No Great Mischief (6 page)

I see my grandparents even now, in terms of their gestures and certain scenes. The way she would touch his inner thigh from
behind, as he stood on the ladder, helping her with the spring housecleaning, which he hated but always did; and the way his knees would buckle at the surprise of the touch until he had composed himself and was able to turn, laughing, towards her, looking down from his ladder while holding the curtain rod or the cleaning cloth in his hand.

As they became older and he became somewhat deaf, they reverted almost totally to Gaelic – especially when they were alone. It was the language that one heard emanating from their bedroom late at night – his voice a bit too loud, the way it often is with the somewhat deaf who cannot hear the volume of their own utterances. It was the language of their courting days and they had always been more at ease with it, although, especially after “the chance,” they had become quite adept at English. If one passed the sometimes slightly opened door of their bedroom in the early morning, they were to be seen always sleeping in the same position. He, lying on his back, on the outside of the bed with his lips slightly parted and with his right arm extended and curved around her shoulders. And she, with her head upon his chest while the outline of her right arm extended down beneath the blankets, towards the familiarity between his legs. They were tremendously supportive of one another, never denying each other anything which came within their framework of knowledge. And confidently certain of how their lives should be.

Sometimes when he stayed too long at the taverns, as he sometimes did in his later years, he would exhaust his money and send a “runner” to Grandma, asking for more so that he might extend his socializing. She always gave it to him, saying, “He does not do this often. And it is little enough when you
consider all he has given to us.” And once when a rather cryptic neighbour said, “If he were my husband, he would not get another cent,” Grandma, in her own indignation, said, “Yes, but he is not
your
husband. You look after your husband and I’ll look after mine.”

On one Christmas Eve, we waited and waited for him throughout the late afternoon and the early evening. He had gone to get his last-minute presents, but “must have stopped along the way,” as Grandma put it. “Maybe he took too much money for the presents,” she added. “Anyway, he will come by 6:30, because he knows that there are things to do, and that we must go to church later tonight, and anyway the taverns close at six on Christmas Eve.”

Sure enough at 6:30 he arrived; in a taxi, no less, accompanied by a number of erratic friends who helped him open the door and carry in his precious packages and then vanished back into the taxi, amidst off-key choruses of “Merry Christmas.”

“Hullo,” said Grandpa, weaving unsteadily across the kitchen floor.
“Ciamar a tha sibh?
Merry Christmas to all. Is everybody happy?”

He wobbled to his chair at the end of the kitchen table, where he sat swaying almost regularly, as if sitting on the deck of a departing, pitching boat. “How is everyone?” he said, waving to us blearily, his hand moving back and forth before his face, as if he were cleaning an imaginary windshield. “Great day to be alive,” he added, and then he sort of crumpled and fell off his chair in a rapid yet amazing sequence. It was like looking at those films which show the destruction of the building which has been cleverly laden with dynamite and then, in a matter of seconds,
folds up and seems to vanish soundlessly before your eyes. A few tremors and shocks and then it crumbles.

“Holy Jesus, get that boat up before the tide rises” was one thing he said from the floor and the other was “Be sure that all the valves are shut off before you do it.” Two rather curious statements: one from his life before “the chance” and the other, perhaps, from after it, referring to the hospital. And then he was sound asleep. Even Grandma was a bit taken aback, looking down on him as he slept so peacefully, his mouth partly opened and his arms outstretched.

“Whatever will we do?” she mused, and then brightening she said, “I know.” And going to the box of leftover Christmas tree decorations she began to extract various ornaments and strands of foil rope and even a rather tarnished star. She placed the star at Grandpa’s head and deftly strung the rope about his limbs, and placed little balls and stars at strategic places on his outstretched limbs. She strung some Christmas icicles across his chest, where they looked vaguely like outworn war medals, and then sprinkled him with some artificial snow. The latter caused him to crinkle his nose, and it seemed for a moment that he might sneeze, but he slept on. And when she was finished her decorating, she took his picture. When Grandpa stirred later in the evening, he was at first almost afraid, seeming somewhat like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, awakening to find himself covered with small strands of silver foil, and for a while not really realizing just where he was nor what had happened to him. He did not move for a bit, allowing only his eyes to move about the room, until they finally came to rest on Grandma, who was sitting quietly in a chair not far from his feet. Then he lifted his
right hand very slowly, looking at the snow and icicles that fell from it and at the green ball fastened to his middle finger.

“We thought that we would finish decorating you for Christmas,” she said, looking at both my sister and me. And then she began to laugh. Slowly, like someone trying to extricate himself from a wired and potentially explosive bomb, Grandpa sat up, moving carefully and trying not to disturb his strands and streamers. When he stood up and looked down at the place he had vacated, it was almost possible to see his outline on the floor, like a sort of reverse snow angel, with bits of artificial snow and some of the ornaments outlining the former boundaries of his limbs. Later that night, at church, when he turned his head in certain directions, the golden muted lights reflected on the wisps of artificial snow still found within his hair.

After the picture was developed, he kept it in his wallet for years until it began to crease and fall apart the way such pictures do and then he had Grandma dig out the old negative so that another copy might be made.

I think of it now as one of those “joke” pictures taken for high-school yearbooks and which, years later, seem to reveal more than was ever realized at the time.

My
twin sister and I were the youngest children in our family, and we were three on March 28 when it was decided that we would spend the night with our grandparents.

After he returned from naval service in the war, my father had applied for the position of lightkeeper on the island which seemed almost to float in the channel about a mile and half from the town which faced the sea. He had long been familiar with boats and the sea and, after passing the examination, was informed in a very formal letter that the job was his. He and my mother were overjoyed because it meant they would not have to go away, and the job reeked of security, which was what they wanted after the disruption of the years of war. The older generation was highly enthusiastic as well. “That island will stay there for a damn long time,” said Grandpa appreciatively, although he later apparently sniffed, “Any fool can look after a lighthouse. It is not like being responsible for a
whole
hospital.”

On the morning of March 28, which was the beginning of a weekend, my parents and their six children and their dog walked ashore across the ice. Their older sons, who were sixteen, fifteen, and fourteen, apparently took turns carrying my sister and me upon their shoulders, stopping every so often to take off their mitts and rub our faces so that our cheeks would not become so
cold as to be frozen without our realizing it. Our father, accompanied by our brother Colin, who was eleven, walked ahead of us, testing the ice from time to time with a long pole, although there did not seem much need to do so for he had “bushed” the ice some two months earlier, meaning he had placed spruce trees upright in the snow and ice to serve as a sort of road guide for winter travellers.

During the coldest days of winter, the so-called “dog days,” the ice became amazingly solid. It was a combination of drift ice from the region of the eastern Arctic and “made” ice which resulted from the freezing of the local channel. In extremely cold winters if the ice was smooth, it was possible to move freely from the island to the mainland and back again. One could walk, or skate, or fashion an iceboat which would skim and veer with cutting dangerous speed across the stinging surface. People would venture out on the ice with cars and trucks, and on one or two weekends there would be horse races to the delight of all. The sharpshod horses would pull light sleighs or even summer sulkies as they sped around yet another track staked out by temporary spruce. At the conclusion of their races, their owners would hurry to cover them with blankets as the perspiration on their coats began to turn to frost. They seemed almost, for a few brief moments, to be horses who had prematurely aged before the eyes of those who watched them, their coats of black and brown turning to a fragile white. White horses frozen on a field of ice and snow.

My parents welcomed the winter ice because it allowed them to do many practical things that were more difficult to accomplish in the summer. They could truck their supplies over the ice
without the difficulty of first hauling everything to the wharf and then trying to load it on the boat which swayed below and then, after transporting it across to the island, having to hoist it up out of the boat to the wharf’s cap and then again having to transport it up the cliff to the promontory where the lighthouse stood. They took coal and wood across in the winter, and walked and traded animals, leading them by their halters across the treacherous and temporary bridge.

Also in the winter their social life improved, as unexpected visitors crossed to see them, bringing rum and beer and fiddles and accordions. All of them staying up all night, singing songs and dancing and playing cards and telling stories, while out on the ice the seals moaned and cried and the ice itself thundered and snapped and sometimes groaned, forced by the pressures of the tides and currents, running unabated and unseen beneath the cold white surface. Sometimes the men would go outside to urinate and when they would return the others would ask,
“De chuala?
” “What did you hear?” “Nothing,” they would say. “
Cha chuala sion
.” “Nothing, only the sound of the ice.”

On March 28 there was a lot for my family to do. My older brothers were going to visit their cousins in the country – those who still lived in the old
Calum Ruadh
houses neighbouring the spot which my grandparents had left when they became people of the town. If they could get a ride they were going to spend the weekend there. Even if they could not get a ride, they were planning to walk, saying that ten miles on the inland sheltered roads would not be as cold as a mile and a half straight across the ice. My parents were planning to cash my father’s cheque, which they hoped my grandparents had picked up at
the post office, and my brother Colin was looking forward to his new parka, which my mother had shrewdly ordered from the Eaton’s sale catalogue when such heavy winter garments were reduced by the coming promise of spring. He had been hoping for it since before Christmas. My sister and I were looking forward to the visit with our grandparents, who always made a great to-do about us and always told us how smart we were to make such a great journey from such a far and distant place. And the dog knew where she was going too, picking her way across the ice carefully and sometimes stopping to gnaw off the balls of snow and ice which formed between the delicate pads of her hardened paws.

Everything went well and the sun shone brightly as we journeyed forth together, walking first upon the ice so we could later walk upon the land.

In the late afternoon, the sun still shone, and there was no wind but it began to get very cold, the kind of deceptive cold that can fool those who confuse the shining of the winter sun with warmth. Relatives visiting my grandparents’ house said that my brothers had arrived at their destination and would not be coming back until, perhaps, the next day.

My parents distributed their purchases into haversacks, which were always at my grandparent’s house, and which they used for carrying supplies upon their backs. Because my parents’ backs would be burdened and because my brothers were not there, it was decided that my sister and I would “spend the night” and that our brothers would take us back to the island when they returned. It was suggested that Colin also might stay, but he was insistent that he go, so that he might test the long-anticipated
warmth of the new parka. When they left, the sun was still shining, although it had begun to decline, and they took two storm lanterns which might serve as lights or signs and signals for the last part of the trip. My mother carried one and Colin the other, while my father grasped the ice pole in his hand. When they set out, they first had to walk about a mile along the shore until they reached the appropriate place to “get on” the ice and then they started across, following the route of the spruce trees which my father had set out.