by Myrna Dey
From the start, the union has offered miner’s relief even to nonmember strikers who do not scab. Like wages, many relief pay packets did not make it past the beer parlours until the union arranged credit with local businesses in the same amount. Roland’s allotment is $9 per week — $4 for himself, $2 for his wife, and $1 for each child.
Since then, Jane alone puts money in the tobacco tin. But she earns less now. Money is scarce among strikers, and she would be made to feel a traitor taking in work from strikebreakers’ families. Those who are friends know enough not to ask. A clientele of lumbermen, merchants, and teachers from a wider area allows her to sustain her family. That and an outside root cellar of potatoes, turnips, carrots, and onions, along with a canner from which not a plum, cucumber, bean, peach, crabapple, beet, or tomato escapes being preserved, jellied, or pickled after the family have all eaten their fill of fresh ones. From her carefully managed bounty, Jane finds enough for small hampers for households with new babies or for those who run out of food between relief. Poor Mrs. Harper, with a milk leg resulting from her seventh birth, was the latest recipient of Jane’s soup, pies, and fresh buns. At each new delivery, she says a prayer of thanks for her own strong constitution. She could not bear the thought of forsaking her children in any of their needs or care.
Jane always knows how much is in the tobacco tin. Roland is taking less, and she figures he must have stopped buying drinks for everyone, because his own inebriation level has not diminished. She consoles herself that he never drinks at home, even when his slurred maudlin words or raucous self-pity come back with him from the pub.
But when he had returned from Nanaimo late this afternoon, he had had just enough to keep his tremors in check. His voice was raspy but lucid.
“Nothing for us at Jingle Pot.”
“I’m sorry.” Jane looked up from the chicken stew she was stirring. The tantalizing, frothy pink cake already stood in the middle of the table for supper.
“Happy Birthday anyway.” He tossed a flat paper bag next to it. When Jane made no immediate move, he said: “Open it.”
Sara and Janet scampered in eagerly from the front room, resting their chins on the edge of the table; Llewyllyn retreated to Jane’s sewing room. From the bag she pulled out something light and soft folded in tissue paper. Held up, a long-sleeved lilac silk blouse fell into shape: pearl buttons down the back, modish tucks on the bodice. Jane displayed it like a banner with outstretched arms, then up against herself over the starched white apron she uses for special occasions. The twins gasped at the delicate shimmering colour and material. She has had only a few store-bought garments in her life, and this is without a doubt the finest.
“Your favourite colour, Mama,” Janet said.
“That’s because lilac is her favourite flower,” Sara added bossily.
Roland’s nod indicated he had known this, his face expressing more than any words could. She thought of the Methodist church back in Wales, when the minister spoke of supplicants. Her husband’s watery eyes were filled with supplication, beseeching her to judge him for this blouse and this moment and not eighteen years of disappointment. She smiled, then reached for him in a rare embrace. He began to weep. She held his bony chest tight against her, as she once had their young son when he cried. Locked in the clasp, Jane swallowed her own tears. They disappeared with all the others into a compartment hidden even to her: a trapdoor to the past, its valve-like aperture permitting only one-way passage. Her gratitude toward him encompasses much more than he or anyone will ever know. She herself cannot face the scope of it yet.
When his sniffling subsided, she released him and said quietly, “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”
And because he knew the question in her mind, he said: “I sold my father’s watch. It’s the only thing he ever gave me and this should go to you.” Another surprise from Roland because Jane had not known he still had it after all these years.
Now, after sizeable helpings of stew and dumplings, cake and homemade ice cream, Jane looks upon her husband and their daughters. Unlike Llewyllyn and herself, both weakened by experience, the young twins lap up attention uncritically like puppies. In the forty-one-year-old face that looks closer to sixty, they see only pride in Sara’s careful recitation.
At the sight of them, Jane feels a heart surge, a pang of joy. This has become a familiar sensation in the last three and three quarter years. She craves a new dimension to embrace it — or even a new word to express its intensity. Not one, but two perfect little girls. Two identical packages of life holding two such different personalities. Janet, her Snow White, speaks so little Jane worried about her development. Now she sees in the quiet twin the same strain from which her brother Thomas and sister Margaret are made, each happiest when engaged wordlessly in purposeful activity. Ever since she was a toddler, Janet would rather arrange dolls and help Jane bake or set the table than look at the books Sara loves so much. Already Janet sorts threads and buttons according to colour and soon she will be ready to learn the rudiments of the sewing machine. Sara shows no interest in domestic work, leaving Janet to pull the quilt up over their bed in the morning. But Sara is Jane’s Rose Red, her beloved Cassie, full of curiosity, questions, and laughter. Such a magical child she never thought could exist, let alone belong to her. She too lightens Jane’s long hours in the sewing room, singing and chattering to pretend friends, acting out all parts. How has her life of mistakes and ordeals been redeemed with these three blessings of children? She catches her breath, always afraid to break whatever spell has reshaped all previous trials into steps to this reward.
“Lance Cruikshank got killed,” Roland says when Sara drops the book and crowds in against her sister on Jane’s lap.
“How?”
“Drowned. Not an accident, they say. Scabbing at the same time he was collecting relief. Someone got him drunk and took him out fishing in Driver Lake in the middle of the night.”
Jane digests the news. The year she spent working with Stella and Lance is now hazy. Before the twins were born, she ran into Stella in Nanaimo, fat and matronly, but with the same girlish giggle. She was working at the Black Powder Factory and still living with her mother in Departure Bay. Norman would be twenty by now and Jane wonders if she has ever passed him without recognition. Through Roland she knows Lance had married again, treated that wife badly as well, and was left on his own to drink and rant to anyone who would listen. Friends became fewer and fewer.
“You can’t have it both ways. Miners don’t forget that.” Roland’s voice implies neutrality about Lance’s fate. He gets up to put coal in the stove; Jane’s faded bluebell wallpaper affords no protection against draughts through the cracks in the walls. His hands on the scuttle wobble so much she fears the small lumps will fall out. Being helpful usually precedes his exit for the pub, but he sits back down.
“Also heard a man was left for dead in coontown.”
Jane’s body stiffens, causing Sara and Janet to look around at her face. “Must you?”
Roland shrugs and says with a sly glance, “Keep forgettin’ your soft spots.”
“Why is it so easy for everyone to degrade Negro people?” She catches her breath. “And the Chinese? To list them in the mines by numbers instead of names, for heaven’s sake.”
Roland knows his wife has included the Chinese in her retort to sidetrack any personal connection with the other race. He remembers how attached she was to old man Strong when she washed his clothes, but then after he died or was murdered or whatever happened to him, she hasn’t mentioned his name. Had he been more fortified with drink he would have blustered at length about such terms just being casual talk and not meant to hurt anybody. “As I was sayin,’ a fella left for dead was rescued by Jim Hamilton. A Negro scab he was,” he says defiantly, “brought up from the States by the company. Shows the strikers have the big hearts.”
Jane wishes to ask “Who beat him up, then?” but lets the story die.
“Tommy was on the train back
. He’d been to Nanaimo for provisions.” “How is he?
Jane has not seen her older brother for a few months. With both men out of work, Roland brings no news of him from the mine, and since his marriage to Lizzie, he no longer frequents taverns. Tommy was one of the many Extension miners who followed company orders and moved his family to the port of Ladysmith because of the cleaner water and more agreeable setting. Stubborn ones like Roland refused to budge, choosing the constant clatter of machinery around the pithead, the sulphury smell of the smouldering slag heap and soot everywhere, over a twelve-mile train ride to and from every shift. Eventually the Mackies had to give in and leave them where they were.
“Wonders if we need anything done.”
“The back door lets in snow and the stairs are coming loose.”
Both houses started out the same: square boxes from abandoned mines cut in half and brought on flatcars for reassembly in their new communities. Comparing Tommy’s with Jane’s, it would seem he and Lizzie were much more prosperous, as in truth they were before the strike. Not that Tommy earned more than Roland. As a digger, Roland could make more than anyone in the mine, depending how fast and how many coal cars he could fill. Being strong and steady rather than quick and energetic, Tommy was content to remain timber foreman in Extension after he moved from No. 1. But wages untouched by liquour left money for home improvements, and Tommy’s cottage in Ladysmith, like the one in Chase River, stood out among the others around it. Fenced yard, orderly flowerbeds, painted blue wooden siding outside, and three bedrooms inside, one of which their mother had occupied until her death eight years ago. Myrtle, age seventeen, and Edna, fifteen, have their own rooms — a luxury, to be sure, when some families crowd seven or eight children into the same space. Tommy has also built a verandah around the house, enclosing the area near the back door to serve as a scullery and to house Lizzie’s precious icebox.
Now the strike has levelled the fates of those with savings to those without. Lizzie brings in nothing, exerting herself as little as possible even in the home, so whatever Jane makes sewing seems like wealth by contrast. To supplement his relief credit, Tommy takes on the few carpentry jobs miners don’t do themselves. Last spring Jane hired him to add a sewing room to their cramped cottage. He used free lumber from an abandoned building and she paid him with a sealer of pennies she had been saving for years. So that Roland would not wonder where she found the extra money during the strike, she and Tommy conspired in fixing three different prices. The lowest for Roland, the highest for Lizzie, who thinks her sister-in-law deserves no favours with everyone struggling, and the actual amount Jane gladly turned over to her brother instead of a stranger.
Just off the kitchen, Jane’s new room uses warmth from the stove; at night a curtain isolates the whirring of her machine from the sleeping household. It has filled up so quickly with bolts of material and piles of clothes for repair that she cannot believe these heaps once occupied most surfaces of the house. All but the settee, which she always kept clear for Roland to land drunk in the night and leave her alone in the bedroom.
“Tommy says their icebox is for sale.”
“What?” Jane stands up, carefully spilling her daughters from her lap onto the floor. They have become fidgety and scatter into separate corners. “That’s Lizzie’s pride.”
“That’s what he says. He thought if we wanted it, they could buy it back once the strike is over.”
“And what if I grow to like it in the meantime?” Jane has wanted an icebox almost as much as a sewing room, but her special savings sealer is empty. “He doesn’t know his own wife. She would never agree to it being in this house.”
Lizzie has always begrudged Tommy’s concern for his family. Mama’s years of care in their home were not easy for any of them, care Jane would have willingly provided, had there been an extra room of retreat from Roland’s drinking. She cannot guess the reason for her sister-in-law’s jealousy of her. Lizzie has always had more of everything except a drunken husband. She prays she and her children will never have to depend on her sister-in-law for anything.
“There’s another icebox for sale in Hamiltons’ yard. Wardrobe too.”
“I felt like a vulture buying my sewing cabinet from Mrs. Lewis when I knew she was selling furniture in order to eat. I won’t be doing it again.” Jane is in the kitchen putting the kettle on to boil. “And where would the money come from? Does Tommy think I grow it in with the leeks?”
“And I seen someone else.”
Jane endures Roland’s grammar in silence.
“Went to the Five Acres people about getting us a place there.”
“You did?”
“A couple of lots are vacant. Two families couldn’t wait out the strike and moved to Vancouver. They’re going cheap as a company house. Seven dollars a month.”
Twenty years ago, the Five Acres project was developed on Harewood Estates, on the southwest edge of Nanaimo, to give miners a chance to lease a parcel of land in that amount with an option to buy. The original condition was that they were to be fenced and cultivated, one Roland would never have fulfilled. But that work was done years ago, along with subdivision of the original plots, and houses stood on them all. Jane had never allowed herself to hope they might live in Five Acres.
“Did you sign up?”
“Thought you might like to go see for yourself tomorrow. The boy could miss school and watch the twins. He’s wasting his time there anyway. Should be helping put food on the table. I was, at his age.”
Jane saves her words, knowing she will send Llewyllyn off to school and then take Sara and Janet over to Maude Hamilton before Roland gets up. Maude will mind the girls gladly and the pie and potatoes Jane takes over when she picks them up will be appreciated. “I’d like that.”
Roland stands up. Jane sees from his hands that it’s time. Not for many years has she tried to stall him. “Would you like a cup o’ tea?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll be goin’ out for a bit.”
He steps into the bedroom, emerging in his rumpled everyday clothes. He hesitates. She feels the old irritation at his prolonged leave-taking. She has poured herself a cup of tea and is on her way back to the front room when he turns from the scullery, the open curtain letting in chilly air.
“Happy Birthday, then.”
The blouse, draped gracefully over the back of her chair, tells her why he’s lingering. “Thank you. It’s the loveliest birthday I’ve ever had.”
He steps outside, leaving his soft voice in her head for a moment, reminding her of Mama saying, “He’s a Welshman like us.”
Janet is already in her long flannel nightgown and Sara is retelling “Thumbelina” aloud to herself.
“Time for bed, girls. Sara, get into your nightgown.” Jane hears Llewyllyn’s footsteps in the porch, again thankful he is safe under their roof for another night. “Do you think you could read your sisters a bedtime story?”
His mother’s request takes him by surprise. The twins squeal and jump under their comforter at the prospect.
In the kitchen, Jane stops to pour herself a second cup of tea. An old yearning stirs within her: to write to Cassie about this birthday. She pushes back the curtain of the cupboard and checks under the tea towels, where she keeps her paper. She forgot there is none. The strike has made stationery a frivolous expenditure. Besides, she does not know how to write a proper letter anymore. The landslide of years in Extension has trapped all the words and feelings that once flowed so freely. Letters from Cassie are infrequent now, and who can blame her? Long ago she relinquished her dream that Cassie might move to Vancouver Island, but she has not given up hope of a visit someday. Both sisters are married to men of means who might make it possible.
Jane adds enough coal to the cookstove for a few hours of work; she pushes aside the chintz curtain to allow heat to circulate. She sets the oil lamp on the sewing cabinet and teacup on the machine, then bends to sort through layers of cloth. She must finish a few things t
o replenish the tobacco tin after emptying it for the train trip tomorrow. She starts with the most welcome rather than the most urgent job: a white baby layette for a doctor’s wife in Ladysmith — three smocked nightgowns of batiste cotton, a thick satin bunting bag lined with flannel, and a christening dress and bonnet out of organdie and lace. Rising from her chair, she catches sight of herself in the mirror she uses for fittings. Though her doe-brown hair has not changed colour since she left Wales, wisps escaping her upsweep look gold against the lamplight. The long Owens chin she has always regarded as unbecoming on a woman seems proud and full of resolve in semi-silhouette. Her figure has become more rounded in the bust and hips since the birth of her children, but she still has a waist; her extra pounds are not out of control like some miners’ wives her age who have eaten too much starch during the strike. For a few moments she considers the reflection of this mysterious backlit woman who by day is plain Jane. If she is attractive enough for a fine silk blouse, could she still be a fantasy someone dreams of? Where would he be now?
SARA ALWAYS SAID THAT ANTICIPATION — both dread and longing — was more powerful than the experience itself. I was still trying to figure out if my first date with Mr. Wright exceeded or fell short of those wild and changeable expectations of my convalescence.
The evening after my birthday, I dragged myself into The Cactus Club. Mid-afternoon, while delivering subpoenas, I realized that my mending limb was still calling the shots. Warren, already seated with a view to the entrance, sprang up and ushered me back to the booth. We both wore bashful smiles seeing each other for the first time in arranged circumstances. At least our mutual injuries made opening conversation easy.
