I know the Victorians. I lived in a house from that era and it was thoroughly haunted—and to this day, so am I.
So when I inherited Great Grandma Eileen’s Victorian row house my first impulse was to modernize it and exorcise it of all ghosties and ghoulies.
Fran, however, was reluctant to carry out renovations afraid it might destroy the charm of the old Painted Lady—and so we were at an impasse.
Besides. the house had secretes we hadn't yet explored, like the letters Grandma Eileen hid behind the fireplace mantel and who knew what past ghosts might be stirred up by demolishing old walls?
Still, by now two months has passed and we were all moved in. It was July and I adjusted to the house and decided it was time to redecorate.
Fran grudgingly told me to choose a room—any room, and gave me free rein to do what I wanted. I chose the front room, figuring it was the most out of date and in need of an upgrade.
It was a stifling hot day and she was off to Kensington Market leaving me a pitcher of lemonade and a one-sentence warning: “Don’t get carried away.”
Knowing me, that wouldn’t be hard.
What I had in mind was to knock down the wall separating the living room from the dining room—maybe later, replace the leaded widows with a more modern bay window.
Normally, I’d just lay a tarp, get a hammer and go to work—but it was stiflingly hot and the lemonade looked so cool and tempting that I found myself propped up on a cushion on the couch leisurely sipping the icy beverage and daydreaming.
It was a drowsy afternoon. The windows were open and I was mesmerized watching bumblebees lazily droning among Morning Glories and sparrows chirping in the chestnut tree outside.
There were sounds all around—children playing in the street and neighbours’ voices drifting in and out, even sounding as if they were inside the house. And then, I realized they were.
There was a hushed conversation, scarcely louder than the rustle of the breeze in the chestnut leaves and the sounds of porch chairs creaking.
I was in that state psychologists call sleep paralysis—not asleep, but not quite awake—and totally unable to move.
I saw two people on the porch—the one, a young lady who I thought at first was Fran, but as I stared, she turned slightly and my heart stopped. It was a younger version of Great Grandma Eileen, dressed in the style of the Twenties, and beside her on the porch swing, a strange, handsome young man.
The two were obviously in love, immersed in each other’s company. They seemed completely apart, as if living in their own world. And then, as suddenly at they appeared, the scene faded.
I felt the force holding me release, and immediately bolted up from the couch, trembling and feeling faint. I ran to the window and looked outside, but as I suspected, there was nothing. Still, there was an indefinable aura of a presence as if the very air itself still contained heat signatures.
I returned to the couch feeling shaken and perplexed. I knew the man Eileen Preston had married two years after her beloved airman died. He was a mousey stockbroker on Bay Street who lost everything in the Black Tuesday Crash of 1929.
Coward he was, he took his life jumping out of a Stock Exchange widow leaving my Great Grandma with a two-year old girl to raise and a hard row to hoe.
Life was hard for my Great Grandma struggling through the Depression. Eileen never remarried and if she had ever had a lover, no one knew about it—not even me, the favorite grandson who was closest to her.
When Fran returned, I told her all about it.
“That explains it!” she smiled.
“Explains what?”
“The letters, Silly—the neat little stack tied up in the violet ribbon in the cigar box.”
It hadn’t dawned on either of us that the letters were romantic in nature, since everything I knew about Great Grandma Eileen and confided to Fran would certainly preclude the possibility of her possessing a cache of billets doux.
“But if they were love letters, why a violet ribbon?” Fran wondered.
“Well, I know Grandma Eileen dutifully wrote an airman who was shot down over France in World War 1—When I saw the packet, I assumed the letters were written to him—a kind of civic duty, typical of Eileen.”
Fran nodded. “Lots of girls wrote soldiers in the war—even offering to marry them as a kind of encouragement, knowing most of them would never come back.”
I sighed deeply. “Her airman never did.”
“But what if they were love letters to another, Blake? Face it, they were scented and lovingly hid away.”
“True, and it’s possible she could have had a secret romance. The only fact I really know for sure is the airman she wrote is buried somewhere in France.”
“Maybe it’s time to open that box again and read the letters—maybe that’s what your Great Grandma was trying to communicate to you by letting you in on her secret.”
I nodded. It made sense—at least that part.
We opened the panel and sat again in Eileen’s front room, unsealing her letters and reluctantly prying open her heart.
