“What’s the word?”
“Soporific?”
“I beg your pardon? I’m sorry.” Shaking her aged head, and smiling. “My hearing is too awful.”
Harriet wrote the word on a piece of paper.
“That’s it,” said Fiona. “Nobody can sleep, haven’t you noticed, and?” – with her little lilt – “it doesn’t matter.”
Age had put its heavy hand on Fiona’s head and pushed her half over. She was Groucho Marx as a leaf in the wind, lifted along on her daily trek to Bank Street, a plucky Scot from theIsle of Lewis who arrived in Canada on a Saturday, started work on the Monday, and two months later, on October 29, woke up to the stock market crash of 1929. “The girl at the next desk said, ‘Did you know that so-and-so, some big shot, kicked the bucket?’ Where? ‘On the bridge over there,’ she said. And? I looked out the window and pictured a man on the bridge kicking a wooden bucket.”
And?
was the link that joined each of her utterances to the next, making her unstoppable in conversation no matter how deaf she might be. “I am reading Chekhov, and? I manage several paragraphs at a time.”
Now that’s pure love, thought Harriet, to go to the trouble of learning Russian in order to read Chekhov in the original, and to do so at such an advanced age and off the back of the public education available in Scotland in the 1920s. That’s what oatcakes will do for you. Harriet had gone to Fiona’s house for tea (Fiona always invited neighbourhood newcomers to tea, taking her job as Sybil Rump’s successor very much to heart), and eaten five oatcakes. “To the future Sir Sean,” she said, raising her teacup.
Fiona nodded and smiled and nodded again, as deaf as a post, having mislaid both of her hearing aids earlier in the day.
Harriet has since looked up the marvellous name Sybil Rump in a biography of Mackenzie King, but Sybil, who probably kept King and therefore Canada afloat, didn’t warrant a mention. Now there was a man who tilted at windmills, at least by night. Harriet looked northeast, in what she thought was the general direction of King’s house on Laurier Avenue, where fifty years ago he held the late-night séances that put him in touch with his dead mother and his dead dog Pat. Then she found her thoughts drifting back to the fly in the neighbourhood ointment:loud Ray, who planned to cut the mighty oak tree down. Come spring, he said. He was going to put in a pool. If that tree weren’t there, he told everyone, he could drop a swimming pool into his backyard and have room left over. As if to accustom his appalled neighbours to the prospect, he spent hours outside with his snow blower, ruining their peace of mind.
She knew she ought to lie down for a while, even if she couldn’t sleep, but Bill Bender’s kitchen light came on next, and something about the play of light and shadow took her back to the day last summer when she came upon him lying flat on his back, his head and shoulders hidden under a clump of tall ferns, his long legs stretched out across the grass, his feet in red sneakers.
She had knelt down, rested her head at the base of the ferns, and glimpsed what he was looking at: deep, navigable shade. How beautiful it was. And to think she had never looked before. It was like an emerald forest – primeval, peaceful, huge – and only visible from this boyish, unembarrassed angle. Bill Bender was looking up the skirts of the world when it was young.
Some half-remembered words came back to her. “A green globe,” she murmured, “in a green shade.”
The old man sat up, then. “‘A green
thought
in a green shade,’ you numbskull. ‘Annihilating all that’s made / To a green thought in a green shade.’”
“Marvell?”
“Andrew Marvell. Member of Parliament for Hull and secretary to Milton.”
“I thought so,” she said.
She was impressed with herself, even if he wasn’t. Afterwards, she looked up the poem in the library.
The nectarine, and curious
“Soporific?”
“I beg your pardon? I’m sorry.” Shaking her aged head, and smiling. “My hearing is too awful.”
Harriet wrote the word on a piece of paper.
“That’s it,” said Fiona. “Nobody can sleep, haven’t you noticed, and?” – with her little lilt – “it doesn’t matter.”
Age had put its heavy hand on Fiona’s head and pushed her half over. She was Groucho Marx as a leaf in the wind, lifted along on her daily trek to Bank Street, a plucky Scot from theIsle of Lewis who arrived in Canada on a Saturday, started work on the Monday, and two months later, on October 29, woke up to the stock market crash of 1929. “The girl at the next desk said, ‘Did you know that so-and-so, some big shot, kicked the bucket?’ Where? ‘On the bridge over there,’ she said. And? I looked out the window and pictured a man on the bridge kicking a wooden bucket.”
And?
was the link that joined each of her utterances to the next, making her unstoppable in conversation no matter how deaf she might be. “I am reading Chekhov, and? I manage several paragraphs at a time.”
Now that’s pure love, thought Harriet, to go to the trouble of learning Russian in order to read Chekhov in the original, and to do so at such an advanced age and off the back of the public education available in Scotland in the 1920s. That’s what oatcakes will do for you. Harriet had gone to Fiona’s house for tea (Fiona always invited neighbourhood newcomers to tea, taking her job as Sybil Rump’s successor very much to heart), and eaten five oatcakes. “To the future Sir Sean,” she said, raising her teacup.
Fiona nodded and smiled and nodded again, as deaf as a post, having mislaid both of her hearing aids earlier in the day.
Harriet has since looked up the marvellous name Sybil Rump in a biography of Mackenzie King, but Sybil, who probably kept King and therefore Canada afloat, didn’t warrant a mention. Now there was a man who tilted at windmills, at least by night. Harriet looked northeast, in what she thought was the general direction of King’s house on Laurier Avenue, where fifty years ago he held the late-night séances that put him in touch with his dead mother and his dead dog Pat. Then she found her thoughts drifting back to the fly in the neighbourhood ointment:loud Ray, who planned to cut the mighty oak tree down. Come spring, he said. He was going to put in a pool. If that tree weren’t there, he told everyone, he could drop a swimming pool into his backyard and have room left over. As if to accustom his appalled neighbours to the prospect, he spent hours outside with his snow blower, ruining their peace of mind.
She knew she ought to lie down for a while, even if she couldn’t sleep, but Bill Bender’s kitchen light came on next, and something about the play of light and shadow took her back to the day last summer when she came upon him lying flat on his back, his head and shoulders hidden under a clump of tall ferns, his long legs stretched out across the grass, his feet in red sneakers.
She had knelt down, rested her head at the base of the ferns, and glimpsed what he was looking at: deep, navigable shade. How beautiful it was. And to think she had never looked before. It was like an emerald forest – primeval, peaceful, huge – and only visible from this boyish, unembarrassed angle. Bill Bender was looking up the skirts of the world when it was young.
Some half-remembered words came back to her. “A green globe,” she murmured, “in a green shade.”
The old man sat up, then. “‘A green
thought
in a green shade,’ you numbskull. ‘Annihilating all that’s made / To a green thought in a green shade.’”
“Marvell?”
“Andrew Marvell. Member of Parliament for Hull and secretary to Milton.”
“I thought so,” she said.
She was impressed with herself, even if he wasn’t. Afterwards, she looked up the poem in the library.
The nectarine, and curious
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