by S. P. Hozy
“Maybe you could send me some,” said Dinah. “I could put it in the gallery and sell it. Authentic Canadian handicrafts.”
“That’s not a bad idea. Why not?”
Just then, Angela came back in the room, a large pair of scissors in her right hand. “Haven’t you finished opening these boxes yet? Do I have to do everything?”
Dinah looked at Maris. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I’ll deal with her.” She lifted an ebony carving of a woman’s face out of the box. An expression of beatific tranquillity on the face suggested she had seen Shangri-La. “Isn’t it exquisite?” she said.
After the funeral, Maris and Dinah had sorted through Peter’s stuff and decided what to do with it. Angela had flown back to Germany almost immediately to attend to the business that had been interrupted by Peter’s death. She told them not to get rid of anything without consulting her first.
In his will, Peter had left instructions for certain things to be given away, and they attended to them first. To Maris he had left an old leather trunk that at first glance appeared to hold nothing more than some old books and paintings — probably from his childhood and not the kind of thing he chose to display in his elegant apartment. Peter was not sentimental, but he wouldn’t have kept the old trunk if its contents hadn’t been important to him.
To Dinah he had left his precious art deco furniture, but with the stipulation that she could sell it or dispose of it in any way she chose if she didn’t want to keep it. She had cried when that part of the will had been read. Later she told Maris, “I’ve always loved that furniture but I never told Peter. It wasn’t as if I had to have it. I was just happy to look at it whenever I went to his place. He must have known.”
“Peter was pretty good at reading people,” Maris said. “I’m sure that’s why the gallery was so successful. He had a knack for matching people with the things he knew they’d love.”
“Is that why he gave you his childhood mementos in a trunk?”
“Maybe. He never did something without a reason.”
“Then I’m sure all will be revealed,” said Dinah.
Maris hadn’t examined the contents of the trunk before she left Singapore. She believed Peter’s decision to leave them to her had been deliberate and she would have to figure out why. But for now she wasn’t in a frame of mind to figure anything out. She was beginning to wonder if she really was depressed, as Dinah had suggested. Maybe she should talk to someone. But even the word “psychiatrist” made her uneasy. She knew a shrink would prescribe some kind of drug, and she believed that it would suffocate any creative impulses she might have. I have to find a way to work this out through my art, she thought. Words are not a good way for me to express myself. I never quite say what I mean. But a painting is either right or it’s not. It’s not finished until its meaning is clear. To me, at least, if not to anyone else.
She was looking forward to seeing her mother again. She’ll know what to do, Maris thought. After Maris’s father had left them for both another woman and a completely different life, her mother had been forced to re-invent herself in her mid-thirties. She had married Maris’s father, a California draft dodger, when she was twenty-one years old and they had moved to a hippie commune northwest of Vancouver. There they had raised three children: Maris, her sister Terra, and a brother, Ra. Maris had been thirteen, Terra twelve, and Ra nine when their father left to marry an heiress whose money had been made in automotive parts. Arthur Cousins had so transformed himself after marrying his second wife that he was now a successful businessman and owner of a BMW dealership in the posh Vancouver suburb of Kitsilano.
Sheila Cousins, or “Spirit” as she was called in those days, had been devastated. Arthur’s betrayal had gone way beyond breaking her heart. He had cast aside everything they had believed in and moved into the enemy’s camp. Had he just been playing a role all those years? And if that was the case, why had he loved her? Or had he loved her? Sheila Cousins was Spirit, in her heart and in her soul. She had not been one of those costume hippies who wore gypsy skirts and beads and feathers. She had been a believer. Meeting Arthur, who’d introduced himself as “Freedom Man,” had been pure destiny. She knew they were meant to be together. He’d heard about a hippie commune somewhere on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia.
“Pure Earth,” she’d said. “I know where it is. Near Roberts Creek.”
“Then be my lady and I’ll be your man,” he’d said. “And we’ll live on the land and be free.”
And they had, for nearly fifteen years. They’d cleared land, planted fruit trees and a vegetable garden, and raised goats for milk, butter, and yogurt. There were twelve other people on the commune in the beginning. After six years there were just eight of them left, but by then the children had started coming. The kids had run free, and they had names like Free, Moonbeam, and Meadow. Spirit had named her children for the sea, the earth, and the sun: Maris, Terra, and Ra (who later decided he would rather be Ray). She’d believed, and so had Freedom Man, that children were born filled with truth and goodness, and they should be allowed to grow without the restrictions and rules that society placed on people. They would learn to read when they decided they were ready and they would study what and when they wanted to learn.
Maris’s interest in art had begun early. Both her parents had encouraged her and sometimes she would draw pictures all day. Then she would give them to Terra and Ra to colour. The walls of their house were covered with drawings of animals, trees, flowers, people — anything Maris could see in the sheltered world around her. One day Spirit had taught her about still-life drawing. She had taken one of her own pottery bowls and filled it with fruit. Placing it on the kitchen table, she had added a candle and an open book, and told Maris to draw it. Then she had rearranged the objects, putting the fruit on the table, and the candle in the bowl. Another time she placed a sleeping kitten on the book.
By the age of ten, Maris began to develop a style of her own. But she hadn’t yet started to work in colours, except for red. She loved red and usually included something red in her drawings. They were quite dramatic in their own way, especially after her father gave her a bottle of black ink and some Japanese brushes. The commune operated on the barter system as much as possible, and Freedom Man would drive up the coast in an old pickup truck and trade fresh eggs, chickens, fruit, and vegetables for staples like flour and sugar. At the hardware store in nearby Gibsons, he traded some of Spirit’s pottery for small cans of paint and brushes for Maris. When Freedom Man left a few years later, Spirit started to sell her pottery for cash so she could buy art supplies for Maris. She got a library card and borrowed books on art and art history so that Maris could study and learn from the masters.
By this time, twelve-year-old Terra had developed an interest in pop music and wanted to learn the guitar, and Ra, who was nine, was obsessed with reptiles and spiders, especially the poisonous ones. Spirit refused to accept money from Freedom Man, who was no longer Freedom Man, of course, but Arthur Cousins, businessman, but he opened bank accounts for each of the children and deposited an allowance each month so that they could have some “extras,” as he called them. He was not without a conscience, even though Spirit told him he was a shallow, unscrupulous shit. But he was determined to provide an education for his children, however they wished to get one.
A couple of years after Arthur left, the three kids were still being home-schooled on the commune. Arthur wanted Maris to go to high school, so he drove out to the commune (in his BMW convertible) several times to talk to Spirit about it. He said Maris could come and live with him and Shirley and go to a good school. He would arrange for her to take the entrance exams so she could be admitted to a public school. Spirit said absolutely not. She was adamant that Maris would stay with her on the commune. End of discussion. Fine, said Arthur, she could be bused to Gibsons every day. He knew there was no point arguing with Spirit when she got like this.
Shirley didn’t say anything but she was se
cretly relieved that Maris would not be coming to live with them. She told Arthur, however, that she was very disappointed. She said that she had been looking forward to having a daughter, but she understood why Spirit did not want to let Maris go. She suggested that Arthur increase the children’s allowances. It was only fair since they were forced to endure such primitive conditions because their mother had custody.
Arthur provided a tutor so that Maris would pass the high school entrance exams and she started school at Lord Stanley Secondary School in September 1978.
December 1923
——————
Chapter Five
Singapore
December 3, 1923
My Dearest Annabelle,
To say “I miss you” is to put into cheap, inadequate words a longing that surpasses anything I have ever felt. I am here with Sutty and we have settled into the Raffles Hotel and are quite comfortable, except that half of me is missing because you are not here. Sutty says that if I don’t stop moping around like a lovesick old elephant he’s going to turn me into a character in one of his books and have me die a horrible death. So come to Singapore, I implore you, and let’s be married and fulfill our destiny. Don’t abandon me to Sutty’s pen.
When I think of you in dreary old London in December my heart breaks anew. The sun shines so brightly here every day that we’re forced to shield our eyes. We are like moles who are obliged to live above ground when we have been bred by Mother Nature (as Mr. Darwin said) to exist in a gloomy netherworld called England. We are squinty-eyed and pathetic creatures, our skin turning red wherever it is exposed and our stomachs protesting at the unfamiliar food.
Ah, but I mislead you, my dear. I make this place sound like some kind of hell, when it is only that because you are not here. In fact, it’s a glorious place, full of trees and flowers most exotic, and the sun, the sun, is magnificent and warm. And when it rains, it’s usually a lovely, warm, soft rain, not like those sharp pellets of filthy water that fall from England’s skies.
As for the writing, I have been eking out a word here and there. Nothing like Sutty’s proliferation of prose, of course. But then, who else but Sutty can turn the most prosaic encounter into a story of brilliant proportions? He is a true genius while I am but a poor scribbler, aspiring to greatness but always sliding ever backwards because my feet are planted, not so firmly, in the mud. I cannot seem to land on solid ground again like Sutty, because … because … if you were here, you could tell me why.
My Annabelle, my Sweet Annabelle, I long to see you and to hold you in my arms. Come to me, my darling. Sutty wants you to come, too, if only so he can enjoy his beer without hearing me weep.
I love you. I love you.
Your adoring
Francis
Annabelle finished reading Francis’s letter and gazed around the dreary sitting room of her father’s house. She had grown up in these small, stuffy rooms and it was the only home she had known. Since her mother’s death last year, she had been housekeeper and companion to her father, a man once hale and hearty, now suddenly old and broken. “I’ll be myself soon enough,” he kept telling her. “Don’t you worry about me.” But how could she leave him and go halfway around the world? And how would Francis support her, with his wanting to be a writer and all? It was all right for Sutty; he had a small income from his grandfather. And people knew him and were buying his books. But Francis hadn’t yet made a name for himself. Who would pay good money for a book written by Francis Adolphus Stone when they could buy Edward Sutcliffe Moresby?
Annabelle had begun to worry about such things since her mother’s death. She was not yet twenty-four years old but already she felt the burden of life falling on her shoulders like the heavy old woolen cloak her mother had worn when she worked as a nursing sister during the war. Sometimes Annabelle thought she would suffocate just thinking about all the bad things that could happen to a person. She hadn’t wanted Francis to go to Singapore with Sutty. The ship would surely sink on the way; he would get a fever and would be buried at sea; or, if he did get to Singapore, there was malaria to worry about and no end to the diseases people were struck down with. She had heard the stories about cemeteries filled with the graves of babies and young women and men who had succumbed to the heat and the brackish water and the contaminated food.
Francis had laughed at her fears. Although Sutty, she noticed, had not. He was a more experienced traveller. He had seen things he didn’t like to talk about, but they were in his stories. She was sure he hadn’t made them up. She believed that they were basically true, they were so believable. Francis said it was because Sutty was such a good writer. Of course she thought they were true, he told her. You were supposed to believe them. Look at Shakespeare. He wrote about tragedy because people wanted a good cry, and he wrote comedy because people also wanted to laugh. It’s all about bums in seats and cash in the till. People wouldn’t pay for it if they didn’t believe it.
But Francis was an optimist, always seeing the best, and she was a pessimist, although she preferred to think of herself as a realist. The world was not a happy place and life wasn’t all happy endings. Even if you worked hard and did all the right things, you could still get run over by one of those beastly automobiles or lorries that seemed to be multiplying like rabbits. Or you could fall off of a bicycle and break your neck. Just last week she’d read about a woman who’d stepped into a lift where she worked and she’d fallen twelve floors to her death because the door had accidentally opened when there was no lift, just empty space. There were lots of words for these events — accidents, bad luck, providence, destiny — but to Annabelle there was only one word: life. Life was dangerous and if you ignored that fact, or chose to believe otherwise, you did so at your peril.
Oh, but she missed Francis and his foolish optimism and his dreams of being a writer. She loved him more than anything because he almost made her believe that life could be good. That she would be safe with him. That because they loved each other, everything would work out, somehow. She wanted to be with him so badly, but in Singapore? It wasn’t the last place on earth she wanted to be, but it was nearly the last. China was probably worse, or India, or maybe Russia. Thank God Francis hadn’t gone to any of those countries. Or Africa. Singapore didn’t seem so bad when you compared it to some of those places. At least there were English people there, but there were English people in India and nothing could induce her to go to India. Oh, what to do? she thought.
She knew Francis had no intention of coming back to England, at least not for a long time, and not unless something miraculous happened, like a rich uncle (if only he had one) dying and leaving him a fortune. He had counted up all his money to the last penny and told her, “It’s either five months in England or five years in Singapore, including the passage. And what can I write in five months? Think, Annabelle, think how much I could do in five years. Five whole years, if I’m careful.” If I’m careful, he’d said. Not if we’re careful. So did the five years include a wife or not?
And what about her father? How could she leave him alone to fend for himself? She’d be worried the whole time that he wasn’t eating or that he was drinking too much or smoking too many cigarettes. It was an impossible choice.
Maybe what she should do was go down to the P&O office and find out what it would cost for a one-way passage and when the next available ship would be sailing. That way she’d be able to tell Francis that it wasn’t possible for her to come. That it was too expensive or there wasn’t another ship leaving for four months. Then maybe he’d decide to come back and get a job and they could get married, and maybe even have a family. They could live with her father and they wouldn’t have to pay rent.
London
December 20, 1923
Dearest Francis,
I miss you so terribly and wish we could be together. I went to the P&O this week and they told me a one-way fare to Singapore would be fifty pounds, which we simply cannot afford. And the next ship will not be
until the beginning of February.
Father is not doing as well as I would like. Of course, he always says he’s fine, but I know it’s because he doesn’t want to be a bother. But since Mother died, he’s aged ten years. I want to weep whenever I look at him. He shuffles about like an old man and falls asleep in his chair in the evening listening to the wireless. It breaks my heart, Francis. He’s not even fifty-five years old.
The weather here is nasty, as usual. A miserable chill that pierces to the bone. I envy you your sunshine and heat. The price of beef has gone up again, and soon we’ll be reduced to boiling the bones for dinner. As for butter and cream, we’ve had to cut in half what we usually take.
Francis, I hope you are eating properly and well, and not drinking anything but the boiled water. Always make sure they boil it well, because I’ve heard that they just take water from the tap and fill the bottles with it. Go into the kitchen, if you must, to be sure. Better to be safe than sorry. And always wear a hat in the sun. It is very common to have sun stroke in the tropics and you don’t want that.
Please take care of yourself and write again soon. Tell me everything you’re doing. Give my regards to Sutty and tell him I expect him to look out for you. Listen to what he says because he has experience in these things, meaning life in foreign countries, as he’s travelled so much.
Please have a happy, happy Christmas, although I shall be missing you every minute. I miss you and think about you all the time and dream about you every night.
All my love, your
Annabelle
The next letter, addressed to “Miss Annabelle Sweet,” arrived in early January and was from Sutty. In it was a cheque for sixty pounds.
You must come, it said, because Francis is at his wits’ end, and so am I, if truth be told. He’s impossible to be with because all he talks about is you, Annabelle, and all he wants is you, his “Sweet Annabelle,” as he calls you. I implore you, Annabelle, for my sake if not for Francis’s, to come to Singapore. If I could put him on a ship and send him back, I would. But he is, quite honestly, better off here. You could live very well here and Francis could write something important. It’s not forever, Annabelle, but for now. Try to see it that way and maybe it won’t seem so bad to you. If you don’t come, he will waste his time and his money yearning for you, and I will go mad listening to him!
