by Stef Penney
‘Mrs Ross. Delighted to meet you.’ Stewart takes my hand and bows slightly. I nod.
‘And you must be Moody. Delighted to make your acquaintance. Frank tells me you are based at Georgian Bay. A beautiful part of the country.’
‘Yes, it is,’ says Moody, smiling and shaking his hand. ‘And I am delighted to meet you, sir. I have heard much about you.’
‘Oh, well …’ Stewart shakes his head with a smile, seeming embarrassed. ‘Mr Parker. I believe thanks are in order for guiding these people on such a difficult journey.’
Parker hesitates for a fraction of a second and then shakes the proffered hand. There is not a trace of recognition on Stewart’s face as far as I can see.
‘Mr Stewart. I am pleased to meet you again.’
‘Again?’ Stewart has a look of slightly apologetic puzzlement. ‘I am sorry, I don’t recall …’
‘William Parker. Clear Lake. Fifteen years ago.’
‘Clear Lake? You’ll have to forgive me, Mr Parker, my memory isn’t what it used to be.’ His face is smiling pleasantly. Parker doesn’t smile.
‘Perhaps if you roll up your left sleeve, it will help.’
Stewart’s face changes and for a moment I can’t read it. Then he bursts out laughing, and claps Parker on the shoulder.
‘My God! How could I have forgotten? William! Yes, of course. Ah well, a long time ago, as you say.’ Then his face grows serious again. ‘I am sorry I couldn’t come to meet you as soon as I arrived. There has been a tragic accident, I am sure you heard.’
We nod, like children with their headmaster.
‘Nepapanees was one of my best men. We were hunting on a river not far from here.’ His voice tails off, and I think, although I’m not sure, that I see the gleam of tears in his eyes. ‘We were following some tracks and … I can still hardly believe what happened. Nepapanees was a very experienced tracker; a skilful hunter. No one knew more than he did about the bush. But as he was following a track that led out along the river, he stepped on a spot of weak ice and went through.’
He stops, his eyes focused on something not in the room. I notice that his face, which on first impression inspires such confidence, is also creased and tired. He could be forty. He could be fifteen years older. I can’t tell.
‘One minute he was there, the next he had gone. He went through, and though I crawled out as far as I could, I saw no sign of him. I even put my head under, but it was no good. I keep asking myself–perhaps I could have done more?’
He shakes his head. ‘You can do the same thing a thousand times, and think nothing of it. Like walking on ice. You get to know it, how thick it is, whether the current is strong or weak. And then the next time you set foot on it, after all those times when you knew it was safe, you make a mistake, and it does not bear your weight.’
Moody nods his head in sympathy. Parker is watching Stewart with minute attention, scrutinising him with the same look I saw on his face when he was studying the ground, looking for the trail. I don’t know what he finds so enigmatic; Stewart exhibits nothing but regret and sadness.
‘That was his wife out there?’ I ask.
‘Poor Elizabeth. Yes. They have four children too; four children without a father. A terrible business. I saw you went out to her.’ He speaks to Moody now. ‘Perhaps you thought us callous to leave her alone, but that is the way with these people. They believe that no one can say anything at such a time. They have to grieve in their own way’
‘But surely, they could tell her she was not alone? And in this weather …’
‘But in her particular grief, she is alone, is she not? He only had one wife, and she only one husband.’ He turns his startling blue eyes on me, and I cannot disagree. ‘It is particularly hard for her that I could not bring back his body. For Indians, you know, drowning is unlucky. They believe that the spirit cannot go free. At least she is baptised, so perhaps she will find some comfort. And the children too. That is a blessing.’
Despite the atmosphere of shock, Stewart insists on showing us around. The tour, something granted to all visitors as an act of courtesy, has a stilted and unreal quality, as if we are acting the parts of guests murmuring approval.
First he shows us the main building; the three-sided square. A single wooden storey with a corridor as its spine, and rooms on either side. As we walk, the difference between Hanover’s past and its present becomes increasingly apparent. One whole wing was meant for guests; at least a dozen of them. The rooms we have been given look outward, over the river and the plain. Now the view is all white and grey horizontals that blend imperceptibly into each other, bisected by the dirty brown of the palisade. But in summer it must be beautiful. Then there is the dining room, which without a long table seems empty and forlorn. In the old days, Stewart tells us, when Hanover was at the centre of rich fur country, it held a hundred men and their families, and celebrated fat profits with feasts that lasted all night. But all this was years ago, long before Stewart’s tenure. For the past twenty years or so, it has operated with a skeleton staff, maintaining the Company’s fragile hold over the wilderness, more in honour of the past than for any sound financial reason. The long central wing is largely empty; formerly the residence of officers, now it is home to spiders and mice. Instead of a dozen Company officials, there are now just Stewart and Nesbit. The only other member of staff who lives in this building is the chief interpreter, Olivier, a boy no older than Francis. Stewart calls him to meet us, and if he is grief-stricken he hides it well. He is a quick-witted youth who seems eager to please, and Stewart tells us proudly that he is proficient in four languages, having the natural advantage of one French-speaking parent and one English-speaking, each from a different native tribe.
‘Olivier will go far in the Company,’ Stewart says, and Olivier beams with shy pleasure. I wonder if that is true; how far can a brown-skinned boy go in a company owned by foreigners? But then, perhaps he is not so badly off. He has a job and a talent, and in Stewart, a mentor of some sort.
From the third wing, made up of offices, Stewart takes us to the storehouse where the goods are stocked. They have shipped out most of their furs over the summer, he explains, so stocks are low. Trappers spend the winter hunting, and it is in spring that they bring the results to the post to sell. Donald asks questions about outfits and yields, and Stewart answers him with interest, flattering him. I glance at Parker, to gauge his reaction, but he doesn’t return my look. I feel snubbed. Ignored by the others, something catches my eye. I lean down and pick up a square of paper. Written on it are some numbers and letters: 66HBPH, followed by the names of animals. It reminds me that I still have the scrap of paper that Jammet had, perhaps, so carefully hidden in his cabin.
‘What is this?’ I pass the paper to Stewart.
‘That is a pack marker. When we pack the furs …’ he is addressing me alone, the only one who doesn’t know Company practice ‘… a list of contents goes on top so we know if we lose anything. The code at the top refers to the outfit–here the year to May last, the company, of course, the district, which is Missinaibi, designated by the letter P, and the post–Hanover, H. So every pack is identified with where it came from and when.’
I nod. I can’t remember the letters on Jammet’s scrap, only that it was from some years ago; perhaps when he worked there last. As an explanation this leaves a lot to be desired.
Beyond the storehouses are the stables, empty except for the dogs and a couple of squat ponies. And beyond that, the seven or eight wooden huts where the voyageurs live with their families, and the chapel.
‘Normally I would take you to meet everyone, but today … It is a close community, especially now that we are not so many. There is much grieving. Please feel free,’ he turns, and again seems to address me more than the others, ‘to go into the chapel whenever you choose. It is always open.’
‘Mr Stewart, I know you have many things on your mind at the moment, but you know that we are here for a reason?’ I don’t
care if it isn’t the right time to bring it up, I don’t want Moody getting there first.
‘Of course, yes. Frank mentioned something … You are looking for someone, is that right?’
‘My son. We have followed his trail. It led us here … or near here, at least. You haven’t seen any strangers recently? He is a youth of seventeen, black hair …’
‘No, I’m so sorry. We have had no one here, until you came. I’m afraid it had quite gone out of my mind, what with all this … I will ask the others. But no one has been here that I am aware.’
So that is it for the time being. Moody looks most unhappy with me, but that is the least of my problems.
Stewart leaves us to see to some Company business, and I turn to Parker and Moody. We have been left in Stewart’s sitting room, where a fire makes it relatively comfortable, and there is an oil painting above it, of angels.
‘Last night, just after we got here, I heard Nesbit threatening a woman. He said she would feel his hand if she didn’t keep quiet “about him”. That’s what he said–“about him”. She was arguing; she refused, I think. And then he said something would happen to her when “he” came back. That must have been Stewart.’
‘Who was this?’ asks Moody.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her, and she was speaking more quietly than him.’
I hesitate over whether to tell Moody about Nesbit and Norah. Something makes me think it was her; she looks the type to argue. But then the door opens and Olivier the young interpreter comes in. It seems that he has been sent to entertain us. But it feels to me as though someone wants us watched.
She once heard of a woman who was in trouble because her husband threatened to kill her. She went to the nearest Company post and stood outside the gate, with all her belongings in a heap in front of her. First she set fire to the belongings. Then she put the match to a bag hanging round her neck. It was full of gunpowder, and exploded, blinding her and burning her face and chest. Inexplicably alive, she took a rope and tried to hang herself from a tree branch. Still she lived, so then she took a long needle and stuck it into her right ear. Even with the needle all the way inside her head, she didn’t die. It wasn’t her time, and her spirit wouldn’t let her go. So she gave up and went off to make a new life somewhere else, where she prospered. Her name was Bird-that-flies-in-the-sun.
Strange that she remembers the story in such detail. The woman’s name; the right ear. The name perhaps because it is a little like her own: Bird. She knows nothing else about the woman, except that she too knows what it is to want to die. Were it not for her children she thinks she would try to hang herself. Alec would be all right; thirteen and clever and already working, apprenticed to Olivier as interpreter. Josiah and William are younger but with less imagination to scare and confuse them. But Amy is only little, and girls need more help in this world, so she will have to stay in it a while longer at least, until it is her time. But without her husband by her side it will always be winter.
Without being aware of looking out the window, she sees the visitors come and stand a few yards from the house, looking in her direction. She can feel them talking about her; he will be talking about her husband, spinning his tale of how he died. She doesn’t trust him any more; when he talks to you he makes you keep secrets. He made her husband keep secrets, which he didn’t like, although he shrugged them off; dropped them outside the house when he came back from their hunting trips.
That morning–she was expecting him to come back as soon as she woke up, and Amy asked if papa would be back today, and she said yes–she walked out to the western gate, hearing the distant dogs barking, smiling to herself. She could hear so well she was sure she could hear the hush of runners on snow. She still smiled when he came back from a trip, even though they had been married for such a long time. She heard the dogs and walked up to the bump from where you could see over the fence. And saw that there was only one man with the sled. She stayed there watching until he reached the palisade, then went down to the yard to hear what he had to say, although she already knew. Others, William and George and Kenowas and Mary, had seen that he was alone and came to find out, but he had spoken straight to her, laying his eyes on her like a blue spell, so that she could not speak. She did not remember anything else until the visitor, the moonias with the knife wound and the bad feet, came out and tried to talk to her, but his voice sounded like the humming of bees and she did not know what he said. Then a little while later he brought out a cup of coffee, and put it in the snow beside her. She didn’t remember asking for it, but maybe she had; it smelt good, better than any coffee she had ever drunk, and she watched tiny snowflakes land and vanish on its oily black surface. Land and melt, so they were gone for ever. And then all she could think of was the face of her husband trying to speak to her, but she couldn’t hear him because he was trapped under a thick layer of river ice, and he was drowning.
She picked up the cup of coffee and poured it onto the skin on the underside of her forearm. It was hot, but not hot enough. The skin went pink, that was all, and her arm smoked like meat in the cold air.
They brought her back to the house, and Mary stayed with her, stoking the fire and bringing food for the children. She stays now, as if she is afraid Elizabeth will throw herself on the fire if she leaves her alone. Alec came and put his arms round her, and told her not to cry, although she wasn’t crying. Her eyes are as dry as a stick of wood. Amy doesn’t cry either, but that is because she is too young to understand. The other boys cry until they fall asleep exhausted. Mary sits by her and doesn’t say anything; she knows better than that. George came in once and said he will pray for her husband’s soul: George is a Christian and very devout. Mary shooed him away; she and Elizabeth are both Christians, but Nepapanees was not. He was Chippewa, without a drop of white blood in his veins. He went to church and heard a preacher a couple of times, but said it wasn’t for him. Elizabeth nodded at George; she knew he meant to help. And maybe it will; who is to say Our Heavenly Father cannot intervene in her husband’s fate? Perhaps there is a reciprocal agreement.
‘Mary,’ says Elizabeth now, her voice rasping like a key in a rusty lock. ‘Tell me if it is snowing.’
Mary looks up. She is cradling Amy on her lap and for a moment Elizabeth has the fantasy that Mary is the mother, and Amy a child she doesn’t know.
‘No, it stopped an hour ago. But now it’s getting dark. It will have to be tomorrow.’
Elizabeth nods. The snow has stopped for one reason only and she knows what she will do in the morning. Would have done it earlier but for the snow, which fell to make them stop and think for a while. So that they would act with thoughtfulness. In the morning they will go back to the river and find him, and bring him back.
Amy wakes up and stares at her mother. She is hers, after all, with her grey-brown eyes and pale skin. They’d wanted another girl. Nepapanees joked that he wanted a girl who was like him, instead of like her.
There will not be another girl now. Her spirit, if what Nepapanees believed is true, will have to wait to be born in another place, at another time.
The trouble is, she doesn’t believe in anything any more.
Donald retires after dinner to write to Susannah. More snow fell as they ate; if Stewart is right, this storm could last days, and there will be no chance of travelling before it is over. But he has more than one reason to be grateful for this. He is alarmingly tired. His feet, even in moccasins, hurt like hell, and the wound on his stomach is red and weeping. He waited for a moment in the dining room when he could draw Stewart aside, and quietly mentioned that he might need some medical attention. Stewart nodded to him and promised to send someone with some expertise. Then he had, rather unexpectedly, winked.
Anyhow, he doesn’t feel too bad now, sitting at the rickety table that he requested, with his packet of paper and some defrosted ink. He tries, before he starts, to fix Susannah’s oval face in his mind’s eye, but once again finds it hard to grasp. Again, Maria�
�s face comes to him with absolute clarity, and he reflects that it would be interesting to write to her and discuss the complexities of their situation, which he feels sure would bore her sister. Not to mention the upsetting business with the widow. Somehow he thinks he would like to know what Maria would have to say about it all. Tomorrow, or the day after, there is no real hurry, he will have to make some proper enquiries, he supposes. But for now, he can put his duties out of his mind.
‘Dear Susannah,’ he writes, confidently enough. But after that, he pauses. Why should he not write to both sisters?
After all, he knows both of them. He taps the pen on the table a few times, then takes a fresh sheet of paper and writes ‘Dear Maria’.
After an hour or so there is a soft tap on the door. ‘Come in,’ he says, still writing away.
The door opens and a young Indian girl slips noiselessly inside. She was pointed out to him earlier; her name is Nancy Eagles, the wife of the youngest voyageur. She can be no more than twenty, has a face of arresting loveliness, and a voice so soft he has to strain to catch it.
‘Oh, Nancy, isn’t it? Thank you …’ he says, surprised and pleased.
‘Mr Stewart says you are hurt.’ Her voice is quiet and toneless, as though she is speaking to herself. She holds up a bowl of water and some strips of cloth–she has clearly come to tend to him. Without speaking again she indicates that he should take off his shirt, and sets the bowl on the floor. Donald covers the letter with some blotting paper and unbuttons his shirt, suddenly aware of his meagre white torso.
‘It’s nothing serious, but … here, you see, I received a wound two … three months ago, that has not healed properly.’ He peels off the dressing, pink and damp with fluid.
