Trust Esther to remember Kay’s relationship with Aren perfectly—she’d won the History Prize at school, and was a scholarship student at Queen’s University. Now doing good works in Halifax, while Kay did what? Went to weddings.
She liked Esther, but she did not want to talk to her this morning, with her tongue still furred and Aren upstairs in bad straits, and also with that Merissa girl who might start shouting any moment. She stood back against the wall for Esther to pass on the narrow stairs.
“I know you can’t be happy to see him out of work,” Esther said.
So that was the truth of it.
“But you can’t do more than a person will let you. He’s chosen this himself.”
Kay looked at her.
“You mustn’t blame yourselves, you and your family. It’s not anything you did,” Esther said, her voice cooler, eyes assessing Kay’s face and hat and life.
But it was, it was exactly something that they had done.
* * *
—
Going through the Public Gardens, Kay stopped to lean on the railings and watch the grebes and waterhens, and bright-coloured mallards with their retiring wives. “I come from haunts of coot and hern,” she said out loud, and strode out more purposefully for the train station. Even the rails followed the rhythm, and all day long she could not get that poem out of her tired head, listening to the clicks tricking over the tracks, “For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever.”
Aren was never coming back. He would become one of those men in the cellar, lying against the wall, smoking a long pipe. He would fight with that beat-up, damaged girl and live in poverty and misery—not that he could not have money if he wanted it, but he had told Thea he would not take any. How was he living, if he’d left the job Francis had found him? Most likely running rum, and that would be a bad business—jail if he was ever caught.
What she had liked least about him was the patience in his eyes, that said this was what he expected, all he would ever expect.
Down the Annapolis Valley, the sentence made by the tracks’clacking changed, as it often does when the train rounds a bend, or when one is tired. Not worth a fight not worth a fight not worth a fight they said again and again, while Kay tried to find a place on the windowsill that did not hurt her head.
3
Lake Milo
She jumped off at the Milton station at 4 p.m. on Saturday, planning to walk or—because she was very tired—to sit on the station fence till someone from Lake Milo came by. Along came Donny Sweeney from the ice factory, who offered to take her out in his trap after he’d off-loaded the cheese, so that was longer to wait.
She got him to let her out before the turning, cut across and walked over the fields and into the orchard. Somewhere back here, Jerry Melanson had buried Pilot. There, there was the mound. And there was Roddy, staring at a grave-marker stick, already made and carved, not very neatly. Not a cross, Kay saw. Roddy shared her mind on that, then. When she got close enough to read, she saw that it said,
PILOT
HOME FROM THE SEA
Which was what she had thought about Francis.
Hearing her approach, the boy turned as she came near, unsurprised. “Did you go to see him?”
Kay nodded. Her head still ached. “I saw his room, and met some of his friends.”
“But why— Why he hasn’t been back?” It seemed like Roddy had been wanting to ask that for a long time. “We want him around here, he is— I love him.”
A hard thing for a nine-year-old boy to say. Kay could not think of anything to tell him.
His white, knobby hands, big for his age, trembled as they adjusted the grave stick again. “It was Eleanor King, wasn’t it? The fellows were saying at school that my brother had tried to go with her, and her father and brother ran him off.”
She knew what the fellows were saying must mean. They had been making fun of him, or of Aren to get to him, which was worse. She must think of something useful to tell him.
“I don’t think it was exactly that they ran him off,” she said. In her inner ear she heard Aren saying don’t take them on, I am not worth a fight. She could not tell Roddy the real story, the sudden, ridiculous drama of Eleanor’s mother reading her diary, all those six months of 1920 scribbled with June-mooning over Aren, and the men bounding down the hill to confront Aren where he sat with Eleanor eating ice cream by the bronze horse, the mother following along clucking like a hen. And Eleanor meekly going home with them, after the months of passionate secret vows. Or Mr. King saying he’d be damned if he’d have a damned darky in the family—and Kay at the counter of the luncheonette while all this was going on, Aren standing there alone until she went to be with him and shouted a few things back at Mr. King, which even Thea had not asked her to apologize for.
She said, “Mr. King was angry because Eleanor had not let him know that she was going to the dance with Aren. He is a stupid man and takes a long time to wrap his head around new things. And Eleanor is foolish and silly, and had not grown up.” That was the crux of it.
“She is married now.”
She was, to James Fitzgerald. Not a bad person, a junior engineer on the DAR line. Eleanor was still pretty and wobbly, no more able to stand up to James than she had been to her father. But beingher father’s daughter, she was too stupid for Aren, and Kay could not be exactly sad that it had all been stopped. Except that it had led to Aren leaving, and nothing was any good when he was gone and unhappy and not ever coming back. And also, Merissa Peck! She was even less possible than Eleanor King had been. Aren was perhaps only being kind to her—she was impossible—but he would probably love her soon, if he did not now, for her trouble and hurt as much as anything else.
“You smell right bad,” Roddy said as they walked back down the orchard. “What even is that smell?”
She sniffed her sleeve, breathing in deep. “Drinks, meat, smoke, sadness.” None of it smelled like Aren, his good smell of salt water and rope and sun.
Roddy went to the stables. Kay slipped in the side way to avoid Lena Hubbard and reached the bathroom before Thea could hear her, or smell her. Her fawn linen dress was probably ruined, now she came to look at it, but she washed it in the sink, tiptoed to her room and hung it in the closet to drip onto the strip of old linoleum there. Still faintly fragrant of tobacco and depravity.
* * *
—
On Sunday morning, the Reverend Arnold Archibald preached about the heathen. It was Missionary Sunday and he exhorted the congregation to “give up to your uttermost and then give more.”
The only way to save poor heathen souls from damnation was to enlighten them with the gospel, he said, and ended on a joke: “It reminds one of the missionary who was tasked to translate the Nunc Dimittis—Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace—into the backward tongue of an African tribe, and could get no nearer than Big Boss, kick us out gently.”
Ha ha ha, the congregation chortled as one.
Kay thought of walking out, but then there would be explanations to give, and she would become inarticulate or weep with fury. Instead, she waited for the Communion prayers and the confession, where she could speak to God frankly. The prayers wound on and on in Archibald’s florid rendering, so unlike Mr. Brimner’s brisk, sane exhortations. Beside Kay, thin and stiff in his tweed knicker suit, Roddy kept kicking the kneeler very delicately, leaning his head on the pew back, unable to bear the frustration. Kay too tapped her shoe against it until her big toe hurt, even though she had learned better over long years of attendance at both services every Sunday.
Finally they were dismissed. At the door, Mr. Archibald pressed Thea’s hand, thanking her for the invitation to midday dinner. A large meal that Kay could not avoid by a walk in the fields. He pressed Kay’s hand too, fleetingly, before reaching for Aunty Bob, who had some money to give to the mission.
Kay could have given some, too, if she’d been inclined. She had no admiration for missionaries, but she was all right for cash. She was not earning her keep, but the trust from Father’s part of the English estates was at last wound up, and Kay would have an annuity. If she lived modestly, she would not have to work, though she might need to supplement her living by teaching piano, or tutoring high school boys in Latin for pin money.
She and Roddy and Thea went out into the glassy northern sunlight and Kay thought of the sun she wanted, that hot glow of the tropics, light everywhere, needing no visible source.
* * *
—
Virginia Archibald had a serious disposition. She was a little older than Kay, but they had been in the same class at school, which meant that she remembered the various ways Kay had made a fool of herself: knowing too much and not understanding to keep quiet; fighting in the schoolyard whenever Aren was threatened, or even when he was not; angry weeping at the top of the class when ordered to describe her experiences in the West; clumsiness at double-dutch skipping. All the myriad infelicities of her conduct at school and her inability to fit in or bend to custom or demonstrate school spirit.
And of course Kay too remembered things, like the time Virginia had burnt off all her hair on one side with a too-hot curling iron, and left the other side long for a week before accepting that there was nothing to be done but cut it all even with her ears. Or the truly hideous lilac taffeta dress Mrs. Archibald’s wealthy mother had sent for matriculation, which Virginia had had to wear, although it was far too long for the fashion and smelled of moth. So they were cautious with each other as they sat down to midday dinner.
Virginia taught early grades at Yarmouth Elementary School. She was cultivating an interest in folklore and the old songs, which she was determined to write down. It would be a perfectly good life. Kay did not at all dislike her.
But she disliked Mr. Archibald (perhaps mostly for his failure to be Mr. Brimner), and also his wife. Mrs. Archibald was careful of her social standing and liked to place people, ideally below herself. Also, she had known Father, and always told Kay how much she resembled him. Now she did so again, climbing up the veranda steps. She and her husband sat unswinging on the wicker swing, with Virginia beside them on a flowered hassock, smiling vaguely at the general air, all sipping at sherry and making mouths as if it was a little too strong. Thea engaged them in conversation about Giving Sunday and what the missions might expect this year.
Depressed, Kay sat on the veranda steps with Roddy until the dinner bell rang.
Virginia leapt up to help Lena with the plates, so Kay had to do so, too. Thea brought in the asparagus, the first from the glasshouse, arrayed on the famille rose, the greatly loved platter that Francis had given her in Shanghai, arrayed with the emperor’s hunt. She had brought it out from Elm Street when Olive announced her engagement and it became clear that the family would be at Orchard House for some time. Francis smiled to see it, helping himself to asparagus, but could not be persuaded to tell the story of its acquisition, only smiling again and shaking his head. It was one of his silent days.
To cover the slight awkwardness, Thea told Mrs. Archibald that even though Aunt Lydia had such lovely things, it seemed a pity to leave all their own sea bounty gathering dust on Elm Street.
“I see the famous Hundred Faces fan has replaced your aunt’s silver epergne on the fireplace mantel,” Mr. Archibald said. “Fifty Chinese faces on each side, quite a treasure!”
Thea did not correct him; neither did Kay.
Roddy was newer to life and could not contain himself. “Forty-nine on the second side, actually,” he said. “You see, the one who holds the fan becomes a part of it—you yourself are the hundredth face! It is a capital joke.”
Helping herself to salad, Mrs. Archibald said, “I find foreign humour opaque.”
Virginia asked Kay, “What do you hear from Aren? I hope he is very well.”
She probably did hope so. Kay wondered what would happen if she said, He is living in squalor on Gottingen Street and drinking too much and I don’t know what he does for money.
“What an act of Christian charity that was,” began Mr. Archibald, “to bring that young fellow out of darkness into the light!”
Francis looked up from the pie he was dissecting. “Hardly darkness. The light in the South Seas is particularly radiant.” It was the first thing he’d said that afternoon.
“We all thought it was just wonderful of you to take him on,” Mr. Archibald continued.
Mrs. Archibald leaned forward. “His leaving almost reads, I must say, as ingratitude.”
“Nothing of the sort,” Francis said, too loud at the end of the table. “A young man has his way to make in the world—eighteen is high time to be out and exploring.”
Roddy was white and tense, and Thea had put her handkerchief to her eyes. Muttering, “I will see about the tea, excuse me, please!” Kay pushed back her chair and took her plate to the kitchen.
Lena Hubbard was eating her dinner at the table there, raw pink arms splayed on the table. She cast a sideways eye at Kay but turned away to press another piece of pie on Jerry Melanson. Jerry winked at Kay, holding his plate to say he did not mind if he did, and then she was past them and out the back door into the air.
To her surprise, Virginia came after her, running down the back lawn in her Sunday shoes. “I’m sorry about Mother,” she said, when she got near enough.
Kay said, “It’s all right.”
“She doesn’t—she didn’t know him as a person. The way I did. I wondered about him, that’s all, but I’m sorry I asked it at the table.”
Kay shook her head. “It was kind of you to ask.”
“And the fan! How could Father forget the hundredth face? I remember so well when your sister displayed it at the girls’ social tea during the war. It always makes me think of an exquisite porcelain face, you know, delicately flirting behind the fan. You are so lucky to have travelled widely and known such an ancient culture!”
A sick wave of anger rose again within Kay. It was all of a piece: whether the Archibalds thought foreigners were dirty or exquisite, they were not people, not real, only stories. But Virginia was not bad-hearted, only ignorant. Untravelled, as she’d said.
Kay took her arm and said, “I suppose I must go back and make that tea. Tell me, how can you bear to teach? Do you love your students? Or do you take the strap to them with abandon and make their hands burn, like old Mrs. Richards?”
* * *
—
After supper that evening, Kay and Thea sat on the veranda, as had become their habit here at Orchard House. Thea looked very tired, very drawn. Kay wondered if she was ill, or just sick of troubles. In a moment of impatience, she wished Thea would go ahead and die, then, if she was going to leave her anyway. Or Roddy, if he was. Coming down to breakfast each morning, wondering which chairs will be empty, or whether Aunt Lydia had finally yielded into dust in the back dining room. What was the point of loving people, anyway? Better to separate oneself from all that.
But not yet, not yet. While you had people, you should talk to them.
“I have some questions for you,” Kay said.
Thea nodded. “When did you ever not? As long as you do not ask Mr. Archibald…”
“Just listen,” Kay said. “You have to answer. Were we right?”
“Right to do what?”
“Were we right—did we have the right, or perhaps even the duty—to take Pilot from New Zealand?”
“Yes! That is a nonsensical question. He was starving in that mining camp—and besides, he was a present from the entrepreneurial dentist, who I believe lost his shirt on those kauri trees, in the end.”
The next question was harder to ask: “Were we right—did we have the right—to take Aren?”
After a moment, Thea said, “He was starving t
oo—gaunt with it, they all were. Do you not remember? The men devoured a bushel of bread, and kept crying poor, poor and clutching their stomachs.”
“Still, was it right, to take a child from his people?”
Thea shook her head and got up from the rocker. “You make me tired, Kay,” she said. “You have a way of simplifying an argument that ignores the complexity of life.”
“The question is answered, then.”
Thea shook her head again. She leaned on the porch railing, trailing her finger along the lilac leaf that overhung it. Tight purple buds had formed; they would be open soon.
Kay did not know how to go on. Perhaps there was a difference between animals and humans. Pilot had been content to be one of their pack, content at sea or on land, only asking to be near them; Aren had needed his own people to find his way in the world.
“Dear Kay, do you always have to be questioning? Why can you not accept that there might be some things we do not know yet, or can never know, because we are human—because you are human, and not God Himself?”
“I can’t leave things alone. I have to ask—the questions just arise.”
Thea shook her head, not smiling. “It’s not a virtue to be curious.”
“I think it is!”
“Virtue involves service to others, not vulgar prying into every tiny crack that does not concern you. Virtue would lead you to a greater peacefulness in your own heart.”
Kay felt Thea’s great eyes upon her, pinning her, putting everything she thought or felt (could not help thinking and feeling, after all) to the test. She could have turned away, gone up to bed. But she loved her sister and did not wish to be misunderstood by her.
Leaning forward to see better in the twilight, Kay said, “I don’t care about virtue, or whatever people say is virtue. I care about being kind, about people being kind to each other. I care about saying what is true and not pretending what’s false.”
The Difference Page 27
