Words for Wednesday

Photo from: http://birdingforpleasure.blogspot.com
Writing prompt from: https://myjustsostory.blogspot.com/2018/10/words-for-wednesday_17.

The Bench

He'd wanted desperately to put his hands over his ears and yell and shout. To stop the torrent of words pouring out of her mouth, overflowing on to every tissue in his body. But he didn't. He was too conscious of how childish this would look, how demeaning and pathetic.

Instead, he left her standing in the kitchen in mid-flow. His wife of fifty one years now.

He tried to sort out the words she'd used, to put them in some kind of order and perspective.

She used the word narcissist, she called him a narcissist. He'd have to look that up, it sounded like he was a flower of some kind. No ponce he. No sirree.

Then she yelled "hopeless sociopath". Him. A retired detective. As if.

But the clincher was when she said it was time for them to go their separate ways. It was time for some happiness for herself after all those years of fearful living with a monster. Meaning him. Again, as if. He knew monsters, he'd put them behind bars.

She wanting to sell the house and share the proceeds. Give her freedom. Freedom from what?

When he was the best husband and father a woman could even dream of.

Now he'd go home, his home, and talk some sense into her.

Copper

I would be most grateful for feedback on this very short story that I have struggled with on and off for about two months. I think it finished now but am totally open to suggestions. I am hoping the point of it is clear or that some reflection on elder life is teased out of readers. It's a true story.

COPPER

His middle-aged son brought the dogs for a visit every Wednesday afternoon, Scotch Terriers who looked just like the picture on the old Black and White Scotch whisky bottles. I’d be drawn to my second floor window by their ecstatic yips.

The old man would be at his open window on the ground floor, leaning out, waiting, calling them by name, Maud, Billy, over and over, his quavering voice filled with longing, his magnificent head of white hair streaked with traces of a youthful auburn. His son would hold each dog up in turn for him to pet with his crippled arthritic hands.

Someone told me they were like children to him after his wife died. He held on to the marital home until he was no longer able and his son then moved him into our no pets allowed independent senior living building five years ago. Word had it he signed over his house to his son with the understanding that he took care of the dogs and brought them to visit.

Last month he graduated from our building into one with a higher level of care. A couple of small trucks and a station wagon showed up with the whining dogs peering out the open window. Ten minutes later his son emerged from the building carrying a large suitcase. Next came the old man, tottering along on his walker, his extraordinary hair like an orange-streaked cloud at sunset. He was stooped over, reluctance in each uncertain footfall, losing more and more ground as he fell further behind his son.

But catching sight of the dogs he straightened with some effort and his eyes lit up, Maud, Billy! and they bounced out of the open car door to greet him, trying desperately to climb the walker to get at his face. His son folded the walker into the trunk as his father clung to the car door, looking up at my window. I saw tears lodging in all the folds of his face and I nodded, absorbing a little of his pain and fear.

As his son helped him into the back seat the dogs fell onto his lap in spasms of joy, his words were blurred and hoarse under the excitement of their yelping.

The station wagon moved away and was quickly out of sight. No one stands around outside to say goodbye to anyone leaving here. It’s like it’s contagious and no one’s been vaccinated.

The trucks immediately disgorged their drivers and the two men vanished into the building. Shortly afterwards, the windows to the apartment were thrown open and the accouterments of his left-behind-life were tossed onto the lawn.

Where are you taking all his stuff? asked Bertha, who patrols the grounds of our building like a border guard, all ninety years and ninety pounds of her. The men looked at each other then at her.

To the dump, lady, to the dump, one of them said impatiently. They loaded the two trucks with boxes of dishes, cheap shelving, metal tray tables, a saggy couch, an over-used easy chair, pantry items, an old mattress, a melamine headboard, sad linens, a wonky kitchen table with rusty kitchen chairs, photos in frames of weddings and children and soldiers, many albums, scrapbooks, magazines, an old console television and a stereo turntable, rickety bookcases, books, a giant bag of dog biscuits.

It took a week to air the place out for I heard the old fellow smoked like a chimney.

Professionals then came to dismantle and eject all the cabinetry and fixtures and cart it all away, some of it falling apart, missing knobs and drawer fronts.

A few days after that a pair of plumbers came. I could hear the hammering and the sound of things being torn apart, next I heard a clinking and clanging an hour or two later and looked down below and caught a glimpse of copper and for a few seconds thought it was the old man’s head protruding from the window.

But no,various lengths of copper piping were being passed slowly and carefully through the apartment window from one worker to the other.

They were then wrapped like treasure in flannel sheets before being reverently placed inside a van, to be auctioned off, no doubt, to the highest bidder.

Lament

Lament: I don't often hear the word. A fine old word. Comes from the Latin "Lamentum" which means moan or wail. Many sad old Irish tunes are "Laments". We're a great lamenting lot, us Irish. We lament everything: our children's emigration, our history, our language, our land, our people. I think we're born with a lament written on our psyches.

So I was mulling all this over in my car yesterday. I had to go to town and mulling is de rigeur when I drive by myself. I was trying to come up with a brand new short story for the Commonwealth Short Story Competition. To keep me sharp,I made a resolution this year to plaster all these short story competitions with entries. I get short listed, usually, which pleases me intensely, as it means the stories are readable and interesting. I don't aim to win or place, though that would be a lovely shock. But to go on a list of 100 out of, oh, 3,000-5,000 submissions is very, very pleasing.

So y'all know what I'm talking about - here's a sample of one lament. You can hear the sorrow threading through it. Words are not necessary in a lament.



This is called Lord Mayo and Joanie Madden, she of "Cherish the Ladies" fame, tackles it.

So I was playing this in my car and as luck would have it (it does happen now and again) a short story fell into my head. About this woman at a dinner party being asked to sing an Irish lament. And I wrote it last night and have been polishing it today amongst other stuff like my washing machine breaking down and blueberries needing to be jammed and a Tigeen needing to be cleaned.

Priorities.

Norah

This story was inspired by the photo above taken by my friend Joe Healy.

[As a follow-up to yesterday's post and requested by you faithfuls via emails and comments, here is the short listed story. Thank you kindly and feel free to critique.]

Strange how the simple regimentation of childhood fell into place once again in the declining years, the seeming spontaneity of middle life vanishing almost imperceptibly. Each day blended seamlessly into the next. Every morning at eight she had her simple breakfast of tea, toast and marmalade while reading the headlines of the Irish Examiner which seemed to slavishly follow the unwritten rule of 'if it bleeds it leads'. Accidents, drug lord battles, a drowning in Crosshaven. The bowl of mixed fruits in the middle of the table brought the only spot of colour into the kitchen, a counterpoint to the murky grey day nudging at the window. She rinsed out her dishes.

November is a wicked month, she reflected, looking out. Now who'd said that?

Ginger wheezed at her feet. A most unattractive fellow, all the colours of the dog world on him none of which were even remotely appealing. A mottled thinning wiry tufty fur: grey, dirty sand, streaky black topped by his white whiskers in a downward swoop giving him a constantly mournful expression. Fifteen. A great age for a dog but it was far too challenging to calculate it in human years like some did. Multiply a dog's age by seven? Maybe six? Or something far more complicated. She couldn't remember. And she a maths teacher back in the day.

Ginger was a witness to the last breath of her married life. A couple of years before he died, Hugh had found Ginger on St. Patrick's Street huddled up against a rubbish bin. A wee puppy. Rain slick and softly whining. He'd brought him home wrapped in his winter scarf and wanted to call him Pana after the street. Ah now, he'd said, don't be so hard Norah, a dog will get us out of the house more. And on the third ah now she'd relented. What harm? But she stood her ground on calling him Pana. Ginger, she'd said. And that was that.

And he'd stayed runty small and Hugh, God bless him, ignored the laughter-laden jibes, the 'sure what kind of rodent-rat-squirrel is it at all?' remarks that were tossed casually at his six foot self and his ugly little dog by passersby on Pana. Ginger. How euphemistic a name was that, you'd have to hunt to find the small bit of ginger fur on his belly.
Hugh had died right there on the kitchen floor while he was bent over topping up the dog dish. Ginger had a voracious appetite. They had laughed about it. Taking a peculiar pride in his enormous consumption. Hugh would joke about the subsequent output, he'd put all the Irish wolfhounds out there to shame would our boy!

Ginger whined and licked Hugh's face as he lay there, dog food scattered around him, while she dialled emergency services, stuttering into the phone, her words panicked and incomplete. For they both knew, she and Ginger, that Hugh lay forever still beneath the death that had silenced him.

Lisa and Jeff and the grandchildren came down for a week but that was all a blur. A disturbance really. Lisa had left home many years before and Hugh and herself had always visited them up in Dublin as there wasn't room in their small house in Cork for the swarm of them all. Five grandchildren including one set of twins, all within five years. All very loud.

After her cancer and hysterectomy and some very careful consideration, she and Hugh had adopted Lisa. They'd hoped for a quiet girl. And Lisa, as if she knew what was required of her, was one of those self-entertaining babies fascinated with her own fingers and toes, overjoyed with the mobile they hung over her cot, rapturous at being taken outdoors into the sunshine and best of all she slept through the night. She was barely an intrusion on their reading and listening to classical music, was entranced by their singing rehearsals for the Cork Baroque recitals and gurgled as they hosted their turn at bridge nights. Pretty too. And bright. They took a modest pride in her accomplishments, her scholarships. And then she'd met Jeff and all these children started arriving. Quickly. Unseemly they'd thought but had agreed it was truly none of their business. Three days in Dublin every Christmas, they decided, followed by one long weekend in the summer. That would keep their grand-parenting end of things up. And, of course, remembering all the birthdays and the anniversaries and putting aside modest educational funds. There, that would be their duty done without the noise of the rambunctious four boys and their even louder sister offending their delicate sensibilities.

She'd embraced the internet some years before after a few night classes. A vast encyclopedia of untapped knowledge, she'd said to Lisa, excited for the first time since Hugh had died. She missed Hugh's stimulating conversation. The vast world wide web compensated for this in a small way.

A month ago, she'd looked up the symptoms for depression. Old Doctor Harmon hadn't picked up on what was really going on with her. By now he was just seeing her and a few more of the stalwarts as he called them - patients that had been with him for the fifty years since he qualified. So he listened carefully as she read off her symptoms from a slip of paper and then handed her a small pack of anti-depressants from his samples. He wagged his finger at her in that way of his that she was used to by now but that Lisa had so much trouble with when she was a teenager.

Now Norah, he'd said, you can only take these with a bit of food, and just one three times a day mind! She'd nodded, repeating what he said as that had always pleased him.

And the three prescription renewals were no trouble either. He'd asked to see her again after the third one. She made sure she pasted a smile on her face as she walked into the surgery and remembered to keep it there even though her face ached as she left with the new prescription. Feeling marvellous, she'd assured Gerry Harmon, like a new woman!

She'd seen her mother going down the road she was headed. Second childhood they called it then. But at least children could recognize their own families. Her mother hadn't known any of them during the eight years before she died, even their simple brother Bertie who had lived with her all his life. A mother to nine strangers.

On researching Alzheimer’s on the web, she found that there were ten early warning symptoms. Not that she could remember all of them now.

She went into the hall and put on her blue quilted coat, forcing her mind back to the symptoms. Oh yes, one had to do with driving, another with forgetting to pay the bills. She'd always liked driving out to the country, especially Kinsale, usually with friends, most of them now gone or in care homes. Lovely spots for lunch there. But the confusion on the roundabout, and those coloured lights, what were they again? – traffic lights that was it - and deliberately avoiding the motorways and then getting on to them accidentally. This was all alarming enough for her to hide away the car keys in a lucid moment a few months ago and then forget where they were. Good thing too.

Ginger was sitting in front of her, staring at his leash hanging on its hook. She certainly never saw the need nor had the desire to talk to Ginger as Hugh had done. They existed within each others' lives without the clutter of language. Ginger knew the times of his twice daily feedings and his walk or reliefs, and would leave his basket by the kitchen stove and show up by the dish or the coat-rack or the backdoor without prompting and at the right times for these functions. He made no unusual demands on her nor she on him. It was a highly satisfactory arrangement.

She snapped the leash onto his collar and put on her blue hat and her red mohair scarf and her winter gloves and took her cane out of the hall stand. Ready steady go.
Not for her the stroll on Pana of Hugh's days but the scantily peopled North Mall with its nice flat footpath around the corner from the house. There were no twists and turns on their promenade and they both knew the way.

As she walked, she found herself pondering yet again on that Ten Point List. Something about forgetting to groom, using poor judgement. She'd made careful notes. Stuck them around the place. Especially about bath times and washing her clothes in the machine. One day, she'd found herself washing sheets in the bath like her grandmother would in the old copper tub at the farm. At times, alarmed, she'd had to decipher what the notes meant as once it took her many hours to figure out the word shampoo as she'd thought it had something to do with Ginger's doggy business.

Lisa hardly telephoned anymore which was all well and good. They now exchanged emails. Lisa sent current photos of her family on Sunday nights from her Iphone. Dinners, graduations, Halloween, birthdays, sports, performances. She would respond cheerfully, exclaiming over the children, all adults now, some married themselves. Unknown beings to her. She assumed their communal loudness had decreased in volume. Or maybe not, as on line she had kept herself up to date on heavy metal music and that rap nonsense that so polluted the airwaves on the radio.

Before she realized it, Ginger had turned around and they were headed back down to the corner of Marlborough Place. Close to sixty years at the one address though for the life of her she couldn't recall the number of her house if she was asked even though she'd silently repeat it to herself when she saw it on her own gate.

Mornings were the best. Afternoons were more of a challenge especially with the sun going down, for her agitation increased and then her ability to read even her own written directions to herself failed. She had let go of her beloved books, how long ago now, a year? Still aware enough then to find herself re-reading chapter one of each well thumbed tome over and over again trying to set the characters in her mind. And failing.

She carefully hung up the walking paraphernalia on the hall stand, placing Ginger's leash on its special hook and stared at it. She'd never been a sentimental woman. There was room for very little sentiment in the house she grew up in, and Hugh, bless him, had provided what sentiment there was in this house.

She took the four bottles of pills out of the kitchen cupboard and ground down two of the pills with her mortar and pestle and mixed the powder into some fresh mince meat. Ginger wasn't used to treats and devoured the snack quickly. And then she waited. It didn't take long. Wordlessly, she laid him in his bed beside the stove.

She put the remainder of the pills into the pestle and ground these. She poured some cornflakes in a bowl and sprinkled the powder all over it and poured milk on top and set it aside carefully and then went into the parlour to the computer in the corner and opened her email. She reviewed the instructions for 'delay delivery of email' and set the time for eight p.m. that evening. Then she painstakingly typed from notes she had prepared over the last few days.

Dear Lisa,
By the time you get this, I will have passed on to be with your daddy. I sense the onset of my own Alzheimer’s in more ways than I can tell you and I do not want yourself or Jeff to be burdened with my ever worsening condition. I've left all in order for you in your father's small safe. I'd like to be buried with him in St. Finbarr's.
You've been a joy and a source of pride to me Lisa and always respectful of my need for privacy and quiet. I am so very grateful that I can take care of this one small task left to me without bothering you. If you would, please have Ginger's ashes scattered on the grave. Your daddy did love him so. Goodbye. I've had a very good life.
Love, Mother.

Aside

There's a major Irish Short Story competition held every year.

Last time I entered - about 5 years ago - I made the Long List.

This time I made the Short List.

There were 1,575 stories submitted and the Short List was 103 which included my story. I made that magical 6.5% of all submissions - you can see that my accountant mind lives on, ha.

The reason I am posting this here is that it is a very weird feeling to make it to the Short List. Weird and wonderful.

I want to celebrate this - you know - but it sounds foolish to other than a writer's ears and self-laudatory. Actually, pathetic is the word. Not the achievement but the desire to blow up the balloons and throw around the sparklers and streamers.

Who would possibly understand that I would want to celebrate an overall non-win as I didn't make the final cut of 11?

Mulling

Our evening walk

Mulling: Verb

1.Think about (a fact, proposal, or request) deeply and at length: "she began to mull over the various possibilities".

To write well I do believe we have to read well. I was struggling with a short story I wrote that I like very much. For one it's based on truth but for two I have a narrator that just isn't sitting right with me. The story's in the third person and he is an old, wise man with some physical deformities (oddly proportioned body, very short with a large head)that I am extremely fond of. I know, for literati - "of whom I'm extremely fond" sounds clunky and snobbish, so hey, artistic licence, y'all.

He collects stories, and people trust him with their deepest secrets. I've written many stories featuring this wonderful old man but this particular one was driving me crazy. I put it away about six months ago, still unresolved.

I was reading a story out of an anthology yesterday. It was a great story up to a point and then it all fell down as the writer couldn't extricate the narrator and the protaganist from each other. The end of it was a mess. I read it four or five times and it was still a mess. Like the writer gave up and said, I did really well for 90% of this and now I'm tired, so stop bothering me.

I was out with the dog this evening and I was transfixed by the slapping of the incoming tide on the stones. My mind soared off. I was a child again listening to my grandfather who had wonderful stories and songs. "Come here to me, a leanbh," he'd say, "an sceal eile." (child, another story). I don't know how long I stood there but it was long enough for the dog to throw herself on my feet and whimper. But, suddenly, I knew where that writer had gone wrong and QED where I'd gone wrong too by not giving my beloved storyteller, Chester, his very own voice.

It's odd that. How we can think reading and walking and playing with the dog can be pastimes, fun things, but on another level, almost subconsciously, the mind can be opened up anew and a very old ball of knotted wool can be untangled.

Just like that.

Just an Old Shed.

 

He used the old dory for storing the driftwood he picked up from the shore, to dry it out and later use in the stove.

The land behind he grew the potatoes on.

He was religious in the mowing of the grass, every week without fail, in the gentler months.

He'd allow himself to look at the old shed then. And think to himself it looked so orderly, so deeply and satisfyingly red against the green.

Today he thought to open up the shed. Give it an airing. Make sure the tools hadn't gotten rusty and all the many implements of boat-building were still in their places.

No, maybe tomorrow. He wasn't ready. Not quite yet. His heart was still too tender. Those old rafters would be too welcoming.

It had been six months. After their forty-four years and seven months and three weeks and one day together.

His whole world had broken apart the day Ben the dory maker had died.

His beloved. His everything.

Frozen Conversation

It's not as if he wasn't expecting it. He'd seen herself and Gabriel (what kind of silly-ass name was that anyway?)lurking behind the fishplant on more than a few occasions.

She looked flustered when she saw him across the road, waiting for them to emerge. He thought he was discreet, sucking on his cigarette, one eye squinted against the evening sun when the day got late and his feet got tired and he got sick of saying hellos and howareyas to the foot traffic on their way to the shop or the plant. She just about ordered him back to the house. Not inside it. Never inside it. But outside it.

He just wasn't expecting the tone of voice she'd used, the icy feel of it. Calling him a nuisance and a pest. She'd sat right there, next to him, in her lilac sundress in the heat of the summer, tossing him those snowballs of wintry words.

The chairs never forgave her.

The Smell of Fire - (Final Installment) Part Six

See Part One HERE
See Part Two HERE
See Part Three HERE
See Part Four HERE
See Part Five HERE

There was something so, well, unconscious, about her son, she confides. As if the spirit inside him had never truly woken up. It worried her greatly. He was drinking too much, did I know that? He was so much an outsider in that family. She said that, much the way she'd said Italian in describing her granddaughter yesterday. He was a lonely man, her boy.

She knew of the jibes of his schoolmates and his teachers too, she said. So hard on a little boy. And her eyes filled with tears. No wonder he couldn't wait to get out of school, a man who had the capacity to be an academic. Or a priest. And here she sighed and gripped my hand in both of hers a little more firmly.

I'm not asking you to wrench him away from the signorina, dear, she said, never. You are too spirited to handle him and he too dispirited to handle you. And that's the way of it.

But perhaps you can bring him a little ease? A little comfort to his days? Am I so far out of line here you think me meddling and appalling?

She didn't know it, or maybe she did. But she could have asked me anything and I would have done my best to provide it. Climb hills, ford streams: Martha, just ask.

I shook my head, no, she was no meddler, then I nodded slowly, demolishing the word “pimp” as it surfaced, unbidden, to my judgemental self .

I'll try, I said, I can try.

She didn't have to say it but I could never tell him of our meetings, for they were to gather and grow, little rewards perhaps for my attentions to her son, a cynic might say. But in many ways she was a mother/mentor - expanding upon my own personal vistas with encouragement, attention and connections.

Ian had a lot of free time, opened up substantially by his wife's regular jaunts to Las Vegas.

He would come to me after a bad fire and talk of it, talk of death or rescue, of children and animals and drunks with cigarettes burning or poor wiring and backdrafts and fire alarms and smoke detectors and axes and hoses and mighty red trucks and high to the sky ladders.

He would lay it all out before me, lying there beside me, for even after he showered, the smell of the battle would stick to his pores, drift through his hair, cling to the bed for days afterwards. He would take hours in the recounting of it all until he fell, exhausted, into a mumbling sleep.

And I'd lie there, propped up on one elbow, looking down at him as he slept, marvelling that the only passion he ever felt was in the quenching of the fires of others. And the only passion I ever felt for him was in the smell of it long after it was over.

But it has never really been over, except in the physical sense. Several years into this arrangement I met someone else and I got out of the habit of Ian while still meeting with Martha for dinner or drinks or her latest show.

And I still see her. In an artists' retirement lodge now. Near ninety she is. Alert, engaged, passionate. Teaching the fine points of her profession to any who'll have her. And many do. Wearing her signature yellow. She would not move in with her son and the signorina. It would have been signing her own death warrant and too soon, she says.

I run into him the odd time there. His seventy years looks ill at ease on him. As if he's too old for it, for he looks older than her now. He asks me about my books, my columns, my plays. He tells me as he accompanies me out to my car in the parking lot that he has never loved anyone like he loved me and I believe him.

Some would be flattered by this. But I am sad. For indeed wasn't it a poor excuse for a love affair we had?

And then I remember the smell of fire on him.

And I wonder what I missed.

The Smell of Fire - Part Five

See Part One HERE
See Part Two HERE
See Part Three HERE
See Part Four HERE

My room was all the way up in the attics. One small little dormer room, a single bed, a dresser, a cracked mirror, my trunk, that was it. Four stories up it was.

A terrible part of it was the blindfolding. Even though it all happened in darkness. I never knew who it was, you see. I'd get little clues, smells, grunts, the feel of different hands, some soft, some rough, odd scented soap, hair-oils, unshaven chins, brandied breath, garlic from the pasta. I was gagged too at the beginning, but when I begged them not to do that as losing my breath on top of everything else was paralyzing me so much I thought I would die, they stopped, making me promise not to talk or scream or cry out, I just became numb, you know?

I had nowhere to run, nowhere to go, neither flesh nor fowl nor fish that belonged to me in this strange huge city, such a leap from Ballycloyne, Brigid. You would have no idea.

I knew nothing of such acts. Nothing. I thought it all part of the service to the clergy. Doing my duty in the palace. All in a maid's daily work.

I went to his Excellency when the inevitable occurred. He called me some terrible names, if you can imagine. There was nothing worse that could happen to me, I knew that, so I stood up to him. So I did. I had nothing to lose at all. I had no intention of giving up my child so I asked him for ten thousand dollars and I would be no more trouble to him or his friends. That was a huge amount in those days, dear. I suppose it would be over a hundred thousand today. If he didn't give it to me I would go to the police, I said. He made a lot of threats, of course, saying I'd gone down the docks with all the sailors and he knew all sorts of characters, shady ones, that would knife me as soon as look at me, but he gave in. He must have seen something in my eyes. I would not go down lightly.

Cash, I'll never forget the sight of all that cash in his safe in the library. And jewellery too, diamonds and gold and the flash of rubies. My ten thousand was just a drop in the ocean. He piled it all up in front of me and then, a very odd thing, put an envelope beside it with St. Michael's College printed on it. Told me to use it for the boy's education. If it was a girl, he said, spend it on her wedding.

And that was that. Of course Ian is the head off him, unfortunate I suppose, I could never think of him as my son, understandable, I would think? He is so much of his. But Ian is kinder, he's always been such a gentle boy. But oh, so timid. I had dreams for him, but he plays life carefully, narrowly, have you met Signorina Rosa?

Here, her reflective mood shifts and she laughs as I nod.

Can you imagine how she hates being called Signorina?

Her delight ignited my own and we tittered companionably as she held my hand in both of hers, suddenly sombre.

I have a favour to ask you, Brigid.

The Smell of Fire - Part Four

See Part One HERE
See Part Two HERE
See Part Three HERE

I phoned her. Of course I did. I said I had to see her again, talk to her, listen to her. Without Ian - that was implied in my pathetic slightly desperate phone-call. I'd never done anything like this in my life.

What in God's green earth, I questioned myself. This is bizarre. This is lunacy. I told no one.

I did run it around my mouth for a while, the story I would tell a friend about Martha Carbery and her son Ian. I practised, complete with careless little giggles. “Oh, when I was over at Martha's there, Martha Carbery? Having tea, looking at her latest works......” I confirmed to myself it all sounded far too weird, far too off the edge. I, normally so talky I would attract attention if I muted up, avoided my friends.

A week later, I was back in her studio, dressed in jeans and a new silk shirt, denim blue to bring out my eyes which I had been told were quite a lovely shade if offered some encouragement. Silver earrings in old Celtic symbols (Newgrange circle) dug out from the bottom of the wooden cigar box I kept such stuff in and my hair bound up in a silver barrette to one side of my face. One of my aunts, the fanciful dreamy one, told me once I put her in mind of Veronica Lake of the forties films, and when I was feeling especially in need of getting attention I would do this sideways thing with my hair as Veronica had done. It is hard sometimes to call out the line between the ridiculous and the attractive. But I took my chances.

I got a brisk nod from Martha when she evaluated me and quickly went off in search of her cameras. When she returned, only an ephemeral trace of the woman that I had seen the previous week remained. As if she had tossed aside the script of the deferential persona that hovered around her son. Here was a woman of certainty and electricity.

She put me sitting on her kitchen table. Leaning back on my hands which gripped the edges vice-like. I was terrified of slipping backwards, splaying clumsily across its insetted colourful Spanish tiles. You see, I wasn't blessed with the grace of a gazelle and often laughed at myself, singing “Poetry in Motion” when I tumbled to the floor whilst attempting a new dance manoeuvre.

She took a series of shots, me pensive, sitting looking out from the well of one of the high windows, me, leaning against a whitewashed brick wall, hands in pockets of jeans smiling at her, so easy to do, she was so lovely on the eye.

Afterwards, when she talked to me, I felt as open as I ever felt with anyone in my life before.

I like you very much so I'll tell you, she said, though I've never told Ian and never will and you mustn't. Do I have your word?

I nodded.

I was a little under-maid, the upstairs maid, in the palace, she said. Do you know the palace in Forest Dale?

Who doesn't, I said, it's where the princes of the churches live, right?

Yes, she said, I was fresh over on the boat from Ireland, my mother had died leaving eight of us. Daddy put most of them into care but I was old enough at seventeen to be put off his hands so he talked to the parish priest who arranged for the trip to Toronto and good training in the palace with the fare being paid off out of my wages.

My job was to lay out the archbishop's clothes every morning and every evening, wash them, iron them, keep them repaired, starch his shirts and his hankies, run his bath, make his bed, change, wash, iron and repair the bed linens and those of his clerical friends who would come and visit and stay for a while. Going from dawn to dusk I was, with never a stop and only the half-day of Wednesday to myself and very little money until the fare was paid off.

It started not too long after I arrived.

Here she paused and gathered herself, straightening her shoulders, clearing her throat.

I've only talked of it very few times, Brigid. Some things are better off lying dead and buried.

The Smell of Fire - Part Three

See Part One HERE
See Part Two HERE

How on earth could a vibrancy such as Martha give birth to the carefulness and hesitancy that was Ian?

She must have seen my glance go back and forth between them while we were standing in her vast studio off King Street. You'd never think to look in an area like that for artists. I'd often rushed through it as I drove by. Decrepit, run down, full of rats and criminals and druggies, I'd always surmised.

The soft Irish mist of her voice assured me when I had shared this that of course: this was the whole idea. A secret enclave of studios and galleries hidden away, safe from intrusive eyes in a seedy section of the city.

Her speciality was black and white photography capturing the entrails of the city. Often featuring the beautiful and prominent. The mayor himself cast upon the detritus of his metropolis: sitting, ill at ease, on a blanket on an overloaded skip outside of a demolished building.

It's easy to convince them, she said in answer to my unspoken quizzical look, I tell them it's the only shot of them I'll consider and they all want a Martha.

Her unusual silver grey eyes evaluated me. Her heavy, black (assisted?) hair tumbled around her face. The woman must be near seventy, I thought. I, at 48, felt my own life, as yet completely unlived, heavy on my bones, with my drab grey flannel skirt and tweedy jacket underlying my own sartorial timidity.

Sixty-eight, she said, as if reading my thoughts. It was a month before my 18th birthday when I gave birth to Ian.

She was dressed in a bright yellow pantsuit, with the jacket cut in Nehru style, covering any sins on her neck. Her sleeves were rolled up displaying the hands I had seen on her son. Ian was deferential. I had never seen a son so attentive and admiring of his own mother. She on the other hand, bestowed a careless affection upon him, evidenced by an occasional detached glance in his direction or a soothing “Do you think so, dear?” when he assessed one of the enormous black and white prints hanging from the high ceiling of the studio. It was like walking through a maze to see them all, hung as they were on hooks on the rafters twenty feet above our heads, descending to a few inches above us on black silk ropes, and scattered (as I thought) haphazardly throughout the vast space.

Oh no, dear, she said to me when I mentioned this. There is a plan and a plot to it all.

We went from photos of the tent city on the shores of Lake Ontario to the obscene enclaves of the wealthy in Rosedale as we wended our way from left to right along the pathways of the huge photographs. A journey, for me, through a city I had never seen so intimately.

She gave us green tea in tiny Chinese bowls and kept up a conversation that landed on whatever took her fancy. My career, Ian's upcoming holiday to Ireland to trace his roots (“Whatever for, dear?”), Courtney, her Italian granddaughter (“Is she free of that poisonous man, yet dear?”) all said in that hypnotizing voice of low hills, shallow valleys: tiny inflections, as if all ordinary curiosity had abandoned her years ago, leaving her with only this passion for her art.

I fell in love.

The Smell of Fire - Part Two

See Part One here

Yeah, he was lonely. Yeah, there was no sex in his marriage. His only child, Courtney, was in an impossible childless marriage to a cocaine dealer. All of this rang with the familiarity of the old angelus bells at noon. His oddly hesitant honesty blurting out nuggets in the midst of his life's biography. He'd had a superb private education courtesy of his anonymous father. He'd been a fearful child, sensitive to the jibes and jeers of his schoolmates who learned of his unusual status in an era when “unmarried mother” was pronounced “whore”.

He wanted to get into the work force and quickly to avoid further stigmatization, so he dropped out of university and became a fire fighter at 19. He didn't like it, not one bit. He should have been an academic, he said, but the money was good and he met Rose, the cousin of one of his workmates, at the annual ball, she was a bit older and very serious. Just what he needed as he was a bit of a dreamer. Her dad had been a contractor when the vast swathes of the suburbs of Toronto were being built and died at sixty leaving his four daughters to share in a million dollars. Enough to pay off all their houses.

Trouble was, and here he was hesitant and his cheeks coloured in that strangely attractive way, his wife and her sisters went four times a year to Las Vegas and spent. And spent. So it wasn't like he was living the life of Riley in a mortgage-free house. They still did not have quite enough, even with the nephew's repayment (thanks to you, he said huskily) for him to retire. Even though he could buy himself out now and have a pension as he had just turned 50.

Way back, his daughter had been in high school then, he'd fallen for one of her teachers. Much like me. He'd gone for coffee with her and said to her what he was about to say to me. And that was his only attempt at having a special friendship until he met me.

He wasn't in it for sex, he had to make that clear, but he always had difficulty with friendships due to his childhood status. He never got in the practice of it then. And it became an even bigger challenge at the fire station. Friendships, that took poker and baseball and golf, didn't it? Whereas he just always wanted to be friends with women and talk books and ideas and theatre. And that was impossible, working where he was. And then Rose, how could she understand him hanging around with other women without her. She consumed Harlequin romances like candy. One a day. Though he wasn't critical of people's reading. Don't take him wrong. Reading was good no matter the content. But his field of private interest was medieval history, he loved the middle ages. And its music too. This made him an object of some amusement to his wife and her sisters and friends. And even to his own daughter. A strange bird, they called him. See? He never quite fit in anywhere.

That was easy to see considering his parentage. Old fashioned now, of course. Nowadays, one wouldn't bat an eye at a single mother or speculate on an absent father. But then, it was another story. His mother would never tell him or anyone who this ghostly Other was. Up to this day. And then he blurted out:

“You'll have to meet her!”

Now that got my attention. I snorfled into my cappucino and looked at him, licking the foam off my lips. Had I heard him right?

His face lit up. He became alive. I saw the boy he must have been, excited, proud, his hands coming into play (those lovely hands) as he described his mother's photography business. Her awards, her attention to detail, to unusual locations. Martha Carbery. Who hadn't heard of Martha Carbery? I had seen her exhibits, seen fabulous lake shots in local newspapers, seen her series on the old Toronto docklands.

“I'll ask her to shoot you,” he said excitedly, “Oh, she will love you!”

Ahem, said I, once his hands and voice went still and he sipped his coffee, his delighted eyes never leaving my face, what about Rose?

He looked surprised. Startled almost.

“Oh”, and there was an odd sort of relief in him, rippling slowly through his long, rangy body, “Oh Rose and Martha can't stand each other!”

The Seanachaí*

* Irish for storyteller.

Funny this. I write stories. I love writing stories. I embroider or expand or elucidate or embellish. Take your pick. That is what storytellers such as myself do. Give us a sliver of a theme and we will give you a buffet. No headlines for us. It is all in the details of the dishes on the dresser or the fire crackling in the hearth and the sound of the rain tap dancing on the roof late at night.

I write them well, I think. As to actually reading them to an audience, I don't think I do that well, though I would love to. I would love to climb outside myself and pretend I too am in the audience enthralled with the spin of the words coming from the stage. I aspire to that. The loss of self in the telling. Eamon Kelly had such a gift, if you ever want to see one of the greatest Seanachaís of all time in action, have a look at this:



And because I am known a wee bit around these parts as a storyteller, I get sent to old people's houses so I can sit and listen to their tales.

What I don't tell anyone is that while giving all appearances of being raptly attentive to their stories, spruced up and laundered for me, The Seanachaí, I am listening fiercely to what is left unsaid.

In Search of Lost Time - Final Instalment

See Instalment 4 here


Now he was at the Battery Bistro, renamed La Vista in its latest incarnation, at the end of Harbour Drive, overlooking the Tickle. The booths were no longer a burgundy velvet, they were a Mexican print. The special of the day was burritos. He made his way to the back and sat in the same old dark corner. It was early, too soon for lunch. He ordered a coffee and then signaled the waitress and added an Irish whiskey and tossed it back like she would have and ordered another and did the same.

He left a twenty on the table and went up the hill to Boston Way. Far too soon, would she be there yet? It said two on the paper. It wasn’t even noon.

There was a notice outside. At rest - what rubbish - Una Doyle and the visitation hours listed underneath. He entered the hush of the place. The thick carpets. The strange smell, he could never identify the components of a funeral home smell. Nothing as crude as formaldehyde, but subtler, a cocktail mix of the hothouse flowers, the wood, the candles, the paper of all the cards, the beeswax polish.

Can I help you? The murmur came from his left at an entrance to a large room. There was a casket being arranged at the far end. There were a lot of flowers around. She was an older lady, his age, she looked both familiar and in charge and she confirmed it by telling him she was Leona Darcy, the funeral director, and he remembered her from church and reminded her of their connection and she immediately shifted into a more intimate helpfulness and first name terms.

A client of mine, he said confidentially, here to pay my respects. Una Doyle.
Ah, she said, right Richard. That’s not till two, but she’s here and her daughters are here and her brothers, and her mother too, private family viewing and arranging at the moment, but hang on and I’ll get the girls and she was gone before he could stop her and thought to race out the door but Leona knew him now and how odd would that be, so he stayed rooted to the spot, not knowing what to do with his hands so shoved them, gloves and all, into his pockets and pursed his lips into a whistle type arrangement but thought better of it.

The girls. There they were in front of him now. Identical twins. Una’s hair. The dimple on her lower lip. But blue eyes. Taller than Una. They offered him friendly, puzzled smiles. He removed his cap and gloves to shake their hands and followed them into a small coffee room at the back of the funeral home.

When did you know Mum? Elspeth said. Elspeth was in yellow and Isobel was in blue.
The time of the divorce, and then I saw the notice in the paper today….his voice trailed off.

They looked blankly at him.

Richard Kelly, he offered helpfully, I was her, and he paused, her lawyer.

Which divorce? Asked Isobel, the one in blue.

Oh, said Richard, taken aback, the one from your father?

Three marriages ago, Elspeth giggled, looking at her sister.

Mother and marriage! and Isobel rolled her eyes, she was even going to try it again and then the cancer came a year ago. Lung. From all those Players.

Richard tried to gather his thoughts and failed, they were scattering everywhere. But he had to know, dear God. Ask it. He took a deep breath and was glad of the warmth of the whiskey still nestled in his stomach.

Did she ever mention me? he asked, Richard Kelly, he added again, just in case they missed it the first time.

The girls looked at each other.
One of her husbands was a Richard, Elspeth said helpfully, frowning in concentration, but that only lasted six months, did you handle that divorce?

He shook his head, and stared blankly at the table top, refusing their offer of coffee.
No, no, just the first one, he stood up and shook their hands in turn, bowing a little, backing away as they looked at each other and followed him across the foyer.

Will you be here at two for the public viewing or would you like to come in now? from Elspeth.

He shook his head again. No. No. And he thought frantically for something to say, and nothing would come out around the previous something that was stuck in his throat. He walked away.

He stood outside the main door, coughing, donning his cap and gloves, and just before he closed it he heard one of them murmur to the other, I wonder what brought him here?

And the reply, Strange old bird, yeah?

In Search of Lost Time - Instalment 4

See Instalment 3 Here

This would all have been enough, he was content just sitting in the car with her, in the booth at the Bistro, walking by the boats in the harbour, her hand in his. He had heard the expression that his cup runneth over, but this was even bigger, astonishing him to the core with the magnitude of his feelings, his desire to be with her.

Even that very same night, lying in bed with her afterwards, knowing he had to tear himself away he had said and so seriously:
Una, I’m not the kind of chap who does this.
And she had understood him as she always would.
I know, was all she said, I know you Richard, and then she kissed him and pushed him gently out of the bed.

And next morning over breakfast, he had lied skillfully about a case he had to work on, he had shut off the office phones they got so busy after the secretary had left, lost all track of time, fell asleep at his desk, woke up at two in the morning, what a shock. It was easy. Just like that.

And later, walking around at lunchtime, finding himself at a jewelers and catching sight of a bird of paradise brooch and walking in and buying it. Just like that. And writing a cheque on the company account. Just like that. And it felt so normal, it took his breath away. As if he were born to it. And going over to the Writers’ Club on Abbot Lane and leaving the box in a company envelope in her mailbox. Just like that.

And her voice on the phone in late afternoon.

Happy anniversary, darling, he’d said.

Anniversary? She’d said, laughing. Her laugh, smoky with the Player’s cigarettes and the Jameson’s whiskey she favoured.

Twenty-four hours, he’d said, his breath catching, it’s the bird of paradise one. And she’d laughed again, her breath catching too.

He looked around him, my god, he’d left the bench at the park and now he was in the grounds of the hospital, looking up at the windows, which one had it been? He found himself at the main desk, a man of measured words always, now searching and fumbling.
Una Doyle, he got out. Una Doyle?

The receptionist looked at her computer screen and clicked a few keys.
Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, my love… but he broke in before she finished.

I know, I know, what room was she in? his strangled urgency sounding strange even to his own ears.

Four sixteen, why? Can I help you? And he heard the words echoing behind him as he pushed the button of the elevator, once, twice, three times. As if he were a man on the run.

What did he hope to find in room four sixteen? There were two occupied beds, several visitors turned to face him as he stood in the doorway. Which bed? He’d like to think it was the one by the window. You could see the lake from there and if you looked downaways you could nearly see the bench they would sit on in the afternoons.

He had thought he could leave Doris. Maybe after Gavin left law school, but then Susan said she wanted to become a doctor. It was all too much. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t squeeze Una into the picture of lawyer’s wife, stepmother to Gavin and Susan and himself as stepfather to the vapourous toddler twins. He’d never even met them. Una had been adamant on that. Only if they had a real commitment.

He had told her for two years to leave it with him. He’d sort it. But he couldn’t, could he.

He was president of the Bar Association, chair of the Rotary, deacon at St. Paul’s. He couldn’t get his head around Una fitting in with all of that. Until Una, he’d never thought about any of that stuff. It just was. Until Una. Una with her diaphanous skirts and peasant blouses and loud orange boots and Jesus sandals and chain-smoking and chugalugging her whiskey and laughing uproariously and obscene poetry and daring him to do it in a public place (and they had on the bench in midsummer), and sometimes no underwear.
And then he’d made the big move. He went and talked to his rector at St. Paul’s and told him the whole story, watched as Reverend Cripp’s eyebrows just about folded into his hairline.

Are you mad, man? was all Reverend Cripp had said, out of your mind? Think of Doris, of your poor shamed children. And all for what?

And it was the shamed children that had done it. Susan and her dreams actually. Poor shamed Susan, she might have run away, drugs, pregnancy, who knew. Her medical school aspirations trashed by her own father. He asked Una to wait for another five years. To be his mistress in the meantime. He’d given that a lot of thought. He could afford to subsidize her. Keep her and her children.

She’d reacted like he had offered to pimp her on Duckworth Street. Her horror and rage knocked him sideways.

You think this is about money? She’d yelled at him, leaping up from the park bench, standing, leaning over him, shoving his shoulder crudely over and over again. The words following were horrific.

He agreed with all of it, now sheltering his head from her blows. Yes-yessed her until she collapsed again beside him. Sobbing. Rejecting his arms, finally staggering to her feet, wiping at her cheeks, hitting the handkerchief he offered her.

You’re like the rest of them, all the other fuckers, you either die or leave. Useless fucker! I never want to see you again!

She had yelled this as she backed away, down the path, and then turned and raced off in her pink runners with the yellow laces and their smiley faces, her jewellery clanking, her hair flying in all directions.

In Search of Lost Time - Instalment 3

See Instalment 2 here

She’d sat across his desk at Kelly and Kelly when it was only Richard Kelly LLB. And he joked afterwards with her that it took all of five seconds for him to fall in love with her, hopelessly and forever.

She was wearing Levis and some wild tie-dyed tee-shirt and there were things threaded through her hair, feathers, he thought, strings, beads, heavy chunky things around her neck and around her wrists and her huge earrings were even bigger and carried some kind of payload as well, crystals and amulets. Her knapsack was purple and it would later spill books and papers and maps and even candles all over the floor when she went to find something in it.

But first she had shaken hands with him and then sat down and said: You’ve got to nail the fucker for me, Richard. Can you do that?

And no one had ever asked him to nail anything, not even a picture, ever before. And something happened inside his chest, a slow surprising warmth spread through it and his hands trembled as they played with the pen and the notepad and he cleared his throat and found himself tumbling into those golden brown eyes that were appealing to him as if he, Richard, were some kind of knight, some sort of saviour of maidens in distress and the warmth hit his arms and he spread them outwards and looked at her steadily and vowed fervently: Una, I’ll nail him.

And he had wanted to add ‘so help me God’ because it felt like that kind of moment. But he stopped himself.

And he heard about the deadbeat husband who had abandoned her and the twins and headed off to Toronto with the sixteen year old babysitter.

I mean, Richard, it’s like the cliché of clichés, right? She was breathless; there was very little anger in her. A waste of energy, she said when he questioned that. He was a useless fucker, she said, she was mad to ever marry him, not to mention breeding with him, and here she rolled her eyes at him, but the twins were dotes, gorgeous girls, three now, in pre-school. They deserved every bleeding penny he, Richard, could squeeze from the fucker. She was a writer; did he want to hear the poem she wrote about the fucker leaving with his kiddy-fuck?

Richard, stunned, still trying on his suit of guardian of the downtrodden, nodded and this was the moment she poured the knapsack all over the floor. Richard intercommed his secretary and said to hold his calls and cancel his four o’clock and he went around the desk ostensibly to help her retrieve all her stuff but when she sat down in the middle of it all, he sat down too, not even bothering to adjust the knife edges on his pin stripes. She read her poem about abandonment and her little girls and her mother and her father who had died at sea and the tears rolled down her cheeks when she had finished and it was just like that, so easy, so natural, he put his arms around her and rocked her.

And it was like finding all the remaining pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. It all came together without any big song and dance. The both of them sliding into place beside each other. He took down all the relevant and legal details of Hugh Doyle, the fucker, while still sitting on the floor and when all that was done he put the notepad down and took her in his arms again and said: Can you meet me at the Battery Bistro at eight for dinner tonight? I’ll make a reservation. Then he walked around his desk as if nothing of any import had happened. As if this cosmic tidal wave had occurred to someone else.

She had just nodded as she got to her feet, keeping her eyes on his as she threw her knapsack on and then, as if they had been saying goodbye to each other in such a fashion for years, touched her finger to the indentation on her lower lip, kissed it and turned it to him in a tiny salute before backing out of the room.

He had thought affairs complicated and not worth all the trouble. A matter of immense proportion to be ordered and plotted and planned and slid around and lied about. A lurking, messy business fraught with booby traps and hidden landmines.

None of this was the case with Una. Her mother took the twins on command it seemed and Una’s small apartment was on a side street off the beaten track. He was not so much aware of the breach of his wedding vows as not causing Doris any unnecessary hurt so took some pains not to flaunt it. That night, the first of many dinners at the Bistro, booth six in the back, he felt like a cliché himself, telling her, in a voice that had never before expressed the baffling loneliness of his marriage, that he and Doris had ceased to sleep together after her hysterectomy, but not from his doing. She had taken on the persona of many women he had observed in the province once they turned forty. She had shortened her hair to a brisk mannish razor cut after the operation and announced with feeling that thank God, they’d had enough of that nonsense and separate bedrooms were now the order of the day.

He and Una had talked of everything and nothing. She was an editor, writer, director, poet, actor totally involved in the arts scene in St. John’s. It turned out she had come to the wrong lawyer; someone had recommended Kelly the so-called barracuda of St. John’s. Richard told her that was Wild Willy Kelly, the divorce specialist. He, Richard, handled the dry as dust cases, the government ones, the ships colliding, the insurance, the falling walls and missing manhole covers, the sundry grievances of the disgruntled segment of the populace. She said, I’ve got the right lawyer, Richard, and took his hand across the table.

In Search of Lost Time - Instalment 2

See Instalment 1 here

Doyle, Una, loving mother of Elspeth and Isobel, mother-in-law of Austin, grandmother of Gretchen. Passed away from cancer at the Health Sciences Centre, St. John’s, Newfoundland on Monday. Visitation today at Darcy Funeral Home on Boston Way, St. John’s between two and nine o’clock and tomorrow between four and seven. Una was the creative force behind September Rock, the annual drama festival in St. John’s that featured new plays from across Canada. She was also a poet and writer and featured regularly in The Telegram along with other publications and taught drama at various summer schools around the province. Her two plays “Sighs from the Rock” and “Ages Ago” won various awards and she had just completed her second book of poetry, “Death and Other Newfie Jokes.” Funeral is on Friday at eleven a.m. from the Basilica. Donations to the Cancer Society. Cremation. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Cancer Society or to the Una Doyle Foundation, established at Memorial University to encourage young playwrights. She has left us the gift of her amazing joie de vivre.

Una. His Una. Oh God. He had a ridiculous thought amongst all the panic stricken ones in his head. It hadn’t said she’d struggled. He’d always thought how awful that was in an obituary, people struggling conjured up the appalling picture that they’d never gone through the four stages of a foretold death, the struggle came early, the acceptance came last. Anger was in there somewhere too and resignation. He forgot the order of it all, but he knew that acceptance was last. Maybe Una accepted? Oh God, he prayed she’d accepted, she hadn’t suffered. He bowed his head. Dear God, he started, she must be at peace? Please God. Peace.

Unbidden, startling, shocking, tears were flooding his eyes, steaming his glasses, salting his cheeks.

What’s wrong, Richard? The kitchen door had opened behind him; he sensed Doris’s uncertain presence.

Nothing dear, he said mildly, after a pause, shaking his paper and bending over it.

I thought I heard you groan or moan or something, a strange sound? Doris didn’t move from where she was.

He managed a h’mm, dismissive, the sound he usually made, he thought, never having been so aware of his own sounds as he was now in this minute.

He heard her releasing the door and it swung gently for a few seconds. All was silent again until she once more turned up the television.

He had never thought it would end like this. He had thought Una, who had been so present in his head, in his very body it felt like, for these last eighteen years would always walk in St. John’s. Would somehow be tuned into him too. Like a secret radio station. She had never stopped coursing through his blood, thinking about the way she would laugh, the way she would read some of her poetry to him, the way she’d call him stuffy, the way she felt in his arms, how he would lift her up and bury his face in her neck. He carried all of that around with him all the time. Una. Lily of the Valley was her perfume. George Harris was her favourite Beatle. Amber yellow was her favourite colour. Her left knee had a hole where she had a terrible tumble from a bicycle when she was six. Her hair had a life of its own that no cut or perm or treatment had ever tamed. Her fingernails were always bitten. Her bottom lip had an indentation in the middle. She would laugh about her permanent little pot belly that had cradled her twins and like the mark of Zorro would never leave her. She called it her double oven.

Are you sure you’re alright dear? It was Doris again, this time he watched her sensible pink slippers pad over to where he sat, his head bowed. He took his glasses off without looking up and unpacked his Irish linen handkerchief from his cardigan pocket and dabbed at his eyes.

A cold, I think, Doris, I’m coming down with a bit of a cold. And he blew long and hard into the fine fabric.

You’re making the most woeful of noises, Richard, are you in pain? Doris reached over to touch his shoulder and pat it diffidently as she would a stranger. They had long ago lost the maps to each other’s bodies.

Sorry dear, Richard said now honking for good measure into his hankie a second time; I’m having some difficulty coughing.But I’m fine, fine, he amended quickly. Quite fine. Allergies, perhaps.

Doris hesitated for another second then left the kitchen again. Back to her morning dose of talking heads.

Richard went to the hall and put on his coat, his cap and his gloves and glanced in at Doris in the family room.

A breath of fresh air should fix me, he called, timing the sentence to coincide with the second he moved through the front door. He closed it quickly and headed off down and around the corner up Forest Road. He was a good fifty yards up the road when he could have sworn he heard the door open and a faint Richard? trail up the air behind him but he didn’t acknowledge it and thought he heard the door close in resignation. Forest Road, moving in the direction of the hospital. What on earth? Keep moving, he instructed himself, just keep moving. Away from the house. Away from everyone.

It could be a mistake, Una Doyle. There must be many Una Doyles with daughters, twin daughters named Elspeth and Isobel right? Many co-incidences like that in life. A common name Doyle. Very common in Newfoundland. How old would Una be now? Fifty, she’d be fifty, no age given on the death notice. She was fifteen years younger than him.

He slipped into Quidi Vidi park. Their bench. She couldn’t wait anymore. This was where she told him, stealing all the magic off the bench when she left it for the last time. Eighteen years ago next month. He sat and leaned over and stared at the river. He hadn’t thought she’d meant it after their magical two years together. He banged his fists off his forehead, desperately wanting to hurt, wanting a bodily wound, a visible bruise, blood. How could she die and he not know? How could she suffer without him holding her? How could she leave taking her lips and her ragged fingernails and her voice and her poetry and the golden brown of her eyes that matched the freckles on her breasts just so?

In Search of Lost Time - Instalment 1

It was a morning like all of the others behind him. Doris was in her sensible housecoat at the stove in the kitchen, his egg, soft-boiled one and half minutes, in the one remaining Doulton egg cup that was left from a set of four, a wedding gift forty years ago. The Globe and Mail was folded in its blue plastic baggie beside his plate, black and white striped ironstone. His coffee was poured, ready for his cream. No one could ever do his cream right except himself. The barest teaspoon of it sufficed with no sugar.

Richard was showered, dressed impeccably in what is referred to as casual wear and which for him was a pressed pair of khaki trousers, a checkered shirt and one of many retiree cardigans in various dull shades ranging from putty to mud, that Doris and or their children and or their grandchildren replenished on a regular basis, a neat row of twelve hung in his closet, dry-cleaned and waiting. He was ready for the day that loomed endlessly ahead. Just like every day since he had retired from his law practice five years ago. At Gavin’s, their son’s, insistence. Though it was subtly done and none in the family ever referred to it again. Now Kelly and Kelly was down one Kelly and up an Aherne and a Rogers but it remained Kelly and Kelly and would, Richard suspected, until he had tossed off his mortal coil.

He murmured a good morning Doris with the usual politeness accorded her on the occasions throughout the day when their paths would intersect, and she responded with his two slices of whole wheat, barely golden from the toaster, scraped sparingly with Becel, placed just so on his plate.

From long habit, and with his left hand, he unfolded his black and white checkered napkin and placed it on his khaki lap while tossing a teaspoon worth of cream into the coffee and sipping it with a satisfied ah before scrutinizing the headlines of the paper. When his egg was finished, he selected a fruit from the bowl - it was Wednesday so it was a kiwi - and carefully peeled it in one strip with the fruit knife from the top of his placemat, an English scene of horse and hounds bought on a tour around England three years ago. He laid the peel carefully on the edge of his plate and carved the fruit into four bite size pieces.

Doris by this time had left the kitchen, he had ceased years ago to ask her why she couldn’t sit down and share at least one meal a day with him. Next he perused the stock market activity of the day before and then headed for the obituaries. He was quite unprepared for what he read under the Ds and had to read it three times before he comprehended the full measure of it.

My First Public Reading

The big night is behind me now.

First of all the location. Were I asked to choose a place for a reading debut, this is exactly the one I would have chosen. A gorgeous wood and glass centre right on the ocean. Where the whales come in. And they did that evening, chasing the capelin that are running. Cavorting in the waves by the shore.

This was the festival's Irish night and Irish stew was served. A dinner and show format. The place was packed and there was a waiting list. I would like to take the credit as the 'star' of the event but this would not be completely accurate. The food and the shockingly reasonable ticket price were a huge factor. Plus this year - in spite of gas prices and air fare prices - has been a record year for tourism in Newfoundland.

There was a large contingent of tourists from California waiting patiently in the parking lot for admission. We managed to save them some food and put tables out in the lobby for them to eat and then squashed them into the main room for the 'show'.

Packed to the rafters would be a fairly accurate description of the audience.
Maybe it is my advancing years, and more self-acceptance, but I wasn't nervous at all. Excited yes. Honoured yes. And totally delighted at being asked.

I spoke for about ten minutes on how I found Newfoundland five years ago (or more accurately how Newfoundland found me!) and then read my story, which took approximately twenty five minutes, dramatized for this purpose. I have posted it, along with stage directions to myself on the "Off the Rock" writing section of my blog for anyone interested in reading it.

A couple of friends from Toronto were kind enough to film the whole thing for posterity and will provide me with a DVD when they get back home in August.
In my experience, however, every event has it's unplanned sideswipe.

The evening was warm and the windows were all open and I could feel my skirt, a very light cotton, floating around my legs in the lovely ozone laden breeze. A not unpleasant feeling. About half way through my reading I had the odd sensation that the skirt was sliding down my behind but when I slipped a discreet hand back there all appeared to be well.

Oh, poor deluded me! Imagine my horror when the whole floaty skirt settled around my ankles in front of 200 people. I had the flash: you have to make a joke of this, you just have to. So I did. I hauled up the offending garment, resettled it around my waist and asked the audience if anyone would like me to remove my top also. There was a stomp of applause and roars of laughter. I then said my mother always told me to wear nice underwear in case of an accident and I did and I wanted to show you all publicly, thanks Mum.

Then I went back to my story. Just goes to show you, no matter how well planned anything is, the most unexpected disaster can occur.

The audience were wonderful. The Californians particularly went out of their way to get my email and address so they could purchase my book when it is finally edited and out there.

Then the accordions and guitars arrived and we all went on to dance and sing the night away.

At the end of the night everyone gathered in a huge circle and held hands and we all sang this tail of the evening number which often ends parties and festivals in Newfoundland:

Music And Friends


I've done a lot of living and I've found
No matter where you go the whole world round
They always go together hand in hand
Where there's one there'll be the other music and friends

When blue skies turn to grey and hide the sun
When tired hands their daily work has done
Nothing seems to turn things round again
And make the whole world right like music and friends

Music and friends it's so good to bring together music and friends
Side by side no one can break them
when we take the time to make them
Nothing else can take the place of music and friends

Music and friends it's so good to bring together music and friends
Side by side no one can break them
When we take the time to make them
When there's one there'll be the other music and friends

Nothing makes the whole world right like music and friends

All in all a wonderful, positive experience. One I will never forget. For many reasons!

PS And I thank Laura for my latest Braggadocia award, see it on sidebar.