With thanks, always for reading and/or reviewing. Here's a lighter update for you. I'd say we've all earned one!


May, 1927


Jims Anderson disembarked at the corner of St George and threaded his way through a veritable zoo of people. It had felt like heaven when the school bell had finally sounded for the day, and as such the perfect occasion to call in on the aunts. Now, as he ducked and wove through the unconcerned legs of so many sunstruck adults, he was beginning to regret not staying inside and plumping for something suitably indoorsy. Maybe inventing a nice machine with lots of cogs and whirligigs that could reliably transport him from school to home without coming into contact with the blistering heat. Now that sounded heavenly.

He was beginning to despair of ever reaching his destination when Hal, the omnipresent porter hailed him at the door to the St George flat.

'Visiting your Aunts?' he asked, beaming sunnily at Jims. Too sunnily, Jims thought, given the weather and the equally omnipresent layers of suit that came with Hal's person. One couldn't say such things though, so Jims nodded, and then was dismayed, betrayed and demoralised when Hal came back with the disheartening repartee that 'You've just missed them. Poking around in some musty book or other, if you want my opinion.'

One also couldn't say that one did not want Hal's opinion; years at the knees of the fearsome triumvirate of Mum, Grandmother Leslie and the awe-inspiring housekeeper Madrun had successfully instilled this much worldly knowledge at least in Jims. He contented himself with a nod, even as his spirits plummeted to somewhere around shoe level, there to be trammelled on by the likes of the sunstruck zoo of adults.

'Thanks,' he said to Hal, and raised him a boy scout's salute for form's sake. Then it was out the gate, back down St George Street, and through the roiling masses to the Aunts' college. Supposing they were in college and not the great university library. If the Law of Contraries kept on at the rate it was going, they would be at the library but only if Jims didn't go there directly. Otherwise they would be at the college after all. It was turning out to be that kind of day.

Somewhere between St George and Knox College, though, God remembered Jims, or the Law of Contraries forgot him, because the Knox Porter waved him through with a jovial, 'I'll let you in to the library, shall I?'

That boded well. Jims supressed the impulse to hug ruddy-faced, sun-baked Chalmers the Porter. Hal wouldn't have minded, but it wouldn't do in the hallowed grounds of Knox college, and Jims knew as much.

'Second storey?' he asked, trotting to keep pace with Chalmers.

'Usual floor,' said Chalmers. Jims nodded dutifully.

'Thanks,' he said as the great doors swung open. It was blissfully cool in the library. Jims lingered in the stairwell the better to savour it. Particles of dust drifted like lazy diamonds through the air, irradiated against the massive windows. Jims hugged the banister and thought idly that they weren't all that Presbyterian as windows went, at least, not if you learned Presbyterianism from Susan Baker, who mixed it with two parts severity and one part Total Solemnity. These windows were...well, they weren't severe or solemn. Entirely too big and declamatory. Still, it was soothingly cool on the stair, all stone and silence, like a gigantic cold room, or maybe a tomb, or one of Aunt Cass's cathedrals. She had promised Jims a trip to see one soon, but not today. Today was too hot, and there were too many people doing things between here and the assorted Toronto Cathedrals.

Slowly Jims climbed the stairs. They were categorically not designed for young legs. Jims wrapped his arms around the bannister and used it to heft himself over the deep-set steps. One storey, two. Then a massive door that required a tremendous push from Jims. It swung thinly open and he skimmed through the narrow opening and stood blinking in the dim light of the library.

Everything was encased in hush. Definitely tomb-like, Jims decided, and made a mental note to revisit the ones at the museum on the next suitably rainy afternoon. Even his shoes failed to squeak; the carpet swallowed any sound they might have made as Jims picked his way through sombre tables and vast bookshelves to what Chalmers would no doubt have called 'The usual place.'

Sure enough, there was Aunt Persis, golden head bent practically double over something that defied reading at a distance, her head nigh on level with Cass's darker one. The table was adrift in scads of loose paper, and between them was a sea of little index cards marked up in what Jims made another alphabet entirely. Aunt Cass appeared to be mining it for gold and Jims picked a card up warily. It whickered a bit against the wood of the table, which was evidently too much noise by half, because both heads shot up directly. But no reprimand was forthcoming.

'Jims,' said Aunt Persis in an undertone, surprised but seemingly not put out.

'Jims,' echoed Aunt Cass, and table notwithstanding, snared him awkwardly into a hug as best she could. She smelled of sun and mustiness, of forget-me-not, and vaguely of ink. Jims blamed the sea of paper.

There followed a silence in which it donned on Jims that they could not visit here in the library, and similarly that he was disrupting them at work.

'Sorry,' he said, scuffing his shoes against the forest of carpet. 'I should have arranged ahead.'

'Not at all,' said Cass, waving Jims into a chair that was too tall, too wooden and too high backed to be comfortable, but into which he nevertheless dropped.

'Nonsense,' said Persis. And then, as if in proof of this, 'There's only so much more of this I can read today, anyway. Shall we wrap up this chapter and then make an excursion?'

Aunt Cass murmured assent. 'It's Appleby's notes,' she said. 'I can't decide if he failed the course on legibility, or never attended in the first place.'

'That's all right,' said Aunt Persis. 'It's his theory on tribal inheritance that doesn't add up. Here – '

There was a rustle as she shuffled papers into a haphazard order and handed them in a packet to Cass across the table. It struck Jims that they lingered over the exchange fractionally longer than was necessary, and Jims's stomach flipflopped unaccountably. It was silly, but he had the distinct impression he was trespassing on a private conversation, and he shrunk down into his chair in an effort not to intrude. Mum and Cap had used to do things like that, he thought, though not so much lately. This brought another uncomfortable somersault to Jim's stomach, and there being nowhere further to shrink into the chair ,he hefted one of the larger books towards him out of the amassed pile, the better to detract from such complicated things as aunts and parents. Besides, he reassured himself as he got to grips with the book, you couldn't be anything other than perfectly ordinary and uncomplicated when discussing things like Dr Appleby's legibility and his theory on Tribal Inheritance. Surely. Not, naturally, that Jims had the least idea what Tribal Inheritance was.

The book was thick, which gave Jims ample yellowed pages to thumb absently through. There were brown spots dotting the corners – foxing Grandfather Owen would call it, though Jims couldn't for the life of him see how or where foxes came into it. Jims thought all this as words about kinship and rites and rituals glanced off his eyes but failed to connect with his brain. How the aunts could lose hours to this stuff was beyond him. He shifted in his seat, the better to squint at the words on kinship. They had traded papers now, and had resumed their work. Jims knew this because he risked a glance away from the interminable text in front of him. He was almost sorry about it – they had looked so at ease before, so comfortable. It was nice. Indeed, everything was nice. The cool of the library, the smooth grain of the table, even this impossibly high-backed, ill-fitting chair. Definitely the company, Jims thought, with an oblique wish that everyone had aunts this pleasant and another peak up from the interminable paragraph on kinship.

The words on the yellowy page still made no sense. In fact, Jims was tolerabley sure he had got stuck on the same unlikely sentence and had been for some minutes. It was like school, but worse because it was if possible even duller. Only he mustn't say so, bcause the aunts so enjoyed their work…

Aunt Persis's hand brushed a sandy curl out of his eyes, occasioning a reprieve. Jims could tell it was her without looking up because of the blue of her sleeve. It was her particular colour. Aunt Cass's was red. Jims did not recall when he had processed this, only that it had wormed its way into his consciousness somewhere along the line. Aunt Persis was blue like the PEI water, and Aunt Cass wore the cherry reds of blood roses and pomegranates.

'I'm afraid you aren't finding that terribly interesting,' said Aunt Persis, still in an undertone. 'Why don't you run along and find something that suits?'

Jims did not argue. He slid off his chair in relief and made a beeline for the bookshelves. He felt mildly disgruntled at having betrayed the aunts through disinterest, but the feeling soon dissipated in the sight of the bookshelves. Why, there were miles of them! And there were books on everything. Leather-bound books, and books with long, improbable names, short squat books, great fat bricks of books, books on numbers and still more books on kinship tables. Jims wondered if perhaps the Aunts had missed them, then decided that no, they were too clever for that. There was even, he saw, a copy of Grandfather Owen's Life Book lying neglected on a nearby table. Jims did not pick it up. Between the outing to the library and sitting down at the table with the aunts, he felt entirely too grown-up for a book the Cap had read him at bygone bedtimes.


He was deep in a glorious, new-smelling text with complex diagrams of gears and cogs when he smelled must, forget-me-not and ink.

'Rather you than me,' said a voice over his shoulder, and Jims looked up, dazed, to find Aunt Cass's dark eyes sparkling down at him. She held out a hand and Jims took it as he scrambled to his feet. Then she folded Jims's arm under hers, just the way Mum did with Cap, and Jims felt terribly grown-up indeed walking back to the usual place with the sea of index cards and reams of scattered paper.

Only they weren't scattered and the sea was dried up, because Aunt Persis was shuffling and shifting things into worn leather folders, and stuffing still other things into envelopes. She handed Jims an ink bottle and said, 'Mind doing the cap for me? I never get it tight enough, and then there's always such a mess to clear up afterwards.'

Jims grinned and set about the business of screwing the cap in place. Aunt Cass said around papers of her own, 'What are your thoughts on ices? We were thinking it might be the day for them.'

Jims' grin stretched involuntarily wider.

'Please,' he said, fractionally more audibly than was perhaps desirable, or indeed warranted by the offer. He flushed hot in the cool of the library, suddenly a mere schoolboy again. It was horrible. But then Aunt Persis had got his arm in hers and said at perfectly ordinary volume, 'Excellent. Onwards we go then,' and somehow it mattered less.

'Sorry,' said Jims later, under the blissful shade of an oak. He was nursing a strawberry ice and sandwiched companionably between the aunts, so that all was right with the world.

'Sorry?' repeated both aunts in what Jims made perplexed unison.

'Not about turning up unannounced, surely?' said Aunt Persis.

Jims squirmed uncomfortably, suddenly acutely aware of the stickiness of the melting strawberry ice and hastened to explain that no, it was not about the spontaneous visit to Knox.

'I've done that lotses,' he said. 'Lots, even' he amended around a mouthful of ice. 'I know you don't mind. Or at least,' with a grin to rival the Cheshire Cat, 'you're awful good at pretending you don't mind. I meant – ' but further explanation was rendered impossible as two sets of hands fell upon him and, for his heretical declaration, commenced to tickle him mercilessly. Their fingers were cold from the ice, and Cass particularly was partial to skittering her hands across his neck. There was nothing for it but to shriek a breathless recantation.

'He was saying something,' said Aunt Persis, abating.

'Something sensible, I hope,' said Aunt Cass, her fingers hovering inches from Jims' ears amd twitching to terrifying effect. Jims supressed a further spasm of giggles.

'About the book,' he said once he had got his breath back. 'Not finding it interesting, I mean. I know it's important to you.'

'Well, yes,' said Aunt Persis, even as Cass's fingers loomed incrementally closer to Jims' vulnerable person. 'To us. Not to you. No reason it should be.'

'But,' said Jims, 'it's what people do, isn't it? Care about the things the people they care about like? That's what Madrun says.' This last statement with great conviction.

There was another of those moments in which the aunts appeared to forget Jims, this time in favour of a whole conversation apparently without words. Jims concentrated very hard on his ice. His stomach flipflopped again. He decided, catching, but not parsing, the tail end of this exchange, that on the whole, he liked the feeling. It was sort of pleasant, like riding a teacup at the fair, or burrowing under a thick eiderdown. Aunt Cass's elegant hand relaxed into resting posture against his shoulder, which it then squeezed affectionately.

'I don't suppose you recall our exchange up in the library,' she said. 'When I came to fetch you back to us? What I said?'

'Course I do,' said Jims, indignant. 'Rather you than me. That's what you - Oh.' He stopped, chagrined.

'You are absolutely allowed,' said Aunt Cass, 'to like other things. And I don't care,' this somewhat defiantly, dark eyes flashing, 'what Madrun has to say about it. Is that clear?'

Jims nodded.

'Good,' said both aunts together. Jims tried and failed to snuggle simultaneously against the pair of them. It did not work, and leary of leaving anyone out, he resigned himself to leaning against the oak tree. Only, Aunt Persis pulled him close and Aunt Cass handed him her ice and said, 'Would you do me a favour and finish it, darling? I'm afraid I shan't be able to.'

Jims took the ice, closed his eyes and took a bite. So everything was all right after all. Even the heat was bearable now, with the leafy overhead of the oak for protection and the remnants of Aunt Cass's ice to nurse. It was, on reflection, a surprisingly good day, and Jims savoured it.