Playing Sarah Bernhardt. Joan Givner

aunt of my own did the very same thing. DON: But couldn’t she have been her own daughter, born out of wedlock? SPEAKS: Well, Aunt Augusta was a lively old girl and it was said in the family that the girl bore an uncanny resemblance to the butler.... DON: No, I don’t mean your aunt. I mean Mazo. SPEAKS: (laughing) Oh, Mazo? Was the daughter hers? Not a chance in hell. DON: Why ever not? SPEAKS: Mr. Donaldson, you never met Mazo. She was, how shall I say it, not a womanly woman. She was masculine, or sexless, rather. Certainly not attractive to the opposite sex ... not the type to appeal to a man at all. DON: But tastes do vary in these matters. SPEAKS: Do they, Mr. Donaldson? May I say something, man to man, and with no offence intended? It seems to me that your natural inclination is towards the novel form. The Gothic novel. And, as someone with a good sense of the current publishing scene, I have to say that the market in costume Gothics has never been better. It’s always brisk. Much better, in fact, than the market in biography — unless you have a sensational life, with some bizarre forms of sexuality. That always sells, of course. But my advice to you, my dear fellow, is to try your hand at a novel. Or a play. DON: Maybe someday. But at the moment, Mazo has her teeth in me. She’s cast a spell on me somehow, and I can’t shake it. When I read her novels I feel there must be a story behind them, a story in the person who wrote them. They’re the novels of someone with a fund of experience, someone who understands — well — passion, sensuality, adventure. SPEAKS: I’m a Harvard man myself, Donaldson, and inclined more to restraint than to colourful judgements. DON: I keep coming back to the rumours that were never put to rest. The child, for example. You say she couldn’t have been Mazo’s. What about Caroline? Did she appeal to men? Was she attractive? SPEAKS: Caroline? Oh very. Oh, yes indeed. In fact, I — DON: Well, there you are. Surely she holds the key to everything? SPEAKS: She holds the key to everything, but she won’t let anyone near the door. She’s very secretive. Even more secretive than Mazo. And besides, she sees almost no one. DON: Except the daughter? SPEAKS: Perhaps not even her. Antoinette was estranged from Mazo for years. It’s always just been Mazo and Caroline. DON: Mazo and Caroline. SPEAKS: It’s Caro-line, by the way, not Caro-lyn. Mazo had a very particular way of pronouncing it, as if she wanted to hang on to every syllable. Caro — LINE. I can hear her now, calling out the name with that special inflection she had — Car-O-line. Car-O-line.

      “You seem to be very interested in this Mazo de la Roche,” the librarian said one day as she stamped Harriet’s book for the umpteenth time. “Is she any good?”

      “It’s not Mazzo, it’s May-zo,” Harriet said before she could catch herself.

      “My,” said the librarian, “you are well informed, aren’t you? And how did you know that?”

      “My aunt Nina told me,” Harriet said. What she really wanted to say was “My aunt knows her,” but that would have been showing off, and besides it was not strictly true. Her aunt didn’t actually know Mazo, she just knew all about her. Harriet had almost the same conversation with her English teacher in school. But unlike the librarian, the English teacher had read some of Mazo’s books. She said she liked them on the whole but she had “some reservations.”

      “Oh, like what?” Harriet asked.

      “A bit too much sex,” the teacher said, looking first to the left and then to the right and lowering her voice.

      Her aunt finally arrived the next spring bringing presents for all of them. She brought Harriet some new clothes and Mazo’s latest book. It was called Variable Winds at Jalna. There weren’t many opportunities for Harriet to be alone with her aunt, the odd stroll around the neighbourhood or to the corner grocery store, but whenever she could shake off her sister and her mother, she plied her aunt with questions about Mazo and Caroline and their daughter, Antoinette. They had now sold the mansion in England and lived in a big house outside Toronto. Mazo and Caroline had made a trip out to Vancouver, but Antoinette hadn’t come with them because she was in boarding school. Her aunt answered her questions thoughtfully and seriously, as if the subject was just as important to her as it was to Harriet. They discussed boarding school, both of them agreeing that Antoinette probably enjoyed being with girls her own age, and speculating about the sports she might play. Harriet, who had read lots of stories about boarding schools, thought she probably played lacrosse.

      And then quite suddenly it all ended. Harriet, scheming to be alone with her aunt and often sneaking into the bedroom she’d been obliged to vacate to make room for her, hadn’t been monitoring the barometric pressure of tension in the house. And so she was oblivious to the growing storm between her mother and her aunt until it finally erupted.

      Her aunt’s present to her father was a bottle of Scotch whisky, and she usually joined him for a glass of it after they’d had their supper. The bottle sat on the sideboard all day, and her mother scowled at it every time she dusted. Harriet could still see the label — Mortlach — because it was the same name as a small town on the highway that they passed on their way to Swift Current. When the row broke out, it had something to do with the Mortlach, and something to do with the book her aunt had brought her. It began innocently enough, all of them sitting around the living room, her dad and her aunt on the sofa with their glasses of whisky, and Harriet herself sitting on the floor beside them with Variable Winds at Jalna on her lap. Her mother looked up from her knitting and said she was doing so much reading she was going to put her eyes out if she didn’t look out and end up wearing glasses.

      “Reading won’t do her any harm,” said her aunt, who usually avoided contradicting her mother. “In fact, it will help her with her education.”

      “What education?” her mother said.

      “There’s no reason she shouldn’t go to college,” her aunt said. “She’s smart enough.”

      “She sure is,” her dad said, smiling at her. “She’d make a good teacher.”

      “And what’s the use of going to college for three or four years,” her mother said, “when all she’s going to do at the end of it is get married? Waste of time and money, if you ask me.”

      “Even if she does, it’s good to have something to fall back on,” her aunt said.

      “Well, let’s hope she’ll behave herself, then she won’t need anything to fall back on,” her mother said pointedly.

      “Oh, right, it slipped my mind. Getting married will provide her with everything she wants, just like it did you.” And her aunt