by Freya North
As they walked, Scott and Aaron told Frankie tales of their childhood, anecdotes to be laughed at and reflected upon. Aaron talked of fish as if they were lovers: sockeye, coho, Chinook, pink and chum salmon, steelhead, bullhead, suckers and whitefish. Scott pointed out cottonwood trees, western hemlock and red cedar, Douglas fir and Engelmann spruce. They showed her a cedar where long sections of the fibrous bark had been pared off to be used by the Ĺíĺwat for mats, hats, blankets, baskets, fishing nets, rope.
‘We live by two concepts when it comes to nature,’ Aaron told her. ‘Ḱúĺantsut and ḱúĺtsam – we take only food and materials that we need.’
‘Unless it’s my beer,’ Scott said.
‘Unless it’s Scott’s beer,’ Aaron agreed.
‘And I’ll meet Rose later?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Aaron. ‘You’ll see a lot of us while you’re here.’
‘Not too much,’ Scott said.
‘A lot of us – all of us, Rose, me, Tara and Johnny. I’ll take you up in my plane.’
‘I don’t like flying,’ she told him.
‘But the world comes to you when you’re up there,’ Aaron said.
They stood at the lake. They were the only people there.
‘But everything I want in the world is right here,’ Frankie said, wrapping her arms around Scott and grinning at the sky.
Once Aaron’s family had gone home after visiting in the afternoon, Scott left Buddy looking after Frankie and drove to Whistler to collect Jenna after her shift. Alone in his home as Frankie waited, toying with the idea of doing some work on her book, she remembered how she’d felt on telling her children about Scott, able to smile now at their unexpectedly revolting response when they first met him. She thought about Jenna. If I were twenty, she wondered, how would I feel about meeting my father’s new girlfriend? What would I think of Me?
She sank into the sofa, looking in turn at each of the guitars hanging from supports on the wall. They looked beautiful in their own right, wood carved into those sensual shapes, exuding silent music. Buddy came over, his tongue lolling as if he was mid-conversation. Frankie patted his head.
‘You know something,’ she told him, ‘I was twenty-one when my father remarried and had my half-sister.’ Frankie thought of Stephanie. How did I feel? She laughed out loud. ‘I rolled my eyes at the concept and talked to Peta for hours on end about how to handle Mum when she found out.’ She thought again of Steph. She hadn’t spoken to her since she’d phoned to see if she could look after the children when she’d first met Scott. ‘I must phone her more often,’ Frankie told Buddy. ‘She’s a bit on her own now – despite always being so larky and so bloody bouncy.’ She thought about her late father. He could play the banjo. There were few other defining features she really recalled about him. ‘I didn’t see him much – he left my mum, he left Steph’s mum, he left the one after that and then he died.’ The dog yawned. ‘Why am I telling you all of this anyway?’ she said. ‘You’re a dog.’ At that, Buddy left and went to the open front door and out onto the porch. It was five in the afternoon. Frankie had been on Canadian soil for just twenty-four hours.
Frankie followed Buddy and sat on the swing seat, rocked it gently, her feet meeting the dog’s back rhythmically with light strokes over his chocolate-brown coat. She gazed out over the valley to Mount Currie. Trees in a verdant blur appeared uniform until seen on the ridges where each stood uniquely delineated against the sky, some solitary, others in family groups, like a motley queue waiting to get to the top. She looked for John Sky’s face but couldn’t see it.
Scott’s truck, still a way off, but approaching. A surge of nerves took her quite off guard. Was she to shake hands or kiss Jenna? What was the etiquette? Where’s the handbook for finding love at this stage in one’s life?
‘I’m Jenna.’
‘I know,’ said Frankie naturally matching and mirroring Jenna’s expansive grin and searching gaze. ‘I’m so pleased to finally meet you.’
‘Oh my God me too – like you wouldn’t believe.’
They weren’t quite sure what to do but they smiled and hugged warmly then turned and looked at Scott. He was standing in the doorway scratching his head at a scene he’d never even thought to imagine.
Frankie woke Scott at three in the morning.
‘I can’t sleep.’
He mumbled something soothing.
‘Your daughter is just lovely,’ she told him.
‘Shh – you’ll wake her up.’
‘I’m whispering!’
‘Sounds loud.’
‘Wake up Scott.’ She nudged him. ‘Wake up! I’ll be gone in a few days and you’ll regret not waking up right now.’
He chuckled and sighed, turned to lie on his back, opening his arm for Frankie to snuggle into the crook. He smelt warm and sleepy, his body felt soft as well as strong and, while he pulled her hair gently through his fingers and she tuned in to his heartbeat, Frankie felt she might be able to drift off.
‘All these years it’s been just me and Jenna,’ he said. ‘And now you’re here and it’s all OK.’
‘Were you worried?’
‘A little.’
‘Was she?’
‘No.’
‘What were you worried about?’
‘You want the people you love most in the world to get along, right?’
‘And we do.’
‘I know – I hardly got a word in.’
‘You disappeared off to your studio!’
‘Shh – you’ll wake her. I only went because you were talking about boys and stuff. You were talking about me. It was – weird.’
Frankie giggled and Scott again said shh! She travelled her hand down his body and found his cock.
‘Stop,’ he whispered, ‘I mean it.’ He half-heartedly tried to take her hand away but it felt too good. ‘Not with Jenna in the house.’
‘Don’t be so daft,’ Frankie whispered into his ear, giving the lobe a tantalizing suck. ‘I can be ever so quiet.’
‘You made me sleep in your spare room,’ Scott objected.
‘You offered,’ Frankie said, kissing his neck while her hands swept along his body. ‘But I’m wide awake – and, by the feel of things, you are too.’ She kissed a path down his stomach. ‘Be such a shame to let this go to waste.’
Scott grabbed her arms and pulled her up to him, flipped her onto her back and slid up into her, pushing in deep and then staying motionless. It made Frankie gasp and he placed the palm of his hand over her mouth.
‘Shh,’ he told her. ‘Don’t you make a sound.’ He took his hand away and put his lips against hers.
Jenna could hear the bed creak in her dad’s room. She could hear whispers and occasional soft laughter. In her old bedroom, Jenna put her pillow over her head and giggled, wondering when it would be safe to emerge.
Because oh my God – that’s pretty gross.
* * *
Each day of Frankie’s trip, Scott found some excuse to go into Pemberton, and the village that had seen so little of him was now treated to the regular sight of him mooching hand in hand with his girl. They ate at Mile One and the Pony, they bought food from the deli and browsed the aisles of both the small supermarkets. He proudly showed her just how stocked the pharmacy on Frontier Street was. Speaker cable, toys, T-shirts, electrical items, enough stationery to stock a school. He took her to the crammed and quirky General Store where they happily rooted around for half an hour. He had an amp in there still for sale three years on but he hadn’t the heart to take it to the store in Kamloops.
Everywhere they went, people said well hey Scott, how you doing? He’d proudly introduce Frankie and they’d all chat awhile. Later, they’d say to each other, you know I saw Scott today with his girl and I could not stop him talking. Oh you saw him too?
‘It’s been a long time coming.’ Aaron was discussing Scott behind his back. ‘But it’s no more than he deserves. Rose always says there’s love enough in the world for all folk t
o find.’
‘You think he’ll stay?’ Jordan mused. ‘You think he’ll move to the United Kingdom?’
Aaron looked a little startled. ‘Scott? Leave?’
Jordan shrugged. ‘So – maybe she’ll move here? She has a family, right?’
Aaron stared into the neck of his beer bottle. He hadn’t wondered about any of it. Logistics seemed a cumbersome concept where love was involved. ‘I don’t know,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘But it’s serious – you can tell.’
Aaron nodded. ‘It’s the real deal.’
* * *
Frankie was washing up when Scott came up behind her, his arms around her. Giving her bottom a smack he looked at the clock.
‘I need to do a little work,’ he told her.
‘I might try and work too.’
‘You’re on vacation,’ he laughed.
‘But I want to try – just to see.’
‘I’ll be in the studio – I’ll surface around lunch-time.’
She did try but it was as if Alice had missed the flight and was therefore still in UK time and asleep. Instead, Frankie sketched Buddy. She thought back to the ideas she’d had when she’d first heard about the dog who liked to fly. Maybe she’d talk it through with her agent when she was back. Or email him from out here. I have a job I can do from anywhere, she thought. Although not, it seemed, from Scott’s kitchen table.
He’d done a good morning’s work and in the afternoon they walked.
‘What I love about it out here,’ Frankie said, walking the boardwalk out over the water at One Mile Lake, ‘is that there’s everything. Lakes and mountains and forests. And cinnamon buns and friendly people. It’s such a thriving community. Everyone seems to actively embrace where it is they live. They really appreciate it. It’s quite different to Norfolk. And you have bears,’ she marvelled, ‘though I’ve yet to see one.’
‘You will,’ said Scott. ‘If not this time – then next time. BC has more races of black bear than any other part of Canada.’
‘And you have two schools,’ she said quietly when she stopped to take in the vista. Families were playing and picnicking back on the shore. Ahead of her, the forest. They walked on towards the trees. ‘It’s a good life out here, isn’t it?’
‘It is, for sure. But you know, we also live with the real threat of landslides and floods and forest fires – there’s nothing like seeing fire candle up a tree. They say that fire doesn’t travel downhill, well it does if burning trees fall,’ Scott said. He pointed to a fire-ravaged area of hillside where the trees looked like ghost-trees, soft and thin like stained, tattered gossamer amongst all the strong and sturdy green. ‘And winter can be a bitch.’ He looked at Frankie. ‘It is what you make of it, Frankie. But that’s the same for any place.’
‘But they clear your roads twice a day when it snows,’ Frankie said. ‘You want to try living in Norfolk,’ she said darkly. ‘There are razor blades on the wind in winter.’
‘But if you ask folk around here, they’d say there’s a lack of recreational facilities and it’s a long winter. Skiing is expensive – you’re looking at almost two thousand bucks for a season pass. We have no indoor pool, no arena, no gym. We could do with better trails networks. A bus that goes further than Whistler. That’s why I feel my mentoring the kids is important – not just for the music, but to give them some impetus, something to do.’ He thought about it. ‘You have to commit to a place like Pemby. Like you have to make a commitment to your little cottage with the postbox in the wall.’
‘But I don’t have history there,’ Frankie said. ‘I don’t have ties. I have a job I can do from anywhere.’
Scott knew what she was trying to say, but he knew too that his country was beguiling on a first visit in July. Stop and think, that’s what he wanted to tell her.
Scott took her hand. ‘Wherever we are, we’re together.’
She thought about that.
The scent of spruce and fir was phenomenal.
‘But not even Holkham smells this good.’
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply as if inhaling it straight into a vial she could use once she was back in the UK.
‘Sometimes metaphors and symbolism aren’t enough.’ She turned to Scott. ‘When we reach the turning points in life, we mustn’t back off, we must stride out.’
* * *
‘Do you have to go?’ Tara asked Frankie. Scott was helping Johnny collect bugs, Rose was in the kitchen and Aaron was up at 10,000 feet tipping skydivers out of his plane. Tara had her dolls in a semicircle; she was reading to them the picture book Frankie had given her which Tara just couldn’t quite believe she’d also written.
‘I have to go the day after tomorrow,’ Frankie told the child. ‘I have my own babies waiting for me.’
‘But Scott calls you baby – what about him?’
‘You’ll have to make sure he’s OK for me, until I can come back.’
Tara went through the names of all her babies and then asked Frankie how old hers were.
‘They’re nine and thirteen.’
‘They’re not babies,’ Tara said cautiously as if Frankie might not have realized. ‘They’re not babies any more Frankie.’
Frankie knocked gently at the frame of the screen door. ‘Rose?’ she called. ‘It’s me – Frankie – come to say goodbye in case we don’t see you tomorrow.’
‘Please,’ came the voice, ‘come in.’
Inside, it was meticulously spic and something smelt good in the kitchen.
‘It’s been lovely to meet you,’ Frankie said, not quite sure how best to express it. She put out her hand but instead of taking it, Rose placed something in it.
‘Here,’ she said bluntly.
Frankie looked at it. A small box, woven. She lifted the lid away. The underside of the weaving was as perfect and beautiful as the proud side.
‘I made it.’ Rose shifted a little.
‘You made it?’
‘Yup.’ She came closer. ‘Cedar root,’ she said. ‘Then the red of the design is wild cherry bark, the pale is canary grass, the dark is black cherry. The patterns – they’re the landscape. I know you like the mountains.’
‘It’s exquisite – thank you very much.’ Frankie looked closely. ‘It’s so – detailed, so precise.’
‘You know when I was a girl and I started my monthly, my grandma made me sit and pick all the needles of a cedar branch. A big old branch it was too. Had to prove I had what’s required to be a weaver and a woman – patience and skill. My grandmother could weave with pine needles.’
‘I can’t even sew a button on straight or mend a hole in a sock,’ said Frankie. ‘Things just fall apart if I try and fix them.’
Then Rose put her head back and really laughed, guttural and hearty, quite taking Frankie by surprise.
‘Not Scott though,’ Rose said. ‘Your stitching’s made that man good and strong. I’ll see you again. Bring your kids next time.’
Early in the morning, the day before she left, Scott took her on his favourite hike and at Joffre Lakes, Frankie wept.
‘I had no idea that places like this existed.’
‘It’s the glacial silt particles,’ Scott explained as if it was no big deal. ‘Suspended in the water, illuminated by the sun, reflecting the sky.’
The first lake, through the trees and just a stone’s throw from where they’d parked, had stunned her into silence; the most unimaginable dense turquoise without a ripple on the surface to say it was actually water.
‘I thought I was fit,’ she panted as they hiked steeply to the middle lake.
‘It’s different out here to where you are,’ said Scott. ‘We do this a lot.’
On they went, alongside tumbling creeks and dense woodland.
‘Wait a bit,’ Frankie said, breathing hard, hands on hips, gazing down the mountain as if that was the only reason she’d stopped. Her chest felt tight and sore and she was boiling. ‘I must look a right state.’
&
nbsp; He looked at her hair; licked by sweat into little kiss curls around her neck, her cheeks hot red, her nose shiny, damp patches darkening her T-shirt around the armpits, socks rucked and dirt on her legs. ‘It suits you,’ he grinned. ‘Come on.’ He held out his hand and pulled her along with her mock-moaning for the next few minutes.
At the middle lake, the colour was even more vibrant; the water enclosed by trees and rock; a glassy stillness and otherworldly quiet. It was so spectacular all she could do was giggle and say oh my God over and again.
‘You want to go back?’
‘There’s more?’
To the uppermost and largest lake they climbed and clambered, the terrain rugged and in parts relentless, as challenging as it was exhilarating. Frankie’s lungs screamed, her legs complained and her arms itched but when they made it, that’s when she wept. The lake was her prize. The vivid cerulean blue, its surface glossy as polished enamel, held in the cupped hands of the mountain. The slashes and slides of grey-cold rock still striped with snow reached right down to the water and, most breathtaking of all, the vastness of the glacier. The midday sun seemed brighter up here. Where was this place? It seemed too heavenly to exist in the self-centred plastic rush of the twenty-first century.
‘Don’t cry,’ Scott laughed gently.
‘I’m so knackered,’ she sobbed, rivulets of clean skin streaking down her grimy face. ‘I thought I was fit – it’s depressing. But I’m so happy.’ She blew her nose on her T-shirt. ‘This,’ she said, gazing out over the lake, back to the glacier. Had it moved? Of course not. ‘This,’ she said again, waving at it all. ‘I have no words – and I’m meant to be a bloody writer.’
She sat between Scott’s legs, his arms loosely around her. Sweaty and gritty they rested awhile, drank water and ate their lunch.
‘This is what you do,’ Frankie said, as if she’d been quietly working it out. ‘On a weekend – or a morning off – this is where you come. You jump in your truck and you drive twenty minutes and you hike to God’s own country.’
‘Pretty much,’ Scott said. He thought of all the other places they’d been over the last few days – and all those he still wanted to take her. They’d run out of time and a wave of sadness swept over the still water. Next time he came to Joffre, he’d be on his own. She would be gone.
