She asks about your bronchitis and whether you’ve been into Kingston lately to see the new shopping centre; she comments on how lovely your house looks now that the porch and framework have been painted that nice soft shade of grey, how riotously the geese have been flying over town this past week, how the lake is higher than in recent years, how the Red and White is once again offering discounts on quarters of beef—not that she needs a quarter of beef, not her for heaven’s sake, she’s just about turned into a vegetarian!
Generalities and pleasantness, the small self-effacements and half apologies and scattered diversions that fit so perfectly the looped contours of Rose’s middle life. She does not tell you anything about herself, not about how she will be spending her evening tonight—a Friday evening—or about the recent cessation of her menstrual periods or the lucky penny in her pocket or the square beige envelope she is carrying home in her purse, an envelope containing, if you only knew, an invitation to a symposium (yes, a symposium) on the works of the poet Mary Swann to be held in Toronto during the first week of the new year.
And why doesn’t Rose confide any of this to you? You’ve known her for years, all your life in fact.
Perhaps she detects a lack of interest on your part, sensing that you are already wearying of this casual, peripheral chitchat, that you’re shifting from foot to foot, anxious to be on your way, into your own house where a familial disarray awaits and affirms you, where you can sink on to a kitchen chair with your sack of groceries and say. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rose Hindmarch does go on and on, and she never says anything.”
Or does Rose, so open, so helpful, so stretched by smiles, protect her secrets like a canny nun? For in a sense you might say that her Friday nights are a kind of secret, though an innocent one, and that her menopause, except for the headaches, has brought her a flush of covert pleasure, a deserved but shameful serenity, almost dispensation; at last she’s released to live freely in the kind of asexual twilight that most flatters her. As for the printed invitation in the silky inner lining of Rose’s purse, it glows like a reddened coal, precious, known only—as yet—to her.
Just fifteen minutes ago, on her way home from the library, she stopped to collect her mail from the post office. There were three items for her today—not unusual, not at all. There was her telephone bill; there was a postcard, close to indecipherable, from her friend Daisy Hart who is visiting her sister on the gulf coast of Florida; and there, puzzlingly, was the large square beige envelope (quality paper) addressed simply: Rose Hindmarch, Nadeau, Ontario. No box number, not that that mattered. No Miss or Ms., just Rose Hindmarch, the sturdy wily Rose, the energetic leading lady of the Nadeau township monthly minutes.
She opened it on the spot—never mind what Johnny Sears thought—but taking care not to destroy the creamy wholeness of the envelope. A symposium? On Mary Swann. January. Toronto. She was invited to attend a four-day symposium. (That must be a meeting or a convention, something along those lines, she will look it up in Funk and Wagnall’s when she gets home.) Also included was a small, rather cunning-looking reply envelope, the kind that comes with wedding invitations, already stamped, too, a thoughtful gesture given the current postage rates.
Rose calculated quickly. September to January, four months away. A long time. Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving, Christmas; a very long time. Her excitement dwindled to dullness and she felt a pressure like tears rushing behind her eyes. But no, on second thought, four months would give her time to lose ten pounds—all she’d been waiting for was a good excuse. Five pounds off each hip and a little off the stomach. And time to make a shopping trip into Kingston to find something appropriate to wear, a suit maybe, something in that burgundy colour everyone is so crazy about these days, though Rose can’t see why. Turquoise, her old standby, is hardly to be found.
The Harbourview Hotel. Toronto. January. That nice Sarah Maloney might come from Chicago. It wouldn’t be any trip at all for her, not the way she travels about. And Professor Lang. Certainly he’ll be there, no doubt of that. And maybe, but it would be silly to count her chicks, and so on, but maybe Mr. Jimroy would be there. Morton; he had, on that very first morning they met, asked her to call him Morton. “All my good friends call me Morton,” he’d said.
His good friends. That is what Rose Hindmarch is: one of Morton Jimroy’s good friends.
Where Rose Lives
Here we are, coming to where Rose Hindmarch lives. This is her suite, her apartment, 16½ Euclid Ave. Not, probably, the kind of place that comes to mind when people think of the word apartment; that is to say, there aren’t any concrete towers or elevators or underground parking facilities here. This is a three-room suite (living-room, bedroom, kitchen) on the second floor of an eighty-year-old frame house on the corner of Euclid Avenue, a house owned by a young couple, Howie and Jean Elton (originally from Cornwall), who both happen to teach out at the new township school on Highway 17. (Howard teaches science; Jean, Phys. Ed.) Eventually the Eltons are planning to put in a separate outside entrance for Rose, but for the time being she goes in through their dark narrow front hall. “Hi ya, Rose,” Jean calls from the kitchen, where she’s usually throwing together something for supper; that’s the expression she uses, throwing something together. “How are ya, Rose?” Howie will yell. He might be helping Jean make hamburgers in the kitchen or else sitting in the living-room having a beer and watching something on television. “Hi,” Rose says in her merry voice, and hurries up the stairway.
She’s glad there’s a proper door at the top of the stairs, even though there’s no lock. She likes Howie well enough and loves Jean, but privacy is important. She senses that they feel this way too.
And now what? She hangs up her coat on its special wooden hanger, glancing at the elbows for signs of wear. Owning a suede coat is a responsibility. Then quickly, in one long unbroken gesture, she puts on the teakettle and turns on the little kitchen radio, just in time to catch the six o’clock news. About once a week, usually on a Friday—and today is Friday—Rose will treat herself to a small rye and ginger-ale, which she sips while stirring up an omelette; two eggs, one green onion minced, a quick splash of milk. And just one slice of toast tonight. If she’s going to lose ten pounds by January she’ll have to start getting serious. But a little butter won’t hurt. Only twenty-five calories in a teaspoon of butter, less than people think. There’s a tiny mirror on the kitchen wall that Rose sometimes stands in front of, demanding: is this face going to turn into dough like Mother’s did? Granny’s too.
The news these days always seems to be about Libya or South Africa. When Rose thinks of South Africa she pictures a free-form shape with watery sides way down at the bottom of the map. The Dutch people went there first, she recalls vaguely, or else the English. In South Africa untidy policemen in shirt sleeves are always stopping people, black people, from going to funerals or forming labour unions. Well, Rose thinks, that doesn’t seem like too much to ask for, though she’s grateful she doesn’t have to deal with unions herself. Howie and Jean belong to the teachers’ union, but Howie says it’s mostly bullshit, just two or three troublemakers trying to stir things up for everyone else. In South Africa there’s a man called Nelson Mandela, a family man, stuck in jail. Rose has seen pictures of him on television, and pictures of his wife, too, a handsome woman with a grave face and a kerchief on her head.
From habit she eats slowly, daintily. Then she opens the refrigerator door and helps herself to a scoop of chocolate ice cream for dessert. Tomorrow morning she’ll go down to the Red and White and buy a carton of yogurt. Jean and Howie both recommend yogurt, and Jean has even offered to lend Rose her electric yogurt maker. But Rose loves chocolate ice cream. Her mother used to make ice cream out on the lawn on summer evenings—that was when they were still in the house over on Second where the Harts live now. Rose remembers being twelve years old, turning the crank, waiting for the ice cream to form. A little rock salt, a little elbow grease, and the miracle took place. Almost the on
ly miracle she can recall witnessing.
Rose is a happy woman; her routines make her happy. When in the early morning she pulls the sheets and blankets smooth and fluffs the pillow on her bed, she feels hopeful about the day ahead. A parade of minor pleasures—like the lucky coin today—reassure her, let her know she’s part of the world. And on Friday nights she gets into her pyjamas early and crawls into bed to read. It’s only seven-thirty and still fairly light outside. She cleans her face with cold cream and brushes her teeth and creeps under the covers. Her bare feet stretch out contentedly. She might read until midnight or later. Tomorrow is Saturday; she can sleep as late as she likes.
This is the bed her mother and father slept in, though Rose can’t recall anything about her father who was a soldier—his mother was a Nadeau, a descendant of Martin Nadeau—who died at Dieppe. It’s a comfortable double bed with a walnut-veneer headboard and has a good firm mattress that Rose bought after her mother’s last illness and death; and smooth fitted sheets, cotton and Fortrel, a cheerful checked pattern. When Rose reads in bed she props herself up in the middle so that the pillows on each side embrace and warm her.
Only once has she shared this bed with another. That was two years ago, on a Friday night like this. She was reading as usual. It must have been eleven or later when she heard someone tapping or scratching lightly on her door. Then there was a hoarse whisper. “Rose? It’s me, Jean. Can you let me in?”
Big bony Jean with her muscular shoulders and arms protruding absurdly from the lacy sleeves of a pale blue nylon nightgown. Her large feet were bare and her hair was pulled back as always by a heavy wooden barrette. That night her wide mouth gleamed in the dim hall light, a rectangle of anguish. “Oh, Rose. Oh, Rose,” she was whimpering.
Sitting in Rose’s kitchen she wept helplessly, and while she wept she beat her fist softly and rhythmically on the kitchen table.
Rose made her drink some rye, a good inch, straight, out of a nice juice glass.
“I hate him, I hate him.” Jean made a wailing sound and put her head on the table. Rose, sitting beside her, stroked Jean’s heavy hair, awkwardly at first, tentatively, and then she got up and made some tea.
“Oh, he’s such a fucking bastard, oh Rose, he’s a bastard, a first-class bastard, if you knew what he was really like. You don’t know how lucky you are. Oh, my God, oh, my God.”
Rose herself drank some tea, but poured another inch of rye for Jean. She wanted to say, “Can you tell me what happened?” or “Do you want to talk about it?” This was what people said in such situations. But a lump of stone had lodged itself in the centre of her chest and kept her from speaking. The pain was terrible. What a ninny she was.
Jean’s nose burned bright red, and large paisley-shaped blotches formed on the sides of her face. Rose supposed—hoped—they were caused by the weeping and the rye whisky, and not by the force of Howie Elton’s fist. With both hands she passed Jean a box of Kleenex. “Here,” she said.
After a minute Jean blew her nose. The light from the fluorescent fixture sharpened her somewhat vulpine checks and lips. She drew herself up and said “What am I going to do?” Then she said, “He doesn’t know I’m up here. He thinks I ran out the back door.”
“You can stay here,” Rose said, “as long you want.” She felt heroic at that moment.
“Oh Rose, can I? Really? Are you sure you don’t mind?” Jean began sobbing again. The sobs sounded like water bubbling up from a deep lake, and Rose put her arms around her. It seemed to her that Jean was like a daughter or a sister.
Neither of them mentioned Rose’s living-room couch. They slept together—it seemed perfectly natural—in the big double bed; or at least Jean slept, her copious kinky hair, wild and perfumy, loosened from the barette and spread out wide on the pillow. Rose lay awake most of the night, staring at the dark softenings in the corners of the ceiling and feeling herself in a daze of happiness. Her nose twitched with tears. She had no desire to touch the heavy, humming, sleeping body beside her. A narrow, exquisitely proportioned channel of space separated them and seemed to Rose to be a breathing organism. When Jean turned, Rose turned. When Jean murmured something from the depths of a dream, Rose heard herself murmuring too, a wordless, shapeless burr of pleasure. The wonder of it. The bewildering surprise. So this was what it was like to feel another human being so close. Inches away, so close she could feel the minute vibrations that were the sounds of Jean’s inhaling and exhaling. Dear God. At almost fifty years old she at last divined that a body was more than a hinged apparatus for getting around, for ingesting and processing food, for sustaining queasy cyclical assaults. The same body that needed to be washed and trimmed and tended, and sometimes put to sleep with the help of a wet finger, also yearned to be close to another. How could she have failed to know something as simple as this? There was nothing to be wary of, there was nothing dangerous at all about this, lying here in bed with Jean Elton beside her.
In the morning Jean was gone. A note on the kitchen table said: “Thanks.”
Nothing was ever said. Howie and Jean disappeared to Cornwall for the weekend and came home late on Sunday night; Rose heard them in the kitchen downstairs making coffee, Jean’s familiar heavy voice, always on the verge of swelling into horsy laughter.
What had happened? What was it that Howie had done? Rose didn’t know, or, more accurately, she did know, or at least suspected. Women, other women, opened their bodies trustingly. Howie must have done something unspeakable, something that appalled Jean, something vicious and sexual, something less than human; he must have climbed on top of her and taken some dark animal presumption. What that violation might be, Rose didn’t know, didn’t need to know. She regarded Howie after that with a certain awe. Jean, she loved.
It didn’t happen again, but even now, after two years, Rose spends her Friday nights reading and waiting. She turns the pages of her book slowly, one ear tipped for the sound of Jean Elton scratching on her door. She feels it important to be there if Jean needs her.
Oh, she loves her Friday nights. During the week she’s too tired to read, and it’s all she can do to keep her attention on the television. But Friday nights: a pot of tea by her bedside, the satin binding of the blanket at her chin, the clean cotton-and-Fortrel-blend sheets moving across her legs, her book propped up in front of her. Amid this comfort she speaks harshly to herself. “Well, Rose kiddo, you’re getting to be a real old maid, tucking in here like a hermit Friday after Friday. You should get out, go to a movie in Elgin now and then, the bingo even. What about the Little Theatre in Kingston, you used to go along with the Harts to all the shows. You’re getting downright anti-social. Set in your ways and that’s a bad sign.”
It has crossed Rose’s mind that someone should do a survey of what the librarians of small villages read in their spare time. Librarians are, after all, the ones who order new books and the ones who are always recommending such and such to someone else. “You’ll love this,” they cry, trying to remember who likes thrillers and who goes in for war stories and who opts for heavier things—though only Homer Hart in Nadeau reads books that might be called heavy.
It can’t be said that Rose Hindmarch is a narrow reader. At the library, whenever she has a minute, she’s dipping into this and that, a little local history, a Hollywood biography, the new mysteries, the new romances, the latest bestsellers, two inches thick—though these are getting so expensive Rose orders only one or two a month—and even the occasional volume of modern poetry
Poetry, though, poses a problem for Rose. Except for Mary Swann’s book, she has trouble understanding what it’s about, and even with Mrs. Swann she’s not always sure. “The rooms in my head are bare/Thunder brushes my hair.” Now what’s she trying to say in that poem? Of course rooms are a symbol of something, but thunder? “The mirror on the other side/Opens the place where I hide.” Who can make heads or tails of that? Mr. Jimroy maybe. Morton.
Poetry, biography, romance, travel—Rose will read anythi
ng. But what she craves, and what she saves up for her Friday-night reading binges, are stories of espionage.
She tells herself she should sit down some day and make a list of all the spy stories she’s read. There must be five hundred at least. Intrigue, escape, foghorns in the harbour, duty and patriotism. She knocks one back every week or so depending on the number of pages. Ian Fleming—but she scorns him now, his bag of tricks—Ken Follet, John le Carré, Robert Ludlum, these are her favourites. The delicious titles, the midnight blueness of them, and the heroes with their hair curling over their ears, their intricate disguises and quick thinking, the cipher clerks labouring away by night in the back of an electrical supply store, the plump Munich prostitute with the radio receiver strapped to her thigh.
What Rose Hindmarch appreciates in most tales of espionage is the fine clean absence of extenuating circumstances—not that she would put it in those words—and the way the universe falls so sparely into two equal parts, good on one side, evil on the other. There’s nothing random about the world of espionage. Evil is never the accidental eruption it is in real life, far from it. Evil, well, evil is part of an efficiently executed plot set into motion by those unnamed ones who possess a portion of dark power. And death? Death is never for a minute left in the hands of capricious gods (the morose, easily offended Ontario God included). Death is a clean errand dispatched by a hired gun. A slender man enters a brilliantly lit room, his wide velvet collar spilling charm, but his right hand moving meaningfully toward an inner pocket.
And Rose is drawn, too, toward that black confusion that pulsates behind the Iron Curtain—the tricky, well-guarded borders, the deep Danube, the cyanide pellets concealed in Polish fountain pens and lipstick cases, the rendezvous in shabby Warsaw bars or under flickering Slavic streetlamps. The swift-running trains that cross Germany and Hungary, always at night, transport her too, her chugging heart, her dry hands, carrying along a carload of ideological passion, none of which matters in the least to Rose, and the obsession to get to the heart of evil, to follow orders, to risk all. Mr. X (greenish skin beneath a greenish suit), a man of no fixed profession but protected nevertheless by hooded guards and German shepherds with open mouths. Why? Rose reads on. Because he is part of a gigantic plot to take over the Western world, that’s why. The linkages glow like jewellery below a mirrored surface. Solutions arrive in the final chapters, cleansing as iodine, though Rose has read so many spy stories by now that she sees, halfway through, how it will go for her special envoy. This doesn’t prevent her from reading on.