“I have not the slightest doubt.”
They ambled across the grass to the house and stepped up onto the porch.
“It seems deserted,” said Morgan, looking at the faded crewelwork hanging lank beyond small panes of glass in the door. They moved to the edge of the porch and gazed beyond the pond to where the river emerged from a channel in the marsh. “Carp and koi,” he said, not feeling the need to explain the equation. “Imagine this river teeming with koi.”
“They used to shovel them out in the spring for fertilizer.”
“Carp?”
“Out of the streams when they were swimming to spawn.” Miranda touched his arm. “Do you really think my coat’s too big? It was the only one I tried on.”
“I like it.”
“Good. I like it, too.”
They turned back to the door that strangely projected an emptiness inside. As they were about to knock, it swung open.
“I’ve been observing you,” said an elderly woman, not at all what they expected. She was slender, small, bright, absolutely solid on her feet, and smiling. “It’s a lovely view. You two seem to be having a very good day.”
Thrown off guard, Miranda blurted, “Do you know Molly Bray?”
“Of course, dear. She’s my granddaughter. Come in and have some tea. The water’s near boiling already.”
10
Crayfish, Walleyes, and Pike
“Let me describe her,” the old woman said, blowing across the top of her cup. She looked from Morgan to Miranda and back again, then talked into the space between them. Her voice was warm, embracing the past, inviting them to share in her affection, while her eyes moistened with images visible only to her.
“She was an angel and a devil, Molly Bray. It would make your head spin. As a wee girl, she’d march along beside you like nobody’s business. She wouldn’t hold your hand, mind you, but she’d be close enough you could feel her little body against your leg. Do you know she had her own garden? She wouldn’t let me help. She grew a whole garden of radishes one year.”
“She lived here with you?” Miranda asked, sipping her tea, trying to be as subtle as possible about straining the loose bits through her teeth.
“Oh, yes, from an infant. She was such a good baby …”
“Where was her mother?”
“She didn’t have a mother. What’s your name, dear?” They had introduced themselves when they came in, but the old woman was busying herself with tea paraphernalia and hadn’t paid attention.
“I’m sorry. I’m Miranda Quin. This is David Morgan. We’re —”
“She didn’t have a mother and she didn’t have a father. In those days we looked after our own.”
“That wasn’t so long ago, Mrs. …?” Morgan asked. The woman had neglected to give them her name, the tea ritual taking precedence over niceties apparently deemed less important.
“Former times. I’m thinking of my parents’ day. When you don’t have a family of your own, you do that. I’m Miss Elizabeth Clarke. I’m an old maid. I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Morgan. Would either of you like a dash of hot water?”
“No, thank you,” said Miranda and Morgan simultaneously.
“I have my tea mailed to me directly from England. This one’s Lapsang Souchong. Do you like it?”
“It has a distinctive flavour,” said Miranda. Morgan, who wasn’t so diplomatic, said nothing.
“If you’d prefer, I have some Tippi Assam.”
“You buy it in England?” asked Morgan, succumbing to the notion he had to say something on the subject. “Are you English?”
“Yes,” said the old woman. “Seven or eight generations back. Depends on whether you follow my moth-er’s side or my father’s. I’ve never been there. No desire to go. It’s all Jane Austen and Charles Dickens in my mind, and that’s how I like it. And Winston Churchill and Twiggy.”
Morgan took a deep breath over his teacup. The odour of hot asphalt gave way to an aroma of damp winter evenings warmed by the embers of an open fire.
He looked around. There was only a space heater, smelling faintly of rancid oil. Maybe Miranda was wrong. This house, a cottage, really, must have been built after the advent of cast-iron stoves.
Elizabeth Clarke watched him as he surveyed the small room. She had lived here all her life and her mother before that, and her people before that. She knew what he was thinking.
“There was a fireplace in the back wall. It was filled in. Caused a dreadful draft. The iron pot-belly was better, but it leaked smoke. Then we replaced it with another made from steel. It’s still out back. After that we brought in a modern oil burner. I suppose most heat with electricity now.”
“I suppose they do,” said Morgan.
He was enchanted by how comfortable she was among the generations that had lived here and died. Strangely, it was a bit like he felt himself in the subterranean depths of the Griffin house. That was something he admired about Europe — how people lived less on the surface of history than in its midst, as if it were a place, not a line of descent. “How did you —” he began to ask.
“Because you’re from the city, Mr. Morgan. You expect a fireplace in an old house like this. Now the young lady, she knew better. She’ll be from a small town, I imagine.”
“Waldron,” said Miranda.
“The Griffins had a mill there, too,” Elizabeth Clarke said. “Not many log houses over your way. You mostly built with stones from the fields before hauling in brick when the Grand Trunk went through.”
That would have been in the 1880s, Morgan observed to himself.
“I’d be happy to let you try several,” she said. “You seem like a young man of good taste.”
Morgan was disconcerted for a moment, then realized she was talking about tea. “Thank you, no.”
“Some other time perhaps.”
Miranda was sure the old woman was flirting with her partner. Elizabeth Clarke must have been in her eighties. She had exquisite ankles and crossed them proudly in front of her for Morgan to admire. The old woman kept adjusting her posture, re-crossing her ankles a couple of times. Miranda and Morgan felt comfortable in the embrace of Elizabeth’s Clarke’s ramshackle home that from the outside had seemed virtually empty. She welcomed the invitation their patience affirmed and continued her narrative.
“In her teens Molly was a magical creature. Bright as a whip, determined. My gracious, she did homework like it was fun. She’d make surprises for me in home economics, cooking and sewing and crafts. She taught herself to knit one winter and made me a sweater better than I could have done, and she brought animals home. She always had a wounded chipmunk around or a frog half-chewed up, or crayfish in my good crystal bowl under her bed. Once she rescued a duck with no skin on its neck. A big snapping turtle got hold of it, and she waded right in there and rapped the turtle smartly with a stick. That duck’s neck was as bare as a skinned chicken, but she wrapped it in a rag full of Vaseline and kept it beside her bed. And, can you believe, it lived and went back with the other ducks, only they always made it swim behind. When they walked across the lawn, the ducks all in a line — they did that to take a shortcut from the pond to the marsh — that little duck would bring up the rear. Sometimes it would veer over to where we were sitting on the porch, maybe shucking some corn or peas from the garden, depending on the season, and it would stop right in front of Molly and give her a big quack. Then it would scramble on through the grass to catch up with the