An Audience of Chairs Page 16

  After speaking briefly with Duncan, Moranna handed the receiver to Bonnie just as she burst into the kitchen, trailed by Brianna, to fetch a drink of water for Ginger who was ensconced on the woodpile as Queen of the Forest. Breathlessly, Bonnie told her father about playing make-believe with Ginger, visiting the pigs and chickens on the farm next door and riding the hobby horse Grandpa had made from a log and an old mop. Not to be outdone, Brianna chattered on about playing in the sandbox and building a cardboard house for their dolls.

  When Moranna came back on the line, Duncan’s voice, heavy with fatigue and loneliness, described the empty store shelves, his dingy room and the depressing gloom of Moscow’s streets. He told her it had been a tough week. “I’m not sleeping much and even in bed I feel I’m being watched. I’ve been told that I’m being followed by the KGB, who keep an eye on foreign journalists.”

  “Will they keep following you?”

  “I suppose. I’ll just have to get used to it.”

  “Have you tried shaking them off?”

  “Not yet but I might,” Duncan said. “Now tell me what you’ve been up to.”

  Moranna told him about painting the furniture, the afternoons spent on the beach and the hayride she and the girls were about to take with Lyle MacKay.

  “Then I’d better let you go,” Duncan said. “Talk to you next week.”

  Before hanging up, Moranna heard clicks on the line and wondered if Duncan’s line was being tapped or whether the clicks were neighbours listening in.

  Murdoch had been making himself a ham sandwich in the kitchen and overhearing Moranna brag about painting the furniture, the old animosity flared up like a recurring rash, and as soon as she hung up, he said, “Just wait until Dad sees what you’ve done to the furniture. It’s not yours, you know, and why you think you can just do what you want with it is beyond me.”

  “It is beyond you, Murdoch,” Moranna said airily, “and it’s your problem, not mine.”

  She was right. When Ian saw the painted furniture on the weekend, he said he liked it and told Moranna to go ahead and paint the kitchen floor. He agreed that the planked spruce floor, pitted and scarred from generations of use, would be much improved by a coat of paint.

  On Sunday night, after the MacKenzies had returned to Sydney Mines and the children were in bed, Moranna set to work. The floor ran the entire width of the house and accommodated the pantry, the eating area and the wood stove. Working through the night, she sanded the boards, and setting aside a basket of food for tomorrow’s meals, she painted the floor buttercup yellow. Two days later, the second coat was dry and she dipped a fine brush into green paint and made leaves of parsley, rosemary and sage. By the time she had applied a coat of varnish, Moranna was bored with house painting and turned her attention to the Bras d’Or.

  Although she didn’t recognize them for what they were at the time, signs of Ian’s affection were everywhere that summer—in the freshly painted boat and dock, the varnished oars and the locker containing life jackets. Buckling her daughters into the jackets, Moranna rowed them out from shore, urging them to keep an eye out for jellyfish and lobsters. The life jackets were too bulky to allow the children to look over the side, but Moranna reported that she saw two lobsters and what looked like part of a boat. Bonnie wanted to know what a boat was doing on the bottom of the lake and Moranna told her a big storm must have blown up and sunk it.

  That night when her daughters were tucked into bed, Bonnie asked her mother to tell them a story about two lobsters and a boat, and Moranna, swept up in the euphoria that had been escalating the past few days, told them a story.

  “Inside a boat on the bottom of the sea there lived an old King with his two beautiful mermaid daughters, one with blond hair, the other with black hair.”

  “What were their names?”

  “Bonnie and Brianna.”

  The children squirmed with pleasure.

  “Not far away lived two lobsters who were really merman princes in disguise and were roaming the sea bottom looking for brides. When they saw the mermaid princesses sitting on the underwater deck combing their hair …”

  “What were their combs like?”

  “Silver encrusted with pearls. The mermen immediately wanted them for wives and approached the King and asked to marry them. The King sat on a sea chest he used as a throne, listening to the lobsters and thinking, ‘They are such ugly creatures with their huge claws, long feelers and tiny eyes that my daughters cannot possibly marry them. I will discourage their intentions by setting them a task so difficult they will never complete it.’

  “The King said to the lobsters, ‘When you return with a braid woven from strands of blonde and black hair, you may marry my daughters.’

  “The lobsters lumbered away discouraged, for how could they ever make such a braid? Each time they approached the mermaid princesses, they swam away or hid themselves below deck.”

  “This is a sad story, Mama.”

  “Wait. From watching the boat, the lobsters knew the mermaid princesses slept in hammocks on the deck away from the watchful eye of the King, who slept on his throne. One of the lobsters said, ‘If we are quiet and careful, using razor clams we can snip locks of hair from each of the daughters while they are sleeping and when we have snipped enough hair we can make a braid and present it to the King.’

  “Night after night the lobsters crept up on the sleeping princesses and, using razor clams, snipped enough hair to make the braid and presented it to the Princesses’ father. Reluctantly the King accepted the braid and granted the lobsters permission to marry his daughters. He summoned the Princesses and as soon as they appeared, weeping and woebegone, the lobsters turned into handsome merman Princes. The sisters were delighted, and thanking the old King for being so wise, they joined hands with the merman brothers and danced merrily around the deck.”

  “What’s the story called, Mama?”

  “The Mermaid Sisters.”

  “If the mermaids had turned into lobsters, they could still have married the lobsters, couldn’t they?”

  “I suppose they could.”

  For the rest of the week, the children insisted on hearing “The Mermaid Sisters” before they went to sleep, and when Ginger heard it on the weekend, a third prince and a red-haired princess were added to the story.

  “But I’m not a sister. I’m a cousin.”

  “That’s all right, Ginger. You can be a sister in the story.”

  The cousins slept together in a double bed in the middle bedroom upstairs, snuggled beneath the musty quilt listening with rapt attention while Moranna sat on the edge of the bed in the dark and told the story. When she finished, Ginger instructed her to leave the door open. She had instructed her parents to leave their door open as well—they slept on one side of the middle bedroom and Ian and Edwina on the other. Moranna slept in the fourth bedroom in the attic. She liked it up there. Often restless at night, she poked around the attic, opening trunks and trying on clothes she assumed had belonged to her grandparents. Slipping a moth-eaten coat over her nightgown, she tiptoed downstairs and went outside to watch the dawn light filtering through the trees.

  How satisfying it was to think that the trees planted by the pioneers had become a private forest her father now owned. When there had been a smattering of overnight rain, she smelled the evergreens, and the hay belonging to the MacKay farm. She remembered herself as a child following the woodland path to the farm. Lottie MacKay always gave her a cookie from the dented tin with the droll monkey face on the lid, the same tin she used to offer cookies to Moranna’s daughters when they visited her earlier in the week.

  Moranna’s euphoria didn’t last—her highs were always temporary—and by the time Duncan telephoned, not Sunday morning, but Sunday night after the children were in bed, her magnanimity and tolerance had drained away and she was tired and disheartened Her family had returned to Sydney Mines, leaving her stranded with two children in a farmhouse on the edge of a village with no m
eans of transportation. Duncan’s call increased her feeling of isolation by reminding her that there was another, worldly, exciting life out there and that he, not she, was leading it.

  Duncan reported that after a discouraging start, he had found his feet and although his movements were curtailed, and he was still being followed by the KGB, he was sleeping much better. Had she heard his dispatches? No, she hadn’t. She told him she must have been outside when his stories were being aired on the CBC though in fact she had forgotten to listen to them. Duncan said that he was working on a profile of Brezhnev, doing the legwork for a lengthy piece he intended to write when he got home. It was slow going, like detective work, but he had managed to hunt down previously unpublished information and was beginning to enjoy himself. “Good for you,” Moranna said and hung up. She didn’t want to hear how pleased he was with his assignment. Here she was stuck in a backwater, her own ambition thwarted and cast aside. Once again, she saw her life as a drama in which she was playing the lead role. Someone with her talent and ability should not be frittering away her time cooking macaroni and making Cheez Whiz sandwiches. It wasn’t that she lacked maternal feelings; she could be as ferocious as a tiger where her children were concerned, but she wasn’t cut out for wiping noses and bottoms. The menial tasks of motherhood were dispiriting and degrading. As someone who never thought of the future except in an inflated, grandiose way and whose forward momentum was leaping from one fabulous project to another, Moranna did not even consider the fact that in a few short years her daughters would be doing some of the menial tasks themselves. Overwhelmed by the weight of her present situation, which had become an insupportable burden now that the euphoria had waned, she went to bed and, pulling the covers over her head, surrendered to the solace of sleep.

  Her daughters were early risers and when they awoke, trailed into her bedroom in their nightgowns and played with their dolls and teddy bears on the bed. From time to time, Brianna crawled over her mother’s inert body and, sticking her face close to Moranna’s, whispered, “Are you awake, Mama?” Bonnie was maternal and patted her mother’s shoulder. “You sleep, Mama,” she said. “That’s a good girl.” They were loving children and Moranna loved them to distraction. When they were hungry, the children went down to the kitchen and ate crackers, potato salad and sliced ham Edwina had left in the fridge. Living in the old farmhouse where, except for the lake, they were free to come and go, the children had become more independent and seemed unperturbed that while their mother slept, they had to fend for themselves.

  One afternoon—Moranna had no idea what day it was—she was awakened by a crisp, slightly officious voice.

  “I brought the little girls back.”

  Moranna rolled over and saw Lottie standing in the doorway. “Back from where?”

  “The pigpen.”

  “What were they doing there?”

  “You tell me,” Lottie said dryly. “I was mashing potatoes for our dinner and when I looked out the window I saw Bonnie and Brianna inside the pigpen patting the sow, I yelled to Lyle and we streaked out there fast and got them out of the sty.” Lottie shook her head, wondering why the sow hadn’t charged. “That sow is unpredictable. You never know what she will do. I hosed down the girls’ feet and their muddy nightgowns, fed them dinner and brought them home. They’re downstairs in the bath. Where do you keep their clean clothes?”

  Moranna roused herself enough to say she would get their clothes, then realized she didn’t know where they were. She often left their clothes in the bathroom, but Edwina might have put them somewhere else. For all she knew they might be outside pegged to the clothesline. She found them in the top dresser drawer of the children’s bedroom and carried them downstairs to the bathroom. Once the girls were dressed, Lottie made tea and, pouring a little into a toy teapot, carried it outside and encouraged Bonnie and Brianna to have a party with their dolls. When she came inside, Lottie poured two cups of tea and, ordering Moranna to sit down, she said, “Now, suppose you tell me what you were doing in bed at two o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “No.”

  Having often seen Moranna during the summers she spent in Baddeck as a girl, Lottie remembered her as an odd child, but it was now becoming clear that she was more than odd, she was unstable. Lottie waited patiently for her neighbour to shake off the stupor and collect her thoughts.

  “I was fine on the weekend when the others were here, but after they left I collapsed.”

  “Motherhood can be exhausting,” Lottie agreed. Having raised five children, she knew the demands of motherhood firsthand. “You need someone to help.”

  “I asked Duncan if Sophie could come to Baddeck with us,” Moranna said, “but he didn’t want to pay her way from Toronto and said we could get somebody here to help.”

  “And so you can,” Lottie said briskly. “I know the girl for you. Have you met Rodney Kimball next door?”

  “When I first arrived I called out to a man on the other side of the hedge, but he didn’t call back. Is that Rodney?”

  “Yes, he’s a bully and a grouch but his daughter Paula is all right. She’ll never set the world on fire, but she’s obliging enough and good with children. She often looks after youngsters at church during the sermon. I’m told she likes to earn money babysitting. You get dressed and I’ll telephone her and ask her to come over straight away.”

  Pudgy, with a round face and nondescript brown hair, Paula had a breathless manner as if she had run down one driveway and up another when in fact she’d come through the spruce hedge. Partway across the yard, she stopped to brush the needles from her hair and then continued, moving slowly, the cloth of her tight cotton shorts rubbing together between her thighs. All this was show; she was well aware that the women sitting in lawn chairs were waiting and watching. Now dressed in a blouse and shorts, Moranna had emerged from dormancy and encouraged the girl to make herself comfortable. Paula never needed encouragement to make herself comfortable. At fifteen, she was already turning to fat and wasn’t an active babysitter, being inclined to sit in the most comfortable chair and preside, which she did. Immediately she turned her attention to the children playing in the sandbox. She made no effort to join them, but the half-smile flitting across the lipsticked mouth was a sign that her interest in them was genuine.

  Satisfied the problem was solved, at least for the time being, Lottie went home and Moranna interviewed Paula. Yes, she was free to babysit on weekday mornings. Yes, she could get them dressed and feed them breakfast, she was used to babysitting little kids. No, she didn’t have younger brothers and sisters because her mother died from a hole in her back when Paula was four, but someday she’d get married herself and have a bunch of kids. No, she wouldn’t take the children to the lake, she’d keep them on this side of the road. From what she could see there was plenty for them to play with right here, she never had near as much to play with as a child. Paula crossed her arms and sat back in the chair, smug in the knowledge that she had exercised a judgment on the children of this strange and glamorous woman whom she’d been spying on through the hedge these past weeks.

  “Could you feed them lunch and stay until mid-afternoon?” Lunch, she said, not dinner. Why didn’t she say two or three o’clock instead of mid-afternoon? She’d be paid by the hour, wouldn’t she?

  “I like to sleep in because I work late at night. I’m writing and illustrating a children’s book,” Moranna said, although it had only now occurred to her to make a project of “The Mermaid Sisters.” The fact that she knew nothing about book illustration did not of course deter her. Moranna never doubted she was equal to any task requiring creative talent; in fact, it was precisely because she knew nothing about how to go about illustrating a children’s book that she wanted to take it on. Now that she was challenged to do something she believed would be exceptional and unique, the responsibilities of motherhood no longer seemed so onerous, and self-assurance and br
avado took over.

  “Is it scary?” Paula enjoyed scary stories. Not books, she seldom read a book if she could avoid it, but she liked telling ghost stories to her friends.

  “No, it’s not scary. It’s a children’s book,” Moranna said, then added severely, “And I don’t want you frightening my daughters with scary stories at bedtime.”

  Paula gave her an insolent look. “I won’t be putting them to bed, will I?” Canny enough to know that her neighbour was desperate for her to babysit, she knew she had the upper hand. “I want to be paid by the hour, not the day,” she said. “Fifty cents an hour.”

  Moranna agreed. How much to pay the babysitter was the last thing on her mind.

  They agreed Paula would look after the children from nine to three on weekdays, allowing Moranna to work on the children’s book.

  Clearing a work space in the attic by shoving trunks and dusty carpet rolls aside, Moranna set up a trestle table in front of the window where she tacked preliminary sketches to the wood frame. She was experimenting with images as they came to her and wanted to work undisturbed and alone, but her daughters soon found her and, coming up to the attic, asked if they could make their own books. She didn’t shoo them away but looked at them fondly. “Of course you can make your own books,” she said, “as long as you don’t bother Mama.” How could she deny them? They were her very own creative children.