Lily's Story Page 35
In the teeth of such infamy it is little wonder that scant attention was paid to local concerns: like the continuance of the rate wars between the Great Western and Grand Trunk, to the embarrassment of the public purse and two dozen bankrupt municipalities; like the rumblings of discontent faintly heard from the New West where Canadians were already wearing out their welcome among the puzzled half-breeds; like the visiting phrenologist from Boston who proclaimed in the Town Hall of Sarnia that man was a ‘developmental creature’ and the earth around him eons old, only to be scientifically refuted, to general approbation, the next week by a learned Doctor of Theology from Pittsburgh; like the death of Mrs. Elspeth Edgeworth, widow of the late Colonel Edgeworth of London, who passed away quietly in her sleep at the home of her sister-in-law in Toronto. The good woman was laid to rest beside her husband in their home city.
Lily insisted that they could not afford train-fare for both of them to attend the funeral in London. She even believed it as she said it, and was secretly hurt when Tom showed no inclination to accept her argument. “Of course we can,” he snapped, “and we both know very well why you won’t go.” She was about to say something in her defense when Brad’s whimper from the boys’ room sent her scurrying off. Pulling the child close to her warmth, feeling the cold shiver as it clutched at her – she heard Tom slam the door and go out.
Later, into the silence she said: “I loved her very much.”
Tom leaned over and held a piece of meat on his fork until Robbie drew it, teeth flashing, back into his mouth and smirked up at his father. “Nice little puppy,” Tom said and gave him a pat.
“I wish she could’ve seen Brad.”
“Brad go, Brad go,” the little one chanted, secure on his mother’s lap.
“Gimme another one, Da,” Robbie said and spilled his milk.
“I take it you haven’t changed your mind.”
“She was the kindest person I ever knew,” Lily said. She sponged at the milk with the end of her apron.
“Da, gimme another –”
“Shut up, Robbie. Shut up!”
It took Lily an hour to quiet Robbie down, and while she hated to see how a cross word or a sideways look from his father could devastate him so, she cherished his flesh curled into hers so close she could hear his heart palpitate like a minnow’s gill out of water. Naturally Brad fussed all the while, complaining that his “tummy ache”, and finally throwing a tantrum to prove his point. She held one child in each arm until Brad fell asleep and Robbie just let his head slide onto her shoulder, in which haven he could nestle down and prepare for the wonderful dream that always came just before sleep. Very quietly, so as not to disturb her boys, Lily wept for Aunt Elspeth, for the walled garden, for Lucille in the morning room, and for all that had happened there.
Tom slept on the cot. At breakfast he picked Robbie up, spun him around in the clouds and tousled his hair. Robbie responded by punching Tom on the stomach with mock ferocity. “Can I go with you, Da? Can I?” Tom gave him a manly sort of hug. “Soon as I come home tomorrow, I’ll take you hunting,” he said.
Tom was eerily polite until he was ready to leave for the train. Lily noticed the dark hollows under his eyes. She reached out and straightened his tie. Tom raised her hand with his. He gave her the strangest look and said tonelessly: “You’ll have to leave him some day, you know.”
When Gimpy aimed his father-in-law’s buggy around the bend in the lane, Tom turned and waved at the boys. Robbie flapped his hand like a pennant.
From the moment of his unorthodox entrance into the world Bradley Marshall was a difficult child to cope with. Being premature, he seemed to try and compensate by constant suckling, demanding service at any hour of the clock, overcommitting his capacity and upchucking the lot. Whereupon he would cry with doubled hunger and indignation. When he did manage to feed satisfactorily, he would be wakened by colic, wailing his grief far into the night and the wary dawn. Where Robbie had been cherubic, Brad was wizened and irritable; where Robbie was robust and outgoing, Brad was sickly and withdrawn, as if his arrival had after all been some perverse mistake. When his colic subsided, he picked up a touch of whooping cough from his brother, then the chicken-pox, and most recently the red measles. Lily had two sick children to care for, and a husband with little sleep to sweeten his shortened temper. Robbie suffered his maladies gallantly, lying in his bed (Tom had made them single ‘bunks’ for ‘their room’) and letting Lily minister to him, smiling bleakly when she had to leave to attend Brad, hugging her to him when the pain spilled into occasional tears. In many ways, Lily often thought, these were their best moments together: Robbie knew for certain who she was, what she was for, why she couldn’t be done without. As a result, Robbie responded easily to treatment and was soon over the afflicting, bruiting his appreciation to the wild woods and fields he loved to roam in – within a mother’s shout of the house.
Poor Brad, being a year younger and never quite recovered from one malady before the next one struck, suffered badly and without dignity. He would shriek till his nose ran and slathered his chin, and Tom would give him several sharp shakes, stilling the fit but ushering in a pathetic, unceasing series of whimpers and mewlings that made his tormentor instantly contrite. But when the whimpering continued unconscionably, Tom would plop the child into Lily’s arms wherever she was and stomp off without a word. Usually she could hear him take his gun down and head off for First Bush, with Robbie trailing him ineffectually to the edge of the garden, then returning to Lily to cry out his anger or, more likely, making certain that her attempts to soothe Brad were unsuccessful. When both boys were sick together, Tom would bring young Mary Bacon out from the village to help. Mary was always cheerful and efficient, chattering away to Lily, to the boys, to the lilac bushes, to anything that moved or was beautiful. Robbie had someone new to show off his acrobatics to, and was, Lily thought, excessively affectionate to the girl. Brad did not ‘take to’ Mary, who failed to notice.
After Brad’s second birthday, Lily detected a distinct change in his behaviour and in their relationship. He had begun to talk early – at sixteen months – but despite the facility of his speech he used it mainly to establish the urgency of his wants. Lily cradled, hummed and sang to him often during these stressful periods, and he had responded in a curious way: he consumed the lullaby syllables thirstily, drawing them into his discomfort like a tonic, giving nothing back but the grateful easing of his tense little body in the singer’s arms. The songs Lily sang to him in those early months – born out of desperation and sometimes even panic – were those she remembered, however obliquely, from her own mother’s lips and imperfectly copied in her sudden need. They did as much to soothe the nurse as they did the child. Most of the ditties had no words she understood, but she felt that somewhere, way back, she had known their meaning or something near enough to meaning to be comprehended and prized. She could not describe even to herself the pleasure she derived from watching the fretful child respond to the lilt and dance of her own deep music, not with his eyes (which often twisted in resistance) but with his skin, his unstiffening body, the green thrumming of his miniature bones, the easy rhythm of animal sleep.
But just last month, all that had changed. For one thing Brad was a bit stronger now, even though he would always be a pale, thin towhead and prone to infection – all the way into his adolescence, where he would choose to capitalize on these ‘failings’ in unexpected ways. For the most part his abrupt shift in behaviour came with his increasing command of speech. He could not only string sentences together that would have dazzled visitors (if they had had any), he could take a word or phrase, as Robbie might a rubber ball, and play with it – tossing, balancing, testing its resilience against foreign objects – for his own endless amusement. One of those objects became Lily, who tossed the phrases right back – daring, taunting, smiling. Slowly, tentatively, they were returned until the rules of a new and wondrous game were realized, a game for two players – full of laugh
ter, quick slides, dizzy trapezes almost-over-air, shivering hugs when they both at last touched ground and waited together for the spinning to slow. While Robbie foraged out-of-doors, toy rifle at the ready to stun the first squirrel, Lily and Brad spent the mornings in perpetual conversation. Sometimes when Mary Bacon came out to help with the housework, she brought her little brother, Mitchell, and while the two older boys rampaged through the wilds out back and Mary hummed over the kitchen stove, Lily sat in Uncle Chester’s chair and began to tell Brad all the stories she knew. Brad did not always stay silent and enthralled; at a signal from Lily he would jump straight into the narrative and help her make it up, and when it broke down, as it must, in rambunctious nonsense, they would both laugh till even Mary would start giggling and Brad would freeze, tug at Lily’s apron and grow sullen for the rest of the day. At night he would say: “Put some words to the song, Mama, please.” “But they are words,” Lily would say, indignantly, then relent and improvise some English ones. “That don’t rhyme!” Brad would shout gaily. “Not supposed to!” “Make it rhyme, Mama, please.” So she would, happy that the child was content with her quarter-rhymes pulled out of the air and away from objects they shared intensively in their small fabular world. Of course, Lily had also sung Robbie to sleep with her lullabies, and did still when he was in need, and she loved also the way Robbie’s eyes, like acorns tinted blue, rounded drowsily and welcomed sleep. Rarely did she finish a song or story with Robbie at bedtime; his gratitude was quick and sonorous. During the day he would merely fidget and long to be outdoors despite the rain or driving snow. She loved Robbie passionately with a kind of aching she had never anticipated as she watched him gambol alone in the garden, stride behind Tom when they marched towards the wood, when he lay breathing in his heavy, recuperative sleep each afternoon. When he was sick or rejected, she got to hold him as tightly as she wanted to.
Tom was quick to notice the change in Brad. Lily was aware of his glance saying to her ‘Well at last there seems to be a little human being under all that crying and carrying on’. Lily in turn was quick to include Tom in the conversations as they developed. As first she had little success; Brad would simply clam up and sulk if Tom hung about too long on the fringes of their dialogue. “You’re too big,” Lily said to Tom, trying to make light of it. “Why don’t you get down on your hands an’ knees an’ just peek over the table, like you done with Robbie way back.” Tom was puzzled but went along. It worked. Gradually Tom was let into the word-play, where he did quite well, and occasionally Brad would say something he thought amusing and then look only at Tom and smile. Whereupon Tom would fall backwards and laugh and kick like a tipsy mule. This latter manoeuvre usually brought more laughter from Robbie than any of the other spectators.
But Tom just wasn’t around enough, Lily concluded. It didn’t seem fair. So for the time being, at any rate, Brad was unwilling to transfer his antics solely to Tom, even though Lily increasingly found opportunities to leave them alone together. “C’mon, Robbie,” she’d say, “You an’ me’ll go down to the creek an’ see if those trout are still there.” Robbie would glance anxiously at Tom – torn between loyalty and desire – and then give in to the latter. The only way she could keep him happy was to let him lead her to the secret pool and point out to her all its cumulative mysteries. Often they returned to a silent house.
Tom himself seemed a lot happier in general. No longer would he have to switch over to the freight-sheds every April. He was made a permanent (and veteran) member of the car-shop. His specialty became the repair of crippled stock cars; he would tear out the splintered sections and improvise replacement schemes at minimal cost to the Grand Trunk. “I’ll never be a cabinet-maker,” he’d say, “but at least these hands are good for something.” The only sad news was that Gimpy and Clara had settled permanently in Sarnia. Though they still saw them on special occasions, some of the old intimacy was lost. Tom had a number of acquaintances – pals – at work, some of whom he hunted and fished with, but with Bags’ departure (no news) and Gimpy’s defection, Tom had so far not found friends to replace them. Though he never said it aloud, with Gimpy gone to the Great Western, Tom had a better chance at becoming assistant foreman.
Soon, Lily thought, we’ll start talking again about that cottage in the village.
It was late April. Brad was asleep inside; his glands were swollen. Lily was digging in the garden. Robbie was ‘helping’ with his toy shovel. After a week’s lay-off Tom was back at work. Lily’s mind was full of plans for the coming season. She hummed a waltz tune, one she remembered dancing to long ago. Suddenly Robbie peeked up and said, “Ma, what’s a Fee-neen?”
“Where’d you hear that word?”
“When me an’ Da was fishin’.”
“Mr. Bacon use that word?”
“Uh, uh. Da did. What is it? Da won’t tell me.”
“They’re bad men, but they live a long way over the River. They can’t hurt you none. So don’t you go worryin’ about them, eh?”
He paused, then brought his shovel to his shoulder and aimed it. “I ain’t scared,” he laughed and pulled the trigger; the weapon went off with an explosion of spittle. Lily said nothing. After a while the instrument resumed its more humble duties.
When Tom came in from work, Lily was bent over the rabbit stew. She listened in vain for the rattle of his bucket and ‘thunk’ of his cap on its peg. She turned to look, the hair on the nape of her neck rising.
He was all in green, tunic and breeches, with black unbent boots. A bit of gold piping winked here and there. The rifle in his fist gleamed more brightly.
“I joined up,” he said.
2
The Fenian scare had reached its zenith. Enemy troop movements were being reported daily all the way from New Brunswick to the Niagara frontier. For several months the spanking new Canadian militia, side by side with British regulars, had been patrolling the borders of Canada East and Canada West. Point Edward was a critical spot, the nexus of two great transportation facilities. The Grand Trunk round-house and yards harboured at any given moment more than fifty locomotives. The economy of the united provinces could be crippled with a single surprise strike across the St. Clair River. Near the railyards stood an elevator crammed with last fall’s wheat reserves. Beyond, the Lambton countryside was dotted with Irish Catholic farms reported to be longing for emancipation and two-hundred-years’ vengeance. Three militia groups with local commanders were formed as part of the 27th Battalion: the Sarnia Infantry and Artillery Brigade, and two units from Point Edward known as the Grand Trunk Companies. Eventually they took on the name they had already chosen unofficially for themselves: the St. Clair Borderers.
To assist them in defending the vital installations of the region, the Government sent several companies from elsewhere in the Province, and these were billeted in what remained of the original Ordnance Grounds – a flat, grassy plain between Mushroom Alley and the lakeshore. The spring breezes billowed the white tents and the sun shimmered on bayonet and buckle. Flocks of truant boys crouched breathless in the bushes nearby, then dashed off to the dunes to replicate the dress-parades and menacing battle tactics they had been permitted to witness. Many a hummock and foolish milkweed felt the slash of a sabre and quick, voiceless death.
The Borderers joined the outsiders for combined exercises, but they also rehearsed independently on the Sarnia parade-ground or among the dunes themselves, firing their rifles into the air, hurling imprecations into the wind blowing impudently from Fort Gratiot, showing curious lads who longed to be a year older how to fix a bayonet without severing a finger. One rumour, widely believed, suggested that a Gatling Gun had been smuggled in from the States and cached somewhere near Mushroom Alley. Ordinary folk bolted their doors and kept the curtains drawn
With a logic known only to the Irish, the assault did not come against the vital, vulnerable Western region but across the Niagara River against loyalist strongholds rooted in that countryside since the expulsions of
the seventeen-eighties. Despite the advantages of a familiar terrain and a spy system which informed them of every twitch made by the enemy, the Canadian militia, in their maiden engagement, set a standard for ineptitude that only the fiascos of the Great War would surpass. Heroism there was aplenty, even a victory of sorts. But the soldiers weren’t cheering.
Because John A. Macdonald’s agents knew that the Fenians under O’Neil’s able leadership were about to cross the Niagara in force, a masterful battle-plan could be hatched with time to spare. The regular army units from Toronto under Colonel Peacock were to sail across Lake Ontario and effect a lightning-swift landing and an inland thrust below the Falls. The militia units – eight-hundred strong – were taken overnight on the Great Western to Port Colborne where, as the sun rose, they were to move slowly, by rail, to a point well below the marching line of the Fenians, who were now disembarked and heading straight for the Welland Canal. The militia commander, Colonel Booker, either forgot to set his watch or was simply overeager, because he started his northern drive two hours sooner than scheduled. Hence the pulverizing pincer-movement – Peacock’s regulars from the north, Booker’s militia from the south – was somewhat miscoordinated, particularly when the militiamen bumped into the Fenians near Ridgeway, to the astonishment of both parties. The Queen’s Own Rifles from Toronto charged into the invading hordes and sent them in full retreat – right through a festering swamp known locally as Smuggler’s Hole. Both armies were up to their thighs in muck and pond-water. The battered Fenians, backing up, discovered soon that they were all standing on a dry hill staring down on the sloshing, foot-weary Canadians. It occurred to them to start shooting back. They did, and several soldiers toppled into the sludge, blotting it with their blood. Reinspired by this, the main body of the Fenians charged down the hillside, while some of their units fanned right and left in an attempt to outflank the Canadians and trap them in the quagmire they had accidentally arranged for themselves. Colonel Booker succeeded in effecting an orderly retreat, hauling the wounded with him, until one of his officers, hearing perhaps the triphammer of his own heart, cried out “The Cavalry are coming!”, whereupon with no further evidence to sustain him the Colonel called for the formation of the famous British ‘square’. When duly formed, it was discovered that there was only one horse within a mile and it was pulling a plough. Meanwhile, the Fenians’ flanking manoeuvre was able to be completed with ease; the rear units of the Canadian militia broke and scattered; and the Queen’s Own continued bravely and stupidly to retreat in order – until their backs were cut to pieces and fifty-three of them had fallen, seven not to rise again.