Lily's Story

by Don Gutteridge

  She swallowed her tea but did not look up.

  “For Dominion Day,” he explained hastily. And butchery along the Somme.

  She flashed him an ironic smile he pretended to miss.

  “The unanimous choice of the council, though I suspect we didn’t all vote for the same reasons. The vets will form up at Bayview, they’ll be led by our own small drum-and-bugle corps down St. Clair to the monument. We’ve covered the Honour Roll with a flag, as you can see, and at precisely 11 A.M. I’ll unveil the memorial plaque an’ the first wreath of remembrance’ll be laid.”

  He paused. She was listening intently.

  “Could I have a bit more tea?”

  She reached for the pot, stopped and peered over at him with a gesture which clearly said, ‘Tell me what’s really on your mind, I can take it’.

  “The council – recognizin’ all you’ve done an’ meant to this community for sixty years, an’ seein’ that you’re now a deed-holdin’ landowner,” – he was unable to complete the smile here – “would like you to lay the wreath. It was unanimous. Even Hitch. The rightness of the choice was self-evident. They – that is, I don’t see how anyone else could possibly do.” Finally he turned to face her. The burn-scar on his left cheek glowed softly in the muted sunlight of the room. Unconsciously he drew his fingers over its numbness.

  “Look, Cora, I know how much we’re askin’ of you. And I have a pretty fair idea of what you think of the War an’ politicians an’ pooh-bahs. But that part of it’s over, you see. We let Lord Byng an’ his Lady an’ his entourage of party hacks come here an’ have their say back in April. You can’t keep them away from a thing like this. So we invited the whole shebang includin’ a brass band. They come an’ they said their piece an’ they went. Not a one of them will ever remember again where Point Edward is without checkin’ a map first. What we’re plannin’ for July is goin’ to be our own. Sure, we couldn’t say no to the local M.P. an’ his cell-mate from the Legislature, but that’s all. Not even His Worship from the City will be here. Just us. The people who suffered an’ the people who sacrificed. The people who wanted this monument built, an’ know, each one of them, what it means.”

  The flies along the window-ledge buzzed in the local sun.

  “I think you know, Cora, that in some ways you’ve been almost a mother to me. Sometimes Prudie gets annoyed with me comin’ over here so much, and I’m at a loss to give her an explanation she can believe.” He paused, drew a deep breath, and said more quickly, “This monument’ll mean different things to different people, but let me tell you what I think, an’ what I believe many others in the village think deep down inside. This monument isn’t a memorial to war or the so-called triumph of good over evil. There’s nothin’ glorious about war whether you win or lose. We know that for ourselves. There’s not a man between twenty-five an’ forty in this town who isn’t limpin’ or half blind or wakin’ up screamin’ in the middle of the night from the shrapnel that ain’t come out yet or the nightmares of shell-shock. An’ the women know even better than we do – they suffered here at home for four years, they looked into the grim faces of the bereaved, an’ most of them felt that pain themselves before it was over.” He swallowed hard. “No one felt it deeper than you did.”

  She tried to deny it but her eyes failed her.

  “I’ll tell you what I think that monument means to most of us when we walk past it by ourselves, when we’re sure no one is watchin’ or listenin’. You’ve seen them already, haven’t you, from this window? To them it’s not a fancy pillar to the glorious dead. It’s a memorial to those of our own who left us for a cause we thought to be right. They died, and I know that some of them found courage before they died and others didn’t. That don’t matter. They were ours, they left us, and if we don’t remember them no one else will, no one but us will really care. We want our grandchildren to know, years an’ years from now, whenever they see this column an’ the names on it, that once there was a village here, with people who were brave an’ foolish an’ caring. This is goin’ to be a monument to ourselves as a village, what we been through in the past, how much we can be together in the future. This is only one of the wars we’ve already been through. Who knows that better than you?” He got up and stood at the window looking across to the cenotaph and the ancient tree behind it.

  “So you see why it has to be you to lay the wreath.”

  When he found the courage to face her, she gave a reluctant consent.

  “The council also asked me to give the dedication address,” he said. “I agreed, of course. And I will. But I’d like you to write out the words for me.”

  Granny made no attempt to brush away the tears that would do as they pleased anyway. When Sunny started towards her, she held up her hand, and smiled. As he watched in a sort of anguished awe, she got up, joints creaking a bit, went over to Arthur’s trunk on top of which she kept her writing tablet, and wrote something on it in slow, stiff surges. He waited as she brought the paper across to him.

  It read: ‘Not necessary, you already have’.

  Sunny Denfield wrote out for her a detailed description of the ceremonies and her small role in them. “By the way, my cousin Ruth-Anne is comin’ down for the occasion. She hasn’t had any luck in tracin’ her mother’s relatives, but I guess she’s heard so much about this fabulous town lately, she decided she had to come an’ see it for herself. I’m delighted. I haven’t seen her in eight years. We ain’t been much of a family, I guess, and I’m anxious to make amends. I think you’ll like her.”

  As he was about to leave, Granny wrote on her pad: ‘I wish to give you a gift, something personal, for all you have done’. While he was energetically refusing such undeserved kindness, she reached into Arthur’s trunk and brought out a leather pouch. She loosened the drawstring and he saw two objects inside: a pendant with what appeared to be a cameo portrait of some kind and a calf-bound book, perhaps a miniature Bible. He could tell from the way she fingered them that these objects were heirlooms of great value. Again he demurred, but she held out the book until he took it, gently, into his hands. On her tablet she wrote: ‘This belonged to my father and he got it from his mother. He inscribed it for me and asked me to keep it until I could pass it along to my own children’.

  58

  1

  Three days before the ceremony Prudie Denfield came over. She insisted on showing Granny how to use the new-fangled gas range in the kitchen, and after a brief one-sided tea, the two women went through the dusty trunks in the uninhabited bedroom until a presentable dress was unearthed. It was the black one she had worn to Arthur’s funeral. How thin she had become since that time, ten years ago almost to the month. I thought I’d be with you long before now, she said quietly to him when Prudie’s back was turned. But then I never was lucky at planning anything for long.

  Prudie fussed over her, pinning the dress with elaborate care for the alterations she was threatening to carry out. She even promised to bring over a boxful of vintage hats – representing all sizes and generations – from which a choice eventually could be made. Before she left, she sat Granny down in her padded rocker and began brushing her hair with long, rhythmic, drowsing strokes. When her eyes opened, the room was dark. She let her dream continue. She was dreaming of Bradley and the night he came back from the dead...

  Bradley had no sooner stepped into Hap Withers’ cottage that night when he staggered and collapsed on the linoleum. The swaddled child struck the floor before she could catch it, and began crying. Holding it in her arms, she forced the door shut with her body, already soaked from the wind-driven, icy rain pouring in on them. She stripped off the wet rags and wrapped the baby in an old quilt, its cries shuddering through her, its tiny face wizening as if it were trying to squeeze all the blood out with whatever pain or terror was twisting inside. Bradley groaned and heaved onto his side. Something black and oily dripped from his mouth. The baby shrieked. She hurried back to the kitchen, but the stove was cold. She lay
the baby down on her bed and returned to the front room. Somehow with the child wailing and the storm lashing about the eaves and sills, she managed to haul Bradley’s unconscious form onto Hap’s bed. She could not get more than his jacket off because each time she pulled at his clothes he jerked back as if he’d been jabbed by a cattle-prod. She pulled the large comforter over him, tucked it firmly in all around, and went back for the baby. Covering it with her own coat, she ran into the fury of the storm towards Peg’s house, just across the tracks.

  Despite her good marriage and religious conversion, Peg Potts Granger was still an Alleywoman. She asked no questions; the desperation in Lily’s face was all the testimony she required. Two of her boys were dispatched to rouse the doctor in Sarnia. She herself took charge of the baby, and while Lily – Peg called her Mrs. Burgher because she could not bring herself to call her mother’s lifelong friend ‘Cora’ even though most of the village had grown accustomed to the change – while Lily stood shivering in uncharacteristic helplessness, Peg dug out an old bottle, warmed some milk and soon had the baby’s wailing damped down for the night. “Go back to Bradley, missus. I won’t say a word till you tell me. The baby’ll be here when you’re ready for him.”

  After satisfying herself that Bradley was still breathing, Lily went into the kitchen and got a roaring fire started. Then she walked grimly back to her son. She was not even sure just how she had come to recognize him, something in the eyes perhaps that no metamorphosis however savage could disguise. The once-thin, ascetic face was monstrously bloated, his skin had the pallor and touch of gray-white mushrooms too long in the rain. The top of the head was bald but not smooth – as if the hair had been pulled out in frenzied tufts. What hair remained – on the sides and back of the head – was a weathered, colourless fungus no amount of scrubbing would ever make blond again, or curly. As she pulled away the vest and shirt, she saw that the body flesh was similarly puffed and shapeless. Under her touch, it oozed. As she drew his trousers down, she caught sight of the swollen, lopsided protuberance stretching out below his right ribs – like a blooded liverwort. His breathing came in short, gasping seizures followed by a death-like quiescence – equally frightening.

  It was dawn when the rain stopped and Dr. Dollard arrived, white-haired and exhausted after a night in the township. He accepted Lily’s offer of a cup of hot coffee and a biscuit, and they sat in a grateful silence for a while – though there was much that lay between them. Finally he said to Lily in a grave tone: “I’m afraid he’s come home to die.”

  “How much time?” Lily said.

  “A few days, a week. No one can say for sure. He’s slipping in and out of hepatic coma, and it appears from his breathing as if pneumonia’s setting in. His liver’s finished.”

  “Drink?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “To be honest, no. I’ve seen a lot but I didn’t think a young man could change that much in so short a time. I’m sorry, Mrs. Burgher.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Keep him warm or cool as his temperature varies, get some liquid into him if you can. I must warn you, he may go into delirium tremens if the pneumonia don’t work fast enough. If he does, get some help quick. And call me.”

  “Thank you.”

  At the door he said, “You take care, Lily.”

  Bradley had his first seizure before noon. Asleep on the chesterfield, Lily was brought upright by some loud muttering from the bedroom. When she went in, he was still unconscious and shouting violently at some antagonist in his dream and thrashing his arms about as if warding off savage blows. The comforter was knocked askew, and suddenly both of his knees shot up, flinging it to the floor. With a fierce cry he rose up and began flailing at his invisible assailants; she could distinguish only ‘no, no, no’ as he fell back in a crumpled ball, knees up and against the belly like a monstrous foetus. Then everything began to quiver, then tremble, then quake – skin, puffed flesh, the elastic bone, the pale lids of the eyes. She heard the scraping of his clenched teeth and the embowelled groan trapped behind it. The force of it unbent his body and popped his eyes wide open.

  Hap Withers, bless him, promised to stay close, but Lily assured him there was no need. She was not frightened. After one of his brief seizures, Bradley was calm and perfectly lucid, as if some kind of exorcism had occurred without his blessing. Although his voice was thin and without colour, it was one she remembered, and from the ruined housing of that flesh it was Bradley’s eyes that looked at her. On these occasions he was usually able to speak for half an hour or so before he tired and slipped into a sleep which was both shallow and fathomless. In the seven days that he lived – during which she left his side for brief moments only, trying to sleep when he did, eating with him, suffering with him as she had so many times before when the fever and the fever-dream chose to strike – they never really had a conversation. If he were quiet but alert, she would speak for a while, telling him what she thought he ought to know or just letting him hear the strength of her voice. He would dip his chin slightly or move his eyes in a certain way to let her know she was to continue, and sometimes, though rarely, he would murmur in assent or acceptance. At other times she would find him awake and before she could utter his name, he would begin talking in his whispered monotone. When this happened, she had to sit close to him to catch every word; if she moved an inch to loosen the crick in her neck, his eyes would widen with a childish terror and he would start to speed up his speech towards a frantic blur until she moved in close enough, once more. At times she felt he was talking right past her to some more unconvinced ear beyond this room – the words, the jumble of ideas, the arcane references, the assumed knowledge – all tending to puzzle and estrange. Yet even when the flow of his talk became trancelike or confessional, she had only to turn her head to one side before he seized upon the gesture as a betrayal. Every word that he uttered during the last week of his life was something he needed to say, and, in a way she never fully understood, something he needed to say to her or in her presence. Though all of it was obviously not meant for her, every word and every deed behind it required a sanction only she could give. She made it her business to cherish each syllable.

  2

  When Bradley and Paul Chambers made good their escape to Toronto in June of 1882, they knew precisely what they wanted and where to find it. They set themselves up in a bachelor quarters on King Street, close to the city’s centre and some distance from the academic community they had vowed to repudiate. Though there were no salons in which they could instantly expose their superior talents, they knew which coffee-houses and taverns to frequent and which clubs to infiltrate to promote the cause they were now celebrating with selfless gratuity – art for its own sake, beauty because it is beautiful, the ideal of the mind transcendent and nudging towards cosmic consciousness. Or something like that. Bradley lugged his satchel of poems everywhere there was a potential audience and Paul Chambers his sheaf of political pamphlets. They badgered the journalists and cub reporters in the beverage rooms along King and Bay, they tried to impress the cognoscenti of Canada First who loitered about the coffee houses around Yonge and Adelaide, they even costumed themselves as gentlemen and passed undiscovered amongst a gathering of the literati at the Grange, a cabal whose bourgeois decadence they took pleasure in disparaging. They spent not a little of their time in haberdasheries searching for clothing appropriate to the Wildean image they had preserved intact from their encounter with the great man. They shunned black. When the University term began in September, they took a cab up to College Street and stood in the sunshine of the walkway below the Main Building, dazzling in their improvised Pre-Raphaelite finery, purveying disdain to the wretched freshmen by their mere presence. Paul’s father, ever gullible, believed his son had settled in to school and continued to send money until the Dean’s letter at Christmastime disabused him. Paul was summoned home, and for a few black days Bradley sat in the rooming hous
e, out of money, and wondered when the walls would crash mercifully in upon him. Several times he started to write a letter home, the words tangling and seizing in his remorse. He could find no words to describe the aloneness deep within, impermeable to love or loathing alike. His poems seemed trivial, a mocking impertinence in the face of his suffering.

  Paul Chambers arrived on New Year’s day, in time to pay the rent and nurse his friend through a bout of pneumonia. He had succeeded in convincing his father that he needed merely to ‘sow his oats’ for a few months more, to ‘get Europe out of his system’ and then he would settle down. He even made flagrant promises to consider engagement to a plain young woman of resistible virtue who lived just down the street. He kissed her once on the front porch. The upshot was a guaranteed monthly income for as long as he needed it, the sum total to be deducted from his considerable inheritance if he turned out to be a bad investment. Paul grinned and said, “Now we can begin to live, you and I. We shall make things happen.”

  Bradley continued to have some success in getting his poems published in Goldwyn Smith’s journals and elsewhere in underground circulars. Paul managed a few biting letters-to-the-editor in the Mail and one in the Globe. What happened, of more significance, was their meeting up with the Crawfords sometime late in January. Sarah Crawford was a journalist of sorts, who wrote and sold fleeting pieces for the papers and did copy-editing when she needed to eat. “We met in a coffee-house, she was sitting alone in a dusky corner of the room; she was elfin and spare, with porcelain skin and starveling eyes; she exuded a brittle, painful beauty. When she spoke to me I fell madly in love. She knew who I was, we talked, I returned to my den and began pouring out breathless anapests to love and beauty and faithfulness – every one dedicated to the goddess Sarah.”