Scare the Light Away (4 page)

Chapter 7

The Diary of Janet Green. Saturday, January 22, 1944

Dad and Aunt Betty reacted so badly when Bob and I told them that we want to get married that we’ve hardly said a word since. It has been quite unpleasant around here, so say the least.

I was making breakfast this morning, a bit of bacon and toast. We’ve come to the end of the strawberry jam. There are no eggs left. Dad came downstairs right after me. He looked all sad, and sort of sagging around the edges. He ate his bacon and toast without saying a word, and then when he was about to get up from the table, he told me that he doesn’t want to lose me, and if I marry Bob and go to Canada then he’ll lose me. He said that he couldn’t bear it, what with Mum leaving and then what happened to my brother, John. So we both cried and hugged each other. That is the first time I have seen my dad cry. Even when we got word about John being killed, Dad just walked out to the yard, whistled for Bonnie, and they went into the wood.

It’s only been two years, but since that day my dad has been getting old before my eyes.

Dad said that he will miss me dreadfully if I go off to Canada, but that if this is what I really want to do then I have his blessing. I kissed him and jumped up and down with the joy of it. Then he told me that he would take Bob out to the pub in town the next time he was off duty, and he would buy a drink for all the lads to celebrate that Bob and I are to be married.

I am so happy!

April 20, 1944

Tomorrow is my wedding day!

After tea I tried on my dress for the last time before the ceremony. It is so lovely. Dad saved every clothing coupon he could manage; some of my aunts even sent coupons so that we would have enough. That was so very kind of them! Mrs. Beeton has made me the most beautiful dress. It is all white, not long with a flowing train like I have always dreamed of wearing, but falling only to the knee. But I wouldn’t have anything longer if a fairy offered it to me tomorrow. I have borrowed the veil and shoes that Jenny’s sister gave her to wear to her wedding. Jenny is already expecting a baby, so the borrowed veil must be good luck.

The cake is sitting in the kitchen. It looks lovely, although a bit small. But it is a real wedding cake, like the ones they had at the family weddings we went to before the war.

My wedding day!Tomorrow will be the happiest day of my life.

Chapter 8

I took Sampson for a long walk and got back as the game Dad had wanted to watch was ending. He mumbled good night and shuffled off to bed. I turned out the lights, locked up, and made my way to my own bed. The night was pitch dark, the way I like it, but my eyes remained wide open, staring at nothing but blackness. Sampson snuggled against the curve of my body as she had every night since Ray’s death, the night she was first allowed up on the bed. My mother’s diary was almost certainly nothing more than a litany of schoolgirl dreams followed by a lifetime’s worth of long lists of groceries needed and chores to be done. I didn’t want to read them. They’d be sad, nothing but sad. Dad had no interest in them, so tomorrow I would find the lot and toss them into the trash.

But something nagged at the back of my mind, an irritating infinitesimal whisper that wouldn’t be hushed and sent off to sleep, so in the early hours of the morning I succumbed, crawled out of bed, and crept down the rickety old stairs to the cellar.

The light over the landing did little to penetrate the darkness. In this old house, the basement was not a recreation room, as might be found in a modern suburban home. It was a real cellar, lined with handmade shelves made out of cheap wood groaning under the weight of jars of homemade jam and preserves and bulk purchases bought on sale at the supermarket. A few root vegetables, the remains of a winter’s worth of supplies, were stacked in farmers’ market bushel baskets in the corner. My mother had been dead only a few days, but already the damp, dark room was assuming a miasma of dust, mold, spiders and abandonment.

Tea chests.

Wooden tea chests were used for packing.

My mother moved into this house in 1946, the day she arrived from England with nothing but a cardboard suitcase, a squalling Shirley, and her dreams. She would have had no further need for packing crates.

Prying the lid off the first one, I peered inside. Too dark to see anything. I ran upstairs for the flashlight Dad kept on top of the fridge.

The light’s strong beam revealed a box crammed full of books. Not books from the bookstore or library, but mostly loose-leaf binders, a few spiral-bound notebooks, one or two proper journals.

I leaned up against the freezer and shone the flashlight into Sampson’s eyes. She didn’t like it and snapped her jaws to scare the light away. “I don’t want to do this, dear dog.” I told her. The box was nearly full and there were two other tea crates behind this one. That’s a lot of writing.

I pulled out the book on the top. It was a good quality journal, and on the cover there was a pretty picture of a young girl with a long summer dress and big sun hat standing in a field of yellow flowers. I opened it to the first page. The
From:
was filled in with a date only a few months ago. The
To:
was blank.

I hoisted myself onto the freezer and lifted my flashlight higher in order to see better. I flipped to the last written page. Sampson sat in a far corner, scratching at I didn’t want to know what.

I hadn’t been home for thirty years, but in all that time my mother had written to me almost every week and often more. Her handwriting was as familiar to me as my own. More familiar. It’s been years since I’ve written anything more involved than a shopping list or directions to a friend’s summer home. Like almost everyone else in my world, I type, and then click “print.”

It was dated six weeks ago:

Bit of a pain in my head again today. Came on me sharp as I cleared the front step. But then it passed. Maude keeps saying that she’ll drive me to see Dr.Richardson in North Ridge, if I only make the appointment. That’s kind of her. She’s become a good friend, Maude. But I don’t like to go to Dr. Richardson. He’s pleasant enough but seems much too young to be a doctor. I do miss old Dr. O’Malley. Winter will be over soon, thank goodness. After fifty-some years one would think that I would be accustomed to these horrid Canadian winters. Letter from Rebecca today. So nice to hear from her. She doesn’t write much any more. This was the first letter in months.

Did I really want to read this? But I could no more climb back up those stairs, turn off the light and go to sleep than Sampson could tell me that she would read them and give me a précis.

She took Ray’s death so hard. I wanted her to come out here, for a nice long visit. But she won’t. Too proud. It would have been better if she and Ray had had children, then she would have someone to live for now that he’s gone.

Enough!

The book slammed shut with sufficient force to distract Sampson from a thorough washing of her private parts. The journal landed with a thud in the open tea chest, and I jumped down off the freezer.

The treads shook with every step as I stomped up the stairs. The light was switched off so fast that Sampson had to make the last bit of her way in the dark.

I found it hard to sleep that night. All the years of my accumulated guilt rose to the surface and I tossed and turned until daybreak.

I was a bad daughter. My mother tried to be a good mother. She was a good mother. I was a bad daughter. I’m a bad person.

So what, I asked myself? This was my life’s lesson: no good deed goes unpunished. The good finish last. I’d learned that at the hand of the master: my grandfather.

***

Monday morning. For most people, a working day. For me, the day of the dreaded family dinner. I stared up at nothing as the sun conducted dust mites in Viennese waltzes across the ceiling. My parents had slept in this bed. Making love. Yuck! Conceiving Jimmy and eight years later, me. Yuck again! Why were there so many years between Jimmy and myself, when Shirley and Jimmy were fairly close? If I read my mother’s diary I might know.

I pushed the thought aside. Who wants to know the details of their own conception?

Not me.

Of course, I told myself as I padded to the back door to let Sampson out, being my mother she wouldn’t have written such an impolite thing down. Would she?

“Morning, Dad.” He came in as I was measuring out the coffee I’d purchased yesterday. “Sleep well?”

“As well as can be expected, Becky. Without your mother beside me. But thank you for asking.”

“Rebecca,” I said automatically.

“Coffee. How nice.” He pulled out the remains of yesterday’s newspaper and settled in at the table. No one would see today’s papers until someone walked up to the mailbox on the road to get them.

I briefly considered doing just that. And telling my dad that I would be back in a few minutes and I would have my eggs over easy, thank you. And lightly on the toast. I don’t like it burned.

Instead I pulled out sausage and eggs and sliced generous pieces off the loaf of twelve-grain bread. “What time’s the funeral tomorrow?”

“Two.”

“Fried eggs okay?”

“Yup.”

“Do you know Jennifer Taylor’s family?”

“Who?”

“The girl who’s gone missing. The one I read about in the
Gazette
.” Reduced-fat granola and non-fat yogurt were laid out on the counter for my own breakfast. The sausages smelled great, all bubbling and hissing away in the frying pan. One or two wouldn’t hurt, and when was the last time I had indulged in a fried egg? Before yesterday, that is? I returned the unopened container of yogurt to the fridge and tossed three more sausages onto the pan.

“Her father owns the hardware store. Fawcett’s. Old John Fawcett died long ago. His son didn’t want the store, sold it to the Taylors. They never changed the name.”

“Do you know the girl, Jennifer?”

“Seen her in the store once or twice. Don’t go there as much as I used to any more. Just for a light bulb or a bunch of nails now and again. Getting too old to be doing chores around this place. Janet worried that I would fall and break something.” He smiled at the memory. “Said she didn’t care if I broke my fool neck, ’cepting that then she would have to look after me.”

I turned back to the stove and cracked eggs into the hot fat. The smell of sizzling sausages, fresh coffee, and browning bread filled the kitchen.

“But Jimmy knows them well. He gets lots of work over the summers these days, building cottages, fixing up the old houses. More work than he can handle. He hires on the Taylor twins, Jennifer’s older brothers, when school’s out. Jimmy told me she tags along some times. Said she wants to learn a trade. Funny world this. People woulda laughed themselves silly in my day, girl thinking she could be a builder.”

I put the sizzling plates on the table. “She spent a lot of time with Jimmy?”

Dad shrugged and turned his attention to his plate. “Funny bread this. What’s these little things?” He poked at the toast with his fork.

“Seeds.”

“Seeds. Imagine that. Your mother never served up toast with seeds.” He took a cautious nibble. “Good though.”

Eventually Dad finished his breakfast and, leaving the dishes to me, walked up the road to get the papers: the local
Gazette
and the
Sun
, a Toronto tabloid. When he got back he tossed them on the counter as I folded the dishtowel over the oven rail to dry. I glanced at the front page of the tabloid.

Parents plead for Jennifer’s return
.
Must be a slow news day in the Big Smoke.
A middle-aged couple, faces sagging with a worry verging on despair, filled the front page. A pair of teenage boys flanked them, looking equally grim. Dad had told me they were twins, but otherwise I never would have guessed. The boys were the same height and they had the same narrow eyes. But one was lean and wiry while the other had either never lost his puppy fat or had already grown more. Jimmy’s helpers. Two black labs sat at the fat boy’s feet. Even the dogs looked lost and confused. The grief-stricken family stared back at me. The man was identified as Dennis Taylor, Jennifer’s father. I thought I remembered him from school. And not at all fondly. I folded the paper and placed it on the counter, face down.

I spent the morning tidying the house before indulging in the luxury of making myself a cup of tea. A real cup of tea, leaves steeped in the brown betty and poured through a silver strainer. I drank my tea out on the deck, standing up because the chairs hadn’t been put out yet, watching Sampson dash about the lawn and under the trees as she followed one fascinating scent to another. The sun caressed my face with the soft, polite warmth it only shows in spring. Sampson dashed around the side of the house, probably heading for the woods.

Since Ray’s death, I had tried to learn to whistle. Two fingers at the edge of my mouth, the way he did when calling the dog home. What came out usually managed to be no better than a feeble squeak, but this time I managed a full blast. I felt rather pleased with myself, particularly when the big dog rounded the house and climbed up the steps to stand at my feet.

“What a good girl.” I scratched behind her ears. I had no worries that she would get lost in the woods. She wouldn’t go far. We lived in a condo in Vancouver, a high-rise like so many others, in a very good part of town. Most of her days Sampson lived the life of a city dog, kept inside, walked by a professional dog walking service because my working hours were so long. But we—now just me, me and my dog—owned a vacation home near Whistler. To which, when my husband was alive, we had escaped as often as we could.

In summers past Ray golfed, and I sat out on the big wooden deck overlooking the rainforest with either a good book or papers from the office. In the winter we skied. Ray on the slopes of Whistler and Blackcomb, me—too afraid of heights to ride the ski lifts—cross-country, often with Sampson somewhere off to one side following tiny animal tracks and sniffing at patches of yellow snow.

Only once since Ray’s death had we driven back into the mountains. It rained constantly and I spent most of the time staring out the big bay window watching the trees drip water. The place went up for sale the day I arrived back in the city.

I looked at Sampson’s mud-encrusted feet, legs and belly. At her wagging tail and smiling face. I plucked a dead twig out of her bushy tail. As soon as it reached a reasonable time in Vancouver, I’d call the agent and tell her to take the property off the market. Sampson needed it.

And so, I now realized, did I.

Energized a fraction, I reluctantly entered into the simple, emotional, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking task of sorting through my mother’s clothes, as Dad had asked me to do. He’d made the bed, or at least he’d tried. The quilt was so lumpy it obviously had been dragged up over a tumble of sheets. It was a beautiful quilt, lovingly constructed of tiny squares of fabric in myriad shades of blue ranging from almost-white to near-black but blending so slowly from shade to shade that it was almost impossible to determine where one color ended and the next began.

I opened the cupboard and went through the drawers, making three piles. Things too old, too stained, or too horribly out of,fashion for anyone to want headed for the garbage. Mom had few nice things—a couple of good dresses, a new pair of shoes, two old but serviceable handbags. These would go into a box for the church. And then there were the things to be kept. Of which there was precious little. Shirley might like a few pieces of Mom’s jewelry. None of it was good—she never spent money on herself, and Dad never had a nickel to his name. But some of it had sentimental value. It was nice to see that she still used the wooden jewelry box that I bought her for her birthday a long, long time ago. I picked up a brooch. It was large and perfectly ugly, but she liked it. When I was young, she wore it on her best coat, the one that she wore to church every Sunday in winter. It was silver plate pounded into a hollow circle, rimmed with rhinestones and with a rhinestone tail dangling down. The tail had become partially detached and waved from side to side as I shook it.

I remembered sitting in church. On the hard wooden seat, the heat in the building turned up way too high. The minister—I forget his name—droning on and relentlessly on. The poor man had not the slightest inflection or emotion in his voice; he might have been reading the yellow pages for all he seemed to care. I was the youngest in my family, so I was always plunked between Mother and Grandmother. Jimmy and Shirley sat on Grandmother’s other side and wriggled as far away as they dared get. On occasion, Shirley tucked a Nancy Drew inside her Bible and read all through the service. I wanted to tell Mom, but the look my sister gave me when she caught me watching was enough to chill my blood. Father and Grandfather didn’t normally come with us to church. There were never many men in church, except at Christmas and Easter or something special like the baptisms. And even then nothing approaching the numbers of the women. Usually it was only the oldest of the men, the ones who drooled and fell asleep during the service and woke up shouting “Who? What?” The ones who came in their wheelchairs or walkers, and had to be helped up the ramp and down the aisle by wives as old as they or a succession of daughters or daughters-in-law. About once a month my father would come, leading his family down the aisle, nodding at all the neighbors. But never Grandpa. Church was for children and women. I don’t remember the actual occasion when he said that, but the memory of the words is there, spoken in his deep voice, the one that would accept no argument. But he could be quick to quote the Bible, and I assumed that he had also spent his childhood Sundays confined to the stiff wooden pews.