Balsam Sirens Page 5

  Hawley looked bewildered, but recovered quickly.

  “No. I wasn’t aware that Harold had died. Please accept my condolences, Mr. Barbour.”

  “It’s evident that we’ve misunderstood something, Mr. Hawley. Could you explain, from your point of view, what led to this meeting?”

  “Yes. Certainly. Last week I was instructed by Harold Barbour to pass these two envelopes to his brother, George. He said specifically that there was no rush, and that sometime within the next ten business days would be fine.” As he said this, Hawley indicated two sealed envelopes lying on his desk.

  George was suddenly pale and withdrawn, probably fearing another experience like the one at the morgue, or even worse.

  “So, you weren’t aware that Harold had died?” I asked.

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  Hawley hesitated here, and before he could carry on, I jumped in again.

  “What is in the envelopes? Do you know?”

  “One of them contains Harold’s will. I don’t know what the other one contains.”

  “Why would Harold want George to have a copy of his will while he was still alive?”

  “I asked him that. He said that he had never spoken to George about his will or what it said, and he just wanted his brother to be aware. So now I’m passing these letters to you, Mr. Barbour”, picking them up and reaching them toward George as he said this, “and I will ask you to sign, acknowledging receipt.”

  George recoiled as though he were being handed a poisonous snake.

  I felt I had to jump in again. “Harold was found dead four days ago on the shore of Balsam Lake, a victim of what the police are calling a boating accident. It has come as an enormous shock to George, and he has asked me to act for him, help him get through this. Do you agree to me taking the letters?”

  “As long as Mr. Barbour signs, I have no problem.”

  I took the form acknowledging receipt that Hawley was holding, looked it over quickly, placed it in front of George while handing him a pen, and asked him to sign. In deep water and unable to touch bottom, George hesitated and cast me the pleading look of an unhappy spaniel. I smiled at him encouragingly, and he took the pen and signed.

  “I’m going to open these now on your behalf, George. Do you agree?” George nodded, wearing a let’s-get-this-over-with expression.

  I opened the will and read. It was simplicity itself. Harold left everything to George, and in an attachment there was a list of the major items: the contents of his rented apartment, his car, the money in his bank accounts, and the contents of his safety deposit box. The other letter contained a single folded sheet of paper. On the sheet were four pairs of numbers:

  -0.0009 0.0199

  -0.0212 0.0168

  0.0113 0.0203

  -0.0053 0.0392

  Nothing else.

  “I’m going to hang onto these for you, George”, I said. Without waiting for a reply, I turned to Hawley. “Could you make a copy of each of these and keep them until I ask for them again?” Hawley nodded, and asked one of his assistants to make the copies.

  For George’s sake, we needed to wrap this up. I thanked Hawley. “If anything further comes up”, I said as I rose, “could you contact me by phone or e-mail?” Hawley nodded, he shook hands with me and then with George, and I ushered George out of the office.

  There were two things I wanted to do practically right away. One of them was to pay a flying visit to Harold’s rented apartment. Harold’s personal effects found in his car, including his wallet and keys, had been sent to Toronto with his body. We had collected them from Cromarty at the morgue, and they were now in the cloth bag I was carrying, since I had hoped to pass them over to George. Change of plan on that. The second thing was to talk to Andrea, and she wouldn’t be thrilled at what I was going to suggest.

  Outside Hawley’s office, I flagged a cab, and we went to George’s apartment, where I asked the cabbie to wait. What we had to do there took only five minutes, thanks to me bullying George and him being in shock. Back in the cab, we drove to Harold’s apartment building. It took a few minutes to find the right keys on Harold’s key chain, but we got into the building, then into Harold’s apartment. I didn’t expect Harold’s flat to be neat and tidy, and it wasn’t.

  The place had been comprehensively ransacked.

  Nine

  “But you don’t even know him!”

  “That’s true, Andrea, but he is my client, and he –”

  “This was supposed to be time off for us!”

  “And it will be. He won’t be in our way. It’s only to get him out of town, and because it’s really not safe to leave him on his own.”

  There was a long eloquent silence.

  “I’ll look after him, Andrea. You won’t need to speak to him or have anything to do with him. He won’t be in our way. I promise.”

  My cellphone abruptly went dead.

  George and I arrived at our condo building. I paid the taxi, took him in the elevator straight to the parking garage, walked with him to my parking space, and asked him to wait in the car. A normal person would have been surprised or offended, but George was meek as a lamb.

  Upstairs in our condo, Andrea was tense and bristly, an earthquake just waiting for a trigger. She grabbed the bag she had packed, leaving mine to rest by the door in telling solitude, then we locked up in silence and walked toward the elevator. The air in the hallway chilled by a good fifteen degrees as we passed through it, and I expected hoar frost to form on the buttons in the elevator. As we approached our car in the parking garage, we could see George sitting in the back seat immobile as a crash test dummy. Andrea cast me a sideways glance that challenged my decision to leave him here, alone, in a soulless parking garage, but I picked up my pace, opened the trunk and put both our bags in it. Andrea climbed into the passenger seat, belted up, and then just stared straight ahead, also well on the way to crash test dummy status.

  It was a long, silent twenty minutes later, and we were on the Parkway, well on our way out of town, before Andrea turned in her seat.

  “Hello, George. I’m Andrea.”

  George jumped, prodded back into an unforgiving reality. His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he could make any utterance, and when it came out the meaning in it was well concealed.

  “I … George … I’m very pleased … my brother … I suppose … you know …”

  I glanced across quickly at Andrea. Although she can be ruthless professionally, a person or an animal in distress brings out her empathy at full wattage.

  “Yes”, she said through a sympathetic smile. “I’m very sorry about your brother. I hope that a few days’ quiet in the country appeals to you. I always find it very refreshing.” Another smile, fuller and brighter this time. I could just see part of George’s face in the rear-view mirror, and a faint smile shimmered behind his features.

  “We can spend some time talking when we get there, George. For now, I hope you don’t mind if I doze a little. It’s been a long few days for me.” Without waiting for a reply, she turned to face forward again, almost immediately slid down in the seat a bit, laid her head back against the headrest, and closed her eyes. Some kind of hypnotic suggestion must have been at work, because within a few minutes I noticed George’s eyelids fluttering, and soon he was asleep in the back seat.

  I drove on in silence. Traffic was light, and the freeway was of no inherent interest, just a means for covering a distance.

  Largs can be reached from Toronto by a number of possible routes. The one I use almost exclusively follows the freeway to its junction with Highways 115/35. From there, the car could practically drive itself. And the route from there always causes me to delve into some corner of my mental scrapbook. As it climbs away from Lake Ontario, the highway passes through a horrific strip of business slum that lines both sides of the road, something that I try to ignore. I concentrate instead on the graceful sweep of apple orchards to the left, and Lake Ontario behind, winkin
g serenely in the sunlight. Mercifully, having the highway bypass Orono spares that lovely village from the fate of gutted congestion that has condemned many others, but for some reason, Orono always reminds me of the life and sad death of the friendliest large cat in the world, Bongo the lion. Beyond Orono, the Ganaraska Forest sleeps to the right, and almost immediately we are into glacial terrain. Here, strong memories often jump up and dance joyfully in my head, and it was all started by Mr. Talbot.

  In fact, Mr. Talbot, my Grade 4 teacher, started a lot of things for me. But it was his discussion of the village of Cameron that first piqued my curiosity, giving me an interest that began when I was ten, and I’m sure will last until I draw my final breath.

  Mr. Talbot said that the village of Cameron is built on a drumlin, and encouraged us to go and look at it sometime. I was mildly curious, I suppose, and at a break in the class, I asked “What’s a drumlin?” That was what began it all.

  It had been a long way to go, but the following Saturday, I did cycle from Largs to Cameron, and then cycled around all its streets trying to get a better impression of the place. I made some rough measurements using the odometer on my bike, and the next day I drew a map of the village and indicated on it where the high points of the land were and how it sloped away. And it is a delightful setting, sweeping gracefully down to the east where Sturgeon Lake dozes in the middle distance, and to the west looking out over a tapestry of rich farmland.

  That was just the beginning.

  A few weeks later, I began wondering about the old lime kilns in Coboconk, since I saw them every time I cycled there. I asked Mr. Talbot. He looked at me in a curiously interested way. We were in the middle of a geography class, and the students were all reading an assignment Mr. Talbot had just handed out, so he and I spoke in whispers.

  “I’m pretty sure”, he said, “that there’s a connection between Coboconk and Largs. Your family probably has something on the history of Largs. You should look it up.” He then walked slowly to the back of the room. I had returned to the reading assignment, but a few moments later Mr. Talbot quietly placed a book on my desk. A slip of paper marked some spot in the book. I placed the book in my satchel, and as I looked up at Mr. Talbot, he winked and smiled. Later that day, I looked at the book at home and saw immediately that something was written on the slip of paper marking Chapter 7, “The Record of the Rocks”. Some words might be difficult. Ask me. G. Talbot. Years later, I thought of that exchange when I began learning the details of how old McCleod had constructed Largs.

  Our progress toward Largs jogged other memories, images of exploration from my youth, many of them also traceable back to Mr. Talbot’s hints and suggestions, but the recollections were of my own solitary explorations, recollections that were brought back vividly by aspects of the landscape drifting past outside. Not until quite late in school had it occurred to me that school and learning could possibly be anything other than fascinating.

  In primary school, I was always on the quiet side. I was good at baseball, but poor at soccer. It was in Grade 5 that I learned a hard lesson about being studious. And that lesson was delivered by the dastardly Mick Ahearn. I don’t know why he took a dislike to me. But he did. Maybe because school was hard for him and easy for me. I found myself being jostled for no reason that I could see, tripped unexpectedly, and checked too heavily in soccer games. Soon, I realized that whenever something like that happened, the smirking, sneering face of Mick Ahearn was not far away. I began taking great care to stay out of his way, but this seemed to make him only more determined to seek me out.

  “What’s wrong?” Mrs. Hastings asked me gently one morning over breakfast.

  “Nothing”, I mumbled. I finished my breakfast quickly, collected my things, and went out to wait for the school bus. The truth was, and I knew it, that for the first time I was reluctant to go to school, and that was a barrier damping my natural urge to satisfy my thirst to learn, something that caused me great anxiety.

  I suspect that Mrs. Hastings guessed what was wrong, and that she spoke to my teachers. In the end, things only became worse. I guessed why. Ahearn must have assumed that I had snitched on him.

  It was a Thursday, and I had stayed to talk to Mr. Talbot. Another boy, John, was at his desk, staying late, doing his homework, probably because it was quieter at school than at his home. I collected my things and left. The school bus had already departed, but it was only four miles to my home, and I could walk that in about an hour and a half.

  Without warning, I found myself on the ground.

  Ahearn.

  That bastard Ahearn was now sitting astride me, grinning maliciously, and showing his rotten front tooth.

  “You need to learn some manners. Real men don’t snitch.”

  “Real men aren’t bullies!” I shouted back without thinking.

  Ahearn’s fist caught me between mouth and nose. I could taste blood from a split lip and warm liquid began running down my cheek. I struggled to push him off me, and almost succeeded. This angered him, and he wound up for another strike. I moved my head to one side, and his fist struck the hard ground instead of my face.

  “Ahhh! You little bastard!” he shouted. His face was twisted in rage as he prepared to deliver another punch.

  But then, suddenly, he fell to one side. I in turn rolled well clear of him, not sure just what had happened, and sat up in time to see a large length of wood hit Ahearn on the side of the head. John stood there, holding the piece of wood, while Ahearn rolled on the ground, moaning, cupping an ear that was now torn and bleeding. John wound up for another strike, but I grabbed his arm and shook my head.

  “Stay away”, John said quietly to Ahearn, the threat being that much more potent because it was so softly spoken. John threw the piece of wood down onto Ahearn, and we walked off, me trying to stem the flow of blood from my nose. But my gratitude to John and the taste of victory had pinched off the urge to cry. By the time I got home, my nose was clean, so to speak. Neither John nor I ever said anything about the brawl to anyone. But I noticed afterwards that I could look Ahearn in the face and he was the one who broke eye contact first.

  We had reached the junction of Highways 35 and 7, just west of Lindsay. A few kilometres further on, we passed through a rock cutting down toward the area where Sturgeon Lake peters out into swamp at its southern end. The rock cutting had significance for me, since it is part of the great limestone cliff that snakes its way through Victoria County. A few miles further on, we rode over the drumlin on which the village of Cameron sits, and I experienced, once more, that inward thrill and smile that I felt all those years ago. After a bit more winding, we passed the turning to Fenelon Falls, rose up over a stub end of the Dummer moraine, and, as always, I was elated by the sweep of Cameron Lake to the right. We passed over the bridge at Rosedale, and then, five kilometres further along, the spire of the little church at Largs came into sight, through some trees on the left.

  I have never had a “normal” return to Largs, and I looked across at Andrea, who was awake, relaxed, and now smiling at my own involuntary smile of arrival. Each return was different, I found, and this time there would be the pragmatic difference of having George with us. In addition, we would meet Kate in a few hours at The Repose in Rosedale, and I could feel myself slipping once again into the welcoming embrace of Largs, this time for a two-week stay.

  Whatever it was I was expecting, it didn’t turn out quite that way.

  Ten

  The entrance to Largs from Highway 35 is to the west along Arran Street, a long curving way lined on both sides by mature maple trees, and between these trees, as a continuing legacy of Mrs. Hastings, grow irregular clumps of daffodils and lupins. In the bright sunlight of our early afternoon in June, the volume of space above Arran Street, enclosed by the maples, was a bath of delicate warm air, tinged in green by the chlorophyll in tens of thousands of leaves, and enlivened by the metallic chatter of several parliaments of sparrows. In the last quarter of its route from Hig
hway 35, Arran Street curves more sharply round toward the left, and enters the open square in Largs from the north. The square is bounded by the little church on the west, which sits next to the lake but is elevated a couple of metres above the shoreline, by our large house on the south, by the administration building on the north, lying just west of the area where Arran Street enters the square, and on the east by a long stone trough that was at one time a horse trough. More likely than not, one would find two or three small boys playing there with model boats. The trough is still supplied by a small stream of water as a focus of attention, both aural and visual, for anyone using the three benches located just behind it. Behind the benches is a forsythia hedge, and behind the hedge sits the first of the roughly forty cottages in the village. In the middle of the square is a large circular stone pedestal, on top of which sits a block of pink granite bearing the engraved names of the two Largs men who died during WWI, and the four who died during WWII. Before this monument was erected in the early 1950s, the space was occupied by the mule-driven grain mill old McCleod had built in the mid-nineteenth century. The square is paved in granite stones, and Jimmy keeps the whole area swept and tidied.

  For a village in Ontario to have this kind of central square is unexpected, very much atypical, but it works today because local nature now has tamed the place. After spending not more than a day here, one becomes accustomed, indeed strongly attached, to something that at first glance seems Old World fake. I put it down to the rather narrow local conception of how an Ontario village ought to appear. The observation that Largs grows quickly on people has been validated more than once, when some whisper of a change to the square has led to a deafening roar of outrage from permanent residents, long time visitors, and newcomers alike.

  To the east of the administration building, on the east side of Arran Street as it enters the square, is a longish building of more recent construction, built in stone facing to resemble the original cottages as closely as possible. This building houses Harris’ food emporium, general store, hardware store, and drug store. Somehow Wally manages to deal with the massive but relatively short-lived peak in business during the summer and the long-depressed flow of business during the rest of the year. That is Wally’s picture of the reality of his business, one that isn’t universally shared.