Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [8]
DALLIA GRETT BECAME Dallia Dapps in the small chapel of Saint Piter Martyr’s Church on the western side of Prospect Hill. Piter Martyr’s Church no longer exists; it fell down several years ago.3
I try to picture Mother in her wedding dress, I try to picture Father standing next to her. I suppose Father must have been very nervous and probably stuttered until everybody wanted to say the words for him. And then I wonder how Grandfather reacted to the expansion of his daughter, already visible under the wedding dress, which the doctor had called ‘Pregnancy’. If it was impossible to imagine Grandfather at his home on Pult Street it might be assumed that he had registered the fact of his daughter’s metamorphosis only by the different way he addressed Father in the post office—no longer calling him ‘Orphan Linas’, but terming him instead ‘Potent Linas’. But Grandfather can be imagined in this building in Pult Street, I can even picture Grandfather sitting in his study, because I know the room so well. I imagine Grandfather at his desk back in those black and white days. I imagine him talking. Who are you talking to, Grandfather? To the ghost of Grandmother? No, Grandfather’s talking to his collection of matchstick buildings. Grandfather always talked to his matchstick buildings. He talked to them far more than to anyone living; he found their companionship preferable. Irva and I used to visit him often and he always liked to talk to the matchstick buildings far more than he talked to us.
Postmaster Grett, our grandfather, had been constructing matchstick buildings ever since his childhood, when he was plain master Grett. (How his parents, our great grandparents, would complain when not a single match could be found in the house to light the stove.) Grandfather was a patriotic man—he built replicas only of buildings found in our country. And when off duty he would attend various fairs and competitions for like-minded enthusiasts. He was moderately skilled at his construction with matchsticks and won three medals for his efforts (one for second prize, two for third). He proudly stored these medals in a certain silk-lined drawer, which he would visit often (particularly on unhappy days) and which he would show us too with great ceremony when we were old enough. The saddest day of Grandfather’s matchstick career came when the archbishop of Entralla commissioned the ordinary postman Marco Girge (who had won seven medals for first prize) and not Grandfather to build a matchstick model of our cathedral, even though grandfather was the senior postman, even though Grandfather was postmaster. It took Postman Girge, a solitary man who was himself built entirely out of patience, a man who could never do anything with any speed (including his post office rounds), nearly eight years to complete the model. And then, with a ceremony which included the archbishop’s blessing, the model was placed on a wooden plinth just by the font, with a collection box at its side.4 And how quickly this collection box was filled. How the people loved the matchstick cathedral—more eager, it would seem, to relinquish their money if it might help to keep the matchstick model in good order, than to aid the vast and echoey religious warehouse itself. This is not uncommon; miniature things move people.
Grandfather stopped going to church.
He began to construct his matchstick properties only in private, for himself alone.
Postman Girge was sacked.
AS MOTHER SWELLED with her pregnancy then, Grandfather back at home undressed himself of his post office blue, approached