Every Secret Thing (7 page)

Toronto

Grandma’s house, like Grandma, never changed. The same scents of paste wax and furniture polish still met me like a wall at the front door, and as always my steps shook the floor just enough to make the chimes ring very faintly in the big old mahogany-cased grandfather clock that stood angled in a corner of the entry hall. Ahead of me, the stairs ran steeply upwards to the bedrooms on the upper floors, while on this level I had a view right straight through to the kitchen.

Pocketing my key, I swung the front door closed behind me, making sure to turn the deadbolt. Grandma wasn’t always good with locks – not because she was forgetful, but because her mind was frequently preoccupied with other things. She was a busy woman with an intellect that, I suspected, could run rings around my own. I slipped my shoes off, calling out to let her know that I’d arrived.

She didn’t answer.

Normally, that wouldn’t have alarmed me. Grandma often did her reading in the afternoon, and nothing short of an earthquake, or the ringing of the telephone, would draw her out of a good book. I wasn’t even sure about the earthquake.

But today, for some reason, I felt a little bit uneasy at the silence. I called louder. ‘Grandma?’

She wouldn’t have been out, I thought. She’d known that I was coming, and besides, if she’d gone out she would have left a note for me on the hall table, the way that she always did. Worried, I set down my luggage and started to search.

She wasn’t upstairs, in her bedroom. Or down in the basement doing laundry. She wasn’t anywhere, as far as I could see. I was standing in the kitchen, trying to decide what to do next, when a flash of movement past the window caught my eye.

I hadn’t thought to check the yard. Grandma wasn’t really the outdoor type, and her yard wasn’t much of a yard to begin with. When my grandfather had died she’d had it paved with brick, because she hated cutting grass. She’d spared the maple tree, which stood now as an island of natural growth in the narrow space, hemmed in by tall wooden privacy fences that, seen from the windows upstairs, made the back yards of Grandma and all of her neighbours look like rows of those claustrophobic narrow high-walled starting gates they jammed racehorses into. This wasn’t living space, by Grandma Murray’s definition – just the place she kept the garbage cans and, sometimes, hung her laundry out to dry.

So it was something of a shock for me to see her out there now, and on her knees at that, trowelling topsoil into a raised wooden planter – a new feature – set in the very back corner. I’d never seen her gardening. She looked quite different, doing it.

She didn’t look herself. I couldn’t put my finger on it, really, but the difference was enough to keep me there, beside the kitchen window. I sat at the table with its tablecloth of yellow gingham checks with little apples spaced between the squares, and resting my chin on the heel of my hand I watched my grandmother the way I might have watched TV.

She spent a fair amount of time preparing the newly built planter. Her neighbour, I guessed, must have made it for her – he was handy in his workshop, and was always quick to lend a hand to Grandma when she wanted something. Besides, the wood he’d used to make it matched the fence he’d built between their properties. He’d likely had some bits of boards left over, all these years, waiting for just such a project.

Grandma seemed pleased enough with it. I watched her dig holes and take twiggy somethings out of pots, carefully patting the clumpy roots into the soil. Then she soaked the whole bed with a watering can and stood, dusting her knees with gloved hands, looking satisfied. She still had that look when she came through the kitchen door.

‘Katie! Sweetheart, when did you get back? I didn’t hear the taxi.’ Her hug was freshly cold with outside air, and smelt of garden soil and autumn leaves. And it was firm. At
eighty-three
, my Grandma Murray stood as arrow-straight as always, with her white hair – which had once been red as mine – cut short and styled for convenience. I had hopes that I would age like her, although I knew I’d never match her energy. She asked, ‘How was your flight?’

‘Fine, thanks. One of Margot’s friends was on the plane as well. We managed to get seats together, so at least I had someone to talk to.’ As Margot had promised, she’d told her friend, Nick, to keep an eye open for me at the airport, and he, being a security and surveillance expert, had taken her at her word, hunting me down in the check-in line. ‘He was nice. He’s in town for the international Chiefs of Police convention, and…’

‘Oh, that reminds me.’ Turning, she apologised, ‘Sorry to interrupt, honey, but you had a call today from a policeman. Metcalf was his name. He called at two o’clock, or thereabouts. Now, you know I don’t like giving anyone your schedule, but he did say you’d called him first, and that it was important, so I told him you’d be home tonight. I hope that was all right.’

‘Of course it was.’ I hadn’t actually expected that he’d be in touch so soon. Whatever the Sergeant’s failings, I conceded, he at least checked his voicemail and answered his messages promptly.

‘Something to do with the trial, is it?’

‘Sort of.’

‘I thought it might be. He had an English accent.’ She had her coat off now, and her gardening gloves, and was casting a glance at the clock. ‘We have a bit of time before I have to get supper on the go. How be I make us a couple of Caesars?’

I didn’t say no. My grandma’s Bloody Caesars were her speciality; my weakness. Since I’d moved back to live with her, it had become a ritual between us, having drinks to celebrate my coming home after assignments.

I watched her while she moved to wash her hands and get the vodka from the cupboard, trying to think of a way to approach her about Andrew Deacon. She was not a chatty woman, and if she didn’t want to talk about a subject, trying to engage her in discussion could be every bit as challenging as using your bare hands to try to open a determined clam. In the end, I tried to edge in sideways. Looking out the window, I remarked, ‘I see you’ve got yourself a little garden out there.’

‘Oh, hardly a garden. It’s just the one planter. I thought it might be nice to have some roses.’

Roses…That was better than I’d hoped, really, because it seemed quite natural, then, to reach into my jacket, slung over the chair at my back, and take out the thick paperback mystery I’d carried to read on the plane. ‘I brought you something back,’ I said, ‘from England.’

She glanced round from the chopping board, where she was wedging a lemon. ‘Oh, Katie, you shouldn’t be wasting your money on gifts, not for me.’

‘It didn’t cost anything.’ I drew a breath. ‘I went to Andrew Deacon’s funeral, Grandma, and I thought that since…well, since you couldn’t be there, you might like to have a little something, sort of a memento, from the grave. So here you are.’ I took a small pressed rosebud from the pages of the book, and held it out toward her on my upturned palm.

She didn’t take it right away. She set down her knife, and stood a moment looking at the flower lying on my outstretched hand. And then she reached to pick the rosebud up, with something close to reverence.

‘Thank you, Katie,’ she said quietly. ‘That was thoughtful of you, very thoughtful. I…’ She stopped, and set the fragile flower gently on the window ledge before turning to busy herself with the lemon again, her hands making rapid and decisive movements. Head down, she asked, ‘What was the funeral like?’

I was back on uncertain ground again, feeling my way, but I took my cue from the deliberately conversational tone of her voice. ‘Nice, I thought. It was in Hampshire, at a little village church, and the vicar gave a beautiful service.’

‘Were there many people there?’

‘Quite a few. I met his nephew.’

‘Little Jamie, yes. His sister’s boy. I had forgotten…’

Which must have meant she’d been a young woman when she’d met Andrew Deacon, if his nephew, at the time, had been a child. I tipped my head, taking a chance with a straightforward question. ‘When were you friends with him, Grandma?’

‘Oh, years ago, Katie. I told you. We lost touch.’ Taking a half-empty jug of clam-and-tomato cocktail from the fridge she filled our two glasses and stirred in the vodka. Usually she rimmed the glasses, too, with salt and pepper, but this time she had either forgotten or simply not bothered. ‘Did he have any family of his own, there? Any children?’

‘No. He lost his wife during the war, I was told, and he never remarried. As far as I know, he was all on his own.’

She didn’t turn; she kept her back to me, but I could sense the change. Her movements stilled. Head bent, she asked, ‘How did she die, his wife?’

I’d hit a nerve, I knew, but since I wasn’t sure how I had done it I carried on, cautiously, ‘The nephew didn’t say. He told me no one really talked about her much. She was American, apparently. They married in New York, and she stayed there while Mr Deacon went to Portugal, to work. I think she died while he was there.’

A long moment passed, and her silence was so like the silence I’d heard on the phone when I’d called her last Wednesday from London, that I couldn’t help but be curious. ‘Grandma?’ I said. ‘Did you know her?’

A pause. And then she turned her head, and once again I had that feeling that I’d had when I had seen her planting flowers in the yard – the feeling I was seeing someone I had never truly seen.

Her eyes, especially, were almost unfamiliar. They were smiling, but I thought the smile seemed sad. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘I knew her very well.’

It wasn’t the first time we’d sat face to face at the old kitchen table with its cheery yellow gingham cloth, the afternoon sun slanting through the back window. But this time was different.

Maybe, I allowed, the change was not in my grandmother, but in myself. My vision had matured, perhaps. Certainly I seemed to be seeing my grandmother through altered eyes, today – seeing her more fully, without prejudice.

In all the years I’d known her she had always seemed the same, the constant point around which my own world, chaotic as it was, revolved. And with the selfish eyes of youth I’d only viewed her from the angle that applied to me – she was
my
grandmother, not Georgie Murray, woman in her own right. I supposed that she hadn’t been really allowed to be plain Georgie Murray for years, not since she’d been twenty-five, when she had married Grandpa. After that she’d always been somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, someone’s grandmother. In fact, she’d always filled that role so perfectly I’d never stopped to wonder what she might have been before all that…when she was my own age.

I had a feeling I was going to find out now, to get a glimpse at least, because she started out with, ‘I suppose you never knew I spent a year in New York City, working, when I was a girl.’

‘I didn’t, no.’ So that, I thought, must have been how she’d come to meet Andrew Deacon, and his wife. I leant my elbows on the table, took a sip of my own drink and waited, knowing that with Grandma you could never rush the process.

She was quiet for a moment, as though trying to decide where she should start the tale. I had no idea, not then, what was coming. Had I had any inkling, I would have stopped her, gone out to the hall, and fetched my tape recorder so I didn’t lose a word. In fact, I never quite forgave myself for
not
recording what she told me, afterwards.

But then, I didn’t know.

It started simply.

‘I went down,’ she told me, ‘with three other girls, in ’43. I knew them from here, in Toronto. We all worked together at a war plant, called John Inglis – they made refrigerators after the war, but during the war they made Bren guns, and we worked upstairs, in the payroll department. Well, one of the girls read an ad in the newspaper, and she asked me, how would I like to go work in New York? It didn’t say in the newspaper what the job was, it just said working for the British government, in New York City.’

That, I thought later, was the point at which I should have started taping.

She went on, ‘So, we wrote to them. It took a while, but finally we heard back, and they asked us to come for a typing test, to one of the downtown hotels. I remember I was nervous, but I only typed one line, and then they said fine, thank you, and that was that. I had the job. I had to have a medical, of course, and a note from my dentist, and the Mounted Police checked me out.’ She smiled. ‘My mother found out about that when a friend of hers wrote to ask what I’d been up to, because the RCMP had been round to our old neighbourhood, asking questions. Mother wasn’t a stupid woman – I’m sure she figured two and two was four, but she never said anything if she did. But my dad…when I told him I’d been hired for this job in New York City, he said no. No way. In those days you would never go against your parents’ wishes, and I thought the world of Dad.

‘Usually, he backed me to the hilt when I had set my mind to something, but this time… I think maybe it was because my brothers, both of them, were fighting overseas, and he just didn’t want me leaving home as well. I know that when my younger brother, Ronnie – you’ve heard me mention Ronnie, he’s the one who played the violin I keep up in my closet—’

I’d heard his name a few times through the years, and I had seen the violin, but I felt suddenly ashamed that I remembered little else. To be honest, I had always thought he’d been her only brother, and although I knew he’d died before I’d come along, I didn’t know much more than that.

‘When Ronnie left,’ said Grandma, ‘Dad had a hard time of it. He kept saying how he couldn’t get used to the house being so quiet, with the boys gone; and of course he’d listen to the radio and go to watch the newsreels, and he’d worry. He’d been in the First War, the Great War. He knew what war was. And he knew what my brothers were up against, what it was like for them, how slim the odds were they’d both come home safe. So I suppose when I said that I wanted to go to New York, to him it just meant he’d be losing his last child, and that must have seemed like the last straw, to him.