The Mud Floor

“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple” Oscar Wilde

“Everyone is in such a hurry to go nowhere”, my father used to say. Cars that raced by us on sleepy old Nova Scotia roads were the bane of his existence. He never understood the rush to get from one place to another. My father loved to drive, and would often take me around the villages and countryside surrounding Glen Haven, where we lived. He was a real estate agent. He would show me houses he had sold and tell me stories about the people who lived in them. “Everyone has a story”; that was another thing my father used to say.

One bright, cool day in early October, when I was fourteen, he and I drove out of town across the Bass River Bridge. We passed cornfields, small farms with red barns and goats, and Pot’s Dairy, where we often stopped to get ice cream on the way to the beach. Pot’s was closed now for the winter. Then we came upon Robert Haverstock’s house. Robert Haverstock was an antique dealer who lived with his mother in a beautiful home. I was intrigued when we drove by his house, hoping to hear an update on his strange tale. As on previous days, I saw the old spinning wheel in the window and the painting on the wall behind. Beds of dwindling summer flowers adorned the lawn in front of the house. A magnificent oak was bravely fighting off the encroaching Fall. It was losing the battle, for its tenants had turned a deep red, glowing brilliantly in the late afternoon sun. Before long, they would succumb to autumn fire. I wondered who would pick the flowers when they died, and burn the leaves when they fell from the old tree. Robert Haverstock was missing.

My father told me Robert was a quiet, effeminate man. When I asked what effeminate meant, he said Robert was a sissy, a mama’s boy. He also told me that he was a gentle man who always had a kind word for everyone. Robert was in his mid-forties and had never married. He had impeccable manners, drove a tan Cadillac, traveled widely to antique shows, took his mother grocery shopping, and preferred to be called Robert. In a fusion of small town informality and subtle effrontery, most local men called him Bob anyway. Others were less kind.

He had a distinguished style of dress, perhaps a little too splendid for rural Glen Haven. He bought his clothes on frequent business trips to Boston, Chicago and New York. When he stopped at the gas station, the men at the lunch bar would share a chuckle over his finely cut trousers and polished shoes. “Hope the fairy doesn’t get his fancy wings dirty”, thinking themselves clever in their greasy overalls. When they were boys, they would tie young Robert Haverstock to a post in a field, call him names and pummel him with cow shit and acorns. Through his tears, he would try to remember his mother’s affirmation that names could never hurt him. But the acorns stung. Robert had a hard life growing up in the Glen Haven countryside.

I once heard people in a shop talking about Robert Haverstock. Beneath their expressed contempt for the man they shamelessly called a queer, there seemed to lie a sense of bewildered fascination. “God knows what he gets up to in the big city”, they would say, shaking their heads. Deep down, I suppose it hurt them that they would never get up to anything in the big city.

Robert Haverstock had exquisite taste and a discerning eye for quality. Several times a year, he would drive out of his yard, past the old oak tree, and down the road to the antique shows and auctions in New York, a big wagon hitched to the back of his Cadillac to bring home his ancient treasures. Upon his return, he and his mother would host an open house, inviting the more discriminating collectors in the community to view, and hopefully purchase, their wares. “I thought of you when I bid on this chest, Janet”, he would gush to one of his well-heeled benefactresses. “It belonged to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney”, and Janet would pretend to know who that was.

For the ladies in his life, he exuded a sort of mysterious and certainly non-threatening glamour. Robert Haverstock was an exceptional salesman and a wealthy man by Glen Haven standards. His mother had a full-time nurse and every winter, he took her, the nurse, and a handsome colleague from Chicago, to Fort Lauderdale or the Caribbean for a month.

Just over a year before that sunny autumn day when my father and I passed his house, Robert Haverstock kissed his aging mother on the forehead, got into his Cadillac, drove to New York, and never came home. Glen Haven was rife with speculation about his fate. Some guessed that Robert had decided to move to New York or Chicago to live with his young antique dealer friend. But most people, remembering his devotion to his mother, feared that the quiet man with the polished shoes had been the victim of foul play. One rumour had him being robbed, murdered and thrown into the East River. If only it could have been so pure and simple a tragedy. Still, the entire community - his mother, his friends and customers, even the men at the gas station lunch bar - hoped that, one day, he would return safely from wherever he had gone.

As the fine house disappeared into the distance, I asked my father what he thought had happened to Robert Haverstock. He didn’t answer. My father never said much about Robert. Mostly, he just listened as other people made their judgments. My father did not judge people. Like everyone, he had his own demons, but he seemed to understand that people were never simply good or bad, strong or weak. He understood that they struggled each day, like he did, to be the best they could be, and more often than not, failed.

We turned up Old Schoolhouse Road and drove towards Pine Valley Junction, stopping at the cemetery to look at my grandfather’s grave. It was an impressive stone of shimmering black granite. The rosebush, planted by my grandmother years before, still bore blossoms from the waning summer, despite the recent frost. “You know, eight generations of your family are buried here”, my father said. The cemetery, so quiet and green, was comforting. We returned to the car and drove on.

Crossing the Pine Valley Bridge back over Bass River, we came upon a lovely place called Harmony. What a beautiful name, I thought. It wasn’t a town or a village. It was just a place in the country…a place to drive through. I imagined that it had been named by a poet for its rolling hills and gentle waters. It seemed so peaceful. And yet, the early flash of passionate colour emanating from the forest in the distance gave the appearance of silent rage.

My father stopped the car and stepped out to smoke his pipe. I got out too. He pointed to a pale yellow farmhouse sitting on a hill among the trees. It was an impressive home with outbuildings and several acres of land. “You see that house up there?” he said, “I sold it to Tyler Montgomery fifteen years ago. Made his money mining nickel in Ontario.” My father took a long, slow drag on his pipe. “As nice as that house is, would you believe it has a mud floor in the basement?” The sweet cherry smoke encircled my father’s head, then wafted into the sky. “Bob Haverstock is buried in that basement.”

My father was suddenly pensive. He stood gazing up at Tyler Montgomery’s house. I sensed that, whether he wanted to or not, he needed to tell Robert Haverstock’s story. And at fourteen, I guess I was old enough to hear it.

It seems that Robert had indeed driven to New York the previous year. But he had not gone for an auction or an antique show. In the seventies, revolutionary medical advances in the science of gender reassignment - sex change, my father called it – had made hormone treatments and subsequent surgery popular among men who wished to be, or believed themselves meant to be, women.

Robert Haverstock had confided to Helen Montgomery, his best friend, that he had always felt uncomfortable in his body. He said he knew somehow that he had been meant to be a woman. He told Helen that, on his many trips to cities in the States, he frequently posed as a woman. He said these were the only times that he felt truly himself, truly alive. He had not told his mother…he didn’t know how. She had tolerated the young man in Florida because she loved her son. He was all she had. But how would she ever understand this? Helen Montgomery did not understand either. But she was a caring woman who had known Robert all her life. She listened sympathetically.

On his recent trips to New York, Robert had secretly consulted with a specialist in Brooklyn. The doctor started him on a regimen of hormone treatments. As the therapies progressed, the drugs were not having the effect Robert had expected. At times, he became violently ill. At others, he was faint and confused. He had not even begun to come to terms with the impact his altered state would have on his life in Glen Haven. Robert was frightened. But every morning, he put on a cheerful face to greet his patrons and sent them off with the perfect addition to their stately homes. When they left, he would often double over in pain. At first he thought he was feeling the normal repercussions of the reassignment process. But over time, he began to fear something was wrong. His agony seemed to grow with each new day.

By the time Robert Haverstock left home for his last trip to New York, he was in a very bad way. He was nearly broke from the exorbitant cost of the treatments and the advance payments for his pending surgery. The drugs were devastating him. He was coughing blood. There was not a doctor within a thousand miles whom he could trust to help him through this nightmare. And none of his calls to the specialist in New York had been returned. He imagined, with terror, the inside of his body. He need not imagine the horror of his outer self. The effects of the mysterious hormone treatments were becoming increasingly difficult to conceal. Upon arriving, in a hard rain, at the office of his specialist in Brooklyn, Robert found it locked and empty; a condemnation notice posted on the side of the building. You see, this was 1980 and gender reassignment was not a perfect science. Robert Haverstock was in trouble.

He found a telephone booth and made a collect call to the only person he could think of who may be able to help. Helen Montgomery heard his desperate story, his voice hollow and unnatural. “Come home, Robert. Just come home”, she said gently. It was an instinctive response. For Helen Montgomery, who had spent her entire life in Glen Haven, even while her husband slogged away in the nickel mines of Upper Canada, home was the answer to all one’s problems. Home was where people loved you and would support you. Like the name suggested, it was a safe haven from the cold, hard world. Despite everything, this was Robert’s instinct too. Without a second thought, he got into his car and left the city that never sleeps.

Helen Montgomery had no choice. She had to share Robert’s story with her husband, Tyler. Having told him to come home, she didn’t know how to help Robert. She guessed he would need money, medical attention, and eventually, a place to hide his wrecked body from his mother. From everyone. She could not deal with this alone. Robert’s story, as told by Helen, threw Tyler Montgomery into a fury the likes of which his wife had never seen. “Jesus and Mary, that sick bastard!”, he shouted, “I knew he was queer but this is just hellish and evil!” Rage is the mask of many a man’s fear. Helen fixed him a whisky and soda. It did not calm him. “I’ll not have that freak anywhere near my home! Do you understand?” Helen understood. She made herself a strong drink and went to bed. Early the next morning, Saturday, she and her husband quickly packed the car and drove to their cottage on the north shore, hoping to avoid an ugly scene. As they sped by Robert Haverstock’s house, Helen briefly glimpsed his mother, looking out the window by the spinning wheel. Then she noticed the clouds on the horizon.

By late Sunday evening, the storm from New York had reached Glen Haven – and so had the tan Cadillac. When Tyler and Helen Montgomery turned into their long road and drove towards their home on the hill, they could see Robert Haverstock’s car parked beside their house. The fierce rain had pasted the roof and sides with a crooked collage of leaves and branches. “Stay in the car. I’ll deal with this”, commanded Tyler. He disappeared into the night. Moments later, Tyler Montgomery staggered out from behind his house and returned to the car, soaked to the bone. He was breathless and overwhelmed. Helen saw his wild eyes and looked away. They drove next door to the Bains. Janet and Ed Bain had also been Robert’s friends and customers. The two couples shivered by a raging fire as Tyler explained that, when he reached the back of his house, he found Bob Haverstock, dressed as a woman, hanging from a tree.

The four drank heavily and discussed the possible implications of this horrific calamity. If the police were called and the normal course of action taken, the whole community would know Robert’s humiliating story. His mother, who had done nothing wrong, would surely die. People would wonder about their involvement. Yes, people would talk. It was decided. The normal course of action was not in order. Tyler Montgomery and Ed Bain put on their jackets and silently left the house.

When he finished the story, my father emptied his pipe of its coals. We got into the car and drove home in silence. I wondered if Helen Montgomery knew where Tyler and Ed had buried the body of Robert Haverstock. I doubt she ever asked. I suppose she believed that her foundation was fixed and solid. But how are the acts and omissions reconciled with the intentions? I barely know for myself. But I do know this – the truth, for better or worse, has all the patience in the world.

Twenty years have passed since Robert Haverstock disappeared. My mother occasionally sends me copies of the local paper so I can keep up on the news from Glen Haven. I often come across an obituary of a person whose story my father told me. He died ten years ago and I miss him very much. Robert’s mother died a few months after her son was laid in his lonely grave beneath Tyler Montgomery’s mud floor. Prior to her death, she could be seen, everyday, looking out the window by the spinning wheel, waiting for Robert to come home. In the last batch of papers my mother sent, I read that Robert Haverstock’s rusty old tan Cadillac had been pulled from Bass River in a place called Harmony.

Universal Copyright 2003 John David Phillips