Jim Harrison - The Ancient Minstrel

Breakfast next morning before their noon train was pleasant as the man had long gone off to work.

“You’re going to be very lovely. Take care in your choices. You can’t be too cautious about who you marry. I’ll probably see you in London for a visit,” the woman said to Catherine as they said goodbye.

To Catherine the three days in New York City were fine, especially the Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The hard part was her mother’s interminable shopping. Catherine wasn’t fascinated by clothes the way some girls her age were, in fact she simply didn’t care much about them. Her favorite thing to wear was her overalls out on the farm, just like Grandpa’s. Her mother, however, had inherited some money from a maiden aunt in Hereford, England. Her father thought that they should buy a new Ford roadster with the money, but her mother had brought the money along in traveler’s checks to keep him away from it.

The voyage was utterly grand to Catherine. They had middling tickets, not first class but certainly not steerage. She didn’t really know the difference and didn’t care. She was completely untraveled and New York City had been stunning in terms of the people she saw. The ship was the same but because it was confined she was able to wander around and study the variety of people as if she were studying her chickens.

The only thing irritating to Catherine was that there was a certain kind of older man who would stare and wink at her. In truth despite her ignorance of sexuality she was a little early in her pubescence and had begun to have breasts. She was five-foot-nine and graceful with big eyes and certain men have a taste for the too young. To Catherine these men were no different from the boy behind the school who had aimed his hard dick at her and yelled, “Bang.” She wanted to continue being a girl and had no interest in becoming a woman which she could see was a disadvantage, in Montana and maybe everywhere else. In school even the teachers fawned over the boys who were star athletes. A mere perfect student like herself was largely ignored except by one or two. Luckily her Sunday school teacher Mrs. Semmes had taught her the value of humility which allowed her not to become angry about those conditions she couldn’t change. Several years later some girls she knew asked her to join them on the cheerleading squad but frankly she hated the idea of yelling, maybe because of her father who did so much though never at her.

She immediately loved London and her grandparents though she grew quite tired of accompanying her mother on her visits to old friends. Mother treated her as if she were a trophy which she disliked and Catherine was at a loss for anything to say to her mother’s schoolmates. Finally she relented and let Catherine take walks with either of her grandparents. They lived about a block off Cheyne Walk in a house that came to them through her grandmother’s parents, otherwise it would have been too expensive for them in that lovely neighborhood. They would walk along the Thames and Catherine thought there was no substitute on earth for a big river. London was simply a fabulous walking town and they strayed far in the short time before the war started. It was pretty much all that anyone talked about.

They were there six months when there was a wire saying her mother had to go home because Catherine’s grandmother on the farm had died and her father was ill from a possible stroke. Catherine didn’t think her mother cared about her father but there were many things to be sorted out that required her at home. She had trouble booking passage as there were so many people trying to get out of England in fear of the possibility of a German attack. Finally Grandfather got her aboard a big yacht returning to Newport, Rhode Island, in exchange for his wangling enough gas for them to reach port. Grandfather had been very high in the civil service, basically looking after all transportation in the London area. Catherine deduced later that this must have been how he wangled gas for the yacht. Her grandfather was called in for many civil defense — type meetings during the war, some at their home during which she had to go up to her room. Secrets were being told and she shouldn’t know them. She liked this air of intrigue having read mystery books.

Alicia pretended that she wanted to take Catherine back home with her but Catherine doubted her sincerity. She was still angry about losing her brother and was quite critical as a young woman can be. Catherine’s grandmother was dead and her grandfather was ill and she was afraid he’d die and she’d never see him again. Her English grandfather assured her that the Germans would never dare attack “mighty England” as he called it. Then scarcely ten days after they said goodbye to her mother the London Blitz started.

All the nights of the Blitz were spent down in the local subway stop, called the Tube over there. Because of her grandfather’s importance he had a little office toward the end of the stop as he needed safe access to a phone. MI5 also gave him two very large guards which consoled her grandmother who lived out the Blitz in a state of relentless fear. They stood right outside the door all night long. Catherine often worried about their families but they had been sent to relatives in the country early on. They were also visited once a day before dinner by grandmother’s French cook and his wife Nina. They had a hot plate in the office and Patrice would cook whatever he could scavenge that day from the markets. Grandfather refused to use his importance to get better food than the rest of the city could get because of rationing, but sometimes when Patrice got something particularly good and nondemocratic Grandfather would pretend he hadn’t noticed while eating his sacred lamb chop or whatever it was. There was also an open toilet bowl and sink in the office and an electric transformer against the wall which kept them warm on cool nights. They slept with blankets on thin mattresses that would be rolled up and stuffed under the desk during the daytime. So Catherine couldn’t complain that her family suffered like thousands of others in the Blitz. At first it embarrassed her to go potty in front of others but when you are hearing the thunder of bombs and the walls are shaking you learn to adapt.

The barrage called the London Blitz continued for fifty-seven nights in a row. Even if you didn’t hate Hitler at the beginning you would be insane with rage by the end. Catherine read later that it had killed forty thousand innocent civilians and severely injured about that number. Her birthday fell in October and Patrice managed to make her a cake on the hot plate which made her quite happy, a nice chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

Catherine felt cheated of the night. She had always loved to walk at twilight and see nightfall, hear the nighthawks and whippoorwills, then stumble home in the dark. Mother would make her take a flashlight but she never used it. The flashlight seemed vulgar in the beauty of the night. She missed most seeing the moon. Grandpa knew this and the evening of the full moon he daringly took her to the top of the stairs to see it. Frederick, one of the guards and a huge Jamaican, escorted them. The moon was distorted by all of the smoke in the air but still beautiful. There were fires all over London from the bombs. They stared at it but suddenly the Luftwaffe dropped the first bombs of the evening not a quarter mile away. Frederick put himself in front of them but Catherine saw the moon turn bright orange from the firestorm. She was both awed and horrified.

Grandpa took her for a walk in the station every afternoon so she could get some exercise. That was when there were the least people in the station. Many left during this time to scavenge for food and to go to the toilet on the streets, as the public toilet in the station was in disrepair. The Red Cross began bringing food which was much appreciated but never enough. Then Patrice was shot trying to steal meat. Nina was bereft but brave and stayed on with Catherine’s grandparents until they died. Way into the time of the Blitz one day MI5 sent a small truck that picked up Grandma and Catherine. Grandmother was very ill at the time and the war effort couldn’t afford to let Grandfather go with them. The truck, manned by a nice American from Missouri, drove them through the rubble of London. There was a special insignia on the side of the truck and no one tried to stop them. The man from Missouri, named Ted, drove them way out a couple of hours from London to Truro, in Cornwall, to Grandma’s brother’s small farm. Grandma wept when she saw the farm because she had been raised and given birth to Catherine’s mother there. Catherine’s heart soared when she saw a big gaggle of chickens in the yard. As soon as she got out of the truck she walked among them crying and speaking soft loving words. A rooster pecked her leg before she could push him away with a foot. It was a solid peck and hurt but she didn’t care. Her great-aunt Winifred, called Winnie, made them an early supper because Ted had to drive the truck back to London before nightfall. Catherine would always recall it as the best supper of her life. Great-Aunt Winnie made an enormous omelet with her homemade cheese and served it with a big plate of very red garden tomatoes. Despite what Patrice came up with Catherine hadn’t seen an egg in a month and a half because eggs were very precious and she thought she had never tasted anything as utterly delicious in her life. Winnie gave her an Easter basket and it was her job to feed the chickens and gather the eggs as she had done back home in Montana. Most people don’t care for chickens, looking at them as food-bearing pests, so everyone was happy when Catherine took over the job. She knew what grand creatures they were and she was pleased to do it. At eighty-five Catherine would still be taking care of her own chickens. When they ate a stewing hen Catherine knew her private name for her. It didn’t bother her. It was just part of life.