“He doesn’t like that music?” I said. “What kind of music does he like?”

“Sort of more old-fashioned, you could say. Definitely not classical, though.”

“The Beatles?”

“Oh goodness.”

“Not Lawrence Welk?”

“It’s not up to us to discuss this, is it? I shouldn’t have got going on it.”

I disregarded her.

“So what do you like?”

“I like pretty much anything.”

“You must like some things better than other things.”

She wouldn’t grant more than one of her little laughs. This was the nervous laugh, similar to but more concerned than, for example, the laugh with which she asked Uncle Jasper how he liked his supper. He nearly always gave approval, but with qualifications. All right, but a bit too spicy or a bit too bland. Perhaps a little over- or possibly undercooked. Once, he said, “I didn’t,” and refused to elaborate, and the laugh vanished into her tight lips and heroic self-control.

What could that dinner have been? I want to say curry, but maybe that’s because my father didn’t like curry, though he didn’t make a fuss about it. My uncle got up and made himself a peanut butter sandwich, and the emphasis he put into this did amount to making a fuss. Whatever Aunt Dawn had served, it wouldn’t have been a deliberate provocation. Maybe just something slightly unusual that had looked good in a magazine. And, as I recall, he had eaten it all before pronouncing his verdict. So he was propelled not by hunger but by the need to make a statement of pure and mighty disapproval.

It occurs to me now that something might have gone wrong at the hospital that day, somebody might have died who wasn’t supposed to—perhaps the problem wasn’t with food at all. But I don’t think it occurred to Aunt Dawn—or, even if it did, she didn’t let her suspicion show. She was all contrition.

At the time, Aunt Dawn had another problem, a problem that I wouldn’t understand until later. She had the problem of the couple next door. They had moved in about the same time as I had. He was the county-school inspector, she a music teacher. They were perhaps the same age as Aunt Dawn, younger than Uncle Jasper. They had no children either, which left them free for sociability. And they were at that stage of taking on a new community, where every prospect looks bright and easy. In this spirit they had asked Aunt Dawn and Uncle Jasper around for drinks. The social life of my aunt and uncle was so restricted, and so well known around town to be restricted, that my aunt had no practice in saying no. And so they found themselves visiting, having drinks and chatting, and I can imagine that Uncle Jasper warmed to the occasion, though without forgiving my aunt’s blunder in having accepted the invitation.

Now she was in a quandary. She understood that when people had invited you to their house and you had gone you were supposed to ask them back. Drinks for drinks, coffee for coffee. No need for a meal. But even what little was required she did not know how to do. My uncle had found no fault with the neighbors—he simply did not like having people in his house, on any account.

Then, with the news I had brought her, came the possibility of a solution to the problem. The trio from Toronto—including, of course, Mona—was performing at the Town Hall on one evening only. And it so happened that that was the very evening when Uncle Jasper had to be out of the house and had to stay out fairly late. It was the night of the County Physicians Annual General Meeting and Dinner. Not a banquet—wives were not invited.

The neighbors were planning to attend the concert. They would have had to, given her profession. But they agreed to drop in as soon as it was over, for coffee and snacks. And to meet—this was where my aunt overreached herself—to meet the members of the trio, who would also be dropping in for a few moments.

I don’t know how much my aunt revealed to the neighbors about the relationship with Mona Cassel. If she had any sense, it was nothing. And sense was something she had plenty of, most of the time. She did, I’m sure, explain that the doctor could not be present on that evening, but she would never have gone so far as to tell them that the gathering was to be kept secret from him. And what about keeping it secret from Bernice, who went home at suppertime and would surely get a whiff of the preparations? I don’t know. And, most important of all, I don’t know how Aunt Dawn got the invitation through to the performers. Had she been in touch with Mona all along? I shouldn’t think so. She surely didn’t have it in her to deceive my uncle on a long-term basis.

I imagine she just got giddy and wrote a note, and took it to the hotel where the trio would be staying. She wouldn’t have had a Toronto address.

Even going into the hotel, she must have wondered what eyes were on her, and prayed that she would get not the manager, who knew her husband, but the new young woman, who was some sort of foreigner and might not even know that she was the doctor’s wife.

She would have indicated to the musicians that she did not expect them to stay for more than a little while. Concerts are tiring, and they would have to be on their way to another town early in the morning.

Why did she take the risk? Why not entertain the neighbors by herself? Hard to say. Maybe she felt unable to carry a conversation by herself. Maybe she wanted to preen a little in front of those neighbors. Maybe—though I can hardly believe this—she wanted to make some slight gesture of friendship or acceptance towards the sister-in-law, whom, as far as I know, she had never met.

She must have gone around dazed at her own connivance. Not to mention with various crossed fingers and good-luck prayers, during those days before, when there was a danger of Uncle Jasper’s accidentally finding out. Meeting the music teacher on the street, for instance, and having her gush her thanks and expectations all over him.

The musicians were not so tired after the concert as you might have expected. Or so disheartened by the small size of the Town Hall crowd, which had probably not been a surprise. The enthusiasm of the next-door guests and the warmth of the living room (the Town Hall had been chilly), as well as the glow of the cherry-colored velvet curtains that were a dull maroon in the daytime but looked festive after dark—all these things must have lifted their spirits. The dreariness outside provided a contrast, and the coffee warmed these exotic but weatherbeaten strangers. Not to mention the sherry that succeeded the coffee. Sherry or port in crystal glasses of the correct shape and size, and also little cakes topped with shredded coconut, diamond- or crescent-shaped shortbread, chocolate wafers. I myself had never seen the like. My parents gave the kind of parties where people ate chili out of clay pots.

Aunt Dawn wore a dress that was modestly cut, made of flesh-colored crepe. It was the sort of dress an older woman might have worn and made look proper in a fussy way, but my aunt could not help looking as if she were taking part in some slightly risqué celebration. The neighbor wife was also dressed up, a bit more perhaps than the occasion warranted. The short, thick man who played the cello wore a black suit that was saved by a bow tie from making him look like an undertaker, and the pianist, who was his wife, wore a black dress that was too frilly for her wide figure. But Mona Cassel was shining like the moon, in a straight-cut gown of some silvery material. She was large-boned, with a big nose, like her brother’s.

Aunt Dawn must have had the piano tuned, or they wouldn’t have stuck with it. (And if it seems odd that there was a piano in the house at all, given my uncle’s soon-to-be-revealed opinions on the subject of music, I can say only that every house of a certain style and period used to have one.)