The Heart Beats in Secret

‘I’m sure they would,’ Felicity said. She laughed and shook her head, her hair falling over her shoulders, almost down to her waist. ‘A great slogan. See? You still have a knack for poetry.’

‘Haud yer wheesht,’ Gran said, but she smiled and that was all right and then the sound of the coffee mill changed in my hands, and the crank turned smoothly.

‘Can I open it now?’ I asked. She nodded and told me to be gentle.

‘I will. This is the best part.’ I placed the mill on the table and pulled out the little drawer with its perfect gold knob. Inside, a small mountain of fragrant coffee grounds looked like rich, dark earth, and I imagined I could make out a tiny pathway snaking up the hillside, tiny people walking in line towards the peak. I winked and the hikers looked up into the kitchen sky, my one open eye a shining blue moon above them.

‘Your dad didn’t like any of those explanations,’ Granny said in a voice suddenly tired. ‘He called them all theories. He wanted to believe the magic. Said that he believed we’re entitled to a blue moon every once in a while. I can hear him saying that, can’t you? Just like that. As if saying made it so.’

I was pulling on my jeans when I heard a honk. Under siege again. I opened the curtains but couldn’t see the goose. The day was clear and the sky a swept blue. The house here sat below the level of the road, and the lane to the door ran downhill, but by a trick of the lane’s angle, I could see the sea from the front bedroom window. Out on the water, birds were bright flashes diving white among the waves – gulls of some sort; fish-eaters. Felicity would know. Or Gran. I could only guess. But the goose was unmistakable – a run-of-the-mill, plain-as-my-face Canada goose. There was nothing else it could be. Big and brash and, as if the thought conjured it, there it was again. Another honk blasted from somewhere behind the house. Well, it could have the shed, if that’s what it wanted. I’d spend the morning inside. There were maybe two jobs in hand. Or three. Yes, three. The first was the inventory and that was the biggest. The second was to look for whatever it was that Gran had left me. The third was the difficult one: to decide what to do next.

I’d thought again about the auction house idea but selling everything would be absolute. There’d be no chance to search and sort if I handed the house over to the professionals. And if there was something to find, perhaps I’d better be the one doing the looking.

I took out my notebook and wrote: To keep. To rehome. To let go.

I’d start with the desk. That was sensible. If Gran had left me something, it would likely be there. I opened each drawer carefully but found only tidy stationery supplies. Then an address book and a neat diary, mainly empty. A set of utility bills held together with an elastic band. There was a new set of blank postcards and a book of stamps. Nothing old at all. Nothing resembling news.

I turned to the bookcase, scanning the shelves. Was there a notebook wedged in backwards? A small box hidden behind the novels, containing – what? Something.

Gran must have imagined me like this. Searching. Looking for family secrets, reading the old letters, the dusty diary, finding the crucial photograph.

Everything looked dusted.

The flow of books seemed natural. Dictionaries to bird books, walking guides, then maps. Pebble identification. Edible wild foods. Mrs Beaton. Then poetry below, with historical fiction, anthologies and folk tales. A collection you might find on the shelves of anyone of a certain vintage and a certain class. Still, something wasn’t right. Working in the gallery shop, I’d learned to read a shelf. What was missing, what had been moved. I stood, looking, balancing from the balls of my feet to my heels and back, trying to work it out. George Mackay Brown. Byron. The King’s Treasuries of Literature. Legends of Vancouver. All interspersed with knick-knacks. A bowl of marble eggs was displayed in a willow-pattern bowl next to the Scrabble dictionary. French poetry books stood upside down so that their titles aligned with their English fellows, and each of the shelves was pristine and polished. Everything looked ready to be seen.

I needed Mateo. He never spoke about his work, but I pictured him like this, poring over bits and pieces, looking for patterns in a collection. I needed a good eye. An organizer. A curator.

But maybe that was it. That was what seemed strange. Everything had been made ready. Everything was ready to be seen. Like the start of every day at the shop. Everything was dusted and arranged as if at any moment, the time might come to unlock the door and let the day begin.

Was that how I remembered my gran? Ordered, polished and ready? I wasn’t sure. I remembered the soft woollen rug with its tangled fringe, the warm electric fire and the bowl of marble eggs. I remembered her soap. Imperial Leather, and it smelled like the forest and cinnamon and sandalwood. And like geraniums, too, but without the prickle in the nose. The bar sat beside the bathroom sink – a heavy block the colour of maple cream, I thought, or the Caramac bar she would set out on the tea tray for me beside Felicity’s mug. I remembered Gran standing at the sink, scrubbing our grey underwear with her Persil powder, sighing that our homemade camp soap never got anything white. She pinned the laundry to the line in the garden and I remembered chasing Felicity through the cities of sheets and shirts, the wind itself white and clean. Then I remembered Gran combing out my hair in the evening, and Felicity saying yes, it was all right, as Gran lifted me up on the table to cut my hair off at chin level so it swung. Just like a wee land girl, she said. Muriel used to wear her hair like that. You need a Kirby-grip over your eyebrow and then you’ll be jaunty.

I remembered Gran working hard and liking beautiful things. I imagined her readying this room. Standing here by the shelf, straightening the books and the photo frames. Maybe she caught her own eye in the mirror, too, and looked and wondered when, and then set things in order for me. Muriel said she knew I was coming. So, she knew she was going. And she made things ready.

My grandmother was tall, as was my grandfather. The height of the mirror was telling. As was the height of the bookshelves and the shelves where the boxes sat. Some were labelled in my grandmother’s precise script – what my mother would call ‘educated handwriting’: Photographs. Felicity’s letters. Recipes. Buttons. Then there were the boxes marked with Granddad’s scrawl: Pebbles. Scribbles & Poems. Feathers. Maybe.

I pulled out the desk chair and climbed up. Felicity would like the recipes. An easy to keep, I thought. The box held neat bundles of pale-blue index cards bound with sensible elastic bands and marked with white tags. Soups. Vegetable Sides. Game. Puddings. Sweet Treats.

My gran’s coconut macaroons were the most exotic objects in my childhood. And her golden cheesy fish, baked in a casserole and covered in breadcrumbs that crackled in the middle and bubbled at the sides. Chicken in mushroom sauce meant a whole chicken breast just for me, and a white napkin to spread across my lap. Water in a cut-glass tumbler. Margarine.

I leafed through the recipes, hungry for the familiar. But you can’t flick through memories like that. They don’t turn on like the lights. You need to kindle them and wait.

Sloe gin

1 lb sloes

8 oz white sugar

1¾ pint gin

Sterilize a good strong darning needle in a candle flame, then use it to prick the tough skins of the sloes all over.

Place sloes in large bottle and add sugar and gin.

Seal well and shake. Keep bottle in a cupboard and shake every second day for the first week. After that, shake once a week and gin will be ready to drink in two months. Lovely at Christmas.

Note – Muriel’s mother says to try this with brandy and blackberries.

To dry rosehips

Wash your rosehips, top and tail then finely dice and dry them on newspaper in the sun.

Tip the dried rubble into a metal sieve and shake gently to remove the tickly hairs. They will easily fall away, leaving you with clean dried rosehips, ready to be used for tea, jam or jelly. Good for preventing colds and as a treatment for stiffness.

Coconut macaroons

Line a sandwich tin with sweet pastry.

Mix in a bowl:

1 cup coconut

¾ cup sugar

1 switched egg

Smooth into tin and bake at 400˚ for about 25 minutes.

Sweet pastry Felicity likes

2 lbs plain flour

1¼ lbs margarine and lard (mixed)

½ lb sugar

2 eggs

Pinch of salt

Makes a lot so a child can play with extra as pie is readying.

8

THE BOX LABELLED FELICITY’S LETTERS WAS A NEATLY bound archive, the envelopes marked BY AIR MAIL/PAR AVION. I remembered these. The paper thin as onion skin. The blue-and-red marked edges and the acrid taste of the glue. I could see Felicity bent over the table in the cabin, writing by candlelight. She filled page after page and sometimes let me add pictures, too. Her ballpoint felt important in my fingers and awkwardly precise, my smiley birds looking far scratchier than they ever did drawn in crayon on Bas’s cut-open paper bags.

Felicity drew pictures, too – little sketches perched at the beginning of paragraphs or squeezed in along the margins. There were babies’ faces and Rika’s hands. The table in the birthing house with its neat rows of instruments set out ready. A chipmunk in the woodpile, its eye reflecting the shape of the treetops against the sky. The rough-roofed cabins. The road into town and the patterns of leaves. And among all the details and the sketches, in letters that predated me, I found stories I’d never read before.

Montreal, January 1969

Dear Mum and Dad,

I guess I should start by apologizing for my last letter. Way too abrupt and I’m sure you were shocked. I could have managed it with more grace. Still, I wanted you to know about the baby, and I didn’t know how to say it gently. I shouldn’t have written what I did about keeping it or not. Let’s just pretend I never did, okay?

It’s beginning to feel like a real baby now. When I wrote before, I just felt sick and tired, but now it’s moving about a lot. There are most definitely feet and elbows in there. The textbooks say it’s supposed to feel like butterfly wings, but that’s not right at all. A bit like hiccups, maybe, but with a completely different kind of anticipation. Jenny and Margaret are being lovely with hot-water bottles and they rub my feet when I come in from a long shift at the hospital. They’ve even given me the sofa cushions for my bed. I’m still feeling sick sometimes, though I’ve got through last month’s exhaustion which is truly wonderful. I kept falling asleep at the nurses’ desk and getting scolded by the matron. She assumed I’d been out dancing like all the other girls and told me that it simply wasn’t respectable to come to work so shattered. Not sure what she’ll say when she notices the real cause for my doziness, but so far so good. I seem to be more or less the same shape at this point. Well, a little wider in the waist, but there’s room in my uniform. Last month, I was only thirsty but you won’t believe how hungry I’ve been today. I ate two sandwiches for lunch. Which felt like a luxury but didn’t break the bank.

I’m writing this from the deli on the corner. It’s not quite as cold here as at home, and the man behind the counter is kind. He keeps coming by to fill my mug with hot water. He’d pour coffee on the house, he says, but I say no, it’s fine, I like the hot water just as it is. Besides, coffee would make the baby jump and keep me awake, and it’s my day off so when I get home I’ll just want to sleep as best I can. Of course, I don’t explain all that to the deli man. He probably can’t even tell about the baby. I’m pretty wrapped up. It’s a good thing it’s cold like this. At work, we’ve been given permission to wear an extra layer and that’s probably bought me another month of work. That and my snazzy maternity girdle. The glories of synthetic yarn.

The money at the hospital is decent, so I won’t be putting in for a clinic job anytime soon. Anyway, I still like the bustle of the hospital. It’s right in the middle of everything here and as crazy as the city. So many people, so many stories. When I first arrived, I thought everyone might speak French and that I’d be forever struggling to take notes from French specialists. As well you know, my spelling is rather atrocious – and sadly so it proves in French, too. I fudged my way through the interview with feeble school French and it was such a fluke they picked me up because officially, all the hospitals here are either French or bilingual. I was sure it would be just a matter of time until someone called my bluff and likely as not, it would come out in the middle of an emergency triage, some poor child’s life dangling and my incomprehension making a mess. But it seems not. Half the nurses at the General are as bad as me and the first question every single doctor asks is, Do you speak English?

I hope you aren’t too scandalized by all this. It might not be quite how you imagined this chapter of my life working out, but it’s your grandbaby, so I thought I should let you know how it is growing, and how I am, too.

I haven’t come up with a better word than it so far. He or she seems presumptuous and I don’t fancy cutesy pet names at this stage. What did you call me before I was born?

It’s taken some thinking but I might have a solution for the birth. Not the General, at any rate. I couldn’t face that. So, I’ve been asking around for other options. Margaret – she’s one of the girls in the flat – is active with the women’s movement on campus. She’s still a student herself – politics and art history – isn’t that a great combination? She told me about a place in the woods where girls can go to have their babies. Not a Catholic home for unwed mums or delinquent girls or anything. It’s really wholesome. A few families have built cabins by a lake and they are farming there, or at least gardening, and they welcome anyone who needs a place, and they look after you when your baby comes. She says they are amazing. A couple of McGill girls went there last year. I think I’ll look into it. My job won’t last too long at the hospital once the matron finds out the real reason for my snoozes, and I don’t want to skive on rent here with the others. I’m not coming home. I don’t say that to hurt you, just to be honest about how things are. I came over here and I got myself into this … I was going to write mess, but I can’t. I’ve got to keep my words precise and language like that isn’t loving and it isn’t positive and I can’t bring a baby into the world in that frame of mind.

I’m going to end here because I need to head home and forage in the fridge for some dinner. It’s my turn in the kitchen tonight and I promised them something better than tinned to-may-to soup. See, I can even talk Canadian now. I miss you both and I’ll write more soon.

Lots of love,

Felicity

* * *

Montreal, February 1969

Dear Mum and Dad,

The weather is still cold. I’ve been absolutely living in that mohair wrap you sent over for Christmas. Again – thank you. The colour is perfect. Like East Lothian daffodils against the old drab snow of Montreal. At Christmas, there was romance to all that white, but now it’s stale, scrubby grey and it’s hard to feel inspired. I haven’t seen the ground outside my building since November. Some of the doctors come into work in parkas with fur around their hoods. Wolverine, apparently, because it won’t freeze regardless of the temperatures. Others wear black fur hats, something between a tea cosy and a Russian officer’s hat. They are the senior doctors and don’t even speak to the junior nurses except about patients, and hardly then. The students who come around to our flat all wear camel duffel coats with floppy hoods and toggles and most wear black galoshes zipped over their shoes. They leave these in puddles by our door and they drape their coats over the radiator or on all the kitchen chairs. The students themselves pile into the living room with Jenny and Margaret, spreading out newspapers, smoking like forest fires and arguing about the salvation of Quebec. The air grows rank and it all sounds foreign and zealous and strange, but I’m happy here. I feel I’m settling into something entirely new.

The light here is amazing. Cold and white and blue. New snow brightens everything, and then there are layers of reflections – neon and shop windows and all the cars. The snow piles up in high banks along the streets and on the spiral staircases outside apartment buildings. From my window, the fire escape looks both laden and lightened with all the snow. The city trucks come by and scatter salt on the pavements to melt the ice, but they call them sidewalks here like the Americans, or les trottoirs. Mincing along, trying not to slip, I think of pigs’ feet. I read in the paper that there’s talk of heating them from underneath so that the snow will melt on contact. Isn’t that crazy? Very space-aged, like so many things here. Since the Metro system was built, there have been extensive expansions underground, so it’s like a brand-new city just under the surface. Shops and restaurants, even a church and a discotheque. Imagine all that under Princes Street!

Despite the cold, there is so much life in this city, so much feels just about to happen. And I love the mix of people. The whole world is here, all bundled up in a thousand layers against the freeze. French and English, obviously, and a fair number of Scots among the mix. But black people, too, with fantastic French accents, and Hungarians and Jews and even Chinese. I hope to go down to Chinatown soon to try one of the restaurants Jenny keeps talking about. I’ll let you know all about it when I do. I wonder if foetuses like ginger.

Did I write to you about Expo? I know I sent the book about it, but I can’t remember what I told you. Probably not much. I know I didn’t write much when I first arrived – I’m sorry for that. Everything was so new and I was so ready to be far from home, but I should have been better at writing. Anyway, Expo was amazing. Space-age for real, with real Apollo capsules and an American astronaut suit. I first went with Jenny a month or so after I moved into the flat. We took the Metro and stood all the way to Île Sainte-Hélène, which is an artificial island made of earth dug out from the Metro tunnels and deposited in the middle of the St Lawrence River. Then everything was built on top – all the buildings of the world. I loved the American Pavilion. A 200-foot geodesic dome covered with a shiny acrylic skin. Dad would love it: a great clear bubble filled with spacecraft and Raggedy Ann dolls, Andy Warhol prints and totem poles, cowboys and neon, and Elvis Presley’s guitar. Pure poetry. The Americans hated it. Not enough about technologies and arms, not enough about trade. Instead, it was all American imagination and so beautiful in its glorious gaudy way. But more than the exhibits, it was the space itself that I loved. A shining bubble floating above the island, the light shimmering in triangles. It was honeycomb and patchwork quilt and crystals and constellations all at once. A mini-rail train ran right through the building, and giant escalators climbed to the very top. Everywhere you looked, there were people moving, bright colours, and a sense of beautiful space.

Everyone came to Expo. All the languages in the world on one little Canadian island. Like the war was finally, finally over, and everyone was together in a place that was new and glowing.

It was all supposed to close at the end of October and all the countries were to pay for the individual demolition of their pavilions. But the powers that be changed their mind and opened it up again this summer. Renamed it, too. Couldn’t very well be Expo ’67 in perpetuity. Now it’s ‘Man and His World’, which ticks Jenny off no end. Margaret, too, but Jenny is louder. All this mind-expanding globality, she says, and they go for the archaic misogynistic tag. I can’t say I’m bothered, but she is, so we hear about it continually. It’s even worse in French, she says. ‘La Terre des Hommes’. And just when do we get our world, she asks over porridge and tea, waving her spoon about histrionically. I shrug and she says I’ve been brainwashed by the patriarchy and need to wake up, but I say I’m tired out by ten-hour shifts and a growing lump of humanity in my belly and I don’t feel excluded by an historically accepted inclusive noun. She’d prefer ‘Humanity’s World’, which suffers poetically, but maybe equality has higher value than poetry.

Jenny is from London and used to teach primary school, though that’s impossible to imagine now. She’s far too loud and bright and flamboyant for any classroom. Maybe things were different in London. She wears ground-trailing skirts and her hair is short and dyed jet black to match her mascara. And she’s an actress now, which she says isn’t a world away from teaching. She’s managed to get leading lady roles in a few Shakespeare plays – says it’s the accent that kills at auditions. She thinks it’s a riot I’m still in nursing. A last-generation job, she calls it, perfect for old-fashioned girls. I’m not quite sure she understands wanting a stable life. And it’s not like she has pots of money to prop her up. Before she moved into the flat, she had a basement room with no furniture. Just a mattress on the floor and a radio to keep her company. She says it did wonders for her Canadian accent, all that talk radio. The prime minister is said to be very upset about this room-er. Tomorrow, the high temperature will be twenny-three degrees.

Heat is supposed to be included in our rent, but the flat is still cold. Jenny walks about draped in blankets. Margaret says that the weather will be warmer by March. I’ve already been through a full year, but Montreal weather is hard to anticipate. Margaret keeps saying things like when the snow melts … and that was before the dog days. They roll off her tongue quite naturally, but then, she’s from here. I should be keeping a logbook, I think, marking down temperatures and the superstitions of the natives. But she’s right to remind me. Seasons change quickly here, and spring doesn’t linger. Last year, it was such a shock. Ice and blizzards one week and then the crocuses were up and gone the next. Blink and you miss it and everyone’s in bare legs. Margaret says I should really call the folk at the camp soon and see if they can help, if that’s my plan. She said it so sweetly. You’d like her. I guess I want you to know that I’m being looked after. We’re a family of sorts here at the flat, the girls like sisters and guardian angels – their friends and suitors, too.

I’m not going to write to you now about my baby’s father. I don’t mind that you asked and I will tell you at some stage, but for now he isn’t important. And I’m fine with that. That sounds defiant, or defensive. It isn’t meant to. I am well and as peaceful as I can be in this cold and troubled city. Jenny says get used to it – not just snow but bombs, too. Bienvenue au Québec, baby. But don’t worry about me. I am well and safe and more or less happy.