Blue Moon (34 page)

“I am Mrs. Wilson.”

I nodded in agreement at this apparent truism.

“I am not at all pleased by the selection of titles that greets me in Duthie's basement. In fact, I am outraged.”

I explained that we were still in the process of developing our selection. For instance, we were going to stock the entire Everyman's Library. “They're hard bounds but at paperback prices,” I explained.

“You have anticipated my complaint, miss. Exactly what I was going to remonstrate with you about. You require more translations from the French and German down here. I feel very reassured by the information with which you have supplied me. If you will permit a crude metaphor, Vancouver needs culture to be injected directly into its clogged arteries.” I nodded in agreement as the woman with considerable difficulty mounted the steps to the upper world.

A few minutes later, Bill Duthie came hurling down the stairs. “Ethel Wilson was very impressed with you. Informed me I had hired the ideal
coadjutor. I
think you will be invited to tea in a day or two. You must take the afternoon off when she requests your presence.” This was an order from the boss, a role Bill was not usually comfortable with.

“You mean
the
Ethel Wilson?”

“Yes. But she is always Mrs. Wilson. You never take liberties with that woman. She is excessively formal. She can also be dangerous. I once accompanied her to a cocktail party where we bumped into Jack Wasserman, the gossip columnist for the
Sun.

“'May I introduce Mr. Wasserman?' I offered in an offhand manner.

“There was a long pause. Then, in her slyest manner, she whispered: 'How do you do, Mr. Wasserman?'

“He said nothing. Mrs. Wilson stared ahead. I was left in a void and so I tried to fill it. 'Of course you read Mr. Wasserman's column?'

She looked at me askance: 'I don't have to answer your question. I don't need to tell you what I read or don't read.'

“Not sure what to do, I continued—very unsure of how much trouble I was letting myself in for: 'No, really,
do
you or
don't
you read the column?'

'“I have reached an age when I don't have to answer a question unless I want to!'

“Wasserman bowed politely in Mrs. Wilson's direction but gave me a sharp look. He made some innocuous remark in next day's paper about meeting Vancouver's literary grand dame. So forewarned is forearmed. The lady can be a mite difficult.”

Sure enough, the summons came three days later. I have chosen the word “summons” carefully; I cannot call it an invitation. Mrs. Wilson's maid phoned Bill to tell him I would be received at four o'clock the following Monday afternoon. That weekend, I re-read
Swamp Angel
and
Hetty Dorval;
I read
Love and Salt Water
—published a few years before—for the first time.

Mrs. Wilson's formidable presence had been preparation of sorts for the high-ceilinged, resolutely old-fashioned flat in the West End. From her sitting room, she could see down into the waters of False Creek. She also had an unobstructed view of islands and mountains. The room was lined with books, oriental rugs were scattered everywhere over the hardwood floor, and a photograph of Winston Churchill and a pencil sketch by Burne-Jones graced the walls. A uniformed maid—I later learned her name was Phyllis Marshall, although her mistress always addressed her as Marshall—answered the door, took my coat and gloves, and then announced me to a room that appeared at first to be empty. After some effort, I could see a small bed at the far end of the room on which Mrs. Wilson was lying prone. She waved her hand in greeting and then used it to beckon me in her direction. “Hello Ducks,” she called out. “I am delighted you are able to join me.”

Although I never questioned her on the subject, I later learned that the arthritis in Mrs. Wilson's right hip was so bad on some days that she could barely walk. I took my seat close to her, at which point Marshall returned with the silver tea service. On that day I did not meet Wallace Wilson, my hostess's kindly physician husband.

That afternoon, I decided that Ethel was much more like Nell Severance than she had ever been like Maggie Vardoe. In
Swamp Angel,
elderly Nell is the owner of the revolver that gives the book its name. She is difficult, controlling, and utterly loveable. She also displays a sinister edge when she threatens Maggie's estranged husband. Nell is also unduly inquisitive about others; she is never content to mind her
own business. I had been summoned to tea to be interrogated by Nell's creator.

Mrs. Wilson began on safe ground by quizzing me about books. I passed that test with flying colours, but then the real purpose of our meeting surfaced.

“I have observed that you have a very precise way of talking. Very crisp, right to the point. Have you always been like that?”

“I'm not sure. That skill seems to have come to me with age.”

“You are still a young woman. Exactly how old are you?”

“Thirty-nine. Almost 40.”

“And you are from Toronto I have been told.”

“Near Toronto. Hamilton.”

“The steel city? I have never been there. Why have you suddenly appeared in our midst? Why would a woman of your age and cultivation suddenly arrive on our doorstep? Are you a woman with a past?”

“You are a bit forward. I'm not sure I mind telling you about myself, but I've become fearful of sharing my secret with too many people. You are a writer, always looking for grist for her mill. Will you spare me?”

“My dear, you'll never know unless you confide in me.”

Nell's curiosity in
Swamp Angel
was benign—if she liked the person she was interrogating. I decided she meant me no harm. And so for the next hour I told her my life history. No sign of amazement crossed her face, although she paid close attention to everything I said, once or twice interrupting me to ask for clarification. When I concluded, she pulled herself up slightly. “Dear, will you sort out my pillow?” she asked. When I finished doing so, she took my hands in hers and looked into my soul with her crystal blue eyes. “Like you, I am an immigrant to British Columbia, although I arrived here many years ago by way of South Africa and England. Both of us are outsiders—kindred spirits despite many differences.” She stopped speaking and drew her shoulders up: “You have found a genuine confidante, Elizabeth.” She should have added: “And a warm friend.”

“Send me some of the pieces you've penned. I am most anxious to read them. Perhaps one of them could be turned into a short story?”

Two years ago, a reader of mine sent me a transcript of the following material in the Ethel Wilson archive at the University of British Columbia. I was as relieved to see these documents did not bare anything too revealing about my early history as I was touched by her generous words.

[Diary entry for 12 June 1960]

Some would say Elizabeth is strange. Some would call her withdrawn. The same adjectives are often applied to me—behind my back.
Recently, in confidence, she told me of her childhood and young womanhood. Before she began, she told me I would be shocked. When all was said, I was much surprised and profoundly saddened—but not shocked. The entire human condition is one of oppression and repression. Why should I be shocked that life has bestowed on this poor woman a goodly share of both?

[excerpt from a carbon copy of a typewritten letter to Earle Birney, October 14, 1962]

Dear Earle,

I have read and re-read with sympathetic pleasure a piece named “Prison Walls,” by Elizabeth Delamere. I am sending you the typescript. Why my heart warmed and expanded towards Miss Delamere is because I have never before seen in print an admission of frailty or an honesty that is sympathetic to my own. Perhaps I am inordinately self-centred and simply see a reflection of myself in this woman?

[Handwritten draft of a letter of 4 October 1974, just after the publication of my first novel]

Dear Elizabeth,

What a darling you are to send me the glorious book, right from the fine texture and binding—the gold, the monogram, the paper, the type—the outside and then blazoning into the inside. I simply can't say all I feel. To me—it is just gorgeous. To me—despite all the suffering you describe so relentlessly—it is a
great
book. I believe some people could not read it because it is the very life of life, and they do not know about life.

Sitting here alone in the living room today—terribly worried about my health that continues to plummet—I imagined your early life. The despair of it all, the deep pain you endured, the humiliations, the unkindnesses poured on you by your mother and father, the very people who should have offered you consolation. You are very much
like my clear Maggie in
Swamp Angel,
although she took off before she would have been forced to murder her beast of a husband.

Love can be a beautifully ferocious thing. You have endured only the ferocious—have never been allowed to touch the beauty. Is that why you write like an angel? Has the compensating grace sometimes given to those who suffer greatly been bestowed upon you? Yes. Most certainly. Much was taken away; much has now been given. Only you can decide if becoming a great writer is sufficient payment for the unhappinesses of the past. Lovingly, Ethel.

The hours long, the reward negligible. That was the painful lesson I learned soon after I began, at Ethel's instigation, to write with any kind of eye to publication. Since my working life consisted of the often difficult task of inciting would-be readers to purchase other people's stories, I often felt drained by the whole notion of creating my own. I also had to read a lot of books in order to talk about them. That took a lot of time. In many ways, I was overburdened by the book world, by the entire process of making books desirable to consumers. Moreover, I could only write in the evenings, on the few evenings after work when I did not have a book to read urgently. Having little confidence in getting anything
published, I did not in my early days in Vancouver actively pursue the craft of writing.

During my afternoon visits with Ethel, I told her I was not a born writer. “Nonsense, dear. No one is simply given—hocus-pocus fashion—the act of conjuring a book from a hat. It takes a great deal of hard work. You have the raw talent. In embryo. You must apply yourself. Read and read. Avoid pretentiousness. Cultivate your interest in people—study them carefully at the bookstore—the nice customers, the old so-and-so's like me. You will instinctually know what to leave out—all good writers know about reticence.”

These instructions, although kindly meant, were not helpful. I knew the stories I wanted to tell, but they were not yet inside me enough. Unwilling to be summoned like performing dogs, eager for reward and praise, they balked. The more I insisted, the more obdurate they became.

Emma Skeffington had no time for books. “A complete waste of time as far as I'm concerned,” she bluntly informed me. Yet, she often asked me to use my employee discount to purchase self-help manuals (how to increase your self-esteem, how to become a more dynamic person, how to transform yourself into the powerful person you really are). Strangely enough, her idea of real culture was centred on the foreign films that were just beginning to attract attention in North America. She looked at me askance if I suggested going to
Breakfast at Tiffany's, Imitation of Life,
even
Lawrence of Arabia.
Her interest was entirely engaged by the “New Wave”: Truffaut's
Jules et Jim,
Fellini's
La Dolce Vita,
Antonioni's
L'Avventura.
Hollywood films were, according to her, “pure schlock, formula films that tell us the same unrealistic things over and over again. Nauseating.” If I attempted to tell her of my admiration for some of the stars in the ascent at that time—someone like Audrey Hepburn—she simply directed a look of complete incredulity in my direction and then let loose a string of invectives. She would always conclude her tirades with the same sentence: “You can go to that film by yourself!” I often did exactly that, but many an evening I accompanied her to the latest subtitled film to reach Vancouver.

After a while, I became a convert to the new cinema. I never had much time for the whirling camera shots and the anxiety-filled voiceovers. But those films, almost always about impossible human life
struggles, never had final answers. Perhaps they were too ambivalent and ambiguous in their depiction of the human condition, but the faces, the bodies, the insurmountable problems were genuine.

In particular, I remember Bergman's
The Virgin Spring
wherein the young, chaste, beautiful girl is brutally raped and murdered. I have never forgotten the sequence where her mother and father see her mangled remains. Those parents take some consolation in religious belief, but Bergman does not: her cruel and unnecessary death is part and parcel of life's many grim realities.

After six months on Skid Row, I had put enough aside to move. I found the perfect place on Thurlow Street, a few blocks away from Duthie's on Robson. My second-floor apartment was a small one—tiny excuses for a bedroom and a washroom—but it had the advantage of an enormous living-cum-dining room with a large window that gave me a magnificent view of the water. The flat—above a men's clothing store—also allowed me a perfect view of the busy street and its shops. Directly opposite me was a pharmacy, a delicatessen, and a hardware store. Quite soon—after I had put aside another tidy sum—I had book cases built into every available corner of the room.

My next acquisition was a strange one for me: a cat. Not just an ordinary cat, it turned out. Casper, a Russian Blue, was a giant kitten who became an enormous cat. A creature of big paws but delicate feelings, he gave forth an enormous bellow if a visitor was careless enough to compliment me on my magnificent grey cat. Casper calmed down only when I explained to my startled visitor that the animal had a noble lineage, in fact considered himself a descendant of felines who had been attendants of the czars of Russia, and that he was very definitely blue in colour. Casper was also a very literary companion who approved of books. When I settled in my armchair to read, he seated himself at my feet, purring loudly his approval. If I wrote in an evening seated at the large table at the window, he would join me there, placing himself a foot or so away from my scribbler. At such times, the crescendo of his purrs assumed startling modulations in its rising and falling sounds.