Turtle Valley (12 page)

April 15th
This man continues to show a slow improvement. He says that he likes the quietness of the ward and feels better. He claims that he was continually hounded by someone or something that followed him about the farm, threatening him harm, and that here he is “left alone.” When questioned further about the nature of this person or thing that was following him, the patient refused to answer.

May 4th
In a letter to his wife today, this patient shows marked persecutory ideas in regard to the people in their vicinity. He asks her not to associate with them as they are all rotten. He also warns her to stay out of the bush, that there is something out there that might harm her. His physical condition remains fairly good.

June 15th
This patient was again brought to the attention of the Clinic today.
DIAGNOSIS: TRAUMATIC PSYCHOSIS.
For verbatim, see separate sheets.

Ward Notes

Verbatim taken by Dr. Spears

1945

June 15th

Q.
Where were you born?

A.
In England. Nottingham, Nottinghamshire.

Q.
Is your father dead or alive?

A.
I never knew him.

Q.
And your mother?

A.
She died giving birth to me. My grandmother raised me.

Q.
Any siblings?

A.
No.

Q.
What is your wife’s name?

A.
Maudie. Maud.

Q.
How many children have you?

A.
Two. Beth and Dan. Dan joined up last year.

Q.
Is Beth still in school?

A.
No. She’s seventeen. She works with me on the farm.

Q.
How long did you go to school?

A.
I was taken home to work when I was twelve. I was milking morning and night. Then my grandfather died when I was fourteen and the farm was sold to pay debts so I went to Eastwood Collieries and served my time there.

Q.
What for?

A.
No, no, not jail! I was in the mines, driving the ponies down into the pits. Into the bloody dark. You had to force the ponies down, you see, anyway you could. Kick them, poke them, whip them down. But I had one named Charlie that would only go down for me, and not for the other drivers. I kept sugar cubes in my pocket for him. But then a runaway dram got him. The both of us heard it rumbling at us but there was only time enough for me to press myself up against the rock before it rammed past me; I couldn’t get Charlie out of the way. The dram flung away the oil lamp I was holding and thundered right into Charlie. I could hear him groaning in the dark until they found us. After that I came to Canada.

Q.
Where did you go to first?

A.
I went to a place called Toronto. But I couldn’t find work that paid so I came west to work in the mines. Then I got it in my head to go back home to find a wife, so I joined up here and they sent me over.

Q.
You were injured in the war?

A.
A shell hit close by, and buried me. There was dirt in my mouth, in my nose. I thought I was dead. But then a second shell exploded and tossed me out of that hole and shot me through with shrapnel. There were a lot of men buried that way.

Q.
You say shrapnel hit you?

A.
Tore open my head. They put a metal plate in. Here, you can see the scar.

Q.
And you convalesced in England?

A.
At first, yes. That was how I met my wife. She was an ambulance driver, you see. Drove me from one hospital to another.

Q.
I gather that was the end of the war for you.

A.
They sent me back here to convalesce. My wife joined me some time later, after the war ended. She’s had to look after me ever since. We got this farm at Turtle Valley—

Q.
Turtle Valley?

A.
It’s a valley between Salmon Arm and the village of Promise, where I would be out of the way, where I wouldn’t cause trouble. It’s been hard for her, you know, to care for me all these years. I wish to God I’d been blown to bits in the war and been done with it.

Q.
You don’t mean that.

A.
Yes, I do! What use am I to anyone? What use am I to Maud? I can’t even build her that damn greenhouse, much less a decent house. If I could just get that house done for her.

Q.
You’re building her a house?

A.
I had the plans drawn up, you see. But we need a good well. I keep digging on the place. If I could just find a good well, then I could start building the house for Maudie. For Maudie and me. And Beth, and Dan if he comes home. He’d come home, I think, if we had a decent house. Something I could leave him. That Maud could be proud of. She’d see I was worthwhile then.

Q.
You don’t think she sees that now?

A.
The whole problem is that the people who live near me are such ignoramuses. They do things to make me look bad in front of my wife, to make me look incapable.

Q.
How so?

A.
Like Valentine. He knows Maudie wants a greenhouse. So he takes advantage of this situation, me being in here, to build it for her. I was going to build it for Maudie. I was getting to it. I just have all these headaches, and then I have to spend the day in bed. But I can do it. I would have done it. Now he’s gone and
built the thing and made me look bad in front of Maudie, made it look like I can’t ever finish things.

Q.
I understand you’ve been quite frightened; that you felt someone was following you. This neighbour perhaps?

A.
No, not him.

Q.
Then who?

A.
I don’t know. It’s something, in the bush, always watching me, following me, coming after me. Never letting me get a moment’s peace. I just can’t stand it. I get so I don’t want to go outside. I don’t want Maudie going outside either, but she does. The cows have to be brought down, you see, for milking. I don’t want her going into the bush.

Q.
So, was that what frightened you this time?

A.
Well, there was that thing in the bush.

Q.
The thing you just mentioned? Following you?

A.
No, no. It was one of them Japanese balloons. A spy balloon, come to watch me.

Q.
To watch you?

A.
And it crashed, I guess, before it could report back with whatever it found out about me. Then some men came and blew it up, to hide the evidence.

Q.
Men came to blow the balloon up. That was spying on you.

A.
Yes! It made a terrible noise. I don’t remember much after that.

Q.
Your daughter and your wife are frightened of you … Mr. Weeks? I said your wife is frightened of you.

A.
I heard you.

Q.
That comes as a surprise?

A.
Why would Maud be scared of me?

Q.
I understand you threatened her and your daughter with a gun.

A.
No!

Q.
The police report says they were frightened of you and tried to leave and that you threatened them with a gun.

A.
I wouldn’t hurt Maudie! She knows I wouldn’t hurt her! Why would she be scared of me?

Q.
Evidently you also threatened your neighbour.

A.
Valentine came at me and I thought he was going to shoot me and I just lost control of myself.

Q.
What did you do?

A.
I don’t know. That’s what I would like to find out.

I READ MY GRANDFATHER’S LETTER
to my grandmother again: …
each piece made me think of you, how you test the fudge rolling it between your fingers in a bowl of water & how you feed it to me in the kitchen if Beth isnt there. how you let me lick that sweetness from your fingers.
It seemed so unlikely that my grandmother would do this; these weren’t the actions of the reserved woman my mother had painted in her stories.

I tucked my grandfather’s files back in the envelope, then retrieved the carpetbag from the box and turned it upside down so the contents spilled to the table. The little pot of rouge. The wallet. The photo of Valentine. The newspaper clipping. A tube
of lipstick. A makeup compact. A comb. Her glasses case. A handkerchief with her initials, M.W. Her coin purse and a handful of coins. A water-warped copy of
The Prophet,
by Kahlil Gibran, landed on top of it all. When I leafed through it, the book fell open to a yellowed envelope tucked into the chapter
On Marriage,
to a page where a section was underlined:
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Inside the envelope was a tattered Christmas advent card from my grandmother’s sister, dated April 6, 1932:

I closed my great-aunt’s card. On the front Santa, dressed in green and not red, stood beside a Christmas tree lit with candles. Tiny numbered flaps covered the whole of the card; each lifted to
reveal a picture—of a reindeer, a soldier, a horn, a spinning top—one for each day of December leading up to Christmas. Why would Sara suggest that my grandmother leave her husband? My grandfather’s illness would have been a difficult load for her to bear, but I wouldn’t have expected a woman of that time to leave a sick husband. In any case, with two young children to care for, where would she go? What would she do? Yet here was this card from her sister, a woman of her own time, who had assumed differently, that she had a choice. I opened the makeup compact and looked in its mirror. Had she contemplated leaving?

Sweet, I wanted something sweet. I went through my mother’s pantry. A yellow tin of Colman’s Prepared Mustard. Heinz sandwich spread. Marmite. Bird’s custard. I shifted the cans around and found a bag of brown sugar. That was what I wanted, penuche, brown-sugar fudge. Searching for the recipe that I knew it contained, I tugged my grandmother’s scrapbook from the top of the fridge and found the page with the tortoiseshell butterfly pressed between its pages, its wings tattered and torn away. The penuche recipe called for:

I buttered the sides of a saucepan near the top, to stop the penuche from sticking as it boiled, and put the sugar and cream into it, stirring with a wooden spoon until the sugar dissolved. Fudge-making was always a finicky process. I never bothered to
make it during rainy weather as it would simply soak up the moisture and wouldn’t set properly. But even in hot, dry weather like this, I couldn’t predict how the candy would turn out until it was done, and often found making it frustrating. And yet, perversely, I was compelled to make the stuff, and to eat it. Eating was now an instinctive act. I ate quickly, mindlessly, and when I was done, I looked down at my plate and thought,
When did I eat this?
I wasn’t present in the act of eating, even when I ate the things I loved, though my body was there, reaching out to plate and fork, to the sweets I made myself, to cooked chicken and buttered bread, to salad greens fresh from our garden, to skinned peaches bathed in their own juices.