Apparition (20 page)

K
ip, in dark sunglasses, is at the wheel. I can’t help feeling happy just to be with him, and excited because we’re driving south on Highway 6 to visit Mrs. Ross, the lady I used to read to. Except now we know that she’s also Dorothy McGrath, the oldest living person with a connection to what is now the Telford farm. She’s the granddaughter of the original Scottish homesteaders. Unreal. I’ll be so happy to see her again. And it’s great to be seeing her with Kip.

His hair seems a little longer than when I saw him last, even though it’s only been a week. It’s curling at his collar. He’s wearing a black turtleneck sweater under his black wool coat. I’m trying not to be too obvious about staring at him. So far, he hasn’t had much to say.

Morris said that Mrs. Ross sounded fine on the phone. Sprightly, he said. He told her he’s writing about some of the first families in Grey County with the help of two young researchers—that’s us—and we’d like to interview her and ask her what she remembers about her grandparents. On the phone she laughed and replied, “Not
a lot,” but she said she’d be happy to chat. Morris told her she might recognize one of us. “Well, it’ll have to be by the voice,” she said. “My eyes don’t recognize much anymore.”

Morris gave us a crash course on interviewing. He said we should try not to sound like we’re digging too much. It’s better to come off as only curious and interested. Don’t react too much to what she says, he advised. And don’t worry about the silences. Hold off and wait for her to fill them. And then he gave us a mini-digital recorder. I told Morris and Kip I’d prefer it if Kip did most of the interviewing. Morris shrugged and said okay, but he told me that it’s a skill I should eventually pick up.

“Just to review,” Morris told us, “the public record is that Dorothy’s brother Willy died by accident after coming back from the war. He’d been a POW in Germany, and when he was liberated at the end of the war, he came home to a hero’s welcome. A week or so later the family threw him a homecoming party to celebrate, and at some point that night he ‘accidentally’ shot himself with his own revolver. In the head. That’s all we know. So your job is to find out more about her brother’s death, without sounding suspicious. We don’t want to upset her.”

Sitting in the passenger seat now, I steal another little glance at Kip. He’s keeping his eyes on the road, deep in thought. Finally he speaks up.

“I almost forgot. Dad was doing some research on the Internet and found something pretty cool—a native heritage site on the south side of Blue Mountain called the Scenic Caves. You know how interested he is in ley lines and that kind of thing? Well, he was looking into some local native legends about ghost roads, which I guess are routes the spirits of the dead travel on their way to some afterworld. He’s found a place that’s supposed to be a kind of gateway to a ghost road, and it cuts through Grey County from somewhere around
Craigleith, heading west, to just south of Owen Sound and out toward Lake Huron.”

“The same line his ghost sightings are on?”

“That’s it.”

“Holy jeez!”

“You should look it up. It’s pretty awesome.”

We pull into the lodge parking lot and leave the car under a row of naked silver birches, then head up the entrance steps and into a warm reception room. Mrs. Ross is waiting for us near the front desk. It’s wonderful to see her. She hasn’t changed a bit. She’s still my idea of a perfect elderly ninja warrior. She’s short but she holds her chin up and stands straight, with those round blue eyes that don’t see much and a little smile. She’s wearing a deep purple knit sweater and black slacks. She walks toward us carefully, using her white cane, and holds out a thin, veiny and graceful hand. She must have been so pretty when she was young. And I bet there’s more than one resident in this place who thinks she’s still pretty.

“Mrs. Ross, it’s me, Amelia Mackenzie. I read
Great Expectations
to you two years ago.”

“Amelia!” Her face lights up. Honestly. She really looks happy. “Amelia! Of course it’s you. Of course, my dear. How are you?” Her voice is warm and only slightly shaky. She’s reaching out her right hand, searching impatiently for mine. She finds it and gives it a squeeze.

“I’m good. I’m fine, thank you. And this is my … uh, research partner, Kip Dyson.” It’s a little awkward calling him a research partner, but I figure I’ll play it safe. “Kip is Morris Dyson’s son. You know Morris, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. By reputation! How are you, young man? Pip, is it?” She grins and holds out her hand to him for a gentle shake.

I laugh. That’s the name of the hero of
Great Expectations
. “Kip,” I say, a little louder. “Kip Dyson.” I think she was just teasing me.

She invites us to follow her to a lounge around the corner beyond the reception desk. It’s like a super-large living room with four different upholstered couches, all pale pinks and greens. Each one is set up like a separate little space, with a coffee table and a couple of high-back chairs. The place has the feel of somebody’s home, with nice broadloom and pastel-coloured walls, framed pictures and several fireplaces. There are flowers in vases around the room, and floral patterns on the draperies and throw cushions. The only institutional touch is a small table in one corner with stainless steel urns of coffee and tea, a stack of white cups and saucers, and small packets of sugar and milk in a basket. Mrs. Ross looks right at home here, like she decorated the place herself.

There are only two other people in the room, an elderly white-haired couple sitting close together on one of the couches at the far end, talking and holding hands. Kip and I notice them at the same time, and he leans into me, nudging me with his elbow and whispering, “Isn’t he too old for her?”

It catches me off guard and a little laugh escapes me. I hope Mrs. Ross doesn’t think I’m laughing at these old lovebirds. But did he mean something by that? Was he saying something about us? I look at him, but now he’s smiling at Mrs. Ross as she points out the coffee and tea across the room.

She invites us to help ourselves, so Kip and I walk over together and pour three cups of tea, opening packets of sugar and milk. For a moment it feels like we’re playing house.

While I’m stirring, he leans in close and whispers, “How’s that deadbeat boyfriend of yours?”

Is that supposed to be funny? “I’m going to ignore that,” I say. “But it’s nice to see you,” I add, as casually as possible. I’m looking down
at the teacups, feeling embarrassed at how much I mean that, even though he knows just how to put me off balance. I can’t figure out whether he’s flirting with me. I change the subject. “Isn’t Mrs. Ross lovely? She’s my idea of the perfect grandmother.”

He smiles. “Sure. But I kind of like your grandmother. She’s cool.”

“Hmm. I’d rather be like Mrs. Ross when I’m old.” I think about that, then add, “That’s how I picture my mom would have been … if she’d lived.”

He gives me a curious look. “I’m too busy wondering what kind of twenty-year-old I want to be to worry about stuff like that.”

I balance two teacups on saucers and he takes the third, and we head back across the room together, him hinting that he’s prepared to race me if I’m game. It’s tempting, but I resist.

Back at the couch, as we settle in with our tea, Kip chats up Mrs. Ross about Williamsford Manor, and talks about the kind of research he does for his dad’s articles on heritage properties and social history around Grey County. Then he puts on his interviewer’s cap. He’s a natural. I guess he gets it from his dad. He takes out the small voice recorder and asks if she minds if he records the conversation. She hesitates, laughing, and says there will be so many blank spots where she forgets what she was going to say. “I suppose you’ve got a fast-forward button for those bits?”

“It’s voice-activated,” he says. “It stops recording during silences. So no worries at all. Take your time.”

She reluctantly agrees to the recording, and he thanks her and turns it on.

For the next twenty minutes or so, Kip asks Mrs. Ross about her grandparents. Where in Scotland did they come from? What does she know about their life before Canada? What does she know about their early years, building and working the farm?

She was born after both grandparents had passed away, so mostly she talks about things her mother told her. Their lives were very hard, her mother said. There were many years when they struggled just to feed themselves through the winter. They grew root vegetables and bartered for flour. Eventually they bought several cows. Babies were born at home, and when people died, that was at home too. They’d head into town once a month, to either Owen Sound or Meaford, and over to the small church on the next line every Sunday. The closest schoolhouse was on the same road, a forty-five-minute walk in spring; in the winter snow it could be twice that.

The conversation moves naturally to Mrs. Ross’s own childhood and family memories. Most of the time she talks, she looks somewhere between us, and far away.

“What do you remember most about your father?” Kip asks.

Her eyes glisten and she smiles. “How hard he worked,” she answers. “People today wouldn’t believe how little leisure time those folks had. Dusk till dawn. The way people today can kill time, it’s dreadful. Back then, there was barely a half-hour to spare for a radio show, not the hours every day that people spend in front of the TV now. Even children worked hard. I remember my brother, Willy, chopping wood for hours on end, day after day, and stacking it in rows as high as he could reach. It was wood that kept us alive in winter. Warmed the house, cooked the food. I know it sounds like an exaggeration, but we had to work day and night through the spring and summer and fall to make it through the winter. Just like the squirrels. Those were the Depression years. We had so little. But all I feel when I remember that time is joy.” She chuckles. “I don’t know if that’s because life was so much simpler, or because my memory is so poor.”

I break in. “I think your memory is amazing. I can barely remember what happened last week.” But what I really want to do is get
her to talk about Willy. I screw up some courage and catch Kip’s eye for support, then take the plunge.

“Mrs. Ross, was Willy the war hero in the family? I know one of the McGraths came back from the war with military honours.”

She smiles and nods. “Yes,” she says. That’s all.

“Actually”—now it’s Kip’s turn, and he’s speaking carefully, looking down—“when we did some research, we found that there had been a tragedy written up in the local paper.” He pauses and looks up at her. “Was that Willy who … who died so soon after the war was over? A terrible accident, the newspaper said.”

Her smile fades. Her eyes look through Kip. “My brother died, yes. It was … a tragic loss for the family.”

“And that kind of death—an accident, I mean—well, there was no shortage of accidental deaths on family farms in those days. Still, this one must have been so hard on your parents, with him being fresh back from the war.”

“That’s true,” she says.

At first I feel bad that we’re pushing this, but you can see that she’s casting back in her mind, and she seems willing to talk. We let her pick up the story when she’s ready.

“It was particularly difficult because we’d missed him so much when he was away at the front. He was the family favourite, you see. Willy. And then my parents were notified that his plane had been shot down, and there was no word about whether he’d survived. But we were told that some airmen who’d crashed toward the end of the war were captured and shipped off to camps. So we never gave up hope. The whole family prayed nightly for his safe return. When we got word that he was alive, that he’d been found during the liberation of German camps at the end of the war, we felt our prayers had been answered.” She smiles a little now, but weakly.

We are both looking at her intently, nodding in sympathy. It’s hard, knowing where this is going. We wait for her to continue.

“We planned a homecoming party for him. Not right away, but about a week after his return. We wanted to make sure he was rested. We didn’t know what to expect. What kind of shape he’d be in, physically or mentally.”

“And what shape was he in? Do you remember?” I’m feeling a little more comfortable asking questions.

“The day he returned? He was thin, pale. But he was grinning from ear to ear. He had tears in his eyes as he put his arms around each of us, one by one. Holding us so tight. I still remember how it felt, my arms around his neck that day. I did love my brother.” Her eyes drop again, looking into her half-empty teacup. “He had always looked out for me. He was so protective. Too protective, maybe. But that is one of the happiest memories of my life, the day he finally came home.”

We all sit in silence. It seems like minutes go by before Kip says, “I can’t imagine what it must have been like—having him survive the war only to die in an accident. A shooting accident, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes, it was. On the night of the homecoming party. He accidentally shot himself with his own revolver. We never knew what happened exactly. All we knew was that he had shot himself. In the head.”

“My God! I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but how did you know it was an accident? Were there witnesses?”

“It was my father who found him. He said it was an accident. He said he could tell.” Her voice drops off a bit with those last words.

“It’s just that”—Kip is choosing his words very carefully now—“these young men, coming back from that horrific experience, I suppose a lot of them must have suffered from what they call post-traumatic stress disorder today. I think they used to call it shell shock back then.”

Mrs. Ross’s red eyes look out across the room, focused on nothing. “Yes, that’s true. I … I do believe it’s possible my brother suffered some of that. I believe my parents were aware that it could have played a part. But I suppose the truth is that it was easier somehow to think of his death as an accident. I mean, it was desperately difficult, but still easier than the alternative. So many people were at the farm that evening, and there was so much happiness, so much celebrating. Music and dancing. Willy seemed happy. We were all so relieved.”