Tempest Tost
( The Salterton Trilogy - 1 )
Robertson Davies
People who do not know Salterton call it dreamy and old-world. They say it is the place where Anglican clergymen go when they die. The real Saltertons, however, know that there is nothing quaint about the place at all. With its two cathedrals, its one university, and its native sons and daughters busily scheming for their dreams, Salterton is very much in the real world.
Robertson Davies
Tempest Tost
All characters in this story are imaginary, and no reference is intended to any living person. Readers who think that they can identify the creations of the author’s fancy among their own acquaintance are paying the author an extravagant compliment, which he acknowledges with gratitude.
I’ll drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid.
Weary se’nnights nine times nine
Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:
Thoughhis bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-tost.
Macbeth I.3
One
“It’s going to be a great nuisance for both of us,” said Freddy. “Couldn’t you make a fuss about it, Tom?”
“If your father said they could use the place, it’s no good for me to make a fuss,” said Tom.
“Yes, but Daddy just said that they could use the place in a large, general way. He didn’t specially say that they could use this shed. Anyway he only said it because Griselda is probably going to have a big part. It seems to me that I remember him saying that he didn’t want them in the house.”
“Now Miss Freddy, you’d better be sure about that. You’ve got a way of remembering your Dad said just whatever you wanted him to say.”
When Tom called her Miss Freddy she knew that he had temporarily ceased to be a friend and had become that incalculable, treacherous thing, an adult. At fourteen she had no defence against such sudden shifts. People treated her as a child or an equal, whichever suited them at the moment. But she had thought that she could rely on Tom. Still, had Daddy really said that he didn’t want the Little Theatre people trampling through his house? She could hear the words spoken in his voice, quite clearly, but had he really said them? Solly had once told her that she interpreted Daddy as priests interpret their gods, for her own ends. This was a moment for discretion. She would achieve little without Tom’s help.
“I didn’t mean that you should refuse to let them in here, or anything silly like that. I just meant that you could make it rather difficult. You don’t want them snooping around in here, poking into all your drawers and using your tools, and getting everything all mixed up. That’s just what Larry Pye will do. There won’t be a thing left in its place by the time he gets through. You know that, Tom.”
Tom’s expression showed that he knew it very well. He didn’t want strangers in his workshop, messing about, dulling all his carefully sharpened edges, snarling his tidy coils of twine, using his pruning shears for cutting wire, as like as not. What might not happen if they began nosing into his special pride, the cabinet where all his seeds were kept, labelled and tucked away in tidy brown envelopes? Be just like them, to go rooting into what was none of their business. In his heart he was on Freddy’s side, but he wanted to enjoy the luxury of being persuaded. Anyway, he shouldn’t give way to a child too easily. Bad for the child’s character.
“Maybe I don’t want ‘em,” he said, slyly; “but you want ‘em even less. I’ve got my things to keep neat. But I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“It’s beneath you to say a mean thing like that, Tom,” said Freddy.
“Bad enough if they get larkin’ around with my seed, but suppose they get hold of those bottles of yours? I don’t want anybody poisoned in here, and police on the job, and you put away for anything up to forty years.” Tom guffawed, relishing his flight of fancy.
“Oh, Tom!” Freddy was disgusted. How stupid adults could be! Even a nice man like Tom.
“They’d let you off easy for murdering Larry Pye. But bootlegging! That’s where they’d get you. Brewing and distilling, and thereby cheating the Government out of its taxes on alcoholic liquors! That’s real crime, Freddy.”
“Tom, I’m not a bootlegger! I’m a scientist, really. I’m only a bootlegger if I offer it for sale. And I give it away. As you certainly ought to know, for I gave you a bottle of my blackberry wine last Christmas, and you drank it and said it was good.”
“And so it was good. But you put quite a bit of your Dad’s brandy in that blackberry before you put it down to mature.”
“Of course. All those dessert wines have to be fortified. But it wasn’t just the brandy that made it good; it was good wine, and I made it with the greatest care, and I think it’s downright miserable of you to make fun of it.”
“I was just coddin’ you, Freddy. It was real good wine. But I don’t know what your father would say if he knew how much stuff like that you’ve got hidden away in here.”
“You’ll know what he says in a few weeks. His birthday is coming, and I’ve got a dozen—a whole beautiful dozen—of champagne cider to give him. It’s wonderful stuff, Tom. A year old—just right—and if he likes it, I’m going to ask him to let me study in France, and learn everything about wine, and then come back here and revolutionize the wine industry in Canada. He’s got a lot of stock in a winery, and he could ask them to give me a job. Just think, Tom, maybe I’ll end up as the Veuve Cliquot of Canada!”
“Can’t say that I know what that is.”
“It’s the name of a woman. ‘Veuve’ means widow. Madame Cliquot’s champagne is one of the most famous in the world. She’s dead, of course, but her name lives.”
“Well, anything can happen,” said Tom, considering. “Widow Webster’s Wines; that’s what yours would have to be called. Sounds like something you’d take for your health. But that’s a long way off, Freddy. I’d give it a rest, now, if I was you.”
“I couldn’t be Widow Webster if I’d married,” said Freddy, practically; “I’d be Widow Something Else. Tom, you don’t understand how serious I am. I really mean it. I’m not just playing. I really have a very professional attitude about the whole thing. I’ve read books about wine chemistry, and books about vintages, and everything about wine I can get my hands on. I know I’m young, but I’m not being silly, really I’m not. And if you let me down I don’t know what I’ll do, for there isn’t another soul I can really trust. Griselda wouldn’t understand; she hasn’t any brains anyway, and when it comes to wine she simply hasn’t a clue. And Daddy will have to be shown. Please be a sport, Tom, and don’t go all grown-up on me.”
Tom was not the man to withstand such an appeal. He was fifty, he had an excellent wife, he had two sons in the Navy, he was the best gardener within fifty miles, he was a respected member of the Sergeant’s Club, and he was bass soloist—unpaid, but highly regarded—in the choir of St Clement’s; but age and honours could not change the fact that Freddy—Miss Fredegonde Webster, his employer’s younger daughter—was a very special friend of his. As he often said to the wife, Freddy had no mother. But if he was to give in, he’d have to give some advice, as well. That was only fair; if a kid gets her way, she has to take some advice. That is part of the unwritten code which governs the dealings between generations.
“Well, Freddy,” he said, speaking her name on the low D which was so much admired at St Clement’s, “I know you’re serious, right enough, but you’ve got to remember that you’re only fourteen, and if most people knew what you was up to, they’d be shocked. They’d never believe that you could make it and not drink it. Now wait
a minute; I know you just test it, because you’ve got to keep your palate sharp. I know you just gargle it and spit it out and smack your lips like the real wine-tasters. But they’d never believe it. They’d misunderstand. I’ve seen a good deal of life and a good deal of war, and I tell you, Freddy, it’s a shocker how people can be misunderstood. I’ll say nothing, but you be careful. You’ve got to keep your nose clean, as they say. If your Dad found out, and knew I knew, it’d be as good as my position is worth. And I don’t want to leave this garden because you’ve been found tight under a lilac and I’m an accomplice. See?”
Tom was a Welshman, and the native taste for preaching was plainly strong within him this afternoon, so Freddy struck in hastily. “Oh yes, Tom dear, I do see, and I’ll be very discreet. And I do think you’re being simply marvellous and big-souled about the whole thing. And I won’t take to drink; I swear I won’t. That isn’t what interests me in wine at all. I’m really very professional. I’ll say special prayers against the temptation.”
This was not a happy inspiration. Freddy had, within the last year, become rather High Church in her views; St Clement’s was Broad, with a tendency to become Low under stress. Tom took breath for another lecture, but Freddy hurried on.
“It won’t be a secret from Daddy after his birthday, you see. I’ll give him the champagne cider, and explain everything, and I’m sure it will be all right from then on. He might even let me set up a little lab in the house—maybe even a tiny still—”
“I can see your Dad letting his daughter set up a still in his house,” said Tom, using his low D again to achieve an effect of irony. But Freddy was not to be checked. She liked to talk as well as he.
“It’s sure to be a success. It’s good; I can see that. Not a hint of acetification or rope to be seen in a single bottle of the dozen. I took care of sediment before I bottled. And I bottled just at the psychological moment. I bet if Veuve Cliquot had been there she would have been pleased. And now it’s been ten months in bottle and should be quite fit to drink. Of course another year would do no harm, but it’s ready now.”
“I shouldn’t think your Dad was just the man for cider,” said Tom.
“But it isn’t just old common cider. It’s champagne cider. And Morgan O’Doherty says in Life through the Neck of a Bottle that he has tasted champagne ciders which were superior to all but the finest champagnes! And you know that ache Daddy gets in his back on cold days? Well, the doctor says it’s just an ache, but I suspect it’s gravel. And do you know what’s the very best thing for gravel? Cider! It says so in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It says, “The malic acid of cider is regarded as a powerful diuretic which stimulates the kidneys and prevents the accumulation of uric acid within the system.”“
“I told you it was medicine,” said Tom, who was not a man to let a joke perish half-savoured. “Try the Widow Websters Wines for what ails you.”
“Tom,” said Freddy, in a cold voice, “was your Christmas bottle of my blackberry like medicine? Your wife told me she didn’t know where you got it, but that you never let it alone till it was all gone, and you sang Gounod’s Nazarethfour times without stopping and embarrassed her before company. Let’s not hear quite so much about the Widow Webster.”
Tom did not receive this well. But Freddy had reached an age where she no longer felt called upon to submit without protest to the impudence of her elders, even in the case of such a valued friend and ally as Tom. There was a silence, during which Tom continued to do mysterious things with some wilted bits of green stuff which he called “slips”. Freddy, having made her point, was willing to risk a snub by starring up the conversation again.
“Do you think we can keep them out of here?”
“We can try.”
“Daddy said they could do their play in the garden. They don’t really have to come in here.”
“My experience with people who do plays is they have to go everyplace that isn’t locked and they have to move everything that isn’t fastened down,” said Tom, with bitterness. This’ll be the nearest place for them to get their electric power from, and they’ll have a lot of tack they’ll want to store here between practices and the like. What your Dad said to me was, “Give ‘em whatever help they need, and if it gets past bearing, come to me.” Well, I can’t go to him first off and say I don’t want ‘em to use the workshop and toolshed. That’d mean they have to use the garage or part of the cellar, and he won’t want that. They mustn’t get into the house. That is, unless we all want a row with them Laplanders.”
Tom’s grammar was variable. Speaking officially to his employer, it was careful. But for emphasis he relapsed into forms which he found easier and more eloquent. He never spoke of the admirable Swedish couple who headed the indoor staff except as “them Laplanders”.
“But we’ll do our best, won’t we?”
“Yes, Freddy, but I got a hunch that our best isn’t going to be good enough.” And with that Freddy had to be content.
In her daydreams Freddy sometimes fancied that her native city would be known to history chiefly as her birthplace, and this as much as anything shows the extent of her ambition. Salterton had seen more of history than most Canadian cities, and its tranquillity was not easily disturbed. Like Quebec and Halifax, it is a city which provides unusual opportunities for gush, for it has abundant superficial charm. But the real character of Salterton is beneath the surface, and beyond the powers of gush to disclose.
People who do not know Salterton repeat a number of half-truths about it. They call it dreamy and old-world; they say that it is at anchor in the stream of time. They say that it is still regretful for those few years when it appeared that Salterton would be the capital of Canada. They say that it is the place where Anglican clergymen go when they die. And, sooner or later, they speak of it as “quaint”.
It is not hard to discover why the word “quaint” is so often applied to Salterton by the unthinking or the imperceptive; people or cities who follow their own bent without much regard for what the world thinks are frequently so described; there is an implied patronage about the word. But the people who call Salterton “quaint” are not the real Saltertonians, who know that there is nothing quaint—in the sense of the word which means wilfully eccentric—about the place. Salterton is itself. It seems quaint to those whose own personalities are not strongly marked and whose intellects are infrequently replenished.
Though not a large place it is truly describable as a city. That word is now used of any large settlement, and Salterton is big enough to qualify; but a city used to be the seat of a bishop, and Salterton was a city in that sense long before it became one in the latter. It is, indeed, the seat of two bishoprics, one Anglican and one Roman Catholic. As one approaches it from the water the two cathedrals, which are in appearance so strongly characteristic of the faiths they embody, seem to admonish the city. The Catholic cathedral points a vehement and ornate Gothic finger toward Heaven; the Anglican cathedral has a dome which, with offhand Anglican suavity, does the same thing. St Michael’s cries, “Look aloft and pray!”; St Nicholas’ says, “If I may trouble you, it might be as well to lift your eyes in this direction,” The manner is different; the import is the same.
In the environs of the cathedrals the things of this world are not neglected. Salterton is an excellent commercial city, and far enough from other large centres of trade to have gained, and kept, a good opinion of itself. To name all its industries here would be merely dull, but they are many and important. However, they do not completely dominate the city and engross the attention of its people, as industries are apt to do in less favoured places. One of the happy things about Salterton is that it is possible to work well and profitably there without having to carry one’s work into the remotest crannies of social life. To the outsiders, who call Salterton “quaint”, this sometimes looks like snobbishness. But the Saltertonians do not care. They know that a little snobbery, like a little politeness, oils the wheels of daily life. Salterton enjo
ys a satisfying consciousness of past glories and, in a modest way, makes its own rules.
More than is usual in Canada, Salterton’s physical appearance reveals its spirit. As well as its two cathedrals it has a handsome Court House (with a deceptive appearance of a dome but not, perhaps, a true dome) and one of His Majesty’s largest and most forbidding prisons (with an unmistakable dome). And it is the seat of Waverley University. To say that the architecture of Waverley revealed its spirit would be a gross libel upon a centre of learning which has dignity and, in its high moments, nobility. The university had the misfortune to do most of its building during that long Victorian period when architects strove like Titans to reverse all laws of seemliness and probability and when what had been done in England was repeated, clumsily and a quarter of a century later, in Canada. Its buildings are of two kinds: in the first the builders have disregarded the character of the local stone and permitted themselves an orgy of campaniles, baroque staircases, Norman arches, Moorish peepholes and bits of grisly Scottish chinoiserie and bondieuserie, if such terms may be allowed; in the second kind the local stone has so intimidated the builders that they have erected durable stone warehouses, suitable perhaps for the study of the sciences but markedly unfriendly toward humanism. The sons and daughters of Waverley love their Alma Mater as the disciples of Socrates loved their master, for a beauty of wisdom which luckily transcends mere physical appearance.
At an earlier date than the establishment of Waverley four houses of real beauty were built in Salterton by the eccentric Prebendary Bedlam, one of those Englishmen who sought to build a bigger and better England in the colonies. By a lucky chance one of these, known as Old Bedlam, is upon the present university grounds, and houses the Provost of Waverley.
While upon this theme it may be as well to state that, among the good architecture of Salterton, there is much that is mediocre and some which is downright bad. The untutored fancy of evangelical religion has raised many a wart upon that fair face. Commerce, too, has blotched it. But upon the whole the effect is pleasing and, in some quarters of the town, genuinely beautiful. There are stone houses in Salterton, large and small, which show a justness of proportion, and an intelligent consideration of the material used, which are not surpassed anywhere in Canada. These houses appear to have faces—intelligent, well-bred faces; the knack of building houses which have faces, as opposed to grimaces, is retained by few builders.
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