Lady guarded the door, a low growl in her throat, while Caroline watched through the screen as Eldon stood outside and doffed his hat. His face was sunburned from long hours on the tractor but the broad expanse of his forehead under his receding hairline was glaringly white and it occurred to Caroline how smooth and unlined, how free of worry, it was. He wore smartly pressed navy trousers and a cream-coloured shirt with a pale blue hanky tucked in the pocket. Even though it was a regular workday, it looked like he was headed out for a night on the town.
“Afternoon, Caroline.”
“My father’s not home,” she said through the screen, not bothering to open the door. “He’s sowing wheat at the old Maxwell place.”
“I’m not here to see your father,” Eldon said. “Mind if I come in?”
Eldon stayed for an hour and Caroline didn’t get the dumplings made. After he left, she rushed out of the house, still in her school clothes, and raced down the country road in the family Buick, bumping over washboard and ruts, toward Maxwell’s farm. She had just accepted an invitation to attend a concert with Eldon at the United Church. A string quartet from the city was coming to Ross Prairie — Maisie Stuart’s grandson played the viola — on May 24. A busy time with farmers still in the fields, Caroline thought as she swerved to miss a barking dog. She had hesitated in answering him at first, knowing what her mother would have to say, but she’d kept looking at the clock, minutes ticking by, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the unmade dumplings and her mother stuck along some back road in Old Smoky. Eldon wasn’t showing any sign of leaving even though she’d served him two glasses of iced tea, so she finally agreed to go to the concert with him to get him out the door.
She saw her mother in the distance at the side of the road, waving her kerchief above her head, as though Caroline might not see Old Smoky pulled off the road, steam or smoke or both curling up from under the hood.
Her mother’s hands were coated with sticky black grease and the smell of burnt rubber hung in the air. “Tried to get the belt off myself but I can’t do it. I’ll need a wrench or we might just have to come back with a chain and tow Old Smoky home. What took you so long anyway?”
Caroline could only imagine what her mother would say if she knew she’d been sitting in the kitchen, chatting with Eldon Webb about the crops he’d sown and the pleasant spring weather. Her mother looked so tired, Caroline didn’t have the heart to tell her just yet that the dumplings weren’t made, and she decided to wait until the time was right, whenever that might be, to tell her about her upcoming date.
Caroline was a bundle of nerves, getting ready. Why had she ever agreed to go to the concert with Eldon? She could have said she wasn’t interested or had an important test to study for the next day. Why couldn’t she just speak her mind and not worry so much about other people’s feelings or what they thought of her? Susan, with her bright, shiny words, never held back. She came out and said whatever was on the tip of her tongue, just as she had when Caroline told her she was going to the concert with Eldon. “It’s preposterous. Simply ridiculous that you consented to such a thing without giving it more thought,” she’d said.
Her mother’s face had grown stony and cold when Caroline finally told her. “He’s too old for you,” she said. She was standing at the sink, hands immersed to the wrists in a murky bucket of water.
“What’s it going to hurt, just this once?”
“I know you might be impressed with his fancy new truck and the sharp way he dresses,” her mother said, pointing a paring knife at her, “but there’s something about him; those shifty eyes that don’t seem to look right at you when he’s talking, like he’s scheming or thinking about some way to get the best of you even while he’s standing right there in front of you. He might have your father fooled, but those Webbs, they can’t pull anything over on me,” she had said, and carried on peeling potatoes.
Caroline hadn’t mentioned it to her father (she couldn’t tell him about something as personal as a date with a man) but she assumed her mother must have, because he was in high spirits at suppertime, as chipper as he’d been in weeks, eyes shining as he talked a mile a minute about the new truck he was hoping to buy.
Caroline had two different outfits laid out on the bed. She first tried on a navy skirt with a soft pink blouse but it seemed frumpish, like something Alice might wear, so next she chose a sleeveless mint-green dress that showed off her curves, although she worried it might be too early in the season for a sundress.
She heard the creak of the stairs and turned to see her mother leaning against the doorway. She’d lost weight, and Caroline wondered why she hadn’t noticed it until now. Her ample bosom had nearly disappeared and the bodice of her blue housedress was puckered in folds from the apron strings cinched tightly around her waist. “Need some help?”
“I can’t decide what to wear.”
“I’d put you in a burlap bag if it meant Eldon Webb would lose interest in you.”
Caroline slipped into the dress and lifted her hair while her mother fastened the covered buttons. She sat at her vanity table in front of the mirror and her mother picked up a brush and pulled it through Caroline’s thick golden hair.
“You look tired, Mum. Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m no spring chicken, Caroline. I’m slowing down. Can’t do what I used to.”
“You’re not old,” Caroline said, reaching back to touch her mother’s hand.
“It wasn’t fair to you, growing up with parents as worn out as a pair of old shoes. I hope you have your children when you’re young, like I wish I could have done.” Caroline’s parents had been married for sixteen years before she was born, the first and only time her mother had carried a child. She squeezed Caroline’s shoulder. “But not too young, mind you. Don’t you be letting Eldon Webb get too close now,” she warned.
Caroline laughed. “I’ve already told you I don’t think of him in that way. But he seems nice enough.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. He’s a sweet talker and they’re the ones you have to watch out for. They know exactly what to say to sweep a young girl off her feet. He’s two-faced like his mother, sweet and syrupy when they’ve got you face to face but just as likely to knock you flat on your arse once your back’s turned. Before you know it, September will be here and you’ll be off to start a new life. Don’t you be letting Eldon Webb turn your head and change your plans.”
“Oh, Mum.” Caroline grasped her mother’s wrist. “I’m not about to let that happen. Besides, Susan would kill me.” She shook her head and let her hair settle in waves on her shoulders.
“Besides, there’s something I need to tell you about the Webbs,” Caroline’s mother said, resuming her brushing. “Eldon was engaged once, about ten years ago. A city girl, someone he met when he went to agricultural college after high school.”
Caroline caught her mother’s eye in the mirror. “Who was she?”
“I don’t know if I ever knew her name or heard it mentioned. That’s the way the Webbs are. A secretive bunch. They always have been. Elvina’s slick as ice, the way she controls talk ’round town, making up tales herself and dropping little bits off like bread crumbs here and there, changing how folks think. And Eldon’s no better. Making themselves out to be something they’re not.”
Caroline twisted around on the stool to look at her mother. “What happened to the girl?”
“There was a June wedding planned at a ballroom in a fancy city hotel but in early spring it was called off. Folks wondered why, o’ course, and Elvina was acting as though there’d never been an engagement, so that busybody Millie Tupper came right out and asked her ’bout it one day in the post office. The girl wasn’t suited to life on a farm, Elvina said, so Eldon thought it best to let her go.” She lifted one eyebrow skeptically.
“Did people believe that?”
“There was talk, o’ course. Most folks, me included, believed it was the girl who dumped Eldon. I heard it was because
she didn’t care for the way Elvina always had her nose in his business, while others said it was something about Eldon himself that scared the girl off.”
Caroline turned back to the mirror and twisted open a tube of lipstick. “You don’t have to worry.” She applied a coat to her lips. “I’m going to this one concert and that will be the end of it.”
“You know tongues will start wagging the moment you walk into that church with him. Millie Tupper will have a story spread by the time the coffee’s perked and, the next thing you know, folks’ll be saying you two are planning a walk down the aisle.”
Caroline stood and pecked her mother on the cheek. “Mum, it would be a frosty Friday before I’d even agree to another date, never mind letting him put a ring on my finger. I’ve got my whole life stretched out ahead of me, waiting for me to make my own way.”
“And a sad day that’ll be when we send you off.” Her voice cracked and she looked down at her shoes.
“Oh, Mum. Let’s not talk about that day yet. Once my final exams are over we’ll have the whole summer to spend together. Just me and you.” Caroline turned and fumbled through a drawer so her mother wouldn’t see her eyes welling up. “Where’s that yellow ribbon? Could you help me tie it in my hair?”
Millie Tupper was seated in the church foyer when Caroline and Eldon arrived. “Why, Eldon Webb and young Caroline McPhee!” she said as she handed Eldon a program and eyed his hand hovering at Caroline’s waist, barely touching her.
He removed two tickets from his shirt pocket and handed them to Millie. “Judging from all the cars out there, it looks like it’s a full house.”
“Don’t you worry about a thing. I’m sure your mother’s saved you the best seats, up at the front where you always sit. Enjoy the show, you two.” Millie gave Eldon a conspiratorial wink and turned to the next person in line.
Caroline spotted Nan and Fran Tupper, their necks craned and heads swivelled. They bent their heads together, whispering to one another as Eldon and Caroline made their way past the crammed pews. Four young musicians dressed in black pants and white shirts sat in chairs on the chancel tuning their instruments, plucking strings and turning keys as the discordant sounds filled the church above the low drone of voices.
Eldon took Caroline’s elbow and steered her toward the pew at the front of the church. “There’s Mother.”
Mrs. Webb, wearing a purple flowered dress with a full skirt, stood in the aisle, fanning herself with a program. Caroline had seen her before, in Pipers’ store selecting a roast from the butcher’s counter or driving her Cadillac slowly down Main Street, but she had never actually met or spoken to her. Why hadn’t Eldon mentioned his mother would be joining them for the concert?
“Here you are, Eldon. Finally. I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind about coming at all. I can’t say I’d blame you, it’s so terribly hot in here. Even with the door open, there’s absolutely no breeze.” She flapped the program in front of her flushed face, looking as wilted as the oversized satin rose that drooped over her ear from her small pink hat.
“Mother, this is Caroline McPhee,” Eldon said.
“I know who she is,” Mrs. Webb said, limply shaking Caroline’s hand before turning and abruptly squeezing into the pew. Eldon slid in after her and Caroline took her place at the end of the pew on the aisle.
Mrs. Webb removed a lace-edged handkerchief from her patent-leather handbag and dabbed her glistening forehead. “Eldon, why don’t you ask Millie or whoever’s in charge here to open a window or two? Have they no concern at all about our comfort?”
Eldon stepped over Caroline and hurried off to the back of the church as the young minister, who didn’t look much older than one of Caroline’s grade-twelve classmates, spoke to the cellist before approaching the lectern, trying to get the audience’s attention.
“Do you like classical music?” Mrs. Webb asked, turning to Caroline as she fiddled with one of the red gems dangling from her ear.
Caroline listened to the latest radio hits on Saturday evenings. Sometimes, when the girls were over, they pushed aside the chairs and table and jived, Susan and Alice pairing up, and Caroline coaxing her mother away from her work to be her dance partner. They would swivel their hips and twirl and laugh, sliding and swirling across her mother’s freshly waxed kitchen floor.
Mrs. Webb looked at her expectantly, waiting for her reply, but luckily Eldon was back, standing in the aisle, and Caroline didn’t have to admit she never listened to classical music. Marvin Tupper tugged at a hook at the top of an arched window with a long-handled stick while the minister tapped at the lectern with a pencil to get their attention. Millie Tupper bellowed, “Quiet!” from somewhere behind them and the chatter died as Eldon sat down beside Caroline and she slid closer to his mother. The quartet began its first piece, a haunting melody by Brahms in C minor.
Caroline closed her eyes, pleased at the way the music painted vivid, moving pictures in her mind and she wondered if this was what Brahms had intended; for a girl like her, sitting in a church hundreds of years later, to be reminded of two birds, soaring in wide, languid circles through a pale blue sky. She’d once seen two hawks in flight above one of her father’s fields. They dipped and rolled beneath the clouds — at play, she thought — until the larger bird pitched steeply then climbed through the sky again, higher and higher, as though pursuing the smaller, more vulnerable bird. He dove upon it from above and, together, talons clasped, they plummeted in a spiralling crescendo toward the earth until, at the last moment, they’d released one another and swooped back up into the sky.
She opened her eyes and glanced at Eldon. He drummed his fingers on his knee, the tapping out of time with the music. He was frowning — there was a deep pucker between his brows — and it made Caroline wonder what he was thinking about. He seemed to have no real interest in the music at all. After a few shorter numbers the audience applauded politely while the musicians took their final bow.
“Just wonderful, wasn’t it?” Mrs. Webb said, standing in the aisle. “We should hurry downstairs so we’re at the front of the coffee line. I noticed Maisie Stuart carrying a plate of her raisin tarts when you dropped me off, Eldon. I know they’re your favourite.”
“I don’t think we’ll be coming down for coffee,” Eldon said. “Caroline needs to be home by nine thirty.”
“Why, it’s just eight o’clock,” she said, frowning at him. “Do you need to go just yet? And how am I to get home if you leave now?”
“I’ve asked the Cornforths to give you a ride.”
“Very well, then. I see you have this all arranged. You might have had the courtesy to tell me about it before the concert.” Mrs. Webb huffed and turned to glare at Caroline.
Caroline felt herself blush. “It is early.” She turned to Eldon. “There’s time to have coffee first if you’d like.”
“What I’d like,” Eldon said, leaning in close so his mother couldn’t hear, “is to take you for a short drive. There’s something I want to show you.”
On their way out of town, Caroline reached up and pulled the ribbon from her hair. The unmistakable smell of the end of a blistering hot day — a lazy scent that reminded her of summer holidays — swept through the open windows. Eldon had something to say about every one of his fields they passed, explaining what type of crop he’d planted or telling her how he or his father had come to own that specific piece of land. Caroline wasn’t particularly interested. What did she care if Eldon’s father had won a hundred and sixty acres of scrub trees from Walter Nychuk in a poker game? They turned down another gravel road then slowed and rolled up to the Webbs’ huge brick house. The front yard was dotted with a number of flower beds, splashed with the crimson red and vibrant yellow of dozens of tulips. A man working in a bed nearest to the road leaned on his spade and waved when they drove by.
They stopped in the yard and Eldon came around to open her door. “I’d like to show you where I live.”
With none of their
own land nearby and her school van on a different route, Caroline had only been past the Webb house a few times. She remembered the size of it because her mother had once commented that Elvina Webb might lose a few pounds if she had to hustle around that big house and do the cleaning herself.
Instead of walking in through the kitchen door like Caroline’s family did at home, Eldon led her into a foyer through a massive front door with a stained glass inset as fancy as one of the windows at church. The foyer was bigger than the McPhees’ living room with hardwood floors and a curved staircase off to one side. Through an arched doorway to the left was a sitting room. Every piece of furniture was polished to a gleaming shine.
“Have a seat,” Eldon said. “I’ll get us something to drink.”
Caroline didn’t feel right being alone with him in this big house without his mother or anyone else there but she settled in on a cream-coloured chesterfield with a tufted back. Oil portraits of a younger Eldon and his parents hung on the wall and she wondered why they’d had their pictures painted, why they wouldn’t have just gone to a studio to have their photos taken like everyone else.
A Strange Kind of Comfort Page 5