by Leah Fleming
Rose stood for everything good about this new life. Here he could forget killing and maiming and the carnage of war. He was dead to that life now, but to prove himself worthy of this prize, he must first take on this way of life, curtail old habits, boozing and worldly pleasures, and enter this serious, sober hard-working community with sincerity.
Had he been sent there to replace Zack? Was it preordained that he should find them and be welcomed into the Yoder farmstead? Did Rose look on him only as a brotherly substitute? There were rituals and customs here he would have to apply, but first he must show willing to take on their beliefs, set his reason and doubting aside and embrace this order as a novice might enter a monastery.
In his heart it was all part of paying back the Yoders for saving his life, giving him clothes, food and shelter when he couldn’t earn his keep. Would they risk giving their daughter to him in marriage? Only time would tell.
At first he struggled to keep up with the physical hardships of leading the team of horses with the plough, learning to harvest and to build. He must repay their trust in him. He had come from a different world where everything was done for him: horses groomed, clothes cleaned, food prepared, repairs to wheels and harnesses taken and returned fixed by others. He had been waited on hand and foot as an officer, given privileges, better food, transport, a fine uniform. How would they even contemplate the luxuries he had grown to take for granted?
None of that mattered here. They took as they found and he was doing his best to please. The women worked even harder than the men, sewing, spinning wool, tending flocks of birds, nursing children and old people, baking, preparing for gatherings, making clothes with nothing that made their labours easy except sewing machines, flat irons and iron mangles. The mattresses were stuffed with feathers from birds. The house was bare, swept, mopped, freshened with garden herbs, but no one went hungry, clothes were mended and redarned, put away and then brought out again. He was wearing Zack’s cotton bib overalls and knockabout clothes with his one black Sunday suit that had to be let out and reshaped to fit his long legs.
His beard grew thick. He wanted to look just like all the other young men, but it was hard not to stand out.
‘How do I join your Church?’ he asked Izaak one night after supper.
The man smiled and leaned back on his chair. ‘You have to attend meetings, read your Bible, accept the law of Christ, bear each other’s burdens and live in peace with all men. You must take membership and communion, be examined and subject to the disciplines of your fellow brothers in Christ. We do accept people of other faiths, so don’t look worried: you are halfway there already. I knew the minute you gave me that letter that you were sent to us for a purpose. Be patient. There’s no rush in these matters.’
Oh, but there is, Guy sighed, thinking of Rose. I must wed her before some other young buck has the same idea.
Selma threw up all the way down the coast. The heat and the dust and the constant jostling of the train journey made her sick. It was not turning out to be the best of honeymoons. Jamie was full of his part in the Western, nervous that this might be his big break into a junior lead. They’d cast him for his height and brawn, and he looked good on horseback. He was growing a beard that tickled when he kissed her,
The film was called White Horse Mesa and it was being made in Arizona, where they had to find five thousand wild horses and Indians in costume, and shoot lots of action shots. The offer couldn’t have come at a better time.
‘I’m late,’ she’d confessed to Jamie one night. ‘I think there is a baby coming our way.’
He’d stared at her agape for a second, then burst out laughing. ‘I’ll have to make an honest woman of you then.’ There was no shock, no anger, as if they’d not done anything wrong at all. ‘We’ll have to get our skates on, I suppose, and find a judge to marry us; in and out in five minutes,’ he’d laughed, as if it were all some joke.
‘But it’s my wedding. We have to do it properly,’ she protested.
‘You do what you want. I’ll turn up and we’ll take a few shots for the studio. Buy yourself a new dress, though. I’m sick of seeing that old thing.’ He laughed again, not seeing the hurt in her eyes.
‘We’re going to get married,’ she confessed to Lisa, who immediately asked Uncle Corrie for the loan of his garden for the ceremony.
Pearl was no doubt relieved that Selma would be out of their hair and offered to lay on a buffet. ‘You must make sure the press get hold of the story. Jamie needs publicity.’ The roller coaster was on its way.
They dragged her to a fancy dressmaker in the costume department, who loaned her a lacy concoction with a feather headdress, made from an old garment. Jamie was kitted out in a frock coat and frilly shirt. They looked as if they’d just stepped off a set for a theatrical musical in Broadway.
Selma managed not to throw up in public and the wedding day went perfectly. The portrait was sent to her mother and she kept glancing at her ring finger with pride. No one guessed her condition except perhaps the dressmaker, who had to let out the waist using both seam allowances.
Jamie played his part, dancing with everyone, flirting with Pearl, and made a funny speech about Selma capturing him straight off the Scottish steam ship, which wasn’t true, but it got a lot of laughs.
Little did she know she was about to see one of the greatest wonders of the world: the Grand Canyon. They stayed overnight on the South Rim to catch the sunset over the rainbow-coloured rocks. She had never seen anything so wonderful in her life and it made her want to cry at the glory of God’s creation.
There was something majestic about the landscape of Arizona, with its red rocks and desert, the ochre and carmine earth, the wonderful trading posts with walls covered in rugs and skins, baskets and jewellery. Outside, Navajo women were weaving rugs with arms jingling with silver and turquoise jewellery.
Jamie bought her a bracelet of turquoise stones and she’d never took it off. In those few hectic weeks when he was always on set, she took a horse and trekked with anyone willing to accompany her, through creeks and sagebrush trails where cactuses towered above her. It was like living in a picture book under an ink-blue sky. It was fairy tale and magic all rolled into one. Was this what her life was going to be like from now on, going to such exotic places?
No, it wasn’t. Soon they returned to Jamie’s pokey rooms. Selma came down to earth with a bump. How would they fit another person into the apartment? Money was tight and there wasn’t any other work on the horizon. This time it was her turn to wait in a diner, where her legs ached in the heat and the body sweat of the men made her want to vomit. While Jamie stood and waited for bit parts or extra work, she kept them in leftovers and free meals, trying not to let her pregnancy show.
When she told Lisa about the baby, she gave a whoop of delight. ‘A honeymoon baby, how romantic!’ There was no point in disillusioning her. Lisa was going to be far too worldly wise and educated ever to get herself into this mess.
It was only a matter of weeks before Selma realised how feckless Jamie was with money. When he had cash he spent it on stupid things like new shirts or magazines. He’d go out with the crew and ply them with drinks in the hope of catching titbits of gossip about who was filming and casting, and when.
When she complained about them having nothing put by for the baby he turned round and snapped, ‘It’s your bairn, you see to it. I’ve got other things to do.’
This was their first real argument and she saw a new side to him. Or had this always been there and she just hadn’t noticed?
It was then that she felt utterly alone. The baby was not going to stop his career, of course—that was to be expected—but not even to contribute to its coming was cruel and selfish. Somehow she was going to have to earn extra herself and where better than the Hollywood studios?
If Jamie could be an extra then so could she. Time to sign on and see if they could find her background work. She had grown her hair back long out of economy and put on a firm
corset to hide her bump. Taking herself off to the casting offices, she was told to provide photo shots and interviewed.
‘You’ve got a good pioneer face, corsets and shawl work for you, hair scraped back, good fair features…you’ll do.’
She was given forms to fill in and told to go to the costume bay to be kitted up, take the docket and line up. ‘They may want you or not.’ On the ticket her name was written as Zelma Barr and she didn’t correct it.
It was a long day sitting in the shade, dressed in a crinoline and boots, wig and bonnet, until the director marched up and down picking out extras:‘Yous and yous and yous—over there on the street, up and down, walk! Hey, yous,’ he pointed to Selma, ‘pusha the pram and look as if you mean it.’
Her first job was pushing an old metal pram up and down a main street of a row of wooden shop fronts propped up at the back; back and forth for hours while they took their angle shots and rehearsed the scene. Her back ached with the heat and boredom, but there was a canteen and it saved her cooking on that terrible contraption that passed for a stove.
This was as far away from the Arizona honeymoon as she could imagine but for thirteen dollars a day who was complaining?
Jamie was furious when she told him what she had done.
‘You told me to find work.’
‘I did not!’
‘In so many words, you did. If you won’t feed our baby, I will!’
‘I didna mean it like that…the two of us can’t be in the same business.’
‘Whyever not? I’ve nothing else to do. It’s come-and-go work…but they did say I had the face for it, so as long as they do Wild West pictures someone has to walk the frontier towns looking prim and proper,’ she smiled, hoping he’d see the funny side of it all.
‘There we’ll be, me up one side and you down the other. This isn’t quite what I had planned,’ he sighed, no longer sulking, which was a relief.
‘We ought to think of finding another apartment when junior arrives. There isn’t room to swing a cat in here,’ Selma said, striking while he was in a good mood.
‘My pa and ma raised six weans in a single end…in just one room in a tenement,’ was his reply.
‘Where did you all sleep?’
‘Topped and tailed in the dunny in the wall on a mattress, the weans in a cot and my parents in a makeshift bed. A bairn is happy with a bottom drawer for a few months.’
Selma didn’t want their baby sleeping in the sideboard drawer but needs must. At least she’d got him thinking about the coming event. When he became a father, he’d soon take his responsibilities more seriously. It was then she realised just how little she knew about her husband and how little he knew about her.
Guy stood in wonder watching the scarlet flash of the red cardinal in the bush. The birds here were so bright and colourful, the blue jays and the woodpeckers. The great hawks wheeling in the sky still made him down tools to observe them. He liked to take himself off alone just to think over how much his life was changing.
He was plucking up courage to ask Izaak if he might approach his daughter. Now he had been accepted for membership and adult baptism, taken his first communion and made himself useful on the farm. It was only natural he’d want to settle down into his own family life.
He loved to watch Rose busying herself with her mother, cooking, sewing dresses, making fancy quilts, always on the go. But when he stepped into the room, the air changed, he saw her cheeks flush and she glanced up at him out of the corner of her blue eyes with the briefest hint of a smile.
They needed no excuse to walk the fields together and she asked him about his old life, his family and what England was really like. She couldn’t understand how he could leave his country and he found himself talking with nostalgia about Yorkshire and how bits of it were just like here, about Jemima and his brother. How time had stopped for him living there.
‘Like you, I don’t have a big family, any more. School and the army were my family too.’ She looked perplexed, not understanding any of it. How could he begin to describe his pampered life to a girl whose own education had ended at thirteen? That was when her real education began. She’d been baking bread since she was five, and sewing too.
They came from such different worlds—what did Rose know of his terrible flashbacks when he woke in the night to the sounds of hundreds of men screaming at once, choking for breath because of the explosions in his head, those colours of fire raging around him, orange, yellow swirling flames, the smell of burning flesh and blood in his nostrils that haunted his dreams.
Having known combat, life had a special flavour for him now, which these gentle folk would never know. He yearned to lose himself in simple things with decent people who cared nothing for external wealth and status. His mother would be horrified at his choice of bride, but he had cut her out of his heart. He did not want to examine the power of these feelings towards her, the bitterness and anger. All he wanted was to belong right here, forget what had gone before and start over again.
The delicacy of his request was making him shake, not wanting to do the wrong thing. Would they accept this English Englisher? There was only one way to find out.
After supper, when Izaak was sitting on the porch watching the sun creeping down behind the barn roof, Guy stood cap in hand. ‘I have something to say, Brother Izaak,’ he stuttered.
The farmer looked up and smiled. ‘Feel free, brother.’
‘I have a request to ask. I have taken a liking to your daughter. So much so that I would like to settle down with her for the rest of my days if I have your permission.’
‘Have you indeed?’ Izaak looked up sternly for a second. ‘This is serious talk. Do you know what is expected of a man in making such an offer?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Guy hesitated, feeling this was not going well.
‘Let me tell you how it is done, provided she gives her consent. There must be a period of walking out together in public. There must be a period of spiritual preparation, a house has to be built, stocked with all the basic linens, furniture and kitchenware a bride needs to set up her own home. Then there is a ceremony to be undertaken at the right time of the season so many can visit the Homestead, a feast to prepare, and all this must fit around our farm duties. Some have had to wait many years for such a coming together.’ Izaak looked up, seeing the disappointment on Guy’s face. Then he burst out laughing, ‘Sit down, sit down…before you fall down. Don’t look so flattened. Five years might do it. Did not Jacob wait seven years for his Rachel?’
Guy sighed. Five years was an age at his time of life. ‘I was hoping for five months, brother,’ he replied.
‘Oh, Charles, I’m only teasing. I know how it is between the two of you. Anyone can see the Lord put a fire in both your eyes the moment you met. What took you so long to spit it out?’
Only then did Guy flop down with relief. ‘I promise to take care of her.’
‘You will cherish each other. That is what marriage means: two horses hitched to the same wagon pulling in the same direction—well, most of the time,’ he chuckled. ‘You were brought here for a purpose, Charles. Besides, every farm needs new bloodstock if it is to prosper,’ he winked. ‘Now let’s see what the women have to say.’
As if on cue, Miriam and Rose appeared from the doorway, smiling. ‘Well, sisters, how say you?’
‘It looks as if it’s going to be a busy summer and a busy fall this year,’ Miriam said. ‘November is a good wedding month.’
Rose looked at Guy with such relief and tenderness. He just wanted to get down on his knees and pray, what have I done to deserve such fortune?
19
Selma looked down at her daughter’s pink face and cried with relief to see such a perfect baby staring back at her.
Lisa was fussing over the bed. ‘She’s so beautiful. What will you call her?’
She’d agreed with Jamie that if it was a girl it would be her choice, and his if it was a boy, but he was too busy on location out of
town to worry about names.
‘I’m going to give her two names,’ she smiled. ‘Esther, to please my mother and Sharland, after the village where I was born…Sharland Esther. What do you think?’
‘Ripping!’ Lisa said. ‘But how will you manage here?’ She looked around. ‘It doesn’t get any bigger, does it?’
They had not made the move she’d hoped for. Money was leaking through their fingers, but Lisa had bought a wicker crib for the baby that would do for a few months. Selma wrote to Jamie hoping he’d be back to help her with little Shari, as she had quickly taken to calling her. But the regular work he was getting with the studios meant he was hardly ever at home.
His new agent, Danny Steel, was hustling hard on his behalf.
Jamie did a good line in mountain men in beaver skins with long hair and beards. It looked as if she would have to go back to being Zelma Barr, pioneer woman, soon and little Shari might be used as an extra too, if the authorities allowed. She might as well push a pram up and down Frontier Street with a real baby in it, and if she howled, who was to know as there were no sound?
Since their honeymoon, and once her belly began to bloom, there had been no more long trips on location. She made trips to the ocean in the vacations with Lisa, who always plugged the gap that Jamie seemed to leave. Yet Lisa was growing up fast now and had a gang of high school friends. She wanted to go to college to study geography. Selma wasn’t looking forward to the time when they must inevitably go their separate ways.
Her new life was like a row of skittles being knocked down: emigrating, marriage, and now a baby. Her Yorkshire roots had been yanked up and transplanted into this dry soil. She wasn’t sure they’d struck, and kept thinking of that journey south to Arizona, to those rides in the sagebrush and mesquite, the mountains and canyons that in a strange way felt more like home than here.
‘I’ll take you there, one day,’ she whispered as her baby suckled on her breast. ‘You’d like it there. We’ll have some ponies to ride.’ Tears rolled down her face, tears of pride and sadness. If only Jamie would come home and see his little girl. She wanted them all to be a proper family.
