The Memento (11 page)

Art’s voice broke. “Oh, Fancy, let it go. You aren’t like him. And he said it wouldn’t be the same for you so you don’t need any
teacup anyway.” He leaned into the water looking for the pieces of teacups and saucers, his tears slipping into the water, the whole pool awake and rippling away any possible reflection.

“There was something there but you scared it away, Art. You ruined everything. Maybe it was Grampie. Maybe he was visiting. To tell me why Ma wants to talk to John Lee. Or John Lee come to speak for himself, to explain. But you went and ruined it.”

I ran all the way to the far door in the wall of Evermore. Art ran behind me calling my name but I was the fastest. The path became illuminated as the garden lamps snapped on. There was a shape standing in the dark of the magnolia tree by the service door. I stopped, Art banging into me for he’d followed immediately as I’d bolted out from the cedars. Hector came out from the shadows. “What in fuck trouble are the two of you getting into here in the garden? Hope you’re being a gentleman, Arthur.” Hector winked at Art, and his expression changed as he saw Art’s red eyes. “Well, I guess crybabies don’t get up to that yet, no offence, Art. Fancy, you being mean to him? Loretta’s looking for you. Good thing she didn’t hear all the commotion, Girly Miss and Mister Man, like old Loretta calls you. What do you think she’d call me?”

“Arsehole,” I said, and he rubbed his ear like he heard wrong and started laughing. Art didn’t laugh and neither did I but the tension was broken. It was nothing more than childish imaginings. The moon can make you think the craziest things.

“Well, Loretta don’t strike me as the swearing kind. I’m sure she’s got a nicer name than that for me, even in private.”

“What are you doing here? I thought you left for the day.”

“A handyman’s day is never done, don’t you know. Just doing some extra chores,” Hector said. “Art, I’ll take you home. Fancy, you should get in there before Loretta thinks we’re up to no good and blames me.” He lit a cigarette and leaned against the tree as he winked. There was a belch and Hector waved his hand. “Well, Jesus, Buddy, come on out. Don’t hide behind a tree like
a pussy.” Out stepped his short friend, Buddy Mote. He was the same age as Hector, nineteen, but he was already balding. He had a thin moustache, and no matter what he said it came out as a whine or a snort. “Buddy’s helping me out with them lawnmowers. Don’t see why the Briar Patch can’t bring their own but who am I to question?”

Buddy burped at Art and gave me an up-and-down. “It’s a weird place up here,” he said, looking at Art and over to me, up and down, up and down.

“It’s no weirder than you are,” I said.

“Fancy’s had a long day. Don’t you mind her, Buddy. She’s a real nice girl.”

I left them all there and went around to the kitchen door. Art came behind me calling he was sorry but I told him to go, and I could hear his footsteps stop as I slammed the kitchen door closed.

Loretta was in her nightgown, reading a book in her sitting room. She looked at me standing in the doorway and gestured at a chair. I told her I was done for the day, that I lost track of time in Evermore. She could tell I was upset but she didn’t pry, and I left. In my room I could hear her climb the stairs and come down the hall to my room for the second time that same day. I sat on my bed thinking about them broken teacups.

“Girly Miss, it’s been a long day. You should get some sleep. Don’t fret about this. I’m so sorry. I never should have let you go to your mother’s overnight in the spring. It set her off. She’s been waiting, the poor wreck of a woman. This is my fault.” Loretta went down the hall and came back with a warm facecloth and washed my cheeks and eyes.

“I want to know if I’m like Grampie, Loretta. Why wouldn’t Grampie help Ma?”

“Because knowing any more about John Lee wouldn’t have helped her. Or any of us. What could be done? Unspeakable things happen to the young and old.”

“Well, maybe if I could speak to John Lee then Ma would stop hounding me. Maybe I could try. At least Ma told me the truth, and you and Grampie never did.”

Loretta looked tired and stiff. “Don’t be like your mother. She told you the truth for selfish reasons. You must pray for strength to carry on, that’s what you must do.”

“I went to Grampie’s house. I took the cups. They got broken.” I cried more and told her how angry I was with Art.

“Oh, Fancy, don’t go looking for it. Part of me believes that perhaps your grandfather just imagined these people, these visitors. And I don’t mean he was crazy. You know how these artist types are, seeing inspiration in all his surroundings. That’s how I mean it. You know how some people say the birds talk to them, how they see things in the clouds? Well, your grandfather, he saw things in teacups, at the tea table. You’ve got that same spirit in you, in your great dark eyes. It’s for the best that you broke those cups.” Loretta gave me a smile but her lips fell back down like they was too haggard to care what Loretta wanted out of them. “You must try to go about your life the same way as you have, no different, my dear. Your grandfather, he didn’t go looking, you see. And you don’t need to either, Fancy. Go to bed and say your prayers.” Loretta kissed me on the head and left.

I put Grampie’s letter on the bedside table and prayed to Holy Mother Mercy to come in my dreams and tell me how to see the dead. I prayed to the stars and the sky. When you’re a child you believe such things can hear you. You know with absolute certainty the twinkling star is twinkling only for you.
Keep me safe
, I said in the dark. All night it seemed there was a voice out there singing, that maybe some spirit had been following me around. I decided what I believed in was the Grampie I remembered, and he was there beside my bed, not a dead Grampie but the one I knew, with his cheerful, wrinkled face, his dentures white, his low grumbly voice singing,
Hear the wind blow, love, hear the wind blow
. The
curtains were long and slender white on either side of the window, and the moon moved across the sky as smooth as a petal blown over the surface of a pond. I could almost feel Grampie’s rough hand softly graze my forehead as sleep drew me in.

A
RT AND
I spent the next morning picking strawberries in the kitchen garden, relieved to have the wreck of my birthday behind us. We did not speak of the day or night before. In the early morning the letter had been there on my bedside table. I had taken it and crawled under my bed, where a piece of the wooden floorboard was cut as a lid, with a metal hook, to cover a small compartment. I kept special stones in it and a lavender peony sachet for good luck, to keep the good fairies about. I put the letter in there, where it would be out of sight and out of mind. And so it was, as we picked and ate those succulent strawberries until the sun was coming up on high noon.

On our way back through the garden we cut tall flowers and took them in a gathering basket to the house. Loretta was in the kitchen bustling about, writing things down on lists and sticking them to the bulletin board for the house and estate staff, which was me, Art and Hector. There were lists she did up for the services
they contracted out, as it was called: the gardeners, cleaners, roofing and electrical services. There was a big chalkboard on one wall where she wrote out her own schedule and personal lists. Loretta was worried that the Parkers might appear in the doorway, ringing bells, at any moment. We were out of practice with real people.

I went into the flower-arranging room off the side of the kitchen. There were shelves with every kind of vase and flower-holder, from the smallest bud vases to enormous silver pitchers and all sorts of jardinières. Along the far wall was a wide counter for arranging flowers and a sink for rinsing stems and knives. I heard Loretta and Art talking away, the muffled sounds a familiar comfort. I took a big full vase and struggled down the hall connecting the back house to the main residence, pausing at the door to the Annex. There was a small mirror across from it with an ornate frame. I was waiting to hear a sound coming from inside, but there was nothing. No singing or rustling, nothing but the usual creaks of the house. I did check in the mirror but there wasn’t no one or thing standing behind me, just the locked door and the window beside it.

I continued down the hall, out the door that led into the grand hall, and put the flowers on the big round table with the gleaming marble surface. The table faced the massive front door. It was opened to the screen door Hector had put on for the summer. It was later in the morning and the torrid air was coming through both the door and the windows. We always opened them up in the early morning so the fragrant brisk air would fill the house, and we’d shut up them later against the approach of the heat. Marigold wouldn’t let the windows or doors stay open at night, due to her superstitions. Loretta must have forgotten to close them up.

Right off the grand hall was the music room. The door was open and sun streamed through the lace sheers hanging in the tall southern windows. In the room were Marigold’s prized Queen Anne armchairs with elaborate embroidery seat covers: a black
background and an intricately stitched array of flowers and birds in deep, brilliant colours. This was my mother’s fine work. Marigold had loved to sit in those chairs, resting and contemplating or listening to Pomeline’s sonatas. Loretta said Pomeline was taking her exams for the music conservatory at the end of the summer but I didn’t see how that would be much different from any other time Pomeline was out over the years. She’d sit in there at that piano, the music pouring through the rest of the house, shimmering and rising through the rooms and halls, even reaching the servant quarters. Despite my occasional lessons with Pomeline and practices by myself, I never could truly relax when I was in any part of the main house alone. It felt like an empty stage, just waiting for the Parkers to come back and start performing.

My understanding of the past was very different since Ma had come to my school with her gruesome news flash. Standing at the door looking at the Queen Anne chairs took me back three years to when I had moved into Petal’s End with Loretta. That first day, Loretta toured me through the grounds and the mansion. I remembered my first time seeing the music room. I stood by the piano while Loretta pointed out the chairs to me and explained Ma’s design was to reflect the estate—the gardens and creatures. The Colonel loved the chairs as much as Marigold and had gone so far as to have Ma brought up from the kitchen and presented at a reception when guests inquired about the embroidery. The high-backed chairs was taller than I was. The air had wafted in through the front windows, aromatic with the lavender and rosemary growing around the stone pathway in front of the house. Loretta had announced then that I must never play in the main part of the house. It was forbidden. And she told me why I was to take the rule seriously. She took me back out into the hall, to the bottom of the enormous oak staircase. Loretta put her hand on the carved wooden banister post as she said how John Lee and young Master Charlie had come sailing down the banister one summer day when
Marigold had been reposing in the music room. The door was closed tight. The boys weren’t supposed to be playing in the main house, certainly not John Lee. He was not permitted in this part, only the kitchen or the playrooms and nursery, or in the garden. Some other children visited but poor Charlie was so timid he would only play if John Lee was by his side. Charlie and John Lee were the same age and the best of friends even though they was total opposites. There was a new nanny, Loretta said, but no one could find her. She’d left the children unsupervised.

Charlie and John Lee had come cruising down the banister in a gale of laughter. They were playing tag and had decided to hide on the main floor in the music room. They tumbled in the door and onto the soft silk carpet at Marigold’s feet. The story went that her eyes flashed open and she was yelling,
How dare you come in here, John Lee. The servants’ children are forbidden to play here!
Marigold rang the bell for the nanny but it was Loretta who came running. Marigold shrieked that John Lee was not to be left to run about the property like a stray dog. Charlie started shouting how John Lee was his best friend.

After that story, we never played games in the big house, not even with Jenny. And now three years later I was working throughout the house as a maid.

After I made sure the room was tidy and the flowers set perfect in the hall, I came back to the kitchen. Loretta was on the phone. “Oh yes, I see, yes, oh really, yes,” she kept saying over and over again. Art was hulling strawberries and I put on an apron and started helping him. Loretta was going to make jam. Even when the Parkers didn’t come out they still wanted Loretta to make preserves and send them to the city for the winter.

Loretta hung the phone up. “Well, the Parkers will be along any day now, not that they’ve settled on a day.” Loretta didn’t get annoyed—she got concerned. She liked a fixed schedule. She started getting the huge Maslin pots ready for cooking the jam.
“That was Dr. Baker calling on behalf of Marigold. They’ve hired a girl to help Marigold out. He says it would be too much for me or you, Fancy. Pomeline is so busy practising for her piano exams she can’t help her grandmother as much as she used to. Jenny isn’t capable, of course. Apparently Marigold is doing very well, though. She’s a tough old bird. She’ll attribute it to the herbal remedies and teas she has taken over the years, and her hardy constitution. Maybe there’s something to it after all, children. Don’t be fooled by how fragile she looks. We should never judge someone on their appearance, that is the truth. They’ve hired Margaret Armstrong. You’ll remember her from Bible School.”

Art locked eyes with me from across the room as he dried his hands. I took the plates of sandwiches out of the fridge and put them on the table. “Oh. Yes. Bible Camp Margaret,” I said.

Loretta was inspecting the strawberries, making sure we hadn’t cut too much fruit off with the hull. “Well, was she a nice girl?”