Lily's Story Read online

  By the third summer – after her fourteenth birthday – Lily Ramsbottom was making half of the deliveries herself. More and more, Aunt Bridie was leaving the egg-and-vegetable side of the business to Lily while she herself drummed up further trade in the expanding sections back of Christina Street, peddled her candles and quilts, or scouted the competition’s prices at the Saturday market beside the St. Clair Inn. As far as Lily could tell, her Aunt was never tempted by the garish displays of finery in the shops along Front Street.

  “Tell me, Lily dear, what Church is your Aunt raisin’ you in?” asked Mrs. McHarg, sweetly, for her husband’s sake.

  “The green peppers’re good today, ma’am. Crisp as ice.”

  “You are attendin’ a Church of some kind, aren’t you?”

  “No, ma’am.” Lily felt her eyes drop, a flush of red staining her cheeks.

  “You poor, poor thing, you.” The woman’s voice trembled with delicious shock. “An’ why not?” she ventured.

  “We work on Sundays,” Lily said, looking up proudly.

  Mrs. McHarg was speechless. Lily was already giving Benjamin a hug when she heard faintly from the back doorway: “That woman oughta be hanged!” Then: “Lily, you tell that so-called Aunt of yours not to bother comin’ round here again!”

  Lily did no such thing.

  “Carrie, come an’ see, quick! Lily’s on her own!”

  Miss Caroline stayed in her place. “Where’s the old bat?” she whispered.

  “Nowheres in sight. Down with the gout, I hope.”

  Lily came up to Miss Charlotte with the order.

  “Aren’t we all grown-up now? She’s got a bonnet on, ain’t that grand?” Carrie thought so.

  “There’s be change from that quarter,” Miss Charlotte said, peering up the street.

  “I’m on my own,” Lily said with the correct change already in hand.

  “We hear you and your Auntie labour on the Sabbath, don’t we dear?”

  “Will there be any special order for next week?”

  “Such a scandal, an’ this pretty little thing caught up in it. What’s to be done, dear? Do you suppose we can carry on givin’ out good cash for the Devil’s work? No wonder them cabbages is full of slugs no amount of boilin’ll kill off!”

  “Same order for next week?”

  “Just don’t see how we can carry on an’ call ourselves decent folk, I don’t. You agree completely, don’t you, Carrie?”

  Lily walked carefully to her cart.

  “Can’t get over how pretty she is, can you, dear?”

  Lily loved the boarding houses, especially the rambling clapboard one on Lochiel Street run by Char Hazelberry. If she wished, which was often, Lily got right inside the cozy kitchens where aproned servants cooked and scrubbed and gabbled; where some of the working men – dilatory, hungover or recuperative – lingered about to tease the landlady. When Lily appeared puzzled by the oddity of the landlady’s name, Badger McCovey whispered breezily in her ear: “Short for Charity, but she ain’t got none, get it?”, and Walleye Watson, his good peeper next to hers, said, “It’s the way she cooks the food!” and burbled so rapturously his veined hand slipped down and across Lily’s bottom. He tried to wink, with absurd results, and she laughed with the rest of the room.

  “Hi, toots, gonna take me to the shindig, Saird’y?”

  “What mine d’you stash all that silver in, eh?”

  “I get first dance, promise?”

  “Not me, I’ll take the last one, eh Lily gal?”

  “Don’t you pay them geezers no mind,” Char would say, taking Lily under wing as usual. She’d cock her head towards the scullery crew, wink and say in her stage whisper, “Most of them’s well past it anyways! They couldn’t raise dust in a hen-house.”

  “Leavin’ so soon, sweetie? Ya ain’t give Badger his nighty-night kiss.”

  “You take off them diapers of your’n,” roared Char to her audience, “an’ you might just get yourself a live one!”

  Lily usually left Char’s place feeling faintly wicked, cheered, welcomed, guilty – and humming all the way to Exmouth.

  Once, Char pinned a purple iceland poppy in Lily’s hair and in front of the girls – Betsy of the shimmering ringlets and apple-cheeked Winnie with her sudden belly – and several of the men called her “the sweetest strawberry blonde in the county”. Lily kept the compliment intact until Benjamin made the turn off the Errol Road towards the farm, where she held it up till the wind blew the waferous petals far and wide. At Christmas Char let her take just a wee sip of dry sherry and gave her a beery hug, almost as if she were her mother.

  Mrs. Templeton was in her front garden among the zinnias. She waved at Lily, pulled her gloves and apron off, and called out: “Take the things all way round to the back yard, would you dear? I’ll be there in a jiffy.” And she hopped to her front porch and headed through the house.

  Lily carried the last order of the day to the back of the blue cottage – under the rose arbour in primary bloom and into the meadow of the Templeton’s dooryard. She was delighted to see the cedar table covered with a linen cloth and set for tea. The missus must be planning a garden party, she thought. And by the looks of the fancy cakes and scones and the silver tea-set, the company expected must be from the hoity-toity. Mrs. Templeton popped from her shed, brushing back her unbonneted hair, and swept across the lawn to Lily.

  “Well, young lady, don’t just stand there lookin’, sit down.”

  Mrs. Templeton showed Lily the proper way to pour tea and how to hold a scone with three digits and some dignity. She smiled sideways and whispered, “Wouldn’t want to upset the good ladies of the town, now would we?” She took Lily’s arm and escorted her about the English gardens, explaining carefully how one nursed and groomed such unruly beauty, prompting Lily to talk – even a little – about the wild blossoms of the townships.

  “Well, Lily my sweet,” she said with a sigh, “you must go now. Bridie will soon be frettin’.” She tied Lily’s bonnet snugly below her chin. “I just hope your Auntie knows what a prize she’s got.”

  Lily blushed. Aunt Bridie, she knew, would not approve of such “spoilin’” that could “turn a girls head” in a direction which would eventually – one had to assume – prove regrettable.

  As Lily was leaving, Mrs. Templeton turned suddenly and called after her, “Oh, Lily!” She had a note in her hand. “I almost forgot to tell you. Maurice and I are holdin’ a campaign meeting here in a week, we’ll need a lot of extras, delivered early in the mornin’ if that’s all right.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lily’s eyes were fastened on the fluttering note.

  “There’s so many things I wrote them all down for you and your Aunt. Here, take this along with you.”

  Lily took the note, turned and was almost under the rose arbour when Mrs. Templeton said, a bit too quickly, “Oh Lily, would you mind dear, checkin’ that note to see if I put down eight bunches of carrots or not?”

  Lily froze. She felt the confiding coziness of the morning ebb away.

  “Just take a quick glance at the list, love.” Mrs. Templeton seemed to squeeze the sentence out.

  Lily looked straight back at the anxious stare. “I can’t,” she said tonelessly.

  “Well then, it’s high time we did something about it!”

  Lily desperately wanted to be present when Aunt Bridie and Mrs. Templeton had their tête à tête over her attending the common school in town. A letter in an envelope had been delivered right to their door by a suborned errand-boy. Auntie read it, her brow pincering, her lips half-saying the words. “Some nerve!” was her only comment. But next morning she and Auntie scoured the house and, to Lily’s amazement, a pewter tea-service materialized from the steamer-trunk to be set upon a crocheted tablecloth of ancient but unblemished vintage. Then she and Uncle Chester – only one of them protesting – were banished to the barn.

  “I’ll show you what I been workin’ on, Lily love,” Uncle Chester said,
running his hands through his sandy mop as he always did when he was nervous or excited. “It’s for you. I been thinkin’ about it all winter.”

  With a regretful glance backwards Lily followed him into the barn. In the stall now converted into a workshop, Uncle Chester showed her his “latest contraption”. It was a wooden ‘flat’ for berries that would hold six quarts; it had a screened top (“to keep off the flies”) with a handle on it for easy carrying and a device that held the boxes in place and could be unlocked by sliding a lever along a piece of doweling. “You can swing it over your head like a skippin’ rope,” he beamed, “an’ nothin’ll come loose!”

  Lily tried it out. The sliding lever jammed.

  “Just needs a bit of sandin’” he blushed. “You go for a walk if you like. I’ll just whittle away here.”

  “I’ll check the water in the coops,” Lily said. “That’ll be a big help,” she added, admiring the bulky device. “It really will.” She could feel Uncle Chester’s eyes upon her as she walked away from him. They were loving eyes, she was certain.

  Aunt Bridie was a good reader. Uncle Chester said so many times. But there were no books in sight. Lily did see her aunt reading, though, for each week she picked up at the St. Clair Inn the weekly issued of The Canadian Observer and brought it home. Auntie took special pains to read it on the Sabbath. Uncle Chester would peek at it occasionally but would say to Lily, “It’s full of radical ranting, girl, an’ bad politics that’ll come to no good end.” He would then sigh with the feigned resignation he used whenever Auntie’s behavior was beyond him. “It’s beyond me why she takes in that stuff. ’Course, you gotta remember where she come from.”

  Lily couldn’t remember what she didn’t know. Auntie would not talk, ever, about the old country. Uncle Chester would, after a slug or two from his cache in Benjamin’s stall, ramble of about the Ramsbottom tribe in Lancashire, his innumerable interchangeable cousins whom he had never met, having been alas born in the colonies the only child of a shipwright attached to the military command during the Simcoe regime and who, along with his wife, died inconveniently of cholera. The Ramsbottoms, however legendary, were not blood.

  “Don’t ask,” Auntie would say, seeing the tilt of Lily’s chin. “The Old Country’s old, it’s only good for forgettin’.” Or, outdoors with a modest sweep of her hand: “This is where it’s real. The Old Country was for livin’ in; this one’s for thrivin’ in.” Then, in a rare mellow mood she might peer up from her quilting and say, “Some day I’ll tell you all about your folk. Especially your grandmother. You’ve got a right to know.”

  Once, startled by her own boldness, Lily asked: “Who was my mother?”

  Aunt Bridie answered – not without a touch of sadness in her voice, “I don’t know, child.”

  Seeing how “down” Lily was after this disappointment, Uncle Chester – risking all – slipped into his bedroom, opened the trunk with a squeal that arched Auntie’s eyebrows, and returned with a large leather-bound book. “I’ll just read her the story parts,” he said in Aunt Bridie’s direction. “It’s her right, you know,” he added vehemently though his voice didn’t quit quavering until Samson had pushed both columns aside and brought the wicked temple down upon himself. The next winter he grew bolder and brought forth a calf-covered novel called The Last of the Mohicans, from which he read aloud to Lily all through that dark, cold season – his voice sonorous and comforting and quickened by the images and passions released by the words on the page. He insisted that Lily curl upon his lap on the wing-backed chair he bought from Cameron’s with his “own money”. “Waste and rubbish,” Auntie warned, and never once was she tempted by its cushioned luxury. Last winter, though, when The Deerslayer made his debut, Lily did not sit on Uncle’s knee. She perched on the ample arm of the chair and watched his lips transform the letters. She would say some of the words over to herself, and Uncle, delighted, would repeat a sentence, point to a word and when she guessed right, smile and pat her arm affectionately.

  “See, Bridie love, the young lady can read. Smart as a whip, she is.”

  Aunt Bridie, who appeared not to be listening, snapped, “Don’t be turnin’ her head, you old fool. She can’t read. Soon as I get some time, soon as everybody around here pulls their weight, I’m gonna teach the child to read properly.”

  “Don’t blame the girl,” he said petulantly. “After all, she’s had no upbringin’ to speak of.”

  “An’ never will with the likes of you around her.” The reading was over for that evening.

  When Lily came in, Mrs. Templeton was adjusting her Sunday hat and looking quite pleased with herself. “Thanks for the tea, Bridie. You really must let me return the hospitality soon.”

  In her working smock Lily felt smudged and unworthy, but Mrs. Templeton kissed her warmly on the cheek, smiled and turned towards Auntie.

  Bridie, in her gray-and-blue gingham, smoothed her skirt and said to Lily: “It’s all fixed. You’ll start in at the Common School first thing next Monday.”

  Lily turned her shining face to Mrs. Templeton. “Don’t thank me, young lady. Thank your Aunt; she’s givin’ up the best helper she’s got.”

  Bridie wanted to be severe but couldn’t manage it.

  Auntie, of course, had argued for starting in September when the new term began. After all, only one week remained in the current school year. “This way,” Mrs. Templeton had insisted, “she can try it out, introduce herself to Miss Pringle, and get set up for the fall term.” What she really meant was that it would be cruel to let a girl of Lily’s temperament wait in anticipation over a whole summer.

  “Only if Chester’ll help out with the weedin’,” Aunt Bridie had countered. Fortunately Uncle’s trick back took a turn for the better, and dressed in a brown-and-tan gingham especially cut down by Auntie and with a lunch-pail in tow, Lily set off for Port Sarnia.

  The Monday-morning sun had risen full of hope, then retreated. An east wind brought dark clouds prophesying thunder, and worse. The rain gusted and slashed sideways at Lily, who was torn between sheltering in the bush by the road or being late for school. Mrs. Templeton had made the arrangements. She was expected. Using her thin broadcloth shawl as deftly as she could, Lily manoeuvred her way through the squalls and mud into the open streets of the town. She was soaked through to the skin. Even her petticoat, improvised from a plain calico skirt, was sodden. Her boots were wet and plastered with grime that splashed up to her ankles and soiled the hem of her dress. Lily gritted her teeth and wedged her right cheek into the rain.

  When she got to the schoolhouse on George Street, the rain had stopped; the sun was making a comeback. No children skipped or cavorted in the grounds. Lily paused at the door about to knock when a large boy with a pimple on his nose opened it, and called back: “It’s the new girl, Miss Pringle! Looks like she’s fallen in Durand’s Pond!”

  A gale of laughter greeted Lily as she entered the room, her shawl dripping. Standing at the front behind a table, Miss Pringle – frightfully tall, angular, eyes overly brilliant like a starved cat’s – slammed her fuller down. “Behave yourselves, class,” she shouted an octave above normal. “Remember, you’re young ladies and gentlemen.”

  The ragtaggles and strays among the motley group of ages and sexes were not taken in: ladies-and-gentlemen-to-be went to the Grammar School on Christina Street. When the hubbub had died of its own weight, Miss Pringle said, “Please hang your cloak on the nail to your right, and take a seat. Class, say hello to our new pupil, Miss Lily Ramsbottom.”

  The surname had barely left Miss Pringle’s lips when three or four unsynchronized snorts were emitted, followed by several inferior female imitations. “That’s enough!” screamed Miss Pringle. “We don’t make fun of people’s names,” she informed the tiny and timid among her troop, “no matter how odd they may be.”

  Lily sat down at an empty spot on the bench that held three other girls who might have been her age. Her gingham, still sopping, clung to her and
shivered. The dark-haired girl next to her edged away.

  “Have you attended school elsewhere?” Miss Pringle asked sweetly, not leaving her post.

  “No, ma’am. This is my first time.”

  Miss Pringle paused, her gasp communicated instantly to the class. Lily felt the humidity and reek of the almost windowless room. She watched the teacher’s eyes, and tried to breathe.

  “Then what on earth are you doing sitting with the Fourth Book?” she snapped with more satisfaction than the situation warranted. Her ruler pointed left like a claw. “You’ll have to sit with the First Book, then, won’t you?”

  Lily saw the empty place at the end of the back-left bench beside an oversize boy who swivelled and beamed at her. Lily hesitated.

  “There’s a Reading Primer waiting for you,” Miss Pringle said, indicating the gray-backed tome on the desk, her voice honeyed again.

  Lily went round the perimeter of the spectators and eased into the appointed place. Her fingers touched the worn cover, rubbed threadbare by a generation of Grammar School children down the road. She looked up and waited.

  “My God!” screeched Miss Pringle, hitting descant. The class reeled as one and swung to the point of Miss Pringle’s glare. Lily flushed. She reached up and tried to smooth her damp hair back. “Stop! Don’t do that!” wailed Miss Pringle, and twenty-three necks craned, irreparably scandalized. “You can’t sit there, just sit there…like that!” she spluttered, unconsciously lifting her hands towards her own well-harnessed bosom.