Cadillac Cathedral (22 page)

But the driver was obviously annoyed to be confronted with this surprise. “What’s this?” he said. “
What’s this?
” He could have meant “What’s this piece of junk parked in my way?” or “What’s this trick you’ve played on me?”

“Ben!” Myrtle Birdsong stepped forward, smiling, to greet him. A
strained
sort of smile, it seemed to Arvo. “It was my father’s — look! From long ago!”

When those of us who are now old were still young
.

The youthful driver circled the Cathedral hearse with the look of a man who hoped to find a reason to have it hauled away. Of course he would not have to think long. He could ask for ownership papers. He could phone the competition bureau to make a complaint. He would not accuse Myrtle Birdsong of betraying him but would put all of the blame on this lanky old man with the thinning hair and the “Finnish eyes.”

These possibilities may have occurred to her as well. “Don’t you find it beautiful?” she said. “This gentleman has brought it home.”

“But not for today,” Arvo quickly added. She had misunderstood — his fault. “I’ll bring it down again the minute we’ve taken our friend home for a proper send-off. I just wanted you to see that it was safe and in good working order.”

“Of course,” she said. “But please wait …” She barely touched his shirt sleeve. “Wait till Ben has taken Isabel away. Maybe you and your friends in that strange-looking car could come inside for a cup of tea? No, I expect you’d choose coffee, like every Finn I’ve ever known. Sucking it through a sugar cube between your front teeth.” She laughed.

“Not me,” Peterson said, when Arvo had relayed the invitation. “I’ve gotta get back. Lucy will destroy me if she wakes up and thinks I’ve run out on her.”

Of course Cynthia chose this moment to step out of the Henry J. She’d waited this long, he supposed, to see what his plans were — though it was not like Cynthia to be shy. But neither would it be like Cynthia to resent his giving one pot of her flowers to a woman who had just lost a cousin. “You should use the phone while you’re inside,” she said to Arvo. “Let the hospital know we’ll be by to pick up Martin. We’ll wait.”

CHAPTER 13

WHILE HE WAITED FOR
someone at the hospital to pick up the phone, he watched from the central hallway as Myrtle Birdsong brought solemn-looking visitors into the living room, most of them of her generation, and his. Her relatives, he guessed, or friends of the deceased cousin. More women than men, which seemed to be the situation everywhere now, at least amongst people his age.

Like Myrtle, these people appeared to be saddened but not devastated. The death may have been long in coming. No one here wore black. Myrtle’s dress was a sort of light beige, with short sleeves and a skirt that shifted around the hem as she moved. Something a tall woman would probably feel comfortable in. It looked expensive to him, but of course he had no idea what women paid for their clothes.

The house smelled of furniture polish, just as he remembered it smelling when he’d come by with classmates to practise for a school concert or work on a group science project. Or had come alone to help with her homework. Maybe his coming alone had not happened quite as often as he’d thought — certainly not so often that she’d remembered immediately once he’d brought it up.

Myrtle, he could see, was gracious, graceful, soft-spoken — more or less as he’d imagined. She’d become a rather “stately” woman, yet quick to smile as though she genuinely liked whoever she was speaking to. Maybe she did like everyone who hadn’t given her a reason not to.

When someone finally responded to the ringing phone, he identified himself and said he’d be there very soon to pick up Martin Glass.

“You called yesterday?”

“I did.”

“Well, I’m terribly sorry! But I’m afraid that when no one arrived yesterday afternoon as we’d expected, and we got no answer at your home number, we arranged for Mr. Glass’s remains to be sent north to the Henderson Funeral Home first thing this morning. Of course we got in touch with Mr. Henderson, to make sure they were expecting him.”

“And now?”

“Gone, I’m afraid.”

Arvo replaced the phone, closed his eyes, and hauled in a long deep breath. Stupid! His stupid fault … assuming that Martin would wait while he satisfied his own private hopes.

So now, with a knot in his stomach, he had to ask permission to use the phone again, this time for a long-distance call to make sure that David Henderson understood there’d been no change to the original plan. “They knew we were to pick him up for you but they
got impatient,” he explained. “Just stick to the plan when he gets there. We want to scatter his ashes on the ocean out front of Martin’s house.”

“On the
ocean
?”

“Martin was always happy on the water.”

“I know Martin was happy on the water but my God, Arvo, you haven’t forgotten that he was a public figure? He belonged to more than just his few close friends. I thought you’d want a proper ceremony here in town — open to the public. With a grave that admirers could visit.”

“The public didn’t give a damn about Martin once he was out of politics. It’s only his friends now, and his neighbours.”

“Well …” Dave Henderson let a few moments of silence go by. “If you say so.”

“Have you got a nice-looking pot of some kind to put him in?”

“Hell no, I was going to turn him over to you in a rusty soup can — what did you think?” He let a moment of silence go by. “I guess I can rustle up something. We’ve only got a few dozen choices in the storeroom. I figure Martin Glass belongs in a stainless steel cylinder, no decoration. He was a simple man.”

He was not a simple man. He was a man who chose to
appear
simple. Arvo suspected this was one of Martin’s techniques for achieving things without drawing too much attention to himself — a technique that had turned out to be of little use in the House of Commons. On the television you saw them baying and snarling like hounds on the scent — motivated largely by contempt for one another. Contempt as well, it seemed, for the voters who sent them there.

When he explained the changed circumstances to Myrtle she insisted he not rush away. “Stay, please, for a little visit. Invite your friends in for coffee.”

Outside, Peterson was leaning against the Henry J and studying the pavement while Cynthia examined the flowering fuchsia bushes along the front edge of the Birdsong lawn. “You mean we came all the way down here for nothing?” Peterson said.

“We didn’t know it would be for nothing,” Arvo said. “We didn’t know the damn hospital would be in such a hurry to get rid of Martin.”

He took a deep breath and waited through the silence that followed.

“I guess we took longer to get here than they thought we should,” Cynthia eventually suggested.

“I guess you’re right,” Arvo said. He resisted the urge to blame Herbie for this. “The lady has invited us in for coffee.”

“Naw!” Peterson said. “I better get back to Lucy.”

“I have never turned down an invitation for coffee,” Cynthia said.

“Well,” Peterson said. “If we make it quick.”

As they were about to go up the steps, they were joined by an elderly couple who’d just stepped out of a black Mercedes. The woman introduced herself and her companion as “Birdsong cousins from Vancouver.”

Coffee was served, and cake. The deceased cousin would have been flattered by the compliments Arvo overheard. It seemed she had been “selfless” and “energetic” in her service to others. And extremely generous to the homeless you saw on the streets.

The conversations had less of his attention than his memories of being in this house so long ago. Was that upright piano beneath the high window the same piano where he’d turned pages for her? It looked much as he remembered. A Heintzman. The dining-room table may not be the same table but it stood in the same spot where he’d sometimes helped her with her school projects. And the closed doors to unseen rooms reminded him now, as they had then, that this house was home to a business where her father prepared bodies for
burial — though of course all that had taken place in another building.

But they could not sit here for long, making small talk with strangers. Peterson was obviously uncomfortable, edging his way towards the door. Cynthia raised her eyebrows as though expecting some sort of instruction from Arvo. Since Myrtle was busy being a hostess, she could pay little attention to him aside from the occasional smile — perhaps a conspiratorial smile — as she passed by with the coffee pot or a tray of cakes, or turned from welcoming newcomers into the room

“Time for us to move on,” he said, getting to his feet the next time she glanced his way. He offered a hand for Myrtle to shake, but she clasped it in her own and did not let go while she walked him out onto the veranda. “Thank you for thinking of me,” she said. “This is a day when the arrival of an old friend is certainly appreciated. I can imagine Cousin Isabel smiling if she had known.”

“But she wouldn’t know who I was.”

She smiled and squeezed his hand. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

Now that they had come to this moment, he took a deep breath and made what felt like a serious plunge. “If you came up to join us next Saturday you’d see your father’s hearse put to good use again. I could even tell you something of its history since you saw it last. Then we can bring it back here and do whatever you want with it.”

“It will make for a sad week,” she said, looking off down the street. “One funeral after another.” For a moment she examined a potted geranium on the veranda ledge and removed a dying leaf.

By the time she’d released his hand so that he could go down the steps, Cynthia had gone ahead to open the rear door of the hearse and bring out another pot of her blooming flowers, and then a second, and carried them — one in each arm — up to present them to Myrtle. To Arvo she said. “Will you help?”

Of course he knew what she meant. He joined Peterson to remove
more of Cynthia’s potted flowers from the hearse and carry them up to the house. “I’m sure these will be happy here,” Cynthia said to Arvo when she’d returned for a second load, then lowered her voice to add, “Let her family see that country hicks sometimes know how to behave.”

After carrying the last of the flowers inside, Arvo found Myrtle refilling a coffee pot in the kitchen, and offered to return to discuss the hearse once the guests had gone. She put a hand on his arm and lowered her voice. “I’m afraid not all of them will be going anywhere. The Vancouver cousins will be staying for a few days. And a niece.” She glanced at her wrist. “And immediately after lunch I must rush off to the university for a board meeting, which I’ve been promised will be brief.”

“You’re on the Board of Directors?”

She laughed. “Oh dear, no. My father left a generous amount to a certain renewable fund and I am invited to take his place at their meetings. I’m sorry. It meets so infrequently that not even today is a good enough excuse to stay away.”

“Then I’ll see you when I return the hearse. Naturally it should still belong to you. We’ll dig up a lawyer and make sure it does. Of course you could decide to come up for Martin’s funeral and bring it home yourself. ”

She studied her own hand for a moment, opening and closing her fingers. Then said, without looking up, “It would be lovely to see you, of course. But I’m sorry, I have to tell you that I really think I would rather not have the hearse returned, despite the pleasure of discovering it has been so well cared for.”

Arvo was not sure he knew what she meant. “After your cousin’s funeral then?”

“No-no. I meant I would rather you found something else to do
with it — donate it to a museum, sell it to a vintage car collector, drive it off a cliff. Well!” She laughed. “I didn’t mean with you in it. If there is a way of keeping it safe somewhere, then please do — but I would rather not have it returned.”

Of course he’d known there was a possibility of this. “But it was your father’s.”

“Exactly,” she said, and held out her arms for Cynthia to pass over another pot of flowers. “These are lovely, lovely!” She put them down on the nearest table and turned again to Arvo, laying her hand lightly on his arm. “I’m sorry. It was a lovely idea, but I just couldn’t …”

It seemed that he was supposed to imagine the rest. “Couldn’t” rather than “wouldn’t” or “shouldn’t.” There were things he didn’t know. About the father, or about the brief unsatisfactory husband who had driven the hearse for a while.

When the flowers had all been delivered inside, Peterson announced that he ought to get a move-on, in case Lucy was fed up with waiting. “She’ll have found out about another shopping mall she wants me to take her to, I can tell you that. She hardly ever gets away from her chickens. And she won’t be very much fun to be with if she’s forced to leave early.”

“Well then,” Arvo said. “Some of us will have to set off without her. You can decide for yourself if you’ll wait. While you’re at it, you can think about stopping in to visit Herbie on your way home.”

“Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to look.”