Mount Holly,
Bolingbroke,
April, 1927
John,
A strange Easter. Phil's Aunt Hetta died. It was peaceful, but still unexpected. I think death is always unexpected to the living. Hetta was last of the Gordons, and that's the strangest thought of all. I'm torn between the aptness of death at this season of resurrection, and the pall of it. Being more of the Easter than Christmas persuasion, I find it hopeful. But it's a difficult thing to explain, to Ruthie especially. She and Mark lived with Hetta for years, and loved her like a grandmother. Ruthie was more niece than great-niece to Hetta, Phil always said. Closer than that, maybe. Aren't families strange?
Ruthie reminisces about their card rubbers and their walks to church and their flower arranging competitions, and I don't know how to comfort her. An awful admission for a father to make. You would have an eloquent turn of phrase, one that soothed and enlightened. I content myself with arranging the service and passing along casseroles. I tend such earthly things as my children can grasp and pray that is enough and more than enough.
It's even more difficult to explain to the grandchildren, who saw Hetta as something of an auxiliary grandmother. They called her 'Grand,' because she was, and because that was less of a mouthful than Great-Great-Aunt if you are young. Hetta loved to be 'Grand.' She coined it because she said 'Great-Great-Aunt' made her sound ancient. (She was. She was a small, bird-like woman of an antiquated and rarified taste, the like of which will not be seen again. Cornelia Bryant would say she was 'rich as Croesus,' too.) The youngest babies are too young to understand, and Ruthie's impending child won't know Hetta at all. But the older children know something is wrong, and Phil and I have soothed many tears between us while tending our own grief.
Phil feels the loss keenly, and says that's strange, because she wasn't close to Hetta. There is nothing of strangeness in that to me; Phil's heart has always cast it's net wide. It's what drew me to her in the first place, the breadth of that love, the colour of it. How well one knew a person, or how much time we spend together, isn't the point. Deaths, however they come, are grievous things, because they remind us how fleeting are the joys and blessings of this world. To hold onto them is no more tenable than to bottle the moon, though we still try betimes. The best we can do was to cherish those things up in the heart, as Mary is said to have done of her son's childhood. I said all this after we had soothed the babies and left their parents to one another's care. There was only the rocking of little Emma's cradle, the twitching of a vine against the window and the salt tang of the sea creeping under the sash to disturb us.
That's the esoteric news and meditation. The mundane is that Ruthie and Mark will inherit Mount Holly, as I once predicted. No one grudges them that; No one else took such exquisite care of Hetta in her dotage. And the others have homes of their own. Mount Holly has been Ruthie's since her marriage. She cared for Hetta at the end. She and Mark arranged the companions, the gardeners and the estate management. In the evenings they read aloud to her. They played whist when they could make a four and rummy when they couldn't. The Presbyterian in me should disavow the cards, but all I am is grateful that an old woman did not die miserable and alone. I've seen that happen. So, so often. Hetta had more years than Gil anticipated, and they were taxing, but happy. As Sam put it, the house is a very small return on fellowship like that.
Anne wrote us the lovelies letter on that mourning paper of hers. Did you know she still uses it? I didn't. I wonder if Phil does, too. It's never felt more apt. I knew what Anne would say as soon as I split the envelope. Hetta would have loved the formality.
Enough of this; Happy Easter, John. I fear I got neither to Sunrise services this year nor Bible study. Between the decline of Hetta and waterproofing assorted boats for lobster season, time got away from me.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch,
Jo
Mount Holly,
Bolingbroke,
April, 1927
Gil,
Thank you for coming to us. Phil wrote Anne a version of this level, but tell her thanks from me, too. It meant so much to have you there – for Phil and Naomi too. (That reminds me; I owe Fred Arnold a similar letter and must not forget. His appearance was unexpected but welcome. I do indeed, as I once prophesied to John, like him immensely.) In a funny way, this is a thank-you from Hetta, too. You were a great favourite of hers. She would be delighted at the thought of you attending her funeral. I know Phil was; No one makes her laugh like you, Gil, and it was good to hear her like that again, whatever Hetta's feelings on the subject.
I know you were spoiled for choice where Easter holidays were concerned. I'm sure Leslie would welcome you with open arms, and Larkrise extended what I'm sure was a warm (if madcap) Easter. Reportedly, Teddy does a commendable lamb. I never expected you to sacrifice all that for an obscure connection of Phil's.
It won't surprise you to hear Hetta had that whole service outlined to the teeth. I couldn't even choose the prayers. Hetta confined me to selections from an old obscurity called My Prayer Book. I don't think John Knox wrote it, but someone who knew him might have.
We'll stay a little longer at Mount Holly for Ruthie. We'd only have to go back when she had the baby, anyway. I fully expect they'll settle on some permutation of Henrietta for a name, though what they'll pair with that I don't know. I long ago ceased being surprised by the fashion in names, strange though it seems to us.
I think, too, Ruthie wants to keep tabs on us. Sometimes, I end a phone call to her with the distinct impression she expects me to be crushed by a boat or felled by a loose shingle as I minister to assorted parishes. Another time I would be glib and tell her Faith won't let that happen; Not today.
I bet you stopped in Kingsport. Send me all your news. We want cheering, and Larkrise never fails.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch,
Jo
Ingleside,
Glen St Mary,
May, 1927
Jo,
Of course we came. For you, for Phil, for the golden-birch of a girl that took the call from you in our telephone nook. For Hetta too; She had a grand sense of humour under all that form and ceremony. It was getting at it that was like cracking a coconut. We wouldn't have missed it for worlds. If she's still with you, tell Ellie from us she sang like a lark; I can still here her Nearer My God, chorus rising like a sun, and ebbing like one too. I tried to tell her at the service, but between Sam, her children, and a mesh of well-wishers her hands looked full, so I left her to it.
Besides, Leslie and Owen are more than able to negotiate rough water unassisted. According to Anne, Leslie ordered us to Mount Holly. As if she had to. But Leslie's that type.
You asked for our news. We stopped over at Larkrise as you predicted. They're due another baby, not that they said. Years of practice on my part. I always guess right.
Dr. Christopherson (think Crow Lake) was also there. He was passing through for a spring conference or something and wanted to meet his namesake. Faith ordered him to stay for Easter. (She's that type, too.) I liked him lots. We got talking over a round of cribbage and he mentioned he kept a letter ready-drafted on his desk addressed to the Redmond Medical Faculty in the event they ever got awkward about Faith's attendance. I grinned and admitted I'd done the same in the Redmond era, always waiting for the phone call that might tell me it was necessary. He grinned back and said he didn't really know what good he'd have done, a former graduate of Ottawa with a practice in rural Ontario, but figured it was worth a try. Then he asked about the little girls; Was Miri still trying to climb her way into the clouds and Jerry still having nervous fits about it?
No one had told me about Jerry and his nerves – or not in this particular scenario – but I didn't let on. I said something about all parents being that way over their children, even as I wondered if John knew. I suppose he must. Anyway, I could and did tell him that Mandy's the tree climber these days (more squirrels up there). Miri's moved on to swimming. Anne, who never learned, lives in perpetual anxiety she will be swept away by the current and now I wonder if Jerry shares her concern. Nan's remarkably placid about her whirlwind girls. I can't decide if this is the fault of her Harrington, whose scrapes put the girls' to shame, or her own intrepid childhood talking. Probably both.
Fox Corner, you will be unsurprised to hear, made quite the thing of Easter, despite Mara surviving on less sleep than normal. Iain's at the teething age, but it wasn't all his fault. Mara was equally preoccupied with late-night vigils and a thing called a Triduum that I don't understand, though John could probably enlighten me. I'm afraid to ask, lest Susan suspect I've been converted. Shirley stuck close to Martyrs' and says the chap that's got your place made a hash of the Lent appeal, the sermons, and clearing the debris off the church roof. If it's done by the time you return, Shirley has made good on the threat to do it himself. He's also investigating whatever became of the highly specialized pieces needed to regenerate the Martyrs' radiator, which he says is still broken. He reckons postal gremlins ate the requisite thingummy and you'll be out of pocket, but he'll see if he can sort it. If they do arrive on your doorstep in time for a Pentecost miracle, haste you to have them fitted before they can try an Ascension trick and disappear into the clouds. At this point I'd believe anything.
Love ever,
Gil
P.S. About Miss Abby. You wouldn't believe the fuss she made of my return. You'd think I was the resurrected fellow, the way she went on. I know part of Di's reason for going abroad was to help wean her baby, but sometimes, between us, I wonder how wise it was. I've never known a child feel partings so strongly.
Ingleside,
Glen St Mary,
May, 1927
Jo,
Change all round. First Hetta Gordon, now the children. But this is good. They're going to stay. Di, Alastair and he children. Here at Ingleside! Alastair's been contracted to build holiday homes at Four Winds Point, and can they move in?
Miss Abby's in raptures. I'm in raptures. The house will almost feel full again!
There's a spectacular furore in the Glen over the holiday cottages, because Change Is Evil, etc. Want to guess whose leading it? If I said her name was almost but not quite Cordelia, would that help you guess?
I say they can build thousands of holiday homes. Di will by back at Ingleside. You must think me mad. I sound it. But Di, of all the children…. You know she's my favourite inasmuch as one has a favourite. Glen people will give you all sorts of reasons why; Anne's looks, my practicality...Maybe the fact that I look at Di and see Anne does play a part. But it's more than that.
The first time I held Di, her eyes hadn't settled and she had no hair. But she was the first of our girls to live. The instinct to love and nurture her was overwhelming. Matthew did it for Anne; I picture him as an interlude of greenery in a sheer, cragged landscape. I used to feel the shape of it in those early days of our friendship. I used to look at Anne under the shade of a sliver birch, her face dappled with its leaves and see in their shadow-play the hint of some still, unquiet thing. Or we'd walk through the haunted wood of an evening and she'd startle at a noise; A chaffinch taking flight, or the crunch of a dry branch underfoot. I wondered what it was that could turn her in a heartbeat from dryad to startled hare, ears pricked and back taut.
I've learned piecemeal over the years, but never everything, because how to tell a nightmare? So, there I was with Di on my arm, her big-eyed with wonderment and me all but brought to my knees by the need to keep her whole and safe, because if I could do that, then maybe I could fill the void that my younger self saw in her mother. If I could keep her in food, clothes, the girlhood whims of the hour, be there to catch and cradle her and hold her in the palm of my hand, then perhaps it would set some cosmic balance right, nurture whatever iteration of Anne it was I never knew. It sounds absurd, put down in writing like that. But I wanted it keenly.
I tried to live it too; I think I did, even, for Di and all of them. Certainly they were a brazen enough tribe to scandalise Susan.
Then she grew up – they all did – and had children to safeguard. I resigned myself to a house that wasn't just very big, but monolithic the day. And now Di's coming back. For good.
Ingleside is ebullient. We were dreading Naomi's departure; Now we won't have to. I'm glad, Jo. So very glad.
Love ever,
Gil
New Manse,
Glen St Mary,
May, 1927,
Jo,
Una sent word that the Horley Hall children are heading back to Ipoh now the dry weather's arrived and school out.
But the latest and most important is that Una finally met Li. Carl brought her over to Trinity House the other evening. They arrived animatedly discussing the finer points of the life cycle of the guava tree. Una knew Li was of the Race that knows Joseph when she took one look at Puck pouring tea and was shocked into silence. Then she told Carl off for not introducing the women.
Once they got past the language barrier, they made headway. Una poured tea the English way – well, the only way I thought you could pour it. But somewhere around the swapping of recipes, Li offered to take over and taught her the Singaporean trick of pouring from cup to cup a little bit at a time. This way, everyone gets a cup that's the same strength.
They're fast friends now. I often wondered how that would go.
Rosemary didn't. 'Una never was a bit like Ellen,' she said, by which she meant Una wasn't going to interfere in anyone's marriage plans, except to promote them.
If I'm right, the Glen will be well in gossip for easily the next twenty years. I don't much care; Carl and Una both sound the happiest I have known them. That's all I ever wanted.
Love, blessings and prayers to you and yours,
J.M.
P.S. Whatever became of the adoption of Kilrenny and New Waterford? The General Assembly must have decided by now.
Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
June, 1927
John,
The official word is that New Waterford and Kilrenny will be absorbed into the Yarmouth, for reasons that defy all logic. I long ago gave up understanding the whims of the General Assembly for the sake of my sanity on Phil's advice. It was good advice. I recommend it. I'm more than a little relieved, honestly. Kilrenny isn't remotely near Yarmouth, but it's not near Kingsport, either. Whoever is doing the geography of assorted parishes has an interesting brain indeed.
You know, of course, that Naomi and Fred are going over there after the wedding? A temporary thing, they say. Purely an excuse to catch up with your daughter. Since I cannot remember the last time Naomi did a thing by halves, I take generous leave to doubt her.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch,
Jo
New Manse,
Glen St Mary,
September, 1927
Jo,
A lovely wedding. I can't remember if I said. I don't think I did. Pass on our congratulations to Ruthie, too. Her Hetta makes a magnificent baby.
Una's very glad to have gained your daughter. They still work well together, she says. Strange – I always think of Ruthie in connection with Una, all those talks they had in Una's domestic science era, I suppose. I forget she worked with Naomi at your Food Ministry.
Una might be enjoying her reunion, but the Glen already misses Naomi. A Miss Millicent Drew took over the school, and you wouldn't believe the sudden rash of children who have fallen ill in consequence. Nothing serious; In fact, nothing legitimate. Gil says all any of them are suffering is a healthy dose of boredom. He calls it Drewitis when the worried mothers are out of earshot, and I try hard not to laugh. It's hard because he's pretty overrun with over-worried mothers. Mary Douglas is the exception, and no surprise there. She'd send her children to school with varicella, and that's a whole other source of irritation to Ingleside.
Love and blessings,
J.M.