SATURDAY morning, the second day of May, delivered on its forecast – sunny and warm with a soft westerly breeze. I chugged in the Land Rover from the shop down the familiar route to Isabelle’s.
By noon, Sandy and I had loaded the back of the vehicle with Sandy’s clothing and personal items and what seemed to be four tons of Jane’s dolls shipped from London. I followed Sandy driving her Miata back into town.
We crossed the canal at Hog’s Back onto the Colonel By parkway. The view along the canal near Dow’s Lake was spectacular. Throngs of people were walking and cycling through the thousands of tulips glowing in the sunlight. A few brave windsurfers were trying to keep upright on the lake.
We turned off the parkway onto Leonard, stopping and starting down short blocks until we hit Hopewell. Sandy’s new home was the second and third floor of a ninety-five-year-old three-storey red-bricked, mansard-roofed house, typical of the neighbourhood, located in the second block in from Bank Street. The streets in this area, known as Old Ottawa South for real estate appeal purposes, are lined with towering maples and oaks. Within walking distance of Carleton University, the area is popular with students and professors alike and many of the houses have been turned into multi-flat housing.
Sandy parked her Miata on a parking pad at the front of the house, and I pulled in and parked across the driveway entrance with the Land Rover. As I got out to stretch, a middle-aged man came down the front porch steps of the house.
“You can’t park there,” he barked.
He was in his fifties, a balding, portly fellow whose mottled red face resembled a slab of rare roast beef. He was wearing a nondescript pair of dark green slacks, a garish purple sweatshirt, and white and black running shoes. At only about five foot four, he resembled some kind of rare beetle.
Sandy joined us next to the Land Rover.
“Mr. Richards, this is my friend Conn Anderson. Conn, Mr. Richards is the landlord and lives on the ground floor.”
Sandy turned a dazzling smile on this grumpy looking person.
“Mr. Richards, Mr. Anderson is helping me move my stuff in today. It won’t take long, and then he can move his Land Rover somewhere else.”
Looking only slightly mollified, Richards nodded and returned abruptly to his porch.
I raised my eyebrows at Sandy.
“I know, I know. I’m not sure this is going to work out. He’s crotchety, and I’m a bit worried about complaints if Jane is running around too much on the floors above his head. But I must have looked at thirty places and this was the only one that wasn’t a complete dump.”
We ascended the porch steps and Sandy unlocked the front door that Richards had slammed shut. Facing us were three doors. The one on the left, marked Apt. 1, was the landlord’s; a middle door led to the basement, Sandy said; and the third she unlocked with another key.
I followed Sandy up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. On the top landing, doorways led off to a living and dining area, a spare room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. All in all it was nice and bright with lots of windows and twelve-foot ceilings, the trim all painted white. I wandered over to the living room windows and glanced idly at the view.
The neighbourhood housing was a mix of pre-World War I era multi-storey buildings like this one, plus assorted later built bungalows, new infill homes, and other more motley buildings, typical of mature areas close to universities. A dog walker was going past, and across the street students had equipped a front porch with old couches and a beer fridge for their nocturnal revels.
Out of habit, I scanned the cars parked along that same side of the street. Most were beat-up Japanese compacts, reasonably reliable and cheap for student pockets. There was the odd truck, as well, but farther along, at the extreme edge of my ability to see it, was a late model large gray Chevrolet sedan that seemed out of place. There appeared to be a figure in the driver’s seat reading a newspaper. Perhaps it was a parent waiting for his student offspring. My speculation was interrupted by Sandy calling me from the third floor.
I trotted up the narrow staircase that led off the second floor foyer up and around to a small hallway on either side of which was a large room. Sandy was standing in the middle of the back room, arms akimbo, a vacuum cleaner, pail, mop, and other cleaning supplies at her feet.
“I thought I’d start cleaning up here first,” she said.
She was looking a bit downcast. The flat, rented to her as furnished, certainly contained enough basic furniture to start with and it all seemed relatively clean, if a bit threadbare. The hardwood floors had all been sanded and varnished, and while the walls, uniformly beige throughout, looked freshly painted, there were marks here and there and things were generally dusty. New beds and mattresses were due to be delivered sometime in the afternoon.
Sandy blew a breath straight up, fluttering the fringe of hair above her forehead.
“It looks a bit grubbier than I remembered.”
“Never mind. Let’s get at it.”
“You don’t have to …”
“It’s okay, Sandy. Tell you what, why don’t we put some music on? We can whistle while we work.”
For the next four hours, as Sandy’s plug-in radio and CD player played sixties rock on an oldies station, we scrubbed walls, vacuumed floors and rugs, cleaned bathroom and kitchen fixtures, washed down cupboards, and cleaned windows. The beds for Sandy and Jane’s rooms arrived more or less on schedule, and it didn’t take long to assemble them.
I plugged in her landline, as Bell had activated her telephone service the day before, then went out down the street to a convenience store on Bank Street to get new light bulbs to replace burned out ones in lamps and ceiling fixtures. The gray Chev was gone.
Sandy installed her books in various built-in shelves in the living room, and by 6 p.m. or so we were sitting at the kitchen table, with freshly brewed mugs of coffee. We were tired, but at least Sandy was looking much happier about the state of the place.
“Conn, about dinner out …”
“We could phone out for some pizza instead.”
“I brought a change of clothes for the party …”
“We don’t have to go …”
I’d been wondering whether attending a party as my “date” would make Sandy feel pressured in some way. She wouldn’t know anyone else there.
“I’m happy to go, Conn, and meet your friends … but …”
We looked at each other across the table. She started to smile, a smile that reached her eyes.
I could feel my stomach lurching.
“Mmm … maybe … there’s a movie we could watch on your TV?” I said.
“I’ve got a better idea.”
We didn’t go to the party.