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Authors: Margaret Laurence
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wouldn’t go to the brick house in Manawaka, of course, but when Marvin was born I gave Aunt Dolly to understand that if Fatherwanted to come out to the Shipley place and see his grandson, I’d have no objections. He didn’t come, though. Perhaps he didn’t feel as though Marvin were really his grandson. I almost felt that way myself, to tell the truth, only with me it was even more. I almost felt as though Marvin weren’t my son.
There’s the plain brown pottery pitcher, edged with anemic blue, that was Bram’s mother’s, brought from some village in England and very old. I’d forgotten it was here. Who got it out? Tina, of course, She likes it, for some reason. It always looked like an ordinary milk pitcher to me. Tina says it’s valuable. Each to his taste, and my granddaughter, though so dear to me, has common tastes, a little, I think, a legacy no doubt from her mother. Yet Doris never cared a snap about that pitcher, I’m bound to admit. Well, there’s no explaining tastes, and ugliness is pretty nowadays. Myself, I favor flowers, a leaf sprig or two, a measure of gracefulness in an ungainly world. I never could imagine the Shipley’s owning anything of account. But Tina’s fond of it—I’ll leave it to her. She ought to have it, for she was born a Shipley. I pray God she marries, although the Lord only knows where she’ll find a man who’ll bear her independence.
That cut-glass decanter with the silver top was my wedding gift from Bram. It should be on the sideboard, but Doris always puts it on the walnut spool-table, the fool, and never puts a thing inside it. She’s dead set against drink. I ought to be the one, if anyone, who feels that way, but I’m not hidebound. I never thought much of that decanter at the time, but now I wouldn’t part with it for any money. It was always filled, in my time. Choke-cherry wine, most often, the berries gathered by me in preference to pin cherries or any others that could bemade into cordials, for the chokecherries were gathered so easily, hanging in clusters, and I’d tear off whole boughs and eat while I picked, my mouth puckering with their sweet sting.
The oaken armchair, legs fluted like a Grecian column, was one my father had made by Weldon Jonas, the local cabinetmaker, when the big house was built. How cross Father would have been to know the years it sat in the Shipley place, after the stroke that caused his abrupt death. Luke McVitie, who’d always handled all Father’s legal business, said I might choose what I wanted from the Currie house, as I was the only blood-tie left. I let Aunt Dolly take her pick, but she didn’t want much, for she was going back to life with her sister in Ontario. I took some furniture and one or two rugs, although I hadn’t much of a heart for this selection, being at the time too angry with Father either to mourn his death or want the stuff from his house. The old man’s will never specified the contents of the brick house. Perhaps that was as far as he could go, in making peace with me. He specified the money and the property, though. A certain sum went to pay for the care of the family plot, in perpetuity, so his soul need never peer down from the elegant halls of eternity and be offended by cowslips spawning on his grave. The rest of the money was left to the town.
Who could imagine a man doing such a thing? When Luke McVitie told me, I could hardly credit it. Oh, the jubilation when the town heard the news. Paeans of printed praise in the
Manawaka Banner
. “Jason Currie, one of our founding fathers, always a great benefactor and a public-spirited man, has made a last magnificent—” Et cetera. Within a year, Currie Memorial Parkwas started beside the Wachakwa river. The scrub oak was uprooted and the couchgrass mown, and nearly circular beds of petunias proclaimed my father’s immortality in mauve and pink frilled petals. Even now, I detest petunias.
I never minded for myself. It was on the boys’
There’s the plain brown pottery pitcher, edged with anemic blue, that was Bram’s mother’s, brought from some village in England and very old. I’d forgotten it was here. Who got it out? Tina, of course, She likes it, for some reason. It always looked like an ordinary milk pitcher to me. Tina says it’s valuable. Each to his taste, and my granddaughter, though so dear to me, has common tastes, a little, I think, a legacy no doubt from her mother. Yet Doris never cared a snap about that pitcher, I’m bound to admit. Well, there’s no explaining tastes, and ugliness is pretty nowadays. Myself, I favor flowers, a leaf sprig or two, a measure of gracefulness in an ungainly world. I never could imagine the Shipley’s owning anything of account. But Tina’s fond of it—I’ll leave it to her. She ought to have it, for she was born a Shipley. I pray God she marries, although the Lord only knows where she’ll find a man who’ll bear her independence.
That cut-glass decanter with the silver top was my wedding gift from Bram. It should be on the sideboard, but Doris always puts it on the walnut spool-table, the fool, and never puts a thing inside it. She’s dead set against drink. I ought to be the one, if anyone, who feels that way, but I’m not hidebound. I never thought much of that decanter at the time, but now I wouldn’t part with it for any money. It was always filled, in my time. Choke-cherry wine, most often, the berries gathered by me in preference to pin cherries or any others that could bemade into cordials, for the chokecherries were gathered so easily, hanging in clusters, and I’d tear off whole boughs and eat while I picked, my mouth puckering with their sweet sting.
The oaken armchair, legs fluted like a Grecian column, was one my father had made by Weldon Jonas, the local cabinetmaker, when the big house was built. How cross Father would have been to know the years it sat in the Shipley place, after the stroke that caused his abrupt death. Luke McVitie, who’d always handled all Father’s legal business, said I might choose what I wanted from the Currie house, as I was the only blood-tie left. I let Aunt Dolly take her pick, but she didn’t want much, for she was going back to life with her sister in Ontario. I took some furniture and one or two rugs, although I hadn’t much of a heart for this selection, being at the time too angry with Father either to mourn his death or want the stuff from his house. The old man’s will never specified the contents of the brick house. Perhaps that was as far as he could go, in making peace with me. He specified the money and the property, though. A certain sum went to pay for the care of the family plot, in perpetuity, so his soul need never peer down from the elegant halls of eternity and be offended by cowslips spawning on his grave. The rest of the money was left to the town.
Who could imagine a man doing such a thing? When Luke McVitie told me, I could hardly credit it. Oh, the jubilation when the town heard the news. Paeans of printed praise in the
Manawaka Banner
. “Jason Currie, one of our founding fathers, always a great benefactor and a public-spirited man, has made a last magnificent—” Et cetera. Within a year, Currie Memorial Parkwas started beside the Wachakwa river. The scrub oak was uprooted and the couchgrass mown, and nearly circular beds of petunias proclaimed my father’s immortality in mauve and pink frilled petals. Even now, I detest petunias.
I never minded for myself. It was on the boys’
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