Becoming Canadian Eh! If It's Yellow - Two

Meeting My Ex

My second journey to Canada was not unexpected, but the reason for it certainly was.

During my visit to Margaret’s I had come to accept her routine of taking her laundry to a Laundromat, thereby saving water and also putting off the arrival of the ‘honey wagon.’ One evening when we were going out for dinner she put two large plastic bags of laundry in the trunk, but instead of going to the usual Laundromat, she drove towards the restaurant and just before we reached it, she turned left into a pitch black driveway.

“I’ll be back in a minute, Dad,” she said as she lugged the bags around a corner in the dark.

I waited in the car for 10 minutes before I remembered that Laundromats were not automatic. Margaret would have to wait for the machine to finish the wash. Puzzled, I decided to explore. Getting out of the car, I walked around the corner of the building and opened the door. Even as I opened it I was thinking it was a strange looking Laundromat.

The first person I saw as I walked in was my ex-wife, Ell. This completely confused me. What on earth was she doing in a Laundromat? Why hadn’t Margaret told me that her Mother owned a Laundromat? It took me a few moments before I realised I was in a house. Another incongruous realization was that it was probably Ell’s home and she was still doing Margaret’s laundry on this side of the Atlantic.

Ell and I had drifted apart after 20 years of marriage and two children. Although the parting was nobody’s fault let me give you a piece of advice. Be careful when choosing the colours of your toothbrushes. Remember men find it difficult to differentiate between green and blue, or at least that’s what Ell screamed as she slammed the door closed for the last time.

I knew Ell had rented a flat in Edinburgh for almost a year, and then, bizarrely, had moved to Canada. There she had re-married, as had I. In the past few years, my wife had passed away and so had Ell’s husband. I was also aware that Margaret’s immigration to Canada had been helped by her Mother, who had found her a job. As Margaret hadn’t mentioned her mother since I’d arrived, I assumed they lived hundreds, if not thousands, of miles apart.

Ell and I stared at each other, but behind her, I could see, slightly out of focus, a smiling Margaret. Her startled Mother didn’t resemble the ogre I’d made her out to be since she walked out. I mumbled some gibberish and stumbled out of the house. When Margaret came back out to the car, she acted as if nothing untoward had happened. “Do you want to have dinner here instead of going out to a restaurant, Dad? Mum’s cooking is a lot better now than it was in Scotland.”

“That wouldn’t be too difficult,” I snapped, still furious at her and embarrassed about my own boorish conduct. We had a rather tense dinner, as Margaret talked about Ell and I pretended not to listen. I did, however, take a note of Ell’s email address when Margaret offered it to me.

* * *

When I returned to Scotland, I wrote Ell’s email address on a post-it-note and stuck it to the monitor. After a few weeks, I couldn't resist sending her an email. Soon, we were phoning each other. We seemed to get on better than we had when we’d been married. It probably had a lot to do with us being older and wiser; or perhaps something to do with the 3,000 mile wide moat between us known as the Atlantic Ocean.

To test the moat theory, Ell came back over to Scotland for a visit. My friends – the same ones who had been slagging her off since she left - were suddenly falling over themselves to welcome her and saying what a dickhead I had been and how it had served me right that she’d left. They continued on the same vein and then not so subtly mentioned that they perhaps might be thinking of visiting Canada soon and….er….would she possibly have any spare beds?

Ell and I took the opportunity when she was in Scotland, to visit some old haunts. She was amazed by the New Town, which when she left, was still in the ‘new’ stage. Now it even had a Football Stadium and a First Division football team. She felt quite at home to find that ASDA (Associated Dairies), a large United Kingdom store, had been taken over by Wal-mart, the largest retail outlet in the World, in which she often shopped.

After exploring the updated New Town, we went further afield and gravitated to nostalgic places from our past, like our first meeting place, the Palais de Danse in Bathgate. We pulled up and parked across the street from the Palais. It was almost a ruin, with one of the doors creaking in the wind, but in my memory I was transported back to that magical Saturday night when a certain titian haired beauty entered the dance hall flanked by her two friends, Grace and Fiona. Again I could feel my mouth falling open as my friend nudged me and nodded towards her as she made her entrance. I was smitten. Before I could stop myself, I was shuffling across that floor and asking her up for a dance.

She was shy and kept her eyes down as I tried to make conversation, and it was obvious she hadn’t been dancing often. All evening I tried to monopolize her dances, but in one instance when I was beaten to the punch I asked her friend, Grace, up for a dance. That was a big mistake. All Grace did was warn me in which direction her knee would be traveling and at what velocity if I so much as laid a finger on Ell. At Ladies choice, Grace and her companion swiveled Ell around until she was facing in my direction and pushed her across the floor. ‘Ah!’ I thought. ‘She’s so shy!’

"Remember that first night?” I asked, nodding towards the dance hall.

“Like it was yesterday,” Ell sighed melodramatically “If only I’d known that the first dance I had that evening was with my future husband and that he had a silent fart that was lethal up to 25 paces.”

“And if only I’d know that I was dancing with my future wife and that her cleavage was a magnet for food as well as drooling males.”

Ladies Choice

We walked across to the Palais and tentatively pushed the door open, and stepped into the past. The floor was a mess of filth, covered with cans, broken glass and cartons. The building smelled like a urinal, which it probably was late on Saturday nights when the pubs were emptying. Surprisingly, the mirror-ball was still mounted on the ceiling.

Kicking the garbage aside, I walked over the left-hand side of the hall. “I was standing here with Sammy when you came in. You walked over there to the women’s side of the hall.” Ell walked over where I indicated. “I think I was about here in the line of cattle,” she said. In those far off days, the system was like a cattle market; men on the left and women on the right. Except for Ladies choice, the men did the choosing.

I kicked a pizza box out of the way and curtsied in front of Ell as she bowed over the remains of a stinking fish supper. “God I hope nobody walks in here just now,” I said. “Do you remember Fats Domino and ‘I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill?”

“How could I forget,” Ell answered as she reached for my hand. “Only in our case it was Cairnpapple Hill.”

Suddenly I fell for her all over again, physically this time as my ass thumped to the floor. I could have blamed my fall on nostalgia, but the dog shit I’d slipped on was all too visible on the soles of my shoes. Ell stood there shaking her head in disbelief as she looked down at me. “Some things never change. If there is any shit flying about, it’s a certainty that you’ll be the substitute for the fan.”

After wiping the dog crap - at least I hoped it was dog crap - from my shoes with a piece of the pizza box, I hobbled across to Ell. “You know where we have to go next, don’t you?”

“If you’re thinking Cairnpapple Hill, forget it. Damp heather no longer appeals.”

“We are going to where I discovered the truth.” Ell laughed as we headed for South Queensferry. Within the hour, we were parked on the esplanade overlooking the river Forth and the Forth Rail Bridge.

Our original drive to Queensferry had been our first date. We’d met often after that first meeting at the Palais de Danse, but in very odd circumstances. During our time on the dance floor, I had discovered that although Ell worked as a book-binder she also had a weekend job at the Broxburn Regal cinema. My friend Sammy couldn’t understand why I began to insist on going to Broxburn Regal instead of our local Regal.

Ell worked in the picture house showing people to their seats. After the lights went out, she became the ice cream girl, and walked up and down the aisles selling ice cream from her illuminated tray. For weeks, the only parts of Ell I saw after buying my ticket were her hands as she took my money and gave me my Walls Choc Ice. I was getting more and more bloated as the weeks went by, and I shudder to think what size of a blimp I would have become if I hadn’t finally plucked up the courage to ask Ell’s hands out on a date. I was ecstatic when they said yes.

That Monday night, when I picked her up for our first date, I was the perfect gentleman and opened the passenger door for her. I realised she was as nervous as I was when she didn’t notice I was holding the door open, and opened the driver’s door by mistake.

“Do you want to drive?” I asked her.

“Oh I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Ell apologised as she came around the car and made herself comfortable in the passenger seat. Now that there was no ice cream tray between us, our conversation became stilted. I drove down to South Queensferry and parked on the esplanade in almost complete silence.

“Do you know where you are?” I asked her.

Ell hesitated and just then a locomotive came steaming over the ForthBridge from Fife, siren blowing and sparks spurting up from the funnel and through the bridge girders.

“That must be the Forth Bridge,” she blurted, “which means this must be South Queensferry.” She dived for her handbag which was in the back seat and as she opened it she said “I can’t do this any longer.” She took out a pair of spectacles. “I’ve never seen the Forth Bridge, even in the dark. To hell with vanity! I want to see it,” she announced as she put on her glasses.

Some things became crystal clear. “That’s why your friends aimed you at me during ladies choice…..” Ell nodded

…..“And you tried to enter the driver’s side of the car because you couldn’t see the wheel, didn’t you?”

“No!” She shook her head. “I’ve never been in a car before.”

I opened the glove compartment and took out my own pair of spare glasses. Excusing myself, I left the car. Taking out my contact lenses, I placed them in their container and put on my glasses. After re-entered the car, I explained to a startled Ell. “I’m as blind as a bat as well; only when it came to vanity I went the whole hog and got contact lenses.” We examined each other through thick lenses and tears of laughter, and began a beautiful friendship.

“And to think we had the audacity to try and build a marriage based on such false foundations. No wonder it only lasted 20 years.” Ell shook her head. “The foolishness of youth.”

“How about in the foolishness of maturity, we give it another go?” I suggested. Ell turned to face me and in a synchronized movement we leaned towards each other and kissed. “You read my mind. Your proposal will never make it into the top 10 romantic proposals, but I think it is a great idea.”

Immigration

As we were both already in Scotland, I assumed Ell would be staying in God’s own country after we were married. When I said this, I was met with hysterical laughter.

“Stay here? Not on your life; much as I love Scotland, I can love it just as much from the other side of the ocean.” Being a true Scots patriot and realistic with it, I had to agree. Crossing the Atlantic every day would be one hell of a commute.

Surprisingly enough, Canada agreed to accept me as an immigrant once Ell and I were married. They forgot to mention the thousands of pounds it would cost and the never- ending medicals I’d have to endure. I did discover an unusual fact when I made an appointment with my doctor to claim my health records.

“You can’t take your medical records abroad. In fact you can’t take them out of the surgery.” The Doc was aghast. “They belong to the National Health Service.”

“They belong to me,” I countered. “It’s was my asthma; was my pneumonia; my fractured femur.”

“There you are,” he said. “You know all you need to know. The records stay here, period!” And stay there is exactly what the originals did.

We made arrangements to sell my house and invited friends around to take their pick of furniture and books. It was a stressful time, and I kept saying “No! You can’t have that.” Ell got muscle strain from prying things from my grasp. She eventually threw me out of the house when a friend, who was choosing books, pounced on my Dune trilogy. I was almost apoplectic. “They do have books in Canada, you know.” She said as she slammed the door shut on my foot. I said my goodbyes to old friends and relatives.

I didn’t expect a pipe band to see me off at Edinburgh airport, and I wasn’t disappointed; although a lone piper would have been nice. I suppose I was lucky they weren’t having a

‘Thank-God-he’ll-no-be-back-again’ rave, but when the plane was taking off I could have sworn I saw a champagne cork jetting past.

* * *

When we landed in Ottawa – I’d already tried the Montreal experience and wasn’t anxious to re-live it, Maggie met us and drove us to my new home. On the way I listened soberly, to the details of Skip’s demise, which wasn’t as I’d suspected, from lockjaw, but from old age. I managed to keep the surprise from my face at this news.

As she drove us to my new home, I looked around. This time in Canada was going to be reality for me. It wasn’t simply a matter of being on holiday. It was a case of ‘this was my new home,’ my new country. I now had proprietorial rights to this land, whether it liked it or not. This time around, there would be no flashing my credit cards around as if I was a millionaire. Those would be the self-same credit cards I had to sell a house to pay off.

* * *

My new home was - how can I put this delicately? Tiny! It wasn’t the same house I thought was a Laundromat. Then, Ell lived in a different village. Her present house, according to her, was a one and a half storey, whatever that meant. It wasn’t so much on the wrong side of the tracks as on the wrong side of the road. Although it was on the County Road 2 tourist route, running alongside the St. Lawrence River, it was not on the river side of the road. It was on the north side, which meant that between us and the river was a road and some other houses. It was a fine distinction of about $400,000.

This fact bothered me little when Ell explained it at the time, and to be quite frank, still doesn’t. What did bother me then was who had stolen the rest of the house. Thirteen steps after walking in the front door, I was walking out of the back door. I did a double-take and nonchalantly began looking for the remainder of the house.

“This is it!” Ell smiled. “It is only 900 square feet, as opposed to your UK home which was 2,500 square feet.”

I shook my head. “I know you told me how big it was in square feet, but it didn’t register with me. You know we don’t measure homes in square feet in the UK! We say it is a 3, 4 or 5 bedroom. What is this? One folding camp-bed sized?”

Ell bristled before defending her home, and herself. “Immediately after my late husband’s funeral, I returned to our matrimonial home and discovered his family had emptied the house of all the furniture. They even took the bed, but being a compassionate lot, they left a mattress - on the floor.”

“What?” “Why?”

“Seemingly I was a gold digger.” She waved her right hand at our surroundings, “as you can see from the stunning mansion and elegant furnishings. I got the message from the mattress episode, and moved out to let them fight over the house. For a time, I was homeless. I moved in with Margaret until I found this charming des-res. I like this house, OK?”

I winced at my big mouth as Ell made her way to a staircase I hadn’t noticed. “There are 3 bedrooms upstairs.” She said. I followed her up the vertiginous stairs and found myself in a bedroom with a sloping ceiling. The ceiling made me feel quite at home, as I’d slept in a similar room when I was a teenager. One of the other rooms could be classed as a spare single bedroom but the other one was definitely a closet. I stood in the middle of the main bedroom and reached up to touch the ceiling. Ell was quite right about the extra bedrooms. Who needed them? “We can’t ever play hide-and-seek, but it is the perfect size for two, I’ll give you that.”

“Ah!” she said. “Follow me.” I followed her back down the stairs. “About the house being the perfect size for two,” she continued as she opened the back door and ushered me out onto a deck overlooking a long, long garden. I had never been on a deck before and I was intrigued by it until I heard a familiar growling noise. Bounding towards me was a Labrador Boxer cross. ‘Oh God, Not again,’ I thought, as I froze.

“Meet Samantha,” Ell introduced the dog, as, stump of a tail wagging, it leapt up and began slurping my face. “Sam for short,” she explained. I sighed; at least I’d rather get licked to death than clamped to death.

“Yours?’

“Ours,” she corrected, giving me and Sam a cuddle.