The Four Ghosts

The phone rings and a sweet voice tells me I did some work for her a few years ago and would I be interested in painting her bedroom. I ask again for her name, stalling for time, because I have no idea who I am talking to. There is something familiar in the voice but I cannot register a name or a location or the work to which she is referring. I give myself away when I finally admit that I just can’t remember, and at that point I ask for more clues. Eventually the light goes on and everything comes back. It is embarrassing, because for the customer it was an important occasion to hire a painter to do her home makeover.

I have come to understand why I remember some people so well and others not at all. Either I made a very good connection on a social level, there was something very unusual about the person, or something happened on the job to make it out of the ordinary. I have several day planner books full of customers names and addresses from many years back and as I page through them, looking at the entries, I find that there are some that absolutely stand out and others give no clue as to what I did there or who they were. I deal with approximately 120 customers in any given year, and end up working for at least 100 of them. Out of those there are at least half that are new people I have never met before, who got my name from a regular client, or from one of the paint stores in town who graciously passed my name on as a recommended painter. So I should be forgiven for forgetting a few of them.
Some of them, in fact, many of them are unforgettable.

I first heard of these ladies referred to as the ‘four ghosts’. It was at a family event at my Uncle Henry’s house where someone inquired about his neighbours across the street. The house was attractive, the garden and lawns tidy and lush, and it seems that on occasion, there was a glimpse of the residents, but only for brief periods of time. All he knew was that they were four sisters and they came and went mysteriously like ghosts. It seems no neighbour had actually talked to them and so they were a mystery to all.

Not long after, I got a call from a Mrs. Quiring, asking if I could come to her home to give her an estimate for painting and papering their house. Her address was Princess Street, but much to my amazement, as I drove down the street looking at house numbers, I came to a stop across the road from my Uncle Henry’s house. I had a little thrill as I knew that this would be interesting and if I got the job or not, I would be the centre of attention at the next family gathering as I told everything I knew about the ‘four ghosts’.

A nervous, but pleasant lady greeted me at the door and bid me enter, as she stared intently at my feet. I had come to learn over the years that this was the signal to remove the shoes. Often I am loathe to do so when I see the kids and pets and various degrees of filth in the home, but here, I knew my socks would not become soiled. After cursory introductions, I learned her name was Helen, and she proceeded to show me around.

The house was elegant in an understated fashion and the furnishings and art work were classy and tasteful. The home looked well organized and very well taken care of. After complimenting her on her lovely home, she agreed with me and made it clear that it did not really need paint, but her and her sisters wanted a change. A ‘pick-me-up’, she said.

Sisters? I could hear or see no one but Helen. Were they at the library, out shopping, or locked in the dungeon in the basement? The house did have an air of mystery to it. I thought I had heard scurrying in the kitchen, or was it a back bedroom? I was quite curious, but there would be no satisfaction that evening. I took specifications, measurements and detailed information about the level of quality that was desired, and soon was out the door, on my way home to work out the price.

“Interesting,” I thought, but nothing really to tell Uncle Henry except for the description of the house and a bit about Helen. She did have one eye that seemed to look to the left, or was it the right. But that might have been the good eye. I did not want to stare so I really did not even know anything about her eye. It just didn't seem right.

I had gained her trust, and that is often all it took with older people. She said I was hired and I could start any time. When all the wallpaper had arrived, I presented myself at her door one day, and began to do the work. I remember the first day clearly as the house was steamy and moist with the heavy smell of cooking. It was Borscht! As I learned later, there was laundry day, cooking day, cleaning day, gardening day and shopping/ post office day. Sunday was church and visiting, but I never did find out what Saturday was until a while later. I was setting up my tools to begin preparation and it was inevitable that I would sooner or later have to meet the other ghosts. And I did. Well, sort of. Helen pointed out a figure stooped over the stove and say, “That’s Katherine. Agnes is in the back bedroom not feeling well today, and the other one is Susie.”

It took the full four weeks that I was there before one of them would even acknowledge me or look at me. They had an uncanny knack of doing their work while at the same time avoiding me or even being near me. Only German was spoken so I assumed that I would not be able to carry on a conversation with any one of them anyway. They were always in a flap about something and there was a sense of urgency to every move. They were hard workers and it seems that work was all they knew. I tried several times to ask some personal questions of Helen, but she would brush me off and besides, she was the foreman and was too busy giving orders to take any time to speak with me. I was never offered coffee nor was I ever asked a question that did not relate directly to the work I was doing.

And so it surprised me one day when Helen called the sisters together and they stood as a group and watched and marvelled at the most exciting aspect of the new decorating job. It was way out on a limb for these ladies, but they had thought about this long and hard and now that it was actually happening, they were giddy with excitement. There was a closet door in a small foyer between the kitchen and dining room, a broom closet with a flat swing door, something they had never liked, did not understand why it had to be there, and how they could make it interesting. They got the idea from a wallpaper mural book, and now I was hanging a door mural on the door, making it look like a half stable door with a horse hanging his head over the
door as if waiting for a carrot. It was striking, but a little quirky for the setting and the house. I found out much later why they went that route.

I did discover that Helen was the youngest and took it upon herself to be the caregiver, according to her understanding of things. They were all well past retirement age, but seemed very close in age. The three eldest were slim and wiry, while Helen was short and plump. Perhaps, had Helen worked as hard as she made the others do, she too would have been slim. Helen was the only one who drove, so I supposed it gave her an extra element of control and it certainly did make the older sisters dependent on her.

We parted on very good terms, and though I learned very little about them, I had grown to like them. I did not expect to ever see them again. But I was mistaken.
It was eight years later that Helen called and this one I remembered. They had decided to sell their house and had moved into a condominium. Would I be interested in doing some painting and wallpapering? I always give priority to old customers so I accepted and this time Helen did not even ask for a price. She simply asked me to do the work and give her the bill.

There were no dark recesses of a house to hide in this time, so I finally got to meet the sisters, officially. And this time I learned enough to give me understanding. I could not help but notice a very large jigsaw puzzle half constructed on the dining room table. They all worked on it, but in turns. This used to be a Saturday activity, but now that there was no garden, there were two days a week dedicated to jigsaws. Helen was the most heavily addicted. She could not seem to tear herself away from the table and shouted out the duty roster to her sisters from her perch under the bright chandelier where she had gathered all the edge pieces and was making great progress. She complained mildly about how difficult it was getting to see the pieces in the evening and night light and she had to get as many pieces in the daylight as possible. Her eye had been injured as a child and was increasingly bothersome. Susie was diagnosed with cancer and was mostly confined to her room, but when she came out, looked fine to me.

It was during this time, over an offered cup of coffee, that I heard some of their story.
They had grown up in Russia during the Russian Revolution and were very young girls at the time. Their dad and brothers had horses and the girls had taken a great interest in them. It had been a happy and prosperous time until the troubles came. The rumours had spread like wildfire and soon they found out for themselves that it was more than rumours. The soldiers had come to their village and the whole family went to hide in the barn. They were found and all made to line up outside, standing against the barn. As these young girls watched in absolute horror, their parents and brothers were shot and killed. I could only assume what had happened to them next because she paused for a time in the story and then found an important task to distract herself.

I thought that this explained why they were reclusive, had never married and were very slow to warm up to a stranger, a man, in their home. They had been scarred for life. Two of them had been able to work at careers when they came to Canada, but the other two had to be cared for by their sisters.

I no longer looked at them as oddities, but my heart was broken at the thought of what their whole lives had been, playing out the scenes of their childhood time after time, and somehow coping, well into their 80’s. After Helen had opened up to me, there was a difference in her demeanour and it rubbed off on her sisters a little too. Two of them actually exchanged a few words with me.

Shortly after, I heard from another customer in the same building, that Helen had been diagnosed with cancer, in her eye, and the doctor’s had to remove it. It was not long after that, she died, followed by two of her sisters.

Several years later, my sister, who was the director of nursing at an old folk’s home, told me that the last sister had passed away. The caregivers had found $35,000.00 in her purse. I do not know what happened to their bank accounts, their assets, or their earthly possessions. They had no one. I always had hoped that their church had somehow taken care of these things for them.

It was a lesson for me. I admired them, in retrospect, for the way they stuck together. Perhaps they had made a pact when they survived their ordeal. But they had to put up with the whispers behind their backs, the sideways glances and the knowledge that they were different. They probably spent a great deal of time, each in their own way, wondering what might have been.
I ceased to judge people hastily after I met the Quiring sisters.