That’s where the geese gather at night and where the shipwrecks sit. Felicity never let me walk out that far. She said they were just rusty submarines left over from the war and not particularly interesting.
The house was a place we visited in winter because in the winter Felicity got homesick. Gran kept the back bedroom ready for us, just in case. She knew that Felicity found the white winters at the camp hard. The days were quiet and short, the trees were bare, the path deep with snow and she had to tuck my trousers into the tops of my knitted socks to keep me warm.
When it got too quiet, too cold, and too bright, she pulled down the army surplus backpacks from the rafters and filled them with sweaters, skirts, books and warm scarves. We’d leave behind the textbooks, their precise illustrations, and the river maps. Then Felicity would bundle me into my thick winter coat, rub my face with Vaseline to keep the wind away, and we hitchhiked off to the city to find the airport bus. We never had enough pennies to commit to an annual flight, but whenever we needed to, we managed to fly. Felicity said that this was yet one more advantage of staying away from the public schools: flight was always possible. She also said that there were ample books at the camp to fill anyone’s brain usefully, and that if there was anything extra that I wanted to know, I could always ask Bas.
I could ask Bas anything and he gave me answers like small prizes slipped into my waiting hands. He was the one who told me pine needles keep you healthy like oranges do. He showed me how to hold hens’ eggs up to a candle to see the chick growing inside, and taught me that adult loons leave the lake a whole month before their children every autumn. The next generation migrates alone, relying on instinct, and he said instinct was a feeling and feelings matter. In return, I told him all the things I knew. That some grown-ups kept their eyes open at the table when we said the blessing. That all my mother’s hair was fair and curly – under her arms, too, and even under her skirt – while mine was dark and flat. That some spider-webs could outlast thunderstorms. That pennies smell like blood and blood smells like fish and that you couldn’t smell bruises at all.
I suspect my gran had something to do with the enough pennies when it came to airplanes. We never had much. We didn’t need much, really. Life in the woods wasn’t about pennies, and mainly the camp was self-sufficient anyway. We grew plenty of food in the fields across the lake and sold what we wouldn’t eat at the road-end all through the summer. Pies, tarts and deep baskets of strawberries and raspberries from the gardens, and wild blueberries from the rocky places along the lakeshore. What we couldn’t eat or sell, we saved. Bas made berry schnapps and wine coolers, and throughout the summer and into the fall, the canning kettle boiled on the woodstove and the air in the farmhouse kitchen was thick with sugar, vinegar and cloves. Felicity said she came by canning honestly, and told me about Gran’s preserves: rosehips, apple chutney, gorse wine and bramble jam. Saving things up must be in her blood and she crinkled her forehead a little fiercely when she said it, though no one would ever say she wasn’t authentic. A good camp word, authentic. Rika used it like a compliment, as though some folk weren’t and might only be acting. Did adults do that? I wasn’t sure. When I asked Bas, he shrugged and pulled the dressing-up box from the cupboard, asking who I was going to be that afternoon. I acted out every story my mother told me. A pirate tree-nymph. A mountaineering beaver. Or my favourite role of all: the Blessed Virgin herself. Bas always made time for stories, layering me with blankets, helping me to belt a pillow to my middle that I might stagger my way towards Bethlehem. He played every innkeeper with arms open wide, and with a straight face and a shining eye, found a footstool for my swollen virgin ankles and wondered if I might like a mug of tea.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Did they have tea then?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe that comes later. It’ll be the wise men who leave some with you, but I don’t think you’ve met them yet, have you?’
‘Are you foolish, Bas? Or wise?’
‘Probably foolish, your holiness. Most probably.’
‘I think you’re wise. You know how to make bread. That’s wise, isn’t it?’
‘Wise enough for this world. Would you like some jam, too, m’lady?’ He spread it thick and I ate it stickily with fingers and lips jelly red.
Bas always knew what to offer, how much to ask, when to be silent or serious or good. He was good at keeping a story going. Much later, I realized the gentleness that took, and the strength.
Stories are fragile things, eggshell thin and porous.
After breakfast, I picked up a few groceries in a small convenience store near the hotel. Enough to live on for a little while, I thought, and there would be shops to explore in Aberlady once I’d settled in.
Then I turned in the car at the rental agency and found the bus. It shuddered out of the city, through suburbs, past rows of stucco houses with gravel yards or small lawns and the occasional incongruous palm tree. Most of the people on the bus were old, chatting with their neighbours, holding shopping bags. A pile of free newspapers at the front of the bus sat untouched, and I thought about leaving my seat to collect one but looked out the window instead.
The road passed on through small towns and smaller towns until at last the way opened up and I could see the colour of the fields and the line of the coast. The clouds had lifted, or maybe the wind had blown them back out to sea. It was a windy landscape, with small, crooked trees and hawthorn hedges along the roadside, and white birds hovered high above the waves, holding the wind in their wings. Then a wooded stretch, denser now, and in between the trees, old cement blocks sat heavily – anti-tank defences left over from the war. I remembered Felicity telling me about them, and about the railings set in the churchyard’s stone wall. They had been sawn off when the country needed more metal for airplanes, leaving iron coins set into the stone. She showed me how to press my thumb in each one – one a penny two a penny – and how to climb up the loupin-on stanes, that long-abandoned set of steps that Victorian ladies used to climb up to their high horses.
Just past the church, the bus stopped and I collected my bags. I hadn’t packed much because I wanted space to bring things home again. I wasn’t sure what, but maybe Gran had left something specific for me to find. Heirlooms or papers or photographs. I’d search the house as if for clues and maybe find why Gran had left it to me. Felicity had trained me to look for stories, hadn’t she?
I crossed the street to the hotel – a big whitewashed building with picnic tables and plant pots out front, trellises against the wall, and ivy. The door was open and no one sat at the desk in the front hall. I wasn’t sure about ringing the bell. It looked as if it would make a great deal of noise. I stood there for a moment, examining the map laid out on the wooden counter, the coastline curved like the back of a fish, or like a belly facing the sea. Then, an old woman came through a door behind me and cleared her throat.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Are you looking for a meal?’
‘No. Well … I’m really here to collect keys,’ I said. ‘For my grandmother’s house. Jane Hambleton. I was sent a letter that mentioned there would be a set of keys here. With Muriel?’ I opened up my shoulder bag and pulled out the letter for the woman to read, but she just looked into my face with a soft smile.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘That’s me. And you are Jane’s little Pidge. Felicity’s, I mean. You and I met when you were small. You won’t remember me, but your mother brought you here. And you look just like her. Except for the hair, maybe. The colour suits you.’ She coughed a little laugh and asked about my mother. ‘Is she keeping well? She’s here with you too, then?’
‘No, it’s just me. She’s back in Quebec. She’s well. Happy.’
‘Ah, yes. Settled there, I suppose. Such a shame that she couldn’t make it home in time for her mum’s funeral, but I suppose it was unexpected, wasn’t it? And so quick. But such a shame. And just before your own arrival. She was so looking forward to seeing you. She told me so many times that you were coming and that you might pop in here first, and that’s when she left the keys here. I think she was worried you might arrive when she was out for a walk or even down in the garden and that she wouldn’t