Is it really almost March? How and when did that happen? If you're wondering, since writing last, our resident groundhog missed seeing his shadow, but we're still only on our thrid or fourth burst of 20" of snow. The dogs, who are 4" tall, are Unimpressed. So much for a hastening spring. Whatever the weather, thanks to all of you who have kept up with, read, and/ore reviewed this story. We're almost into 1938, which is where we should wrap up.
To those of you whose reviews I couldn't get to by message, I half want to throw up my hands and wail that I have done away with a grand total of exactly one infant in this story - which, all told, is low by my past history. But I don't mean it really. I love hearing what you think, and seeing what you see. Hopefully this proves satisfactory on that count.
Martin House,
Charlottetown,
September, 1937
Jo,
Rilla and Ken arrived late this afternoon. They've been up at the hospital ever since, and it's all anyone can do to remind them the canteen exists. Miss Hargreave – that's Jims's Aunt Cass – has quite given up and has taken to placing teacups in hands without so much as a by-your-leave. Thank goodness for Jims's Aunt Cass. I start to see why she's the anthropologists' favourite of the indexers to take on expeditions; nothing fazes her. Not my rambling, or Rilla's righteous indignation that this should happen to her girl, not Ken throwing said unsolicited teacup across the room. And almost certainly not the localised customs of whatever country she should find herself in at a given moment in the name of research. She told me about some of these over Canteen Ditto, but I fear I didn't take any of it in. A shame, because my boyhood self would probably have been fascinated. Though, in fairness to Cass, I don't think she expected me to take anything in. At that point we had run out of politely comisseratory things to say to one another. Who knew there was a limit?
Anyway, what I wanted to do with this snatched interval, was thank you for meeting my girl off the boat. Rilla mentioned it over one of the unsolicited cups of tea, and how good you'd been too her. I wanted to go, but in the event I couldn't bring myself to leave Sissy, never mind Anne and Jims. I kept on thinking that if I turned my back she would really be dead, and then how would I ever look Rilla in the eye again? How would I explain that in my compulsion to make sure she was alive and well, I had looked away from the girl she fought the world for and let her die? And how could I reconcile all of that with leaving Anne and Jims alone to witness it? Even allowing for the indominable Cass and Persis Ford?
Faith understood at once, when I telephoned to Larkrise, as no doubt would have Jem had be been on the receiving end of the call. She promised they would meet the boat coming in, but somehow I never thought…I jest about the canteen tea here, Jo, but whatever you gave them up at Martyrs' was obviously both superior and necessary. I do a great line in sheer stubbornness, evidence notwithstanding – ask Mara some time, she'll tell you – but for how to find hope in grey hours…They needed you for that. Thank you for being there, for reminding them, and me by extension. It's the sort of thing Anne can usually do without thinking, but the world has harrowed her so much, and the hospital is so stark and clinical, that I think even she finds it hard to imagine us into a happy outcome. Especially with the hum and buzz and rattle of that machine breathing for Sissy. I know it is good for, even saving her, but that doesn't make it easy.
I forget, you know, that Anne began in grey hours. Possibly because when I first met her she was so full of sparkle and life. Or else because she has brought such colour to my lives, to the children. But occasionally, as now, some terrible thing will fracture that, and I'll catch a glimpse of how she must have necessarily got that way in the first place. It's why I mind so terribly, Jo, when I can't put it all right. Because if I can't do that for her, then I have betrayed something fundamental about her world view.
But you were lately beset with grandchildren, and I've never heard the outcome. Write and tell me about it, won't you? I don't suppose I'll take any more in than I did all that stuff about the matrilineal habits of whatever tribe Cass was on about, but it will be a diversion. And since Jims has outgrown the diversion-inspiring stage by some margin, we could all do with one.
Love ever,
Gil
Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
September, 1937,
Gil,
You were asking about the grandchildren. They've all gone now, of course. I put Joanie and her brothers back on a Charlottetown-bound boat some weeks back, the last of a riotous collection of house guests.
It worked out splendidly. Jake, Ruthie and families were due to visit, and they wrangled it to line up with the arrival of the young Arnolds. The Very Young Arnolds? Sorry, it is belatedly occurring to me that the former is your name for Fred and my daughter, who of course are worlds away. Still are, in fact, which is why Nathan Arnold was on the receiving end of the boat. He's going to try and have them back up to me come half-term, in the event Naomi's journalistic integrity still requires her to be elsewhere, which it almost certainly will, if things continue in China as they are.
But I was telling you about the grandchildren. The mathematics of the arrangements quite defeated me. It was an easy enough thing to make up the box room for myself, and put Jake and Reta in the big, front bedroom. Arranging for Ruthie and Mark to take what used to be the boys' old room was no effort at all. But the children! Well, the room Naomie and Ruthie had shared was pinched even for the two of them. Phil might have found a logistical way to contrive it, tackled it like an algebra quandary. I tried, decided I lacked her genius and ended up by amassing cushions in the sitting room turned occasional church, and that delighted them. They slept the way I'm always hearing tell Tuesday does; piled on top of whoever is nearest with no care for personal space.
I joined them early on in the first week and got a bad back for my trouble. Inevitably, this led to my reminiscing, since they were demanding stories and all my best ones include Phil. The favourite of these, though, was a misadventure of my own children involving a melting pot, chocolate, and a coffee table Phil had never loved but her mother had. Do you remember that one? The misadventure, not the table.
I don't know how it got started, only that I came in one unforgettable afternoon from marrying Mrs Gresham, as she has been now for over twenty years, and found an open fire on the beloved coffee table of one Margaret Gordon. She'd been dead over a year by then, which might explain how we had got stuck with the table. It was one of those things with clawed feet and hand-painted insets of some pattern or other. I never did work it out, and hadn't a hope of doing it that day, because under the circumstances the tracery was all obscured by scorch marks and melted chocolate. Sam was building up a roaring fire, and the girls were most adamant that they'd got the idea from the latest Girl's Annualor somesuch. (That subscription must have owed to Hetta, because Phil loathed Girl's Annual, even when we became able to afford it.) I still have a hard time believing said magazine was promoting starting fires, much less melting chocolate indoors and atop furniture, but then, I was never an avid reader of the same. As for whythe fire and chocolate – well, that was quite obvious. According to Jake they'd been dipping fruit in it 'for improvement.' Had been doing so for hours. Needless to say, they had no appetite for dinner.
And the thing was, they were so pleased with themselves that harder hearts than mine would have found it difficult to take them to task. Certainly Phil did, and in my whimsical moments, I still suspect she headed the whole operation with a mind to relieving us of the table. It fought with all the furniture crammed into that room, to hear her talk.
Well, the grandchildren were charmed with this rendition, so it should harldly have come as a surprise when they saw fit to revisit the episode. The state of those cushions! And Ruthie and Jake could hardly tell them off and be fair about it, though Mark and Reta felt no such qualms. For my part, I joined in the consumption of fruit and chocolate, and decided it was well worth the ruination of the furniture.
They left in fits and starts starting from the last week of August. Jake and family went first, and Ruthie followed. Naomi's children were last, by which point the sprawling appeal of the cushions had vanished. It was easy enough to tuck them up in the boys' remade room, though the arrangement didn't stick. More often than not they migrated into my room long before I was asleep. I taught them our evening prayers, which bit of theology I don't suppose Nathan will grudge me. After all, he's always expressing concern that they be brought up in the Body of Christ and not The Body of the Newspaper, or Politics. Lest you doubt these are institutions in their own right, I direct you to Joanie, who can tell you what constitutes a good headline, or Pip, who will rattle off what makes for front page news. Probably even baby Gordon could enlighten you on a point or two – how many Rs in hemorrhage and whether the deer laid or lay in the snow. I shouldn't wonder if Hector and Miss Abby are just the same.
Thinking of you and yours. The tea was nothing. It was only what anyone would do for parents in need of comfort. I'd say it is build into my work, only I long ago ceased to have an official function and anyway, it is never work. Not with you, or your children, or anyone really. I don't believe it ever really has been. Otherwise I might be able to switch it off. But you'll know what that's like.
May you ever be well, do good work, and keep in touch – and sustain one another through Canteen Grade Tea. It is truly something else.
Jo
Martin House,
Charlottetown,
September, 1937
A terrible conversation with Ken this evening. We were watching the therapist they've brought in to try and help Sissy breathe on her own, and it wasn't going well. He had a pocket watch he would take out and measure the seconds on – and she looked so frightened. Rightly so – she kept choking. Persis and Anne had taken Rilla to visit the little boys, and Jims and Cass were off at the canteen. Ken had been reading aloud to Sissy – some new adventure he brought back from England, about goblins or elves or something. Gobbets? I haven't caught much of it anyway, and I don't really know that Sissy has either. Still, it sounds charming, and is somehow more bearable than the hum and buzz of the lung.
Anyway, there we were with Ken's Gobbet book on his lap, all greeny-bluey and mountainesque to look at, when he suddenly said, 'It's all my fault.'
Now, I can see how Jims makes it his fault - though it isn't - and I knew why I made it my fault, but Ken…well, he wasn't even here. But then I thought, perhaps that was it, because I knew how I felt when I came home from Over Harbour to Nan's letter that Di was ill with that awful Influenza. I didn't say that, because somehow it felt all wrong to draw comparisons. So I sat there and stared at the green-blue of the book with its mountains, and then he said, 'I keep thinking, if I'd wanted her more…'
He didn't finish, but then, there are so many what ifs to play with. She might have been born sooner, and eluded polio on those grounds, or maybe God wouldn't have felt compelled to snatch at her like that, even though, of course, that isn't how God works. She could also have been a boy, and that wouldn't have saved her either. Or not born at all, which would have, but we'd miss her prattle. Or they could have taken the children with them to Europe, or, or, or…There are a whole host of possible could-have-beens, and I said so. But the possibility of them didn't make the present circumstance his fault. I said, 'It was my idea they come to us.'
'You were trying to get them out of the city,' said Ken. 'That was a good thought.'
'You were trying to keep your family safe,' I said, 'all those years ago. That was a good thought too.' Even if it had cost him an awful lot of sleepless nights, though I didn't say that. The way he grimaced, I didn't have to.
But then the therapist-person finished with Sissy and they eased her and her tray back into the lung, and Ken went back to read to her, so there was nothing more to say.
Hobbits, by the by, not Gobbets. They're called Hobbits and Miss Abby is delighted by the copy Rilla gifted her and Hector, or so Di told me over the phone. It is even now defining the adventures that she, Hector, Meg and the Arnold children go on. There are spiders and wolves (I think?) and all sorts to do battle with, and I'm sure I'd be able to explain it masses better if I could only get home to them with good news, instead of worrying myself into next year up in town, in a room that isn't mine and has the most appalling paisley wallpaper. If you want details, you might write to Miss Abby. Somethow, I don't think Sissy will remember much of it – and that's in my optimistic moments.
Love ever,
Gil
New Manse,
Glen St Mary,
October, 1937
Jo,
This is to let you know that Joanie is thriving at the school. I expect Nathan has told you, but as Alice Caldicote has just been talking my ear off on the subject – in particular the young Miss's brilliance at debating – I thought I'd pass it on. She's been as good as her word about spoiling them, by the by. Which should not be taken to mean Bruce had it wrong about her making medics out of the lot of them. She's forever dropping in on the Methodist Manse with little tokens – penny sweets for after school, sticks of fudge for Sunday pudding, books and swatches of bright fabric and all sorts. Quite a lot of it seems to get repurposed in games of Medic, though they're also deep into something called Middle Earth that they've graciously let the young Fords join in.
You'll gather they're still here. Jims had talked about taking them home to Toronto, and the Aunts were prepared to help him with it, but Sissy was so unwell for a week or three there, that no one felt comfortable about it. I think Rilla really thought she'd only have to summon them back for a funeral. I know Gil did.
So for the time being, they are enrolled at the local school and doing swimmingly. Liam's pet subject, you'll be unsurprised to hear, is history, and Anthony's, equally unsurprising, is music. He's head of the class both in theory and practice. He explained to me at great length that this makes him one of the Elves of Mirkwood, and I have to take his word for it, because Miss Abby's best efforts notwithstanding, I am quite in the dark about how it all comes together. Bruce made a second attempt, and it was valiant, but all I'm really clear on is that there's a magician of some sort, a riddle contest, and somehow, a dragon. I believe there is also an episode involving barrels, but could be wrong.
Anyway, as of writing, Sissy can breathe alone for an hour or two at a time. Gil is beginning to think she may be clear of it before the year is out, which would do everyone good. It is the best she has done against the pocket watch to date, and the other day she even held a conversation with Rilla on her own. It wasn't long, and I gather there were quite a few lengthy pauses, but it was a definite start.
In more distant news, Miri's letters continue regular, but not altogether detailed. She is well, from what I can gather, and looking forward to the baby's arrival. She was sorry, too, to have missed Rilla's visit, and hopes that she and the Fords are well.
Elsewhere, Naomi confirms my suspicions that Una has befriended papatee, resident buffalo. Not that Una has said so, but on the other hand, she takes almost as much trouble over it as she does Iris and Nenni, so she can't be entirely averse to it. See further her tolerance for Puck and Akela. Speaking of Puck, he took an unexpected liking to Fred Arnold, and to demonstrate this, occasionally offers Fred some of his peanuts. Fred doesn't much care for them, as far as I can tell, but also doesn't like to offend Trinity House's resident monkey. He is even teaching him the rules of Croquet, which Una and Naomi fail to see the sense in, but Iris and Li find vastly entertaining. Especially since it isn't unheard of for Puck to run amok with a mallet and bludgeon any wickets that foil his efforts.
None of this convinces me you will have your girl home any time soon, but at least she is in good company. Have you thought of what you will do for Christmas? Because we'd be happy to have you here, if you were so minded. There's certainly room enough. I even think between us we could set up the rest of the children – after all, you and Gil contrived it before.
Do let me know. Until then,
Love and blessings,
J.M.
Station Room,
Charlottetown,
November, 1937
Jo,
Today was a good day. As you have probably deduced from my letterheads, we have since returned to Ingleside and now only make the twice-weekly trip to keep an eye on things. It was thrice-weekly, but we are easing off by inches, as hovering is probably unhealthy.
We arrived around eleven, which was tea time, and found Sissy taking hers with Rilla and Ken, albeit cautiously, what with her still lying flat on the tray of the lung. But she had been out for fully three hours by then, and looked more herself than she has yet. Of course, it was wrenching, watching her trying to talk with her hands, as is her wont, and finding they weren't up to the task. Jims used to joke, you know, that if he ever wanted to stop Sissy talking, he'd tie her hands at the wrists. It always got a laugh, because it was so true, and yet, she hasn't let that stop her yet. Not her hands, which are slow for lack of use, or her arms, which have been made clumsy, or the iron lung and the conspiracy of her own lungs against her. I told you she was like Rilla after all.
Far and away the best bit though was that she was finally able to reassure them she didn't mind about the machine. It's noisy, but she's never alone – see further her recapitulation of the Hobbits to all interested parties – and she can see quite a lot of what is going on behind her by way of the mirror built into the thing. Rilla particularly, I suspect, needed to hear that, but really we all did. And the thing is, this was the first time she'd said it and I believed it. We stayed all through dinner and into the late afternoon, and Sissy kept right on chattering all through it; about the nurses and what she thought of them, the names she had for the cracks in the ceiling and when was Ken going to bring her a new book? She wanted to know what Jims had decided about work and when was he next coming to visit, because if he was going to America she had to make sure he had a spare room to put her up in.
Jims, you understand, has slotted himself into what was Susan's role on the days when we are in town and Di at the paper. I suspect the children are very glad of having him, not least because he makes a Baker-standard monkey-face. It is beneficial, but it does rather cut into visits to town. He was going every evening until I insisted he stop, for fear of exhausting himself. Now he goes every second day, and brings the little boys at weekends, or we do. And he never forgets the Aunts' letters. They've had to return to Toronto for reasons of work, and didn't they have opinions on it! The trouble, of course, or at least some of it, was that Cass particularly could hardly claim family obligation, whatever hand she's had in shaping Anthony's taste in music or Liam's preoccupation with history. And while the local college porters might assume she's the boys' natural aunt, I hardly think the academics would care.
Anyway, I said I'd be sure to remind Jims about the spare room and to update her on his career prospects. (He's settled on the job in America. Rilla, predictably, is unconvinced this is a safe place for a Canadian-raised war-baby to live, and does a very good impression of Susan Baker telling everyone so.)
Oh, it was good, Jo. Naturally, Sissy was beginning to wear out towards the end, but nothing unexpected. Jims will go up tomorrow, and bring her a card from said college porters, and no doubt bring back a report, but presently I am very satisfied with her progress.
A brief delay as our train came in. I should be wrapping up to do a proper stock-taking with Anne, about the landscape as much as about our granddaughter, but I did first want to tell you about coming back to Ingleside. Miss Abby was beyond relieved. We returned shortly after the therapist and his pocket watch first started to really make progress. Did I ever doubt his methodology? He has been marvellous. In any case, we were barely through the door when Dulce and Miss Abby came barrelling at me. She's grown a whole two inches this summer, and I barely noticed until her head came into contact with my ribs, rather than my stomach. If she goes on at this rate, she shall soon get to be quite as tall as Di. Also underfoot was a bundle of fur that goes by the name of Flossie.
Alastair brought her home from work at the request of some nearby farmer or other, who was overrun in young terriers. He decided we had the space and it would make a useful diversion. Also, there are probably worse things to have on hand than a ratter. Personally, I wasn't aware we needed either ratter or diversion, between Mirkwood, Hobbits and all the rest, but then, I was away for so much of the summer that I concede he would know better. Though really, I think it boils down to Alastair having a soft spot for unwanted animals.
Much like Dulce, this one came home in his hat, though she was in considerably better nick. Di says we are getting to be running quite the menagerie, but no one else minds. Dulce is delighted, because she has finally found someone who appreciates her kisses, and can get away with washing Flossie's eyes for hours at a time. Washing Flossie's eyes, to be clear, is a very time consuming business. They do a great deal of tearing around the yard, and batting paws at one another, and I begin to think Alastair really got the dog for Dulce. She has been so much by Hector's side that it must be quite exhausting. After all, he adores Dulce, but she doesn't get to be much of a dog when she is ministering to him. And he was in a trying mood the other day. A book he wanted was too high, and as Anne was up at the Manse and I collecting the post, Do didn't hear him until he gave an almighty yell and toppled his bedside lamp onto the floor. Several more accessible books had followed it by the time she arrived on the scene. They both felt terribly about it afterwards, of course. Di for being elsewhere, Hector because he frightened poor Dulce. She was over it almost at once, but I still think she was better for a half hour of chasing Flossie.
Anyway, on first arrival I just stood there with my arms full of Miss Abby, processing the addition that was Flossie and being bombarded by Dulce's enthusiastic leaps and parries at my knees.
'You're quite sure,' said Abby, peering up at me with eyes that were decidedly green that day, 'you're back to stay? You won't have to go away again?'
I said I was sure and apologised about being gone so long. That relaxed her enough to ask how Sissy was. When I said she was much better she said, 'That's all right, then. I guess you can come back if Sissy is eventually coming back.' Then, thoughtfully, 'You did explain she has to come back?'
I said I knew she would, which at the time was justified optimism but that is now a fact, and she let me go. There was tea, and much snuffling and inspection of our shoes by Flossie, Dulce to be petted and Jims and the little boys to update. And, of course, there were rides to resume with Miss Abby. She'd got out of the habbit with me away, not liking to go alone. Alastair had tried to keep it up, but she was adamant it wasn't the same and wouldn't go much beyond Ingleside with him.
Now, of course, Meg has taken against the incoming cold. We got our first snow the other day, and she looked personally offended. As if to ask, 'Why would you order this?'
A question, in fairness, I spent many years asking when riding out to the Upper Glen of a stormy, blustery, snow-filled night. Anne can rhapsodize about snow almost unceasingly, but then, she's never had to deliver an infant at three in the morning under forty inches of it. Wasn't that memorable. But you must have your own version of this, and I really do owe Anne a talking over of the visit. Keep us abreast, as ever, of Kingsport goings-on, and we'll do the same at our end.
Love ever,
Gil