A Sorrowful Sanctuary

by Iona Whishaw

  Lane, following the instructions Bales gave her, bumped down the road to the chicken farm. A woman, whom Lane assumed was Mrs. Castle, was outside dressed in a coverall with a white scarf wrapped around her hair and tied over her forehead. She had a hammer in her hand and a trio of nails in her mouth. She turned away from the fence she was mending and watched as Lane got out of her car.

  “Good morning. I’ve just been up to the shop for some of your lovely eggs, and Mr. Bales says you haven’t been able to deliver them the last few days. I said I’d be happy to take them up the hill to him. After buying some for myself, of course!” She turned on her most engaging smile. If ever a woman needed cheering up, it was this one. Her angular face looked drawn with a permanent cast of worry.

  The woman took the nails out of her mouth and put them on top of a post. “Coyotes,” she said, indicating the chicken wire she was securing onto the wooden fence. “Crafty beggars. I got eggs boxed up and ready to go, so if you want to take them up there that would be fine. Want to come in for a coffee? I’ve been at it all morning. I’m Vanessa.” She didn’t put out a hand but went instead up the stairs into the house.

  “I’m Lane Winslow. I live up at King’s Cove,” Lane offered, following her. The front door issued directly into a cluttered kitchen, every surface of which was piled with crates and cardboard egg boxes. Vanessa Castle cleared a space on her kitchen table and pulled out a chair. The table was by the lakeside window, and a band of sunlight shone across the table’s painted lawn-green surface. It would be bright looking, Lane thought, under other circumstances. She waited while her hostess filled two mugs with coffee from the percolator that had been keeping warm on the stove.

  “You’re not from here,” Vanessa said. “I’ve got no milk, sorry.”

  “This is fine. No, I’m from London.” That was easier than the complicated story that was her life. “I moved here a year or so ago. I love it.”

  “Is there a Mr. Winslow?”

  “No. I was busy working during the war and never got around to it, I’m afraid.”

  Vanessa stretched her legs out under the table. “There was a Mr. Castle. Finally died on me. Drink, according to what the doctor said. I wasn’t sorry to see him go, and neither was my son. If it weren’t for my boy, I would say I was sorry I ever married, but a woman needs a man to look after her, so, there you are.”

  Unable to think of what to say to that Lane asked instead, “How old is your son? He must be a big help around the farm.”

  Vanessa’s mouth turned down, as if she were holding back feelings. “He’s twenty. He did some work here, but he had a good job as a mechanic. Got laid off on account of a woman who got his job at the garage, and he took off. I haven’t seen him since last Friday morning, if you want the truth. I told the police, but they don’t seem inclined to help. I told them I know something is wrong. He wouldn’t go off like that. A woman!”

  “How very difficult and worrisome for you.” Lane wanted to ask if she had relations he’d go to, or friends, but knew that Darling would already have asked that.

  “He’s a good boy. He knew what was right. A woman taking a man’s job isn’t right. And now all these foreigners are coming in, taking our jobs. All these darkies and Japs and the like.”

  Lane hesitated. Here was a street she didn’t want to go down with this bitter woman. “Do you think he went off because he was upset about losing his job?”

  “Maybe, at first. But he wouldn’t stay away, not without telling me. I’m on the phone here.”

  “What are you afraid might happen to him?”

  This question seemed to flummox the distressed mother. She leaned back, looked out the window, and shook her head. “This country isn’t what it used to be. It used to be a good place for people like you and me. God-fearing Christians. British stock. Now look. Hitler wasn’t far wrong, you know.”

  Lane, who thought Hitler very far wrong, struggled with the logic of this woman’s resentment. She’d met her share of people at home who were very keen on winning the war but nevertheless harboured views not unlike this one.

  “My son doesn’t have the predilection my husband did. But I wouldn’t put it past some degenerate to try to get him to drink . . . then . . .”

  “You’re worried he might have been angry about his job and gone off to drink somewhere?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know, okay. I just know he’s gone. He hasn’t called and he isn’t with the others up north.”

  “Others?”

  “His friends. Do you want these eggs or don’t you? I haven’t got all day.” Mrs. Castle had stood up and was piling egg cartons onto a wooden flat.

  “Of course. Listen, you must have had trouble getting your groceries as well. Why don’t we put these in the car, and you let me drive you up to the store. You can deliver them yourself, and then Mr. Bales can pay you. I could bring you and any supplies you need back here.”

  “I gotta finish this fence,” Vanessa said doubtfully.

  “Or I could run the eggs up and pick up what you need,” Lane offered.

  “Well, if you don’t mind. Bales knows what I get, it’s always the same. Tell him to take it out of what he’ll owe me.”

  Relieved to be driving away from the dark and complicated anger that animated the world view of Mrs. Castle, Lane looked at the gentle slope of land with the rows of trees and the green cover of grasses, already turning to gold with the lack of rain. The peaceful, kindly rural landscape seemed such a contrast to the roiling anger and very justifiable fear Mrs. Castle felt at the unexplained absence of her son.

  Pulling up next to the store, Lane noted that the Lab had moved closer to the road, following the sun. Bales came out and took the crate of eggs out of the car and into the shop.

  “I’ve offered to bring her groceries back to her. She says you know what she usually gets,” Lane said, once he’d pulled some money from the drawer of the register.

  “Her son shouldn’t have gone off with her car like that,” Bales opined as he put bread, milk, coffee, and an assortment of packages of cereal and cookies on his counter.

  “She’s worried something’s happened to him. She’s notified the police, apparently.” Lane had, of course, known this before, from the police themselves.

  “Has she, now?” Bales said, interested. “Whatever trouble he’s in, he got into it honestly. The boy’s dad was trouble. He signed up in ’16 and came back strange. Vanessa’s father was a local politician, you know. The Dominion for the British sort of thing. I never did see what he was on about. Aside from a few harmless tribes and some Doukhobors, it’s about as white a country as you can get. I think that’s about right,” he said, putting a can of Macdonald’s Export tobacco into the last remaining corner of the wooden flat Mrs. Castle had sent the eggs up in. “That’s two dollars and ten cents.”

  Lane paid him out of the money he’d given her for the eggs and drove back toward the lake. If Vanessa Castle had been the daughter of a politician, she was used to a better life. More to be pitied than censured? Lane wondered. Circumstances sometimes dictated people’s political views, and perhaps the difficult life she now lived had coloured her outlook. Unfortunately, holding repellent views was not a crime. After all, that was what Canada was supposed to be about, Lane thought, the freedom and space to think what you want. She shuddered. It was, she found, hard to accept this easily after the war she’d just been through. Still, Vanessa was harmless enough, she supposed, with her egg farming, far from any danger from the foreign hordes she so feared.

  Lane pursed her lips as she took her own groceries out of the car at home. She had had an earful, she thought, and was no closer to understanding where Mrs. Castle’s son might be, what with his mother’s evasions and Bales’s revelation that the boy might be no better than he should be. She could hear her phone ringing as she opened the door
. She waited. Two shorts and a long. It was for her. She put her groceries on the floor and pulled the earpiece off the hook. “KC 431, Lane Winslow speaking.”

  “Oh, Lane, you will never guess what Philip found at the beach today! It—” but the phone went dead. She really would have to get it fixed. She’d put her groceries away and go up to Angela’s to find what the heck it was that Philip had found.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Kootenay Lake, August 1910

  Eleanor Suskind sat in a rattan chair near a luxuriously laid tea table on what, she thought, must be the most perfect August afternoon. She had been surprised, when she and her aunt were ushered through the house to the back garden, by the display of white lace tablecloths, china, and plates of exquisite sandwiches, biscuits, and cakes. A crowd was already gathered outside, young people standing in clusters holding plates and laughing. A group of people were playing croquet at some remove from the tea tables. Older people were sitting in small groupings of chairs. While the sun was still high, it was filtered through the leaves of weeping willow and birch and evergreen, casting a shower of gold and shadow across the lawn.

  “Do sit over here, ladies. I should try to find Mr. Thomas. You will want to meet him,” Mrs. Franklin said, and then added, “Ah, Lady Armstrong, you know Miss Suskind of course, and this is her lovely niece Eleanor. She’s visiting for the summer. I must find Edward!” Mrs. Franklin looked distractedly around the crowd of guests and then bustled off. A maid wearing a white cap offered them tea, and then Eleanor settled back to gaze at the scene. In a kind of ecstasy at the beauty of the afternoon, she stretched out her legs and waggled her feet.

  “I can’t help wondering what it’s like here in winter. It’s so utterly beautiful now. Like an English summer day, but not, if you understand me,” she said to Lady Armstrong, who smiled and put her teacup on the little table beside her.

  “It is a bit of a wilderness, there’s no denying it, but with a good stove it has its charms. Piles of puffy snow. Very picturesque. I must say, I don’t mind it. There is, as you see”—she indicated the forest that seemed to be pressing in, trying to reclaim the lawn and gardens of this sturdy white house with its defiant and sweeping English garden—“plenty of wood.”

  “Why did you come out?” Eleanor asked.

  “My husband took a diplomatic job in Ottawa. Nothing grand. A sort of Dominion liaison, and it stuck. Society at home can be so stuffy.” Lady Armstrong laughed. “Of course, here everyone tries to outdo everyone else in manners. But our children all grow up like barbarians, nevertheless. Look at my boys.” She pointed to where a young man of about twenty-two had collapsed into a chair. A younger boy lay spread out on a blanket at his feet. “Kenneth and John. They have run quite wild. It took all my persuasion to get them out of their suspenders and dungarees and into some proper clothes.” She smiled at her sons with such evident fondness that Eleanor turned to look at them. It seemed to her that someone who engendered this much love must be wonderful indeed. “The young man over there is my nephew, Robin. He came out to stay with us when his parents died.” Robin was talking to two pretty young women that Eleanor deemed to be still in their teens. “You must allow me to invite you and your aunt to come to tea next Saturday. We live, of course, much more humbly, but our view is lovely.”

  “Kenny, John, this is Miss Suskind, who is visiting for the summer.”

  Kenneth Armstrong, feeling as though he had been caught staring, turned away in confusion. He had, in truth, been unable to take his eyes off Miss Suskind. She was slender, with an expression of utter sweetness, but she had an underlying look of strength and determination. Her blond hair, rolled into a knot at her neck, escaped in strands from under her hat. When she turned to look at him, her sea-blue eyes sparkled with amusement and he thought, I am lost.

  He stood up and bowed, looking only briefly into Eleanor’s eyes. His brother, John, shook her hand eagerly. “Topping! How long did it take to get here? I’m dying to go back to the old country!”

  “John is always dying to be anywhere else,” commented his mother. “Kenneth, on the other hand, is always dying to stay right here and escape any danger of being forced into any enterprise requiring a suit.”

  Eleanor was about to make a response to John about the length of her trip, and was scheming about how she might engage the handsome and shy Kenneth Armstrong in some conversation when her view was obstructed by the looming figures of Mrs. Franklin and a man, whom she had by the arm as if she were trying to position him in exactly the right location in the tableau that was her garden party.

  “Please, meet our young guest,” Mrs. Franklin said. “Miss Suskind, this our local politico, Mr. Edward Thomas. He is our distinguished representative in Victoria.”

  Mr. Thomas, a handsome man, though perhaps tending to middle-aged stoutness, with sandy hair and blue eyes, attired in an obviously expensive linen suit, bowed and took her hand. “Miss Suskind, how very charming!” A chair was brought and he sat next to her. “Now then, you are here on a visit. What do you think of our little community?”

  Eleanor glanced toward Kenneth Armstrong, but he had been diverted by something his mother was saying to him. “It is beautiful. I’m not sure I expected to be sitting in my best clothes drinking tea out of beautiful china. I thought there would be more wilderness.”

  “But my dear, the wilderness encroaches on us at every moment. We have carved a miracle from it. Mines, timber, orchards even. There has never been such a land of opportunity! I am sure, dear Lady Armstrong, that you must agree with me.”

  Lady Armstrong inclined her head in his direction and then returned to talking to her boys.

  Eleanor wanted to say that he sounded like a travel guide but instead said, “It must be an honour to represent the local area.”

  “How well you understand me! It is. I feel keenly the responsibility to guide and shape the development of this part of the Dominion. We ought to support the enterprises and the men who build them. I am in a unique position in government to ensure that those who immigrate here are people who will contribute to the growth of the community. Good English stock. Hard workers. People with vision. And we shall need wives for them.” Here he smiled broadly at her, in a way that made Eleanor suppress an instinct to recoil. She was saved from the necessity of having to answer by the arrival of a tall woman who was struggling to hold a parasol and a baby dressed in a frilly bonnet and gown who was wiggling and straining in an effort to see everything.

  “Edward, do be a dear and fetch the perambulator,” the woman said, her face a mask of near disapproval.

  “Ah. The wife,” Thomas said, winking at Eleanor. “Our daughter.” He got up and bowed and followed his wife, who was sweeping off around the side of the house. She apparently had no wish to be introduced to Eleanor.

  Lady Armstrong shook her head. “He never stops glad-handing to draw breath. It must be exhausting being him.”

  “Is he any good at his job?” Eleanor asked. “I expect people vote for him to get him to go away to Victoria.”

  Lady Armstrong laughed. “He’s good enough. He came out here and made a fortune and, though it is churlish to say it, probably supports legislation that is kind toward his business interests. Still, he is right, I suppose. We must build up immigration, develop the land, and whatnot. I find it exhausting to think about all the industry he envisions. I imagine our little community awash with prospectors and sawmill operators, if we aren’t careful. We just want to grow fruit and live in peace. I have spent a good deal of time persuading him that prosperity may include agricultural interests as well. He’s an ambitious man. And I’m sorry to say he loves someone with a title to an almost intolerable degree.”

  “I believe he was trying to recruit me to come and be someone’s wife. He might have called me ‘good British stock’ if his wife hadn’t come along and asked for the pram.”

  La
dy Armstrong laughed in a way that Eleanor found delightful. It was a laugh full of fun and undisguised mirth. She must, Eleanor thought, have been not only beautiful but also unconventional when she was young. “Yes. He does go on. Very keen. I suspect from this that he lacks the imagination to envision a world that is just left on its own. Still, he works hard. One should give him that. He’s been able to have only one child, after, one hears, years of trying. Much to his chagrin, it’s a girl. He’s the sort of man who no doubt sees a future only in a son. Well, I have an embarrassment of riches, don’t I, with two sons. I’d have loved to have a daughter, as jolly as these two are. I don’t envy that little girl. I expect he ignores his family in his effort to make himself agreeable to everyone else.”

  “Oh, how lovely!” Eleanor cried.

  Kenneth looked up to see what Eleanor was exclaiming over. Two west highland terrier puppies had been released from somewhere, and Eleanor was bending to pick one up. “We always had these in my family! Yes, we did,” she cooed to the wiggling puppy on her lap. “Do you breed them?” She turned to her hostess, Mrs. Franklin.

  “I do, yes. Happy to set you up with one. Got a nice litter. These two little fellows are still looking for homes.”

  “I wish I could! It wouldn’t be fair, though. I’m only here for three months and then I’d have to leave it to go home to finish my studies. Auntie, you wouldn’t keep it after I left, would you?”

  Eleanor’s aunt, a severe and erect specimen in the high-collared fashion of the previous decade, looked over her spectacles with a downturned mouth. “Certainly not. You shouldn’t think of doing anything so irresponsible.”

  Eleanor was undaunted. She glanced up, saw Kenneth looking at her, and winked. “I shall have to be satisfied with a little cuddle now.” And then everything changed. Kenneth Armstrong put down his teacup and went to where she was sitting. He stooped next to her and began to play with the second puppy, which was on the grass.