“Dad made that for Mama,” she told the woman. “He made most all our furniture but it was sold in the auction back in Saskatchewan.”
“Hmmph.” The woman bent, squinted at the roses carved on the doors, but said nothing more. Turning suddenly, she stalked out of the cottage.
Margaret ran to the doorway and watched her cross the yard with quick steps and enter the red brick house that fronted the street. It was huge, that house. Could hold her entire family and then some. Too much house for one woman, but then who would want to live with such a grouchy person?
“Old witch,” Margaret said to the twins. “Gone to get her broomstick.”
“Witch! Witch!” Timothy and Taylor chanted.
“Stop that!” Mrs. Brown came into the kitchen. “She might hear you. Wherever did you two learn such a word?”
Margaret quickly bent her head to the stove.
After a supper of cold chicken and bread, Mr. Brown handed Margaret a pair of boots. “These are for you,” he said. “They’re second-hand but there’s lots of wear still in them.”
Margaret pulled them on her feet and tied the laces. The ends were scuffed slightly, and they pinched a bit around the toes, but she didn’t say anything. It was lovely to have her own shoes and no cardboard soles.
“You be sure to take care of those,” her mother said sternly. “Knowing you, they’ll be wrecked within a day.”
Margaret felt stung. She hadn’t even worn them yet and Mama was already seeing them in ruins.
Dad winked and smiled. Margaret grinned back. At least he didn’t see them in ruins.
“Church tomorrow,” Mrs. Brown said. “George, bring in water for baths.” She picked up the empty plates and started towards the counter, when she suddenly stumbled. She sat down abruptly in a chair.
“Olivia.” Mr. Brown jumped to his feet. “Are you ill?”
“Just felt dizzy there a moment. Tired, I guess. I did one housecleaning this morning, not expecting I’d be doing another in the afternoon.”
“You sit there and rest. You shouldn’t be working so hard in your condition,” Margaret’s father said. “We’ll take care of washing up. Maybe we shouldn’t have moved in here so quickly.”
“No,” Mrs. Brown told him. “I’m glad we moved. I don’t know if I could have spent another night . . .” She stopped abruptly and looked around at the children. “We needed our own home.”
“Forget the baths,” said Mr. Brown. “The Lord won’t mind if we come to church dirty for once.”
“Martin, what will people say?”
“They shouldn’t say anything, especially in church. But if they want to look behind our ears, let them. The Lord knows we’re clean inside. We’ve worked hard today and could do with the rest. In fact . . .” He reached into his pocket and pulled out five nickels. “Margaret, George, take a bowl and run down to the ice cream parlour and have them fill it up,” he said. “We could all do with a treat.”
George whooped, grabbed the coins, and ran out the door.
“Martin, that’s just a waste of good money,” Mrs. Brown protested. “I could get two quarts of milk with that money!”
Margaret stopped in the doorway, wondering whether to follow George or not.
“Olivia, once in a while you need a treat or what’s the point of it all?” Mr. Brown turned to the door. “Go on, girl, catch up to George, and mind you run home fast so it doesn’t melt.”
Margaret raced out of the cottage and past the big house. She thought she saw the white lace curtains over the windows twitch, but it could have been her imagination. She flew down the street after George and accidentally splashed in a puddle. She still had her new boots on, she realized. She quickly took them off, cleaned them with her skirt, then tied the laces together and slung them about her neck. She didn’t want to go back with her new boots wet already. Mama would just sigh, and that always made Margaret feel worse than if she yelled. Sometimes Margaret thought she was messy because Mama expected her to be. Evie was the neat one; Edward, responsible; George, cheery; and she, Margaret, messy. The twins were too young yet to be anything. Was there any point, she wondered, trailing George into the store, in trying to be different from what people expected you to be?
“Ice cream,” George said grandly, holding out the bowl. “Vanilla.”
The store owner flipped open the door of the huge icebox and scooped out mounds of creamy white. “That’ll be twenty-five cents.”
George searched through one pant pocket, than another. “Do you have the rest of the money, Margaret?” he asked. His eyes widened in alarm. “I can only find four nickels.”
“No. Dad gave it all to you.”
“I’ve lost it,” George cried.
Margaret plunged her hand down into his pocket. “You have a hole in here. It must have fallen out!”
“I found this outside the store,” a voice behind them said.
Margaret and George turned around to see Jean, holding out a coin.
George snatched it out of her hand. “That’s mine,” he said.
He handed it to the clerk and picked up the full bowl. “Come on, Margaret, before this melts.”
“You go on, George. I’ll catch up,” Margaret told him.
She left the store with Jean. “Thanks very much for finding our money. Though, it might not have been ours.”
“It probably was. It would be odd that you’d just lost a nickel and I just found one.”
Margaret nodded. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, but felt there should be something.
“We moved today,” she said.
“No more Pauline?”
“No more Pauline, or at least not all the time.” Margaret grinned.
The sun had nearly disappeared and damp rose from the ground. Jean shivered and wrapped her arms around her body for warmth. Margaret couldn’t think how to leave the girl.
“Would you like to come to our house for ice cream?” she asked, then immediately wished she hadn’t. Mama wouldn’t like her bringing home a girl who wasn’t respectable. “If your mother isn’t expecting you home,” she finished, hoping Jean couldn’t come.
“She’s not expecting me,” Jean said.
Margaret walked beside Jean, thinking furiously. What would Mama say when she saw how dirty the girl’s dress and hair were? And her feet . . .
“Look at that!”
Margaret followed Jean’s pointing finger into the sky. A long ribbon of black stretched out from a sinking red globe of sun towards them. The first of the ribbon passed overhead and Margaret saw it was a long line of birds, silent except for the whistle of air beaten by thousands of wings. Goosebumps rose on her arms at the eerie sight of the twisting line that seemed to have no end, then suddenly it did with only a few stray birds dotting the sky.
“Wasn’t that wonderful?” Jean’s eyes were shining. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Usually there’s big flocks of birds heading south, but never anything like that.” She beamed at Margaret.
Margaret smiled back, feeling as if she’d been given a wonderful gift, one she could keep inside and bring out again and again just for the joy of remembering.
“Some day I’m going to fly just like those birds,” Jean told her.
“Fly?” Margaret repeated.
“In an aeroplane. I’ll be just like the birds! Can you imagine how it must feel to soar high above the ground?”
Like running fast over the prairie? “Free?” Margaret ventured.
“Yes,” Jean replied excitedly. “That’s exactly how it must feel. I knew you’d understand.” She beamed again at Margaret, who suddenly felt warm all over.
“They use aeroplanes at the front all the time now, and as I plan to go to the war as soon as I’m old enough, maybe I’ll fly in an aeroplane,” Jean confided.
“Go to the war? Women can’t be soldiers,” Margaret said dubiously.
Jean threw her an exasperated look. “I know that. I’m going as a nurse. I�
��ll go right to the front line and help the wounded men.”
“Oh.” Margaret couldn’t think of anything to say to Jean’s startling announcement. “Dad and I watch the geese flying over our farm in Saskatchewan every year. I’m making a Flying Geese quilt. I’ll show you the pattern when we get to my house,” she told Jean in a burst of generosity. Not as good as being a nurse, but it was all she had.
The big house curtains, Margaret saw, definitely did twitch this time. She held her head high and walked past, then remembered Jean was right behind her and her head came down as she went into the cottage
“Mama, Dad, this is a . . .” Margaret paused, “. . . a girl from school.”
She saw her mother take in Jean from head to foot and her mouth tighten. Evie’s eyes widened, but George and the twins ignored them, intent on their ice cream.
“It’s nice to meet a friend of Margaret’s,” Dad said.
“George lost the money out of a hole in his pocket—I’ll mend it tomorrow,” Margaret added hurriedly. “But Jean found it and gave it back to us so I invited her here for ice cream . . .” Her voice trailed off. Mama still hadn’t said a thing. This was worse than she’d imagined. There was a long silence, finally broken by her father.
“As well you should. We wouldn’t be having ice cream at all if it wasn’t for you, Jean. Come and sit down here. Margaret, get a dish for your friend.”
Margaret crossed the kitchen and took two dishes out of the cupboard and placed one in front of Jean.
“I told Jean I’d show her my quilt pattern,” she said, avoiding her mother’s eyes.
She went up the stairs to the room she’d share with Evie. Mama would tell her all about Jean later, Margaret knew, but she was beginning to think that maybe Jean was clean inside.
Chapter 7
If October was crimson leaves, golden sun, and blue sky, November was grey, Margaret thought. Slate-grey sky reflected in mud-grey puddles formed by slanting silver-grey rains. An early snowfall the day before, heavy and wet, had bent tree limbs to brush the lawn and sent her mother scurrying to find warm clothes. It had melted by noon, leaving behind a grey mist that clung thickly to the ground, trees floating above, branches hung with tear-shaped droplets. She could hear shouts from outside, where Peter Stevens and George were rough-housing with the twins. They’d be cold and wet when they came in. Margaret was glad to be at the kitchen table, sitting within the circle of warmth from the stove, working on her quilt.
She had carefully traced the flying geese pieces from the pattern—two different-sized triangles—on the back of a cardboard box, then cut them out. Beside her on the table lay her sorted fabric, in piles of light and dark. Geese and sky. Placing the cardboard template on a scrap of pale blue, she remembered prairie summer sky stretching on forever. Quilts have a way of reminding. She ran a pencil around the sides of the template, marking seam lines for sewing, then took up her scissors. Cut the pieces accurately in the beginning, Grandgirl, and you’ll have a good quilt in the end. Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Her father sat across from her at the table, folding the newspaper in half to study the help wanted ads. Suddenly, he slapped the paper down, sending Margaret’s scraps flying to the floor. She scrambled on hands and knees to pick them up.
“Every job in the paper needs experience,” he exclaimed disgustedly. “Baker, toolmaker, machinist! There’s nothing I can do. No one in the city wants a farmer.”
“You had five days of work the week before last,” Mrs. Brown reminded him.
“Picking apples so we can eat for another few days,” Mr. Brown said dejectedly.
“And you got us wood for the stove,” Margaret’s mother reminded him.
“Yes, wood . . .”
Margaret watched him out of the corner of her eye as she began to cut triangles. Dad had picked apples at an orchard outside of town, leaving before dawn to walk the long distance, then limping home again in the dark, his face twisted in pain from his back. Mama rubbed it night after night with Sloane’s liniment, though it brought him scant relief. But still, he’d worked hard and the farmer had taken a shine to him, Dad had told them, giving them a stack of wood as a sort of bonus payment for a job well done.
For those five days Dad had been busy, coming home tired and hurting, but not wearing that desperate expression he had picked up lately: mouth turned down, eyes bleak. He’d greyed, too—his skin, his hair—he’d greyed like November. It had got so she didn’t want to look at him, that grey made her chest hurt. She kept her eyes on her scissors.
When she had a small stack of light and dark cotton triangles cut, she began to lay the pieces down to find which colours went best together, and after much consideration, chose two. Checking that right sides of the material faced each other, she carefully lined up their edges. Her fingers fairly itched to sew them together, to see the beginnings of her quilt. She threaded a needle.
“Margaret, you could hold this wool for me,” Mrs. Brown bid her.
Suppressing a sigh, Margaret put her needle down and held her hands outstretched in front of her. Her mother looped wool unravelled from an old sweater of Edward’s over them.
“I should be able to get warm vests for the twins out of this,” her mother said, winding the wool into a ball. “And mittens so their socks can stay on their feet where they belong.”
“I’ll try McCormick Biscuits factory first thing Monday morning,” Mr. Brown said. “And McClary’s Manufacturing, the stove makers, after that.”
“Are you sure you can do factory work with your bad back?” Margaret’s mother asked anxiously. “Shouldn’t you be looking at an easier job, like a clerk in an office or store?”
“I’m not cut out for store work,” he told her. “I don’t have fancy clothes like Harold or the fancy manner. Imagine dealing with women like that Mrs. Ferguson all day.”
“I’ll take a look at your good shirt later,” Mrs. Brown promised. “The cuffs are frayed, but I think I can turn them once more so they’ll be good as new. And I’ll press your collar.”
A high-pitched squeal from outside brought Margaret’s mother to her feet. With the ball of wool still in her hand, she towed Margaret behind her as she hurried to the window, threw it open, and leaned out. “George, keep those boys quiet. Don’t you and Peter get them all wound up. Mrs. Ferguson will be out in a minute complaining about the noise.”
A moment later there was a thump at the door, then the handle turned and Mrs. Ferguson walked in, bringing a gust of cold, damp air. With an impatient click of her tongue, Mrs. Brown quickly rushed to shut the door before their precious heat escaped.
Margaret’s father slowly got up from his chair, but said nothing. You had to be careful what you said around a landlady, Margaret had soon learned, if you didn’t want to be put out on the street.
“Those children are noisy,” Mrs. Ferguson barked.
“They’re just playing,” Mrs. Brown said soothingly.
Mrs. Ferguson rummaged inside her billowing black clothes and fished out an envelope. She held it in a black-gloved hand. “A letter came to my house, for you,” she said accusingly, as if incorrect mail delivery was their fault.
Margaret’s mother held out her hand. “I’m very sorry about that,” she said.
Mrs. Ferguson clutched the envelope tightly to her chest.
“May I have our letter?” Mrs. Brown asked after a moment.
Mrs. Ferguson slowly passed the letter over.
“It’s from Edward,” Margaret’s mother cried.
Did Mrs. Ferguson have a letter from Catherine, too? Margaret wondered. She looked at the old woman expectantly, but Mrs. Ferguson made no move to rummage in her clothes again. Instead, her eyes darted around the room, lingering a moment on the cupboard, then to the table. Checking up on them, Margaret supposed. She hated her.
“What are you sewing, girl?”
“A quilt,” Margaret said shortly. She didn’t have to be polite if Mrs. Ferguson wasn’t.
Her triangles were lifted from the table. Mrs. Ferguson squinted at them. “Hmmm . . .” she grunted and tossed them back down.
Margaret’s father cleared his throat. “I need some wood to make railings for the stairs,” he said. “Also, shingles for the roof. I noticed a leak and it could soon rot the ceiling if it’s not taken care of. I’m happy to do the work if you’ll provide the materials.”
Mrs. Ferguson stood staring at them, mouth working as she thought. “Very well,” she said and left.
“Queer sort,” Mr. Brown said.
“Trying to decide if it’s to her advantage to have you repairing her cottage for free,” Margaret’s mother said tartly.
“As long as we get the railing and shingles, I don’t mind the work. Now, Olivia, what’s that letter say?”
“Dear Mama, Dad, and Everyone,” Mrs. Brown read. “This was dated October 24,” she exclaimed. “That’s three weeks ago.” She shuffled the paper. “I hope this letter finds you as well as it leaves me. By the time you get this, Christian and me will have left Saskatchewan. We are being sent to Valcartier Camp near Quebec City for training on October 30 . . .”
“Why, he’s been in Quebec and we didn’t even know,” Margaret’s mother cried. The letter dropped from her hand.
Mr. Brown picked it up, scanned it a moment, then continued reading, “. . . and from there we’ll be shipped out to England.”
Margaret’s heart lurched. To England! Edward really was going to the war. Somehow she hadn’t believed he’d go.
“I am sending you a money order for part of my pay for you to use, though I expect by now Dad has a new job and won’t need it. I am having most of my pay sent to you and would ask that you look after it for me, though please use what you need.”
“We aren’t using any of his pay,” Margaret’s father said flatly. “We’ll be fine. He’ll need it when he comes back to give him a good start.”
Mrs. Brown stared at him a moment, but said nothing. He continued reading.
“It seems being a soldier means mostly marching. The bugle goes at 5:30 every morning, but that’s no hardship as I get to sleep an hour longer than we ever did at home. Our first parade is at 6:00 a.m. and we drill until 7:00, when we get breakfast. Then we have a dress parade, followed by bayonet drill and musketry until noon. Being country boys, Christian and me shoot better than most. After dinner we go on a fifteen-mile route march. Twice a week we have night marches, when we go out at 8:00 and do not get back in until 2:00 in the morning! Then they make us get up at 5:30 anyway. This is supposed to make us disciplined so we follow orders, but mostly it makes us tired. You can write me at the address on the top of this letter. It will find me eventually. I miss you all, Edward.
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