Free Otherwise by Farley Mowat

shared by severalother couples. There was little chance of making out until spring finally transformed the great out-of-doors into something more accommodating.
    This was the way it was for Marie and me until Aphrodite took pity on us.
    After badgering my parents for two months, I finally persuaded them to let
me
have a party at Bridge End House. I planned to invite a dozen close friends on a Saturday night to eat hot dogs and listen to records, to dance, and to breathe steamily over one another. However, on the Thursday before the chosen date Angus announced that he and my mother were going to Winnipeg for a three-day library conference and so, without the presence of a supervisory adult, my party could not be held.
    I protested so vigorously that my parents relented.
    ”Very well then,” said Angus, ”perhaps you
are
old enough to act like a responsible human being. You can have your party if you behave yourself!” Then, assuming his most military bearing, he laid down the rules.
    ”There’s to be no more than eight guests, none of whom will enter the bedrooms or go upstairs for any reason other than to use the bathroom. Singly. No alcohol will be allowed on the premises. Guests will depart by 9:30p.m. leaving the house in immaculate condition and, I trust, remaining in that same state themselves. Is this fully understood?”
    I whittled the guest list down to seven: Marie, and three couples who had been suffering the same restraints that had been making life a torment for me. There was insufficient room for more. If one excluded the cellar (and one would) and the bedrooms (which were strictly
verboten
),the only rooms suitable for what I had in mind were the living room, my father’s office (he refused to call it a ”den”), which had a daybed, and my mother’s sewing room, which had a couch.
    There was
also
, however, our caravan, parked a few hundred feet away. Once my parents had departed I cleansed the battered caravan of its accumulation of mouse droppings and dead flies, aired the mattresses and pillows, and set an array of tumblers and glasses on the dinette table.
    Determined to make this a truly memorable affair, I spent most of Saturday preparing dinner. The
pièce de resistance
was a silver serving dish filled with curried veal on a bed of rice and garnished with apple rings dusted with cinnamon. For dessert there was chocolate trifle and brandied pears. Apart from the pears I cooked all of this myself, following recipes in my mother’s well-worn copy of the
Fannie Farmer Boston Cookbook
. The pears were a present to Angus and Helen from a gourmet friend in England and had been set aside for some special event.
    I served the meal on a mahogany dining table that had belonged to one of the founding Fathers of Confederation, my great-great-uncle, Sir Oliver Mowat. The silver, which I had polished to a silken gleam, bore the Mowat monogram. The dining room was lit by tall wax tapers.
    The wine was Four Aces Sherry, brought by one of my male guests who got it from the local bootlegger. The wine bottles and two dozen beer bottles stayed in the caravan, sequestered but frequently visited. No alcohol was available
in
Bridge End House that night.
    After dinner we played some records on Helen’s phonograph and did a little torrid dancing. Then the couplesbegan drifting away. Where the others went and what they did I cannot say. I whispered in Marie’s neat little ear:
    ”Ever wonder what it’d be like living the gypsy life in a caravan?”
    The early days of 1939 were cold and leaden until April brought the benison of spring. When I opened the kitchen door one morning I inhaled the sensual smell of warming earth. Mutt could smell it too. He was old now but still game.
    ”Spring’s here, old-timer. Ducks’ll soon be back. How’s about a walk?”
    Wagging his tail, he pushed stiffly past me, nostrils wrinkling as he tested the fleeting breeze. I returned to the kitchen to pull on my rubber boots and when I