There was an Old Woman (3 page)

To be fair, Brogan Street was more an alley than a street. There were garbage cans, refuse carts and green garbage bags beside the back doors to the stores along St. Andrew Street. A deserted loading bay at the back of Foley's had become an aerie for two yellow-and-black cats, who studied my progress through their territory with contained suspicion.

The Oldridge house was the only building that fronted on this back alley. It was a broken-down, two-storey frame house with a tilting front porch and gable roof. I say the porch tilted; the whole building listed, inclined away from the perpendicular. Behind it I could see the lean-to-like summer kitchen with a shed behind that. The rear of the property was marked by a rotting board fence. The house had been painted white, but I doubted that the painter was still among the living. Great gaps in the paint curled back from the doorposts and siding, exposing weathered wood and constant neglect. The boards protested my weight on the porch as I tried the front door. I didn't really expect to find anyone there, but I knocked anyway: a gesture of appeasement to the household gods.

The door was locked, but it gave when I added a slight pressure to the rusty round doorknob. I pushed it open and my expectation of hearing the hinges squeak was satisfied. Inside, the place was a mess. Newspapers in stacks and in plastic bags stood against the walls as
though they had been driven there by an internal blast of wind. The kitchen was large enough to accommodate a huge wood stove, which trailed black stove-pipes across the pressed-tin ceiling. Fly-paper strands dangled like spotted corpses from a ceiling lamp and from the stovepipes themselves. The sink was full of filth and dishes that were covered by a mossy fungus. I didn't look too closely. In the centre of the floor stood a round wooden table with a faded oil-cloth or plastic covering. A spider had spun a web from an empty wine bottle to a plate on the table. On the plate, something moved, then ran along the table and down a leg. I stood back, trying to concentrate on the faded cloth lampshade that was barely attached to a tall floor-lamp from the thirties. Everywhere, the smell was poisonous.

I shouldn't go on describing the mess I encountered, but I became fascinated. “Mess” hardly covers the territory. I was looking at squalor that had the depth of many years behind it. The rats in the kitchen were generations removed from the pioneers who knew a good kip when they found one. The stench in the blocked plumbing was what my father used to call “pre-war,” which would have made it at least fifty years old. The bedroom at the back was a woollen mass of moths in bliss. A cloud of dust particles stood in a beam of light coming through the back window, revealing a view of outdoor plumbing just a block and a half away from City Hall. Light fell on a clot of discarded clothes and linen that had been pressed into a kind of felt on the floor near the bed. When something
moved in the bed, I took it as a cue to leave bad enough alone. I tried not to run.

Once out in the misty wet, I took a few deep breaths while looking back at the house. Something in me was delighted by the gall of the old lady to pull this off in the middle of Grantham. It takes courage to become an eyesore to all you meet. The house was a wooden sermon on the futility of storing up goods here on earth. Who, in his right mind, could have warned old Liz that she couldn't take it with her?

I rarely take a drink in the afternoon, but after walking through Liz Oldridge's place, I needed one. The Nag's Head was an English pub imitation that had come along some time in the sixties. It did well for a while with the young people, but finally it was left to a few regulars who used to haunt the old Harding House, until they pulled it down. It had a lot of engraved frosted glass on the outside and darts and half-timbering inside. Like all the places in town, they served the same draft beer and all the regular brands. They had tried fancy specialty beer, the imported and the locally made, but the customers only wanted the old stuff, the familiar amber glasses with a few bubbles moving up regularly to the tiny white head on top.

I sat down at a round table near the dark-stained door and ordered a draft, which I downed in a gulp. Without comment, the waiter replaced it. As a non-serious beer drinker, I took my time with this one. It seemed thicker, more tepid, harder to get down, than the first. I looked around me to see who else could spare a few moments for
a beer this soon after the beginning of licensed hours. I was curious. Against the wall sat a man whose face I'd seen before. It was a grey, lined face with red hair that had gone dusty instead of white. I guessed he was about ten years older than me, but, on him, it looked more. It took me a minute to remember that his name was Rupe (short for Rupert) McLay. A few of the boys at the registry office used to call him the “Philadelphia lawyer” and grin at one another. I guess they meant that at one time he appeared to be promising. And then he'd broken his promise. Isn't that the way with promise?

There were a string of empties on McLay's table, which the waiter didn't seem in a hurry to replace. He sat patiently, staring into his beer, not trying to locate the waiter in the room. When the waiter took away my next empty, I indicated the empty glasses across the floor. “Oh, him?” he said. “He only gets one trayful and then he's washed up, old Rupe. He likes to sit and stare at them for a while, then he goes down to the library to have a nap. He's got an office around the corner on King, but I guess they don't let him sleep there.” I looked around at a few of the other customers, who appeared to be close to that happy state.

There was a fug of warmth and cigarette smoke in the air that both cheered and relaxed me. I didn't blame old Rupe either. Even staring into his last glass, at least he knew where he stood and that was something. Rupe looked like he'd just told himself a joke.

Over behind the bar, a woman with red curls baked into her head was filling glasses from the draft tap for the solitary waiter, dangling a cigarette and squinting over her glasses at the Toronto paper. Wherever you lit up in this pub was the “Smoking Area.” A nice arrangement for everybody except a few of us reformed sinners.

“I ain't seen you in here before, Mr. Cooperman,” the waiter said, looking over my head at the door. “You celebrating the death of a rich relative?”

“Does it take a death to get customers in here?”

“Aw, we got enough business. You stay and see the lunch-hour traffic. We get the overflow from the Mansion House. And the nights! You wouldn't believe.” The waiter's flushed and pock-marked face was familiar. I'd seen that blowzy nose on St. Andrew Street for years, without ever knowing where it belonged. He should have worn a plaque on his chest that read: “I've been serving drinks to the thirsty and taking no guff since1952.”

“I'll remember that,” I said, returning to the here and now.

“But to hear Ev talk, you'd swear we hadn't had a customer for peanuts since Easter.” I glanced at the redhead reading her paper behind the bar. She had the concentration of a proofreader.

“Naw,” the waiter continued, as though I was giving him an argument, “I've seen pubs of all sorts and this is making a living. What I meant before, Mr. Cooperman, is you must be off your trap-line. Never saw you in here,
like I said.” He placed a third draft in the centre of my collection of beer rings on the Formica table.

“I was doing some exploring in the alley,” I said. “Wanted to see where Liz Oldridge lived. I was at the inquest over at the court-house.”

“Old Liz?” he said, the grin showing his fillings. “She was a real ringa-dang-doo in her day, was Liz.”

“How do you mean?”

“When she was younger, she used to keep a bunch of young boys on her place, looking after it and all. Orphans, some of 'em, and nobody looked too close at what was happening besides spring cleaning.”

“That must have been a long time ago. I just saw inside the house.”

“Oh, yeah. Police had to put a stop to her. Never got in the papers on account of her father being an alderman and her grandfather a judge. Liz went funny after that, though. Well, I mean, you can see by the look of her house, can't you? ‘Funny,' you know what I mean?”

I had settled in my chair to hear more about the late Liz Oldridge, when an attractive woman in her early forties came into the pub. Without letting her eyes get accustomed to the gloom, she walked directly to Rupe McLay's table, where she hovered, observing him without saying anything. From where I sat, she looked worth Rupe's time. In his place, I would have looked up from the empty glasses. She was wearing expensive clothes, a steel blue suit that hadn't been made on this continent, but the effect was untidy. She had the look of a woman
who had thrown herself together in a hurry. Her jacket hung unfastened and the blouse had been buttoned wrong: I could see a glimpse of white and a pucker of flesh through the gap. She was breathing hard. The waiter winked at the woman behind the bar. To me he said: “Antonia Wishart,” as though that explained everything.

“Who?”

“Missus money-britches. You know: Harlan Ravenswood's girl. Mrs. Orv Wishart.”

“Oh!” I said, mainly to stop the bombardment.
“That
Antonia Wishart. Glad to know.” The Ravenswoods were the local media family: they owned the
Beacon
and the radio and TV stations.

She stood watching Rupe inspect his rare collection of empty crystal goblets for a few minutes before saying his name gently. His chin came up. There was no smile on his face. Who likes being found out, traced to one's hideaway, photographed in living colour with one's pants down? Not McLay, anyway. Soon they were yelling at one another. Soon there was broken glass on the floor and Antonia Wishart was heading for the door full of sudden resolve and anger, while McLay ordered more beer with a smile that successfully covered his anger and guilt. The waiter brought a single draft and swept up the glass.

I went over to the bar to talk and buy some chips. From the woman behind it I learned some home truths about the idiocy of some women who have it in their minds to save some men from themselves. I also learned that Ev, short for Evelyn, wasn't herself but her absent
husband. She was May. She had married Ev after the Renovation. She said Renovation like it was the Renaissance or the Inquisition. She also confided that Bill, the waiter, was depressed because Ev intended to close down the pub in the New Year. I got her talking about Liz Oldridge.

“Liz was a peculiar old 'un, all right,” May said. “She drank too much and never in ten years did I see her eat anything. Kogan looked out for her as well as he could. You know Kogan?” I nodded that I did. “She never had any money and Kogan was next to the poorhouse himself. He stood by her, though. I have to give him that.”

May could tell me little more about Liz or Kogan or what had happened. “They let her die!” she said, waving her hand in an indictment of us all. When I asked about Ramsden, she could add nothing to what I'd heard at the court-house, except that he was above drinking at the Nag's Head.

At the sound of the name “Ramsden,” I thought I saw Rupe McLay's head rise from its stare into nothingness for a moment. I carried my chips back to my beer. Then I got busy with some thoughts of my own. I didn't see McLay get up and carry one of his drafts across the floor to my table. The first I knew of it was feeling the balance of the table top shift. When I looked up it was into that grey, lined face.

“You mind?” he said, trying to bring me into focus.

“Company's always welcome, Mr. McLay.”

“What's your interest in Liz Oldridge?” He had some difficulty getting the syllables in Liz's name in the right order.

“‘Interest' is dressing up idle curiosity,” I said. Then I thought, What the hell? “I'm making a few inquiries for a friend of mine. You know Victor Kogan?”

“Kogan? Yes, I know him. A man of hidden deps— depths, of most excellent fancy.”

“He thinks Liz was starved to death on purpose.”

“He say for what purpose or who did it?”

“Yeah, he says
they
did it.
They
kept her away from her money.
They
got an injunction to keep him away from her.
They
has a lot to answer for. From what I heard this morning at the court-house,
they
seems to be Thurleigh Ramsden.”

“Wouldn't argue with that, Mr. Cooperman. What the hell's your first name? It's Sam, isn't it?”

“No. That's my big brother. I'm Ben.”

“Ben! Or more correctly, Benny! Yes, I've heard about you.”

“And I about you. Grantham's a small world. Did you know Liz?”

“Knew her dead brother. He was my age. We were in Korea together. I saw Lizzy from time to time. She was far gone when I saw her last. I didn't know what the infamous
they
was doing to her and, I guess, she was beyond calling for help.”

We sat and talked for another twenty minutes. He asked me to call him Rupe at one point. “Can you imagine
a mother calling her new baby Rupert?” he asked me, getting a little sentimental. I tried to change the subject, but he had started rambling and I couldn't be sure what he was talking about any more.

“Is the Nag's Head your local pub?” I asked.

“Fixed point. Everything else is variable. Young Devlin is feeling his oats.”

“Who?”

“Kenneth Devlin. Of Wilson, Carleton, Meyers and Devlin. Devlin's is the fresh face. Doesn't much like this old face. Ambitious, that's young Devlin. Julian Newby himself speaks highly of him and you know Julian Newby, QC, doesn't scatter praise on barren ground. You'll grow rheumatic before you hear him sound my praises.”

“I'm not that set up with the innards of the local legal profession, Mr. McLay—I mean Rupe.”

“Your state is the more gracious, I assure you.”

Rupe called for another draft of beer from Bill, the waiter, and was denied. I called for one and slid it across the table. This way I was hoping for more useful information, and I would have had it but for two things: Rupe became even more confused in his talk so that I couldn't tell whether he was talking or reciting things he'd memorized in school and I became very sleepy. Beer does that to me. I could see from the faces of Rupe, Bill and May that I was no credit to the Nag's Head during its last winter season.