A Prairie as Wide as the Sea Read online

  None of those Canada books we got in London said one thing about Hallowe’en. If they want new settlers to come to Canada they should mention Hallowe’en. Then all the children would make their parents come. Kids should write those books. Grown-ups don’t know what’s important.

  October 26

  The Monster

  Elizabeth told me about a really scary thing that happened to her last Hallowe’en. Scary, then funny.

  There was going to be a party at the school on the night before Hallowe’en. She and Hans were walking to it. They were getting themselves scared for the fun of it, talking about ghouls and walking spirits and all that. And they passed by our house (I mean our old house – the Fretwell house), but nobody lived there then. Elizabeth thought she heard singing coming from the dark house so they went over to investigate. And they just got up to the door and it swung open and there was a monster standing there. It had a tiger’s head, a monkey’s tail and three horns. So they took off like crazy down the road, running as fast as they could. And they could hear the monster running behind them. Then Elizabeth tripped and fell. She said that all she could think of was that the monster was going to gore her to death with his horns. But then she heard this noise and the monster was standing over her laughing. And she looked up and there was Florence Gilmour’s older brother Tom holding a mask. Turns out he was on his way to the party and he stopped at the empty house to put on his costume because he didn’t want anyone to see it in advance. He was humming some old song to himself – that was the sound they heard. He said that he was calling “Stop, Elizabeth,” and “Hans, it’s only me.” But Elizabeth could only hear her own breathing and her heart thumping. They all had a good laugh.

  October 28

  Time Stands Still

  This is worse than waiting for my birthday. Mother said that Hallowe’en sounds like an excuse for a bunch of hooligans, and give her Guy Fawkes Day any day. But she did find me some old raggedy clothes. I’ve decided to dress up like a tramp. Elizabeth is going to go as an old Granny.

  Today at recess Nyla came up to me with a nicey nicey look on her face and said she was sorry that we had to live in a boarding house. I told her it was not a boarding house but a first-class hotel. “Oh yes?” she said in that perfectly poisonous way.

  I’ll bet the Muirs don’t have celery dishes. That’s what I should have said.

  October 29

  Intrigue

  Today Elizabeth passed me a note. It said, “Secret message. Meet me by the stump at lunch.” I meet Elizabeth for lunch every day anyway. But I like getting notes even though if Miss Hutchinson catches us she gives us lines. The secret is that Elizabeth overheard Hans and Ralph planning to scare us on Hallowe’en. They know we’re going to be at the Mullers’ getting our costumes ready. They are going to get Mrs. Muller to ask us to go to the chicken house just around dusk and they are going to be hiding in there in ghost costumes to scare us. Over lunch we planned our counterattack. It is an excellent plan.

  November 1

  What Really Happened on Hallowe’en

  This might be short. I’m so sleepy. We were up until 10:30 last night. Miss Hutchinson said we were all dopes in school. But Hallowe’en was crackerjack. We locked the boys in the chicken house and we pretended we couldn’t hear them shouting. We just said things like, “My, aren’t the chickens noisy tonight,” and “Good thing the chickens are safe because you never know what might happen on Hallowe’en.” We let them out after about ten minutes when we got them to say that we were lovely, kind and beautiful.

  Then we all went into town and did “apples and tricks” at people’s houses. Almost everybody gave us an apple except for old Mr. Olson who didn’t even open his door. Hans said we should overturn his outhouse so we snuck around to the back but just when we got up to it he jumped out of it and came after us with a broom. So we escaped and we didn’t get to play any tricks. But we got lots of apples. All over the streets there were clowns, and hunters, witches, more tramps, ghosts. Abel was a jailbird. Nyla was a gypsy with gold ear hoops and a red sateen skirt with flounces. Her mother sewed her a costume. It is nicer than most people’s real clothes. But she had to go home for ordinary bedtime. We got to stay up late. It was like kids owned Milorie. This morning I heard that Mr. Skidmore set up a booby trap for the next outhouse tippers. They were supposed to fall down the hole. But it backfired and he did! Cannot write one more thing except that I would like to dress like a tramp all the time. You can do anything and not worry about getting dirty.

  November 2

  Outhouses vs Door Knockers

  Today I heard about a few more tricks that happened on Hallowe’en, like the cream separator that ended up on the roof of the school, and whose screen door got soaped. Which is a better place for playing tricks, England or Canada? Canada is good because of Hallowe’en and outhouses. But there is one English trick that you can’t play here because the houses are too far apart. It is called knocking on doors. Here’s how you do it: You take a piece of string and you tie it to the door knocker of one house. Then you tie the other end to the door knocker of the house next door. You have to tie it nice and tight. Then you knock on door number one and you hide. The person in house number one answers their door, doesn’t see anybody and closes their door. This makes the string knock on door number two. The person in house number two opens their door, looks, closes their door. This makes the knocker knock on door number one. And so it goes on back and forth. The record on Halley Road, which was by Peggy Plumley, was twelve times. (You can play knocking on doors any time of the year. That’s another good thing about it. Point for England.)

  November 5

  War

  Today Miss Hutchinson talked about Armistice Day which is next Monday. She talked about the Great War and said we should be grateful for all the men and women who gave up their lives so that there would never be another war. I thought of Edith Cavell. Then I thought of Dad’s brother, Uncle Ted. He was killed at the Battle of the Somme, but when William was an infant he met him. Then Miss Hutchinson read “In Flanders Fields.” She told us that the poem was written by a Canadian doctor and that the next battles we all had to fight were the battles against disease.

  At recess the boys played enemy attack. Boys are loathsome.

  When I got home only Dad was there. He was reading the paper. “Glorious dead,” he said. Then he hit it with the back of his hand and said that there wasn’t that much glorious about it and all the politicians were silly asses here, just like in England. Then he said that the only man that could really run the country would be a woman. Take Queen Victoria! Take your mother! She’d keep them all in line, she would. She’d be a dandy prime minister.

  Then he said bundle up and let’s go for a walk. So we did.

  I told Dad that I had been thinking about Uncle Ted. He told me how Uncle Ted was so clever that he made his own bicycle. Dad told me about a mate of his in Gibraltar, too.

  Then he said how when he came home from the war he had a beard and William didn’t know his own father and cried when he picked him up. He said that after the war the toffs came home and took up their lives again but there was nothing for the ordinary working man. No jobs even though they had been promised them. He said, “You’re a hero when you’re over there, but nobody wants to know about you when you come home.”

  Then he got very quiet and sad. But just for a little while. Then he said it was all ancient history and why didn’t we have a song and he sang “On the Road to Mandalay.” This is a very good song to sing LOUD, especially the “dawn comes up like thunder” bit. We really let rip.

  P.S. If we were home, today would be Guy Fawkes Day. Harry is sad that they don’t do Guy Fawkes Day in Canada because he loves Guy Fawkes because he was going to blow up the Houses of Parliament. I don’t care though. I like Hallowe’en better.

  November 7

  Incident with a Pie

  Mother made pumpkin pies to celebrate our first Canadian Thanksgiving. She
got the recipe from the Homemaker’s Club. Pies from squash sounds horrid but it turns out to be scrumptious. But I had an accident with one. I was in the kitchen showing Harry how I can do a front flip, but it wasn’t a perfect front flip and at the end I had to grab the counter and I put my hand right into one of the pies. Harry was very pleased. He liked the accident better than the flip. But Mother came in before I could repair the pie. She said what was she going to do with me. So one pie was a bit scrambled. But it tasted dandy.

  November 10

  Bed and Board

  Finally everything in the hotel is shipshape and we have our first guest. He’s not a traveller. His name is Mr. Ambrose. He is quite old. His wife died two years ago. His children are grown up and live far away. When he came to look at the room he told Mother that he felt he was in danger of falling into bachelor ways, such as living on beans. Mr. Ambrose is very polite. He also said he would enjoy some stimulating conversation with others from the old country. I wonder how stimulating he will find it when the twins start speaking their secret language. He will have the front room. Mother’s advertisement said, “Favourable terms for long-term guests,” which means he pays less than travelling salesmen would pay. He moves in on Thursday.

  November 11

  Moving Day

  Mr. Ambrose moved in today. William says he had some very heavy boxes. Mother has laid down the law that we are not to talk his ear off.

  November 12

  Extinction

  Mystery solved. The heavy boxes were an encyclopedia. Today when I came home after school Mr. Ambrose was in the sitting room reading this fat leather book. He started to tell me about this huge flightless bird called the great auk. I knew he liked stimulating conversation so I asked what happened to the auk and he told me about extinction. Then he told me that since he stopped farming he has started to read the encyclopedia, because he didn’t have much chance of an education when he was a lad and it is never too late. Then he said that it would be a great favour to him if I would think of a question every day to ask him.

  November 15

  Sea Story

  Question of the day: Why are there seagulls flying over the fields around Milorie when we are so far from the sea in both directions? When I asked Mr. Ambrose he looked as though I had offered him a sweet. He brought several volumes of the encyclopedia down to the sitting room and started leafing and reading. We didn’t really find the answer but along the way he told me that long long ago the prairies were under the sea. I said how did we know and he got even happier and said was I free to go for a walk. Then he went into the kitchen and asked Mother if he could borrow me for an hour for a scientific expedition. I knew there were dishes to wash and twins to mind but Mother said yes. (I like having boarders!)

  We walked out the main road toward the Muller farm and Mr. Ambrose talked about the Cretaceous Epoch, before the Rocky Mountains, when dinosaurs walked the earth. Then we took off down a little track and came to a low sandy bit of land. Mr. Ambrose crouched down and began running the sand through his fingers and then he pulled out a little bit of broken rock with a swirly pattern in it, about the size of my little fingernail. He said it was the fossil of a sea snail that had lived right here, when here was a shallow sea, a hundred million years ago. Then he found something that might have been a bit of squid. He gave them to me. I’m going to collect fossils. That would be a good collection for a deep-sea diver.

  On the walk home I thought about a hundred million years. I thought about a hundred million diaries. In my head I flew up high, like a seagull, and looked down at Mr. Ambrose and me and we looked like tiny ants crawling across the world. We were quiet on the way home and didn’t have stimulating conversation but Mr. Ambrose didn’t seem to mind.

  November 16

  Jazz Man

  The Mullers finally had a letter from Gerhard. He has joined a jazz band and he’s travelling all over. He’s playing the trumpet. Gerhard never even had a trumpet. Elizabeth says he used to go over to the Elliots’ place and play Mel Elliot’s dad’s bugle that he brought home from the war. (Mel Elliot’s dad brought it back, not Gerhard. Miss Hutchinson says that this is an ambiguous pronoun reference and she has many amusing examples of it, but I don’t think it matters because obviously Gerhard didn’t bring home a bugle from the war, he was only a baby.) Anyway, he must have got good enough at the trumpet to be in a band. In his letter he said that he played in a new dance hall in Manitou Beach that has a dance floor that has horsehair under it. The horsehair makes it very bouncy for dancers.

  I don’t understand. Back home Grandma had a horsehair sofa and it wasn’t bouncy at all. It was as hard as a rock. You got numb sitting on it. And when I touched Dot’s mane and tail it wasn’t bouncy. To be really bouncy wouldn’t the dance floor have to be on rubber? That would be a good question for Mr. Ambrose.

  Mr. Muller is still so angry at Gerhard that he wouldn’t even read the letter.

  November 17

  Magic Words

  Snow. Not a blizzard, but big white flakes. It started this morning just after we went in to school. Everybody was looking out the windows and not paying attention. Finally Miss Hutchinson said we could have early recess. Everybody practically fell over each other getting on their mitts and scarves. Harry was disappointed because it still isn’t the kind of snow you can pack into snowballs or igloos. But he cheered up when everyone started playing fox and geese. For this game you tramp out the pattern of a wagon wheel in the snow. It is sort of like tag. The fox is It and everyone else is a goose. But you have to stay on the lines of the wheel and the spokes. If you have to pass someone mostly you fall over in the snow and then you’re out. Miss Hutchinson played with us and she let us have double recess. I had to pass Nyla and she fell over and then she got very huffy and dropped out of the game. She gave me a nasty look, which is ridiculous.

  When we came back in everyone was soaking so Miss Hutchinson let us sit around the stove and she read to us instead of doing our lessons. She made us promise to work extra hard tomorrow. The story she read was Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

  All the boys liked this story because of the gruesome deaths, like being drowned in boiling oil.

  I liked the part where the greedy brother forgets the magic words Open Sesame and starts saying things like Open Barley. That is exactly what would happen to me. I’d forget the magic words. There I would be, Ivy Weatherall stuck in a cave. I would heard the bloodthirsty robbers coming. Open Wheat! I would hear their horses. Open Rye! I would hear the crash of their cruel weapons. Open Oatmeal! Trapped!

  This is what I was thinking about when I

  wasn’t doing my dictionary drill.

  (True confession: I did give Nyla a bit of a shove in fox and geese. I just couldn’t resist.)

  November 20

  Music through the Air

  This evening the Mullers invited us over to listen to their new tube radio. Hans came and got us in the sleigh. The runners on the sleigh make a beautiful sound on the snow. I felt like the Snow Queen in the fairy tale.

  The radio is a Westinghouse two-tube. It is super. Much better than the crystal wireless that Dad had on Halley Road. He used to fiddle with it all the time trying to get something. Mother said she was going to chuck it in the dustbin if he didn’t stop wasting time. The tube radio is much better. It gets stations from as far away as other provinces, like Edmonton, Alberta, and even from other countries, like Salt Lake City, U.S.A. It has two sets of earphones so we took turns.

  Mr. Muller kept twisting the dials to find different places. Mother and Dad listened to a man from Regina giving a talk on growing vegetables. It was torture to wait for our turn. William and I were next and Mr. Muller found us a lady in Toronto singing. I shut my eyes and it was like having a soprano singing inside my head. But she started fading away and then there was a sound like frying so Mr. Muller twisted the dials again and found a little kids’ show. It was “Good Night Stories with Mr. Radiobug.” So we gave the headph
ones to the twins. It was comical to see them laughing at the same time when we didn’t even know what they were listening to.

  When it was over Harry asked how the stories got into the box. Hans explained about radio waves and that. I don’t really understand it.

  Mrs. Muller made tea and then Elizabeth and I shared one pair of headphones and Hans took the other. He found some wonderful music. It was horns and a banjo and drums and I couldn’t tell what else. But you couldn’t listen to it without starting to move around. So we were jigging around and Elizabeth started snapping her fingers and Mr. Muller took the headphones off Hans and listened and then switched off the radio. In an angry way. He said that it was jazz and that jazz is wicked music. Probably because of Gerhard running away to join a jazz band.

  On the way home Harry kept throwing his hands up in the air. Dad asked him what he was doing and he said that he was trying to feel the radio waves. Everybody laughed but, truth to tell, I wonder about that too. If they are going right through me on their way from CKCK Regina to the Mullers’ radio, wouldn’t I feel them? I certainly hope we get a radio when our ship comes in.