Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

She woke at night, worrying.
    “Don’t be silly,” said Char serenely, “He’s overtired.”
    Arthur got up in the evenings and sat in his dressing gown. Blaikie Noble came to visit. He said his room at the hotel was a hole above the kitchen, they were trying to steam-cook him. It made him appreciate the cool of the porch. They played the games that Arthur loved, schoolteacher’s games. They played a geography game, and they tried to see who could make the most words out of the name Beethoven. Arthur won. He got thirty-four. He was immensely delighted.
    “You’d think you’d found the Holy Grail,” Char said.
    They played “Who Am I?” Each of them had to choose somebody to be—real or imaginary, living or dead, human or animal—and the others had to try to guess it in twenty questions. Et got who Arthur was on the thirteenth question. Sir Galahad.
    “I never thought you’d get it so soon.”
    “I thought back to Char saying about the Holy Grail.”
    “My strength is as the strength of ten,” said Blaikie Noble, “Because my heart is pure . I didn’t know I remembered that.”
    “You should have been King Arthur,” Et said. “King Arthur is your namesake.”
    “I should have. King Arthur was married to the most beautiful woman in the world.”
    “Ha,” said Et. “We all know the end of that story.”
    Char went into the living room and played the piano in the dark.
The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la ,
Have nothing to do with the case.…
    When Et arrived, out of breath, that past June, and said, “Guess who I saw downtown on the street?” Char, who was on her knees picking strawberries, said, “Blaikie Noble.”
    “You’ve seen him.”
    “No,” said Char. “I just knew. I think I knew by your voice.”
    A name that had not been mentioned between them for thirty years. Et was too amazed then to think of the explanation that came to her later. Why did it need to be a surprise to Char? There was a postal service in this country, there had been all along.
    “I asked him about his wife,” she said. “The one with the dolls.” (As if Char wouldn’t remember.) “He says she died a long time ago. Not only that. He married another one and she’s dead. Neither could have been rich. And where is all the Nobles’ money, from the hotel?”
    “We’ll never know,” said Char, and ate a strawberry.

    The hotel had just recently been opened up again. The Nobles had given it up in the twenties and the town had operated it for a while as a hospital. Now some people from Toronto had bought it, renovated the dining room, put in a cocktail lounge, reclaimed the lawns and garden, though the tennis court seemed to be beyond repair. There was a croquet set put out again. People came to stay in the summers, but they were not the sort of people who used to come. Retired couples. Many widows and single ladies. Nobody would have walked a block to see them get off the boat, Et thought. Not that there was a boat any more.
    That first time she met Blaikie Noble on the street she had made a point of not being taken aback. He was wearing a creamy suit and his hair, that had always been bleached by the sun, was bleached for good now, white.
    “Blaikie. I knew either it was you or a vanilla ice-cream cone. I bet you don’t know who I am.”
    “You’re Et Desmond and the only thing different about you is you cut off your braids.” He kissed her forehead, nervy as always.
    “So you’re back visiting old haunts,” said Et, wondering who had seen that.
    “Not visiting. Haunting.” He told her then how he had got wind of the hotel opening up again, and how he had been doing this sort of thing, driving tour buses, in various places, in Florida and Banff. And when she asked he told her about his two wives. He never asked was she married, taking for granted she wasn’t. He never asked if Char was, till she told him.

    Et remembered the first time she understood that Char was beautiful. She was looking at a picture taken of them, of Char and herself and their brother who was drowned. Et was ten in the picture, Char fourteen and Sandy seven, just a couple of weeks short of all he would ever be. Et was sitting in an armless chair and Char was behind her, arms folded on the chair-back, with Sandy in his sailor suit cross-legged on the floor—or marble terrace, you would think, with the effect made by what had been nothing but a dusty, yellowing screen, but came out in the picture a pillar and