The Water Nixie

This morning I slept in, exhausted after a night of dark wanderings. My feet were swollen, as if I'd been walking long distances over hard ground; my head felt porous and damp. It was Myra knocking at the door that woke me up. "Rise and shine," she trilled through the letter slot. Out of perversity, I didn't answer. Maybe she'd think I was dead-croaked in my sleep! No doubt she was already fussing over which of my floral prints she'd lay me out in, and was planning the eats for the post-funeral reception. It wouldn't be called a wake, nothing so barbaric. A wake was to wake you up, because it's just as well to make sure the dead are really dead before you shovel the mulch over them.

I smiled at that. Then I remembered Myra had a key. I thought of pulling the sheet up over my face to give her at least a minute of pleasurable horror, but decided better not. I levered myself upright and out of the bed, and pulled on my dressing gown.

"Hold your horses," I called down the stairwell.

But Myra was already inside, and with her wasthe woman: the cleaning woman. She was a hefty creature with a Portuguese look to her: no way to stave her off. She set to work at once with Myra 's vacuum cleaner-they'd thought of everything-while I followed her around like a banshee, wailing, Don't touch that! Leave that there! I can do that myself! Now I'll never find anything! At least I got to the kitchen ahead of them, and had time to shove my pile of scribbled pages into the oven. They'd be unlikely to tackle that on the first day of cleaning. In any case it's not too dirty, I never bake anything.

"There," said Myra, when the woman had finished. "All clean and tidy. Doesn't that make you feel better?"

She'd brought me a fresh do-dad from The Gingerbread House-an emerald-green crocus planter, only a little bit chipped, in the shape of a coyly smiling girl's head. The crocuses are supposed to grow out through the holes in the top and burst into ahalo of bloom, her words exactly. All I have to do is water it, says Myra, and pretty soon it'll be cute as a button.

God works in his mysterious ways his wonders to perform, as Reenie used to say. Could it be that Myra is my designated guardian angel? Or is she instead a foretaste of Purgatory? And how do you tell the difference?

On our second day at Avilion, Laura and I went off to see Reenie. It wasn't hard to find out where she was living: everyone in town knew. Or the people in Betty's Luncheonette did, because that's where she was working now, three days a week. We didn't tell Richard and Winifred where we were going, because why add to the unpleasant atmosphere around the breakfast table? We could not be absolutely prohibited, but we would be certain to attract an annoying measure of subdued scorn.

We took the teddy bear I'd bought for Reenie's baby, at Simpsons, in Toronto. It wasn't a very cuddly teddy bear-it was stern and tightly stuffed and stiff. It looked like a minor civil servant, or a civil servant of those days. I don't know what they look like now. Most likely they wear jeans.

Reenie and her husband were living in one of the small limestone row-house cottages originally built for the factory workmen-two floors, pointed roof, privy at the back of the narrow garden-not so very far from where I live now. They had no telephone, so we could not alert Reenie to the fact that we were coming. When she opened the door and saw the two of us standing there, she smiled broadly, and then began to cry. After a moment, so did Laura. I stood holding the teddy bear, feeling left out because I wasn't crying too.

"Bless you," said Reenie to both of us. "Come in and see the baby."

We went along the linoleum-floored corridor into the kitchen. Reenie had painted it white and added yellow curtains, the same shade of yellow as the curtains at Avilion. I noticed a set of canisters, white as well, with yellow stencilling: Flour, Sugar, Coffee, Tea. I didn't need to be told that Reenie had done these decorations herself. Those, and the curtains, and anything else she could lay her hands on. She was making the best of it.

The baby-that's you, Myra, you have now entered the story-was lying in a wicker laundry basket, staring at us with round, unblinking eyes that were even bluer than babies' eyes usually are. I have to say she looked like a suet pudding, but then most babies do.

Reenie insisted on making us a cup of tea. We were young ladies now, she said; we could have real tea, and not just milk with a little tea in it, the way we used to. She had gained weight; the undersides of her arms, once so firm and strong, wobbled a little, and as she walked across to the stove she almost waddled. Her hands were puffy, the knuckles dimpled.

"You eat for two and then you forget to stop," she said. "See my wedding ring? I couldn't get it off unless they cut it off. I'll have to be buried in it." She said this with a sigh of complacency. Then the baby began to fuss, and Reenie picked it up and set it on her knee, and looked across the table at us almost defiantly. The table (plain, cramped, with an oilcloth covering printed in yellow tulips) was like a great chasm-on one side of it the two of us, on the other, immensely far away now, Reenie and her baby, with no regrets.

Regrets for what? For her abandonment of us. Or that is what it felt like to me.

There was something odd in Reenie's manner, not towards the baby but towards us in relation to it-almost as if we'd found her out. I've since wondered-and you'll have to excuse me for mentioning it, Myra, but really you shouldn't be reading this, and curiosity killed the cat-I've since wondered whether this baby's father was not Ron Hincks at all, but Father himself. There was Reenie, the only servant left at Avilion, after I'd gone off on my honeymoon, and all around Father's head the towers were crashing down. Wouldn't she have applied herself to him like a poultice, in the same spirit in which she'd bring him a cup of warm soup or a hot-water bottle? Comfort, against the cold and dark.

In that case, Myra, you are my sister. Or my half-sister. Not that we'll ever know, or I myself will never know. I suppose you could have me dug up, and take a sample of my hair or bone or whatever they use, and send it off to be analysed. But I doubt that you'd go that far. The only other possible proof would be Sabrina-you could get together, compare snippets of yourselves. But in order for that to happen, Sabrina would have to come back, and God only knows whether she ever will. She could be anywhere. She could be dead. She could be at the bottom of the sea.

I wonder if Laura knew about Reenie and Father, if indeed there was anything to know. I wonder if that is among the many things she knew, but never told. Such a thing is entirely possible.

The days at Avilion did not pass quickly. It was still too hot, it was still too humid. The water levels in the two rivers were low: even the Louveteau's rapids were sluggish, and an unpleasant smell was coming off the Jogues.

I stayed inside the house most of the time, sitting in the leather-backed chair in Grandfather's library with my legs over its arm. The husks of last winter's dead flies were still encrusting the windowsills: the library was not a top priority for Mrs. Murgatroyd. Grandmother Adelia's portrait was still presiding.

I spent the afternoons with her scrapbooks, with their clippings about teas and the visiting Fabians, and the explorers with their magic lantern shows and their accounts of quaint native customs. I don't know why anyone found it strange that they decorated the skulls of their ancestors, I thought. We do that too.

Or I would leaf through old society magazines, remembering how I'd once envied the people in them; or I'd ferret through the poetry books with their tissue-thin giltedged pages. The poems that used to entrance me in the days of Miss Violence now struck me as overdone and sickly. Alas, burthen, thine, cometh, aweary -the archaic language of unrequited love. I was irritated with such words, which rendered the unhappy lovers-I could now see-faintly ridiculous, like poor moping Miss Violence herself. Softedged, blurry, soggy, like a bun fallen into the water. Nothing you'd want to touch.

Already my childhood seemed far away-a remote age, faded and bittersweet, like dried flowers. Did I regret its loss, did I want it back? I didn't think so.

Laura didn't stay inside. She rambled around the town, the way we used to do. She wore a yellow cotton dress of mine from the summer before, and the hat that went with it. Seeing her from behind gave me a peculiar sensation, as if I were watching myself.

Winifred made no secret of the fact that she was bored stiff. She went swimming every day, from the small private beach beside the boathouse, though she never went in over her depth: mostly she just splashed around, wearing a giant magenta coolie hat. She wanted Laura and me to join her, but we declined. Neither of us could swim very well, and also we knew what sorts of things used to be dumped into the river, and possibly still were. When she wasn't swimming or sunbathing, Winifred wandered around the house making notes and sketches, and lists of imperfections-the wallpaper in the front hall really had to be replaced, there was dry rot under the stairs-or else she took naps in her room. Avilion seemed to drain her energy. It was reassuring to know that something could.

Richard talked on the telephone a lot, long distance; or else he'd go into Toronto for the day. The rest of the time he diddled around with the Water Nixie, supervising the repairs. It was his goal to get the thing floated, he said, before we had to leave.

He had the papers delivered every morning. "Civil war in Spain," he said one day at lunch. "Well, it's been a long time coming."

"That's unpleasant," said Winifred.

"Not for us," said Richard. "As long as we keep out of it. Let the Commies and the Nazis kill each other off-they'll both jump into the fray soon enough."

Laura had skipped lunch. She was down on the dock, by herself, with only a cup of coffee. She was frequently down there: it made me nervous. She would he on the dock, trailing one arm in the water, gazing into the river as if she'd dropped something and was looking for it down at the bottom. The water was too dark though. You couldn't see much. Only the occasional clutch of silvery minnows, flitting about like a pickpocket's fingers.

"Still," said Winifred. "I wish they wouldn't. It's very disagreeable."

"We could use a good war," said Richard. "Maybe it will pep things up-put paid to the Depression. I know a few fellows who are counting on it. Some folks are going to make a lot of money." I was never told anything about Richard's financial position, but I'd come to believe lately-from various hints and indications-that he didn't have as much money as I'd once thought. Or he no longer had it. The restoration of Avilion had been halted-postponed-because Richard had been unwilling to spend any more. That was according to Reenie.

"Why will they make money?" I said. I knew the answer perfectly well, but I'd drifted into the habit of asking naive questions just to see what Richard and Winifred would say. The sliding moral scale they applied to almost every area of life had not yet ceased to hold my attention.

"Because that's the way things are," said Winifred shortly. "By the by, your pal got arrested."

"What pal?" I said, too quickly.

"That Callista woman. Your father's old light o'love. The one who thinks of herself as an artist."

I resented her tone, but didn't know how to counter it. "She was awfully good to us when we were kids," I said.

"Of course she would have been, wouldn't she?"

"I liked her," I said.

"No doubt. She got hold of me a couple of months ago-tried to get me to buy some dreadful painting or mural or something-a bunch of ugly women in overalls. Not anyone's first choice for the dining room."

"Why would they arrest her?"

"The Red Squad, some roundup or other at a pinko party. She called here-she was quite frantic. She wanted to speak to you. I didn't see why you should be involved, so Richard went all the way into town and bailed her out."

"Why would he do that?" I said. "He hardly knows her."

"Oh, just out of the goodness of his heart," said Winifred, smiling sweetly. "Though he's always said those people are more trouble in jail than out of it, haven't you, Richard? They howl their heads off, in the press. Justice this, justice that. Maybe he was doing the prime minister a favour."

"Is there any more coffee?" said Richard.

This meant Winifred should drop the subject, but she went on. "Or maybe he felt he owed it to your family. I suppose you might consider her a sort of family heirloom, like some old crock that gets passed down from hand to hand."

"I think I'll join Laura on the dock," I said. "It's such a beautiful day."

Richard had been reading the paper all through my conversation with Winifred, but now he looked up quickly. "No," he said, "stay here. You encourage her too much. Leave her alone and she'll get over it."

"Over what?" I said.

"Whatever's eating her," said Richard. He'd turned his head to look at her out the window, and I noticed for the first time that there was a thinning spot at the back of his head, a round of pink scalp showing through his brown hair. Soon he would have a tonsure.

"Next summer we'll go to Muskoka," said Winifred. "I can't say this little vacation experiment has been a raging success."

Towards the end of our stay I decided to visit the attic. I waited until Richard was occupied on the telephone and Winifred was lying in a deck chair on our little strip of sand with a damp washcloth across her eyes. Then I opened the door to the attic stairs, closing it behind me, and went up as quietly as I could.

Laura was already there, sitting on one of the cedar chests. She'd got the window open, which was a mercy: otherwise the place would have been stifling. There was a musky scent of old cloth and mouse droppings.

She turned her head, not quickly. I hadn't startled her. "Hello," she said. "There's bats living up here."

"I'm not surprised," I said. There was a large paper grocery bag beside her. "What've you got there?"

She began to take things out-various bits and pieces, bric- -brac. The silver teapot that was my grandmother's, and three china cups and saucers, hand-painted, from Dresden. A few monogrammed spoons. The nutcracker shaped like an alligator, a lone mother-of pearl cuff link, a tortoiseshell comb with missing teeth, a broken silver lighter, a cruet stand minus the vinegar.

"What're you doing with these things?" I said. "You can't take them back to Toronto!"

"I'm hiding them. They can't lay waste to everything."

"Who can't?"

"Richard and Winifred. They'd just throw these things out anyway; I've heard them talking about worthless junk. They'll make a clean sweep, sooner or later. So I'm saving a few things, for us. I'll leave them up here in one of the trunks. That way they'll be safe, and we'll know where they are."

"What if they notice?" I said.

"They won't notice. There's nothing really valuable. Look," she said, "I found our old school exercise books. They were still here, in the same place we left them. Remember when we brought them up here? For him?"

Alex Thomas never needed a name, for Laura: he was alwayshe, him, his. I'd thought for a while that she'd given him up, or given up the idea of him, but it was obvious now that she hadn't.

"It's hard to believe we did it," I said. "That we hid him up here, that we weren't found out."

"We were careful," said Laura. She thought for a moment, then smiled. "You never really believed me, about Mr. Erskine," she said. "Did you?"

I suppose I should have lied outright. Instead I compromised. "I didn't like him. He was horrible," I said.

"Reenie believed me, though. Where do you think he is?"

"Mr. Erskine?"

"You know who." She paused, turned to look out the window again. "Do you still have your picture?"

"Laura, I don't think you should dwell on him," I said. "I don't think he's going to turn up. It's not in the cards."

"Why? Do you think he's dead?"

"Why would he be dead?" I said. "I don't think he's dead. I just think he's gone somewhere else."

"Anyway they haven't caught him, or we would have heard about it. It would have been in the papers," said Laura. She gathered up the old exercise books and slid them into her paper bag.

We lingered on at Avilion longer than I'd thought we would, and certainly longer than I wanted: I felt hemmed in there, locked up, unable to move.

The day before we were due to leave, I came down to breakfast, and Richard wasn't there; only Winifred, who was eating an egg. "You missed the big launch," she said.

"What big launch?"

She gestured at our view, which was of the Louveteau on one hand, the Jogues on the other. I was surprised to see Laura on the Water Nixie, sailing away downriver. She was sitting up in the bow, like a figurehead. Her back was towards us. Richard was at the wheel. He was wearing some awful white sailor hat.

"At least they haven't sunk," said Winifred, with a hint of acid.

"Didn't you want to go?" I said.

"No, actually." There was an odd tone to her voice, which I mistook for jealousy: she did so like being in on the ground floor, in any project of Richard's.

I was relieved: maybe Laura would unbend a little now, maybe she would let up on the deep-freeze campaign. Maybe she would start treating Richard as if he were a human being instead of something that had crawled out from under a rock. That would certainly make my own life easier, I thought. It would lighten the atmosphere.

It didn't, however. If anything, the tension increased, though it had reversed itself: now it was Richard who would leave the room whenever Laura came into it. It was almost as if he was afraid of her.

"What did you say to Richard?" I asked her one evening when we were all back in Toronto.

"What do you mean?"

"That day you went sailing with him, on the Water Nixie"

"I didn't say anything to him," she said. "Why would I?"

"I don't know."

"I never say anything to him," said Laura, "because I have nothing to say."