Pastoral

by André Alexis

  – No, she said. I’ve just been thinking about love lately. I think you know why.

  – Oh, I see, said Father Pennant. Yes. Well, let me think … I don’t have a lot of experience but when I was in love there wasn’t room for anyone else in my heart. I can’t imagine being equally filled with two true loves at the same time. So, my first answer would be no. I don’t think it’s possible. What do you think?

  – I don’t know, answered Elizabeth. I don’t see how you can love more than one person at a time. But then God loves us all equally, doesn’t He?

  – Yes, but the love we feel for each other is different from the love God has for us. Our love is an echo of divine love. That’s what I think, anyway. I don’t know. It may be possible for a man to love two women or for a woman to love two men, but how would this poor person live?

  – Mormons can have more than one wife, can’t they?

  – Yes, but most of them choose not to. Too difficult. Still, to answer your question: maybe a man can feel equal love for two women, but my advice for that man would be to find the one woman who truly completes him.

  The sun had moved to the west, but it was still almost as bright as noon. The park’s pigeons had more or less camped out before them, walking back and forth, mindfully unmindful, as if to say ‘We’re only here taking sun, we want nothing from you,’ heads as if pecking at the air, the occasional rrroo sounding as one or two of the birds fluttered their wings and rose before setting down again. After a while, the weight of the birds’ waiting impressed itself on Father Pennant’s imagination. He shredded a piece of his remaining kaiser roll and scattered its morsels in an arc, so all the birds could have a chance at the bread.

  – I don’t think you’re wrong, Father, said Elizabeth. But what if some people are more gifted than others at loving? We can’t all run as fast as the fastest. Maybe we can’t all love as deeply as the deepest either.

  – You have been thinking about all this, said Father Pennant. But let me ask you a question. How would you know that a man loved two women equally? How could you tell? Isn’t that something only he would know?

  The pigeons, joined now by aggressive sparrows, were in a kerfuffle, jostling, flying or trying to fly off with the bigger pieces of bread. Looking at the birds, one had the impression the ground was alive with grey, white and brown feathers, wings and bird heads.

  – He’d have to prove it, said Elizabeth. You give him a choice and if he can’t choose one woman or the other, he loves them both the same.

  – There you go, said Father Pennant. But if he can’t choose, he’ll be like that donkey who can’t choose between two equal piles of hay and dies of starvation. Buridan’s ass. That’s the donkey’s name. You can imagine how amusing that name was when I was in seminary.

  Elizabeth smiled politely, though she was not looking at him directly.

  – I’ve got to get back, she said. Thanks for talking to me.

  – I enjoy talking with you, said Father Pennant. Any time you like.

  The two of them got up as one, shook hands and went off in different directions. Father Pennant, with his paper bags, one now neatly folded inside the other, walked away thinking of his time at the seminary. From the moment he’d given his life to God, joy had come into his soul, and joy was with him still, at times, though he no longer found God at the centre of his happiness. Nature was often there – as if in God’s place – and, now he thought of it, it felt at times as if he served two masters or was himself devoted to two loves. Perhaps he’d been hasty in suggesting a man could not love two women equally.

  Elizabeth, for her part, was grateful for Father Pennant’s advice. She understood him to have said that it was not possible to love two people at once. So, how would she get Robbie to choose between her and the woman whose name now sounded like a nasty word, Jane Richardson?

  III

  JUNE, JULY AND AFTER

  George Bigland had gone to Milwaukee for vacation and he had taken his sons with him. His wife was a capable woman. She had to be, given Farmer Bigland’s habits: principally, drink and self-pity. She could have run the farm with her daughters alone, but Bigland had asked Robbie Myers to help out and Robbie had taken time away from work on his father’s farm to tend the sheep.

  There was nothing new about this arrangement. Robbie had been helping to tend the sheep since he was a boy. Bigland and Robbie’s father (also George) had been best friends since childhood. There had even been some hope that Robbie would marry one of the Bigland girls and unite the families. But Robbie had feelings of his own, it seems. He fell in love with Liz Denny, the orphan, and this love had disappointed his father, the Biglands and the Biglands’ daughter Anne, who’d had a crush on Robbie from the time when they were young enough to bathe together.

  Robbie preferred to tend cows. He was used to cows. He could tell when a cow was sick or healthy or simply wanted milking. With sheep it was all slightly foreign to him. There were always too many of them, gathered together to protect themselves. And it was difficult to care about a clump of bleating creatures whose fleeces were so lanolin-saturated your hand would come out of a fleece greasy and stinking of sheep. He might, eventually, have grown used to the physical fact of sheep, but he could not get used to the irritation of watching over them. Bored while shepherding, he had too much time to think. And having time to think, he had time to make himself unhappy.

  These days, time with himself was especially hard to bear. He had told his fiancée, a woman he loved, that he was also in love with another woman. Worse, he was screwing the other woman, though he still hoped to marry his fiancée. There was no getting around how foolish that hope sounded. Looking over the sheep as they jostled and bleated, he could think of nothing but the hurt and resentment in Elizabeth’s eyes when they’d spoken. She had not believed he loved her, and he had walked back home upset because he did love Elizabeth. That she had not believed he loved her and Jane equally was to be expected. No one believed him. It seemed the world could not or would not believe that his predicament was not, strictly speaking, a sexual matter. His friends imagined him first in the arms of one, then in the arms of the other, a situation they all thought enviable. But how different the reality. He had, in fact, gone directly from one bed to the other, perhaps half a dozen times, but what harrowing times they had been. Jane’s pleasure was in having him before Elizabeth did. And on occasion, she had tried to exhaust him, letting him up from bed only when she was sure his prick was ‘useless.’

  A group of sheep had separated from the flock. As much as it was possible for sheep to look suspicious, they looked suspicious. To give himself something to do, he watched as Clyde, the border collie, harassed and nipped the wayward ones back to the group. This distraction lasted only a moment. No sooner were the sheep where they should have been than Robbie was again defending himself against his own opinions and those of the world. What people could not see, he thought, was that Jane and Elizabeth were entirely different. If he had also been in love with someone like Liz, well, then, yes, perhaps he could have been considered unfaithful. But where Elizabeth was considerate, careful and gently loving, Jane was unpredictable, selfish and a whirlwind. Where Jane was restless, inventive and adventurous beyond common sense, Elizabeth was constant, patient, adventurous only where the ground was well-known. Jane was physically solid, and he could lose himself in her body. Liz was graceful, her arms and legs like ivy about him. And then there was the matter of company. He could spend hours and hours happily alone with Liz, the two of them walking through the woods or watching old movies. Jane was bored by trees and refused to watch movies that didn’t feature naked bodies and high death counts. He could not imagine living with Jane as man and wife, but neither could he imagine a life without Jane there to keep him from drowning at home. So, he loved both equally, knew he could marry Liz, not Jane, and was certain his life would be miserable without both of them in it.

  Just as he was beginning to worry about himself in earnest, Robb
ie’s thoughts were, mercifully, interrupted by Anne Bigland. He saw her approach in the distance, bringing him his lunch in a wicker basket. Though they had little to talk about these days, he was relieved at the sight of her. Stepping on birch twigs that clicked and snapped beneath him, Robbie went out to meet her. He was followed at a respectful distance by Clyde, the most mild-mannered border collie there has ever been.

  – I hope you’re hungry, said Anne. Mom made you three sandwiches, ’cause she wasn’t sure what kind you’d want. And there’s coffee and orange juice.

  – Lunch is the best thing about watching sheep, said Robbie.

  – I know, said Anne. Are you bored? I could keep you company.

  – I wouldn’t mind if you did stay awhile. I’m bored as hell. If it wasn’t for the stray dogs around, you could leave these sheep on their own. They’re not going anywhere.

  Clyde, soul of discretion, lifted his muzzle slightly, allowing himself a circumspect sniff of Robbie’s sandwich. He then sat perfectly still: his way of getting attention. And seeing how still Clyde sat, Robbie pulled a morsel from his ham sandwich and offered it to the dog. With the most discreet of motions, a tilt of his head and a flash of pink tongue, Clyde took everything that lay on Robbie’s palm. He swallowed the piece of ham sandwich and, once again, sat up straight and stock-still.

  – Everything okay these days? Anne asked.

  – Yeah, everything’s okay.

  – You still getting married?

  – Looks like it.

  The three of them – Clyde, Robbie, Anne – stood or sat quietly. Robbie was grateful for company, but there was nothing he wanted to say to Anne Bigland and, as usual, nothing she could bring herself to say to him, a habit of shyness having set in long before this. Her crush on him was obvious to all. It was clear even to Robbie himself and he was not an observant man.

  Not far from them, the sheep began to bleat. A wind troubled the grasses and brought the smell of pine with it. Anne’s hair blew in her face and she tucked the strands behind her ears. It occurred to Robbie that she was beautiful. If he’d had a sister, he thought, this is exactly how he would feel for her.

  – Do you want some of this sandwich? he asked.

  Though she wasn’t hungry, she took half the peanut butter and crab-apple jelly sandwich and ate with him.

  Jane Richardson loathed Barrow and rural Ontario and anything that smacked of ‘flora and fauna.’ She was unsettled, and angry at having been born and raised in Barrow, Lambton County, Ontario, Canada. She thought it an injustice that she had not been asked if she wanted to be of this place, this county, this land. It was difficult to know whom to blame for her ‘birth in exile,’ so she blamed whomever it pleased her to blame: her parents, God, the land or her sheep-like, complacent fellow citizens.

  Jane was not born with loathing for southern Ontario. Her first memories of Barrow were good, if banal: a dying bird in her parents’ back garden, burrs sticking to her school dress and scratching her thighs when she sat down, snow at Christmas, a strong wind plucking an umbrella from the ground and daintily planting it in a field some distance away. There were thousands of such impressions, and all of them added up to a childhood. As she grew up, however, the bright memories faded or were pushed aside so that, by twelve, she could not have named anything interesting about Barrow. The list of great things it did not have, on the other hand, grew wildly: from the general (Barrow did not have a bar that served elegant drinks) to the specific (Barrow had no Sphinx, no Louvre, no Hagia Sophia). By the age of twelve, Jane Alexandra Richardson was aware that she had been born in a backwater.

  For some, hatred of home is mixed with a tincture of self-hatred. But this wasn’t so for Jane. She did not think it her fault she’d been born in Barrow. Nor did she exclusively blame her parents, both of whom she loved. Her dislike of Barrow was imperturbable and objective. At fourteen, she had promised herself she would leave the town as soon as she turned sixteen. She would move to the United States, to San Francisco, say, and send for her parents when she had made the beginnings of her fortune. But she had not left at sixteen. She’d been too frightened to leave. Her parents had insisted she finish her education, and her friends had warned her about cities and violence. And she had listened. And in listening to others, she’d betrayed herself. And as far as she was concerned, she continued to betray herself with every moment that passed with her still in Barrow.

  Now that she was almost twenty-one, she had to leave. Otherwise she would be, like her sisters and her sisters’ friends, married and stuck with two or three children by the time she was twenty-five. That thought, the thought of herself lumbered with children and trapped in Barrow, made her life almost unbearable.

  To state an obvious point that was not obvious to Robbie: Jane Richardson did not love him the way he loved her. She was relieved that, if things went to plan, Robbie would marry another woman. Though it was conceivable Robbie might consider leaving Barrow, Jane believed he was too much of the place. To her, it seemed he belonged to the town she wanted to leave. As far as Jane was concerned, Elizabeth Denny belonged to Barrow as well. Practically speaking, therefore, Robbie belonged to Elizabeth already, and that suited Jane fine.

  Now, at about the moment Robbie was speaking to Anne Bigland and playing shepherd, Jane was in Atkinson’s Beauty Parlour getting her hair done. It wasn’t something she did often, preferring to stay away from the older women who were Agnes Atkinson’s clients. But then, every three months or so, while reading Vogue or New York magazine, Jane would see a hairstyle she found irresistible. Old Mrs. Atkinson could not always reproduce them exactly, but she always tried and, more, always came fairly close, however odd the style might be. The two of them, the hairdresser in her sixties and the restless young woman, would go carefully over the picture (or pictures taken from different angles, if they were lucky), discussing how best to recreate such-and-such an effect, what to do at the back when there was no picture of the back of the model’s head and so on. Then Agnes Atkinson would do her best to copy the style in question.

  On this day, the hairstyle Jane found in the pages of Vogue was one that made it look as if the model had just stepped out of bed: au naturel, as if a hairdresser hadn’t touched her.

  – What will they think of next? said Mrs. Atkinson.

  But it gave her pleasure to do this thing that no one but Jane Richardson would ask her to do. ‘Can you do my hair so it looks like you haven’t done it?’: this idea was, for Agnes Atkinson, very close to a metaphysical proposition. It was right up there with the tree falling in the forest and making – or not making – a sound.

  Agnes had washed and shampooed Jane’s hair, and she was about to cut it when Elizabeth Denny came into the salon. All talk stopped. The only sound was the sound of the hair dryers. And, of course, no one knew quite where to look. There were seven women in the salon when Elizabeth entered. Three stared at Elizabeth, then turned to Jane. Three looked at Jane, watching for a reaction, and one woman stared at Elizabeth, shocked that she had committed such an obvious faux pas. After a while, all seven looked elsewhere. Those who had been staring at Jane stared at Elizabeth and vice versa, while the three who had been looking from one to the other carried on looking this way and that.

  Without looking at Jane, who was (warily) looking at her, Elizabeth sat in a chair by the door. She picked up a magazine that lay on the low table: Maclean’s, a pointless rag that she associated with doctors’ offices and outhouses near Goderich. Without looking up at the others, Elizabeth turned to the back of the magazine, staring at an article by some frothy blowhard before reading the account of a film about vampires and the review of a novel about a dying child.

  The tension that had come at Elizabeth’s entrance went (somewhat) underground, lightly torched by the meaningless words that sprang up, like small fires, to distract from this confrontation between a woman and the woman who – everyone knew – was sleeping with her fiancé.

  – Are you staying in town f
or Barrow Day?

  – What weather we’re having. My back garden’s so dry I have to water it three times a day or it’ll likely blow away.

  – You know, I never have liked boughten salads.

  After a while, when it appeared Elizabeth was not looking for trouble, talk turned to more ‘serious’ things, though everyone kept an eye on the young women. Until finally, upset by Elizabeth’s presence, Jane Richardson said

  – Liz, are you here to talk to me?

  – Not while you’re getting your hair done, said Elizabeth.

  – I don’t have much time afterwards.

  – I don’t have much to say.

  Elizabeth returned to the book review. Jane, unable to move her head freely as Mrs. Atkinson cut her hair, stared at the mirror facing her, wondering if she’d made a mistake with the style she’d chosen. Was it too odd? But then, whenever she had her hair cut, she inevitably had doubts. Once the scissors got going, she would feel an almost irresistible urge to get up from the chair. On this day, however, Liz Denny distracted her somewhat from her doubts.

  The other women in the salon were now more alert than ever. Elizabeth had said ‘I don’t have much to say.’ What could that mean? Would she demand Jane leave her fiancé alone? And what if Jane said no? Would things turn, God forbid, physical? These questions, which would be voiced when the young women had gone, were not simple prurience or love of gossip. Most of the women in the salon knew Jane and Elizabeth. A few had known them since they were little girls, so it was strange to see them like this, rivals for a young man they had also known for years. Others, if they did not know them quite so well, knew their relatives or their teachers or their friends. For all intents and purposes, the women in the salon were related to both girls, if not by blood then by whatever the bond is that a place forges among people.

  Most of them were on Elizabeth’s side. The one who’d been wronged would have had their sympathy anyway. But Jane, with her American hairstyles, was the kind of person who would do better in some big city, while Elizabeth was one of them. In the struggle between the two women, a communal drama was being played out. It wasn’t like a sporting event or a boxing match; it was a test of right and wrong, of morality. For all save Mrs. Atkinson – who favoured Jane – a ‘victory’ for Jane would represent a terrible wrong. It would deepen their (somewhat hidden) mistrust of Jane’s ‘Sarnia ways’ and turn them even more squarely against her.