A GRIMET DAY IN MONTREAL, AND THE FACE OF THE mountain was patched with snow. The day before, the wind had been warm and I thought that spring was coming but in the night, the temperature dropped again, and I woke with cold feet. My shift at the hospital started dark and early and when the sky finally brightened, it was a hard day to read. It could go either way.
Matron was likewise grimet – one moment smiling encouragement and rough as thunder the next, bustling us through too many tasks in just a splinter of time. A far cry from Dr Ballater’s quiet afternoon tea. But wasn’t that the point? I’d wanted a change, and now I was here, feeling fickle as the weather.
Grimet was Dr Ballater’s word. I imagined he thought it sounded rural, but where he dug it up from, I hadn’t a clue. Some old book, maybe. I never heard it from anyone else in East Lothian. Still, it was a good word. Mum might like it. I’d include it in my next letter, I thought, and she’d also like the mountain and the snow. This cusp-of-the-season feeling. The strange sky.
I kept my eye out the window as I made up the empty beds along the ward. It was the last job before the end of my shift so possibly Matron was being kind. She usually assigned me occupied bed-making which was tricky and required two nurses. Empty beds could be managed alone, and, without a partner, I could take a moment to watch the sky. It would be a cold walk after my shift – a full half-hour to the Oratory to meet Asher. I’d imagined a stroll through a new spring afternoon with my hat folded away, my coat open and a warm evening ahead. It had been like that the day before. We’d walked in the sunshine together, right through the downtown, looking for a restaurant. It felt like spring had begun and we’d laughed about how much the weather had changed in the past month. It had only been a month since he’d followed me off the bus and already we were constant.
I’d been looking down at a folded street map, wondering if I might find the way into Summit Park. There were supposed to be pheasants there, up near the old radio tower, and I thought I might find them if I went looking.
‘Is it the Oratory you’re after?’
I looked up and saw a young man walking quickly to catch up with me. He looked pale and northern, I thought, with his dark hair and his strong jaw. I could imagine him chopping wood a thousand years ago in some Viking settlement. Or not a settlement, but a monastery. Remote. Celtic. Scanning the horizon, thinking of God. Yes, there was definitely something monastic about him.
‘You got off a stop too early, really,’ he said. ‘For the Oratory. It isn’t far, just up there. I’m … I’m going there myself.’ He pointed, and that’s when I saw the dome on the hill.
‘Yes? You are?’ It was hard not to smile at his earnest expression.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If you are.’
Now we met as often as we could, for meals or coffee, whatever my shifts would allow. I teased him that I’d soon lose my overseas novelty. He teased me that I’d get lost in the city without him.
We’d wandered through the skyscraper valleys, certain no one else in the crowds was half as lucky, half as alive. We walked miles and we never found the restaurant, settling instead for a counter with smoked meat sandwiches and French fries.
‘Next time, I’ll take you for pizza,’ he said. ‘Have you been to Pizzeria Napoletana?’
‘Is it new?’
‘Hardly,’ he laughed. ‘Been the cornerstone of Little Italy since the end of the war. My uncle used to take me there when I was a kid. Slumming it, my folks said, but it is a venerable Montreal establishment.’
‘Just like you.’
He laughed again and held my hand, so I kissed him and taxis drove past, red rear lights blurring as they turned fast corners and disappeared. Above us, the lights were on in every window and Asher stopped in front of a plush skyscraper hotel. It towered above us, all elegant, arched windows and modern concrete, like a space-age campanile.
‘How about this one? You tried this?’ he asked.
‘A little rich for my blood, I think.’
‘This old cheese-grater? It’s already been open over a year. I hear the Expo guests wore the place right out. The chandeliers are half dulled with all their gawping. But I wonder if you’d like a night in it.’
‘I’m not that luxe a girl.’
‘Aren’t you? But think of it – the finest views of Dorchester Square in the city and Mount Royal in the distance. And room service. Plush hotel towels. A gorgeous big double bed. I wonder if there’s a swimming pool?’
‘Do you mean it? It must cost the earth.’
‘It’s not the Ritz. I could probably manage.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I could wait.’
Asher was at the bottom of the Oratory steps when I arrived. Still waiting, I thought, but I didn’t say it. He smiled and then I thought he looked handsome.
‘There you are! Are you up for a climb? I wondered if you would be, after your shift. Are you tired out?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘The view will do me good.’
Snow clung to the corners of the steps, hiding in the shadows and shining white. At first, my knees felt cold and stiff, but they soon loosened, and we climbed quickly, side by side, step after step after step. Asher said some people climbed on their knees, every step prayerful. There was even a set of wooden steps kept for that purpose and roped off with a sign – réservé aux pèlerins qui montent à genoux – but I kept my Presbyterian feet on the stone steps and held Asher’s hand.
We didn’t go inside the church, not that day. We were pilgrims for the view. The city stretched out before us, the straight streets and the first lights coming on, then beyond, the old city and a river sunset. The Oratory lawns were white with snow, which stood out now, whiter from above. Asher turned to me, his eyes shining.
‘Come, let’s go,’ he said. ‘Snow-viewing till we’re buried.’
When I smiled, he told me it was just a poem. A haiku by Basho. He’d spent the morning in the library and now his head was full of Japanese verse. He said he was struggling with kireji and that there was no real equivalent in English.
‘They’re cutting words – or letters, maybe – that slice a haiku in two. I think it’s about breath as much as about revelation.’
‘Come, let’s go,’ I said, and he laughed.
‘I suppose he meant buried in snow, but I like the fatality of it. Very Montreal, don’t you think?’ He took out his cigarettes and offered me one.
‘My mum read poetry at university. I wonder if she read any haikus.’
‘You don’t strike me as a poet’s daughter.’ We breathed smoke in the cold air.
‘No? Well, she’s more reader than writer. She has reams of it in her head.’
‘And your dad? Let me guess … bagpipes craftsman?’
I swatted him, and he put his arms right around me, pulling me close and warm. He smelled of fabric softener, tobacco and skin.
‘Okay, so not that,’ he said. ‘Shepherd? Politician?’
‘Geologist,’ I said. ‘Well, sort of. Yes.’ I knew this sounded wobbly. ‘Yes, a geology professor. But he might not be my father.’
‘I’m not sure I follow.’
So I ended up telling Asher about the war and all the men away from the village. About the date of my birth and how I couldn’t sort it out with counting. Then about the looks I sometimes saw in the street when I was small and the scraps of rumour I finally heard at the high school. Sometimes I thought my parents were hiding the truth from me and sometimes I was angry but I wasn’t really sure about any of this and I told him that, too, and how both Jane and Stanley were so loving and such rocks for me and he chuckled a little, thinking I was making a geology joke. I told him my half-story badly because I’d never told it before. I wasn’t sure if you needed to understand a story to tell it. Asher listened and said it didn’t matter. Of course it didn’t, I thought. Of course.
After that, it wasn’t hard for him to climb into my bed. And, with him, Basho seeped into everything. Montreal’s warming spring. My memories of Edinburgh’s cherry blossom. Everything.
In my new robe
This morning –
Someone else