“I suppose you must have pursued studies of some kind. Attending lectures.”
She shakes her head.
“Reading?”
Another shake.
“Of course there was your father’s household to look after.”
“Well”—she pauses—”we had Cora-Mae Milltown, you see. All those years. And then Maria.”
“You must have done something with your time,” he prods.
“Charities? The Red Cross?”
She looks blank, then brightens. “The garden,” she says. “I looked after the garden.”
“The garden?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” he says, “ah.” A week later he makes an offer of purchase for a large house on The Driveway near Dow’s Lake.
The house, solidly built of stone and brick, is situated on a triple lot and possesses a garden that has seen better days.
The Things People Had to Say About the Flett — Goodwill Liaison The Prime Minister of the Dominion, himself a bachelor, said, on hearing of the marriage between Barker Flett and Daisy Goodwilclass="underline"
“Marriage is the highest calling, and after that is parenthood and after that the management of the nation.”
The Minister of Agriculture exclaimed to his wife upon reading the marriage announcement in the newspaper: “Good God, Flett’s got himself married. And I always thought the bloke was queer as a bent kipper.”
Mrs. Donaldson, Barker Flett’s housekeeper, said, bafflingly: “Out of the frying pan, into the fire.”
Simon Flett in Edmonton sent a crumpled five dollar bill to his brother and the single word: “Bravo.” Andrew Flett from Climax, Saskatchewan, wrote: “May the light of Jesus shine on you both.”
Mrs. Dick Greene of Bloomington, Indiana, said, in a warm, congratulatory note to Daisy: “Here, in a phrase, is my recipe for a happy marriage: ‘Bear and forbear’.”
Fraidy Hoyt said (to herself): “She’s lost her head, not her heart. I thought she had more sense. A young wife, an old husband — a prescription for disaster, if you believe in the wisdom of folktales.”
Mrs. Arthur Hoad said: “Disgusting. Incestuous. Obscene. Without a doubt he has money.”
The telegram from the Cuyler Goodwills said: “Congratulations and good wishes as you set out on the happy highway of life.”
To himself, Cuyler Goodwill said, “He’s almost as old as I am. He’ll be away from home a good deal. He’ll dampen passion with a look or a word. My poor Daisy.”
“Bambini, bambini,” Maria shouted, making a rocking cradle of her arms, and for once everyone understood what she was saying.
Daisy Goodwill’s own thoughts on her marriage are not recorded, for she has given up the practice of keeping a private journal. The recent loss of her travel diary — it has never been found — caused her a certain amount of secret grief; she shudders to think whose hands it may have fallen into, all that self-indulgent scribbling that belongs, properly, to the province of girlhood — a place where she no longer lives.
CHAPTER FIVE
Motherhood, 1947
Suppertime
People the wide world over like to think of Canada as a land of ice and snow. That’s the image they prefer to hang on to, even when they know better.
But the fact is, Ottawa in the month of July can be hot as Hades — which is why the Fletts’ supper table is set tonight on the screened porch. There will be jellied veal loaf, sliced tomatoes, and a potato salad and, for dessert, sugared raspberries in little glass bowls.
You should know that the raspberries are from the Fletts’ own garden, picked only an hour ago by the children of the family. One of these three children, Warren, seven years old, got raspberry stains all over the front of his cotton shirt, and he has just been sent upstairs by his mother to change into something clean.
“Lickety-split,” she tells him, “your father’ll be home in half a wink.”
The two girls, Alice, nine, and Joan, five, have been encouraged to pick a small bouquet for the table, using an old cracked cream jug as a vase. Their arrangement turns out to be rather unbalanced looking, with long and short stemmed varieties mixed together, and already some of the flowers look a little unfresh. “Very pretty,” Mrs. Flett pronounces, but then she’s distracted because the jellied veal is stuck to the bottom of the loaf pan, refusing to reverse itself neatly on to the glass platter she’s prepared. “Damn it,” she says under her breath so the children won’t hear, but of course they do hear. “Damn it, damn it.” This recipe is torn from the pages of last month’s Ladies’ Home Journal, a feature article called “Cooling Meals for Hot Days.” She’s followed the complicated directions meticulously, right down to the pimento strips and sliced stuffed olives that form the garnishing. “Why didn’t I just buy some cold ham?” she wonders out loud.
“I love ham,” Warren says dreamily, and it’s true. What he especially loves is to take a slice of boiled ham and fold it over and over in his fingers and then stuff it in his mouth so that the soft sweet meat feels part of his own tongue and inner cheeks.
The tablecloth is checked cotton, blue and white. The mother’s place is set at one end and the father’s at the other; this is a family that tends to adhere to conventional routines and practices. At each place, just above the berry spoon, is a goblet for iced tea — even the children will be allowed iced tea tonight as a reward for having been good all day.
Being good — what exactly does being good mean in the context of the Flett family? Alice and Warren have been good because they made their own beds this morning without reminding, and, in addition, Alice has helped her mother by dusting the front and back stairs, the little wood side parts not covered by carpet. Before the war the family employed a woman to clean twice a week (a Mrs. Donaldson, famous for her indolence and sarcasm, who has since been reduced to comic dimensions), but nowadays such help — except for Mr. Mannerly who comes to help with the garden — is not to be had for love nor money, or so Warren has heard his mother say.
Little Joan has been good because she ate her eggs goldenrod for lunch (all but a little bit) and went down for her nap afterwards without whining, and because she remembered, mostly, her pleases and thank yous. And there’s been a minimum of quarreling today. Mrs. Flett, the children’s mother, has only spoken sharply to Alice once; there are days when Alice feels her mother likes her and days when she’s sure she doesn’t. Alice is always wanting to please her elders, but she’s noticed that when she tries her hardest she feels sneaky and sweaty.
At last. The top half of the jellied veal drops, with a sucking slithering sound, on to the platter; the rest is hurriedly prised out with a spatula—”damn it, damn it”—and the gap hidden under pi1mento strips and a ruffle of garden lettuce. The platter is then covered lightly with a sheet of waxed paper and popped back into the Frigidaire so the loaf will stay firm for supper. Mrs. Flett glances up at the kitchen clock, shaped like a teapot with a little smiling mouth, and sees that the time is five-fifteen. She sucks in her breath. “Time to put your bikes in the shed,” she says to her three children. “Your father’ll be here in three shakes.”
It’s about this time that she disappears to “fix up” for dinner.
Warren is always surprised how this disappearing happens without his noticing it, like a little bite taken out of the day, so quick it seems stolen. One minute his mother is standing there in her housedress with her face all damp, and the next minute she’s wearing her red and white summer dirndl and a fresh white blouse with a drawstring around the neck. Her hair will be combed and she’ll have lipstick on, dark coral, glossy like the licked surface of a jujube. She looks straight from the Oxydol ads, or so Warren thinks — perky, her eyes full of twinkles, her red lips pulling up, and her voice going slidey and loose. Sometimes she puts on a pair of silver-colored earrings that hang on by pinching her ear lobes hard. Warren can’t help feeling proud of her when he sees her looking like this, coming down the carpeted stairs, all fixed up.