I've done something different with this one, in a tip of the hat to Ann-Marie MacDonald. If you want a good, gothic, Canadian read in this time of social distancing, you can't ask for better than her.


November-December, 1928; Iris 19 -


All that's gone now. The relaxed, open atmosphere of the interwar. But for the photos you would never know it had existed.

And there were photographs. Time and various people had seen to that; Carl Meredith occasionally, Una still more occasionally and amateurishly, once or twice Naomi Blake as had been had documented their lives. And before her, Di Blythe. Everyone remembered Di's photos of the 1926 flood, of the boats sailing in Middle Alley, but she took other, more mundane subjects, too. Iris found them years later tucked into books, appended to sheets of crisp letter paper, enshrined in frames and folded protectively among the blankets.

This one was of the tea bowls. There were twelve tea bowls, all red, all with a butterfly motif repeating across them. It's impossible to tell from the photo, but it was never the same twice; Iris, who grew up drinking from them, knew this.

In the picture they were displayed pride of place in the china cabinet, twelve red tea bowls like the scarlet captains of a china army. Behind them stood the ranks of the Gladstone Blue Ribbon. The Gladstone Blue Ribbon was the pride and joy of Una Meredith, and before her of Cecilia Meredith, who was Iris's grandmother. The red tea bowls with their butterflies – no two the same – were a wedding present from Carl Meredith to Iris's mother.

The way Una Meredith told it, she knew about the tea bowls in the first instance because Carl brought them to her in an agony of indecision.

'I know we have Mummy's china,' he'd said, 'but I wanted to have…I guess I thought Li might like to start life at Trinity House with something of her own.' He said this as if it was some terrible admission of disloyalty to the memory of their mother, or possibly to Una. Una, telling this to Iris, thought her father believed either or both of these things might have been true. Whichever it was, saying it seemed to ease the way for the rest as Carl hemmed and hawed about would they be good enough and would Li like them. Una picked up a tea bowl, cradled it between her hands and agreed it was absolutely right that Li have her own things to impress upon the house, and these were lovely, of course Li would like them.

All of this surmise was born out when, in the second instance, Li had unwrapped them in the privacy of the sun-room and squealed for Una to come and examine them. Una, marking in the dining room, duly came through the passage and joined Li in waxing lyrical about the brightness of the colours, the subtlety of the pattern, the ease with which they sat in the hand. How perfect their balance, the curvature of the bowl.

'Sometimes,' said Li as she stroked a glazed red tea bowl, 'Carl wakes up and notices us, you see? Mind you,' and here she gave Una her patented water-lily smile, 'it could also be that he noticed the butterflies in the paintwork.'

Una laughed, and laughed still more when an evidently alert Carl gave a cry of indignation worthy of Puck.

'I do notice things,' he said, and crossed his arms over his chest. 'Lots of them!'

'Of course,' said Una. 'Like monkeys.'

'Lizards,' Li said.

'Mynas.'

'Snakes.'

'Especially venomous ones,' said Una.

'Butterflies,' said Li, and they laughed. Even Puck, who was creeping incrementally closer to the tissue-shrouded tea bowls on the chance they were home to stray peanuts, joined in.

'Look,' Li said, 'Puck agrees. Carl can't possibly argue with us now.' Her eyes were shining with mirthful tears. They looked like dark, glassy moons. Carl affected to look more wounded than ever, but it was a very bad performance. With tremendous dignity he said, 'I thought the butterflies were a nice touch.' But then, before their party could dissolve still further he said, 'And I also thought you said something once about red being lucky, and it's all been so difficult that I thought maybe it would be nice for you, the red. The luck. Sort of an omen for us going forward, or something.'

He shrugged, sheepish, and Li got a willowy arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. She kissed his cheek, and Una took Puck in hand before he could strategically interrupt the young lovers on the sofa.

Iris loved this part of the story, could picture them as they had been, her mother, father and Aunt, laughing in the sun room with the animals around them and the tea bowls in their tissue nests on the table. If she closed her eyes she could picture how bright her mother's eyes surely were on this occasion, how warm and gentle her smile. Her father too, with that one good, bright blue eye sparkling. And Aunt Una placid as water, flexible as a willow, the sun irradiating all of them, but especially those twelve red tea bowls. All such a long time ago.

They came to be in the cabinet, where they are in the photo, because placid, willowy Aunt Una retreated from the tableau. That was how she used to tell it to Iris; Li got her arm around Carl and kissed his cheek in thanks, and Aunt Una took Puck in hand before he could strategically interrupt the young lovers on the settle.

'Come on,' Una said, 'there's a job that wants doing.'

There was absolutely no circumstance under which Una Meredith would trust Puck in the handling of the Gladstone Blue Ribbon; she had visions of him tearing round her kitchen with the pieces pell-mell. She did not say this in so many words, but Iris knew it anyway, remembered her as she had been with the monkey. And anyway, Aunt Una all but confirmed it. By her account she settled Puck with his beloved peanuts and undertook the reordering of the china cabinet herself. Una could not quite bring herself to pack Cecilia Meredith's pattern away, but she took care to clear a space in the front of the cabinet that would leave the twelve red tea bowls in pride of place. As for the Gladstone Blue Ribbon in the background – call it their mother's blessing on the marriage, or as close as she could get to giving it.

'Though of course,' Una said with an apologetic stroke of the teapot, 'the tea bowls will be for every day now. But you won't mind that, I know.'

So the tea bowls were installed in pride of place at Trinity House, Evelyn Road, and as it fell out, that was the easiest part of the wedding preparations. They were as beautiful as they were delicate, were those twelve red tea bowls. The picture did not do them justice.


The second picture was also of the sun-room, though now it was rainy. The sky washed grey in the background, and if you looked you could see there was a fire blazing. Li was an adept at fire-building, and must have built one on this rainy November afternoon. Iris knew it was November because of the date on the back. Her mother, Iris remembered was shocked by how completely fire defeated the Merediths.

'But,' Iris could hear her saying to Aunt Una, 'you can do everything else!'

And Aunt Una, as she ever did, would confess her bone-deep dread of catching her hair on the flame, of being more used to coal, and latterly to gas, than to wood, so that she had never learned to lay it just right. Li would threaten, as she always threatened, to teach Puck, since he was so keen on getting into things, and since that way he would make himself useful into the bargain. One day she really did it – taught Puck – but not, Iris thought, looking at the photo, on that particular rainy November afternoon, because in the photo it was Li sat by the fire.

If you squinted, you could see the red tea bowls, but only three of them.

These were, as Una told it – because no one else either wanted to or could not bring themselves to tell it – the easiest part of Iris' parents wedding arrangement. Somehow, in spite of Singapore's multiplicity of religious institutions there was spectacular trouble securing one to take the service. They were discussing this in the photo, Li, Carl and Aunt Una. Puck was there too, but being Puck, he was at that moment entirely too occupied massing a peanut hoard to join in meaningfully. Now they sat around the blaze, Carl and Li on the settle and Una poised as elegantly as was possible atop a footstool while simultaneously nursing an incarnadine tea bowl and a sleep-leaded feline. The red – for the photo was coloured in – made a striking contrast to the navy of her work dress, the white of her peter pan collar.

There was audio too, if Iris closed her eyes, recalled Aunt Una's rendition of this afternoon long ago. Listened.

'The difficulty,' said Carl, 'is this; The presbytery don't like it, the Catholics wouldn't marry us if we wanted them to, nor would the Anglicans, who anyway have such a grim, cheerless cathedral that I can't bring myself to feel disappointed about it. Li's people have made it very clear that they won't, either, so there's no one to perform the ceremony. And obviously the alternative is impossible.'

'Obviously,' Una said. 'Though if that's all – '

Here Carl interjected. 'All?' he said. 'All? I should have thought that was quite the significant point.'

'Well,' said Una, as rain drummed in the background, 'in the usual way – look, how attached are you to it being a Presbyterian wedding?'

Carl blinked. At the coffee table, Puck was noisily counting his peanuts, while over by the fire Li's eyes darted like sleek, dark dragonflies between the Meredith siblings. Una saw her; she and Carl both did, and so fell silent anticipating her contribution. Li made none though, only continued to watch them, serene, a tea bowl cradled in her hands. The rain continued its droning and Puck went on calculating the quantity of his culinary bounty. Their little sun room smelled of camphor wood burning and aromatic jasmine. It was like incense, the combination. Iris remembered it well. Had smelled it often.

Carl said, 'Una Meredith, you're plotting something. I should know; I remember our Rainbow Valley days. Which were, incidentally, the last time I knew you to plot anything.'

Una did not answer this directly. She said, 'There's a chance I could persuade the Rev Peach up at the school to perform the ceremony. Miss Cornelia wouldn't like it, obviously, but she's not actually here, and if you're agreeable, I don't see why it should matter. I mean, it's not as if it makes the marriage invalid, or anything.'

On the settle, Li's eyes brightened as she took this in. She offered Una her slow-blooming water-lily smile.

'He will not mind?' asked Li.

Una shook her head. 'No. He'd see it as the logical extension of his work with the children up at the school. I think.'

'You know,' said Carl, 'I never could work out the difference between Presbyterians and Methodists, anyway. What is it, actually?'

'Dancing,' said Una, never missing a beat. Carl laughed. 'That can't be it,' he said. 'We couldn't dance, either.'

'We,' said Una with dignity worthy of the cat on her lap, 'were children of a Presbyterian minister. Of course we couldn't dance. But the others did. Methodists can't dance at all, whoever their parents are.'

Opposite her, Carl's one blue eye narrowed. 'You're being serious,' he said. 'And I was sure you were having me on, too.'

'Of course I'm being serious,' said Una. 'Why? What did you think the difference was?'

'Well, God,' said Carl, helpless. 'Or at least something halfway theological, anyway.'

'Oh,' said Una, almost careless. 'Well, if you're going to split hairs like that you're asking completely the wrong person. You'll have to write to father about that.'

Carl grinned. 'I will,' he said. 'After the wedding.' Then, the grin splitting wickedly across his face, 'I tell you what it is,' he said. 'You've been at that school too long. No wonder you can't tell us from them.'

Una laughed, and Li, seeing that all this ribbing was in good, gentle, fun, joined in. Puck had obviously decided he could risk dividing his hoard because he threw a peanut at Li's tea bowl. She caught it deftly. Cue more laughter and further peanut missiles.

'You can tell father all about that, too,' said Una, when she had recovered.

'Oh, he won't mind,' said Carl. He never does. But Cornelia…'and the grin splitting his face deepened still further, were it possible. 'I will write, though,' he said. 'I'll send pictures, too. There will be pictures? You'll take them?'

He had become suddenly, childishly eager.

'I won't,' said Una, 'but only because I can't take any worth keeping, and you ought to have a wedding remembrance that is worth looking over and remembering. We'll trust pictures to someone else. It's a shame Di ever went back to Ingleside.'

And not, whatever Carl said to the contrary, just because Di had commiserated about Puck, who was presently scurrying around the room with fiendish alacrity to regather his peanuts. Besides, Li was here now; she understood the trials and tribulations of life with a Puck. As if her thought had galvanised him to action, a stray peanut went sailing into the fire. It hissed and spat there while Puck shrieked his annoyance and stamped aggrieved simian feet.

'But,' said Li, 'there will be friends? I think you said before you had guests coming…'She trailed off, uncertain. But she was hopeful too. Una hated to leave her in the limbo of uncertainty.

'Yes,' said Una. 'Well, not guests. Not exactly. They aren't actually staying with us. But we do have friends travelling here. We overlapped in Kingsport. I seem to recall Naomi is even decently good at pictures when pressed. I'm sure she and Fred will be more than happy to help.'

'They'd better be,' said Carl. 'If Fred Arnold is in attendance than at least one of our party outwith your Rev Peach will actually be the denomination of the service.'

'Carl,' said Una, 'stop.' So saying she plucked a peanut from Puck's unsuspecting hand and threw it at him. It was harder to say whether monkey or human was more indignant.

It was not, strictly speaking, a real picture that one, not something Iris could take out of a book and examine at will. There was no frame preserving it. Nothing so grand. Rather, it was stamped on her mind's eye from copious retellings. She liked to look at it in grey, thin hours; hear how they must have laughed, teased and smiled at one another in the haven of the sun room. In those days their greatest concern would have been the fine details of the wedding and the rain outside the house. Iris liked thinking of them like that, thought happiness suited them.


Here was a picture of the wedding. It was appended to a letter in Aunt Una's script, her handwriting delicate and curling on the wafer-thin paper she favoured. The paper was blue with a watermark of a soaring crane. The crane's wings were spread wide across the paper, each tip connecting with a corner. The very ghost of a bird.

As per the letter, Naomi and Fred Arnold arrived in time for Christmas, their cases laden with treasures from the Glen and further. Naomi unpacked them on the floor of the sunroom like a dark-haired crooked-nosed but fundamentally benevolent elf. The letter did not detail these, presumably because the Manse Merediths were well-versed in the contents, but Iris knew them anyway; could recall Una's rapture over them even in the retelling. There were supplies for the ACS, a tin of Rosemary Meredith's crumbly, buttery shortbread, the latest in mysteries courtesy of Anne Blythe, Jerry's rendering of the St Lawrence by sunset and the usual clutch of Christmas cards from the others.

'They thought we'd get here faster than the postal service,' said Naomi. Fred, sprawled by the fire, nodded his seconding of this opinion and began good-naturedly to wrestle with Akela. The dog was damp and muddy courtesy of an outdoor adventure, and Fred was utterly unfazed by it. He would have smelled as only a damp dog could, too, and it was funny, now Iris had met him, to picture smartly dressed Fred Arnold grappling with twenty-odd pounds of wet dog there on the sun room floor.

Naomi began to unpack further wedding presents; there was a set of silver teaspoons from the Glen St Mary Manse that Una made Rosemary's idea, since left to his own judgement her father would probably have sent off the latest in service book instructions or somesuch. (That part of the story always made Iris laugh after she had met Grandpa Meredith, because it was such an apt summary of him.) There was a long-necked, elegant vase from Larkrise in testament to the fact that Faith Blythe could pick out delicate things provided no one expected her to keep them intact, and a knitted quilt from Fox Corner.

'But,' said Li frowning, 'I thought you said they weren't your family?'

'Not on paper, anyway,' said Una and smiled.

From Nan and Jerry there was a copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the inscription on the fly leaf expressing best wishes and many years of happiness. Now it was also a sacred space for photos; it was where the picture of those twelve red tea bowls had surfaced.

From Bruce there was an unlooked for bounty of red, richly embossed pillowcases with a shy note appended to them explaining he'd been given to understand they were a customary gift, for which Li looked ready to weep. She pulled Una and Carl both into a fierce hug instead. (The pillows were there too, in the chest. They smelled of camphor and were free of moths. The embroidery was still rich, beautiful and intact. Iris couldn't quite bear to think of Aunt Una boxing them up that last time, before she was taken away from the house. Away from Puck.)

They parcelled these things away (though not into camphor chests, not then) or displayed them as occasion warranted. There were no excursions to Raffles Square, because they were not Raffles people, and anyway, the Arnolds were not staying at the famous hotel. They regared it, as did the people of Trinity House, as a strange, funny island of the well-to-do, a thing and place unto itself. But there were still taxi-dances and cafes, music spilling out of open windows and drives out into the countryside. It was such a beautiful jewel of a country.

The letter lingered over the reunion of friends; the little differences that had sprung up since Una and Naomi had last seen each other, but also the constants. Naomi was still, Una noted, one of the few women who wore no scent. (Aunt Una was perhaps the other, except on very, very special occasions.) Naomi was also one of the rare people Iris's aunt was demonstrative with; she must have been because she had let Naomi hug her welcome and had stood there in the hall taking stock of how happy she looked, trading news of home. (Home was Singapore to Aunt Una, but it must have been Glen St Mary to Naomi. Iris could see this unsaid thing between the spaces of the lines, the careful selection of the words. Aunt Una, as ever, trying to spare everyone's feelings.)

But the real proof they loved each other, if you asked Iris, was found in the report of how easily they fell into amicable Christmas preparations.

That part was in the letters if the gifts were not; a lively, amiable account of Naomi and Una gently jostling for ownership of the Trinity House kitchen while Li sat at the kitchen table, patiently slicing, soaking and dicing whatever looked necessary, pausing when pressed to take her turn wishing over the pudding, nodding in approval when Una tucked a sixpence into the ready batter. Iris used to do it too; she remembered vividly standing on a chair, Aunty's hands lovingly wrapped around hers helping her to stir, whispering ticklishly against Iris's ear 'Remember to wish, Firecracker.'

And although it was ages ago, Iris could recall it like yesterday, the grain of the spoon, the subtle curve of its stem from years of use. The smell of the kitchen growing ever thicker with the fiery scent of brandy on the soaking Christmas Cake and the spice of baking. Cinnamon mingled with nutmeg, which mixed with cloves as cider bubbled and boiled.

These things, reliable as the north star, were lightly glossed, dwelling instead on how Fred was put forward for canonisation when he not only took immediately to Puck, but corralled him out of Una's narrow kitchen and taught him how to string popcorn.

'A very useful trick,' said Naomi solemnly. But her smile was wry, even arch, and Una and Li both laughed with her over it.

'But he's not here,' said a jubilant Una. 'It's the best gift I'll get this season, and that's a fact.'

So saying Una rolled out a batch of marzipan, filling the air with almond flavour and sending eddies of icing sugar everywhere. Some of it landed on her cheek and Li brushed it carelessly, laughingly away. The paste stuck stubbornly to the rolling pin, so Una scattered more sugar. Nenni minced delicately through this powdery, culinary snow to sniff vigorously a marzipan Santa, who was stranded in a snowy, marzipan wilderness. She left him lopsided atop his marzipan chimney. Nenni took no notice; she had long since commenced a scrupulous wash, with particular attention to her bepowdered paws. Naomi leaned across Una's shoulder to right him but Li said, 'No, leave it. Like that there is a story to him,' so Naomi subsided and stamped gingerbread into Christmas Tree shapes instead. She had seasoned the dough thoroughly and the tarry molasses and the tang of the ginger made a sharp contrast to the cloying sweet of the marzipan.

She stuck the biscuits in the oven and Una finished with the cake. Li lifted the bubbling cider from the hob, poured it into mugs stamped in Royal Albert's Christmas Old Country Rose. They were fearfully overwrought and Victorian, and a gift from Phil Blake when Una and Carl had first set out for Singapore. Una strongly suspected the minister's wife of regifting them.

She'd become certain of it when Phil's eyes had twinkled devilishly and she'd said, 'Every house needs something positively ungodly to put up with by way of a housewarming gift. Even yours. It builds character, in you and the house.' Even so, the mugs might have been gifted long ago to the ACS, but Li had declared them, upon discovery, to be charmingly, quintessentially English, and for her sake they continued at Trinity House.

Naomi, seeing them, burst out laughing and said, 'Gracious, did Mama give you those? I wondered where they got to!'

Li, seizing an opening, said, 'You've known each other long?' She phrased it as a question, but was not really asking, Una knew. More trying to reconstruct the friendship.

'It feels long,' said Naomi, which was perhaps the best summary anyone could give of their friendship.

But for the letter, Iris would know none of this, about those mugs. They had always occasioned a chorus of laughter from mother and aunt; the reason for it came alive on that water-thin paper, in that delicate, well-inked hand. Imagine using a fountain pen on paper so fine! How carefully Aunt Una must have written!

What followed was strange, and was strange even to Aunt Una as she wrote it. As per the letter, Una sipped the cider in those funny, beloved mugs and inhaling cinnamon, and was shocked to think hers and Naomi's original point of overlap had been in the other woman's sister, Ruthie. Golden, elfin Ruthie, who had also loved and lost Walter Blythe. This though, did not warrant saying. It was a bygone dream from another life, and anyway, Li knew that part of her history, Una thought. Iris had never known it; these were dreams of a bygone life, she supposed, that her aunt had never seen reason to voice.

Besides, it was the friendship with Naomi that had stuck. They grew it over long afternoons tending to what was affectionately termed by the Martyrs' Mission congregants 'The Bundle Kirk,' which was to say the surrounding parish of Rev Jo Blake. Together they had helmed efforts to bundle parcels – this was the provenance of the beloved parish pet name – clothed the naked, and fed the hungry. It was enough to deepen the friendship and silence the lingering ghost of Walter Blythe. Nights, late, when they had finished with their work, Phil foisted the Christmas Old Country Rose on them, brimful of strong, hot soup, or tea as occasion warranted, determined to make the china useful or die trying. Then Una had gone to Singapore and Naomi to the Glen, and their letters had winged back and forth just as fast as various postal services would allow. But now Naomi was in Singapore too, at Trinity House on Evelyn Road and it might have been Patterson St again, the Christmas baking meant for a church supper and not only a family gathering.

Not quite though, because Li was there, accentuating and altering the old rhythm so that it sang in a different key. It wasn't, couldn't be the same, but then, if Una Meredith had been afraid of difference and change she would never have left Kingsport in the first place. She sipped the well-spiced cider and thought, from the way Li nodded and listened, that she understood some of this.

All of this was in that letter, a living, breathing account of an age gone by. Thinness of the paper notwithstanding, Iris felt the pulse of it slow and beating under her fingers.

It wasn't long afterwards that Carl and Li were married. This took place in the chapel of the Anglo-Chinese school, the Rev Peach presiding. Li was resplendent in red, her hair elaborately coiled and dressed by Una with yellow and blue iris flowers that Carl had got from heaven-knew-where. There was a story in the irises, but Una thought it might be too early to tell it, so did not press. She herself wore her all-purpose Good Days Dress, this being Christopher Blythe's childish name for a deep blue moire, trimming it at collar, sleeves and hem with scarlet for the occasion. It was not navy like the work dress, but more the colour of midnight. Subtler even, the blue of the sky as it turns from deep night to dawn twilight on a summer evening, never really having got dark at all. Una Meredith wore that dress until it was worn out with good events; the colour made her look like a goddess of the night sky. As a little girl Iris had adored it. She used to sit in her aunt's closet and envelop herself in its finery. She cried bitterly when, inevitably, it was swapped for something new. But on the day of her parents' wedding, it was still new, still vibrant.

There were pictures of all of this; Naomi Blake as had been did indeed agree to take them when asked. They were amateurish, but they caught Li's water-lily smile and Carl's incandescent happiness as gleaming from that good, blue eye, and that seemed the prescient thing. Now they peeked out at Iris from behind frames worn smooth with age, lovingly preserved between the pages of a favourite book, or Aunt Una's bible.

The Christmas Cake with its lopsided Santa did double duty as a wedding cake; Li salvaging the Santa before cutting into it. Even so, the marzipan saint was short-lived. Nenni bit his nose, and deciding she disliked almonds, swatted him loftily onto the floor, whereat Akela took it upon himself to finish what Neni had so regally started. This was one of Iris's favourite images of all.

Fred forgot to be Methodist and joined Carl in demanding there be dancing, so Una wound the gramophone and Rhapsody in Blue blossomed into slow, sensuous life. Afterwards Irving Berlin crooned something unknown to Una, but she let Fred persuade her into dancing anyway, laughing with him when Nenni's waltz-step got in the way of their timing and Akela harmonised with Berlin. All this was in the letter, but there was also a corresponding picture. It was blurred, and imperfect, but the feeling was there, if not the music.

Puck threw rice, and then peanuts with gusto, though he afterwards gathered up and gobbled his confetti. This was why, in many of the photos Una sent home, the happy couple was not only smiling but laughing outright. Indeed, they all were.

It was all very small, and still more private as weddings went. It was hard not to think Li's family should have witnessed it, and the Merediths. Una did think it, later, writing the wedding up in her bible. Carl Meredith m Li Xue , December 28, 1928.The letter said so. It was hard-won happiness to be sure, but perhaps all the dearer for it.

In what was Una's private favourite of the pictures, Carl had his arm around Li while Puck perched on his shoulder. Where anyone else might have worn a rosette or a handkerchief, there was what looked suspiciously like a snake peeking out of Carl's suit pocket. Fred stood next to him with Akela at his feet, his head against Fred's knees, no doubt decorating them with whatever colour fur would best contrast his suit. Una was beside Li, and Nenni, distrustful of photos but determined not to be left out, stalked spotted, sleek and bristling across some imaginary centre stage, her tail the proudest, most arrogant of question marks.

It was this photo pinned gently to the letter in Iris's hands; her family, their friends, the collection of animals even then intruded – or was it comingled? – upon them. It was so long ago. An epoch of her life. Another life, even. But how happy they looked – how carefree, open and unreserved. Almost it was inconceivable.