Trinity House,
Evelyn Road,
Singapore, May, 1935
Jo,
Safely arrived in Singapore. The children met us at Keppel Harbour, which Carl says they call New Harbour now, but as Carl also said it's new in the way New College, Oxford is new.
Trinity House is bigger than I imagined. It has two storeys and a wrap-around verandah. Not uncommon, from what I've seen. They use them like our parlours. It's handy for the ACS, but not much else. Mind you, the children have such a small social circle that they don't mind that.
Don't suppose from that that we haven't seen the city. The weather's hot but fine, and we've been all through the market.
It's hard to describe so much bustle and novelty. Guava and banana sellers knocked elbows with vendors of curried noodles and paper merchants. They sell that fine, thin paper Una writes on by the ream. There were chickens in cages and monkeys running wild. A herd of piglets overturned a cart full of silks, and a ring-necked dove stole a slice of papaya from an outraged vendor. There were such combinations of spices, flowers and smells as I can't describe. Cinnamon with coriander, nutmeg with oregano, orchids in profusion tangled with queenly lilies and our beloved irises.
We saw Change Alley's paper merchants, and when the women left, Carl showed me around Raffles College. Li and Iris didn't want to get in the way. I take that to mean they didn't want to be shouted at for being out of place. They get a lot of that, I've noticed, even the few days we've been here. Afterwards, Carl walked me down Stampford Street to the much-lauded MPH bookshop. We admired, but did not go into, the Raffles Place shops, and nodded to the Capitol with that famous dome.
I don't think it's really representative of their lives. Showing people one's home never is. You end up doing all the tourist things locals wouldn't do.
We got a better impression of Una's life when we went down to the quay with her and saw the long narrowboats. They look like elegant peapods, but you wouldn't believe the stuff people haul off them. Everything from lumber to lobsters. Una got into the thick of it. I cannot, for the life of me, Jo, reconcile the image of her hauling parcels onto the docks with the slip of a girl I sent away. She fainted from fasting once – you wouldn't believe it to see her in the bustle and clamour of the quayside.
I felt more at home with her drinking Nilgiri tea in Cecilia's Gladstone Blue Ribbon. This was the child I remembered, pouring out with precision and anticipating everyone's individual tastes.
Li and Una don't go out together often. It's a bit of an unforgivable sin over here, the races mixing like that, but they took Rosemary and I out, once. There's a tea shop run by a Mr. Razdan who they get on with. He gave us a tea more English than the English and gossiped with the women happily.
We met the menagerie; Puck with his taste for sweet tea, Nenni, the snake-catching cat, Akela, who is a dog of such mixed pedigree as to outdo even Monday, and, of course, the infamous Buffalo. Una won't admit it, but she loves that buffalo. It's surprisingly gentle, especially with Iris. She thinks nothing of sitting on it or stroking its nose, and it lets her.
Oh, and Iris! It goes without saying we met Iris. Finally. She was wary of Rosemary and I at first. Well, we were strangers. Of course she was.
She's relaxed since then, and comes begging cuddles from us the way she does with family. She looks like Li most – moon-pale and dark haired. But she has Carl's temperament. Not just the love of animals, but the fizzing playfulness that bubbles under an exterior calm. Her family calls her Firecracker. It's a good epithet. Iris is like a living Roman Candle, slow-burning but full of zest and energy.
There's more, there's always more, but if I try and write it, I will neither do it justice, nor see my children the remainder of the visit. A poor holiday that would be.
Love and blessings,
J.M.
Trinity House,
Evelyn Road,
Singapore, June, 1935
Gil,
If you had told me years ago that I would celebrate the King's Silver Jubilee in the colony of Singapore while hosting Empire Day for the Anglo-Chinese School, I wouldn't have believed you. I don't believe it now.
It's like nothing on earth. The scale and size of the holiday, I mean. The day itself is pretty well our Victoria Day with cork hats and extra heat.
That's as full an impression as I can give. Most of my attention was split between the speech I gave to the ACS children and little Iris. For an accurate picture, write to Una.
Speaking of Iris; She and Puck neatly conned Una out of a Victoria Sponge. It was supposed to be part of the day's festivities, but Rosemary wandered into the kitchen and found Iris standing over the cake with a knife. For about thirty seconds, Rosemary couldn't think for the terrifying combination of Iris and knife. Then she realized it was a butter knife and got over the worst of her anxiety. She cut Iris a slice of the cake, and then cut another for Puck. Una tried to scold them, but didn't get far. She's too pleased that we're here to mind, I can tell.
We'll be home when fair waves the golden corn. (Though, if we have to have that particular hymn again for Harvest Festival this year, I think Rosemary really will murder the music director –warn Neil McAllister.) It's both far away and too soon.
It will be good to be home again, but I don't want to leave, either. I've loved every minute of seeing my little girl again, even the little things, like watching her wrangle Rosemary for the teapot. Never mind that I worried little Carl should never find his feet after the war. For all he made light of his eye – Cecilia's eyes – I worried it might cost him his calling. But here he is, adored by his students, a veritable zoo of animals around him, as skilled and suited to his work as Una is to hers. They radiate happiness.
Here, I sat under the noonday sun (to Li's horror) with my granddaughter on my knee and tried to memorize the sun-warm smell of her, the mix of coconut oil and orchid rinse in her hair, the way she quirks her mouth up at one corner when smiling. (It's Una's smile, a soft, subtle thing that belies her Firecracker name.) I can't do it, of course. If there was but forever and forever…There will be, I suppose, in some far-off, New Heaven. In the meantime, such fine details will soften like waxwork, and I am heartsore for it.
I'll carry them in my heart, always. And I'll pray they visit us someday.
Love to you and Ingleside. Give the manse a wave as you pass next time and reassure Jo we'll be home soon, and he can return to his Mission efforts. I know he misses them. Soon we'll sit on Ingleside's veranda and talk of our travels over Susan's impeccable baking and a cup of tea.
Love and blessings,
J.M
Idylwild,
Struan,
June 1935
Jo,
You always gave the best advice. Capitalizing on retirement and coming out here directly was much better than interrupting John's holiday. Singapore! I still can't fathom it. Anne is in rhapsodic ecstasies over some of his descriptions. I fear I can't picture any of it. Not the guavas, not the bustling market throngs, definitely not Una Meredith keeping company with a monkey. A terrible confession; When I think of Una she is forever plucky and ten years old defending Mary Vance to Miss Cornelia. Bet that woman tells you that's just like a man when you tell her I said so.
Struan is much closer to home than Singapore, obviously. Much less...exotic. I've since met smitten Mick Challow, and he makes an affable second shadow to Mandy. I've met Miss Allison Janie, too. And - oh, I can hear what you'll say about love and youth and how there is no room for fear in love. Maybe you're even right. But you can fear for loved ones, can't you?
That's really what nags at me. Struan isn't so much bigger than the Glen. It has its general store (Harpers), and its ridiculous families (Pyes), and it's set of rules. You've lived in the Glen long enough to know the kind I mean; Minister must preach in the pulpit. Minister's children do not dance. The Methodists colonize one half of the town and the Presbyterians the other and never the twain shall meet. Young boys walk out young girls and that you may tie to, to coin a phrase of Susan Baker's.
I guess you've been there long enough now, too, to see what happens when those rules get broken. You weren't there when Carl Meredith's engagement to a Singapore native broke, but I was. The things they said. No need to get into all that now. I bet John told you. Or how about when Shirley brought home a Catholic fisherman's daughter? You want to ask Cousin Sophia about that. (You do not. You have a sense of Christian charity.) And I guess you've heard me talk over the years about the little Fords' aunts. We've debated it academically, but whatever my medical opinion, the fact remains that Persis Ford had the good sense to stay somewhere citified and expansive as Toronto, and when she couldn't, she took care to go abroad to climes and environs sufficiently unconventional as not to care.
Struan is not Toronto. It has Glen St Mary's norms, and they are rigorously policed by a big-bosomed woman named Mrs Stanovitch. She doles out lemonade to the children, opinions to anyone who will listen (and a few that won't) and runs the Presbyterian church far better than the local minister. If she, or anyone else, ever puts two and two together about my granddaughter and this Miss Janie - even if it all turns out to be nothing more than what Anne calls a bosom friendship - that is what frightens me. And she will put two and two together, because that woman has the canniness of a cat, the guile of a fox and the observational eye of a bird of prey. There's a lot of good in her too, don't misunderstand. Mrs Stanovich has the ear of her Lord and Saviour and he tells her very definitely what's what and who should be helped...and somehow I don't believe that will be two infatuated young girls on the cusp of adulthood. But she might help people 'help' them. Her Saviour might recommend it.
Have you ever seen a community turn on someone? I have. It was during the war, and I was at - yes, really! - prayer meeting. Whiskers-on-the-Moon (you'll know him by his Christian name, Mr Pryor) got up to pray for peace. For the war to end. Have I ever told you what they did to that man, Jo? They threw stones at his house. They broke his windows. All because he dared to want what we all wanted.
The thought that one morning I could wake up to a letter saying some upstart youth had attacked Miri - had done worse because their sense of moral rigor was offended...are you sure there isn't room for fear in love? A translation error, maybe?
Nan and Jerry aren't fazed. I can't think why. I'm not in their position and I am. Miri is too. You can see it in the way she watches the world out of the corner of her eye. It's as if she's taking the temperature of the room, waiting for the moment the mercury starts to boil so she knows when to get out. And when she talks about this Allison (she never does where the Stanovitch woman might hear if she can help it) - she reminds me of me, talking my mother's ear off about the new red-haired girl in school. My poor mother. All I did was pull the wrong plait.
Love ever,
Gil
Idylwild,
Struan,
June, 1935
John,
I'm hiding out in the wilds of Ontario on Jo's advice. He thought I'd benefit from seeing Nan and the girls, I thought I'd benefit from escaping the summer polio and that bloody-minded cough of Phil's. My own personal hydra – the pair of them! And Phil –I really think she's actively dying. I must tell Jo. If I don't he'll never forgive me, and he'll be right not to. Honestly, I think that's why I agreed to go to Struan in the first place. I can't possibly tell Jo his wife is dying by letter. And if I can't tell Jo, I can't tell Anne, who has lost so, so many people already. How can I add one of her dearest and most stalwart friends to the list?
Enough of this. Write me another of your travelogues. Tell me the (mis)adventures of Iris and Puck. Describe exactly what a Chinese opera is like. Nothing like Puccini's idea of one, I bet.
Love ever,
Gil
P.S. Later. Nan and Jerry agreed to travel back to the Glen with us for the summer. Not before time, eh?
Ingleside,
Glen St Mary,
July, 1935
John,
I told Jo this morning. It was awful. Like kicking a puppy in the stomach. The worst part – the part I couldn't bear – was that he knew. He had the nerve to suspect Phil was dying, and he went on bravely not telling me for months. Serves me right for not being direct in the first place. We sat in the library with our tea cooling, contemplating nothing and everything. The day was incongruously sunny, and that was wrong, because, as Jo said, 'Phil is a sun. She can't die. The world would end.'
Then he put his head in his hands and for a long time we said nothing at all.
So, when Nan said later that Miri and Mandy would be sisters again, it was the good news we all needed. Life goes on. Goodness exists. Phil was in raptures - as sparkling as I've ever seen her.
Nan said it quietly over the soup course, and I guess the little girls – who are not little! – knew because they weren't surprised the way the rest of us were.
I was still reeling from my talk with Jo. I must have been, because what I said was that I hoped whoever-this-was spared me a repeat of Miri's birth. The look Faith gave me for it!
'You,' Faith said, rightly indignant, 'you weren't the one mending her heart! That was all my job!'
Susan said that was no talk for a supper table.
Miri said, laconic as you please, 'I thought there was nothing wrong with my birth. It was afterwards, Grandad, that I scared you.'
'You were early,' said Faith. 'Caused the whole problem in the first place, darling.'
Rilla and Ken looked amazingly shocked, considering they are no strangers to difficult births. Susan said again that it wasn't a dinner conversation, but Helen and Christopher insisted. For a boy who swears he will never become a doctor, Jem's boy is amazingly medical. Jem got halfway into the story before Teddy went green and Miri changed the topic.
Three guesses who to. I know I go on about wanting those girls to put down roots, but if they move miles from Allison Janie, I'll be happy. The latest is that they've planned a Muskoka holiday. News to Miri's parents. Miss Janie's older brothers will drive them. No parents allowed. Mandy tried to silence Miri with a look, and then by talking over her, but Miri wouldn't be stopped. Ah well, I suppose it will get them all away from the hideous scrutiny of the Struan Pyes. NB: The remote wildernesses of Muskoka is not what I meant when I said unconventionality was safer somewhere else. I meant somewhere sprawling like Toronto, or the cobbles of Montreal. Nan used to send postcards when she and Jerry went out there to visit the Kents.
Back to our dinnertime chatter. Anne seized the conversational reins and rediverted us back towards the baby. When was it due, had Nan given all the baby clothes away, etc. Susan started scheming up a quilt, and almost sounded disappointed about the fact Cornelia couldn't contribute. Don't tell her I said so.
Tell Rosemary that Anne found her account of bansawang most diverting. Looking forward to seeing you soon,
Love ever,
Gil
New Manse,
Glen St. Mary,
December, 1935
Jo,
It's good to be back. To be among one's own things and sit in one's own chair after months away – does anything do that sensation justice? Not that Rosemary and I didn't enjoyed the holiday. We saw things we should never have seen; We knew our Iris. Will always know her, even if we never see her again. I hope I do. But I have held her in my arms and spoiled her (Li's word) with guava, and assisted her in all sorts of scrapes. I attempted – and failed – to stroke the sacred, spotted ears of Nenni, dodged rickshaws, and felt cold I never even imagined. I debated the finer doctrinal points of assorted dubious supplementary commandments with my grandchildren's contemporaries, and learned what sound snow makes when one drives through it with chains on the auto tires. Not forgetting the sea plane, obviously. Everything is beginning to blur together. I'm drinking tea from the Victoria Rose, and it smells of Singapore, the guavas and fireflies to me; If I close my eyes I can still see – just – the light falling across the veranda and the chink of Una's Blue Gladstone Ribbon on the dragon-leg table. But it feels very remote, and Struan, despite being less exotic, feels more so. Is there really such a person in the world as Mrs. Stanovitch? It seems incredible to think there is.
I'm sitting at my desk, surrounded by books, waxing lyrical on what was, instead of penning the thank you I intended. I came home to find all here as happy and well as can be expected. They are full of stories about the marriages, deaths and baptisms I missed but you witnessed. Thank you for shepherding them for me Jo, and doing it thoroughly. I knew you would.
There's more, but I don't know how to say it. If there is ever an occasion when I can recompense you even half the trouble, say. Now, I fear I must relocate myself and the teacup to the company of Bruce, Alice and assorted visitors. Forgive me if I vanish. I'm thinking of you, and hoping Phil is better for being home.
Love and blessings,
J.M.