so unlike my grandmother that I was stunned. She was not a person who begged you to be kind for her sake, or even for God’s sake. If you were kind, in my grandmother’s view, it was for its own sake, and the judgement of whether you had done well or not was up to the Almighty.
Judge not, that ye be not judged
– this was her favourite admonition to me when I lost my temper with one of my friends. As a devout Baptist, she believed it was a sin to pray for anything for yourself. You ought to pray only for strength to bear whatever the Lord saw fit to send you, she thought. I was never able to follow this advice, for although I would often feel a sense of uneasiness over the tone of my prayers, I was the kind of person who prayed frantically – “Please, God, please, please
please
let Ross MacVey like me better than Mavis.” Grandmother Connor was not self-effacing in her lack of demands either upon God or upon her family. She merely believed that what happened to a person in this life was in Other Hands. Acceptance was at the heart of her. I don’t think in her own eyes she ever lived in a state of bondage. To the rest of the family, thrashing furiously and uselessly in various snarled dilemmas, she must often have appeared to live in a state of perpetual grace, but I am certain she didn’t think of it that way, either.

Grandfather Connor did not seem to have heard her.

“We won’t get our dinner until all hours, I daresay,” he said.

But we got our dinner as soon as Aunt Edna had arrived back with Jimmy Lorimer, for she flew immediately out to the kitchen and before we knew it we were all sitting at the big circular table in the dining room.

Jimmy Lorimer was not at all what I had expected. Far from looking like a Mississippi gambler, he looked just like anybody else, any uncle or grown-up cousin, unexceptional in every way. He was neither overwhelmingly handsome nor interestingly ugly. He was okay to look at, but as I said to myself, feeling at the same time a twinge of betrayal towards Aunt Edna, he was nothing to write home about. He wore a brown suit and a green tie. The only thing about him which struck fire was that he had a joking manner similar to Aunt Edna’s, but whereas I felt at ease with this quality in her, I could never feel comfortable with the laughter of strangers, being uncertain where an including laughter stopped and taunting began.

“You’re from Winnipeg, eh?” Grandfather Connor began. “Well, I guess you fellows don’t put much store in a town like Manawaka.”

Without waiting for affirmation or denial of this sentiment, he continued in an unbroken line.

“I got no patience with these people who think a small town is just nothing. You take a city, now. You could live in one of them places for twenty years, and you’d not get to know your next-door neighbour. Trouble comes along – who’s going to give you a hand? Not a blamed soul.”

Grandfather Connor had never in his life lived in a city, so his first-hand knowledge of their ways was, to say the least, limited. As for trouble – the thought of my grandfather asking any soul in Manawaka to give aid and support to him in any way whatsoever was inconceivable. He would have died
of starvation, physical or spiritual, rather than put himself in any man’s debt by so much as a dime or a word.

“Hey, hold on a minute,” Jimmy Lorimer protested. “I never said that about small towns. As a matter of fact, I grew up in one myself. I came from McConnell’s Landing. Ever heard of it?”

“I heard of it all right,” Grandfather said brusquely, and no one could have told from his tone whether McConnell’s Landing was a place of ill-repute or whether he simply felt his knowledge of geography was being doubted. “Why’d you leave, then?”

Jimmy shrugged. “Not much opportunity there. Had to seek my fortune, you know. Can’t say I’ve found it, but I’m still looking.”

“Oh, you’ll be a tycoon yet, no doubt,” Aunt Edna put in.

“You bet your life, kiddo,” Jimmy replied. “You wait. Times’ll change.”

I didn’t like to hear him say “kiddo.” It was Aunt Edna’s word, the one she called me by. It didn’t belong to him.

“Mercy, they can’t change fast enough for me,” Aunt Edna said. “I guess I haven’t got your optimism, though.”

“Well, I haven’t got it, either,” he said, laughing, “but keep it under your hat, eh?”

Grandfather Connor had listened to this exchange with some impatience. Now he turned to Jimmy once more.

“What’s your line of work?”

“I’m with Reliable Loan Company right now, Mr. Connor, but I don’t aim to stay there permanently. I’d like to have my own business. Cars are what I’m really interested in. But it’s not so easy to start up these days.”

Grandfather Connor’s normal opinions on social issues possessed such a high degree of clarity and were so frequently
stated that they were well known even to me – all labour unions were composed of thugs and crooks; if people were unemployed it was due to their own laziness; if people were broke it was because they were not thrifty. Now, however, a look of intense and brooding sorrow came into his face, as he became all at once the champion of the poor and oppressed.

“Loan company!” he said. “Them blood-suckers. They wouldn’t pay no mind to how hard-up a man might be. Take everything he has, without batting an eye. By the Lord Harry, I never thought the day would come when I’d sit down to a meal alongside one of them fellows.”

Aunt Edna’s face was rigid.

“Jimmy,” she said. “Ignore him.”

Grandfather turned on her, and they stared at one another with a kind of inexpressible rage but neither of them spoke. I could not help feeling sorry for Jimmy Lorimer, who mumbled something about his train leaving and began eating hurriedly. Grandfather rose to his feet.

“I’ve had enough,” he said.

“Don’t you want your dessert, Timothy?” Grandmother asked, as though it never occurred to her that he could be referring to anything other than the meal. It was only then that I realised that this was the first time she had spoken since we sat down at the table. Grandfather did not reply. He went down to the basement. Predictably, in a moment we could hear the wooden rockers of his chair thudding like retreating thunder. After dinner, Grandmother sat in the living room, but she did not get out the red cardigan she was knitting for me. She sat without doing anything, quite still, her hands folded in her lap.

“I’ll let you off the dishes tonight, honey,” Aunt Edna said to me. “Jimmy will help with them. You can try out my
lipstick, if you like, only for Pete’s sake wash it off before you come down again.”

I went upstairs, but I did not go to Aunt Edna’s room. I went into the back bedroom to one of my listening posts. In the floor there was a round hole which had once been used for a stove-pipe leading up from the kitchen. Now it was covered with a piece of brown-painted tin full of small perforations which had apparently been noticed only by me.