Finding My Own Way (18 page)

On my way home I had to steer my bike quickly onto the grass at the side of the road as another fire engine roared past me before I reached the corner, the insignia of the neighbouring township emblazoned on its door. It had to be a pretty big fire, I thought, if they've had to call in extra trucks. I put my feet back onto the pedals. As I turned the corner I could see billows of smoke above the trees. It was a big fire.

What was I thinking! The only houses on the road were the McIntyres' and my own!

The fire chief's car sped by, and I rose off the seat of the bike, pumping furiously. Oh no, I gasped. Oh no, please no!

Flames were leaping higher than the trees when I dropped my bike behind the crowd of onlookers in front of my house. Someone shouted for me to stop, but I dashed past the pumper parked in the driveway, leaping over hoses.

Someone grabbed me from behind. “Wait a minute! You can't go in there, missy!” Strong arms held me.

“It's my house!” I shrieked hysterically, struggling to yank myself free. Where was Ernie? The fireman held me firmly, lifting me bodily back out to the road. I saw the old oak buffet, the hutch and the horsehair settee from the foot of the stairs sitting out in the front yard like pieces in some bizarre auction sale. In that instant, with a burst of sparks, the roof of the house collapsed inward.

Suddenly, Henry and Mrs. McIntyre separated themselves from the crowd and two pairs of arms enveloped me. “Elizabeth! You're okay!” Mrs. McIntyre was crying. “We were so afraid . . .”

“Afraid that you might be inside,” Henry McIntyre finished, clearing his throat.

“I went to the employment office this morning,” I wailed. “I got fired yesterday.” As if that mattered now. I looked around anxiously. “Where's Ernie?”

“He's okay.” Mrs. McIntyre calmed me. “We tied him up at our place. It was Ernie, you know, who alerted us that something was wrong. Then he wouldn't stop running back here, so Henry took him and tied him up.”

Numb with horror, I watched as my house disintegrated in the flames, flattened under the pressure of the water. In no time at all, it was over.

“We couldn't save much, miss,” one of the firemen admitted as they began to pick up their hoses. His face was streaked with soot and sweat. “It had a pretty good start before we got the call. All we got out through the back were two boxes. Nothing inside except paper. Sorry.” Alex's manuscripts.

“How did this happen?” I moaned.

“Won't know for sure till the fire marshal's finished looking,” the man said. “The way it went through the walls and attic, it could have been wiring.”

What difference did it make? The house was gone. Now that the excitement was over, even the onlookers began to straggle off.

“You're coming home with us,” said Mrs. McIntyre, her arm still encircling my shoulders. I was in no position to argue. Henry McIntyre threw a tarpaulin over my few remaining possessions in the yard. The writing table was not among them. Then we all climbed into the truck and drove up the road to the farm.

Ernie let me weep into his fur when I closed the door of the McIntyres' spare bedroom that night. It was only a house, someone had reminded me before we left the scene; no one was hurt. But that little house had been my mother's, and it had been the centre of my world for sixteen of my seventeen years. During all the time I'd been away, this was where my heart had been.

The sun had scarcely set over the scene of the fire before cakes and casseroles and offers of furniture and clothing began arriving at the McIntyre farm. Irene drove up to Pinkney Corners from the city early the next morning, bearing two shopping bags of replacement clothes for me. From Pacey's Drugstore, by special delivery, I got the biggest tin of English toffees I'd ever seen.

“Now that,” declared Irene sarcastically, her hands on her hips, “is something truly useful.” I knew Michael had had no part in choosing it.

After Mrs. McIntyre had satisfied herself that Irene had eaten enough breakfast, we took the dog and walked back down the road for another look. The house was a depressing sight—a sodden mass of charred beams and twisted debris. The chimney bricks had toppled down with the roof and now lay overflowing the bathtub, mute testimony to the intensity of the fire.

Even Irene, who had always been critical of the house, shed a few tears. “Keep the dog back from the ashes, Libby,” she sniffled. “He'll get filthy if he goes in there.”

“If I hadn't come back this summer,” I realized with sorrow. “The house would still be here.”

“Well, we always knew the place needed heavier wiring,” Irene said, poking with a stick at something shiny that had been trodden into the muck. “I am just thankful that it happened when no one was inside.” Her digging had unearthed the brass knob from the front door. She wrapped it it her handkerchief and handed it to me. “A souvenir,” she said.

There was one building left on the property—the stalwart outhouse. Alex had always refused to remove it, in case there was ever a plumbing emergency, and there it stood at the edge of the overgrown garden. A more modern convenience had replaced it, but it alone now remained.

“Imagine that!” exclaimed Irene. “I have half a mind to push it over.”

We walked to the river's edge where, by unspoken agreement, we both sat down. I felt a deep sense of sadness that it would be a long time before I ever sat there again. “I guess now I'll have to go back to Toronto,” I said, putting into words that which neither of us had voiced since Irene's arrival.

“You were coming home in another few weeks anyway,” she said gently. “So it's just a bit sooner.”

“I wasn't coming back, you know,” I said, avoiding her eyes. “I was going to live here. Forever.”

“I doubt that. Once you had to heat the place, you'd not have been able to manage for long.”

“You don't know that for sure, Irene. I was going to work for Mr. Thomas at the newspaper. But now he's had a heart attack, and I have no place to live.”

“Your home is with me, Libby,” Irene's tone was kind.
“And you have school to finish.”

“I have my Grade Twelve. That's as far as you went.”

“That was a different time, dear. You don't want to end up selling notions all your life, do you? Unable to follow your heart's desire?”

I had never heard Irene speak like that before. Her heart's desire, I thought, was the ballet. I had always assumed she was happy with her choices.

“Mr. Pacey thinks I should study journalism,” I announced recklessly.

“Perhaps you should. But you'll need your Grade Thirteen for that.” Irene leaned towards me. “It won't be so bad, will it, coming back with me? I've missed you these last few weeks. We are the only family either of us has.”

There it was. I tossed a shower of small stones into the river and decided that, since we were both a little numb from the fire anyway, this was as good a time as any to tackle the difficult subject. “There's something I need to talk to you about,” I began. Irene gave me an encouraging smile. “I learned something the other day, Irene. A secret. It's about Nan's friend, the Countess, and something she told Alex during an interview.”

“A secret?”

“Did you know the Countess gave up a baby for adoption shortly after she got here in 1919? And that the baby grew up in Pinkney Corners?” I had her full attention now. “The baby's name was Irina. When I first read Alex's notes I wondered if you might have known the Countess' daughter. You were both the same age. But when I heard the rest of the story, I knew.”

“Knew what, dear?”

“I knew that little girl was you, Irene.”

To my chagrin, Irene looked mildly amused. “You do, do you?”

“Yes. The Countess told me that a good friend of hers took the baby and raised her. This friend had another child already. A little girl whose name was Alexandra. Too many coincidences, don't you think?” Irene wasn't saying anything, just smiling an enigmatic smile. “And it doesn't matter to me, Irene. I'll always think of you as my aunt.”

She eased her legs out from under her and leaned back, her weight on her hands behind her. “Now it's time I told you something, dear niece. And you are my niece, you know. Yes, I know that story. Alex told me.”

“Oh, I hoped she had,” I exclaimed. I put my hand over hers. “I didn't want to be the one . . .”

“Your mother was as shocked to hear the Countess tell it as you probably were. The reason Alex never printed the story was because, once she checked the facts—the birth and death registers—she knew it wasn't true. It was totally made up!

“The sad truth is, the Countess' baby died within a few hours of its birth. It was only in the last couple of years, we think, that the Countess concocted this story. Certainly, none of us had ever heard it. But if this little fantasy gave an old lady some comfort, what harm did it do?”

“Her baby died?” I gasped. “Do you think, deep down inside, she knows?”

Irene nodded. “She does. Or did, anyway. Years ago, when I was studying with her, she told me about Irina. She called her her dear departed angel.”

“But today she thinks that you are that daughter, Irene,” I insisted. “Don't you think she wonders why you don't ever visit her?”

“No. Because you see, I'm not supposed to know. She told you herself that it was a secret.” Irene got to her feet, brushing off the back of her slacks. “Come on,” she urged. “Let's get the car. There's something I want to show you.”

Back at the farmhouse, Irene put her head in the door long enough to tell Mrs. McIntyre that we were going out for a while. Then we drove to the other side of the town and, to my surprise, through the gates of the Roman Catholic cemetery. “Alex brought me here last summer,” Irene said, parking the car on an incline and setting the hand brake. “Before she got too sick to leave the house.”

I followed my aunt across the grass, around headstones and monuments. “I hope I can remember where we found it.” She spoke back over her shoulder to me. “Up there, I think. On the other side of those cedars. Your mother and I spent ages looking for it. There was only a small marker, set in the ground and almost covered by the grass.”

We rounded a windbreak of cedar trees. A truck with “Nixon Monuments” stencilled on the side was parked on the roadway, and two workmen looked up as we approached. “Which one are you looking for?” one of the men asked, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

“Balenskaya,” said Irene, checking the grass at her feet. “Irina Balenskaya. It's just a little plaque in the ground.”

“Oh, that's right here.” The man stood the shovel he had been using to remove some sod, against the truck.
“That's the one we're doing. The new stone on the back there is for this grave.”

“Well, isn't that a coincidence!” remarked Irene.

We had moved in for a closer look at the granite headstone on the truck when we heard voices and saw, coming towards us up the roadway, a man pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair.

“Countess!” cried Irene, recognizing her at once and hurrying towards the two. “What a nice surprise!” A bunch of yellow gladiolas lay in the old woman's lap, and as she reached out eagerly to grip my aunt's hand in hers, her wrinkled face broke into a delighted smile.

But it was the man behind the wheelchair who caused me to catch my breath. “Is my nephew Paul,” the Countess announced with pride, “son of my brother Dimitri.” It was the man who had come out of the trees by the river at my house.

“Your nephew.” Irene immediately extended her hand to the man with the dark, curly hair and friendly grin. “Why, that's wonderful! I'm very pleased to meet you.”

“This is girl I tell you about, Paul,” said the Countess. “This is Irene Eaton, my ballet pupil for many years.”

So, I thought, she
does
know this is not her daughter.

“And this is my niece, Libby,” said Irene, drawing me into the fold. The nephew and I studied each other warily. Did he recognize the scared rabbit from a few weeks ago, who had gone into the house and barricaded the doors? The same person who had almost run him down in the hallway at the nursing home?

“Have you come to see new stone?” the Countess inquired.

“It isn't ready yet, Auntie,” the nephew explained, pushing her wheelchair up closer to the truck. “Can you see it there?” He read for her the inscription on the pink granite. “Irina Balenskaya. Born, 1919—Died, 1919.” This was in English, followed by some strange letters. “This word is ‘angel' in Russian,” the nephew translated for our benefit. “Russians use the Cyrillic alphabet.”

“Is nice, is very nice,” murmured the Countess. “After all these years, my little angel will have proper stone. Is Paul's gift.”

We were keeping the workmen from their job so our small group moved away from the baby's grave. “My sister Alex and I came here last summer,” Irene told the Countess. “Alex and I were looking for Irina's marker, after my sister had interviewed you again and you told her about your baby.”

The Countess nodded absently. “Have you met my nephew, child?” she asked. “We have wonderful visit, Paul and me.” She gave the young man another affectionate smile.

“We have met,” Paul acknowledged with a wry look. “Although we didn't exactly exchange names, did we? It was a chance meeting by the river, and I'm afraid I may have frightened you.”

“I was just a little surprised, that's all,” I said, not willing to admit any more to this person.

“I'm sorry if I startled you. I've been hanging around Pinkney Corners for a month. I took a room in town, but it was small, and I couldn't be with Auntie all the time, so I did a lot of walking. I didn't mean to trespass.” He sounded sincere.