Extreme Vinyl Café (9 page)

“On his birthday?” asked Stephanie, pocketing the paper bag.

“His execution day,” said Dorothy, marching off.

T
he days passed in a whirl. They were up early. They went to bed late. Dorothy never stopped moving.

They walked through parks and gardens; they sat in squares; they waited out rain showers in bookshops. They bought their lunches at little fruit markets. Stephanie eventually gave up trying to work out whether she was hot or cold, or if it was about to rain or clear. She was constantly putting on or taking off her new Marks & Spencer cardigan.

T
hey went to the Royal Stables and saw the carriages, and to the Tower and saw the jewels, and to Hampton Court
and to Runnymede. They also went to see where the Marquee Club used to be, where Dave hadn’t seen the Beatles.

“Your father is a good man,” said Dorothy. Then, to herself, she muttered, “A little off, perhaps.”

On their last night in London, they had dinner in a small pub. Cornish pasties: potato, steak, turnip and onion pies.

“My grandfather Charles loved these,” said Dorothy. “He took me to the parade on VE day.”

“VE day?” said Stephanie.

“Victory in Europe,” said Dorothy. “The end of the war.”

And then she reached out and said, “You don’t eat that part, sweetie.”

The half moon–shaped pie had a thick rippled crust. “The Cornish miners used to take these for their lunch. Sometimes they had meat at one end and fruit at the other. The crust was so they could hold them without washing their hands. The crust is just a handle.”

Stephanie put the crust down on her plate.

“You were telling me about VE day,” said Stephanie.

“We were on the Mall,” said Dorothy. “Right across from the royal stand.”

“Could you see the queen?” asked Stephanie.

“You mean the king,” said Dorothy. “We could see him very easily. Very easily. And Mr. Churchill too. You used to see them all the time. The girls especially. Elizabeth and Margaret. They were always opening gardens and things like that. People seemed to know where they were going to be. There would always be a little crowd. The girls had such beautiful complexions. The English-rose complexion. They were much more beautiful than their photographs. There was not a
tremendous amount of security. If you saw a little crowd, you could join in.”

“And the parade?” said Stephanie.

“Oh,” said Dorothy. “We got there at three in the morning. That’s why we got such a good place. We had a Thermos of tea. We sat on the curb drinking tea and eating oatcakes. By the time the bands came, the crowd was so big you were just moved along with them. It was like the ocean. I was swept away by the crowd and I lost my grandfather.”

“Were you scared?”

“Oh, no. It was the end of the war, dearie. Everyone was so
happy
.”

“But
you
were lost.”

“But I was found again,” said Dorothy.

Dorothy reached across the table and picked the pie crust off Stephanie’s plate.

“Are you finished with this?” she said. Not waiting for a reply, she finished it herself.

T
hey waved down a cab to take them back to their hotel. It was dark. As they bumped along, Stephanie asked Dorothy about the years after the war.

“Everything was grey,” she said.

She pulled a little package of cookies out of her purse. She held them out.

“Squashed fly biscuit?” she asked.

It was a soft cracker with raisins. Stephanie took a biscuit, and they ate quietly, and then Stephanie said, “You were telling me about after the war.”

“We won,” said Dorothy. “But you wouldn’t think it. There was nothing to eat. We were on rations. We got one egg a month. One each. So two eggs. Mother used to put them on the mantel, and we would talk about how we were going to cook them.

“You had to line up for everything. If you saw a line, you would get in it and ask what you were lining up for afterwards. They would tell you,
tomatoes
, and you would wait for an hour, or maybe two, and when you got there they would give you two tomatoes.”

Stephanie was peering out the window; they were going by Buckingham Palace. Dorothy didn’t seem to notice.

Dorothy was saying, “
We
were better off than most. We used to get packages from my aunt Betty in Canada. Tins. Butter or meat. Once they sent eggs sealed in lard. But they had gone bad.”

“You had an aunt in Canada?” said Stephanie.

“Cape Breton,” said Dorothy.

“That’s where my grandmother lives,” said Stephanie, staring across the dark cab.

“Your grandmother
Margaret
,” said Dorothy.

“How did you know?” said Stephanie.

“Because Margaret is my cousin,” said Dorothy, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. “Betty, who sent the food, was Margaret’s mother.
Your
great-grandmother.
My
aunt.”

Stephanie looked dumbstruck. “If your aunt was my great-grandmother—that means we
are
related.”

Dorothy snorted.

“I mean closely,” said Stephanie.

The taxi had pulled up in front of the hotel. Stephanie stood on the street while Dorothy paid the driver. Her head was spinning.

She
called
Dorothy her aunt, but she knew Dorothy wasn’t
really
her aunt. She had known there was some connection, but she always thought it was distant and dubious. It had never dawned on her that she and Dorothy actually shared a past.

They went into the hotel but not to their room. As they stood in the lobby, Dorothy said, “I think we should have a whisky, don’t you?”

The hotel bar was almost as small as their bedroom. Three tables, maybe four.

Stephanie said, “I can’t believe you know Grandma.”

“Of course I know Margaret. I got a letter from her last month. What are you thinking? Of course we are that closely related. You are my first cousin.”

“I am?” said Stephanie.

“Twice removed,” said Dorothy, waving at the barman for another whisky.

Dorothy leaned forward. She said, “I think we should drink these until we fall over.”

Stephanie picked up her drink and started to say something. Her voice cracked. She took a sip and tried again.

“What did you mean when you said everything was grey?”

“Oh yes,” said Dorothy. “I was going to tell you how grey everything was. Mother used to wash my clothes in the sink and it used to turn the water black.”

Stephanie frowned.

“It was the coal dust, dearie,” said Dorothy. “It was everywhere. Even your underwear made the water black.

“Didn’t they ever tell you about the fogs?”

Stephanie shook her head, no. No one had told her about the fogs. Dorothy sighed. She said, “I have to do everything in this family.”

“It was 1952,” said Dorothy. “The coldest winter we had ever had. I was a little younger than you are today. We had to wear our coats and hats in class. The men in the offices sat all day in their coats too. You never took off your coat. At night my mother and I would sit around the gas fire in our clothes with a wool dressing gown over our clothes, and a scarf, and a hat. One night the water froze in our toilet bowl.

“What was I talking about?”

“The fog,” said Stephanie.

“Oh,” said Dorothy, “yes. It came at night. It was so thick. I remember one night Ellen Macdonald came for supper, and when it was time for her to go, and my mother opened the door and Ellen stepped outside, she was completely swallowed by it. She just took one step, and she disappeared. You have no idea. You have never seen anything like it. I was afraid Ellen wouldn’t be able to find her way home.

“It lasted four days. Later we learned it was from all the coal fires, and it was very toxic. But we didn’t know then. And people were so cold they kept burning their fires. No one knew. And then people started to die. That’s how Charles died.”

“My
great
-grandfather,” said Stephanie.

“Great-
great
-grandfather,” said Dorothy. “He went to the hospital. He had to walk because you couldn’t see to drive. If you were driving, you had to have someone walking in front of you. The hospitals were full. They sent him home again. He turned blue. It’s true,” said Dorothy, “I was your age. I saw it.”

“You were my age,” said Stephanie quietly. She was looking at Dorothy, but she was talking to herself.

S
tephanie flew home two days later. She sat in a window seat with a porcelain hedgehog in her lap. That night in the hotel bar, she’d asked Dorothy to put her name on the entire hedgehog collection. Dorothy had made her take one home.

Stephanie stared out the window during the entire flight. She didn’t watch the movie or say a word to the man in the seat beside her. An uncommon melancholy had settled upon her, like a sorrow from long ago. It was the oddest feeling. As if there was something she was supposed to remember.

About four hours into the flight, the pilot announced they were flying over Cape Breton. Stephanie was full of questions. Where would she be today if her great-grandmother hadn’t gone to Cape Breton? What if she had gone to Australia instead? Or South Africa? And Charles, who had turned blue and died of fog. She wished she could meet Charles. She felt if they could meet in the little bar in Durrants Hotel, he would tell her something important.

She had never thought about the web of influences spun around her, the long line of connective tissue. The bigness of it all diminished her and filled her with a sense of wonder all at once. For the first time, she felt a connection and responsibility to other generations. Those who had been. Those yet coming.

When the plane touched down, she handed her hedgehog to the man in the seat beside her. As they taxied toward the terminal, she pulled her sweater off and wrapped it carefully
around the hedgehog and then gently tucked it into her knapsack.

“It’s very old,” she said to the man beside her. “It used to belong to my great-aunt. Three times removed.”

Dear Mr. McLean,

My husband and I are having a tremendous blow-up right now, and we’ve decided that we need an arbitrator to sort things out. We were looking for someone with a keen critical ability, sound judgment and true wisdom. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find anyone like that. The other day, listening to your show on the radio, my husband piped up and said, “What about Stuart McLean? He seems like a guy with time on his hands.”

So, we are coming to you with this question: When our time comes, should we be cremated or have a traditional burial?

Awaiting your response,
Emily

Dear Emily,

Personally, I have no intention of passing away, so I haven’t given the matter of burials much thought. My friend Dave, however, has. Here’s his story.

B
illy London called Dave at lunchtime. Any other Monday Dave might have missed his call, but not this Monday. This was a Monday in the middle of February, and it had been snowing all day. No one had been in his store for a couple of hours, because no one was out. And who could blame them? Dave wasn’t about to go out either.

When Billy phoned, Dave was sitting in the comfy red chair by the cash register, his feet propped on a milk crate, a cup of soup balanced on the arm of the chair. He was multi-tasking, reading a music magazine from LA and listening to a new vinyl album—a tribute to Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young recorded by a couple of young bands.

When the phone rang he scooped it up and said, “Just a minute.” He reached over to the turntable and flipped up the tone arm; then he picked up the phone again.

“Billy?” he said. “Long time. What’s up?”

Billy got right to the point. He said, “Aunt Ginger died, on the weekend. You’re the only guy I could think of phoning. I thought you’d want to know.”

Dave said, “Huh.”

Billy said, “Yeah.”

Then neither of them said anything.

It was Dave who broke the silence. “Did she make it? She must have made it.”

Billy said, “No. She missed by four months. Three and a half, actually. Funeral’s on Thursday. I thought you’d want to know. I already said that, didn’t I?”

Aunt Ginger wasn’t Billy’s real aunt. She was a family friend of some sort. She had a house in Rosedale, and lived there alone. When Billy slipped over the border at Niagara Falls in 1968, dressed like a priest, she invited Billy to stay with her. He moved in for the better part of seven years. Or he kept his stuff there anyway. Billy played sax and was on the road all the time.

That didn’t bother Aunt Ginger one bit. She was a piece of business—as tough as nails, and determined to live to be a hundred. She missed by three and a half months.

“Ninety-nine and three-quarters,” said Billy. “It would have killed her to know that.”

“How’d she die?” said Dave.

“Skiing accident,” said Billy.

“Skiing?” said Dave.

“Well, snowboarding, actually,” said Billy. “If you are going to be technical.”

B
illy and Dave sat together at the funeral, which turned out to be an altogether extraordinary affair.

It was organized by Aunt Ginger’s only living relative—her older sister, Muriel. Muriel sat in a wheelchair at the front of the chapel as stiff as a plank. The two sisters hadn’t spoken in twenty years.

It was Muriel who chose the reading: Raymond Chandler; Muriel who chose the decorations: balloons; and Muriel who chose the music. Muriel, who knew nothing whatsoever about music didn’t know what to say when the funeral director asked her what they should play, so she asked what most people did. The funeral director said most people chose a classical piece. Muriel named the only classical piece she knew: “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

When the music began, everybody in the congregation looked horrified—except Billy and Dave.

“Not bad, actually,” whispered Dave to Billy, as the piece picked up speed.

“Perfect, actually,” said Billy, nodding. “In so many ways.”

T
he funeral was so awkward and wonderfully inappropriate that Dave couldn’t stop talking about it for days.