Lily's Story Page 31

  Soaked, shivering, wild with dread – she seemed to be running without any sense except that of flight itself. Within seconds she found herself standing in front of the battered door of Bachelor Bill’s hut. She stood there until her breathing came back to normal, and longer. A deep calm pervaded, body and spirit. It’s happened, she thought. She pushed the door aside and went in.

  Bill was dead, though she had to walk over and touch him to confirm her fear. He was sitting where he always did: in his chair by the south-east window – the only window – with a clear view of the lane, his neighbour’s cottage and the rising sun over the tree-line. His eyes were wide open, full of arrested anticipation, and aimed down the lane that ended at the Errol Road, as if he were at any moment expecting the arrival of someone dear to his heart.

  Lily was still sitting by the stove wrapped in a shawl and wondering if she could walk all the way to the village through the gumbo left by the storm, when she heard Tom’s call from the road. She went out to greet him, embarrassed by the flush of joy she felt but unable to stop herself from trotting awkwardly towards the bend beyond the gate. What she saw stopped her breath. Tom was striding down the lane waving to her, and behind him, skipping to keep pace, bounced a slight female figure, also waving. Lily waited until they were almost upon her before she allowed herself to believe it was Lucille.

  Bachelor Bill, as they were to always remember him, was buried in the public cemetery of Sarnia less than half-a-mile from the property he had occupied so long no one could recall him ever not living there. Tom had sent a telegram to the asylum in London, hoping they could find some way to tell Violet. In the meantime the sheriff’s bailiffs arrived to claim the valuables. It appeared that Bachelor Bill had not paid his taxes with the money Tom gave him and that the Grand Trunk bought him out for the sums owed. Warden Hargreaves, it was said, had personally intervened to keep the acquisition quiet and permit the old fellow to live out his days in security and dignity. The day after the funeral Tom received word back from the authorities in London.

  “Violet’s gone,” Tom said. “It says here she ran off three days ago and they haven’t found a trace of her anywhere.”

  3

  Tom informed Lily that Aunt Elspeth was well enough to travel to Toronto to make an extended visit to the Colonel’s sister-in-law, long a widow and now, it seemed, quite frail and in need of companionship. “I haven’t laid an eye on her for ten years, since the funeral, but the dear old soul isn’t strong, you see, so I really can’t say no.” Hence, Lucille was to be despatched, at great personal sacrifice, to oversee the baby’s entry into the world, after which she was to come to Toronto and escort Aunt Elspeth back to Lambton to inspect and approve.

  Lucille was a joy and a wonder. Freed from the supervisory affection of Mrs. Edgeworth, she became a volatile blend of wood-nymph and street-urchin. She never walked where she could flit, saunter, glide or dart. She assaulted the objects in a room with her flung glances: “Oh, Lily, what a beautiful quilt!” “What a sweet little tea-pot!” “Where on earth did you get calico with them colours!” She filled the kitchen and big room with a quarter-acre of lilacs stripped from every lane within a mile’s radius. They strolled and they tumbled (one of them) through the May woods searching out the red-tongued trilliums hidden amongst the ivory millions carpeting the forest floor. Lucille picked up a dazed garter snake, made as if to fling it at a giggling Lily, then abruptly dropped it down the front of her own dress, after which she engaged in an hysterical jig of exorcism and mock sexuality. When she was excited, which was a good deal of the time, she lapsed into a headlong patter where French and English vied for supremacy, to the detriment of sense but the sheer delight of any listener. In the midst of such paroxysms, Lily would suddenly put two fingers across Lucille’s lips and the girl would stop in mid-syllable, her eyes bulging and an enormous giggle burbling in her throat.

  “My turn,” Lily would say, and begin to talk. They told each other the stories they had rehearsed back in London, but now with more flair, more dazzle of detail, and a lot less crippling veracity.

  “My Maman had a lot of kids, you know. She swell out like a pumpkin every spring and woosh, down she go every September. But Maman always wear a big dress, like a tent, an’ so we never got to see what shape the pumpkin take under all that. Always I wonder, eh?”

  Lucille and Lily lay at ease in a grassy hollow in the hardwood forest not far from the brook. The sun was morning-mellow. Both girls had their skirts thrown back far enough for it to bless the skin all the way to the thigh. Languidly, with no particular forethought, Lily unbuttoned her skirt and pulled the cloth back to expose a bevelled expanse of skin.

  “You gonna warm him up a little?” Lucille said.

  “It’s my turn today,” Lily said, widening the breach.

  “You gonna toast that bun-in-the-oven!”

  Lily closed her eyes, trapping the sun under the lids.

  “I never did get to see one of them kids in there,” Lucille murmured, her fingers already treading across the rippled drum of flesh. “Hey, I can feel its head. I can!”

  Lily shifted slightly to one side.

  “Hey, he kicked me! I felt him! The little bugger!” Lucille’s fingers softened, they lathered and soothed. “You like that, little fella? You like this? Eh?”

  A voice murmured sleepy assent.

  Lily eased herself up, her clothes falling back into place. She took Lucille’s hand in hers and moved them both up to the girl’s cheek. The tiniest pressure tipped her back onto the grass. Lily brushed Lucille’s hair from her forehead, then with utmost tenderness stroked the sunlight across her brow, along the edges of her smile, in the furrows of her throat. Then she watched her own shadow fold across the girl’s face as she leaned over and kissed her as lightly as a butterfly touching milkweed.

  “I ain’t never had a man yet,” Lucille said.

  Since the baby was late – it was already the first week in June – and Lily seemed to spend much of her day with Lucille, Tom took more and more time away from home. He hounded the numerous small factories in Sarnia but got precious little work for the hours he put in to the search. Though he refused to admit it openly to her, Lily knew that somehow the word had been passed along from above and was being routinely obeyed. Even the Great Western, avowed enemy of the Grand Trunk, could find no spot for an experienced hand. When Tom took up the spade and headed into their garden, she knew for certain that he too had given up.

  But he was still her Tom, a man of spirit, and she loved him till her heart ached whenever he came into the kitchen smiling and teasing ‘his girls’: “Gimpy and the fellas think I got a harem up here!” he’d say, leering at Lucille. “Well, ain’t ya’?” she’d say right back. Or he’d come across to Lily at the stove, wheel her about for a kiss, give her belly a lustful bunt and say, “You’ll have to lean forward, missus, there’s somebody standing between us,” and Lucille would pretend she’d heard the line for the first time and topple back into Uncle Chester’s chair as if she’d been felled by an axe. Later, in the gloom of dusk Lily would watch him hacking at the clods in the garden, harrowing his hands twice as badly as the tough heart, trying as always to overwhelm it, or cow it with a quixotic show of force. Come on, you little urchin, she’d say to her full-time lodger, we can’t wait much longer. On the fifteenth of June he walked up the Errol Road and hired on with the first farmer he saw behind a team of plough-horses. Two days later she saw him sneak into Benjamin’s stall where he kept a jug of soul-restorer poorly hidden. When he came to bed in the middle of the night, he curled his body behind hers as close as he could fit it, slid his scarred hands around her breasts, then let them drift down to assume some other shape more promising than their own. “I do love you,” he whispered.

  After breakfast that Sunday – while Lucille was helping Lily with the dishes and mimicking her Maman’s defense of the ‘lumpy’ suitor who owned a whole township next to them and who had heroically offered to readjust h
is ‘sights’ in order to secure the services of a ‘well-brought-up’ farm girl – Tom poked his head into the room and said, “There’s horses in the lane.” Still wiping their hands on their aprons, they got outside in time to see a matched team of Belgians hauling behind them an over-size and vacant buckboard very like the one used to deliver beer barrels from the new brewery. Only a driver, swatting occasionally at the reins, and his assistant, with both hands grappling the bench beneath them, managed to steer the vehicle anywhere close to a single direction.

  “Whoa! Gee! Haw! Whoa!” yelled Gimpy Fitchett with a slap of leather on leather.

  “Ya-hooo!” yelled his partner, sparking the horses to greater effort.

  “Whoa back! Whoa back!”

  Fortunately the veteran team had had enough brisk exercise for a Sunday morning and drew themselves sedately up before the gate of the Marshall place.

  “Where in sam hell did you learn to drive horses?” Tom hollered as he dashed across to the visitors.

  “I worked for a week in an abattoir,” Gimpy said. “Good mornin’, ladies. I hope you’ll pardon the intrudin’, but me gentleman friend here felt the need of a little airin’.”

  The gentleman was Bags Starkey. Thin, wan, shivering in the gathering heat of the day – he unhooked his hands and flashed a huge smile at Lucille and Lily as they came over to the buckboard.

  “Mornin’, Mrs. Marshall, Tom. I don’t believe I’ve had the honour of –”

  “Lucille Verchères,” Tom said.

  “Ah, ça va bien, ma’amselle? ”

  While Lucille blushed and attempted to find a dry hand for him to kiss with a flourish, Lily and Tom tried not to look at his feet, or rather the white blobs of bandage that had been wrapped around them and that, except for the stipple of dried blood, might have been mistaken for giant baby booties.

  “This here’s Bob Starkey,” Gimpy said. “He speaks English, too.”

  “Just call me Bags, everybody does except my mother,” Bags said. “Could we interest anyone in a drive through the countryside? Best of accommodations.”

  “We got Barney and Sue here for the whole day,” Gimpy said, never taking his eyes off Lucille. “We’re tryin’ to dry ’em out.”

  “Might even rouse the interest of someone we’re all waitin’ to meet,” Bags said, gripping the bench with his left hand so he could teeter over to wink in the general direction of the yet-to-be-born.

  “Why don’t we take you for a ride,” Lily said.

  Tom was staring uncomprehendingly at Bags’ crushed feet.

  Bags fitted very nicely into Uncle Chester’s wicker wheelchair, retrieved from the woodshed, dusted off and padded out with several pillows, at least one for each of the blobs to rest upon. With Gimpy pushing and Tom stationed at the vehicle’s left wheel, Bags, his lady companion and her duenna promenaded past the garden, where they admired the fine froth of early radish and the flutter of escaping crow and starling, while the veery in the bush offered his see-saw siren in lieu of a melody. They whirled at the barn and headed back by an even more circuitous route. “Quite splendid! Simply charming!” Bags shouted, “And only the servants live there, you say!”

  “Oui, capitaine-le” Lucille giggled, skipping to keep up with the postilion’s pace.

  “Wee, wee!” Gimpy yodelled, accelerating to break Tom’s grip.

  “Wheee!” called the lone rider.

  Bags pulled a mouth-organ from his back pocket, wincing a bit as one of his legs hit bottom, and began to play a jig, sprightly and yet ever so delicate, as if the notes had hopped and glided to their independence only after being pummelled through silk. As Bags’ eyes dances and pursued them, Lily and Lucille joined hands and performed on the lawn of their dooryard a somewhat gallic and oblong version of the Irish national ditty. Suddenly the music got louder and faster, the notes ripped at the air, the girls’ feet began whirling and pointing, bruising the blank spaces around them, maddened by grooves just beyond gravity – till Lucille let go and Lily went sailing backwards to make an ungainly two-point landing in the long grass by the stoop.

  Lily popped up, laughing and panting, and brushed Tom’s hand aside. She and Lucille fell giggling into one another’s arms. Gimpy blushed to his Adam’s apple, with his lame leg still pumping to the echo of the beat. Then everyone stopped.

  Bags had begun to play again: a soft, melodious air that sang wordlessly of something lost and green and never-again-to-be-possessed. Part-way through – no one really noticed when melody and lyric were as seamless as bunting – a tiny voice joined in and made the morning complete:

  Un Canadien errant

  Banni des foyers

  Un Canadien errant

  Banni des foyers

  Parcourait en pleurant

  Des pays étrangers

  Bags Starkey smiled again at the ladies, winked at Tom, and then waved one brave hand from his perch on the buckboard. Gimpy whipped the horses to life, Lucille’s kiss still burning on his cheek. The rig clattered down the lane and muffled all farewells. Just before it disappeared into the trees at the big bend, Bags hunched over, as if he’d taken a cramp, and let his head hang helplessly between his knees.

  Lily squeezed Lucille’s hand. Then she looked for Tom. He was stomping away from them – in the direction of the barn.

  “You better fetch Tom,” Lily said.

  Lucille went white. “Le bébé?”

  “Uh huh. Tell Tom to get the midwife. It’s not gonna be long.”

  “He’s gone, Lil. I don’t want to wake you up for supper, you look so peaceful –”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Off to the town, I think. Oh, Lily he was –”

  “Don’t start cryin’ on me,” Lily said. “Please listen. Stoke up that stove real good. Fill the water tank all the way up. Get out that supply of clean flannels I put in the hamper. Then go into the village. Ask around for Tom. If you can’t find him, see if you can find the midwife.”

  Lily let out a wrenching cry that caused the saucepan to leap right out of Lucille’s hands. “What the matter? Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!”

  “It’s just a labour pain,” Lily said when she could feel her heart again. Sweat dropped off the end of her nose. “The little bugger wants out.”

  Lucille didn’t laugh.

  “But you know all about this,” Lily said, “Your Maman had a dozen after you.”

  Lucille was fumbling with the hardwood faggots, spilling them on the floor in front of the stove. “I don’t know nothin’ about it at all,” she whimpered. “I run off an’ hide in the woods – every time.”

  “I’ll tend to the fire,” Lily said. “You go for Tom.”

  “But how do I find this – this sage-femme?” she said.

  “Just ask, you silly girl,” Lily snapped. But Lucille was incapable of asking anything. Lily waved her over to the cot, put her arm around her, and then holding her chin gently in place, said to her: “Don’t worry, ma petite. We’ve done this all before, haven’t we? Just go to Mr. Redmond’s place, the grocery on the main street. He’ll still be there. Ask him to fetch the midwife for you. Then bring her here. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Her name’s Sophie. She lives where the squatters stay down by the dunes. That’s all I know.”

  As Lucille reached the door, Lily let out another cry, and Lucille started back.

  “Hurry,” Lily gasped out. “Please. Go!”

  Lucille disappeared into the withered sunset.

  The pains were coming about seven or eight minutes apart as far as Lily could judge. They were as raw and frightening as the last time, perhaps moreso because she knew how long they would continue, and how much more frequently they would come to remind her how cowardly and insignificant and dispensable she really was, a mere web of birthing nerve and muscle; and knowing that she too – like the millions of child-bearers before her – would cry out for relief and expiation, would curse the universe that could look on with such unfeeling while
the pain wracked from within as if it were ripping your skin apart from nose to navel with a single, whittled fingernail.

  Why did you leave me? she heard a voice like hers shout from the underworld of her pain. I need you, Auntie. I do.

  Only the glow from the stove-pipes offered any light to the room when the door burst open and a burly moon-fringed figure strode to stage-centre and stalled, as if wondering in which direction the audience lay.

  “Jesus-Christ-in-a-butter-box! Where in hell’s the light?

  Lucille, a trembling silhouette in the wake of this large personage, flitted across to where she had left Lily. “It’s la sage-femme, she’s come with me.”

  “So I hear,” Lily whispered in a voice that caused instant paralysis in the girl.

  The midwife was already at the stove menacing it with a series of ferocious manoeuvres. Flames shot up through the opening and smoke retreated up the chimney-flue. Wielding a lighted chip, the midwife broached several lamps and within seconds every object in the room softened into view.

  “Well now, ain’t that a damn sight better? You must be the victim,” she said, ambling over to Lily who was struggling to sit up, a cautionary hand on her abdomen. “I’m Sophie Potts.”

  “I’m Lily. And I think you come in the nick of time.”

  “I’ve heard all about you,” Sophie said, and she bent over Lily, easing her gently down with a fleshy hand that looked as if it had just milked fifty Holsteins and triumphed. “My, my, you got a live one in there, my girl.” Without turning from Lily she barked softly at Lucille: “Get fresh wood on that fire, Frenchie; I want that water hot enough to boil a baker’s bowlin’ balls. Then haul the oil-cloth off of that table an’ throw it across the bed back there. Then bring all the pillows an’ sheets you can find. We gotta make this young’un as comfortable as we can. Right, dearie?”