Part 23 (1/2)

n.o.body would have the heart to. Or the bad manners.

Instead she looked at Pierre and the bush doctor. Pierre was talking with a boyish liveliness not often seen in him these days.

Or not often seen by Meriel. She occupied herself by pretending that she was seeing him for the first time, now. His curly, short-cropped, very dark hair receding at the temples, baring the smooth, gold-tinged ivory skin. His wide, sharp shoulders and long, fine limbs and nicely shaped rather small skull. He smiled enchantingly but never strategically and seemed to distrust smiling altogether since he had become a teacher of boys. Faint lines of permanent fret were set in his forehead.

She thought of a teachers' party-more than a year ago- when she and he had found themselves, at opposite sides of the room, left out of the nearby conversations. She had circled the room and got close to him without his noticing, and then she had begun to talk to him as if she were a discreetly flirtatious stranger. He smiled as he was smiling now-but with a difference, as was natural when talking to an ensnaring woman-and he took up the charade. They exchanged charged looks and vapid speeches until they both broke down laughing.

Someone came up to them and told them that married jokes were not allowed.

”What makes you think we 're really married?” said Pierre, whose behavior at such parties was usually so circ.u.mspect.

She crossed the room to him now with no such foolishness in mind. She had to remind him that they must soon go their separate ways. He was driving to Horseshoe Bay to catch the next ferry, and she would have to get across the North Sh.o.r.e to Lynn Valley by bus. She had arranged to take this chance to visit a woman her dead mother had loved and admired, and in fact - 224*

had named her daughter for, and whom Meriel had always called Aunt, though they were not related by blood. Aunt Muriel. (It was when she went away to college that Meriel had changed the spelling.) This old woman was living in a nursing home in Lynn Valley, and Meriel had not visited her for over a year. It took too much time to get there, on their infrequent family trips to Vancouver, and the children were upset by the atmosphere of the nursing home and the looks of the people who lived there. So was Pierre, though he did not like to say so. Instead, he asked what relation this person was to Meriel, anyway.

It's not as if she was a real aunt.

So now Meriel was going to see her by herself. She had said that she would feel guilty if she didn't go when she had the chance. Also, though she didn't say so, she was looking forward to the time that this would give her to be away from her family.

”Maybe I could drive you,” Pierre said. ”G.o.d knows how long you'll have to wait for the bus.”

”You can't,” she said. ”You'd miss the ferry.” She reminded him of their arrangement with the sitter.

He said, ”You're right.”

The man he 'd been talking to-the doctor-had not had any choice but to listen to this conversation, and he said unexpectedly, ”Let me drive you.”

”I thought you came here in an airplane,” said Meriel, just as Pierre said, ”This is my wife, excuse me. Meriel.”

The doctor told her a name which she hardly heard.

”It's not so easy landing a plane on Hollyburn Mountain,” he said. ”So I left it at the airport and rented a car.”

Some slight forcing of courtesy, on his part, made Meriel think that she had sounded obnoxious. She was either too bold or too shy, much of the time.

”Would that really be okay?” Pierre said. ”Do you have time?”

- 225*

The doctor looked directly at Meriel. This was not a disagreeable look-it was not bold or sly, it was not appraising.

But it was not socially deferential, either.

He said, ”Of course.”

So it was agreed that this was how it would be. They would start saying their good-byes now and Pierre would leave for the ferry and Asher, as his name was-or Dr. Asher-would drive Meriel to Lynn Valley.

What Meriel planned to do, after that, was to visit with Aunt Muriel-possibly even sitting through supper with her, then catch the bus from Lynn Valley to the downtown bus depot (buses to ”town” were relatively frequent) and board the late-evening bus which would take her on to the ferry, and home.

The nursing home was called Princess Manor. It was a one-story building with extended wings, covered in pinkish-brown stucco.

The street was busy, and there were no grounds to speak of, no hedges or screen-fences to shut out noise or protect the sc.r.a.ps of lawn. On one side there was a Gospel Hall with a joke of a steeple, on the other a gas station.

”The word 'Manor' doesn't mean anything at all anymore, does it?” said Meriel. ”It doesn't even mean there 's an upstairs.

It just means that you're supposed to think that a place is something it doesn't even pretend to be.”

The doctor said nothing-perhaps what she had said didn't make any sense to him. Or just wasn't worth saying even if it was true. All the way from Dundarave she had listened to herself talking and she had been dismayed. It wasn't so much that she was prattling-saying just anything that came into her head- rather that she was trying to express things which seemed to her interesting, or that might have been interesting if she could get them into shape. But these ideas probably sounded pretentious if not insane, rattled off in the way she was doing. She must seem like one of those women who were determined not to have an - 226*

ordinary conversation but a real one. And even though she knew nothing was working, that her talk must seem to him an imposition, she was unable to stop herself.

She didn't know what had started this. Unease, simply because she so seldom talked to a stranger nowadays. The oddity of riding alone in a car with a man who wasn't her husband.

She had even asked, rashly, what he thought of Pierre 's notion that the motorcycle accident was suicide.

”You could float that idea around about any number of violent accidents,” he had said.

”Don't bother pulling into the drive,” she said. ”I can get out here.” So embarra.s.sed, so eager she was to get away from him and his barely polite indifference, that she put her hand on the door handle as if to open it while they were still moving along the street.

”I was planning to park,” he said, turning in anyway. ”I wasn't going to leave you stranded.”

She said, ”I might be quite a while.”

”That's all right. I can wait. Or I could come in and look around. If you wouldn't mind that.”

She was about to say that nursing homes can be dreary and unnerving. Then she remembered that he was a doctor and would see nothing here that he had not seen before. And something in the way he said ”if you wouldn't mind that”- some formality, but also an uncertainty in his voice-surprised her. It seemed that he was making an offering of his time and his presence that had little to do with courtesy, but rather something to do with herself. It was an offer made with a touch of frank humility, but it was not a plea. If she had said that she would really rather not take up any more of his time, he would not have tried any further persuasion, he would have said good-bye with an even courtesy and driven away.

As it was, they got out of the car and walked side by side across the parking lot, towards the front entrance.

- 227*

Several old or disabled people were sitting out on a square of pavement that had a few furry-looking shrubs and pots of petunias around it, to suggest a garden patio. Aunt Muriel was not among them, but Meriel found herself bestowing glad greetings. Something had happened to her. She had a sudden mysterious sense of power and delight, as if with every step she took, a bright message was travelling from her heels to the top of her skull.

When she asked him later, ”Why did you come in there with me?” he said, ”Because I didn't want to lose sight of you.”

Aunt Muriel was sitting by herself, in a wheelchair, in the dim corridor just outside her own bedroom door. She was swollen and glimmering-but that was because of being swathed in an asbestos ap.r.o.n so she could smoke a cigarette. Meriel believed that when she had said good-bye to her, months and seasons ago, she had been sitting in the same chair in the same spot-though without the asbestos ap.r.o.n, which must accord with some new rule, or reflect some further decline. Very likely she sat here every day beside the fixed ashtray filled with sand, looking at the liverish painted wall-it was painted pink or mauve but it looked liverish, the corridor being so dim-with the bracket shelf on it supporting a spill of fake ivy.

”Meriel? I thought it was you,” she said. ”I could tell by your steps. I could tell by your breathing. My cataracts have got to be b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. All I can see is blobs.”

”It's me, all right, how are you?” Meriel kissed her temple.

”Why aren't you out in the suns.h.i.+ne?”

”I'm not fond of suns.h.i.+ne,” the old woman said. ”I have to think of my complexion.”

She might have been joking, but it was perhaps the truth. Her pale face and hands were covered with large spots-dead-white spots that caught what light there was here, turning silvery. She had been a true blonde, pink-faced, lean, with straight well-cut hair that had gone white in her thirties. Now the hair was ragged, mussed from being rubbed into pillows, and the lobes of her ears - 228*

hung out of it like flat teats. She used to wear little diamonds in her ears-where had they gone? Diamonds in her ears, real gold chains, real pearls, silk s.h.i.+rts of unusual colors-amber, aubergine-and beautiful narrow shoes.

She smelled of hospital powder and the licorice drops she sucked all day between the rationed cigarettes.