The Sister's Tale

by Beth Powning

  “For the almshouse? Yes. I wondered if you would care to present it at a tea meeting. Not at your own…place,” he added. “Mrs. Smith has said she would support the cause but has no interest in presenting the petition. Someone needs, you see, to explain the situation.”

  “I…”

  …sometimes cannot get out of bed in the morning…She sensed that Harland wished to meet her eyes, in query or to exchange a smile, but she stared straight ahead, letting her skates find their way, wondering if Maud and Flora would come with her to the tea meeting. Despite her misgivings about Lucy’s fervour, she felt an unusual sense of anticipation, picturing her own signatures—on the almshouse petition, on the suffrage petition—like promises to herself.

  * * *

  —

  January 5, 1889

  Dear Mrs. Jonah,

  I write to you from New Brunswick, where until recently I have been serving the position of Overseer of the Poor. It is in this capacity that an English girl, Flora Salford, came to my attention. She was brought over as one of Miss Maria Rye’s orphans. It is thought that her younger sister, Enid, was delivered to Halifax in a similar group of girls.

  I take the liberty of contacting you since my dear friend, Alicia Alward, informed me that you are a trusted friend of Miss Rye, and may have placed the younger sister.

  It will be my utmost pleasure to hear that this was indeed the case, and I remain in eager anticipation of anything you can tell me about this girl, Enid Salford, for whose welfare her sister, Flora, is in constant agitation and worry.

  Thanking you in advance for any information you may send,

  I remain,

  Yours truly,

  Harland Fairweather

  * * *

  —

  At Mrs. Smith’s tea meeting in aid of the almshouse petition, Josephine, Flora and Maud were given a little round table next to the piano. Josephine sipped tea, her heart racing. She could not take a single bite of the pound cake filled with strawberry jam and whipped cream. Harland had made the assumption that she would describe her experience, and the organizer had simply sent her a note to confirm the date. Flora, too, was to speak; her cheeks flamed, and she had not picked up her fork. Josephine reached over and patted her hand.

  “It’s only Pleasant Valley women,” she whispered.

  Gaslights burned on the walls; in the low, amber light, ornaments glittered—beads, sequins, brooches. A woman stood, tapped a glass with her fork.

  “Mrs. Josephine Galloway will now…”

  “You’ll be all right, Mama,” Maud whispered. She had worn her best gauze blouse; Ellen had repaired the jet buttons. Maud had insisted on adjusting Flora’s hair, easing the tight topknot into a looser pillow.

  Josephine rose and stood by the piano. The drawing room was crowded with the round tables; she saw the relaxed, expectant faces of women, some half-turned on their chairs.

  “I was asked by Mr. Fairweather, who was then the Overseer of the Poor, to attend the pauper auction and bid for a young girl. She should not have been sold as a pauper, he told me, but he had no choice in the matter.”

  As she described the crowd of men, and the way she had elbowed her way to a place below the platform, the tinkling of forks and cups and saucers faded to silence.

  “They were lined up on the platform in the freezing cold. One woman was so sick that she lay beneath a blanket on a wagon, but not so sick, apparently, that she wasn’t brought out to be sold. There were three little children, a brother and two sisters.”

  Flora’s eyes, unblinking, glistened with tears. Maud flipped a butter knife over and over, eyes sending encouragement to her mother.

  “I was the only woman there, I believe. Have any of you ever attended our annual pauper auction? I bid against three men for Flora.”

  Josephine’s voice ceased its trembling and she felt, suddenly, like a teacher she remembered at the Sackville academy. What is the meaning of écrasement? When was the Treaty of Utrecht? How would you compare the Renaissance to the Middle Ages? She slid into the truth of the remembered moment, her horror at the mechanisms of the sale, her anger at seeing frightened people being treated like animals at market.

  “This should never happen again, not in the heart of our quiet town, nor anywhere else. The province should build almshouses and take on the care of people who for any number of circumstances find themselves homeless. It may mean higher taxes. But Mr. Fairweather told me that this is not a certainty, and may in fact prove to be untrue in the long run. It is not the dollar that we must have our minds on, in any case. It is our humanitarian impulse.”

  She finished to applause. She made her way to the table and lifted a glass of water to her lips with shaking hand. The women had listened with grave concern. No man had risen to interrupt her, nor whispered to another man behind a hand. She felt a new sense of herself, dignified not by a husband but by grief and the knowledge that she must make her way alone.

  Mrs. Smith went to the front of the room.

  “I would like to introduce Flora Salford, who, to our great sorrow, had to endure standing on our station platform and being bid for at auction.”

  Flora took her place by the piano and told her story simply, a slight tremor in her voice. The audience leaned in to hear the Queen’s English, even if marred by a country accent.

  “I was alone after they died and then the Overseer came. He took me to some people just for Christmas. I wanted to be sent back to England. No one told me anything. One day a wagon came. It were filled with…paupers. I wasn’t no…I wasn’t a pauper. We were made to sit up on the station platform. Then one by one the names were called out and the people all got sold. I stood up when he called my name and Mrs. Galloway, she put her hand up for me.”

  When Flora was done, Mrs. Smith asked if she would take questions. Flora’s eyes turned to Josephine’s, pleading, and Josephine shook her head—no. The meeting was concluded.

  Josephine sensed an air of suppressed excitement as the women gathered at the coat rack; it was as if, should someone say one funny thing, delighted laughter would burst from one woman, for sheer pleasure of the evening just passed; and it would be like fire—kindled, catching, flaming.

  “It was an excellent talk, thank you, Josephine.”

  She pulled her collar up, flushed. “Thank you.”

  “You opened our eyes, you certainly did. You and Flora.”

  “Thank you.”

  The door opened to the frozen trees and a moonless night, the Milky Way netting stars and planets. Josephine stepped outside, hearing her own voice in her head—may prove to be untrue in the long run—knowing she would not sleep all night long.

  Josephine, Maud and Flora turned into the street. They strode fast, bent by the cold.

  At the corner, a street lamp glimmered, lighting ice-glazed picket fences.

  “Thank you, Mr. Sprague,” Maud remarked. “Mr. Fusspot.”

  Flora spoke through her scarf, muffled. “How that man ruins his collars I don’t know.”

  Josephine laughed. Her heart lifted and she felt Simeon, somewhere in the cloud of stars, relax his hold.

  ELEVEN

  A Man’s Kindness

  FLORA STOOD BEFORE THE house gazing up at the lindens. The sky was the chill blue of a winter evening, the branches so still they did not seem part of growing trees.

  She went to the back of the barn, let herself in. There was not a sound from the workshop, yet Jasper Tuck must be there, since she’d seen him crossing the lawn, breath scarfing the air.

  She listened.

  The opening of a drawer.

  A click.

  She tiptoed to the wall that separated the workshop from the rest of the barn. She put her face to a crack, making a frame with mittened hands.

  She could see him only from the shoulders down. He knelt
at a tool chest with many shallow drawers. The lowest drawer was half-opened. It was filled with handkerchiefs, perfectly folded, laid side by side. His hand passed over the contents, back and forth, as if deciding which one to pluck out.

  She could not understand why he would keep clothing in the barn.

  Not handkerchiefs. Banknotes! Twenty-five-cent notes. One-dollar, two-dollar, four-dollar notes. Orange, grey, green.

  His hand paused, as if he had heard her thought. The fingers, outstretched.

  She held her breath until his hand resumed its soft to and fro.

  * * *

  —

  Ellen frowned, a streak of flour on her forehead and her mouth in a knot as she kneaded dough with stiff arms. Flora, chopping carrots, listened as Josephine and Ellen continued an argument, about herself both in its particulars as well as its unspoken underpinnings. Flora felt her position in the house shifting. Much of the food Ellen prepared would not be there unless Flora had grown it, or bargained and bartered, or sold mittens. Ellen was oddly in her due but would neither acknowledge this nor show gratitude, clinging to her authority over Flora, her only remaining “girl.” Josephine often came to Flora with questions about the house’s running; and Flora responded with caution, thinking that to rise above her station put her in a precarious place whose dangers she could not foresee.

  “Why not, Ellen?” Josephine persisted. “Lucy will be at work, but Flora could visit Cousin Carrie. Couldn’t you, Flora? You could see the ships, the market. We’ll make up a package of food for you to leave at Lucy’s boarding house.”

  She broke off as if struck by an idea.

  “You’ve never had a holiday, have you?”

  “Only to pick blackberries,” Flora said. “At the workhouse.”

  Once a year, the children of the workhouse were loaded into two green omnibuses, one for boys and one for girls, and taken to the country to harvest blackberries. With seats inside and on top, the carriages swayed like bloated beetles. Jolted, wide-eyed, the children watched the profligate, dizzying, deafening world. Shop windows with gilt- lettered signs, delivery men, women wearing skirts with street-sweeping hems, shiny horseflesh, whip-wielding coachmen, butter-coloured stone buildings side by side like sheaves of barley…

  Flora slid a lock of hair behind her ear and resumed cutting carrots on the scarred wooden block, a whole winter’s worth of carrots having been acquired in exchange for six pairs of men’s mittens. She wanted Josephine to think she had enjoyed her trip to the English countryside, with its hedge-lined fields and air smelling of wildflowers—daisies, lady’s pincushion, foxglove, poppies—names that made her think that her mother, who had taught them to her, could not possibly be dead.

  Holiday…

  …Matron. Handing out men’s shirts to all the children. Roll up the sleeves. Be careful of thorns. Arranging the children all along a row of blackberry bushes. Pick, pick. She walked up and down behind them, poking with her cane, and Flora saw a place where she and Enid could push through the hedge, dash into an oat field, hide in a stand of willows. Her thought. Like a flung pebble striking the matron’s head, who whirled and caught the very instant of Flora’s reaching for Enid’s hand…

  Tears sprang to Flora’s eyes.

  “Oh, dear,” Josephine said, watching her. “It wasn’t a holiday, was it.”

  “Nor will be a visit to St. John with the likes of him,” Ellen muttered, scooping up the dough and slapping it into a greased bowl.

  Mr. Tuck needed to go to St. John to purchase fittings for the little houses—tiny weathervanes and grommets, a miniature boot scraper. He needed a new knife, special varnish, bits of carpeting to cut into playing-card-sized rugs. He was leaving on the morning train and would be back at ten o’clock in the evening. He had asked Flora if she would care to accompany him.

  “I think it will be fine, Ellen,” Josephine insisted. “Flora, I will phone Cousin Carrie and see if she can meet you at the train. I don’t expect you to spend the day with Mr. Tuck. Certainly not, Flora. You let him take you to the train and you see that he watches out for you on the trip down and back.”

  How he had asked her, Josephine did not know and Flora did not tell.

  She remembered the silence before he’d asked. The way he’d considered, his lips tight together like the mouth of a bag. He had been whittling wood, the knife held between finger and thumb, more gentle scrape than carve. She could not reconcile these tender gestures with his lean, intent body, his secretive eyes. He did not love the houses. They were matters of profit. The money-filled drawer made her uneasy and she dropped her eyes a fraction more quickly, now, and he noticed that she did so. I’m going to St. John on Friday, he had said. Wouldn’t you like to come with me. It was almost a taunt. You want to come with me, don’t you, was what he really said, like another voice whispering in her ear, telling her her own desires. He peeled her back, revealed her to herself. He looked up sideways and she thought that once again her thoughts were like a flung pebble, as when Matron had read her intention to flee.

  Yet. To go somewhere!

  “I would like to see St. John,” she said. She scooped the pennied carrots in both hands and dropped them into a saucepan. “I’d work Sunday to make up.”

  “That’s all right, Flora. For goodness’ sakes.”

  Flora looked up to see that Josephine was suddenly on the point of tears. Her voice faltered, became breathless. “You work harder than all of us combined.”

  * * *

  —

  Flora sat with her nose to the window, the parcel of food on her lap.

  “You ever been on a train?” he asked.

  His hair, combed, bore the grooves and smell of pomade.

  “I was on this train five years ago. The orphanage gave me a paper bag with a piece of bread and some cheese and a hardboiled egg. I had to wear a placard around my neck and people stared at me. Like as if I might steal from them. Like I were an urchin.”

  “Well, you were, weren’t you. An urchin.”

  “I was not. I was an orphan. Like you.”

  Abruptly, he leaned across her to look out the window at the sight of a burning barn: flames bursting from a roof, running men, a rearing horse. The scene was snatched away, the snow-covered landscape resumed. He did not move back entirely. The side of his leg pressed against her. She inched sideways on the wooden seat, her shoulder cold against the glass, a draught chilling her neck.

  You want to watch out for him.

  He moved back to his side of the bench. He flipped his checking receipt over and over in his palm, staring straight ahead, mouth closed and tongue exploring his teeth. Flora was lulled by the regular, ratcheting movement, the floral carpet under her feet warmed by water pipes in the floorboards. Amid the close-set walls, the varnished wooden ceiling, the murmuring voices, she felt as if she were in a kind of church, a place where people were subdued by a power they could neither understand nor control. She gazed at a hat perched close before her, so close she could touch it, decorated with lacquered berries, feathers. The woman’s neck; a shadow in its groove.

  Her eyelids thickened and she felt herself on the point of sleep.

  She felt his hand on the back of her head, pulling it down onto his shoulder. She sat up, not acknowledging that this had happened. Perhaps it had not. She pressed her forehead against the cold window to keep herself awake.

  * * *

  —

  “Wouldn’t you like to go to college, Flora?”

  The narrow room smelled of beeswax, its ceiling decorated with scrolled friezes and medallions. Side windows faced the harbour, where blanketed horses lined the wharf, icy rigging drooped against a white sky.

  “I’m learning to better my reading,” Flora murmured. “So I can help.”

  Carrie sat straight-backed, alert, hands folded in her lap. On the desk beside her was a stack of book
s in Italian, German and French. Neat piles of paper, clipped together. She smiled at Flora’s answer.

  “That’s wonderful to hear. You know, you can be anything you want.”

  Flora wondered whether Carrie remembered that she was speaking to a girl who had foraged in the frozen remnants of gardens and stolen milk from cows’ udders.

  “Look how many mills and factories there are here in St. John that employ women. Like Lucy. Soon, women are going to realize that they’re working as hard as men, if not harder, and being paid far less.”

  Words came from her mouth in a sleek tumble, like polished stones. Flora held one hand against her cheek, feeling the need to brace herself against the outflow. She strove to understand their meaning—socialism, political economy, pecuniary.

  “We have such stimulating meetings, Flora. I wish you could come. We talk about all the places women should be serving, and you know, when we imagine such a world, a world of equality between men and women, it is as if it has already happened, and were we to walk out into the city we would find women supervisors in women’s prisons, serving as school trustees or on public health boards. In government.”

  She paused, her face rapt with the vision, and Flora, trying to think of a suitable response, found it hard to imagine Carrie the way Ellen had described her; her that went around the world as a child and was almost killed by pirates.

  “Last night we agreed that popular government is founded on the principles of representation by population and taxation. Well, you know the women of New Brunswick form at least half of the population. Many of us already have the required property qualification. And the rest contribute to the public revenue in one way or another.”

  She took a long breath and sat back in her chair.

  “We read a satire in the paper, written by a man. Imagine a stout lady, Honorable Mrs. Jemima this or that, holding the office of the Provincial Secretary…Imagine the speaker addressed as ‘Mrs. Speakeress’…Some of us said that we should fight back with our own ridicule of men. Others said we should maintain our dignity.”