Before Mary Mabel could think, her papa barrelled through the door. “Look at the trouble you’ve got us into!”
“Shut your traps,” Miss Pigeon ordered. “To the Bench!”
The Bench was a church pew retrieved from St. James. Hard and unforgiving, it was the Academy’s version of the stocks. The pair waited an eternity before the headmistress sailed in, a copy of the morning’s paper tucked beneath her arm. “How are we this morning, Miss Pigeon?”
“As might be expected.”
“Quite so.” Miss Bentwhistle swept into her private study and closed the door. A pause, and then she pulled the servants’ cord, tinkling the little brass bell that announced she was ready to receive appointments.
Miss Bentwhistle’s inner sanctum was hushed and dark, the heavy velvet curtains secured to ward off light. Oh-oh, Mary Mabel thought, she’s having a migraine.
“Shut the door,” came a low purr from the far end of the room.
Her papa obeyed.
“Come closer,” the headmistress growled. “I’m not about to bite.”
Her papa gave a nervous chuckle and pushed her forward.
“The both of you.”
Brewster gulped and stepped onto the dusty Persian carpet, almost tripping on the head of the Bengal tiger rug splayed across it. Miss Bentwhistle claimed her great-grandfather, Horatio III, had bagged the beast on safari. In truth, he’d stalked it down in a dusty Toronto curiosity shop. Either way, it was a skinned warning to any who’d dare to cross a Bentwhistle.
Now in range, their eyes accustomed to the muslin light, Mary Mabel and her papa saw a vision gave them pause — Miss Bentwhistle in the highest of high dudgeon, a grand inquisitor to make the angels quake, as imperious a judge as the combined host of Bentwhistles past who glowered through the gloom from the baroque frames that lined her lair. Mary Mabel felt faint, the air heavy with powders, pomades, and lavender potpourris. She glanced at her papa. He looked set to vomit.
An awkward pause. The Iron Maiden cocked an eyebrow. “Well, Miss McTavish, you’ve been quite the busy bee.”
“The girl is sorry,” Brewster said. He stuck an elbow in his daughter’s ribs. “Apologize to your Auntie Horatia.”
“Don’t interrupt,” their captor snapped. She fixed Mary Mabel in her sights. “It is barely nine o’clock in the morning, and we find ourselves besieged by the Middlesex County press. Muckrakers from the Gleaner, Bugle, and Beacon, not to mention our London rag, have decamped at the Academy’s front gates. We’ve been obliged to call in constables, Miss McTavish. Constables. It’s a positive scandal.”
“But what’s it got to do with me?”
She flung the Free Press on her desk and tapped her right index finger three times on the banner headline: LONDON GIRL RESURRECTS DEAD BOY.
“Oh my.”
“Oh my?” Miss Bentwhistle’s breasts elevated to the heavens. “All you can say is ‘Oh my’? A young lady knows better than to draw attention to herself, but you, you flibbertigibbet, you made a scene! And on a Sunday! In so doing, you sullied the Academy’s hard-earned reputation for propriety!”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course not. You’re just a sweet, little Florence Nightingale. Although even she was never ascribed the powers of our Lord Jesus.”
“I didn’t say a word to the press.”
“Why bother when three hundred witnesses, Holy Rollers, God spare us, are happy to babble away on your behalf. Well, you just march outside and tell the press their story is absurd.”
“But it happened. I can’t deny it.”
“Listen to me,” the headmistress said, “and listen hard. I am telling you: there was no miracle. That boy was never dead.”
“He was. Dr. Hammond signed the death certificate.”
“A piece of paper can easily be ripped up.”
“I don’t care. The boy was dead. A power surged down my arms, out of my fingers, and he came back to life.”
“You make it sound like jump-starting a car.” Miss Bentwhistle circled her prey. “Some might say the lad was simply unconscious. That the affair was a stunt. Adolescent theatrics.”
“They’d be wrong.”
“It’s those books of hers,” Brewster blurted. “They’ve turned her wits.”
Miss. Bentwhistle bristled. “When it comes to scandal, insanity is a complication not a defence.” She cast her eye on Mary Mabel. “Though you have shamed the Academy, my pet, I am willing to compromise. You may think what you like in private, provided you say what I want in public.”
“What sort of compromise is that?”
Smoke might have shot from the dowager’s ears. She stormed to the window — migraine be damned — and threw back the curtains. “Do you see those clouds? They take such pretty forms. I imagine I see the shapes of people. Little homeless people scudding across the sky. Why look — an odd-jobs man and his lumpen daughter. Do you see them, my pet? It’s a picture clear as day. Or perhaps not, for look, even as we speak the wind is blowing them apart. Take care, precious, my visions have a habit of coming true.”
Mary Mabel threw back her shoulders. “Do what you like. I won’t deny the reason I’m alive.”
“Indeed, little martyr?” Miss Bentwhistle laughed dryly. “And are you prepared to sacrifice your father for your arrogance?”
“How dare you threaten Papa!”
“Damn right.” Brewster leapt to attention. “If the girl insists on being wilful, do what you must. But why punish me?”
“Heavens, what do you take me for?” Miss Bentwhistle gasped. “I’d hardly put a young thing on the streets alone.”
Miss Pigeon flew into the room. “Toronto’s on the line! A man from the Globe!” The Globe was the paper of record for Academy parents.
Miss Bentwhistle spun on her heel. “No more delay. Recant. Now.”
“No.”
The headmistress whirled back to her secretary. “Inform the Globe that we no longer have McTavishes on staff. Furthermore, should they intend to feature us in their account, provide them with the name of our solicitor.”
Miss Pigeon scuttled off.
“You have one hour to pack and be gone,” Miss Bentwhistle said, with a glance at her watch.
“For God’s sake,” McTavish pleaded, “don’t cast your darling Brewster to the wind!”
“‘My darling’?” Miss Bentwhistle’s hand fluttered to her throat. “Imagination must run in your family! How dare you think I’d stoop to the likes of you?”
“Stooping’s the least of it,” Brewster rose to his feet, no longer the supplicant. “If I’m kicked out, I’ll leave with lips flapping. Your ‘special interests’ will turn this county on its ear.”
“Lunacy!”
“Don’t play the innocent. You’re no more virgin than I am. Why, you take to acrobatics that’d make the Devil blush.”
“Depraved ravings!”
“Not half so depraved as your delight in feather dusters!”
Miss Bentwhistle’s eyes twitched. “Mr. McTavish, your rant is nothing short of slander. Nor is slander the least of your sins. You’ve been denounced by the Misses Budgie, Lundy, and Brown. Their accusations are documented in my filing cabinet. Gross indecency. Attempted rape. Why, I myself had cause to fend you off.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Oh? And who do you suppose will be believed: a McTavish or a Bentwhistle? We know the local magistrate, my dear. Be careful how you tread. Any loose talk and you will find yourself locked in the Kingston Pen with a bounty on your bottom! Now — get out of my school, my town, my county!”
“Mercy for Papa,” Mary Mabel begged.
Miss Bentwhistle curled her lip. “That, my dear, would take a miracle. And you’re fresh out.”
Back in their quarters, Brewster went on a tear. “Trouble, that’s all you’ve ever been. Well, now you’ve ruined us. Happy? You only had to say it never happened.”
“I don’t have much, Papa. I couldn’t give
her that.”
“But you could give away our home? I’m too old to start over. There’s younger men can do the things I do, and better.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find something else.”
“There’s no more ‘we.’ It’s time to be rid of you.” He snatched some coins from his money tin and threw them at her. “There. Don’t say I left you nothing.”
Mary Mabel wilted onto the cot.
“Ah, here come the tears. I’m to feel guilty, am I? Well, you can boo-hoo till doomsday. You brought this on yourself, you and your games of pretend.” He brushed a tear with his sleeve. “It’s for the best, us parting. You’ve hated me your whole life. I don’t mind. Just have the guts to say it. Say that you hate me, so I can leave in peace!”
She couldn’t. He went to smack the hurt off her face. Instead, he grabbed her mama’s teacup and smashed it against the wall.
“Now, curse me,” he wept. “Curse me to hell!” He grabbed his knapsack and ran out the door.
She listened as he blubbered down the corridor, and up the steps to outside. Heard the heavy door slam. She stayed very still for a time, as if, if she stayed still long enough, it would all go away. At last, she crawled across the floor, collected the shards of her mama’s cup, and shrank into a ball in the corner. It was time to pack and go. Go? Where?
“Mama,” she called out, “what am I to do? I need you. Help me. Please.”
But there was only silence.
III
HUNTERS and HUNTED
A Night of Terror
The next thing Mary Mabel knew, the porter had arrived to collect her. “You’re to be stowed in the trunk of the Packard and spirited past the newshounds at the gates.” The indignity was a relief. She was too upset to think, much less be swarmed by reporters. She tossed a few clothes in her bag, along with The Collected Works of William Shakespeare, said goodbye to the rest of her books, and left home forever.
The porter dropped her across town, at Highway 2, on the outskirts of London’s east end. “Hike your skirt, you’ll hitch a ride no problem.” He handed her five dollars.
“Thanks,” she said. Together with the spare change her papa had thrown at her, she’d have food for a couple of days.
The porter drove off. Mary Mabel planted her suitcase at the side of the road and stuck out her thumb. The fourth car stopped.
“Where to?” the man asked as she got in.
“Wherever you’re going.”
“Aren’t you the sly fox.” He put his arm around her shoulder. She slapped his face, hopped out, and raced back into town as fast as her legs would carry her.
The rest of the day she wandered the east end, incognito. Parishioners from St. James didn’t go near these dead-end streets, and her picture hadn’t appeared in the papers. Not that her mug on the front page would have changed anything; she went unrecognized by a pair of Pentecostals who’d been at the hospital. Out on a missionary patrol, they spotted her sitting on a bench, and ran over with their Bibles, eager to testify how they’d witnessed the Beeford resurrection with their very own eyes, and how Miss McTavish was one of their own.
“Well, I’m she, and I’m not one of anybody’s,” Mary Mabel said, “though if you could spare me a room for the night I’d be obliged.”
“You’re not Miss McTavish!” the elder huffed. “You’re a two-bit whore! A pox-ridden clap-breeder! How dare you pretend to be who you aren’t?” The pair turned on their heels and took off in search of likelier candidates for salvation.
At dusk, Mary Mabel found herself at the entrance to the Western Fairgrounds. The revival tent stood silhouetted against the sky, the centre collapsed, tears in the canvas brilliant with sunset. “So this was where Timmy Beeford was electrocuted,” she marvelled. She gaped at the shell, what was left of the generator, and the hulk of the trailer-truck. It was a wonder that only the boy had died.
Night fell. Shadows slipped under the tent flaps and into the trailer. Was it safe to fall asleep among strange and lonely men? She decided not to chance it. Luckily, the truck’s cab was empty. She crawled in, locked the doors, and fell asleep, a full moon shining through the windshield, God’s night light to the forsaken.
Next morning, she was up before the rounds of the London Parks Department. She freshened up in the Fairgrounds’ washroom, managing a sponge bath in one of the stalls with a pair of socks she wet in the sink. For food, she settled for a late afternoon bowl of pork and beans which, with a slice of buttered bread, rice pudding, and a Maxwell House, could be had for sixty cents at Minnie’s Good Eats across the road.
By sundown, she was back in her cab, curled up for bed, proud of herself for surviving her first full day on the streets. “It’s not so bad,” she thought. “At least it could be worse.”
Mary Mabel was right. It could be worse. And it soon was.
She woke up in the middle of the night with the feeling she was being watched. Rolling over, she saw a man standing outside the passenger door, his nose squashed flat against the window. Her Peeping Tom was a vision from the crypt. His eyes gleamed wild from deep sockets, sunk in a head papered in gauze like Boris Karloff’s Mummy. Ears, unnaturally large, sprouted from the bandages, along with clumps of matted hair. Seeing her awake, the monster began to jabber. Saliva drooled from his mouth, a mouth with jaws that appeared to be wired shut with clothes hangers.
Dear God, she thought, it’s a lunatic escaped from the town asylum!
The creature began to claw at the window. Long, bony fingers rattled the door, fiddled the handle. Mary Mabel scrambled to the driver’s side and pressed the horn with all her might, praying the nearby tramps would save her. No such luck. They fled in all directions.
The lock popped up. The door swung open. The madman grabbed her by the calf. She flipped over, yanked up her free leg, and landed a boot to his chin. He reeled back, howling. She turned to escape out the driver’s side. A second stranger blocked the exit. He shone a flashlight in her eyes. She hoisted her bag from the cab’s floor and held it like a shield.
Flashlight chuckled. “We’ve got us a live one.”
“Godda beesh!” swore the madman.
Mary Mabel looked from one to the other. “Back off or I scream!”
“As if anyone would care. What’s your name?”
“None of your beeswax!” She cast a nervous eye at the maniac. To her relief, he’d shifted his attention to the glove compartment, rifling through a grab-all of maps, receipts, pencils, old toothbrushes, and crumpled sandwich bags.
“I admire your spunk,” Flashlight continued, “but you’re in a heap of trouble. Break and enter. Tell us your name or we turn you in.”
“Clara Brimley,” she answered warily.
“Liar. Not to worry, I’ve other ways to find out.” He emptied her bag and searched it, opening the cover of her Collected Works. He read the inscription: “‘From the Library of Miss Mary Mabel McTavish..” His jaw dropped. “You’re Mary Mabel McTavish?”
“What’s it to you?”
Flashlight whooped like he’d hit the bingo jackpot. “Criminey, crackers, and tangerines!”
His monster pal joined in: “Ass an ee sha ruhseef!”
“You can say that again,” Flashlight said. “Miss McTavish, God has answered our prayers.” He saw her confusion. “My apologies. The name’s Floyd Cruickshank. And this here’s my partner, Brother Percy Brubacher.”
Life in the Vineyard
Brother Percy Brubacher would live to regret finding Mary Mabel in the Holy Redemption trailer-truck, would live to curse her name and all her works, fulminating from soapbox pulpits on Los Angeles street corners to the cell of the prison where he would be held on charges of kidnapping and murder. Yet at the time, finding Mary Mabel made Percy feel as close to Heaven as he was ever likely to get.
Now forty, he’d been undergoing a spiritual crisis. The promise of his first years evangelizing had turned to dust and he’d found himself in a pitched battle with the Forces of Da
rkness. “Help me, Jesus!” he’d scream in the middle of the night; but the Lord was not to be found in those lonely small-town hotel rooms with their peeling flowered wallpaper, mouse droppings, and tick-infested sheets.
Percy would leap out of bed in a frenzy and ferret from his suitcase the little black books in which he’d written up the history of his ministry, a literary labour undertaken as an assist to future biographers. He’d seek inspiration from page one, volume one, “The Day I Got the Call,” a recounting of the morning he’d stood, age five, in the alley behind his family’s bakery in Hornets Ridge, and served a communion of day-old Chelsea buns to a congregation of squirrels and chipmunks. As the rodents munched, tiny claws pressed together as if in prayer, the clouds had parted and a halo of sun had shone down around him, the sign of God’s anointing.
Percy’s mother encouraged his call, taking him to local meetings of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. He was an immediate sensation in his little blue blazer, grey flannel shorts, and bow tie, leaping to his feet as the Spirit moved, to preach away on the evils of drink. His father, a backsliding Baptist with a taste for bathtub gin, was none too pleased at his son’s denunciations. But as Percy reported, “The old devil said little, being generally passed out.”
While Percy’s religious vocation was attractive to rural women of a certain age, it caused trouble with the village boys, especially at recess, after he’d trumpeted their sins in front of the teacher. Percy didn’t mind. He wore his shiners proudly. “The badge of the Lord,” he called them. “‘For so persecuted they the prophets who came before me.’”
He took comfort from a postcard he’d received from famed baseball player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday. Sunday had been touched by the letter from the little boy from New Hampshire, who’d written for advice on how to handle an alcoholic father. His reply became Percy’s salvation, recognition from the next best thing to God Himself that he mattered in the world beyond Hornets Ridge. He waved the postcard under everyone’s nose, made it the frequent subject of school Show and Tells, and created a small shrine to it next to the Bible by his bed. At night, he’d kneel, clasp it in prayer, and, running his finger gently over the postage stamp, listen to the still voice of the Lord.
The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish Page 5
