by Stef Penney
‘My name is Frances,’ she said in a noticeable Irish brogue. She had a sharp look about her with her eyes open; alert.
‘Hello Frances,’ I said, nervous. What if she didn’t like us?
‘Are you going to be my Mama?’ she asked.
I felt my face go hot as I nodded. She went quiet after that. We took her inside and I made the nicest dinner I could muster–whitefish and vegetables and tea with lots of sugar, although she didn’t eat much, and stared at the fish as though she wasn’t sure what it was. She didn’t say another word, her dark blue eyes flickering from one of us to the other. She was exhausted. I picked her up in my arms and carried her upstairs. The sensation of holding this hot, limp body made me tremble with feeling. Her bones felt fragile under my hands and she smelt stale, like an unaired room. Since she was almost asleep I just took off the dress, shoes and socks, and tucked a blanket around her. I watched as she twitched in her sleep.
Frances’s parents had arrived at Belle Isle aboard a packet ship called the Sarah. The steerage was packed with Irish from County Mayo, which was still suffering after the potato famine. Like those people who catch onto a fad long after it has gone out of fashion, they developed typhus fever on board, although the worst of the epidemics had subsided. Nearly a hundred men, women and children died on that ship, which sank on its return journey to Liverpool. Several children were orphaned and had been taken to the nunnery until they could be found homes.
The next morning I went to the spare room to find Frances still asleep, although when I touched her shoulder gently I had the impression that she was pretending. I realised she was scared; perhaps she had heard terrible stories about Canadian farmers and thought we were going to treat her as a slave. Smiling at her, I took her hand and led her downstairs to where I’d prepared a tub of hot water in front of the stove. She kept her eyes on the floor as she lifted her arms for me to peel off the long petticoat.
I ran out of the house, looking for Angus, who was splitting wood at the corner of the house.
‘Angus,’ I hissed, feeling angry and stupid at the same time.
He turned round, axe in hand, frowning at me, puzzled. ‘Is something wrong? Is she all right?’
I shook my head to the first question. It occurred to me that he knew, yet I instantly dismissed the idea. Used to me, he turned back to the log; down came the axe; neat halves span into the log basket.
‘Angus, you got a boy.’
He put the axe down. He didn’t know. We went back inside to where the child was playing idly with the soap in the bathtub, letting it pop up through his fingers. His eyes were large and wary. He wasn’t surprised to see us staring at him.
‘Do you want me to go back?’ he asked.
‘No, of course not.’ I knelt beside him and took the soap from his hands. The shoulder blades stuck out like wing stumps on his skeletal back.
‘Let me.’ I took the soap and began to wash him, hoping my hands would tell him more than words that it didn’t matter. Angus went back to the woodpile, and let the door bang behind him.
Francis never seemed surprised that he had come to us dressed as a girl. We pondered for hours over the French Sisters’ motives–did they think a girl would find a home more easily than a boy? Yet there had been boys in the group of orphans. Had they simply not noticed, been blinded by the beauty of his face, and dressed him in the clothes that seemed to suit it best? Francis himself didn’t offer an explanation, or express any shame; nor did he offer resistance when I made him some trousers and shirts and cut off his long hair.
He thinks we never forgave him for it, but that’s not so with me. With my husband though, I’m not sure. A Highlander through and through, he doesn’t like to be made a fool of, and I don’t know that he ever recovered from the shock. It was all right when Francis was a child. He could be very funny, clowning and mimicking. But we all got older, and things changed, as they always seem to, for the worse. He grew into a youth who never seemed to fit with the others. I watched him try to be stoic and tough, to cultivate a foolhardy courage and that casual disrespect for danger that is common currency in the backwoods. To be a man you have to be brave and enduring, to make light of pain and hardship. Never complain. Never falter. I saw him fail. We should have lived in Toronto, or New York, then maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. But what pass for heroics in a softer world are daily chores here. He stopped trying to be like the others; he became surly and taciturn, no longer responded to affection, wouldn’t touch me.
Now he is seventeen. His Irish accent is quite gone, but in some ways he is as much a stranger as ever. He looks like the changeling he is; they say there is Spanish blood in some Irish, and to look at Francis you would believe it–he is as dark as Angus and I are fair. Ann Pretty once made a laboured joke that he had come to us from a plague, and had become our own personal plague. I was furious with her (she laughed at me, of course), but the words stuck and barge out of my memory whenever Francis is storming through the house, slamming doors and grunting as if he were barely able to speak. I have to remind myself of my own youth and bite my tongue. My husband is less tolerant. They can go for days on end without a good word passing between them.
That is why I was afraid to tell Angus that I have not seen Francis since the day before. Still, I resent him for not asking. Soon it will be morning and our son has not been home for forty-eight hours. He has done this before–he will go on solitary fishing trips that last for two or three days, and return, usually without fish and with barely a word about what he has done. I suspect that he hates to kill anything; the fishing is just a cloak for his desire to be alone.
I must have fallen asleep in the chair, because I wake when it is nearly light, stiff and cold. Francis has not returned. Much as I try and tell myself it is a coincidence, just another extended fishing-for-nothing trip, the thought keeps coming back to me that my son has disappeared on the day of the only murder that Dove River has ever known.
First light falls on three riders making their way from the west. They have been travelling for hours already, and daylight comes as a relief, especially to the man at the rear. Donald Moody finds the half-light a particular strain on his weak eyes; no matter how he rams his spectacles up against his nose, this monochrome world is full of uncertain distances and subtle, shifting shapes. It is also freezing. Even wrapped in layers of wool and a skin coat with the fur on the inside, his limbs are numb and long past aching. Donald breathes in the thin, sweet air, so different from that of his native Glasgow, sooty and raw at this time of year. The air is so clear that the unhindered sunlight seems to travel further; when the sun has just broken the horizon, like now, their shadows reach behind them forever.
His horse, which has been crowding the mount ahead, stumbles and rams its nose into the grey’s hindquarters, earning a warning swish of the tail.
‘Curse you, Moody,’ says the man in front of him. Donald’s brute of a mount is continually either lagging behind or bumping into the quarters of Mackinley’s beast.
‘Sorry sir.’ Donald tugs at the reins and the horse flattens its ears. It was bought from a Frenchman and seems to have inherited some of his anti-British prejudice.
Mackinley’s back radiates disapproval. His mount is perfectly behaved, like the horse in front of him. But then Donald is continually being reminded of his greenness–he has been in Canada just over a year and still makes huge blunders with Company etiquette. No one ever warns him in advance, because almost their sole entertainment is to watch him struggle along, falling into bogs and offending locals. Not that the other men are exactly unkind, but it is clearly the way here: the most junior member of staff must serve his apprenticeship as a figure of fun. Most of the Company men have education, courage and a spirit of adventure, and find their lives in the big country sorely lacking in incident. There is danger (as advertised), but it is the danger of frostbite or exposure rather than unarmed combat with wild animals or war with hostile natives. Their daily lives are made up o
f petty endurances–of cold, darkness, screaming boredom, and the overconsumption of bad liquor. Joining the Company, Donald realised early on, was like being sent to a labour camp, only with more paperwork.
The man in front, Mackinley, is the factor of Fort Edgar, and leading them is a native employee, Jacob, who insists on accompanying Donald everywhere, rather to his embarrassment. Donald does not much care for Mackinley, who is sarcastic and bluff by turns–a two-pronged method of deflecting the criticism he seems to expect from every quarter. He guesses that Mackinley is so touchy because he feels socially inferior to some of the men beneath him, Donald included, and is constantly on the look-out for signs of disrespect. Donald knows somehow that if Mackinley were less concerned about such things, he would be more respected, but the man is not likely to change now. As for himself, he is aware that Mackinley and the others regard him as a rather effete bean counter; useful enough, but hardly a real backwoods adventurer in the old style.
When he got off the ship from Glasgow, he meant to be himself, and let the men take him as they found him. But he has in fact made valiant attempts to improve his image in their eyes. For one thing, he steadily increased his tolerance of the rough alcohol that is the lifeblood of the fort, although it does not agree with him. When he first arrived he would sip politely at the rum they decanted from vast smelly barrels, thinking he had never tasted anything so disgusting. The other men noted his abstinence, and left him marooned as they journeyed into the realms of drunkenness, telling long, boring stories and laughing repeatedly at the same jokes. Donald put up with this for as long as he could, but the loneliness weighed on him until he could no longer bear it. The first time he got spectacularly drunk the men cheered, slapping him on the back when he vomited onto his knees. Through the nausea and acrid dampness Donald felt a kernel of warmth: he belonged–finally they would accept him as one of them. But, although the rum no longer tasted as bad as it once did, he was aware that the others treated him with a sort of amused tolerance. He was still just the junior accountant.
The other bright idea he had to prove himself had been to organise a rugby football match. Overall this was disastrous, but out of it had come one small ray of light, which causes him to pull himself straighter in the saddle.
Fort Edgar is a civilised posting compared to most of the Company’s forts. It lies near the shore of the Great Lake, a huddle of wooden buildings inside a palisade–the whole obstinately sheltering from a stunning prospect of islands and bay behind a belt of spruce. But what makes Fort Edgar civilised is the proximity of settlers, and the nearest are at Caulfield on Dove River. The residents of Caulfield are happy to live near the trading post as it is stocked with imported English goods and upstanding Company men. The traders are equally happy to be near Caulfield, as it is stocked with English-speaking white women, who can occasionally be persuaded to decorate the fort’s dances and other social events–like rugby matches.
On the morning of the match, he found that he was nervous. The men were sullen and bleary-eyed after a marathon drinking session, and Donald was unnerved to see a party of visitors arrive. He was even more unnerved when he met them–a tall, stern-looking man who was the image of a hell-fire preacher, and his two daughters, who were excited to be surrounded by so many youngish, unattached men.
The Knox sisters watched the proceedings politely, utterly mystified. Their father had attempted to explain the rules, as he knew them, on the journey to Fort Edgar, but his grasp of the game was rusty and he had only confused them more. The players moved around the meadow in a large ragged knot, the ball (a weighty lump stitched by a voyageur’s wife) generally invisible.
As the game progressed, the mood darkened. Donald’s team seemed to have reached a consensus to keep him out of the game, and ignored his shouts to pass to him. He ran up and down, hoping the girls could not tell that he was superfluous, when the ball came rolling towards him, leaking bits of furry stuffing. He picked it up and ran up the pitch, determined to make his mark, when he found himself on the ground, winded. A short half-breed, Jacob, grabbed the ball and ran, and Donald gave chase, determined not to let his opportunity slip. He hurled himself at Jacob, slicing the man’s legs from under him in a severe but fair tackle. A giant steersman scooped up the ball and scored.
As he lay on the ground, Donald’s triumphant cheer gurgled in his throat. He lifted his hands from his stomach to see them dark and warm, and Jacob standing over him with a knife in his hand, his features slowly animating into an expression of horror.
The spectators eventually realised something was amiss and rushed the pitch. The players gathered round Donald, whose first recognisable emotion was embarrassment. He saw the magistrate bending over him with an expression of avuncular concern.
‘… barely injured. Accident … heat of the moment.’
Jacob was distraught, tears running down his face. Knox peered at the wound. ‘Maria, pass your shawl.’
Maria, the less pretty daughter, tore off her shawl, but it was Susannah’s upside-down face that Donald fixed on as the shawl was pressed to his wound.
He began to feel a dull ache in his gut, and to notice how cold he was. The game forgotten, the players stood around awkwardly, lighting their pipes. But Donald met Susannah’s eyes, which were full of concern, and found that he no longer cared about the outcome of the match, or whether he had displayed rugged and manly qualities, or even that his lifeblood was now seeping through his capote, turning it brown. He was in love.
The wound had the strange outcome of making Jacob his undying friend. He had come to Donald’s bedside the day after the match, in tears, expressing his deep and terrible regret. It was drink that had made him do it; he had been possessed by the bad spirit, and he would atone for the injury by personally looking after Donald for as long as he remained in the country. Donald was touched, and when he smiled his forgiveness and held out his hand, Jacob smiled back. It was perhaps the first real smile of friendship he had seen in this country.
Donald staggers when he slides off his horse and tries to stamp some circulation back into his limbs. He is unwillingly impressed by the size and elegance of the house they have come to; especially thinking of Susannah, and how much more unattainable it makes her. But Knox smiles warmly at them when he comes out, then looks with ill-concealed alarm at Jacob.
‘Is this your guide?’ he asks.
‘This is Jacob,’ Donald says, feeling heat rise in his cheeks, but Jacob doesn’t seem offended.
‘A great friend of Moody’s,’ puts in Mackinley waspishly.
The magistrate is puzzled, since he is almost certain the last time he saw the man he was sticking a knife into Donald’s guts. He assumes he is mistaken.
Knox tells them what he knows and Donald takes notes. It doesn’t take long to write down the known facts. Tacitly they know there is no hope of finding the perpetrator unless someone saw something, but someone always sees something in a community like this; gossip is the lifeblood of small country places. Donald stacks fresh paper on top of his notes and straightens it with an efficient tap as they get up to visit the scene of the crime. He is not looking forward to this part and hopes he won’t disgrace himself by becoming nauseous, or–he tortures himself by imagining the worst possible outcome–what if he were to burst into tears? He has never seen a dead body before, not even his grandfather. Though this is unlikely, he imagines with an almost pleasurable horror the teasing he would endure. He would never live it down; he would have to return to Glasgow incognito, probably live under another name …
Thus engaged, the journey to the cabin passes in a flash.
News travels fast these days, thinks Thomas Sturrock. Even where there are no roads or railways, news, or its nebulous cousin rumour, travels like lightning over vast distances. It is a strange phenomenon, and one that might benefit from the attention of a diligent mind such as his. A short monograph, perhaps? The Globe or the Star might be interested in such an item, if it were amusing.
He has allowed himself to think, on occasion over the past few years, that he has become even more prepossessing with age. His hair is silver, swept back from a high and elegant forehead, worn slightly long and curling round his ears. His coat is old-fashioned but well cut and rather rakish, of a dark blue that echoes his eyes, no dimmer now than thirty years ago. His trousers are natty. His face is finely made and hawk-like, agreeably honed with outdoor living. There is a spotted and cloudy mirror hanging on the wall opposite, and it reminds him that, even in these straitened circumstances, he is a rare figure of a man. This secret vanity, which he grants himself rarely as a small (and, more importantly, free) pleasure, makes him smile at himself. ‘You are undoubtedly a ridiculous old man,’ he silently tells his reflection, sipping cold coffee.
Thomas Sturrock is engaged in his usual occupation–that of sitting in slightly shabby coffeehouses (this one is called the Rising Sun), making one cup of coffee last an hour or two. The musing about news and rumour have come from somewhere, he realises, when he finds that he is listening to a conversation being carried on behind him. Not eavesdropping–he would never stoop to such a thing–but something has caught his wandering mind and now he tries to work out what it was that hooked him … Caulfield, that was it, someone mentioned the name Caulfield. Sturrock, whose mind as well as his dress sense is as sharp as it ever was, knows someone who lives there, although he has not seen them for a while.
‘They said you’d never seen anything like it. Drenched in blood, all up the walls and everything … must have been Indian raiders …’
(Well, no one can be blamed for listening to a conversation like that.)
‘Left to rot in his cabin … had been there for days. Flies crawling over him, thick as a blanket. Imagine the smell.’
The companion agrees.
‘No reason for it, nothing was stolen. Killed in his sleep.’
