But to return to Canada! As the plane sped on through the darkness it was as though a limb, long numbed, regained its feeling. She had had so much to do since Revelstoke began his work on The Golden Asse that even her perfunctory letter-writing had fallen far behind. She had so little time to write, she told herself; in her more honest moments she recognized that she had so little to write that would have made any sense to her readers at home. That had always been the trouble about letters — finding things that her family would be interested in, and of which they could approve. She was no writer. How could she make what she was doing real to her parents? How much could she reveal without bringing, in return, their mockery or a scolding?
The visit to Neuadd Goch, for instance, which was now more than a year behind her. She had told Ma something of it — a very little, really — about the beauty of the countryside, the charm of the house, and the kindness of the Hopkin-Griffiths. Ma’s reply had been sharp enough about “your swell new friends” and strongly disapproving of the news that Monica had been to a Christmas service as offered by the Church of England — “Does this mean you are changing your religion? What do you expect to get from that?” On the whole, it had been politic not to mention her small part in the Matthew Passion, or the perplexities and anguish which it had brought. That was the trouble; you couldn’t tell Ma anything really important without running a risk of hurting her. And it went without saying that her sharpness arose from hurt feelings; question that, and you might find yourself thinking that it sprang from ignorance, jealousy and meanness, which was inadmissible; loyalty could not permit such thoughts.
Loyalty! Monica had not forgotten her protestation of loyalty when George Medwall hinted that she might want to abandon some of the beliefs and attitudes of her family. She had meant it then, and she still meant it. But she had not realized how costly such loyalty might be. She had not foreseen that it could mean keeping two sets of mental and moral books — one for inspection in the light of home, and another to contain her life with Revelstoke, and all the new loyalties and attitudes which had come with Molloy, and particularly with Domdaniel. To close either set of books forever would be a kind of suicide, and yet to keep them both was hypocrisy. As Monica pondered her problem she felt that she was perplexed and tormented unendurably; but anyone looking at her on the plane might well have thought that she looked uncommonly animated and happy.
Letters were no good as a means of communication. She had written as faithfully and as fully as she could, but there were things which did not belong in letters, and which she would now have a chance to tell her mother face to face. And if her letters were poor and thin, what about the ones she received? Ma’s letters were a record of small facts. . .”thought I’d go to church this morning but did not feel I could tackle the stairs. . . your Dad is patching the linoleum in the upstairs hall, but it don’t hold the tacks like it used & guess will have to think of new. . . Donny is growing like a weed & is cute as a fox & says Ganny plain as plain.” And food, always food! Mrs Gall was a Sunday afternoon letter-writer, and every week contained a description of the Sunday menu . . . “Guess you don’t get eats like that over there Eh Monny?”
More informative were the letters of her sister Alice, now Mrs Charles Proby. Chuck Proby was getting on faster in the service of his bank than he had expected, and he had taken Alice to wife, and abandoned his idea that religion was a lot of crap at the same time. Religion had an important place in a young man’s progress. The Probys, however, had taken a long upward step in the religious world, for they had left the Thirteener fold and associated themselves with the United Church, where a vastly superior group of people were to be met. Their union had been blessed with a son, Donald, and snapshots and detailed accounts of the progress of this wondrous child made up the bulk of Alice’s letters. There was still room, however, for a general, nagging discontent to assert itself. Alice had Chuck and Donny; Chuck had a safe job and prospects; but life did not move quickly enough for Alice, who felt the need for a bigger house and a more important husband and an apparently endless list of labour-saving household devices. She frankly envied Monica, whose luck had been so good, and who had no problems, and nobody to consider but herself.
George Medwall wrote now and then, but less frequently as the months went by. He was getting on. He was saving money. He was sick of boarding-houses. He hoped she was keeping well. He had seen her father, who looked okay. Far, far better were the very rare epistles which Kevin and Alex wrote together, and illustrated with funny pictures. But they were tactful, and urged her not to think it necessary to write in return, though she did so.
Worst of all, when it came to answering them, were the letters from Aunt Ellen, so long, so kind, so loaded with a tremulous curiosity about the richly musical world in which Monica was now living. Aunt Ellen was dying to know all about it and to share it as far as possible. But everything she said made it so plain that Aunt Ellen had hold of the wrong end of the stick, and that the musical world she imagined was that intense, genteely romantic world of The First Violin. And she wanted Monica’s life to be cast in that mould, wanted it so badly that it would have been inexcusable cruelty to disillusion her. There was the danger, too, that nothing must be told to Aunt Ellen which had not also been told to Ma, for Ma was sure to find out, and make trouble. Thus Monica was forced to deny Aunt Ellen the romantic crumbs which she might otherwise have afforded her. If Aunt Ellen knew that Monica was in daily association with a man who was writing an opera, she would be transported; it would give her a real and abiding joy. But if Ma knew, Ma would simply want to know why she saw him every day, and if he slept at the same place that he worked. It was bitter hard work writing to Aunt Ellen.
As Canada drew nearer, however, all of these considerations gave way to excitement and anticipation. Coming down at Gander — wonderful! The coffee was not what the McCorkills would have called “real Canadian coffee”, being that characterless grey drink common to lunch counters in all countries; the Quebec carved figures, and the factory-made beaded moccasins, spoke of no Canada which Monica had ever known; but the genuine uncivil Canadian fat woman behind the counter, and the excellent quality of toilet paper in the Ladies were home-like indeed. And the air, the cool, clear air, which had not been breathed and re-breathed by everybody since the time of Alfred the Great — that was best of all.
On to Montreal and Dorval airport. On to Montreal’s Windsor Station, that massive witness to the love-affair between Canada and its railways. Thence to a train which would carry her to Salterton — a real Canadian train, smelling of carpets and stale cigar-smoke, which toiled and rumbled through the country-side whistling, and ringing its bell, and puffing defiance at anyone who might dare to suggest that it was not really going very fast. Monica rode in the parlour-car, gazing rapturously at the snowy landscape, even while eating her luncheon of leathery omelet and cardboard pie. Yet to her it was the food of the gods, for this was an omelet of Canadian leatheriness, a pie of real Canadian cardboard!
Salterton! But nobody at the station to greet her. Well, of course telegrams which you sent to announce your arrival did have a way of appearing, with every show of smart efficiency, after you had well and truly arrived. She took a taxi to her home.
Dad answered her ring at the bell. He looked older, thinner and very weary.
“Oh God, Monny, it’s good to have you here,” he said. And then, breaking into the tears which he had so long held back — “It looks like we’re goin’ to lose your Ma!”
[THREE]
If it were still the fashion to see ghosts (and it may be asked if such revelations are not a matter of fashion or, if a more pretentious phrase is demanded, of intellectual climate) Veronica Bridgetower would very often have seen the ghost of her mother-in-law, Louisa Hansen Bridgetower. While she had lived, Mrs Bridgetower had worn her large, ugly house close about her, like a cloak. Her spirit was in every room; her will in some way influenced every thought and action on her premises. In his bachelor days Solly had tried to escape her by making an eyrie for himself in the attic; there his bedroom and his workroom and a little washroom had provided him with a complete kingdom; he had but to close the door at the foot of the stair and his mother could not pursue him; her ailing heart had prevented her from mounting those stairs for ten years before she died. But she was there, none the less, and he had always known that every creak of a bedspring and every scrape of a chair was heard and considered by her sharp ears. When he had married, he had brought Veronica to this house. Mrs Bridgetower had pleaded, with the sweet self-abasement possible only to those who are completely sure of their power, that her son and his wife should make their home with her — for if they were to leave her, might she not be frightened in that large house, alone except for her two old servants?