"These are fresh from the garden out back." She said with pride, carving a couple of slabs of beefcake tomato onto his plate, the billowy sleeves of her muumuu trailing across the butter dish. Hanging lamps filled the atrium with a pale yellow glow, muting the colourful display of their dinner plates on the red, checkered cloth. Nigel smiled weakly, watching the pale juice seep away from the blood red circles in the middle of his plate into the surrounding potato salad and spareribs. He kept his eyes down, studying the curved rack of dark brown, meat covered bones, wondering exactly how one ate the unfamiliar item.

"Pick 'em up, like this." She said, tearing a bone from her own rack and stripping the meat off with a gleeful chomp. "It's pork. I barbeque them out on the deck."

He tentatively followed her lead, grasping the bones and pulling firmly, dismayed when they slipped from his fingers and plopped onto the table. "Oh dear!"

"Gotta show 'em whose boss my boy." Victoria picked up the errant rack, ripped it apart, and dropped it back onto his salad. "There, try that now."

The rest of the meal passed without incident, and Nigel found he was thoroughly enjoying his first real Canadian meal. The smoky tang of the ribs had blended lusciously with the ripe flavour of homegrown tomato and creamy potato salad. He gnawed the last bone clean, and wiped his mouth, sagging back with a contented sigh.

"That was absolutely delicious, Aunt Victoria. Mom and dad would kill for food like this."

"Let's drop the aunt business Nigel, okay? It's just Victoria." She stood up and gathered the plates, shuffling out to the kitchen, her gown flowing dramatically. "Let me get this stuff in the dishwasher, and I'll fetch dessert."

He sat patiently, watching the unexpected picture of his aunt as she bustled about, looking for all the world like one of her coloured pots come to life. Nigel had expected her to be a stately, reserved woman; a woman with regal bearing and well-modulated speech, something more befitting a London stage performer. She did not show even a trace of her native accent. A niggle of concern stirred his thoughts over just how beneficial this experience might be. Victoria sailed back to the table with a pair of plates laden with apple pie and huge scoops of vanilla ice cream.

"Made this, this morning. The apples are from my neighbours tree, they're Spys."

He looked up sharply. "Your neighbours are spies?"

"No!" A wide grin. "The apples. They're called Spys, but if you want to know the truth, she is a little nosy." Victoria let out a noisy laugh and pressed her fork into her pie with gusto. "Eat up, son."

*****

"So, Nigel, tell about this writing you're doing."

They lay side by side in lounges, on the stained cedar deck, watching the western sky change from pinky grey to a deep bluey black. The coffee was as delicious as the meal, and Nigel felt the tension of his long trip seep out of his body, leaving him feather light and relaxed.

"Well aunt- uh, Victoria, for as long as I can remember I've been wanting to write a play, live, for the stage," he glanced over to see how she reacted, "and uh, well... it's been a bit of tricky terrain. Quite frankly, my endeavor has not been going well at all."

"With all those wells, I can see you might be on dangerous ground. Do you have a specific theme? What's this play you want to write supposed to be about?"

"Well..." he paused, blushing when he saw her eyebrows rise. "My idea was to write a drawing room comedy," he hurried on, "you know, smart crisp dialogue, among society's upper class."

She crinkled her face in a regretful frown, disappointed with her sister's duplicity. "Okay, if that's going to be your theme, what's the plot?"

"Well..." he shook his head and sucked his teeth, hearing her sigh. "That's the tricky part-I don't know. I mean I haven't really found anything... well, stimulating."

Victoria shifted toward him on her lounge, her face a portrait of astonishment. "Good god Nigel, your mother led me to believe you had written a veritable storehouse of material, and now you sit here and tell me you don't know what your plot is?"

"Well I have- I did. It's just that, well..." he winced as her features darkened, clear blue eyes slitting ominously.

"Well," she aped, with sarcastic emphasis. Victoria lay back on the lounge and stared up into the night sky. "Did you bring any of it with you?" her voice was soft and flat as she turned over in her mind the commitment she'd accepted.

"Yes, yes I did." He sat up, hoping to recapture her earlier humour with a display of eagerness.

"Right. Then tomorrow we'll have a look and see what we've got." She tilted up, slurping a mouthful of coffee, and settled back down on her cushions.

"Thanks Victoria," he said with genuine relief, "by the way," he asked tentatively, "I wanted to ask your advice on how to get a play produced. The sort of steps one would well, need to take- that sort of thing."

Silence hung between them for so long, he thought she might not have heard his question, then, in a patiently restrained, low voice, she said, "Nigel... the first step is to have a play to produce - which you don't. The second, if you take my advice, is to sit down with a thesaurus and improve your vocabulary so that you don't use the same words and phrases over and over." The last of her sentence rose in volume and frustration. "Aside from that, when and if the time comes, we can discuss production on a more practical level. Now, I think I'm going to turn in. It's become a long day for me as well."

"Yes, ma'am."

*****

Sunday morning began for Nigel at ten-thirty. A glaring sun flooded the room, prying open his reluctant eyes. The piercing chirp of birds at the window completed his rise from a deep dream filled slumber to a wakeful intensity. He dragged himself down the hall to the bathroom, staggered once again by the brightness afforded by the sun blasted tiles, and undertook his morning ablutions. After dressing, he spent a little time studying the photos and paintings that seemed rampant throughout the house. A pair of small, soft watercolours by Hazzard decorated a short wall at the top of the stairs, incongruous with the surrounding cluster of eight by ten glossies of famous stage and screen actors, all flamboyantly autographed. A peaceful seaside print by Sargent occupied the only space on the wall beside the stairs. To the right, at the bottom of the stairs, Nigel peeked into a cozy, formal living room; two flowered upholstered armchairs, a pale yellow sofa, coffee table and matching end tables. The lamps were a mix of clear glass, brass and painted china; the brass lamp being an ornate floor model with a cream silk shade and tassels. Covering a large portion of the hardwood was a large, oval, hand woven rug of discarded neckties and other materials. He crossed the hall and wandered through the dining room, delighted by the eclectic choice of furnishings with which his aunt chose to surround herself. She was sitting in the sun-drenched atrium, drinking coffee and reading the morning paper.

"There he is. How was your first night's sleep in the cold north?" The earlier humour in her voice, returning.

"A marvelous sleep, thank you, but I must say our perception of your weather was certainly off the mark." He poured himself a coffee and sat down next to her, hoping to erase the brittleness of the previous evening.

"I'll say, you're gonna roast in those duds."

"I'm afraid it's all I have." He looked plaintively at his lint speckled, serge pants and the long sleeved lumberjack shirt his mother had purchased as a going away present.

"We can fix you up at one of the shops tomorrow, you'll never survive the summer in those." The paper rattled noisily as she turned the page and fought it into a half fold that she could handle. "I don't eat much for breakfast, not like those starving miner's meals you have at home. Just a little toast, juice and coffee. I can make you some eggs if you like."

"No, toast is fine- I'll get it. Where ah..."

"Bread's on the counter. Just drop the slices in, it goes down by itself." She wrestled with another section, muttering some obscenity as she did. Nigel ate his breakfast in silence, enjoying at his aunt's amusing crusade against the paper.

Veronica finished cleaning up the kitchen and joined Nigel on the deck for a second cup of coffee. The house cast a long shadow over the neatly mowed grass, splitting into shards as it crossed the vegetable garden at the bottom of the yard. A red and blue birdhouse swung suddenly as a finch did a touch and go off its roof. Nigel closed his eyes, breathing in the faint hint of honeysuckle and the more pungent odour of pine, emanating from a ragged stand across the back of the property.

"This is idyllic, Veronica," he sighed, admiring the explosions of puffy white clouds dotting the bright blue sky. "The colours are all so vivid."

"Enjoy it while you can, son. Our winter is six months long, and the brightest colour you'll see will be people's clothing."

"Does it get very cold?"

"Yes. Very. You'll appreciate those clothes then." She set her cup down and flapped the thick wad of pages on her lap which he had seen when he first came in, but prudently ignored. "Nigel, I read through some of this stuff this morning and I've got to tell you, some of the ideas for story line actually have merit, but the execution... the dialogue... Nigel, it flat out stinks. Have you read any plays? Done any research?"

He didn't answer, just stared at his feet on the end of the lounge.

"Now don't go turtle on me," she scolded mildly, "it just tells me that you haven't been writing with your ears. By that I mean, you haven't listened to the way people really talk. You've got a passage in here somewhere," she flipped some of the pages without reading, "where two people are discussing something and they sound like an old episode of Dragnet."

He rolled his head and gave her a mournfully puzzled look.

"Dragnet. Joe Friday? Never mind. It's too stilted... too unnatural"

"I'm a failure, aren't I?" He moaned.

"Oh for god's sake Nigel, buck up. You can't fail at something unless you've given it your all."

He frowned, repeating her last sentence silently, still without clarity.

"Actually, there's one outline here that sort of caught my fancy, it reminds me very much of a situation right here in town."

Nigel sat straighter, his optimism stirred by her remark. "You think it's something I- we could pursue?"

Veronica gazed off into the distance, a twinkle dancing in her blue eyes, and a tiny smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I think maybe we could Nigel. Hmmm, yes I think we might just have your elusive stimulation- at the very least a starting point."

******