CHAPTER THIRTY

The couple returned to Morocco, where Joan took some beautiful photographs. They loved the country: its sand-brown buildings made from the very earth around them, the friendly welcoming Berbers, the indigenous inhabitants before the Arab invasions of the seventh century. They’d rented a car and driven all over, working as a team. While Joan photographed, Paul would take Polaroids and hand them to the children, diverting them so that Joan could take pictures unnoticed by crowds that usually followed.

He was always amazed at how his wife blended into the landscape. She was able somehow to make herself invisible. Nobody noticed her — a trick he hadn’t learned for himself! She used mostly a silent Leica and later would show Paul the proof sheets, printed in her darkroom from negatives she had developed herself, a hands-on photographer. She would then print her own proof sheets and mark them with a wax pencil; from these, she made 8x10 glossies, the forerunners of her 9x12 gelatin silver prints sold in solo exhibitions across North America and even in Egypt. She eventually made a book, published by St. Anne’s Press.

***

“There’s a phone message from your aunt’s nursing home.”

Paul turned to Joan. “Oh?”

“Yes.” Joan dropped her eyes, and paused. “Auntie Hilda... “

Paul sat up. He knew she hadn’t been well, but had not expected this.

“She’ll be cremated, and they’ll hold her ashes.” She paused again. “I’m sorry.”

Back in Montreal for the winter after a summer in Malibu, the couple headed to the Gaspe Coast in Paul’s little blue Riley with auntie’s ashes.

“I’ve been hearing so much about your Shigawake home,” Joan said as they drove down the wide boring highway toward Quebec City. “I can’t wait to see it. I don’t know why we’ve waited so long.”

“I guess we’ve been busy. I can’t wait to show it to you.” But how would Joan take it? The visit filled him with trepidation. All his childhood, his growing up, was melded into the walls of the Old Homestead. What if she hated it? What would he do then? That question lingered throughout the journey.

Beyond Quebec, as they drove along the St. Lawrence and past Bic with its unusual hills, Joan remarked, “I’m trying to imagine what your old family home will be like.” She had taken over the driving.

“It’s been there a long time.” He grinned. “Big contrast to the shark-infested world of film financing... Mother brought me down from Iron Hill when father went into hospital. I was just a baby.”

Joan pulled out to pass a truck. “You never really talked about him. It must have been a difficult childhood, I mean without a father.”

“Are you kidding? It was wonderful. I lived with my mother and aunt, and no father came back after work to give me a good hiding, as other dads did. I loved not having a father.”

Joan took her eyes off the road to look at him. “Really?” She seemed puzzled.

“Really. To me, it was normal. Better without one, than having to face a disciplinarian every evening.”

Joan shook her head. “And all this time, I’d been thinking, poor Paul growing up without a father...”

“No reason to think that. I was fine.”

“Did you know how sick he was?”

“He wasn’t ‘sick’. He had shell-shock.”

“Did you know what that was?”

“No, of course not. All I knew was he was in hospital. Caused by the war. Mother went to visit him on the train every Saturday. She’d say he was fine.”

“So you never discussed it?”

“No. Why? He was well looked after presumably. Nobody talked about it.”

They drove on in silence for a bit. Then Joan said, “I wonder how your mother must have felt.”

“Fine, I presume.”

“But seeing her husband every weekend...”

“Well, I thought that’s what mothers did, visit their husbands on Saturdays if they were in hospital. But she never told me how she felt. We never discussed it.”

“Obviously a brave woman.”

Paul looked across at Joan and frowned. “Why so brave? What else would she do? Surely not leave him there and never see him.”

“Well, helping you see that everything was normal. When it clearly wasn’t.”

“Who’s to say it wasn’t? Maybe it wouldn’t be for you, because you had a father. It was quite normal for me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well... Okay, I guess when I was in therapy, back when I was with Angela, I do kind of remember spending a lot of time on that, although I was really there to see how to make things work with my wife.” He paused. “I suppose I did cry, a bit. But,” he went on sharply, “not because of my own childhood. Because I realized how awful his life must have been in that darned hospital. No family. No little son...” His eyes misted over. “Poor guy, I know what I went through when Matthew was taken away from me. Just like him, actually,” he realized. “So much worse for him, for sure ...” He sighed. “But this is now, it’s over, done: I’ve sorrowed for him; I’ve prayed for his soul. You see, in those days no one knew what to do with shell shock, PTSD, as they’re starting to call it. All I can say now is I’ve realized how lucky I am to be Canadian, not having to volunteer for wars, as my father and Uncle Jack did.”

And that seemed to put the matter to rest, at least in Joan’s mind.

As they were about to pull in at the Old Homestead, Joan had a good view of the house with the maple trees bare of leaves. “I had no idea it was so large!”

“First, let’s go to the churchyard, where Auntie will be put down...”

The little cemetery lay behind St Paul’s Church, a pretty whitewashed wooden building with its red roof and tall belltower. Paul pointed out the white tombstone of his grandparents, and beside it, a small grey marker for his father and Uncle Earle. Being a warm spring day, icicles dripped from the roof and some heaps of snow were melting. Joan walked around the frozen graveyard, looking at the many other Alford tombstones. Then they drove back to the Old Homestead.

“Ted must be out working, so it’s just us. Leave the bags, I want to show you around.” Paul was excited, but apprehensive.

As customary on the Gaspe, they entered through the back kitchen. Oh boy, thought, Paul, she’s not going to like this! Cousin Ted was a bachelor and unlikely to keep the kitchen tidy.

Joan took in the mess and thankfully, went quickly through to the old dining room. “This is original,” Paul said proudly, waving his arms, “built a couple of hundred years ago. Against that back wall they had a stone fireplace, but when stoves came in around the middle of the last century, they got one to cook on, front of those steep stairs.”

The room had yellowing cupboards along the side wall, blue patterned wallpaper many years old, and a front door that looked out onto the bay. The ceiling was crossed by spindly but strong beams. “Ted’s parents opened up the ceiling to expose them; they’ve been here for a couple of hundred years.”

They went through the living room with its new stone fireplace and into the parlour. “This is where I shot the opening scene in Isabel, the mother in a casket. When I was young, this was only used by clergymen coming for tea, and for weddings and funerals. Every one of the Alfords was laid out in this room. Otherwise, they never used it.”

“Is this part of the original house?”

“No, Ted lifted wallpaper in one corner and found under it newspapers glued to the wall, dated 1886. I guess that’s when they added this wing for their growing family.”

“1886?” Joan reacted. “Before Los Angeles was really settled. My grandmother’s farm in Hollywood was still an orchard then.”

“Yep, long, long after the original house was built. When I came back from Oxford, I tried to write a novel here.” They went upstairs and Paul showed her the tiny bedrooms. “My grandparents had ten children, you know.” They passed through into the large original bedroom above the dining room. Its slanted ceilings followed the contours of the roof. Paul told Joan proudly, “Old Momma and Old Poppa’s room. My grandfather was actually born in that bed, I think in the mid 1800s. He died in that bed too, and so did my grandmother. There is where she had all her children, my father being the last.” He sat on it. “So, what do you think?”

“I love it all. I’d enjoy fixing it up. When we come for longer...”

Paul’s heart leapt. So she might come back with him. Good news.

“Paul, this house has such history.” Paul could only nod. “You should...”

“— Make a film about it?” An idea began to grow in his mind. “Or Joan... wouldn’t it make a great idea for a novel, too, maybe?”

“You’ve always wanted to write, you said.”

“Yes yes, a novel. Maybe even a whole series of them. What an idea!”

Joan smiled.