A Handful of Time (11 page)

The biggest difference was that she gushed. “My darling children … give your old Nan a kiss!” she cried in a sugary voice. “Here's the baby, what a sweetheart— hand her to me. Hello, Ginnie, dear, how lovely to be here! And Maggie … and my own Trevor.”

Patricia listened in wonder. Maybe her grandmother had grown more affectionate after her husband died. But there was something forced and smothering about her cooing. As everyone was embraced again and again, Patricia hid behind the car.

“But where's Patricia?” the strident voice cried. “Where's my poor little Patricia?”

Aunt Ginnie put an encouraging arm around her niece. “Don't be shy, dear. Come and say hello to your grandmother.”

Nan gave Rosemary back to Aunt Ginnie and took Patricia's face in her hands. Patricia jerked her head with embarrassment, but the cool palms held it firmly.

“So this is Patricia … finally!” Nan kissed her quickly and released her hold. “You don't look at all like your mother. Well, perhaps that's just as well. Do you know I haven't seen you for four years? We'll have to have a good long talk.”

Patricia escaped by helping to carry suitcases into La Petite. Her stomach churned with guilt as she glanced at the bed and the newly tiled floor. Early Sunday morning she had crept into the cabin and rescued the watch. She'd hidden it up in the attic of the cottage, concealed in an empty shoebox she'd found in a corner. No one ever went up there; it was far too hot.

“A good long talk”: the ominous words rang in her ears all day. She began to relax, though, when she saw that there were too many people around for Nan to get her alone. Uncle Rod's family arrived and Patricia was protected from her grandmother by a thicket of chatter.

Everyone waited on the old woman. Aunt Ginnie and Aunt Karen hovered around her, keeping her supplied with cigarettes, tea and cushions. Nan was much bossier and more opinionated than in the past. Before dinner she shooed the women into the kitchen and sat on the verandah with Uncle Rod, having a lively argument with him about the prime minister. Trevor, Christie and Bruce crouched at her feet. Kelly had disappeared somewhere.

Patricia sat on the front steps, holding the baby. She watched Uncle Doug tend the barbecue and Maggie practise handstands on the lawn.

Rosemary babbled and snatched at Patricia's nose and hair. Patricia bounced her, whispering a rhyme she'd heard her aunt use:

This is the way

The ladies ride

Nim, nim, nim …

Uncle Doug and Maggie came up the steps. “Do you want me to take the baby?” offered her uncle.

“It's okay,” said Patricia. It calmed her to hold the plump little body. Besides, it gave her an excuse not to join the noisy group inside. Rosemary was heavy however, and after a while Patricia placed her carefully on the grass.

Kelly appeared and joined her on the steps. Patricia wriggled nervously. “Do you think the ground is too damp for her?” she asked, pointing to the baby to draw attention away from herself.

“Oh, no—babies are tough. Come here, Piglet. Now, watch this …” Kelly lugged her sister to her lap, then gently lifted her by the ankles until she hung upside-down.

“Don't!” cried Patricia. “You'll hurt her!”

Kelly laughed. “No, I won't. She loves it.”

And, sure enough, Rosemary arched her back and smiled at this new view of the world. All the same Patricia was relieved when Kelly put her back on the grass.

A chipmunk scuttled across the lawn. Behind them, the buzz of talk rose and fell.

“So what do you think of Nan?” Kelly asked.

“Oh. She's … fine, I guess. I haven't really talked to her.”

“Maybe you'll get to be one of her pets, like Trevor. He's her favourite. She doesn't care for me much.” Kelly's voice was matter-of-fact.

“Why not?” Patricia couldn't help asking.

“Because I'm ‘wild' and ‘a tomboy' and ‘don't dress properly.'” Her cousin imitated her grandmother's tone so perfectly that Patricia smiled in spite of herself.

“She lives in a fancy condominium in Calgary,” Kelly continued, “and whenever we go there, I have to wear a dress and pass tea to old ladies or help arrange flowers in the church. It's incredibly old-fashioned. Christie likes it, but she's strange sometimes. Everyone thinks Nan is so sweet—but she isn't always. Once I accidentally broke an old dish and she really blew her top. It was weird, as if she'd turned into another person. I thought she was going to hit me. She said something queer then … she said I reminded her of Ruth.”

Patricia started. “Of wh-who?”

“Ruth. Your mother, silly. Mum says I look a bit like she did at my age. Bet I won't be as gorgeous, though. But who would want to be? Does she like getting all made up and looking so glamorous all the time?”

Patricia stiffened. “How would
I
know?”

“Well, she
is
your mother. Honestly, Potty, sometimes you get so touchy.” Offended, Kelly turned from Patricia to the baby.

Rosemary had hoisted herself to her side and was lying there like a beached seal. Then, with a flop, she landed on her stomach. She grinned with surprise.

“You turned over, Piglet—good for you!” Picking up the baby, Kelly rushed inside to tell her mother.

F
OR THE NEXT
two days, Patricia managed to avoid being alone with Nan. Her grandmother gave her an appraising, quizzical glance from time to time, but there were no more suggestions of a talk. Patricia hoped she had forgotten about it.

She longed for the watch and wished she could slip up to the attic and escape to the past. But it was impossible to be alone this week. Nan came to the beach with them every morning and sat under an umbrella while they had their swimming lessons. The two fathers had returned to the city, and every afternoon the mothers took Nan and the cousins on a different excursion. They drove to the Pembina river valley to pick wild strawberries, formed a fishing fleet of two canoes and a rowboat and visited friends on the other side of the lake. Every night they all ate together, Nan presiding like a queen.

Sometimes she and Aunt Ginnie told stories of past summers at the lake. Patricia shivered with the strangeness of it when they mentioned something she knew, such as how Aunt Ginnie was so frightened of going to the outhouse at night that one of her parents had to go with her and talk reassuringly outside the door.

“You were a spoiled one,” laughed Nan fondly. She never mentioned Ruth in her stories.

Once she showed her grandchildren her scrapbook of the Royal Family. “I have twenty-two of them,” she said proudly. “One day they'll be valuable. Look, Maggie, here's little Prince William with his parents.”

“His dad sure has huge ears,” commented Maggie.

Uncle Doug and Uncle Rod arrived and departed with the weekend. By Monday, Aunt Ginnie had run out of ideas for outings and Kelly especially was itching to be on her own.

“Let's see …” mused her mother after lunch. “What would you like to do, Mama? We could walk down to the other end and visit old Mrs. Thorpe.”

“Mum,” interrupted Kelly, “can we go and finish our fort? We haven't been near it for a week.”

“I'd like you to come with us to the Thorpes, Kelly. You never see their children—you shouldn't stick to yourselves so much.”

Kelly made a rude face.

“Oh, let them go off and play, Ginnie,” said Nan. “I've monopolized them so far. I can visit Muriel Thorpe this evening. Right now I'd like to have some time with Patricia. Shall we go out to La Petite and have a nice chat? I'm sure you'd like to be left alone as well, Ginnie.”

Everyone but Patricia looked grateful. She lingered in the driveway as her grandmother walked towards La Petite with quick steps, but finally she had to follow her into the cabin.

Nan plugged in the electric kettle and set out tea supplies on a small table. “I'm beginning to have enough of roughing it,” she frowned, examining a chipped mug. “Soon you'll have to come and visit me in Calgary and I'll show you the Coalport china your great-grandmother left me.”

Patricia didn't answer. She sat tensely on the edge of one of the beds worrying about the watch. She was sure that, somehow, Nan was going to mention it.

But it wasn't the watch Nan wanted to talk about. Afterwards Patricia thought how foolish she'd been to imagine that it would be. Nan had no reason to connect the watch with her granddaughter.

She began by recalling the last time she'd seen Patricia. “You were so plump,” she laughed. “Just like Ginnie at that age. I don't know how your mother could leave you with a babysitter.”

“But she was nice,” protested Patricia softly. Hannah had looked after her all day until she went to kinder-garten, and after school later on. She'd told her stories and let her help make cookies.

“Nice or not, I don't agree with this modern notion of mothers working. I told your parents so and unfortunately we had such a great argument about it that I didn't visit again. And every time I've asked Ruth to let you come to me, she's put me off. Photographs are all very well, but they're no substitute. But now I have you in person at last. I'd like the two of us to become friends, Patricia. Your mother and I have always clashed. But you and I can begin again.”

If being friends meant her grandmother talking to her as if she were an adult, Patricia wanted no part of it. She didn't want to hear about past arguments. But then her grandmother went much further.

“Now, I want to hear
your
version of this sad business with your parents,” she pronounced, handing Patricia a mug of tea. “Ruth won't tell me, of course. But you can. I've always approved of your father—he's a sensible, decent man. What did she do to drive him away? Too headstrong as usual, I suspect.”

Patricia was so stunned, she didn't even notice the mug was burning her hand. Nan's voice had an almost satisfied ring to it, as if she had known all along that Ruth's marriage would fail. She began to grill Patricia, who barely whispered her replies.

“Is there a specific reason they're separating?”

“I don't know.”

“Is your mother seeing another man?”

“I don't know.”

“What about your father? Is he seeing someone else?”

Patricia revived a little; this was nobody's business. “I
don't know
,” she said more loudly.

Nan sighed. “Oh, Patricia.” Her voice softened. “I'm not trying to pry—I have to ask you because Ruth will never tell me.”

Patricia set her untasted tea on the table. She was freezing cold and there was a painful cramp in her stomach. “I have to leave,” she muttered. “I don't feel well.”

Nan became a charming grandmother again. “Of course, poor darling. Is it your tummy?”

Patricia nodded and pushed out of La Petite. She ran to the cottage, dashed into the bathroom and sat on the toilet for a long time. Then she spent the rest of the afternoon shivering under the heavy quilt on Kelly's bed.

A
KNOCK ON THE DOOR
woke her from a jangled dream.

“Patricia?” called Aunt Ginnie in a concerned voice. “Do you feel better? Do you want to get up and try eating something?”

Patricia got out of bed groggily. She felt nothing at all, as if her body had disappeared—the way it did in the past.

At least Nan was out for dinner at the Thorpes. Patricia went through the motions of eating, then played checkers with Maggie in a dazed stupor.

“I won again!” crowed Maggie. “You're not very good at this, are you, Potty. Want to play for money?”

Patricia heard Nan coming up the back steps and hung her head over the checkerboard.

“Hello, my darlings,” said the syrupy voice. “Having a nice, cosy evening? And Patricia, are you better?”

Patricia nodded, but then wished she'd thought of saying no so she could go back to bed.

Aunt Ginnie carried in cocoa as Kelly and Trevor burst through the door, out of breath and giggling.

“What's green, red and yellow and rides up and down?” Trevor asked his grandmother.

“I have no idea, pet.”

“A pickle, a tomato and a banana in an elevator.”

The laughing group settled around the fire. Patricia stroked Peggy's head for comfort. Once again, everyone was feeling cheerful except herself.

“You remind me of Wilfred with your fooling, Trevor,” said Nan. “He loved practical jokes. Once he disguised his voice and telephoned our house to apply for a job as a maid. Mother was completely taken in, until he told her he had to be paid in cigars!”

“Who's Wilfred?” Maggie asked her. “Do I know him?”

Once again, Patricia heard about Wilfred. Over the years, however, the story had become elaborated: Wilfred had died the very day of the wedding. Nan's voice gloated over the details as if the memory were an aching tooth she kept prodding. Even through her misery, Patricia couldn't help feeling a glimmer of pity for the sentimental, disappointed old woman.

Kelly yawned obviously and Aunt Ginnie looked worried. “Now, Mama, that's enough about Wilfred. What's past is past …” She nodded knowingly towards the children.

But Nan couldn't seem to stop. She began to tell Maggie, the only one who was really listening, about the watch Wilfred had given her. Patricia had been dozing, curled up against the warm dog. Now her stomach lurched again.

“It was a Half Hunter,” said Nan dreamily. “It had a glass window so you could read the hands without opening it and it was fourteen carat gold. But it was lost years ago.”

“How did it get lost?” asked Maggie.

“Through my own carelessness …” Her voice drifted to a stop.

Trevor put a new log on the fire and it spat and popped as it flared up. Outside on the lake a loon cried faintly. Patricia shuddered. She could change that sad look on Nan's face—if she gave her back the watch.