by Rebecca Tope
‘Your friend perhaps prefers to give pleasure to others. That would explain her bump of benevolence. Or one might less charitably suggest that she does it for the profit it brings. Acquisitiveness. And she has an unwavering intention – firmness, do you see?’
‘You sum me up admirably,’ said Carola, with a small sniff. ‘My mother would applaud you to the skies.’
‘And for me is it a case of taking pleasure in my work?’ Fanny said. ‘And what was the other word – idealism?’
‘Ideality. It suggests a love of show and splendour. Combined with acquisitiveness, it would imply a life of some luxury. It might also hint at a lack of realism in your nature. Flights of fancy and a dangerous degree of confidence in your ability to realise your dreams.’
‘We make a good pair, then,’ said Carola. ‘It seems we have between us quite enough qualities to ensure success in life.’
‘Perhaps so,’ he nodded. ‘Although one might wish for a tad more practicality and caution.’
Matilda reappeared a few minutes later, her expression a mixture of enquiry and amusement. ‘All done?’ she asked. ‘Your characters thoroughly explained?’
‘They were excellent subjects,’ Jeremy claimed. ‘A great boon for my studies.’
‘And all’s well with the world,’ said the woman with a gesture of swiping her hands together. ‘The chicken feathers will do nicely for filling the chairseats,’ she told her man.
‘No substitute for horsehair, in my opinion,’ he said seriously. ‘Feathers are strictly for bed mattresses.’
A final snack of cheese with dried plums ended the day, and the four of them went quietly into their rooms for the night. Outside, Fanny could hear Hugo giving sporadic mournful woofs. ‘He feels abandoned,’ she sighed. ‘And he has had little to eat all day.’
‘That head-reading business is tosh,’ said Carola in a low voice. ‘Little wonder it is received with mockery.’
‘Seductive, though, to be told one’s own qualities with such assurance.’ Fanny understood that she had enjoyed the process rather more than had her friend. ‘I should think there might be money to be made by it, approached in the right way.’
‘I fear not. There is no use in it, you see, for the ordinary man. Rather the contrary, in fact, if he is told his nature is full of greed and obstinacy. It is hardly a revelation worth paying for.’
‘Greed and obstinacy – you have transposed acquisitiveness and firmness into character flaws,’ Fanny observed.
‘And you, my dear, are a lustful dreamer with a good memory.’
‘I am persuaded by your assessment after all – it is nothing but tosh,’ laughed Fanny. ‘And to think we believed he wanted us for our bodies!’
‘That was his little jest. He knew full well what we expected. He is a disappointed man, who gets his thrills by teasing. I fancy he mourns the old country and its books more than he admits.’
‘We must take care to find other lodgings on our return. I could not abide a second night spent here.’ Carola spoke feelingly, and Fanny wondered at the strength of her animosity. Then she recalled how enraged and offended she had been herself. She had been prepared to resist, or so she hoped. And yet, the man’s exploring fingers on her skull had created an agreeable sensation, and the attention to her character not unwelcome.
‘It could have been very much worse,’ she murmured. ‘And tomorrow we will be with my family.’ The prospect sent her insides quivering with an anticipation that carried more than a thread of apprehension.
Chapter Eight
They left early and veered in the direction of the morning sun, following a roadway that led upwards towards distant mountains. The Collins family had settled in a spot on a plain between the Willamette river and the range of inhospitable peaks further inland. Fanny had no difficulty in recalling the route, although she was struck by the quantity of new buildings erected since she last passed that way.
‘Matilda spoke truly when she said it was like being at the dawn of a new world,’ she remarked. ‘The transformation is little short of miraculous.’
‘Settlers have been arriving in their thousands these past few years. They all have to live somewhere. One wonders how it appears to the Indians. Have they retreated to the hills, where they watch us with fury? In the east, there were terrible slaughters of settlers in the early days. How is it so different here?’
‘The Indians have plenty for themselves, and the settlers bring trade and profit,’ said Fanny confidently. ‘Surely you noticed at the forts we passed, they were gladly conducting business of every sort with the migrants. They have seized our arrival as an opportunity.’
‘And yet it is their land. We have brought such immense change in a short time. How can they be sanguine, when we cut down their trees and massacre their bison?’
‘And dig up their gold,’ added Fanny.
‘Indeed. Although one must assume they hold it in little esteem in their own society; else why not mine it for themselves long ago?’
The conversation ran on idly for the best part of the day. The horse was steady in its pace and the dog plodded stoically alongside the cart. Then, finally, they found the homestead bathed in late afternoon light, spring blossoms just opening on some of the bushes and trees. Three dogs came bounding to meet them. ‘Lizzie’s pups,’ Fanny recognised. Their names came to her with a brief effort. ‘Lazarus, Dorcas and String. Remember me?’ Hugo approached them warily, shrinking low in a vain attempt to make himself smaller.
‘String?’ muttered Carola, cringing back as she always did at the sight of unfamiliar dogs.
‘He chewed string a lot as a youngster,’ Fanny explained. ‘Where is everybody, I wonder?’
For an answer, two figures emerged from the house and stood waiting on the deck that ran along the whole length of the front. ‘My mother and Nam,’ Fanny told her friend, as they descended from the trap. ‘Get away, dogs. Carola doesn’t like you.’ But she belied her words with hugs for the animals. ‘They won’t hurt you,’ she told Hugo, who showed quite plainly that he was unconvinced. A fierce protector where strange men were concerned, he was never at all confident around fellow canines.
Then there was the usual swirling of skirts and shrill ejaculations as the women embraced and examined and embraced again. Carola was accepted without question, and Hugo with considerably more reticence. ‘He’s enormous!’ squealed Nam.
Lizzie was inside, adding final touches to a large meal already laid out on the table. She limped smilingly to greet her sister, holding out her hands. Fanny had forgotten just how lame the girl was. ‘Your dogs are still here then,’ she observed. Lizzie, of them all, was the most fond of the animals.
‘Of course. And you, Fan. You are so grown up!’ She turned to Carola. ‘Delighted to meet you again,’ she said politely. ‘You are looking very well.’
Carola laid a cheek briefly against that of the girl. They had never spent time together when the friendship with Fanny had first been formed. The Beaumont brothers had settled some miles distant and permitted their sister little time for socialising. She and Fanny had gone to considerable lengths to meet as often as possible, accompanying menfolk on trips into town where they would exchange encouraging remarks as they saved for their project. ‘It is good of you to welcome me,’ she said, using her Southern tones more than normal. Fanny had noticed the way this happened under certain conditions, concluding that it was an unconscious relapse into earlier times when etiquette came to the fore.
‘Dinner is all but ready,’ said her mother, her arms folded complacently. ‘We did hope that Charity and Moses might join us, but they are leaving it until the morrow. The children, you see. There would be scarcely anywhere for them to sleep.’
‘How’s the baby?’
‘Baby? You mean Walter? He is walking now. He’s the spit of his father, Lord help him.’
Fanny calculated quickly. Her nephew would be a year and a half in age; no longer a baby. ‘And the others? Ellie and Jim?
They must be well grown now.’
‘Jimmy has been sick. His stomach has always been delicate and so it continues. There is so little flesh on him, you can count all his bones. But Ellie is a little beauty. I believe Charity has benefited her very greatly.’ Mrs Collins smiled ruefully. ‘I have always wondered if it was thanks to Ellie that the marriage happened at all.’
Fanny gave an impatient little shake. Her sister’s arrangements had never been of very much interest to her.
Then the men showed up, their sleeves rolled up and hats pushed back. ‘Ploughing,’ said Patrick Collins shortly.
‘But Dada,’ teased Lizzie, ‘ye always said you would leave that sort of work to others.’
The patriarch ignored her, and pulled his second daughter into a close hug, crushing her against his dusty chest. Fanny sank into the embrace like a small child, her mind entirely empty. She rubbed her face against him, and savoured his smell that mixed sweat and horse and rich Oregon soil.
Then the vacuum was filled with a crowd of thoughts. What would he think, if he knew what her last male embrace had signified? A man with a black beard and a powerful thrust. Shame flooded through her, hot and insistent. She no longer deserved her father’s love. It was dishonest even to permit him to hold her. He must never know what she did with her nights. The thing that had previously been an imperative readily pushed into the background now became of the most crucial importance. If her parents were to discover the truth, she would be truly ruined. She would run to the river and drown herself. And had not the people of the previous night taught her that she and Carola indeed had a far-reaching reputation that might even have spread out here onto the homesteads of the eastern plain?
The force of this sudden realisation made her desperate. She pushed away from her father and gave Carola an imploring look. Her friend was suddenly a great danger; she might inadvertently reveal the secret, not grasping how much it mattered. But an instinct warned her to behave naturally. ‘Dada – you remember my friend Miss Carola Beaumont. I should say my employer, perhaps. It is in her business that I found employment. I owe it all to her.’
The notion of a woman owning a business was entirely alien to Mr and Mrs Collins. Their experience, however, had been that the world sprang surprises here and there – and this was one such. Patrick kept his hands on Fanny’s arms, but moved her aside in order to get a clear view of Carola. ‘Miss Beaumont,’ he nodded.
Reuben had followed his father into the house, and was hovering in confusion, transfixed by the unfamiliar woman. ‘This is my brother,’ said Fanny quickly. ‘You never met him before, I believe. Reuben, you might shake her hand perhaps?’
The young man, who was a year or so older than Fanny, straightened his left arm awkwardly. Carola quickly assessed the situation, and extended her own matching hand. Reuben’s right arm hung crookedly from a deformed shoulder, which bowed forward unnaturally.
All of a sudden there was a banging from a room overhead. ‘Grandma!’ gasped Fanny. ‘I forgot her. Where is she?’
‘She is confined to her room,’ Patrick explained. ‘Her legs have failed her.’
This new situation required some degree of clarification. Grandma had, it seemed, suffered a fall, only a few weeks previously. As a consequence of the bruising, she could not walk without acute pain. ‘We are hopeful that she will recover in due course.’
Fanny ran upstairs without hesitation. Shame again gripped her at her failure to enquire as to her grandmother’s whereabouts and wellbeing.
The old woman was barely recognisable, and more than anything this showed Fanny how far she had moved from her family. Over the winter, life had drained out of Grandma, leaving a dry husk of a person. Her skin was mushroom coloured, her flesh no more than a thin layer covering her bones. Fanny was reminded of her mother’s description of Jimmy Fields. The old and the young, then, were finding the new life less than wholesome; the changes too great perhaps for their fragile bodies.
‘Fanny Collins, ’tis a treat to see you, so it is,’ said the old lady with the full Irish tones that she used in times of high emotion. ‘Come and give me a squeeze, me darling.’
Fanny knew full well that she had never been her grandmother’s favourite of the Collins girls. If one of them had to be singled out, it would be Charity, followed by Lizzie. Her father’s mother had learned a good deal about the human heart through her seventy-five years of life, and gave her approval more to those with a handicap to overcome than those blessed with good looks and a happy soul. ‘Fanny can take care of herself,’ she would say, with a meaningful glance that added She has the luck of the devil himself.
‘What happened to you, then, Grandma?’ she asked, after the gentle hug had been accomplished.
‘Fell and banged me back, silly old fool. And now me legs are useless. I’m fading away up here, and no mistake.’ She sighed. ‘’Tis a long life I lived, all over the world. I have no complaints, with a family to be proud of and a number of good friends made and kept.’ Her words were brave, but Fanny detected a mix of fear and regret on her face.
‘Ah, no, Grandma. The summer’s coming and you’ll bloom again, you just see. Make them take you out into the sunshine, and feed you some of that good broth you always concocted for us when we were ailing.’
The wrinkled claw that was the old woman’s hand gripped Fanny’s forearm. ‘Never you mind that. Tell me how it is for you.’ Sharp eyes bored into her own. ‘And tell me the truth, young lady. You know I can see it clear as day when you try to deceive.’
Fanny closed her eyes against the scrutiny, knowing what was coming. ‘Truth, Grandma?’ she tried, with wide-open eyes. ‘I am living in Chemeketa with my friend, Miss Beaumont. You will remember her from last year? She is an excellent businesswoman.’
‘I do not doubt it. My difficulty is crediting that the two of youse have managed to create and operate a store that provides the townswomen with their best frocks. I am not a babe in arms, young lady. I have seen the capital a person has to find for such a business. The story is no more than that – a tale told to credulous children such as your parents and sister are.’
‘Not Dadda,’ Fanny protested.
‘Your Dadda doesn’t like to enquire too deeply for fear of what he mighyt discover. He was always that way where you were concerned. Now give me the facts and no more fibbing.’
Fanny felt almost faint with apprehension. ‘You won’t tell?’ she whispered.
‘They’re never going to ask, now are they? They’ll not suspect your old grandma knows any more than they do.’
‘My friend and I have a…boudoir. We provide services for men who are all alone and desperate for some attention. ’Tis a good living, Grandma. Or it was before they all went off to dig for gold. Now there’s scarcely a man left in town and we decided to take a little vacation while it’s so quiet.’ She spoke in a rush, barely thinking about what she was saying, other than an awareness that it didn’t matter as much as she had feared it would. The truth would find its own way, like water seeking the lower ground. After barely an hour in the bosom of her family, the effort of monitoring every word was already exhausting.
‘My own grand-daughter, a lady of the night!’ There was a trace of glee in the words, along with astonishment that quickly turned to understanding. ‘I always knew you had something of the sort in you – from a tiny girl. Always touching and stroking, feeling it so much more than the others. I watched you one time, handling a silver fox fur, with such a look on your little countenance.’
Fanny’s face puckered. ‘I believe that is a different thing,’ she said, wondering when she had last enjoyed any touching or stroking. ‘The men require relief, and a friendly jest and acceptance. Very little more than that.’
‘But surely -’ Even her outspoken grandmother had trouble finding words for something so taboo. ‘They hold you, and kiss you, too?’
Fanny shook her head, identically unable to give voice to the reality. ‘Not often,’ she muttered. The
re were kisses, of course, but they were always too wet or too hard, too sour or too tentative. Never once had she taken any pleasure from a customer’s kiss.
As for the holding, that was similarly lacking. Too tight or too urgent, it was seldom more than a matter of arranging her position to best suit the man’s ingress.
She sighed. ‘The pleasure is mainly in the money they pay us,’ she admitted.
‘But they are duly grateful? For the relief?’
‘Oh, yes. Some of them are.’ Some, indeed, were so pathetically grateful that it was almost repellent. Most simply nodded a quick thanks and took their leave.
‘Well, me darling girl, it appears to me you might have cause to regret this choice before very much longer. A girl is not a piece of meat, however men might seem to think so. But at least you’ve got yourself up in some fine clothes,’ she concluded. Her voice had grown fainter, and she was slumped into the pillows of her narrow little bed. ‘And Fanny Collins was born under a lucky star, after all.’
‘Was I?’ She had forgotten how entirely she had taken this family notion for granted. Fanny was the pretty one, the one who could sing and dance and make people laugh. She saw herself mirrored in their eyes as an enchantress, with the power to draw their attention and admiration. She saw, more clearly than ever before, just how directly this idea of herself had led to the work she did now.
Chapter Nine
The Fields family arrived shortly before noon next day, in the same wagon they had employed to traverse the two thousand miles of the Oregon Trail. It had new wheels, and patched sides, and had abandoned its tattered cover, but essentially it was the same vehicle, drawn by two mules. Fanny watched as they approached from the north-east, where the land was rockier and steeper. The man driving wore a wide-brimmed hat and was clean-shaven. She remembered that his Indian blood made it unlikely that he would ever achieve a full beard such as many men sported. Beside him sat Fanny’s sister, and his wife. Charity wore a light blue frock that seemed to have a wider skirt than was usual. It flapped around her legs in the westerly breeze.
