Swann (19 page)

Turn to your right and ascend the broad set of old wooden stairs that lead to the second floor. You’ll find that these stairs yield a little under foot, pretty much what you
would expect of an old school stairway when you stop to think of all the young feet that have pounded these boards smooth. The steps, for all their elegance, look faintly dusty, but in truth they’re not; it’s only the
smell
of dust that somehow lingers in the old, hollow-sounding stairwell. Be sure to stop at the landing and read the plaque that records the fact that in the year 1967 the Nadeau High School (as such) ceased to exist. The same plaque tells you of the simultaneous coming-into-being of the new Nadeau Local History Museum.

This museum, taking up all of the second floor of the old school, is small by anyone’s standards, though it manages to attract more than five hundred visitors annually. The two rooms on the right are lined with glass-fronted display cases inviting you to examine some of the astonishing old arrowheads, fossils, and coins unearthed in the region. You can also look at such curiosities as a spinning wheel, a set of cards for combing wool, and a collection of crockery, some of it locally made (at the end of the last century). Be sure to see the interesting old washing machine,
circa
1913, and to take in the various articles of clothing that include a christening gown from the “nineties” and a woman’s grey wool walking costume, piped in red (1902). You will want to spend at least half an hour looking at these interesting exhibits and also at the framed maps and land certificates in the hall, not to mention an outstanding group of old photographs, one of them labelled “Sunday School Picnic, 1914,” illustrating the simple recreational pastimes of bygone days.

On the left of the hallway are the two remaining rooms (the former classrooms for grades 11 and 12). One of these rooms has a small placard over the doorway (the door itself has been taken off the hinges and carted away) that reads: The Mary Swann Memorial Room.

Who on earth, people ask, is Mary Swann?

The answer to their question can be found on a neatly typed sheet of white paper tacked to the doorframe. The late Mary Swann 1915–1965, was a local poet who spent most of her life, at least her married life, on a quarter section of land two miles from Nadeau. Well-known in the area for her verse, some of it originally published in the now defunct
Nadeau News
, she has lately been recognized as a distinguished, though minor, contributor to the body of Canadian literature, and there are those who have gone so far as to call her the Emily Dickinson of Upper Canada. The Mary Swann Memorial Room, established only two or so years ago, contains a number of mementoes of Mrs. Swann’s life—a kitchen table and chairs, a golden oak sideboard, an iron bed, handmade quilts, and many household articles (notice particularly the well-worn wooden turnip masher), In addition, there are some examples of her handiwork (chiefly crochet) and a photograph (blurred unfortunately) of the poet herself standing on her front porch, her arms folded on her chest, facing into the sun. If you have time you may want to linger and read a few examples of Mrs. Swann’s verse, which are framed and mounted on the wall. Especially recommended is the prophetic poem entitled “The Silo,” which was originally printed in the
Athens Record
, June 4, 1958, just seven years before the poet’s untimely demise.

Next to the Mary Swann Memorial Room is the room that has proved to be the most popular with the public. Visitors can stand in the roped-off doorway and admire what is, in fact, a re-creation of a turn-of-the-century Ontario bedroom. Of interest is the floral wallpaper, an exact duplicate of an authentic Canadian wallpaper of the period. There is a length of stove pipe running across the room near the
ceiling, carrying heat from the woodstove that can be imagined to exist in an adjoining room. The pine washstand in the corner is typical of the period (note the towel rack at the side) and so is the wooden blanket box at the foot of the bed. The bed itself is unusual, an Ontario spool bed, handmade it would appear, in a wood that is almost certainly butternut. There is, of course, the inevitable chamber pot peeping out from beneath. The mattress on the bed would have been stuffed with goose feathers—or so a notice on the wall tells you—or perhaps straw.

The extremely attractive quilt on the bed was made by the Nadeau United Church Women in 1967 as a Centennial project. It is composed of squares, as you can see, and each square is beautifully embroidered and signed by one of the women of the congregation. From the doorway you can admire the individual embroidered designs (mostly flowers and birds) and you will be able to make out some of the signatures, which are done in a simple chain stitch. Mrs. Henry Cleary, Mrs. Al Lindquist, Mrs. Percy Flemming, Mrs. Clarence Andrews, Mrs. Thomas Clyde, Mrs. R. Jack Rittenhouse, Mrs. Floyd Sears, Mrs. Frank Sears, Mrs. Homer Hart, Mrs. Joseph H. Fletcher, and so on. Seeing those names, you may smile to yourself, depending of course on your age and situation. You might think: didn’t these women have first names of their own? Hadn’t women’s liberation touched this small Ontario town by the year 1967? You may even form a kind of mental image of what these women must look like: lumpy, leaden, securely wedded, sharp of needle and tongue, but lacking faces of their own and bereft of their Christian names. Sad, you may decide. Tragic even.

But wait. There’s one square near the centre of the quilt, just an inch or so to the right—yes, there!—that contains
a single embroidered butterfly in blue thread. And beneath it is the stitched signature: Rose Hindmarch.

Here comes Rose now, a shortish woman with round shoulders and the small swelling roundness of a potbelly, which she is planning to work on this fall.

Never mind the leather coat and boots and gloves, there’s something vellum and summery in Rose’s appearance, and she almost sings out the words, “Good evening.” As you stand talking on the corner you see, behind her softly permed head, a fine autumn sunset dismantled in minutes by pillars of deep blue cloud. “Such gorgeous weather,” she cries, stretching an arm upward and compelling you to agree.

She asks about your bronchitis and whether you’ve been into Kingston lately to see the new shopping centre; she comments on how lovely your house looks now that the porch and framework have been painted that nice soft shade of grey, how riotously the geese have been flying over town this past week, how the lake is higher than in recent years, how the Red and White is once again offering discounts on quarters of beef—not that she needs a quarter of beef, not her for heaven’s sake, she’s just about turned into a vegetarian!

Generalities and pleasantness, the small self-effacements and half apologies and scattered diversions that fit so perfectly the looped contours of Rose’s middle life. She does not tell you anything about herself, not about how she will be spending her evening tonight—a Friday evening—or about the recent cessation of her menstrual periods or the
lucky penny in her pocket or the square beige envelope she is carrying home in her purse, an envelope containing, if you only knew, an invitation to a symposium (yes, a symposium) on the works of the poet Mary Swann to be held in Toronto during the first week of the new year.

And why doesn’t Rose confide any of this to you? You’ve known her for years, all your life in fact.

Perhaps she detects a lack of interest on your part, sensing that you are already wearying of this casual, peripheral chitchat, that you’re shifting from foot to foot, anxious to be on your way, into your own house where a familial disarray awaits and affirms you, where you can sink on to a kitchen chair with your sack of groceries and say. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rose Hindmarch
does
go on and on, and she never says
anything.”

Or does Rose, so open, so helpful, so stretched by smiles, protect her secrets like a canny nun? For in a sense you might say that her Friday nights
are a
kind of secret, though an innocent one, and that her menopause, except for the headaches, has brought her a flush of covert pleasure, a deserved but shameful serenity, almost dispensation; at last she’s released to live freely in the kind of asexual twilight that most flatters her. As for the printed invitation in the silky inner lining of Rose’s purse, it glows like a reddened coal, precious, known only—as yet—to her.

Just fifteen minutes ago, on her way home from the library, she stopped to collect her mail from the post office. There were three items for her today—not unusual, not at all. There was her telephone bill; there was a postcard, close to indecipherable, from her friend Daisy Hart who is visiting her sister on the gulf coast of Florida; and there, puzzlingly, was the large square beige envelope (quality paper) addressed simply: Rose Hindmarch, Nadeau,
Ontario. No box number, not that that mattered. No Miss or Ms., just Rose Hindmarch, the sturdy wily Rose, the energetic leading lady of the Nadeau township monthly minutes.

She opened it on the spot—never mind what Johnny Sears thought—but taking care not to destroy the creamy wholeness of the envelope. A symposium? On Mary Swann. January. Toronto. She was invited to attend a four-day symposium. (That must be a meeting or a convention, something along those lines, she will look it up in Funk and Wagnall’s when she gets home.) Also included was a small, rather cunning-looking reply envelope, the kind that comes with wedding invitations, already stamped, too, a thoughtful gesture given the current postage rates.

Rose calculated quickly. September to January, four months away. A long time. Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving, Christmas; a very long time. Her excitement dwindled to dullness and she felt a pressure like tears rushing behind her eyes. But no, on second thought, four months would give her time to lose ten pounds—all she’d been waiting for was a good excuse. Five pounds off each hip and a little off the stomach. And time to make a shopping trip into Kingston to find something appropriate to wear, a suit maybe, something in that burgundy colour everyone is so crazy about these days, though Rose can’t see why. Turquoise, her old standby, is hardly to be found.

The Harbourview Hotel. Toronto. January. That nice Sarah Maloney might come from Chicago. It wouldn’t be any trip at all for her, not the way she travels about. And Professor Lang. Certainly he’ll be there, no doubt of that. And maybe, but it would be silly to count her chicks, and so on, but maybe Mr. Jimroy would be there. Morton; he had, on that very first morning they met, asked her to call him
Morton. “All my good friends call me Morton,” he’d said.

His good friends. That is what Rose Hindmarch is: one of Morton Jimroy’s good friends.

Here we are, coming to where Rose Hindmarch lives. This is her suite, her apartment, 16½ Euclid Ave. Not, probably, the kind of place that comes to mind when people think of the word
apartment;
that is to say, there aren’t any concrete towers or elevators or underground parking facilities here. This is a three-room suite (living-room, bedroom, kitchen) on the second floor of an eighty-year-old frame house on the corner of Euclid Avenue, a house owned by a young couple, Howie and Jean Elton (originally from Cornwall), who both happen to teach out at the new township school on Highway 17. (Howard teaches science; Jean, Phys. Ed.) Eventually the Eltons are planning to put in a separate outside entrance for Rose, but for the time being she goes in through their dark narrow front hall. “Hi ya, Rose,” Jean calls from the kitchen, where she’s usually throwing together something for supper; that’s the expression she uses,
throwing something together
. “How are ya, Rose?” Howie will yell. He might be helping Jean make hamburgers in the kitchen or else sitting in the living-room having a beer and watching something on television. “Hi,” Rose says in her merry voice, and hurries up the stairway.

She’s glad there’s a proper door at the top of the stairs, even though there’s no lock. She likes Howie well enough and loves Jean, but privacy is important. She senses that they feel this way too.

And now what? She hangs up her coat on its special
wooden hanger, glancing at the elbows for signs of wear. Owning a suede coat is a responsibility. Then quickly, in one long unbroken gesture, she puts on the teakettle and turns on the little kitchen radio, just in time to catch the six o’clock news. About once a week, usually on a Friday—and today
is
Friday—Rose will treat herself to a small rye and ginger-ale, which she sips while stirring up an omelette; two eggs, one green onion minced, a quick splash of milk. And just one slice of toast tonight. If she’s going to lose ten pounds by January she’ll have to start getting serious. But a little butter won’t hurt. Only twenty-five calories in a teaspoon of butter, less than people think. There’s a tiny mirror on the kitchen wall that Rose sometimes stands in front of, demanding: is this face going to turn into dough like Mother’s did? Granny’s too.

The news these days always seems to be about Libya or South Africa. When Rose thinks of South Africa she pictures a free-form shape with watery sides way down at the bottom of the map. The Dutch people went there first, she recalls vaguely, or else the English. In South Africa untidy policemen in shirt sleeves are always stopping people, black people, from going to funerals or forming labour unions. Well, Rose thinks, that doesn’t seem like too much to ask for, though she’s grateful she doesn’t have to deal with unions herself. Howie and Jean belong to the teachers’ union, but Howie says it’s mostly bullshit, just two or three troublemakers trying to stir things up for everyone else. In South Africa there’s a man called Nelson Mandela, a family man, stuck in jail. Rose has seen pictures of him on television, and pictures of his wife, too, a handsome woman with a grave face and a kerchief on her head.

From habit she eats slowly, daintily. Then she opens the refrigerator door and helps herself to a scoop of chocolate
ice cream for dessert. Tomorrow morning she’ll go down to the Red and White and buy a carton of yogurt. Jean and Howie both recommend yogurt, and Jean has even offered to lend Rose her electric yogurt maker. But Rose loves chocolate ice cream. Her mother used to make ice cream out on the lawn on summer evenings—that was when they were still in the house over on Second where the Harts live now. Rose remembers being twelve years old, turning the crank, waiting for the ice cream to form. A little rock salt, a little elbow grease, and the miracle took place. Almost the only miracle she can recall witnessing.