Thank you again for so many lovely and warm reviews. I've said at the beginning but I'm going to reiterate here; Stuart and his family are not mine; I've lifted them from Timothy Findley's book The Wars. I want to say it again because part of Stuart's conversation here has it's roots in the other book. My hope is it will make sense even if you've not read the other, so if this isn't the case, I really do want to know.


'Have I come in at an awkward moment?' Nina is hovering at the front door of the Sussex Avenue house even as she speaks; she continues to hover there in anticipation of her answer. There is a strong suggestion that at the least hint of inconvenience she will flit vilja-like* back to the house on the corner of Sussex and Huron street.

'Not at all,' says Persis, coming to meet her on the stoop, 'you've just missed mum. She's gone down to Rosedale to see if she can talk Mrs. Ross into doing something besides walking in the ravine and haunting St. Paul's like a ghost. I was about to follow her out.'

'Oh I see –was it Peggy making a crisis out of nothing do you think? She always did when we were in school.'

'Really Nina,' says Persis affectionately, 'I think that may be the most unforgiving thing I've ever heard you say –it's perfectly true though, about Peggy. No, it was Stuart who 'phoned. Peggy's out basting sheets or something. I know Stuart exaggerates –about how high he can climb a tree or the number of fish he can catch –but never about his mother.'

'No,' agrees Nina, 'the trouble with Mrs. Ross is that you could exaggerate all you wanted to about her and it would still probably be true. I suppose I had better come along. It's a short list, the things I wouldn't do for Stuart Ross.'

'I know what you mean,' says Persis, fussing with the Alice-key that locks the front door.

When they meet Carl going up the garden walk as they come down it, it takes only a matter of minutes to talk him into journeying to Rosedale with them.

'Stuart will be glad of someone he can talk insects with,' they say, and the three of them set off together.

Stuart is in the front garden of the South Drive house teasing a large and soft-jawed dog with a baseball bat when Persis, Carl and Nina come up the walk. The dog on the lawn with Stuart is a beautiful Welsh Spaniel trained for flushing and retrieving. Stuart swings the bat in an arc over her head and she makes a leap as though to catch it. He is whistling a bit breathlessly and therefore imperfectly, Ah, Mes Amis! Quel jour de fête

'You can't sing with a tense back,' Nina calls out in spite of herself.

'What in goodness name are you doing to that poor dog?' that is Carl, more than half serious.

'Stuart –are you quite all right?' Persis.

Stuart raises his left hand in salute, an acknowledgement that he has heard them and that yes, he is all right.

At that moment the dog leaps and closes her mouth around the bat. She brings it to the ground and tussles with Stuart for mastery over it.

'You'll spoil her, playing like that,' says Carl authoritatively.

'Ah, she doesn't mind, not really,' says Stuart. He takes a step back the better to brace himself against the weight of the dog and gives the bat another tug.

'He's right, you know,' says Nina, settling with Persis on the garden wall at a safe distance from dog and boy, and unable to resist adding, 'and I really did mean it about singing with a tense back.'

'I'm not singing,' says Stuart impishly, 'only whistling. Don't you think she's enjoying the game?' he gives the bat another tug.

'That's not what I meant,' says Carl, 'anyone can see she's enjoying herself. But she's not a pet, not really, is she? Spaniels so rarely are, I mean. What is it they say about gun-dogs? It takes months to raise one and minutes to ruin one?'

'Yes that's it,' says Nina, nodding for emphasis.

'You two know rather a lot about it,' Persis says.

'You're forgetting I grew up on a farm,' says Nina, 'gun-dogs were my father's solution to rabbits –he hated to kill them, you see, and he could be sure a retriever would bring them back alive so he could move them on. Though I had an idea from Persis,' looking to Carl, 'that you were a minister's son.'

'Don't tell me,' says Carl with a groan, 'that gun-dogs have been added to the list of things I'm not meant to know about. I swear that list gets longer and longer. Anyway, I couldn't help picking up bits and pieces about it. All the boys I went about with lived sufficiently removed from the Glen that dogs were their solutions to rabbits and badgers too.'

'Dad says that too, about ruining a dog in a minute, I mean,' says Stuart gloomily. Then he brightens and says, 'still, I guess one morning can't hurt her. Here,' he says letting go of the bat, 'dead, Moll, dead,' and he slaps his knees in credible imitation of his father. Obediently the dog –Molly –gives up the baseball bat.

'What did I tell you?' says Stuart, grinning broadly, and recommencing his fun, swinging the bat just out of reach of the impulsive, brown-eyed spaniel.

'Dad and Robert've trained her too well to spoil in a morning. Not like mum; she's all gone to pieces since Robert went away to war.' He gives the bat an especially vicious swing and it misses Molly's ears by inches.

'It's mad of course,' he says shortly, by way of elaboration, 'I mean, it's her fault –mum's that is –that Robert went at all. She wanted him to kill the rabbits and he wouldn't because the rabbits had been Rowena's and she had loved them, so Robert wouldn't kill them and Teddy Burr had to be got in to do it. He was a butcher. Really, that is, he worked for a butcher in Kensington Market.'

It dawns on Stuart then that he has possibly garbled this explanation by speaking too quickly and running his words together the way the teachers at school accuse him of doing.

Carl says to Nina, 'are you keeping up with all this?' and Stuart knows he has guessed right, even if Carl's eyes are gleaming when he says it.

'It doesn't make sense, not really,' Stuart says, swinging the baseball bat too low and bringing it within reach of Molly's soft mouth. They begin to tussle for it again.

'That is, I don't understand about the rabbits either, and neither does dad, or anyone really. Ken was still here when it happened and he thought it a lot of codswollop because there was no reason someone else couldn't look after the rabbits. But Rowena loved the rabbits,' tug, 'and Rowena is dead,' tug, 'so the rabbits must die too.' Another tug.

He intones this as though it were his Sunday School verse for the week and its logic infallible. Then as an afterthought, 'Rowena was my other sister. She was –softer –than Peggy. And all anyone could say, mum, and dad and Peggy I mean, when Rowena died, was that we had been lucky,' an especially vicious tug on the bat prises it free from poor soft-jawed Molly, who yelps in dismay.

'Of course,' Stuart says quickly, resuming his game with the dog, 'they didn't mean it the way it sounds. She –Rowena –had hydro- hydroce –'

'Hydrocephalus,' say Persis and Nina for him when the word eludes Stuart.

'Yes,' says Stuart appreciatively, 'that –mum reckons, that people like that don't usually live above fifteen anyway and so Rowena got ten years grace, and so really we are lucky, or Rowena was, or something. I don't know.' He swings the bat just out of reach of Molly's mouth.

'But the point is,' Stuart says emphatically, 'it's because of the rabbits and Rowena dying that Robert became a soldier and mum's been sort of haunted ever since. Well not haunted –that sounds funny, but you know, off, not –not herself all of the time –all in pieces, like I said before.'

'It has all gotten a bit difficult, hasn't it,' says Persis, feeling this woefully inadequate but thinking the summation probably is applicable to most of life since war began.

'Rather,' agrees Stuart vigourously, as Molly successfully prises the bat from him, 'that's what Robert says. Here, Moll, dead. Drop it.'

Ever obedient, Molly releases the bat. For a moment Persis, Carl and Nina think Stuart will go back to baiting her but Stuart sets the bat aside and fondling the dog's ears tells her soothingly, 'atta girl. You are a good dog. Go on, now. Go Back, go back.' At the familiar command the dog gambols away around the side of the house.

Bereft of the dog Stuart comes and worms his way in between Persis and Nina on the garden wall. They have been sitting with their backs to the road, so as to take in the spectacle of Stuart and Molly playing, but now without the dog's antics to distract them, it becomes rapidly apparent why Stuart rang Sussex Avenue in the first place, and apparent too what Stuart meant when he said his mother had gone 'all to pieces.' Through the bay window is just discernable the image of Leslie Ford, her hair plaited like a live gold snake, attempting to coax Mrs. Ross away from the decanter of sherry on the drawing room sideboard. It is only ten in the morning.

It is Nina who breaks the silence that settles upon the group on the lawn and threatens to engulf them. She springs to her feet with a rapidity that rivals Molly the Welsh Spaniel and pacing theatrically around little Stuart, begins to sing,

Hallo maiden, see him ride,

See the horseman prancing,

Has he come to choose a bride

From the maidens dancing?**

The jauntiness of the tune is just what is needed. In a moment Stuart is laughing, and leaping up to join her,. He bows with all the clumsiness of twelve and begins to waltz Nina inexpertly across the lawn.

'Sing the rest of it,' he says, 'sing the rest of it.'

'Yes do,' says Persis with relief. Nina is not in a mood that needs pressing. Somehow, in spite of Stuart's efforts at waltzing, she goes on singing,

Look up maiden mark him well,

Leave the dancers lonely,

He may like you who can tell,

If he sees you only!

'You've stopped,' Stuart protests when nothing more of 'Cavalier' seems forthcoming.

'It's your turn next,' says Nina, rejoining the pair on the wall, 'and I've never taught you the cavalier's part.'

'You could teach me now,' Stuart coaxes. He flashes Nina one of his infamous grins, the kind that expose not only the whites of his teeth but the pinks of his gums too.

'I wouldn't dare. Your mother would never forgive me.'

'Oh –mum wouldn't mind,' says Stuart indifferently. This is probably true.

'Peggy then,' says Nina, 'and you needn't be in such a hurry to learn to be a madcapped cavalier. The world is running over with them as it is.'

'I'll tell you what we'll do instead,' says Carl to Stuart, 'it's a nice enough day, you fetch Molly back and we can go down to the lake. Do you know I've never seen it yet?'

'Have you not?'

'We'll want the tram for that.'

'Can we really?' this last from an exuberant Stuart.

'Why not,' says Persis, 'it's mild enough. Hasn't Indian Summer come late this year?'

'Mm,' Nina murmurs in agreement but the sound of it is drowned out by Stuart putting two fingers to his mouth and whistling shrilly. The girls clap their hands to their ears.

'Is that what they are teaching you in Scouts?' Nina wants to know.

'It's not what they taught us,' says Carl, rushing to the defence of the Glen Boy Scouts.

'Or us,' says Stuart, 'I learnt that from dad –he can whistle even longer and louder than I can. The Scouts are teaching us how to grow vegetables so we can artichoke and beet the Huns.'

'Well I wish they'd leave the puns to the papers,' says Persis, tapping Stuart's nose, 'they make enough of a hash of it as it is, without starting you lot on it.'

'Come on,' says Nina, 'Hanlan's Point, we said, while it's still morning. If today goes on as it's begun it will be far too hot for an outing by noon.'


They take a ball for Molly because Stuart can't be sure where his father keeps lures and doesn't like to look. He, Carl and Nina take it in turns to throw it to one another with Molly as 'monkey' between them. Persis runs skip-change along the side of the sea, courting the waves, their white-capped peaks dancing at her ankles. With one hand she reaches for the hem of her dress and gathers it up so that only half falls long and unhindered on the side of her travelling foot where it grows wet and heavy from water when she does not outstrip the waves.

'You must be mad, completely mad,' says Carl, coming away from the others and walking down to the edge of the water where Persis is wading.

'Isn't it freezing this time of year?'

'It's not so cold as all that. Nothing is cold when you've spent Victoria Day long weekend swimming in Lake Huron.'

She lets go the hem of her dress so that it falls evenly to her ankles and easily steps out of and away from the water, a veritable Rusalka in all her splendour.

'I thought you Island people were often down by the water,' she says, and there is laughter in her voice. In truth the water had been cold at first; it had it had reddened her toes and made them curl inwards on themselves, and whitened the tops of her feet until they grew used to the chill, but so used to it now are they become that the warmth of the sand –which is not much on an October morning–comes as a shock to her.

'Yes,' says Carl, 'but not this time of year. The sea breeze is sharp in autumn-time. It's a season meant for harvest and apple-picking and log fires properly, don't you think?'

Carl holds out his hands to her and she comes lightly out of the way of the waves to where he is standing.

'Having only known this part of the country in autumn, and that only slightly, I couldn't hope to tell you,' says Persis.


On the sand dunes, Stuart and Nina sit talking too, she with half an eye on the others, he absentmindedly watching the dog, who is contentedly rooting among the dune grasses.

'Do you understand the code they're talking in?' Stuart asks. He is sorting shells into groups; the cockles segregated from the conches and the conches from the cones.

'It is a bit like that, isn't it,' says Nina, handing him a scallop by way of apology.

'You mean you don't understand either?'

'Well –it's like any code. You want a key for it.'

'I see,' says Stuart. He sets the scallop down carefully in isolation. On the shores of lake Ontario they are hard come by.

'Will you teach me the Cavalier now?'

'Which Cavalier? I should have thought you'd had enough of soldiers,' says Nina.

'Oh no, I'm going to go off and become one just as soon as I get the chance.'

'Oh Stuart! Don't,' Nina almost pleads; he is so young-looking that she cannot bear the idea of his also going overseas, perhaps to become mangled, or lose his voice to the mustard gas.

''Course,' Stuart rushes to reassure her, 'it's an awful long time before I turn eighteen. Six whole years, and I guess everything'll be over by then. Besides, I only meant the song you'd been singing earlier. You said there was a part for me to sing.'

'Oh that, yes I suppose I could. Though really I think you might be better singing something higher –there's a perfectly good young lover. I thought it was hearts you were set on breaking?'

'Please,' pleads Stuart, turning the full force of his sun-brightened eyes on Nina. 'Teach me the Cavalier. It has such a jolly tune.'

'All right, all right, but don't blame me if your Molly runs off. I've never met an animal yet with a taste for my high notes.'

Molly does not bolt; she snuffles at the dune grass and noses the shells Stuart has amassed. She remembers Nina's singing from Peggy's Branksome days and the afternoons the girls spent visiting at South Drive. Besides, even top A is not so loud as a gun going off. Stuart and Nina pass a pleasant three-quarters of an hour unravelling the intricacies of 'Cavalier' until the others return to find them.

'Have we been making a scene?' Nina asks mildly.

'Not at all,' says Persis, 'though you've gotten over your worry about the words to that song rather quickly.'

'I told you earlier,' says Nina, 'there's very little I wouldn't do for Stuart. I wonder you could hear the words, walking by the water.'

'If you had the sense of a goose,' Persis tells her, 'you wouldn't let him know as much –and we weren't so far away as all that.'

Nina laughs leaves off teasing. Beside her, Stuart thrusts his shoulders back with pride. Nina's arm is still draped across his shoulder and he glories in the inclusivity of it; had the gesture come from Persis it would be protective, he knows. From Nina though, the action is unifying, he is one of mine it says, marking him out as a citizen of that sparsely populated musical universe that is hers.

'I suppose you've come to say we've got to get back,' Stuart says with dismay.

'I have, even if you haven't,' says Carl, 'they want us all parading abut before going tomorrow.'

'Oh –are you going?' Stuart turns round eyes on Carl and then Persis.

'Where to?' Persis asks with assumed neutrality.

'Yes, where,' echoes Stuart.

'Never mind about that,' says Nina, rising and pulling Stuart with her. 'I don't suppose we're meant to know anyway. Come along you,' and she begins to walk back towards the harbour front and the trams.

'And call Molly back. We mustn't leave her.'

'Nina's not at all the way she sounds when she sings,' says Carl, taking Persis's arm and following along behind the others.

'She's much more…'

'Grounded?' says Persis supplying the word he has been reaching for.

'That's always what Ken says too –she's remarkable in a crisis, and quite as adept at singing Queen of the Night as she is at playing the silently suffering virgin. Are you really going tomorrow?'

'Yes –it was why I called when I did. I didn't know what the evening would look like –I was worried it might be full, and I didn't like to go and not say anything.'

'No, of course.' She wants, more than anything, to cry out as Nina's Rusalka once cried to the moon, do not go, but does not. It hardly seems right, not when she let Ken go at Union Station without a murmur of protest. But then Ken had promised he wouldn't be killed…

'You will take care, won't you?' Persis says.

'Of course.'

'That's all right then,' and drawing her arm from his Persis runs to catch the others up.


*A vilja (or vilia) is a wood-nymph.

**Lyrics to 'Hallo Maiden See Him Ride', or 'the Cavalier' from Lehar's Merry Widow, translated first in 1905