The View from Castle Rock

a mound of dark quivering jelly. He was allowed to drive a car, at any rate, and he drove very badly. I remember my mother coming home and saying that she had seen him and Aunt Charlie in town, he had made a U-turn in the middle of the street and she had no idea how he was allowed to get away with it.
    “Charlie takes her life in her hands every time she gets into that car.”

    He was allowed to get away with it, I suppose, because he was an important person locally, well-known and well-liked, sociable and confident. Like my grandfather he was a farmer, but he did not spend much time farming. He was a notary public and the clerk of the township he lived in, and he was a force in the Liberal Party. There was some money that did not come from farming. From mortgages maybe-there was talk of investments. He and Aunt Charlie kept some cows, but no other livestock. I remember seeing him in the stable, turning the cream separator, wearing a shirt and his suit-vest, with his fountain pen and Eversharp pencil clipped to the vest pocket. I don’t remember his actually milking the cows. Did Aunt Charlie do it all, or did they have a hired man?
    If Aunt Charlie was alarmed by his driving she never showed it. Their affection was legendary. The word
love
was not used. They were said to
he fond of each other.
My father commented to me, some time after Uncle Cyril’s death, that Uncle Cyril and Aunt Charlie had been truly fond of each other. I don’t know what brought this up-we were driving in the car at the time, and maybe there had been some comment-some joke-about Uncle Cyril’s driving. My father emphasized
truly,
as if to acknowledge that this was how married people were supposed to feel about each other, and that they might even claim to feel so, but that in fact such a condition was rare.
    For one thing, Uncle Cyril and Aunt Charlie called each other by their first names. No Mother and Dad. So their being childless set them apart and linked them together not by function, but as their constant selves. (Even my grandfather and grandmother referred to each other, at least in my hearing, as Grandma and Grandpa, moving function one degree further.) Uncle Cyril and Aunt Charlie never used endearments or pet names and I never saw them touch each other. I believe now that there was harmony, a flow of satisfaction, between them, brightening the air around so that even a self-centered child could be aware of it. But perhaps it’s only what I’ve been told, what I think I remember. I’m certain, though, that the other feelings I remember-the sense of obligation and demand that grew monstrously around my father and my mother, and the stale air of irritability, of settled unease, that surrounded my grandparents-were absent from that one marriage, and that this was seen as something to comment on, like a perfect day in an uncertain season.

    Neither my grandmother nor Aunt Charlie made much mention of her dead husband. My grandmother now called hers by his name-
Will.
She spoke without rancor or sadness, as of a school acquaintance. Aunt Charlie might occasionally speak of “your Uncle Cyril” to me alone when my grandmother was not present. What she had to say might be that he would never wear woolen socks, or that his favorite cookies were oatmeal with date filling, or that he liked a cup of tea first thing in the morning. Usually she employed her confidential whisper-there was a suggestion that this was an eminent person we had both known, and that when she said
Uncle,
she was giving me the honor of being related to him.

    Michael phoned me. This was a surprise. He was being careful of his money, mindful of the responsibilities coming his way, and in those days people who were being careful of their money did not make long-distance phone calls unless there was some special, usually solemn, piece of news.
    Our phone was in the kitchen. Michael’s call came around noon, on a Saturday, when my family was sitting a few feet away, eating their midday meal. Of course it was only nine o’clock in the morning in Vancouver.
    “I couldn’t sleep all night,” Michael said. “I was so worried that I hadn’t heard from you. What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing,” I said. I tried to think when I’d last written to him. Surely not more than a week ago.
    “I’ve been busy,” I said. “There’s been a lot to do around here.”
    A few days before we had filled up the hopper with sawdust. That was what we burned in our furnace-it