Lily's Story Read online

  Maureen responded by changing breasts and sighing with satisfaction.

  “Believe me, love, it’s all for the best.”

  “What day is it?”

  “You’ve been in and out of a doze for three days now. But you are looking real good today. Shall I get you something to eat?”

  “Could I hold the babe, afterwards?”

  Lily was feeling better. She ate some soup spooned lovingly in by Lucille. Then her daughter was laid beside her, and when the women left for a moment, she eased a nipple into the nuzzling lips. She felt their pull upon her, amazed by the strength and depth of the need there, the compulsion of bonding it brought. Together they drifted to their separate sleep.

  When she woke the next morning, feeling ravenous and fully alert, the room was empty. Moments later the door opened and Mrs. Edgeworth entered in the wake of a strange man who strode to her bedside and sat down on Lucille’s chair as if it had been set out there especially for him.

  “This is Mr. Clayton Thackeray, M.P.P.,” she said to Lily with a tremor in her voice. “He’s come all the way from Toronto to see you, if you’re feeling up to it.”

  “I’m feelin’ all right,” Lily said, staring at the intruder from the city. He was formally attired in spats and morning coat and stiff collar; his face was obsessively whiskered with a pair of hooded eyes like two chips of anthracite. No amount of girdling could control the overbite of his belly.

  “I’m glad to hear it, child,” said the M.P.P. to the opposition benches. “We have important business to discuss, vital business.”

  Mrs. Edgeworth closed the door to mute as best as possible the booming rhetoric of his delivery, then stood leaning against it and watching.

  “I would like you to listen carefully to what I have to say. While you may find parts of it distasteful, I want you to remember that my communication to you comes from the highest authority in the land, that the decisions which have been taken have been thoroughly and humanely considered, and that the best interests of all concerned will be served by ready obedience.” He paused but no ‘hear! hear!’ was to be heard, not even a heartening assent from the back-benches.

  Lily stared right at him – conceding nothing, offering nothing. She recognized the official timbre of the voice and braced herself. When he turned slightly to Mrs. Edgeworth for support, she was staring at the carpet.

  “Well, then,” he began again, glaring at the eternal opposition, “I’ve been asked by the Honourable Charles Gunther Murchison to convey to you the following information. We have it from the highest authority,” and here he glanced at Mrs. Edgeworth and then back at Lily with an absurd wink, “that the father of your babe, a man of pre-eminence as you know, wishes to have his child raised in the most congenial and appropriate circumstances. With the welfare of the child uppermost in mind, certain investigations, shall we say, were carried out in Port Sarnia. Alas, the results were not favourable. I’m sure I do not need to tell you that the financial and particularly the, ah, moral circumstances of the Ramsbottom household leave much to be desired.”

  Lily looked straight ahead.

  “What the gentleman means, dear-heart, is that your Uncle and Aunt don’t go to church regularly,” said Mrs. Edgeworth.

  “What the gentleman means, child, is that the mother of the babe’s father insists that it be raised in the Church of England, a not unreasonable request, you will agree.”

  Only Mrs. Edgeworth, faintly, agreed.

  “And in this instance the grandmother’s wishes are paramount, as only you know,” he said to Lily with another wink that came down with the clank of a coal-shute. “Hence these decisions have been taken in the best interests of all concerned. The child will go to Toronto with its nurse to be adopted by a prominent family there who know generally about the circumstances of its conception and birth and, in spite of such, have, in the most magnanimous and humanitarian of gestures, offered to give this poor creature life and hope.”

  Lily flinched, and recovered. In the silence the breeze worried the curtains, a robin in the garden gargled its breath and ripped a worm from its burrow.

  “It is all for the best, Lily. I believe that,” said Mrs. Edgeworth near tears.

  “Indeed so,” said the M.P.P., as the thunderous clapping of colleagues rang in his ears. “The wet-nurse is delighted to be relieved of the burden of her overnumerous family; she is packed and ready to go, as is the infant itself. Mrs. Edgeworth will have the satisfaction of knowing that she not only saved the reputation of a wayward girl but that the illegitimate offspring of the unfortunate union will also be given a second chance at life. You, my child, will suffer briefly at the loss of an infant not yet dear to you, but may return to your own family purified and renewed. As a bonus for any inconvenience, I am also authorized to tell you that a cash settlement in compensation has already been deposited in your Aunt’s account in a Port Sarnia bank.”

  Clayton Thackeray sat back waiting for some response – tears, rage, thanks. He got nothing. Finally rising, he said to Mrs. Edgeworth, “Not a soul in Port Sarnia has gained a whiff of this. It’s been handled with the utmost discretion and concern for the feelings of those involved. The girl will return with not a single blot upon her character.”

  With that he swept out, startling the pages and footmen. A moment later Mrs. Edgeworth returned. Lily had not moved.

  “Oh, Lily. Mr. Thackeray asked me to find out something important for him. It seems the lady in Toronto who’s going to adopt the babe wants to know, just for herself, the last name of the babe’s mother. I’m to write it down on this card.”

  Apparently Lily didn’t hear.

  “It will all work out, dear-heart,” Mrs. Edgeworth said, dropping all pretense. “We’ll work it out together.” She took Lily’s hand, its calluses now grown smooth, its flesh pink again. “Can you tell me your name? Not Ramsbottom but the one you had before you were taken in.”

  “Fairchild,” Lily said.

  Mrs. Edgeworth wrote it down.

  4

  It was July 4. If she were home now Lily would be watching the fireworks display across the River as the Yankees celebrated the seizing of their liberty. Many people took the ferry across and stood in the grounds of Fort Gratiot as the skyrockets soared independently starward, the army band struck up the victory march and the guns that had driven the British back where they belonged boomed over the non-partisan blue of the fresh-water sea to the north.

  According to all observers Lily was “recuperating nicely.” She left her room for daily walks about the garden. She let Lucille chatter on at will. The colour flowed back into her cheeks. The freckles reappeared with it.

  Lily knew this hurt was permanent, like so many others before it. Somehow it seems safer, she thought, to stay inside the ache, to let it be continually numbing, and build whatever remained of her life around it. But, as before, the sun rose each day with impudent optimism, the elderly rosebushes stretched and infected the garden with their ungirded profligacy. The wind sweetened her chamber each morning. She ate and grew lithe again. At night she held the talisman in her fist, and waited for a word of its magic to re-enter the world.

  In the meantime, she realized she must write to Aunt Bridie. In fact, Mrs. Edgeworth helped her the very next afternoon following the baby’s swift departure by writing down Lily’s words and mailing off the letter immediately. It said this: “Dear Aunt Bridie: I love you and Uncle very much. I am fine. The babe was born dead. I will be coming home as soon as I get strong enough. Soon. Love, Lily.” Despite her careful monitoring Mrs. Edgeworth detected Lily crying only once: the evening after the letter was sent. She was left alone.

  Lily was now quite concerned that she had heard nothing back from Aunt Bridie. She understood why her Aunt had chosen not to write before the birth of the child, but fully expected some response by now. Two weeks had passed with no reply. Lily began to feel that something momentous was about to happen, though she was uncertain about whether it would
be happy or sad. The talisman was strangely silent, as if it had already spoken on the subject and was surprised that Lily was not able to interpret the obvious.

  What neither Lily nor the magic stone knew was that Aunt Bridie had actually sent a reply to Lily’s letter by return mail. In her haste and anxiety, however, she had addressed the envelope to “Lily Ramsbottom, North Street, London, C.W.,” omitting “in care of Mrs. Anthony Edgeworth”, and a summer-time employee of the post office dropped it into the general delivery slot where it remained for several months.

  Just as Lily – on this beautiful fourth of July – was about to suggest to Mrs. Edgeworth that she ought to consider returning home in a few days, she had a slight haemorrhage and was put back to bed with stern warnings. However, in the late afternoon she persuaded Lucille to help her into the wicker wheelchair and push her into the garden, where she sat alone by the rose arbour in the westering sun, letting the tears flow and dry on her face. What am I doing here? she thought. I want only to belong to some place, to someone besides myself. I reached out blindly to the young man inside the Prince’s suit, and he reached back. It was an act of faith on both sides. What has it come to? What did it bring? She thought of her lover, guessing at the special kind of loneliness he too must be suffering. Her heart went out to him across the distance between them, in the dream-memory which was the only mutual thing left to them. Beside her a hummingbird dipped its beak into the nectar of a tiger-lily.

  “My word, look who it is!” Mrs. Edgeworth’s voice cracked with some of its former zest. “Lucille, come here quick! It’s Tippy coming up the walk!”

  There was a scuttle and scurry in the household behind Lily. She turned away, letting the sun caress the nape of her neck. Below the female greetings and oohhing-and-ahhing came the rumble of a man’s response. For a while all was quiet within. Lily grew tense. The hairs on her neck rose. Her heart pitched and yawed. She heard the slap of the screen door, the steady step, the coolness of the shadow blotting out the light behind her. She turned in her chair to face the silhouette framed by the setting sun.

  “Tom,” she said, steadying her voice.

  12

  1

  “I don’t remember much about my parents except my mother was beautiful and my father was tall and stern in his uniform. It was him who got sick first, consumption according to my Aunt, then mother went down with it and I was torn away from them. For my own good, of course. I remember my mother’s face in the window too weak to smile or cry or comfort my screaming. Weeks later I was taken by the Colonel and Aunt Elspeth to their funeral. All of London was there, she said. Except my parents. They’re over there.” He pointed vaguely south-west to where the pink spire of St. Paul’s glinted bravely through the trees below which the granite, engraved stones proclaimed steadfastness.

  Lily lay her head back on the pillow behind her head, half-closing her eyes. Along the ambling lane and its weathered zig-zag fences, hollyhocks flung their petticoats shamelessly into the sun’s gaze. The breeze, perfumed by a penultimate rose, eased her lids shut. Some beneath in the shape of a hand fluttered on her own.

  “I guess you could say I was rich and spoiled. Aunt Elspeth finally got the child the Colonel was too busy to provide her with, and she made the most of it. She had an enseign’s uniform made for me to prance about in when I was barely eleven and very small for my age. But rich, no. My father left me a small sum to be given out as an annuity from my eighteenth to my twenty-sixth year. That ends this fall.”

  Lily squeezed his arm to get a firmer grip as they started north on Colborne Street, on this her first excursion around the block.

  “Take it easy,” Tom said. “Nurse’s orders.”

  “Your Auntie bought you the wrong costume,” she said lightly.

  “I was a real rebel; I must’ve come close to breaking my Aunt’s heart. Especially after the Colonel died in ’fifty. I hated school. I hated Latin. I hated Greek. I wouldn’t do my sums or the dusty old histories of the Empire. I played hookey to go fishing or help the boys build huts and forts and kites. I was pretty good with my hands then. I liked those scruffy, bad-mouthed kids...”

  Lily stumbled and gave a stifled cry at the sudden pain. Two powerful arms held her until she forced back the tears, found her sea-legs and peered up at him wanly.

  “You try to do too much,” he said. “You want to get better soon, don’t you?”

  Lily gave him an ambiguous smile. Letting go his arm, she teetered up the path – confident, bathed in the green praise of the high summer.

  “It’s funny, don’ t you think, that even though I loved to scuffle and carry on mock battles with the ruffians down by river – we even built rafts and men-o-war – my Aunt decided I was too undisciplined to follow in the footsteps of my father and uncle. She decided I was to be a scholar, she had an eye on the law or the new university in Toronto. But, of course, you know enough of Aunt Elspeth to see that she just couldn’t ever be too firm or mean enough to corner a character like me. But she kept me in school, one way or another, mostly through bribes or long bouts of weeping and sighing and calling up the ghost of the Colonel.”

  In the field before the Thames where they were walking for the first time, wild daisies with single-eyed resolve contended with the twitch grass and still-stemmed blue devil.

  “But I got even, I guess.”

  “You joined the militia,” Lily said, holding a daisy under her chin as if it were a dandelion.

  “Yes,” he said after a pause. “Major Bruce’s Volunteer Corps.”

  “Do I have butter on my throat?” Lily said, raising her face dangerously close to the voltigeur’s. He took command – though the kiss was brief, almost brotherly.

  “We drilled every other Saturday over there in Cricket Square,” Tom said. “I was determined to show the world I could make a soldier out of myself and not my upbringing.”

  “I had no upbringin’,” Lily said.

  Tom released her arm. “Why do you say things like that?” he said with that mixture of hurt and anger she was growing accustomed to.

  “Because they’re true,” Lily said, walking ahead with a steadiness that was now only partly feigned. She leaned back against the fence for support, letting the bough of the overhanging apple tree – its fruit as hard and tiny as buckshot – fall across her shoulder, her white dress and her freckled arms set against the last spray of hollyhocks, the sun incendiary in her hair.

  “Are you comin’, Sir Tom?” Lily called.

  Tom was starting in her direction. At last he came up to her, but when they resumed their stroll, he kept rigidly to her left as if he were marching in rank. Lily, sensing the change, made no move to touch him.

  “It’s all right,” Lily laughed, skipping and tilting her way down the steep river bank below Westminster Bridge. “I won’t break!” To prove her point, when she got to the bottom she fell face-forward into the consenting grass, as if she were making angel-figures in the snow. When she bounced back up, though, there was little record of her daring. Breathless, Tom reached her side, his eyes wide with disbelief.

  “For God’s sake, Lily –” he said with an edge of anger, then softened and finished: “please, please be careful.”

  “I’m not fragile, you know,” Lily laughed, doing a little jig and whirling in the breeze to some inaudible fandango.

  “I don’t know anything about you,” Tom said, sitting on the bank and staring sulkily into the water.

  “You know I had a baby,” Lily said in that tone which left him puzzled and occasionally seething. “And I got no husband. And I’m your Aunt’s charity case.”

  “For God’s sake, quit talking like that! It’s... it’s –”

  “True?”

  “– disgusting and...reeking of self-pity.”

  Lily stared at her face in the shivering water. With his blue epaulettes flashing in the light, a kingfisher broke the surface with the bayonet of his beak.

  Tom’s arms were around her in a m
ost unbrotherly fashion. They gripped her like braces; she let him pull both her softness and her strength against his rigidity. Some of the tension flowed her way. His lips brushed her eyelids, her cheeks, then met her own rising. They simply held each other that way for a long time, as if there were a question to be raised and no one to utter the first syllable of the answer.

  Tom let go first. “I’m sorry,” he lied.

  “I’m not,” Lily said. “An’ what for?”

  “You’re in my care,” Tom said feebly. “My Aunt, she’s trusted me, she’s –”

  “An’ you,” Lily said, “have taken advantage of a fallen woman.”

  “Why do you say things like that?” he said.

  “Now that we’ve kissed,” Tom was saying as he dropped the sour cherries into Lily’s apron, “you must tell me more about yourself. Fair’s fair.”

  “Nothin’ to tell, really,” Lily said. “I’m a farm girl, born an’ raised.”

  “You were no farm girl that night we danced in Sarnia.” He held a cherry aloft and she captured it with her teeth, the tart juice stinging.

  “Even farm girls dance,” Lily said equivocally, and saw right away that he was hurt.

  “We’ve come too far,” Tom said. “You sit right here and I’ll fetch the buggy.”

  “Let’s just rest a bit,” Lily said, puffing and laughing from their run down the lane.

  They sat. In the thicket a veery’s note soared and sighed, surrounding solitude.

  Tom said, “Don’t you...don’t you, ever, well, feel sad –”

  Lily turned her solemn eyes his way, puzzled.

  “About the baby, I mean.”

  “It died,” Lily said.