by Beth Powning
The woman climbed down from the wagon. Her dress was clean and without patches. White, with tiny pink flowers.
A girl, really. Maybe only a few years older than me.
The dog scrambled to its feet and began to bark. Mr. Mallory appeared at the front door.
“Shut that.”
The girl walked towards the house. She wore a straw hat with a blue ribbon around the brim. Curls on her forehead. Hair caught up in a soft roll, wisping over her collar. She put down a hand but did not look the dog in the eye. Careful. She continued straight to Mr. Mallory, not knowing that she should be afraid.
Mr. Mallory braced himself in the door, arm over his head, elbow against the frame, hand dangling loose. A shovel leaned against the house.
“What do youse want?”
“Are you Mr. Albert Mallory?”
She’s British.
“Yuh.”
“I am looking for Enid Salford. I heard from Reverend Charles Snelcroft that he sent Enid to you. You applied for a child from Miss Maria Rye.”
“We got no Enid Salford.”
“Why did he give me your name, then?”
“You telling me I’m a liar?”
The girl looked straight into Mr. Mallory’s eyes, as neither the dog nor Doreen ever did.
Nor had Fred.
“Excuse me. I am trying to understand. Perhaps someone made a mistake.”
“Must have.”
“But how could Reverend…how did he come by your name?”
A spider crouched beneath the window’s rotting frame, only inches from her face. Enid Salford. She had almost forgotten her own last name. She was the girl. She had been called nothing else since she had stepped off the train and been snatched by the collar; looked up, struggling, at a tall, misshapen man. Beard. Angry eyes. I asked for a boy. Arriving at the house, he had flung her to Doreen like a scrap of meat. Got you a girl.
Mr. Mallory widened his stance, filling the door.
“You got any more business with me? You and Perley Hayes?”
The driver stiffened at the mention of his name.
“Hey, now, Perley.”
Perley Hayes lifted his whip, minutely. He hunched forward, studying the ground behind his horse.
The girl returned to the wagon. She climbed up. The man circled the wagon, flicked his whip; the horse broke into a trot. The wagon disappeared into the trees.
Enid clutched the stem of the alder bush. Longing for the horse to stop. Longing for the girl to change her mind.
* * *
—
Who was it came in that wagon.
He muttered it at the supper table.
She wanted to hear him say that someone had come looking for her. Someone who knew her name.
Doreen placed a plate of flapjacks on the table. Flies landed on them. The flies had tiny feet, like socks. The flies had been in the pigpen. Enid wanted to nudge Fred’s foot under the table, bidding him look at how the flies kneaded the flapjacks with their specks of feet. But Fred was gone.
No one spoke until the plate was empty.
Mr. Mallory went out to the road with a rock in his hand. He hurled it up the road, in the direction the wagon had gone.
* * *
—
The day after, he stood in the barn door watching Enid milk the cows. As she lugged the buckets to the house he followed close behind, empty-handed. After breakfast, he ordered her to kill three hens, the tame black one she could hold in her arms and the old Barred Rocks. She stripped their feathers by the toolshed where he could keep an eye on her while he repaired a whippletree. He told Doreen to keep her in the house.
Enid spent the afternoon on the front porch, shelling peas.
Crickets rasped. Shush of wind in the spruce trees and the endless booming concussion of the unseen surf. Chicken blood crusty on her cheek, her thumb stained green.
Someone knows I am here. Someone had to of told that girl.
Enid had been driven to this house. She did not know how far they had come, for she had fallen asleep and it was pitch dark when she arrived and she had stumbled into a half-lit room where Fred, younger and smaller than she was, sat on a chair with his hands gripped in his lap.
Could I run away.
Whatever Mr. Mallory was plotting would be worse than anything she might encounter in woods, road or town.
Take a sack of bread and cheese. Might be wild berries.
Creep through the woods, just out of sight of the road.
She slept under a bearskin, knew the coarse black hair and the thick, curled claws.
Take a kitchen knife. One of them long ones.
* * *
—
The next morning, Enid was not at the breakfast table and the cow bawled in the pasture, unmilked.
Mr. Mallory shoved Doreen out the front door.
“I told you to keep an eye on her,” he roared.
She fell to her knees.
“I was asleep, like you,” Doreen screamed. She stumbled to her feet, slapped at her skirts, furious, brushing away dirt. Both of them stared up the road, where, in the opening, sunlight flashed in the spruce trees.
“Git on up that road and find her.”
“I can’t…”
“You git on up along there and find her.”
“I—”
He snatched up the shovel and prodded her in the small of the back, forcing her to stumble over the sun-baked soil.
The cow stretched her neck, continued her gut-deep complaint. Mr. Mallory heaved the shovel as far as he could. It clanged, end over end.
SIXTEEN
Sisters
FLORA TRAILED HER FINGERTIPS across the woven tablecloth. The regularity of its criss-cross pattern calmed her. She sat with a cup of tea at the kitchen table of the Anglican parsonage. Pies with lattice crusts cooled on a cupboard shelf. The minister’s wife was snapping green beans into a bowl.
“Reverend Snelcroft, in Halifax, wrote to the Overseer of the Poor in Pleasant Valley, Mr. Fairweather,” Flora explained. “He said my sister was to be placed with Mr. Albert Mallory. The hostler at the inn knew a driver who would take me there. Mr. Perley Hayes. He had heard tell of the Mallorys. He drove me up there.”
She gestured, vaguely.
“But the Mallorys said…” her voice faltered. “They didn’t know any Enid Salford.”
A practised listener, the minister’s wife watched Flora keenly through steel-rimmed spectacles. She clucked with sympathy.
“Shame. What a disappointment for you.” Her voice was apologetic. “But I’m sure my husband never heard anything from Reverend Snelcroft.”
Flora opened her mouth to protest. Closed it. The minister’s wife reached forward and patted Flora’s wrist, distressed.
“I’m quite certain. My husband tells me everything. A minister’s wife, you see, has to know.”
Flora looked out the window, hiding her disappointment.
“I’m sorry, Flora. He would especially have told me if it was something to do with children.”
Swallows, like a row of pearls, made the clothesline sag.
* * *
—
She spent the rest of the day asking. At the docks. In the dry goods store. At the train station. At the livery stable, the shoemaker’s shop, the blacksmith’s, the milliner’s. People paused in their work, surprised. They looked at her with puzzlement, listened to her query, responded with sympathy. No one had heard of a young English girl named Enid Salford.
By the end of the day, she could no longer bear to tell the story.
At the inn, waiting for supper, Flora sought the breeze, choosing a table by an open window, but even so, beads of sweat prickled her scalp. She felt lost, bereft, as if a cherished picture had been torn from her hands a
nd cast onto a fire.
A young woman pushed open the screen door. Dusty, scuffed boots, one set precisely in front of the other, warily stepping over the floorboards to the front desk. She spoke with the clerk, who took note of the washboard-wizened dress and missing buttons before nodding towards Flora. Flora witnessed the exchange, watched the woman slipping between the dining room tables, slumped like a folded napkin.
“You the one lookin’ for an English girl?”
Flora nodded. The young woman’s eyelids were swollen by blackfly bites.
“I cm’in town to see my brother. He tol’ me someone named Flora from this hotel came to the docks askin’ about an English girl.”
She paused, eyeing Flora. Flora squeezed her cloth napkin, focused on each word, like extracting gold from sand.
“I know where that girl is. She’s up to Black Creek. At the Mallorys’.”
“I went up there. But Mr. Mallory told me…”
“He’s a liar. Mr. Mallory. He’s bad. He’s real bad. My husband gots a distillery. Mallory buys from my husband. They drink. I heard him talking about that girl. He was some angry. Said he asked for a boy.”
Flora was seized with trembling.
“You’re sure.”
“Yuh. Sure.”
Flora took coins from her bag.
“Thanks,” she whispered, pressing coins into the woman’s hand. She felt the brush of fingers. The woman vanished, a ripple of motion, then stillness, like the disappearance of a fox.
* * *
—
Perley Hayes appeared at the door of his house.
“You been up there once, he told you she ain’t there. She ain’t there. You got no reason to go up there again.”
Flora stood straight. She lifted her chin and stared down into the man’s eyes.
“I think she’s there. I was told she is there.”
He drew the back of his hand over his nose, wiped his hand on his pants. He settled into himself, staring past Flora, over the harbour. “Askin’ for trouble and I don’t want to be no part of it.”
“I’m scared for her.”
“Just askin’ for trouble.”
“I’ll pay twice what I paid yesterday.”
He worried his hair with one hand.
“Could you be at the inn at 5:30 tomorrow morning?” She spoke calmly, as if he had already agreed.
His eyes touched hers. Reluctant.
“On your head if he gets riled up.”
“On my head, then.”
* * *
—
Just at sunrise, the hired man knocked over a hoe propped against the side of the parsonage barn. He picked it up and carried it inside.
Started, stepped back.
A body, under grain sacks. On the new hay. He clutched the hoe, tiptoed close. Female, neither child nor woman. Dirt-encrusted fingernails. A rash of fly bites and sores. Arms bloody with scratches. Flakes of skin on her lips, hair caught up in a knotted rag.
He jogged to the house and burst into the kitchen. The minister’s wife was spooning tea into a pot. Oatmeal bubbled on the wood stove.
“Miz Wallace, there’s a girl asleep in the barn.”
She, too, started, tea leaves spilling from the spoon.
“Is she anyone you know?”
“Never seen her before.”
The door from the back stairway cracked open. The minister appeared, crooked spectacles, half-awake. Seeing the hired man, he stepped down into the kitchen.
“Harold, Cullen tells me there’s a girl in our barn.”
“What do you mean, Cullen?” the minister asked, adjusting his spectacles.
“Sleeping. She’s some filthy. Skin and bones. Arms all scratched, like she was picking raspberries.”
“Oh, my heavens, Harold. The lost sister?”
“Most probably.”
“Cullen, rush right over to the Pictou Inn and get them to wake up that girl. Flora is her name. Flora. Bring that Flora back here straight away.”
Cullen hurried from the kitchen.
“Harold, I’m going out to the barn.”
She pushed the oatmeal to the side of the stove. She took molasses cookies from a crock, wrapped them in a cloth, hurried out the door and down the path.
The girl was sitting up. She froze as Mrs. Wallace came into the barn, pulling the sacking up over her shoulders.
Mrs. Wallace knelt beside her.
“Molasses cookies. I baked them yesterday.” She held one out to Enid. “I had a girl like you but she’s all grown up and has two children. My husband is the minister, you know, and he’s the nicest man. I have oatmeal making on the stove. Now you get onto your feet and we’ll go up to the house and I’ll make you some tea.”
A hand slipped from beneath the sacking, accepted the cookie.
“Thank you,” the girl whispered.
English?
“You know, dear, your sister is looking for you.”
“My…”
“Your sister. Her name is Flora? Is that right? Are you Enid?”
The sacking slipped from her shoulders. Collarbones, like a chicken carcass. Hay clung to her dress, made of flour bags.
“I seen her,” the girl said. Her voice was hoarse, as if it had not been used for a long time. “She ain’t my sister.”
Mrs. Wallace pulled Enid to her feet, put an arm around her, led her to the house. Reverend Wallace, watching in the window, was ready with the blanket that Mrs. Wallace wore over her lap on winter nights.
Enid sat in the rocking chair. Mrs. Wallace eased a cup of tea into her hands. They set a spoon and a bowl of oatmeal sprinkled with fresh blackberries on the table next to her. Mrs. Wallace fussed at the sink, postponing her own breakfast. Mr. Wallace took a cup of tea to his study.
Cullen opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen.
“She isn’t there,” he said, glancing at Enid, who had taken the bowl of oatmeal into her lap and was hungrily eating. “Flora. She and Perley are on their way to the Mallorys.”
Enid set down the oatmeal and stood. The blanket fell from her shoulders. “You got to stop her.”
“Why, Enid?”
“Fred…they’ll think I told. He’ll hurt her.”
She was seized with a fit of trembling.
“I run from him. I run.”
* * *
—
Perley Hayes stopped the horse just before the curve in the road, where it led out of the trees and into the clearing.
“I got to water the horse. There’s a stream here. You kin walk. It’s just around the corner and down.”
Flora felt a beat of fear.
“You don’t want him to see you.”
“Horse needs water, is all.”
He climbed down from the wagon, not meeting her eyes. She hesitated, wondering if her instinct was a product of desire or the adjunct of disappointment, a foolishness she would regret.
Flora left the thought unfinished, unheeded, and slipped down onto the road. The sun had risen—spruce needles caused the light to quiver.
“I shouldn’t be long,” she said. “And if I am, you going to come looking for me?”
He was unbuckling the harness, seemed not to hear.
* * *
—
The homestead lay below, an opening in the trees surrounded by a split-rail fence. She heard the broken crow of a young rooster; smelled the smoke that spiralled from the chimney. Dampness rose from the soil as she walked down the hill. Her heart quickened. He was only like Mr. Tuck, she reasoned. Coarse, rough. He was only like the men in the workhouse. Or the hired hands on the farm where she had lived with the Quigleys. Perhaps he had been abandoned as she had been herself. And there was a woman. She had seen her, peering over the man’s should
er; surely she would be a softening influence should Mr. Mallory be angry. The rooster crowed again. Close, now, she could make out the waking farm’s details—a cow belly-deep in weeds, disconsolate with bursting udder; the rooster on the fence stretching his neck. She wondered if Enid might be in the barn, or a shed. She felt sudden misgiving. Perhaps there was nothing sinister about this. Perhaps they only wanted to keep her for the help she gave them. Or perhaps Enid herself was afraid to leave this place. Perhaps she did not want to return to the world where a sister could abandon her; where a child could be bundled onto a ship and shipped across an ocean. Perhaps she thought that whatever came next might be worse than this desolate, secluded farm.
Flora stepped around sun-glazed hollows in the path where hens made dust baths. She approached the house warily, mindful of the dog. It occurred to her that if a young woman should emerge and be presented to her as not being Enid, she would have no way of knowing whether or not this was the truth.
Fourteen years old, she thought. Fourteen.
The door of the house swung open. Mr. Mallory stood in the doorframe, unbuttoning his flies. She froze as he began to fumble with his underdrawers. He sighed, closed his eyes. A golden stream, steaming. She heard a hollow knocking sound, as if something within the house had fallen over.
He called back over his shoulder. “I ain’t done with you.”
He opened his eyes as he tucked himself back into his trousers, and his gaze felt on Flora. He reeled backwards, threw up an arm.
“What the bejesus you doing here?”
His words were slurred. His eyes widened, squinted.
“Fuckin’ women.”
Wee-min, Flora heard. Fuckin’ weemin.
He came towards her, one long step caught up by a sideways lurch. He stopped, clasped his face in one hand as if the light were an anguish. He pointed back up the hill.
“By Jesus, you get off my place.”
