by Joan Thomas
Agnes was the one my mother longed to be. When she made a sampler she copied Agnes’s exactly, embroidering the letters L N M O in the middle of the alphabet, a mistake Agnes had been too lazy to pull out, and everyone laughed when they saw it. Even the hired boy got the joke. Agnes had soft, full lips and a slow way of talking and it was Agnes she longed for, not Eva, who was halfway between them in age and had the same pale wavy hair as my mother and the same set to her mouth and was the one who had stolen Agnes’s love. Eva was full of malice. She pulled Mother’s underpants down once when all their cousins were in the bedroom changing so that everyone saw her bum, she dribbled molasses in my mother’s autograph album. At the supper table Agnes and Eva looked at each other with shining eyes and laughed and then Franklin and Morris pretended to share a secret joke too, but she had no one to laugh with and Agnes never so much as looked at her.
When Mother was about my age she worked as a hired girl for a bachelor farmer named Felix Macdonald, who lived on a treeless yard on the Bicknell road, a tall, stout man with black spots on his gums, who always came to the table stinking of the pigpen, never slipping his overalls off or even his boots. She lasted only two months. She always said it was too bad her hands had to get so coarse for nothing, although being a good milker was handy later when she and my father were shipping cream. She lasted two months with the smell of the pigpen at the table every morning, noon and night, but finally one day she dared to complain. The next day Felix Macdonald came in at supper and walked straight over to the table and dropped a kielbasa on my mother’s plate, a fleshy red sausage like a stallion’s penis. A sausage of the type my mother’s family would never eat: he must have stopped in at one of the Galician farms to buy it. There was no wife in that house, just Mr. Macdonald’s sister Frances, who sat at the table with her head down. My mother wanted to knock the sausage off to the floor, but she was afraid to move. And then he asked her if she knew why her family had sent her, her in particular, and told her that he’d asked for the homeliest sister, he didn’t want his hired girl getting married on him. That was when she packed up her bag and left. When she got home she cried and told her mother angrily what he had said, and her mother got angry too and said, None of my girls are homely.
All this she tells me while we’re sitting at the table one day. She’s a little defiant about the big sausage: because she knows what it meant, or maybe because she doesn’t quite know. I could tell her things from England, but she has that shamefaced, overconfiding air.
What did you do after that? I ask.
I went to work in town for the reeve’s wife. That’s when I started going to church.
What church?
It was the Presbyterian Church, she says. But back then they had a minister who was a real born-again Christian. I was saved in that church.
I think of my father as William, but even in my own mind I never use my mother’s name. Well, it’s Lily.
Warm weather has come to England. Madeleine writes that Uncle Stanley has lifted up the flagstones in the back garden and she and Aunt Lucy have planted carrots and turnips. Spend an hour in the garden, not an hour in the queue. Here worn and ragged patches of snow hang on under the trees on the north side of the yard. Finally it warms up. The robins appear and the spruce down by the river splay out lime green tips. The ducks come back and I walk over to the river after milking and watch them dragging silver wedges behind them in water as smooth and bright as mercury. In the pasture I find crocuses. There were crocuses near Foxdenton Hall, although they bloomed in September and October. They weren’t indigenous to North England, they were brought back from the Crusades by the Knights Templar, who had learned on their travels to need saffron. That’s what George told me. But these are our own, these are older than England’s. They’ve developed their own furry little coats.
My mother sits where she sat all winter, watching the traffic on the section road through the window. I can’t lure her outside to see the peonies or the bleeding hearts. It’s my fault she’s not going to church any more, I think as I sprinkle the laundry and roll it up for ironing. She’s going to sit in that chair the rest of her life, her legs fusing with the oak rungs. In the meantime I’m working hard to get the garden in. It’s been a year since we’ve had a pig and the whole pigpen is a pit of rich, ripe compost. I carry load after load in the wheelbarrow and dig it into the garden and the flower bed. I plant corn, peas, beets, radishes, lettuce, onions and carrots from seed. I cut potatoes from last year into quarters, making sure there’s an eye in each one, and drop them into holes. Turnips I refuse to plant; I throw the seed into the slop bucket.
The meadowlarks come back. One sits on top of a fence post by the pump and calls, I left my pretty sister at home. It makes me think of Joe Pye. I wish I knew what the little flamer is singing about, he said to me once, and I told him what it was I heard. Recalling Joe Pye in our yard is a powerful magic — the next day in town I hear news of him. He’s up in the Interlake, working as a handyman at a residential school. Susan Dabney’s auntie came to visit and mentioned him, and Harry Dabney told me. I’ll find a way to visit him, I think. After the garden’s in. I’ll take the truck and make a day of it. I need to tell him about Dad.
Then one day I notice someone’s built a little fire behind the barn. There are fresh ashes, a few charred pieces of split poplar that could be from our woodpile. Eggshells scattered on the ground like bits of broken china. I tell Mother when I go in. I’ve been thinking so much about Joe that I have the crazy idea it could be him, come back to occupy our yard in a different way.
It’s a tramp, she says. She’s used to tramps, they came through all the time in the Thirties. I wonder if it was our eggs he was eating? she asks. You’d think we would’ve heard someone in the henhouse.
That evening I climb up to the loft to get fresh straw for Molly. There’s very little hay and very little straw left, and the straw’s been rearranged, made into a nest. I climb cautiously up, calling, Hello? Hello? while Blue waits at the foot of the ladder, tail wagging. There’s no sound so I pull myself right up into the loft. A newspaper lies in the straw. A tramp has come to kill us in our beds and carried a newspaper to read while he waited. I pick it up. It’s a Winnipeg paper, the Tribune, dated two days before. He’s on the move, heading west.
I take the newspaper back to the house and read it through. It’s been a while since I’ve had news of the war. The list is posted on the third page. There are thirty-two names that day, if you include the category PREVIOUSLY REPORTED MISSING, NOW FOR OFFICIAL PURPOSES PRESUMED DEAD. Of course this is only for official purposes. Unofficially, families can think what they want. They can keep dusting his bedroom, keep storing little things up in their memories to tell him, keep waking up in the night, shaken by their disbelief. I pass over an article with the headline HEART OF COLOGNE SHATTERED IN HUGE RAID. It’s not the sort of article I read any more. Instead I read the article beside it, a short piece that would have entranced George: about London, about the Roman bowels of London being exposed by the bombing. Too bad there’re no archaeologists around to take advantage of it. I read the comic strips as well and then I fold the paper and put it in the kindling bin.
It’s drizzling the next morning, not enough rain to do the garden good but too much to let me work outside. After I’ve got the fire going I tie a scarf over my head and pick up the milk pail. Halfway across the yard, I glance up at the barn just in time to see the shutter over the loft opening swing closed. I stop in my tracks and wait. No one comes out of the barn.
Blue, I call, and keep him close to me while I cross the yard. Inside the barn he starts barking his watchdog bark. Light falls weakly from the dirty windows to lie in squares on the aisle. I have to pause a minute inside the door before I make out the figure of a man standing in the aisle at the far end. Hello? I say and walk towards him. It’s such an empty barn, only Molly moving restlessly in her stall with the weight of her milk, and the cats following me, crying for breakfast. It’
s a minute before I can clearly see the man leaning against the feed bin, his arms folded and his face full of the expectation of seeing me. I don’t know who it is. Then my heart gives a sideways thud and I do: it’s Russell Bates.
5
I drop the milk pail with a clatter and reach down to quiet Blue.
I thought you were never coming, he says. Aren’t milkmaids up at the crack of dawn?
What on earth are you doing here?
He smiles and gestures, the way you’d say, It’s a long story. He’s wearing a plaid wool shirt in blue and brown, suspenders and a tweed cap. He was a good imitation of an adult when I last saw him six or eight years ago and he’s a man for sure now, although of a different sort. You couldn’t find me something to eat, could you? he says. I’m so hungry I can hardly see straight.
Well, sure, come on to the house. We haven’t had breakfast yet.
No, he says. No thanks. Could you slip me something out here? Don’t let anyone know I’m here, if you don’t mind.
All right, I say, puzzled. I click my tongue for the dog and turn and walk back to the house, trying to move casually, as though I’ve forgotten something. In fact my knees are shaking. Mother is dressing. I can hear her moving around her bedroom all the time I’m slicing bread, buttering it in big swaths with the bread knife, breaking off a chunk of cheese. My jacket has huge pockets, and I wrap everything in a tea towel and slip this loose packet into one of the pockets just as she makes her way across the living room.
I thought I heard you go out.
You did, I say. And then I came back. And now I’m leaving again. I go out and let the screen door slam.
He takes the bread gratefully and offers me some, which seems overly courteous under the circumstances, but out of nervousness I do take a piece. We sit on a manger at the empty end of the barn, wheat spilled at our feet from last year, when the barn was a granary. He takes his cap off and I watch him stealthily. His hair is long. It’s not the military haircut we’re used to seeing and it’s not the clipped city haircut he had before. Without being what you’d call dirty, his clothes look as though they could use a freshening up. He has a working-man’s look — a bachelor’s look: no woman is tending to him. The more I stare, the more I’m amazed that I recognized him, and wonder like a fool if I’ve made a mistake and he’s a total stranger after all.
Sorry I couldn’t manage coffee, I say, to say something.
No, this is great, he says. Excellent bread. Did you make it?
I nod.
I’m impressed. You can’t be on your own here?
Have you been watching for a while? I ask.
Since yesterday. You knew I was here — you have my Tribune.
I did have it, I say. I read it last night and then I used it to start the fire this morning.
Best place for it. He takes out his handkerchief and wipes his mouth. Who’s in the house with you?
My mother. But she never comes to the barn, she hardly steps out of the house. She’s not well. And then I tell him that my father has died, that my brother has got married and gone overseas.
Charlotte’s getting married too, he says. In fact, she may be married by now.
Aren’t you in touch with her?
Well, yes and no. I was getting mail through a friend for a while, but the system broke down. I guess I should look for a chance to telephone her. I don’t see a telephone line in your yard.
Molly moos, cranking her neck around to see what’s keeping me. Astonishment at the sight of him starts to rattle me, my calmness is falling apart.
We’re really close to the base, I say. There’s training flights over the yard all the time. Not that they’d notice you from the air. You’re probably okay. Unless someone sees you who knows you shouldn’t be here.
He laughs. I feel off-balance, the way I did that sole afternoon we spent alone together, when I was clearly amusing him in a way I didn’t intend. Well, I have to do the milking and get back to the house before Mother starts to fret, I say. Seeing you’re not on the lam, are you going to come in and introduce yourself like a proper guest or are you going to keep lurking in the barn?
He reaches for my hand in a conciliatory way. He might look like a workingman, but his hand is as smooth as it was back then. Milk your cow and make some excuse to come back and talk to me. But don’t tell anyone I’m here. Don’t tell your mother or anyone else, okay? I’ll wait up in the loft. No one’s going to come up there, are they?
Sounds very cloak and dagger, I say. Sounds very quisling. But no, I think you’re safe with me.
I can tell he finds this less than funny. I get up and brush the crumbs off my jacket and take the stool and pail over to Molly. I wipe off her udder with the rag hanging from a nail on the wall and then sit down and clamp the pail between my knees, leaning my temple against the hot, twitching wall of her side where her hair swirls into her haunches, and start up a rhythm of milk against the bottom of the pail. The whole time he sits on the ladder to the loft, watching me. Through the years I dreamt once in a while of meeting him again, dreamt of showing him the new, urbane person I had become! But there’s nothing to be done about it, so I press my cheek against Molly’s flank and try to ignore him and when I finish and stand up, he’s gone.
By mid-morning it’s cleared up, an answer to prayer if I were the praying kind, because it would have taxed even my imagination to find an excuse to stay outside all afternoon on a rainy day. After the chickens are fed and the kitchen is swept up I slip into my bedroom and take stock: of my rough hands, the dirt ground under my nails, of my brown face and loose brown hair. I carry a basin of warm water to my room and scrub my hands and face and then I put lipstick on, rubbing a little onto my cheekbones as well, and pinning the front of my hair into waves, the way I used to do in England. I look at myself in the mirror for another long moment and then I take the pins back out and wipe the lipstick off. He’d know it was done for him. The mirror gives me back a tanned, oval face with just a hint of rose where the lipstick was, a serious face, as unfamiliar to me as his was. Then I go back to the kitchen and build up the fire, peel the potatoes, open a jar of yellow beans, and put a pan of little pork sausages in the oven. When dinner is almost ready I walk out to the barn and poke my head up to the loft. He’s lying on the straw propped up against a knapsack, reading a book.
Where were you when I did the milking last night? I ask. My English accent seems to have returned.
I guess I missed you, he says. I’d gone for a walk. Foraging, actually.
Stealing eggs? I ask.
He laughs. That was earlier. You were out in the garden with your wheelbarrow when I stole the eggs.
I climb all the way up and show him from the loft opening where to meet me near the river. And then I go back and set the table. It’s very strange to sit in the kitchen with Mother, under the clock that falters and dithers about declaring the morning over, and know he’s out in the barn.
Are you going to have a nap this afternoon? I ask.
I guess I’ll lie down for a while, she says. I don’t like to sleep during the day because then I won’t sleep at night. That’s what she says every day, right before she tips her head back on the chesterfield and dozes off.
Finally I have the chance to pack potatoes and beans and a row of sausages into the Elizabeth and Margaret Rose tin and slip outside. He’s where I told him to be, sitting with his back against an oak. Can we be seen from the road? he asks.
No, I say. I’m sure we can’t.
You wouldn’t mind checking for me? he asks. So to humour him I walk back and check, but you can see nothing. We’re below the level of the road and entirely hidden by a fringe of poplars and chokecherries.
He’s smoking when I come back and I sit beside him, putting the tin on the ground between us. He turns his cigarette sideways to look at it. Three left, he says, and then I’ll be rolling whatever I find growing in the ditches. He takes pride in being in such straits, you can tell. You don’t
smoke? he asks.
No one has ever smoked in our house. Joe Pye used to smoke in the barn in the winter. He could burn the barn down as long as he didn’t disgrace us by smoking in the house.
Joe Pye, he says, remembering. How old were you the summer we went for that drive? He reaches over and circles my ankle with the hand holding the cigarette.
I think I was fourteen.
I must have been seventeen. It was just before I went to McGill. And Charlotte was sixteen, I guess. Did I tell you Charlotte’s graduated as a nurse? She’s got a job in a surgical ward.
In a military hospital? I ask.
He lifts his hand off my ankle and takes a slow pull on his cigarette. Hard to believe, he says, but there are civilians selfish enough to take sick while there’s a war on.
There’s a road here we could take, but I refuse to go down it. I sit with my arms around my knees and look straight at him. He’s thinner than he was at seventeen — his face is bonier, with deep parentheses around his mouth. He seems very changed to me, but then I’d spent only the one afternoon with him years before, and my memories of that day are so pawed over, so grubby with use that they’re almost unreadable. But it seems to me that the biggest change is internal, as it is in Gracie: a cockiness is gone, or it’s settled into conviction, some of the fun has drained out of it. And he’s wary, it’s in his mind I can’t be trusted entirely.
How long do you plan on being here? I ask. If it kills me I won’t ask him again why he’s hiding.
