All the Voices Cry (15 page)

“Just here, Ruby dear, drive me up here,” said Mrs. Webster, “up towards the asylum, to those trees at the top of the road.” We stopped by a gate where there was nothing to see, just an old car with no headlights, buried in the bushes, and a pile of bricks to show where a house once stood.

“I was born here,” said Mrs. Webster. “The back door faced the asylum, and the verandah ran all around the house. And up the hill under the eucalyptus trees there were passion fruit vines with purple flowers, all fringed with blue. Every year Mum would take us up to look at the flowers, and she would say,
See kids, even in Seacliff.
And we would say,
even in Seacliff what, Mum?
And she always replied,
even in Seacliff we can be on a tropical island.
She had a lovely laugh, our Mum.”

“Shall we walk up and have a look Mrs. Webster?” I said. “Would you like that?” I helped her out of the car and into her coat, found her stick, took her arm. The wind was fierce. Together we took granny steps up the paddock towards the gum trees at the top.

“My mother was known as Scottish Annie,” said Mrs. Webster. “She had that kind of bone-china skin that reddens in the southerly wind. She used to stand on the porch shading her eyes with her hand, looking out at the sea, while she sent my sister Milly to get the washing in,
quicksticks, before the rain comes.
It was a deal of work to keep the five of us washed and mended I can tell you. She did the washing on a Saturday,
which was considered quite unusual, but that way the boys could help. Johnnie stirred the copper with a big stick. Our Mum didn't do things quite like other people.”

Mrs. Webster was looking way out across the ocean. I could tell that she had a story to tell so I let her run. So many of the older ones only have fragments left, but that afternoon Mrs. Webster could still put her hand on the whole thing.

“Our Dad was killed by a coal dray coming down Stafford Street,” said Mrs Webster. “Dad rolled right out of the pub and into the road and then the dray came clattering down the hill, and that was that. You might think that the coal merchant would have had the decency to send a load out to the widow, but he didn't.

“Mum let out the paddocks to Mr. Currie to run his cows on. The cows used to come up and look at us through the window. Then our Mum got a job serving hot dinner up at the asylum, but that still wasn't enough, so we got a lodger. His name was Mr. Reginald Hooper. Mr. Hooper was a clean-cut medical resident, neat as a pin, with round spectacles that he polished with a handkerchief that came out of his pocket, and such nice clean nails. He must have wondered what had happened to him, coming into our house with five kids roaring about. But he never said anything and he was as polite as you please, and out of the house early and not back until teatime. We had our tea first, and then Mum would give the lodger his stew and tell us to go away and let the man have his dinner in peace, because he worked in the madhouse all day and he didn't have to live in one too. We called him Mr. Hooper,
but Johnnie sometimes called him Dr. Whooping Cough. We thought that was terribly funny.

“Mr. Hooper did his best to be handy about the house, even though Mum would never have asked him to lift a finger. A couple of the big eucalyptus trees up the back had been cut down and when Mr. Hooper came home in the evening he would chop his heart out with his sleeves rolled up and his dark hair flopping about. The first woodpile he made came down in the night. How we laughed. Mr. Hooper bit his lip and went out in the dark to stack it again. He liked to bring in a load and put it by the stove ready to use, and our Mum didn't have the heart to tell him that it would take six months to get the wood half-dry enough for burning.

“Mr. Hooper was nice to us kids too, and he didn't have to be. He brought in gum nuts and put them in a box for the baby to shake. And once, when he saw us watching him put his boots on, he turned his sock into a snake that spoke in a funny voice, and another time he did a shadow show on the wall with his hands—you know, the dove, the old woman, the Turk—all those shapes he could do.

“After dinner Mr. Hooper studied his medical books at the kitchen table. Our Mum sat in the cane chair with the sock basket on her knees, darning and watching him work. She made him a pot of tea, but she wouldn't take a cup herself. She was so proud to have Dr. Whooping Cough and his white coat staying at our house. She put him to sleep in the parlour! How people talked. It was cold in the front parlour. That's why Mr. Hooper studied his books in the kitchen.

“The four older kids, Frankie, Millie, Johnnie, and Meggie, went to school, but at the beginning, the baby went down the road to Mrs. Wren's. Then Mrs. Wren's back got bad and baby couldn't go there any more. So in the mornings, our Mum would put the baby in the pen containing the vegetable garden, plump down on its bottom among the cabbages. Every so often she would nip outside to shake out a rag and sing out tra-la-loo, just to check that the baby was alright. She must have been shaking out the rags every two minutes.

“One morning, while the older kids were at school and the baby was in the pen in the backyard, the kitchen chimney caught fire. All that resin from the green wood had built up in the dog-leg of the flue. Well, that's what Mr. Currie said later. He had warned our Mum, but the flue caught fire. It smouldered for a long time and then it got roaring hot. Our Mum had left her apron hung over the fire guard in the kitchen and the gum nuts in the pockets cracked open in the heat.

“Mr. Currie was on his way up the hill to look at Dolores who had hoof rot. He smelt the smoke and ran to the house. I saw the fire too, because I was that baby, you know. It's one of my earliest memories, poking a stick at a piece of wood where the paint has swelled up into lovely soft bubbles. Mr. Currie ran into the burning house and he found our Mum and the lodger passed out on the bed. Entwined they were. At noon. And her not even wearing a wrapper. Mr. Currie had to get it off the hook on the back of the door. First he brought our Mum out, and then Mr. Currie, such a brave man, went back in for Mr. Hooper. After that there was nothing that could be
done to save the house. Dry as tinder it was under the rafters. You must have been able to see the flames far out at sea.

“Mr. Currie laid Mum and Mr. Hooper side-by-side on the cold grass and covered them with a blanket. And the hill beside the house there is so steep that the bodies were almost standing up. Carbon monoxide had come creeping up on them. Well. They came round eventually. No harm done, and everyone said that it was a miracle. Even Mr. Currie said that, because if they had both died, who would have looked after all us kids?

“Well, Mr. Hooper did the decent thing, and he married our Mum, took her on with the five kids and even had another one. That's my younger brother Neil. He's up in the Ross Home now. And Mr. Hooper's parents, they also did the decent thing and they disowned him. And you can be sure that no one at Seacliff was going to let Scottish Annie have her cake and eat it too, dandling her young man in the bedroom while the house burned down and the baby sat in the backyard with The Lord Knows What in its mouth. So our Mum sold the paddocks and we all moved to Caversham, to a wee house in the shade of the hill. Mr. Hooper got work filling orders in a chemist's shop. But he would not let our Mum go to work, no he would not. She was his queen. Queen of the washboard, more like, but in those days, men were proud and they didn't want their women to work.

“For a long time, we had nothing at all, except swedes, boiled and mashed and roasted. My stepfather was a good man. I never saw his belt buckle coming my way and that's
a lot more than the older ones could say for our Dad. Mr. Hooper was the only Dad I ever knew. So, it's not just sorrow that comes out of Seacliff. It was good for us kids, at any rate until the war came. But that wasn't just us. That was everybody.”

 

By the time she finished talking, Mrs. Webster and I were back in the car, fussing with the seatbelts, trying to get our hands warm. Heading back into town, I wanted to say to her, but you were the baby – if you can't remember the bodies laid out on the grass and the passion-fruit flower sitting in a cup of water on the kitchen table, then how do you know that it happened that way? But the story was true. Mrs. Webster knew it by heart. You could tell. And I could not bother her with questions, because she had fallen asleep. That's how it is with these trips in the car. Clear as a bell, like a song in all its verses, and then their eyelids come down and the story is finished.

I don't mind letting on that I envied Mrs. Webster her story. I would have liked a large family and a life rounded out with pots of tea, biscuits and chat at the kitchen table. Mother always said that I could not expect much with my blunt features and heavy bones. Not that any of it matters now, at my age, no matter what the magazines say.

Still, I have a good mind to ask Archie if he would like to take the granny flat at the bottom of the garden. It has a brand new refrigerator that never saw more than a bottle of milk because Mother took all her meals with me. I rather fancy the sound of the piano coming up from behind the buddleia. He
could have the folding card table and Mother's extra chairs. We could make tea and play Scrabble on Wednesday nights. He could be a proper lodger.

Oh I know you're thinking that I'm after Archie, but you'd be wrong, for Archie McLean is not the marrying kind. No, it's just that after I've passed on, I'd rather like it if one person, and maybe it might be Archie, would stop the car outside my bungalow, smile at the upturned faces of the marigolds, and say, yes, happy times we had there, happy times.

First of all, a big thank you to Dan Wells, John Metcalf and the team at Biblioasis for giving this collection a home between covers. Thank you for your time and your dedication.

During the last five years I have benefited from the mentorship of two astute critics: Sandra Birdsell of the Humber College programme for writers and Ami Sands-Brodoff of the Quebec Writers' Federation, assisted by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Sandra, Ami, please accept my thanks for helping to make this a better book. I have also had much support from family and friends in New Zealand, Canada and the USA. I would like to thank in particular Sarah Winters, my ideal reader, and my husband Gary Duncan.

The Elcarim recipe in “Where the Corpse Weed Grows” is based on the formula Essiac, developed in the 1930s by Nurse René Caisse, after an Ojibway herbal medicine.

I would also like to acknowledge the inspiration of chef Marie-Christine Potvin and her recipe
Perchaude aux trois agrumes et ses avocats frits
(copyright Académie Culinaire de Montréal). The garlic is my own ill-advised addition, since this is fiction after all.

Some of these stories have been previously published: “After Summer,”
Geist 62
, 2006,
Journey Prize Stories
, 19 (McLelland & Stewart, 2007),
Coming Attractions 08
(Oberon Press); “Vandals in Sandals,”
Short Stuff: New English Writing in Quebec
(Véhicule Press, 2005); “Neither Up Nor Down,”
Takahe 56
, 2005; “Salsa Madre,”
Geist 69
, 2008,
Coming Attractions 08
(Oberon Press, 2008); “Among the Trees”
Coming Attractions 08
(Oberon Press, 2008),
The Fiddlehead 240
, 2009; “Scottish Annie,”
The Fiddlehead, 237
, 2008; “The Land Below,”
Room 32.3
, 2009; “Through the Gates,”
Takahe 70
, 2010, “Neptune's Necklace,”
Fiddlehead 248
, 2011.

Soon after I arrived in Canada in the autumn of 1994, Ruth and Kenneth Perkins introduced me to the pleasures of lake-side living on the Canadian Shield. I will always be grateful for their welcome and special care. This book is dedicated to Ken's memory: finest of musicians, kindest of friends.

New Zealander-Canadian Alice Petersen was the 2009 winner of the David Adams Richards Award, offered by the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick. Her stories, published in
Geist, The Fiddlehead, Room,
and
Takahe,
have variously been shortlisted for the Journey Prize, the Writers' Union of Canada competition, the CBC Literary awards, and the Metcalf-Rooke Award. Petersen lives in Montreal with her husband and two daughters.
All the Voices Cry
is her first collection.

Copyright © Alice Petersen, 2012

 

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