Trinity House, 1950,
Absolute chaos at that Monica Radcliffe Centre. That young girl I told you Emily didn't trust – Christine? Well, she's only been spying for the Chinese. I could have told them so, because I trust Emily. Actually, think Emily did try and tell them so, but that Impossible Woman was interned with Spying One, so quite see why our word should come second. Irritating, though.
They're handing it off to the young people and going back to England. Said I had half a mind to do the same and Cressida about murdered me.
'Not to my place you're not!' she said. 'I'm auctioning it off and putting the money where my grasping relatives can't get it.'
She's old as Croesus, must be. Cannot possibly imagine she has relatives. The point is, now we're trying to run a shoebox operation with half the blasted box gone. Or something. Terrible analogy. You're the literary one. You'll know what I mean.
B
Trinity House, 1950,
Insist you come back. Bernice champing at bit to get me involved in that damn Centre now it's short-handed, and I bloody well won't do it. You can tell her I said that. I told her I said it and fat lot of good it did, too. Far prefer the goats.
The goats, by the way, can't go to Emily and Iain's place. Army won't hear of it. Why any of us is surprised is the surprise. Also, strongly suspect that family of his have been on at him to come home. He hasn't said but…Tell them to let him alone, will you? He's patently where he's supposed to be. Singapore needs Independence or it will go mad – well, you were here. You know. Explain it to them. Iain working out here, it's like…forget the word. You'll know. Literature and that.
Cressida
Innisfree, 1950
Gaes, Cressida. The word you want is Gaes. A thing you must do despite everything. I've had it, so I know. So, come to that, has Iain's mother; If Mara wants him home, it won't be because she disapproves. It's because Isobel Blythe isn't the kind to play homebody. She was dancing at the Alexandra theatre not last week and we're just back from seeing her. Wish you'd been there – she's as fluid with it as you or Elise ever was. Mind, neither you nor Elise was the type for white dresses and tartan sashes, and you never danced anything like this. But you take my point. It suited Isobel to her bones – dance, city, the lot. Her mother knows it. I know it. And if Isobel moves away…
It's a terrible thing to suddenly find yourself in an empty house. I've done that, too, don't forget.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
Trinity House, 1951,
Emily and Iain back. Happily settled as far as I can tell. Lovely house. Absurdly big, considering. They're going to rattle around it. Absolutely no idea why they couldn't take the goats with them. Mind you, Cressida's taken to them – she would – so perhaps as well.
Actually, worse than that. She's acquired another goat. Brown thing named Hiltrude. Damn thing keeps escaping the garage and getting into the garden. We had to have the vet out the other day because the bloody animal went and ate the chicken wire. Am about ready to throttle it. Would settle for throttling Cressida.
Still, can't think what Britain is about. When you think how badly they mismanaged Singapore before and then to try and resurrect the same bloody system – it gets my back up.
Haste ye back.
B
Innisfree, 1951
Bernice,
You are being entirely too English about those hens. Pay the vet to see to the goats and forget the wire. Donate it to your Centre for purposes as yet undecided. Set the hens up in the kitchen, in that cupboard I assume you mended. It's where I kept them for years, and they lived long, happy, hen-lives until a British shell got them.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
St Aiden's Hospital, England, 1951,
Una,
Solemnly promise to never take Robin or Iris in for a medical exam unless actually necessary. Possibly not unless actively dying. Have just dealt with mother whose obsession with vitamin supplements caused daughter's problem. Could have cheerfully killed her. Unfortunately, took medical oath about never killing anyone, so didn't. Bet Nellie would have, though.
Lovely to see you both at the wedding. Robin looks exactly the way girls that age should, even if Isobel is turning her into more fairy than Mannering. (Trent? I can't keep them straight.) I make that exactly the right ratio for her age. No need to harangue overworked doctors with anxiety on that score. Not that you would.
Do harangue your bookseller about sartorial creations not fit for girls Robin's age. You were quite right about it aging her up ridiculously. (He was equally right it suited her to the teeth, but do not pass that on! I never said it, you never read it.)
Don't leave it so long between visits next time. Come to England next.
Kiss Robin for me,
Joan
P.S. Cressida still makes me check that monolith of hers isn't a crumbling ruin, for all she says she hates the monstrosity. As I'm no longer in the south of England, this is highly inconvenient. But then, Cressida never did do convenient, did she?
P.P.S. Forgive the long delay writing. Work has been impossible. See above re mothers.
P.P.P.S. Britain's idea of 'Reparations' finally found me. It's backdated to about the time of Iain and Emmy's wedding, must have been redirected approximately six times (once by way of Singapore no less) and totals – you'll love this – £50. £50. That's the price of unmitigated horror. Emily says Iain is furious. I'm furious. And a little afraid to ask how Cressida feels on the subject.
Innisfree, 1951,
Absolutely not, Cressida. If you want that house sorted, go yourself. Quite happy leaving endless international jaunts to people who enjoy them. Do not include Joan on this list. How can you possibly not know anyone closer to that house of yours? Write Elise's old parish priest, why don't you and ask him to do it. It's a considerably shorter train journey from London than Scarborough!
I'm sure the reparations money they sent you would cover his travel expenses. Seeing as your threat to use it paying the gardener you don't have is entirely toothless and we booth know it.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch. (This does not include haranguing Joan!)
Time, as the song says, goes by. There's the obligatory Glen Christmas to see them into 1952 and this year Una promises Naomi Arnold they'll stay with her. Naomi hasn't found Li, but neither has anyone else, so Una doesn't hold it against her. It makes her heart-glad to think Iris and little Joanie Arnold, ACS babies that they are, finally in the same place at the same time. Even so, Una refuses to stay for New Year, whatever Mary Vance's plans for a village-wide fete.
'Don't tell me,' says Alice Caldicote, commandeering Naomi's phone. 'That's about the crickets, too.'
Una hears the smile over the static.
She's smiling herself when she says, 'Entirely the wrong time of year for crickets, Nurse Caldicote. Do keep up.'
They can't leave without the usual bookshop festivities. Robin and Martin insist, and Iris is quick to join in. Iris might squeal horror at the prospect of adult romance, but she isn't nine any more, and too much her mother's daughter not to meddle gently and unnecessarily. She, Robin and Kiki make an impossible triad, shimmying up to the high places to twist ivy and holly into unlikely places. Una resolutely ignores them, because the prospect of Robin reaching halfway across void space to wreath holly around the upper echelons of the Very Miscellaneous section is enough to give anyone vertigo. She must look this as well as think it, because Martin says to the stratosphere, 'Come down before you give your mother heart failure, Miss Bird. The windows are languishing.'
Iris, half-suspended from one of the ladders says, 'Auntie doesn't mind. You never did with me, anyway.'
'Entirely different thing, Firecracker,' says Una. 'Your mother kept an eye on you. Puck, too.'
Robin skims her way along the beam she balances on, wraps her hands around it for ballast, and for what seems an unending moment hangs there, stretched to the full length of her small person before dropping leaf-fluid and cat-noiseless onto the floor. Una leans against the counter, inhaling relief. She's content to watch Robin and Iris weave in and out and under each other's arms with the greenery. They laugh in running counterpoint to the radio, which has eschewed the more obvious seasonal selections for Nat King Cole singing Sentimental Reasons. Una can't help but think that worlds away this is the childhood Iris should have had, ribald, musical and full of giddy young children to adventure with. Oh, there was Puck and he adored Iris – but Una would give her the sun if she could. So would Li. So would Carl.
A hand at Una's elbow recalls her. 'Penny for your thoughts?' asks Martin, his smile warm in the half-light of the failing afternoon.
'Not nearly worth that much,' Una says.
How long they would stand there thoughtful is impossible to judge, because Iris bobs up like a toadstool from the window she so lately dressed and says, all sparks and giddiness, 'Shall we do the tree, too, little bird?'
Martin is all for it, and Una for getting both girls home before the light fails. Kiki cackles Murrrderrr in agreement with persons indeterminate.
'Come on, you,' says Iris, getting Robin by the hand. 'Where are the things for the tree?'
'Try upstairs,' Martin says.
Una thinks of the anonymity of that upper-storey flat and finds it improbable, to say the least that it's concealing anything half so personal as Christmas tree ornaments. She doesn't say this. She crosses both arms and says, 'Don't I get a vote at all?' There's a ribbon of laughter in her throat betraying her, though, and all these years later, Martin knows her well enough to know it. Una knows this, too.
'Robin voted for you,' Martin tells Una as Sentimental Reasons segues into Unforgettable. It's still Nat King Cole, and the song got it's name for a reason.
'They'll remember him for this one,' says Una of the music. Somehow this becomes the cue for Martin's extended hand, half-playful. It's been years since Una danced. Even encamped, with Elise teaching them, it was always Una and Bernice at the piano. Cressida made any number of bids to lure Una away, but always she leaned into the music, laughing.
'Minister's children,' she used to say to Cressida, 'aren't allowed, you heathen.'
It's a good line. It worked on Cressida any number of times, which is no easy thing. Una doesn't reach for it. She thinks instead of those long-ago evenings with Carl and Li, the hum of the city around them and accepts the hand on offer.
'Mind,' Martin says, 'I suppose this will startle Robin.'
'Iris, maybe. Her adults never could have lives beyond Trinity House, and her aunt particularly. Robin will be gleeful.' Then, recalling, the old-world rule of those Singapore evenings, Una says, 'It's against the rules though, talking about children during dances. Has been for years.'
'You never said.'
'It's never come up,' says Una.
Talk doesn't so much turn as it stops. There is only the music, lilting, liquid and warm. Besides, there's no missing the girls. They come rocketing down the stairs like so many buffalo. Nice to know, Una thinks, that even the ACS couldn't turn Iris into the soft-footed, demure creature of Aunt Martha's rulebook. Even Iris isn't a patch on Robin, who careens down the stairs ahead of her, well-dwarfed by a box that trails Christmas jumble like scarves.
'You and Carl,' says Una, hastening to heft the box out of Robin's bird-spindly arms. 'Never think when you pack up. Bet you've forgot half of what's in here.'
'Guilty as charged,' says Martin, and holds up both hands. 'Come on, Miss Bird. Help me find out while your mother sorts.'
'Oh no,' says Una. 'You sort while the girls and I have our fun.'
The air is thick with the smell of greenery, and badly-stored tinsel, the smells comingling with Robin's cinnamon-laced cider and an idling decanter of semi-sweet sherry. Nat King Cole finally remembers the season and The Christmas Song crackles to rich, warm life, punctured by the rustle of tissue paper and jangling metal hooks. They refract fairy lights off of them in conversational byplay with the silver of Una's ichthys brooch. Iris hums, half-flat along with the music, Robin laughs, and Una and Martin trade smiles across the tree. The Glen, Una thinks, has stiff competition.
Order of Service for the Occasion of the Death of Rosemary Grace Meredith
Introit: All People That On Earth Do Dwell (Old Hundredth)
Call to Worship Rev. Fields
First Lesson: Ecc. 3: 1-8
Psalm 23 (Responsive)
Abide With Me (Eventide)
Second Lesson: Rev. 1: 12-19
Gospel: Luke 24: 1-12
Sermon
Intercessions
Lord's Prayer (Debts)
Anthem: Never Weather-Beaten Sail
Recessional: The Day Thou Gavest (St Clement)
Trinity House, 1952,
Just head about your mother. Well, not your mother. You know what I mean. After a certain point I expect it becomes so much water under the bridge. Certainly the impression Robin gives.
Point being, awful thing to happen. Extremely sorry. Sounds a paltry thing on paper but do mean it, and all that. Everyone sends thoughts and prayers. Well, I don't do with prayers but Bernie does, and Emmy's lighting candles at whatever place young Chinese girls light candles. Thinking about it, you probably have an answer to that. Iain's off lighting them at whatever the local Roman place is. You probably know that, too. Wish you were here. We'd see you and the girls right. How are Robin and Iris taking it, anyway? How are you?
Cressida
Moon-in-the-Rain, Singapore, 1952,
Auntie,
Wish I was there. I know you and grandmother Rosemary were always close. She wasn't mine and Isobel's paper family, but I have fond memories of the New Manse, and remember I was sorry when you wrote to say the church had sold it on. Can't remember if I said.
She had music like you do, that's what stands out. It came easy to her, like Isobel dancing or Mam on stage. I always thought there was God in that kind of talent, because it would light up the person and pull you in to whatever world they accessed. You have it playing, and so did she. Different music, but that same internal cant towards elsewhere. So, although I could never place any of her pieces the way I can listening to you, I always loved listening, because there was that touch of God there that you felt like strong tea or liquid amber, soul-warm, you know?
I remember Da saying back when Susan Baker died that he never knew how strange the world would be without her. I guess it's a bit like that – but then, you've lived so much strangeness maybe it doesn't signify.
Probably I'm making a hash of this. But I couldn't not write my favourite Auntie on the occasion. Wish it were a happier one.
Love,
Iain
P.S. Nephews are allowed favourites. It's completely different from parents and children.
P.P.S. I think the orange and blue creation Emmy encloses wants to be a fox. She says no one outgrows cuddly toys confronted with loss. Guess she's right at that. The green bear is from me. Recall you once gave one to Iris she called Edward and thought she'd appreciate his exotic descendant if anything like my sister.
P.P.P.S. Ignore Cressida. I mean, not everything she says, just anything she says about me and the Catholic Church. Any candles I'm lighting are card-carrying Anglican ones. Not sure if that makes it better or worse per your standards. It's at least as heretical as Presbyterianism as per my mother. But Grandmother Rosemary was Anglican originally, wasn't she? Maybe that means it all works out in the cosmic wash.
Innisfree, 1952,
Joan,
One of those impossibly mundane inconveniences that no sooner had we got home from Christmas, we had to turn around and head back to the Glen. Not, obviously, that I minded. Martin Swallow conveniently still where we left him and only too happy to take Kiki for longer. Find that extremely unlikely, as Kiki regularly drives me to the edge of madness, but didn't argue.
Bruce met us at the station. Absolutely no idea which of us initiated the hug, or whose tears set who off. Just know that someone did on both counts. The sun was up, not that you'd have known it – it was one of those pearlescent sunrises, which seemed about right. Might have been beautiful if I could have looked at it properly. Asked Bruce why he hadn't told me Rosemary was ill, as would have stayed longer, and he looked at me with those fierce dark eyes of our Father's and said, 'Because I thought you'd seen enough people you love die on you.'
Nothing to say to that, so hugged him harder and tried to stem the worst of the tears because mothers and aunts aren't supposed to cry.
Jerry and family made the trip from Ontario. Wonderful to see him again, especially somewhere not so citified and hard on him as Kingsport, but awful circumstance. Incredible, too, to see how big Mandy's girls are these days. Also, Hattie and Bea are impossibly big. I can't realize that either, and Jerry says he and Nan are as bad. I don't wonder.
Another thing I can't realize is Rosemary dead. I think I've held Carl and Li dead-alive so long that death doesn't make sense any more. Or perhaps we saw so much in camp it no longer registers. I don't know. I do know nothing about the weekend felt real. Not the minister-not-my-father with his indifferent, if admittedly more present preaching style, not the twenty-third psalm, and not the choir singing Rosemary's pet motet.
Do you know, she played Never Weather Beaten Sail not just on Sea Sunday, but whenever the anniversary of that dreadful Magdalenes wreck came 'round? Of course you don't. Truth be told, I don't think Rosemary noticed that I noticed.
Perhaps part of it was that it was the stiffest, most staunchly Presbyterian funeral you ever saw, and at heart, the Anglican in Rosemary never fully died. She never learned to pray the doxology, and was too Anglican to forgive anyone their debts or debtors. It was always 'trespasses.' And she never learned the Presbyterian harmony for 'All People That on Earth Do Dwell.' It is one of life's little ironies that the first time the choir sang it, as they felt, the right way, it was to commemorate a woman who wouldn't have recognized the harmony for trying.
Most surreal of all – I couldn't sing the recessional. Don't know if it was my disconnect from the whole ordeal or the overwhelming colonialism that did it. Strange to think I believed it all, once. Baked for Empire Day, sang the anthem, saluted the flag…But the closer the verse about 'Earth's proud Empire' came, the tighter my throat got.
So, I stood there not singing, and I swear I heard the causeway explode and the British saying they would save us and save us – and at the end of it all that blazing red sun. I felt the heat and heard the flies and, absurdly, the thwack of those cricket balls the ACS children played with and was mute. Forgive me, Joan, you never wanted to play confessor. But I can't tell Bruce – she was his mother – and I'd scandalize the others. Rightly so – Church is no place for politics. I've said it for years. That's half the point of my white poppy. But God help me, I couldn't do anything about it in the moment except fuss with that same poppy and beg silent forgiveness of God and Rosemary Meredith. You're the nearest thing I've got to an ego te absolvo – It's not a Presbyterian rite. I never thought we needed them, before.
Awful for the girls, naturally. Iris has only scrap memories of Rosemary, but Robin – of all the Glen, Rosemary never asked a thing about her. Not whose she was or where she came from or whether those awful guards – Rosemary just loved her. Whenever we were down, she spoiled Robin as much as she ever did Iris.
And when the Glen whispered more than normal and Rilla and Di turned cold at the thought of my trading poetry with people not the departed shade of their brother – Rosemary only poured tea and cried and said she thought she would only ever see me really happy in Singapore.
Spent both train journeys stemming tears. Mine, theirs, Faith's…Improbably, wished we had Kiki for company. Now there's a thought. Also improbable; Was extremely glad of Isobel Blythe's help. When not breaking unsuspecting hearts and wreaking chaos on Kingsport, there's a lot of Iain and Mara's sensibility in her. Also Shirley's steadiness. Faith was wonderful too, between the tears and trying to staunch her own children's weeping. Christopher's children quite young enough to be oblivious – suppose that's a blessing. That freed Emma up to look after Christopher, while little Ben Carlisle sheltered Helen from the impinging universe. He's got all the ballast of an oak tree, that one.
Glad to be back in our own beds, with our parrot(let) and Martin Swallow making tea. I got excessively tired of kettles during the Glen interval. Was only too glad to let him take over.
One thing – Bruce swears Rosemary just fell asleep and that was that. That doesn't happen, does it? That's one of those gentle lies doctors tell relatives. You can tell me – God knows we've weathered unkinder realities.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch,
Una
St Aiden's Hospital, 1952,
Una,
In-between patients so a short note to agree no one ever died of sleeping back in camp, except the ones in coma and they don't count. But it does happen, promise. It still stuns me when it happens, too. I lost a woman like that the other day. God, she was ancient. More wrinkled than prunes and when she was lucid, the kind of wit you could sharpen a knife on. Cressida would have loved her. But then I came in and she was dead, eyes closed and everything. I just stood there gaping while the poor nurses dithered about whether to get Matron or not. Then I remembered where I was and that things like that happen, sometimes. I'm glad it was that way for Rosemary Meredith.
All my love, and kiss Robin for me,
Dr. J Makori
P.S. Finished with patients now and thought you might like to know I've dropped attendance at Evensong. The timing was always awkward – what doctor has a spare four o'clock on a Wednesday? – but I made it work until 'The Day Thou Gavest' got to me too. I can't sing it either, for all the same reasons. Why St Aiden's Cathedral couldn't stick to 'Lead Kindly Light' I don't know.