Appleby College - Argus Yearbook (Oakville, Ontario Canada)

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The House This short story, written as an English project, was based on Louis van Gastern ' s film, The House . This film has no dialogue and contains flash- backs depicting the history of an old house that is being demolished. Out of the fragments grows the mosaic of many lives. - Ed. The dull, dumb walls that make up a building do not make up a house, for a house is more than that. A house is a spirit, a mem- ber of the family just as the family is part of the house. As the family grows, the grey, lifeless rock, which is the house, takes on new colours and grows with the family. It shares the hap- piness of the growing family, the joy of a closely knit family. With the joy of a closely knit family the house gains strength. It shares the sadness of a mourning family and the evil of a crumbling family. With the sadness the house weeps, with the evil it crumbles until the living rocks are once again grey and lifeless rubble scattered on the ground. The dowry was not enough to make him rich but it was enough to build the house. Its architect, John du Point, was a man of his word and he had said that the house would be finished in time. With the last detail complete, the house lay still and dormant, ready to come alive on the wed- ding day. The master carried his wife over the threshold for the first time in what was hoped to be the beginning of a long, happy marriage. The first months were good months, as the two began to be one. With this, the house grew and was part of their lives, part of them. The house had a good future ahead of it. Things were really looking up, but like anything that goes up, it must come down. The first shadow was cast on the house ' s bright future when the wife was in Paris with her aunt who was sick with the fever. The maid was newly employed and lonely, as it was the first time that she had been away from her family. She therefore turned to the master for comfort. .The two were very content with their shady secret. No-one knew ex- cept for the master and the maid who felt no remorse; and the house, whose foundations weakened with every wink, every secret glance meant only for the other. So it went on. On her way back from Paris the wife met du Point. The subject was birds. Du Point was an ad- dicted bird watcher and taxider- mist. The wife had always had an interest in birds, so when du Point invited her to see his studio, she accepted readily. They came to the yellow- breasted woodpecker. This , he said, is very rare. In actual fact I saw one near your house about a month ago . Oh? said the wife with interest. I also saw another very pretty bird . He looked right at her. A very lonely bird . His arm knocked the light switch down, and all was dark. Nine months later little Marie was born ... a bastard. The wife could not be sure, and neither could the architect, but the house knew, the house felt it, every beam, every brick loosened its hold on its neigh- bour. Yes, the house knew. The party was going well, everyone had enough to eat and drink, especially drink, and it was going to get better. Everyone who was someone was there. Marie could hear it from her room; it seemed like such fun and she wished she could go, but her mother had been very stern on the subject. Sixteen year olds do not mingle with adults . And that had been that. She never did get along with her mother, or her father at that, the only one with any feelings towards her, it seemed, was du Point. The master staggered out into the garden and collapsed into a lawn chair. He poured himself another drink and raised it to his lips. Suddenly his fingers fell open and the glass fell to the hard stone below. He was sud- denly sober, all too sober for his liking. He got up and walked into the woods, for he had a lot of thinking to do. The deeper into the woods he got, the more sounds from the house faded, but not the picture of the two shadows embracing in the win- dow, the eye of the house, for it was burnt indelibly in his mind. The days went quickly after that, nothing seemed to matter any more, the house was crumbling. What happened after that can only be put down as a miracle of types. The wife complained of a stomach ache and retired to bed. She died soon after. The coroner ' s verdict was that she had died of food poisoning. This might not have seemed good for the house but in the long run it was. At the time of the reading of the wife ' s last will and testament Marie met a young lawyer who had just joined the family solicitor ' s firm. As the days progressed they fell deeply in love and were married.

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A Lighthouse Mystery The tiny figure was barely visible for the cascading waves which swirled around him in the water. Again and again he would sink down under the surface, but again and again he would rise back up. His pale face was all that was visible in the darkness of the night, and even that was sometimes obscured by his limp black hair. He was Will Rodgers, the night watchman of the luxury liner Overdraft which had just sunk hours before, after being struck by a tidal wave while cruising in the Mediterranean. He had been swimming for two or three hours in the direction of an unidentified light in the distance which he had sighted from the watch tower just before the ship went down. As far as he could tell, he was the only survivor on the ship, thanks to his isolated perch in the tower. He assumed that the others were either trapped inside the vessel or had been sucked down by the turbulence of the sinking ship, the latter of which fates he had narrowly escaped. As he got closer to the light, he could see that it seemed to blink on and off as a lighthouse does, but he could remember no land or markers on the chart for miles around. His body was now numb and fatigued. It was all he could do to cling to odd pieces of wreckage to keep himself buoyant. There were still several more hours un- til dawn when the rescue ships might arrive, if they too had not been demolished by the wave. He did not know if he could hold on much longer. He estimated the light to be less than a mile away, but that might as well have been infinity because he knew that he had neither the strength nor the will to swim on. Even- tually he closed his eyes, and lay motionless, with his arms and legs drooped over a piece of debris. His heart still beating but his mind was a blank. When he awoke, he found him- self on the beach of some deso- late island. Thousands of gulls were the only inhabitants of the island. There were the remains of old human dwellings scattered a- round a huge majestic light- house made of stone and tim- bers. Inside the lighthouse, the beams and original stairs had all long since rotted away. There was, however, a fairly new and sturdy ladder which stretched to the top of the tower where the old oil lamps had once hung to warn ships of the dangerous waters. Will decided to ascend the tower to investigate the view. On his arrival at the summit, he discovered to his astonishment that there were not old oil lamps in the tower, but a modern elec- tric generator with storage bat- teries and a light beam on a swivel. The apparatus was moun- ted on steel beams and cemen- ted to the sides of the tower. Ob- viously someone had been using the lighthouse as a beacon for signalling ships. Perhaps Will had stumbled upon a secret smuggling operation. The light had, however, directed him the night before to the only piece of land for miles around, and that he was thankful for. After having eaten a meal of boiled gulls ' eggs, he began to make a closer investigation of the island. He estimated the island to be only about an eighth of a mile in circumference. In a secluded part of the island he found an old over-turned clinker- built boat in which he hoped to soon escape to civilization. The following night he set off in the boat for the coast of Italy, af- ter having erected a makeshift sail out of some old cloth he found, and having taken on board a supply of gulls ' eggs. Several days later, tired, sun- burnt, and half-starved, he was rescued by a coast guard ship which was patrolling the area for survivors of the catastrophe. When he told them of his discovery on the island they only laughed at him and claimed that he had lost his marbles, for they knew that here was not an island nor a beacon for miles around the area he described to them. Will argued that he might have stumbled upon the heart of a huge smuggling operation, but they would not listen. On retur- ning to the location of the lighthouse several days later, the island was nowhere to be found. It was as if it had all been part of a dream. Years later as Will Rodgers sat eating his breakfast and reading the London Times, he noticed a head which read: Another castaway claims to have discovered an un- charted island with an abandoned lighthouse in the waters near ... J. Gudewill 11 A1

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Not long afterwards, the master died of remorse, or perhaps guilt? The house then passed to Marie and her husband. It would seem as though the house had had a last minute reprieve, but it was only to be temporary one. Just after their son ' s fourth bir- thday, Germany moved into France. With this the house forgot all the good times and began to crumble for the last time. Spirits were low in France and the family was no exception. The end really came when one morning a smartly dressed Ger- man officer marched up the walkway and rang the bell; still no answer. The officer gave up and walked in. He found Marie in her husband ' s arms. The officer saluted and held out his hand politely, but they did not move. I have an order to take this house as District Headquarters , he said in remarkably good French. The days that followed were hell. The Germans became less and less polite until one evening the new master and the officer got into a flaming row and began to fight. The next morning they took him out to the woods. The house remembered the first time the old master had carried his wife over the threshold. They stopped at the old wall. The house remembered the maid who was now employed in a munitions factory in town. His hands and feet were tied. The house remembered. The order was given and all the men raised their rifles. The house remembered the evening of the party. Fire! said the officer. The house remembered the second marriage. The men pulled back the triggers in one move. The house remem- bered the young boy ' s birth. Two nights later there was a tinkling of glass and then an ex- plosion. The officer had paid for the death of the house with his own life. For the second time in three da ys they stood a person against the wall. Again the order was given and Marie fell to the ground, a heap of lifeless cells; but the house no longer remembered. It had fallen to the ground, lifeless, grey stone. It had been a double execution. R. Wooley 9 A1 TO THE READER So now you sit to read a rhyme, Come, scan this work with hearty bliss And think of rest, and all the time You spent not reading rot like this. I am one whose ink is found On ruined paper everywhere, In my attempt to seem profound I ' ll twist your mind until you dare To put the paper down and think what does it mean ... how could it be That while I think these verses stink, The author calls them poetry. S. Roloff 12 E THE BLIZZARD My family was a poor, humble Scottish mining family who lived on the banks of Loch na Nigheadaireachd, a wee loch. We lived in a sturdy, old cedar house which was built by my great-grandfather when he was fighting the Campbells. It was the winter in the year of Our Lord 1859 when a fierce blizzard hit our house. Father was out gathering sap from the maple trees and I was in the house helping mother with the churning. At suppertime father had not come back; suddenly, the wind screamed and a massive white blanket of snow fell on the house. The wind played a dread- ful tune of high notes and low moans. It was so strong that it made the walls shake. I spent my time looking out the window to see if I could find father; sometimes I saw blurry images but they turned out to be trees. That night I had awful thoughts about my father; he was standing beside a haystack, frozen and hunger struck. I could bear it no longer: I put on my coat and muf- fler and hurried out. The wind pricked my body like ice picks but I went on. I tripped over something, and there on the ground lay my father, dead. A. Krempulec 7A