The Night Garden Page 2

  So I didn’t mind working on the history if no fiction came to me. I thought it was important to keep doing some kind of writing. It always made me feel better. As if there were some kind of special energy available but outside of me that I could pull in and it would move through me, coming out my fingers onto the blank page as neither entirely itself nor me but something new. Nothing on the page ever quite lived up to the glimpse of the glimmer of that magic. It was the hope that someday it would that kept me going back to it.

  On this particular night, I was drumming my fingers aimlessly on my typewriter wishing I had more personal anecdotes about Mrs. Brown and her children and wondering if I couldn’t just make some up, when I heard a commotion below, but the cupola is so far from the first floor that I couldn’t make out any words. I tried to see whose car was in the driveway, but it was too dark.

  After the back door slammed and the person left, I peered out again and realized they must have walked over because there was no sound of a car starting up and I could see a flashlight beam head off across the fields. I knew it had to be one of our far-flung neighbors. When the person got to Becher Bay Road and it was clear that they were truly gone for the night, and that I wouldn’t have to speak to them, I went downstairs and Sina told me what had happened.

  Mrs. Madden, otherwise known as Crying Alice, had charged over to our house.

  “Yoohoo, Mrs. Whitekraft!” Sina heard her call as she opened the front door and came into the front hall uninvited. “Mrs. Whitekraft? I know we haven’t gotten to know each other greatly. Or even very well. Or even at all. But now I need you. I NEED you, Mrs. Whitekraft. Thomasina?” And Alice began to bawl. Crying was what Alice did best.

  Sina and I had named her Crying Alice after we had compared notes about all the places we had seen her cry.

  We had seen her cry at parent-teacher conferences for no apparent reason. I didn’t know much about her children because they were all in different grades from me, but they appeared to be very good citizens, good students, upstanding humans, as Old Tom would say. Nothing to cry over.

  We had seen her cry when there were no eggs left at Brookman’s. Brookman’s was on the edge of Sooke and the closest store for all the far-flung residents, and so the hub of a lot of its social life. On Saturdays we brought our eggs and milk to sell there, and the ladies met there to chat in the morning.

  We had seen Alice cry at school Christmas concerts.

  “Well, really,” said Sina, clearing her throat in embarrassment when we got to this part. “That could happen to anyone.”

  Sina had a soft spot for gently lisping carolers.

  Alice didn’t just cry a lot; she cried in situations where normal people seem to be able to hold it together. She cried when she got mud on her dress. She cried when her car got a flat. She cried when she saw the new kittens at Brookman’s. She cried when dropping her children off for their first day of school in the fall. And once Old Tom and I had caught her crying while her car was being filled up with gas. We just sat there in our truck watching in fascination until she pulled away.

  “That is one unhappy dame,” said Old Tom.

  When Sina told the ladies at Brookman’s that we had named Alice Madden “Crying Alice,” they approved. Then they told us her husband did maintenance for the Canadian Air Force’s special plane, the Argot, in Comox and called himself Fixing Bob, which made the nickname Crying Alice seem coincidentally but pleasingly mated. I thought perhaps all couples should have similarly paired nicknames. I tried out Old Tom and Tall Sina, both being one-syllable adjectives, but it didn’t work at all.

  Anyhow, when Crying Alice entered the house wailing, Sina had been drafting her thirty-seventh letter to William Lyon Mackenzie King, the prime minister of Canada, begging him for the sake of the country to grow a mustache like his predecessor, Robert Borden. He was such a dish, she wrote. And you have such a baby face. I feel we would be taken more seriously on the international circuit … Was this the expression she wanted? Were there circuits in international politics? Oh well, let him figure it out. He should be able to—he was the prime minister, after all.

  It seems to me that the public figures people most pay attention to all have mustaches. Look at Hitler. Look at Mussolini. Look at Franco. Mustaches all. I’m not saying you want to be like these men. I’m just saying it’s time that Canada got it together and distinguished itself, internationally speaking, and I fear we shall never be able to do it with a baby-faced prime minister. You were not my choice for prime minister. Your party (if I may be so bold as to tender an opinion) is all wet. But, nevertheless, now you are my prime minister and we must all just make the best of it. You obviously don’t think grooming matters, so I am here to tell you it does and to lend you a little practical advice. I hope you will take it in the spirit in which it is meant.

  Yours sincerely,

  Thomasina Whitekraft

  P.S. I’m sure even the voters who voted for your party—of which, as I say, I am not one—probably wish you’d do something to appear a little less doughy.

  She was mumbling this last sentence to herself as she went down the hall to answer the wail. The sentence didn’t sound quite right, so she was saying it out loud to herself, editing it. Even the voters who voted for your party? No, no, no, that’s repetitive. Even the citizens who voted for you? Why say “citizens”? I did not vote for you but if I had…? No, that’s all wrong. We don’t vote directly for our prime minister. And “doughy” is perhaps a little harsh. Accurate but harsh.

  She was so preoccupied by this that she had forgotten why she’d walked to the front door and didn’t even notice Crying Alice standing in the front hall dripping tears all over the floor. Sina walked right around her to shut the door.

  “Good lord, does no one pay attention to drafts?” she asked, heading back to the kitchen where her typewriter was set up.

  “Mrs. Whitekraft!” said Crying Alice.

  Sina heard this, whipped her head around, and jumped about four feet in the air. At this point Alice was crying so hard that she was leaning her face against the wall making hard-to-get-out wet marks, and all Sina saw was the back of a mass of unruly hair and because her mind was on other things, her first thought was that a large soggy dog had somehow gotten into the house and was dripping on her wall. But, of course, after that she quickly changed gears, came partly down to earth, and realized it was a person. It was the clothes, she explained to me later.

  “Oh my God, are you a burglar?” she asked. Then she noticed that some of the wetness on the walls was from the burglar’s heaving, sobbing body. “Are you a burglar already repenting? Get out. Get out and I shan’t report you to the police.”

  “Mrs. Whitekraft, I am not a burglar,” said Crying Alice. “Didn’t you hear me before? Don’t you recognize me? I’m your neighbor.”

  Well, of course, Sina came fully down to earth then, realized exactly what she had on her hands, and was not happy about it.

  “What are you doing breaking into homes? Do you call that neighborly? Get out.” Sina wanted to get back to her letter. She was losing her train of thought. It didn’t occur to her that there was any kind of situation at hand just because Alice was crying. Alice was always crying.

  “I have a very great favor to ask you,” said Crying Alice, sobbing.

  “The answer is no,” said Sina. “We can’t have people just charging into our homes and upsetting the order of things. I’m trying to write a letter and you’ve put me completely off.”

  “You must help me. You must,” cried Alice.

  “Why must I?” asked Sina.

  “Because I’m afraid my husband is going to do something stupid.”

  “What kind of stupid?”

  “Dangerously stupid. I feel it in my bones,” said Crying Alice, blowing her nose.

  “Oh, all right,” snapped Sina, who always paid attention to the things she felt in her own bones. “It will put a crimp in my evening, I can see that already, but come into t
he kitchen and tell me all about it.”

  SINA TELLS ME

  When Sina had finished relating all of this, I said, “My goodness, what was the great favor?”

  “I’ve agreed to take the children of Crying Alice Madden,” said Sina.

  “Surely not,” I said, grabbing two Girl Guide cookies out of the jar. This struck me as a two-cookie conundrum.

  “Yes,” said Sina. “And I’ve no idea why. Any number of people could have taken them. Why me?”

  “Perhaps you secretly like small children,” I suggested, sitting across from her and beginning on cookie number one.

  “It would have to be very secretly,” said Sina.

  “Then perhaps it has become a sort of nervous tic with you,” I said, breaking the cookie into judicious bites to fuel my ideas. Bit of cookie, bit of idea, bit of cookie was the plan. “After all, you took me on.”

  “That was twelve years ago. Besides, you were different,” said Sina. “I could see that right away. You were extraordinary. There was never going to be another you. Don’t ask me to break into song. I shan’t.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Not about the song part. Although thank you for that, too. About the extraordinary part.”

  “Not at all,” said Sina. “Anyway, it’s done now and it can’t be undone. I’ve said that after school tomorrow she can drop off Winifred, Wilfred, and Zebediah and they can stay with us while she goes up to Comox.”

  “Oh,” I said. This was a blow, but one must keep a stiff upper lip. “I see. Good thing we have all those maid’s rooms they can stay in way up on the third floor where maybe we can pretend they aren’t here.”

  This was rather tricky of me, implying as it did that these strange children would of course be living on the third floor and not on the second with the civilized folk.

  “Yes. Good thing!” said Sina, seizing on this immediately. “Although it is rather a long way to the outhouse from there. Three flights of stairs.”

  “The back stairs are not so bad,” I said. “A bit steep, but they are swift if one’s calls to nature are very pressing. We could keep a series of coal lanterns burning at strategic points.”

  “They’d trip on them and burn the house down. We had better move one of the rockers off the second floor landing, too. Boys can probably run around one rocker without breaking their necks, but two may issue too much of a challenge. Boys clatter. And we’ll hand out flashlights.”

  “Yes, that should work splendidly. See, no problem at all,” I said happily now that it was clear that the Madden children would be a whole floor away from me and, I decided, not allowed in the cupola under any circumstances. “Well, then, for how long?”

  “That’s just it. I really don’t know. Because it was Alice, you see.”

  “Ah. So rather less talking, more crying?”

  “Exactly,” said Sina. “A lot of crying and general carrying-on. She seemed to think that unless she joined her husband immediately up at the air force base in Comox he was going to do something stupid.”

  “What kind of stupid?” I asked.

  “Who knows? What kind of stupid things would a plane maintenance person do?”

  “Drink the cleaning fluid?” I suggested. Sina and I loved this kind of speculation.

  “Braid the mops?” suggested Sina.

  “Perhaps it has nothing to do with his job,” I said. “Perhaps she is afraid he is taking up the tarantella and if left unfettered would soon be moving the whole family to Italy.”

  “Italy?”

  “It’s where it originated. It’s supposed to be mimicking what happens when you get bitten by a tarantula.”

  “Really, Franny, I don’t know how you know these things,” said Sina.

  “I read.”

  “Anyhow, I suspect she knew more than she would let on. She seemed to feel her presence in Comox was urgent.”

  “That sounds bad,” I said. “Bad or melodramatic. We really don’t know her well enough to make a judgment call, do we?”

  “No, that’s what I thought. I asked if she thought he was going overseas to fight that evil Hitler, but she said no.”

  “Didn’t she even give you a hint as to what she thought he might be up to?”

  “No, she refused to say.”

  “The nerve,” I said.

  “Just so,” said Sina. “You’ve hit the nail on the head; to come over and ask such a very great favor and make wet marks on my nice clean walls and yet refuse to give any juicy details—well, it defies all manners and sense.”

  We both looked out the window and I decided I was out of good ideas for the moment, so I finished the cookies in a couple of bites.

  “Still, that’s what we’re stuck with. I think I’ll go to bed,” said Sina.

  “Good idea,” I said. And then something occurred to me. “Tomorrow is the last day of school before the special spring vacation. You don’t suppose she means to leave them here all spring long?”

  “I’ve no idea. Nobody tells me anything,” said Sina despairingly, and she went up the stairs muttering, “Doughy or pasty-faced? Which is less apt to offend?”

  I made my last trip to the outhouse before turning in and sat among the bats and insects thinking that having these strange children cluttering up our 270 acres this spring was not what any of us had planned and how everything can change in a blink.

  Then I walked back toward the house. I could hear the owls overhead, always there, always unseen, like tree monks chanting who who who, their mysterious plainsong, their mystical calls sent into the night, into the black unknown, calling to what we were all calling to, who who who, where where where, setting the universe right, steadying my tangents, piping me to bed.

  THEY ARRIVE

  Well, we are all put on this earth to suffer, and the next day after I’d gotten home from school Crying Alice drove Winifred, eleven; Wilfred, nine; and Zebediah, six, over to the house. Winifred and Wilfred looked similar. They both had long rangy limbs, sandy hair, and freckles. Wilfred, although younger, was taller than Winifred and wore horn-rimmed glasses that made his eyes large and owly. He had a front flop of hair that he was always brushing out of them. Winifred kept her long hair neat. Zebediah was short and dark with olive skin and black curly hair and could have come from a whole other family, so different was he from Winifred and Wilfred. They each carried a small duffel bag. I eyed the bags, trying to determine from the size of them exactly how long they would be staying. But it was difficult. They were medium bags. That could mean that Crying Alice was an over-packer and they would be with us for the weekend only (oh, please God), or she could be a severe under-packer, planning to park them with us for a few months, necessitating Sina taking them shopping. Or the children could lead a spartan existence, eschewing all but the bare necessities. In which case they would not be so appalled by the outhouse. I had had the odd girl over to play and they all seemed to think that by the time 1945 rolled around, everyone in the world should be in possession of an indoor flush toilet. As I had grown up with the outhouse, I had never considered us “strangely medieval,” as one potential friend put it.

  There we all stood in the front hallway eyeing each other.

  Sina, I noticed, had the identical great false grin plastered on her face as I.

  “There now,” said Crying Alice. “Winifred, stand up straight. Wilfred, look alive. Zebediah, don’t slouch. All right, children. I’m off to berate your father. I must talk Fixing Bob out of whatever it is he thinks he is going to do. Be good. Please try to eat healthily. I shall return as soon as I possibly can. Mrs. Whitekraft, may I say that this is contiguous of you.”

  “Contiguous?” said Sina. “Well, you certainly can say it…”

  “Now, children, let us try to part cheerfully.” At which point Crying Alice broke into hysterical sobs, turned on her heels, and barely made it to her car without flooding the front yard. We could see her bent over the wheel, driving off, her shoulders racked with heaving, shuddering sorrow but
her hand waving cheerfully good-bye out the window until the car was no longer in sight.

  I had to admire the children, because they looked more or less normal and unfazed by these theatrics and, really, with the example she set for them, we’d no right to expect it.

  “Well, then,” said Sina. “That’s done. Dinner at six-thirty.” She turned toward the kitchen, leaving me, as agreed, to show them around.

  The children were delighted with their tiny third-floor rooms. The four of us stood in Winifred’s.

  “They’re like little dollhouse rooms,” said Winifred. “I got a room of my own for the first time when we moved here from the air force base in Comox. We used to live on base on Prince Edward Island before the air force moved the Argot, the very important plane that Daddy maintains, to the Comox base.”