There was an Old Woman by Howard Engel Read Free Book Online Page A

came in wearing a rose coat that covered her down to the ankles. She was weaving and staggering as she nearly bumped into me at the top of the stairs from the rehearsal hall. In that light, her skin reminded me of an orchid. Her hair was tightly permed under a fur hat.
    â€œWhat are you doing here, young man?”
    â€œI’m with the group rehearsing downstairs,” I said. I hoped that it wouldn’t be necessary for me to explain that I had come upstairs with a bursting bladder. I got away as fast as I could, but not before seeing that her eyes were dark and unfocused. She was still there, sitting on the staircase when I came out of the washroom a few minuteslater. I told Ned Evans about her, and he had someone drive Gladys home to the big house on Hillcrest Avenue.
    â€œI once saw the old man at a parade,” I said to Robin at last.
    â€œThey went in for parades, fox hunts and march-pasts when he was alive. They had an in with the Royal Family through their horses and dogs.”
    â€œI know a guy who owns one-twenty-fifth of a race horse.”
    â€œNowadays the old woman only cares about the paper and the TV and radio stations. They say she watches Orv like a cat, but she thinks her son-in-law pisses pure lemonade. She wouldn’t believe the out-of-town papers when he was arrested for hit-and-run five years ago in Toronto. Not a word in the Beacon about it. No, dear boy, Mrs. Harlan Ravenswood believes she is living a never-ending romance and the current star is her daughter’s husband, Orv Wishart, the son of a bitch!”
    â€œWhat does the daughter have to say?” I recalled her interest in reclaiming drunks at the Nag’s Head.
    â€œAntonia doesn’t give a damn. She’s been on to Orv from the beginning. I think he tried to sell her bridal train on the way down the nave of St. George’s. Antonia’s got her head screwed on right. I’m not worried about her.” Here Robin grabbed me by the arm and turned me so that I was facing the sweeping end of the staircase as it came into the main reception area of the converted old mansion. A heavily built man in shirtsleeves was just coming to the bottom.
    â€œSpeak of the devil,” Robin said in my ear, in a voice that was heavy with playfulness. “He gets all his exercise on those stairs; never uses the phone.”
    â€œRobin,” Wishart shouted when he caught sight of us, “what are we feeding CBC radio newsroom at 6:45?” He looked like a confused man trying to come to grips with a sudden accumulation of paper that grew on his desk over the lunch-hour.
    â€œThat’ll be the Governor Simcoe item that Frank did: you know a commemoration of the first governor’s search for a capital. He went all the way to Detroit.”
    â€œWhat the hell are they going to do with it? It happened two hundred years ago.”
    â€œThey’re very big on history right now, Orv. Maybe it has to do with Christmas?” Orv came up to us and Robin introduced me. It was probably good for my ego to see that he was only half-focused on me as he gave the small bones in my right hand a massage. In fact, as it soon became apparent, he was looking over my shoulder to where Catherine Bracken stood, pulling off her snowboots. We all turned to see better. Orv immediately set off in her direction. Robin slipped me a wink, before following him. Together they got rid of the woman’s camelhair coat and hung it on a rack. She walked around to the vacant chair of the receptionist and checked her cubbyhole for messages. She let put a loud, rather dramatic sigh as she flipped through the pink slips of paper. Bracken was smaller than I’d imagined from her appearance on the tube. I put her at about five-three or four and just overone hundred pounds. Orv came around to her side of the counter and tried to engage her in conversation. It was plain that she wasn’t in the market for any, because in less than