by Beth Powning
OTHER BOOKS BY BETH POWNING
Shadow Child: An Apprenticeship in Love and Loss
The Hatbox Letters
Edge Seasons: A Mid-life Year
The Sea Captain’s Wife
A Measure of Light
PHOTOGRAPHY:
Hardy Roses
Hardy Trees and Shrubs
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA
Copyright © 2021 Beth Powning
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2021 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The sister’s tale : a novel / Beth Powning.
Names: Powning, Beth, 1949– author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200278886 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200278908 | ISBN 9780735280021 (softcover) | ISBN 9780735280038 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8631.O86 S57 2021 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
Text and cover design by Talia Abramson
Cover images: main photography by Talia Abramson; (shed door) Larry Farr / Unsplash
Map by Talia Abramson
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To Peter
sea, wind, gannets
always
“…each had…some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will.”
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
THOMAS HARDY
Contents
PART I. DECEMBER 1887 – AUGUST 1888
1. Mouse Traps Duly Set
2. The Auction
3. Polite and Invisible
4. Ocracoke Island
5. Mirror
6. A Futile Fussiness
PART II. OCTOBER 1888 – APRIL 1889
7. Emissaries of Winter
8. Tin Reindeer
9. Someone Who Talks Back
10. A Wooden Wheelbarrow
11. A Man’s Kindness
12. Soft as Flannel
13. Green Rabbits
PART III. JUNE 1889 – AUGUST 1889
14. Turrets and Gables
15. Enid
16. Sisters
17. Fresh Bread and Freedom
18. Someone Else’s Happiness
19. A Dark Ghost
PART IV. SEPTEMBER 1889 – JUNE 1890
20. Brass Duck
21. Like Beautiful Objects, Like Possessions
22. Warning to Travellers
23. Reckonings
24. A Different Outcome
Afterword
Acknowledgements
PART I
December 1887 – August 1888
ONE
Mouse Traps Duly Set
IN JOSEPHINE’S PARLOUR, Mr. Fairweather sat close to the Franklin stove, hands held open to its heat. His eyes were like a dog’s, trusting and earnest, and Josephine wondered at his distress. She enjoyed the rare occasions when they were alone together, remembering how, when they were schoolchildren, he had once slipped her a misspelled note, folded to the size of a pansy.
Dear Josephine, will you mary me?
“I apologize for this intrusion, Mrs. Galloway,” he said. “It is because of the urgency of the matter, a young girl.”
He sat back from the fire, turned to her.
“But first, tell me what you hear from your husband.”
“I have only my last letter from him when he was provisioning the ship in New York. Now, of course, he is at sea so I won’t hear from him for some time.”
She closed her eyes, briefly, rejecting even the possibility of sympathy. Her fingers stroked the nap of her cuffs, like petting a cat.
“It is the way for a sea captain’s wife.” Her voice was steady, held riches. “I am accustomed to it. But please, tell me. What young girl?”
“As you know, my duties are…extensive. We have no almshouse in Pleasant Valley.”
A year ago, when Harland Fairweather was appointed Overseer of the Poor by the Justices of the Peace, his wife, Permelia, had whispered the news to Josephine as they were leaving church. He does not want to do it. She smelled of the new wintergreen tooth cleaner from McClean’s Drug Store. He will have to pay a substantial fine if he refuses. I told him he must take the position.
Harland and Permelia lived with four daughters in a mansard- roofed brick house next to Fairweather’s Gentlemen’s Clothing at the lower end of Josephine’s street, where Creek Road met Main Street. Josephine often witnessed Harland in the office at the back of his store, stern and remote, like a display behind glass. All the men in her own family were business owners. Her husband’s father owned the town’s largest dry goods store; her own father, now in partnership with his two sons, owned a boot and shoe factory.
“I have seen the discussions about the almshouse in the paper,” Josephine said. “I concur with the opinion that the poor should have such a place, well-staffed and provisioned by the province.”
He paused, surprised, and she surmised that Permelia did not read the brand-new Weekly Record. Or perhaps, careful with her grammar, her manners, the people with whom she associated, she perused only the social notes. Growing up, Permelia had been, if not poor, at least disadvantaged; her widowed mother had worked at the steam laundry.
“There is much discussion, indeed,” he agreed. Relief, she saw, that he could discuss this with her; and a hint of yearning, quickly hidden by a return of his eyes, and hands, to the stove’s heat. “Based upon the exigencies of taxation rather than compassion.”
She brushed her hands down her skirts, looking at the tips of her shoes. His care for her held no threat or urgency, only made her feel the poignancy of such a friendship.
At the end of the room was an outflung octagonal turret, where the Christmas tree stood, filling the parlour with the aromas of moss and sap. Last night, Josephine and her daughters had decorated the tree with popcorn chains, gilded walnut shells, and stars made of paper-lace.
“I have read about the auction, Mr. Fairweather. Once a year, paupers are offered for sale.” The bidding went downward, rather than up. The lowest bidder won the pauper. “It saves the province money.”
“Precisely. There is a girl up for auction. I have visited her. Her name is Flora Salford.”
He folded his hands in his lap and watched the fire. She saw his lips tighten, pained.
“Why? Why is she up for auction?”
“Evidently she was brought from England by one of the philanthropic people or organizations. She mentions a lady whose name she may never have known. She…Flora…has been here in Canada for five years and has somehow fallen through the cracks, as it were. I suspect that Maria Rye is the philanthropist responsible. Have you heard of her?”
“Yes.” Josephine had seen pictures of Maria Rye in the newspaper. She was an Englishwoman. The children she brought to Canada were known as “Miss Rye’s girls.”
“She is a bit slipshod in tracking the children, especially those not taken to her distributing home in Niagara-on-the-Lake but dropped in Halifax or St. John.” A log crumbled. He prodded t
he fire into shape with the poker. “The short of Flora’s story is that she went to a farmer and his wife, who were both killed in a carriage accident.”
“I heard of that accident, on the Mine Hill. Terrible.”
“The girl has no one and so has ended up on the pauper rolls. Hence she is to be sold at auction.”
“She has no one? No friends of the couple who could take her in?”
“No. I tried…”
Harland broke off, leaning forward to peer out a patch of window where the frost ferns were dissolving.
“I begged him not to go out this morning. It is twenty degrees below, I told him.” Harland kept a weather station. Every morning, he raised a flag on the roof of his house so he could see the least twitch of breeze. “It is one and one-half a degree colder on this morning than it has been on any December twenty-third for nine years.”
Josephine craned to see out the window, touched by his concern. Snow rose as from the bristles of an invisible broom; drifted, iridescent in the morning sun. Beyond the expanse of snow-covered lawn, she could see Harland’s elderly father walking down the street, terrier at his heels, the tassels of a paisley shawl flirting with the tops of his boots. The dog scurried, eyes squinted against the cold—reluctant, obedient.
“There’s a reason we call my father The Commodore, you know. He will brook no interruption in his routine. Save for death, as he says.” He watched a moment longer. “Ah, well.” Harland sat back. “No, as far as I can tell, Flora is utterly alone. I managed to find a family to take the girl through Christmas. They will have her until the auction.”
Josephine brought to mind the customary image of a Home Child—“street Arabs,” they were called, assumed to be rough, ill-bred, untrustworthy.
“Why have you come to me, Mr. Fairweather?”
“Unfortunately, Mrs. Galloway, I cannot offer her to you as a servant. By dint of poverty, like any pauper, she has been made a ward of the province. I must beg you to come to the auction…”
She drew back.
“I have never—”
He raised a hand. “I understand. I beg you, nonetheless, to come to that rabble of hard-faced men and I will hear your bid, no matter how softly you may give it, and I will make sure that my gavel comes down for you. I fear for that child. She is…”
He played a few imaginary piano keys with two fingers, looking at the ceiling. A leaf dropped from an aspidistra with a leathery tap.
“You and I have daughters of our own. Flora is fifteen. Despite the evident hardship of her history, despite the lack of…all, you know, that we have given our own daughters…she is an exceptionally beautiful young person. And what those men will—”
“Ah,” Josephine interrupted. She brought the back of one hand to her mouth, closed her eyes and took a long breath. The ticking of the clock, the crackle of the fire—wind-brushed snow spun past the window.
“Yes, Mr. Fairweather. I can find work for her.”
“The auction will be held after Christmas,” he said. He relaxed back into the chair, crossed his legs. “At the train station. I am in your service, I am indeed. You lighten my heart with your kindness.”
“No, no. I have so much. A husband, a family. All of this.” She offered him her home on the palm of her hand. “It is the least I can do.”
The smell of baking gingerbread rose from the kitchen. A maid, carrying linens, came down the stairs, passed through the hall. The ornaments on the Christmas tree turned, borne on invisible currents of sweet-scented air.
* * *
—
She stood in the door watching as Mr. Fairweather walked down the drive between shoulder-high snowbanks thrown up by Mr. Dougan’s wooden shovel. Cold thinned her nostrils—like the crisp edges of Ellen’s butter cookies.
Lucy, seventeen, and Maud, fifteen, would soon be walking home from the Pleasant Valley Academy, the daughters of a sea captain, well fortified against the cold in their long wool coats, mittens and fur hats. George, attending the University of Mount Allison College in Sackville, was returning tomorrow on the train.
She watched Harland as he swung firmly down the hill in the direction The Commodore and his dog had been heading—towards home, dinner, family; and she was gripped by her husband’s absence and the dangers he risked. She tried to dismiss fear, although she could not—it remained, dark, dull, tarnishing happiness.
In the parlour, she resumed her seat before the fire. She took Simeon’s last letter from a pile on a marble tabletop and ran her hand over the paper with as much tenderness as if vellum were skin. She unfolded it, read for the fifth time:
My dear Josie,
I write from New York, where I am comfortably installed in The Grand Hotel while “Marianne” is being provisioned. Sailor is curled at my side.
Sailor. His beloved St. John’s water dog.
I have agreed to take six women—a mother and two daughters travelling with servants—to South Carolina. Mrs. Holdwell’s daughter is to be married in Charleston. I told her we would head southwards in the New Year, passing Cape Hatteras and keeping as far east as possible from the Outer Banks. I struggle to complete my crew. It is getting harder to find seasoned seamen than in Uncle N’s day. The first mate is experienced but in poor health. The second mate is only nineteen, although willing and honest. I have not yet found a man as capable of navigation as I am myself.
It was the fault of his Aunt Azuba and Uncle Nathaniel in Whelan’s Cove, she thought. All his boyhood, picking apples in his uncle’s orchard or sitting on their veranda high over the Bay of Fundy, he’d imbibed seafaring tales: rounding the Horn; sighting a ship stranded on an iceberg; Antwerp’s museums; the volcanic islands off Java.
Sea captains’ wives are now a rare thing; they are perhaps even pitied. The sea will be my mistress, he’d said, when asking for her hand in marriage. I will not mind, she’d murmured. Mount Allison Wesleyan Academy schooled, modern and brazen, she’d been oddly thrilled by the idea of the sea as seductress. And although their parents did not approve, the wedding was sumptuous and Simeon had proved them wrong with his success.
She slipped the letter back in the envelope and held it to her cheek, watching the fire. The sea, as seductress, had become a thing she wished he would renounce.
He would miss another Christmas.
She rose, restless, went into the front hall and lifted a calling card from a silver dish. She studied its scrolled letters, thinking not of the visitor they represented but of the house rising up around her with its routines—polished salvers on the sideboard, the order sent to Mr. Cardwell’s butcher shop, mouse traps duly set—and of how she must contrive to cause no ripple, no storm, as if to do so would threaten Simeon’s voyage.
* * *
—
Josephine heard the harsh jangle of the new telephone. She went to the front hall; lifting the receiver, heard first the operator, then Mr. Fairweather’s voice.
“Despite the weather, the auction will go ahead tomorrow at noon. Stand in the front row where I can see you.”
She set the receiver in its cradle and stood with her head bowed. She would like to have taken this decision after talking it over with Simeon. He was a man with whom she could discuss things, unlike her father or brothers; or, even, her own mother who had not learned to think for herself, nor approved of Josephine’s doing so.
I am at sea.
She said this to him, last time he was home. Without you, I am at sea. They were in bed, after making love. He knew how to make her find her pleasure. She lay with her forehead on his shoulder, shy after such intimacy, murmuring into his salty skin. And? What does that mean? he said. You should know, she answered. No land beneath one’s feet. A wind coming from one way and then another, I suppose, and never sure how to set the sails.
And he pulled her to his chest and then rolled over on top of her, slowly
letting his weight down until, shrieking, she begged for mercy. There, he said. I press you into the ground. No wind will blow you.
He made the most of his time at home, brightening the future with plans, acting on impulse. Why don’t we build a greenhouse? Or—Let’s take the children on the train to St. John. When the children were small, he prowled the house on all fours, roaring and snapping at them like a bear. When they were older, he brought them extravagant gifts from Hong Kong or Paris. He swept away her anxieties with his assurances of boundless good fortune. Master of weather, navigation and command, he exercised the same capabilities as husband, as father. The impulsive side of his nature—announcing, one morning, with great enthusiasm, that he and two friends were going to skate all the way to Fredericton on the St. John River, or, on a summer’s day, blithely setting forth into the wilderness with a botanist acquaintance on a quest for a purple fringed orchid—was like a reward, she felt, for his adherences to its opposite.
She walked down the hall, calling.
“Ellen?”
The kitchen was like the cook’s own home, with its yellow oilcloth floor, earthenware crocks and copper saucepans, scraps of Irish poetry tacked to the walls like a patina.
Ellen, Margaret, Mary and Mr. Dougan were breaking for tea. Ellen, brisk, stiff-jointed, wearing a cloth cap, poured custard sauce over warm apple cake.
“Will you join us for a piece of cake, then, Mrs. Galloway.” Her questions were statements, offhand, as if inured from caring, although Josephine knew how her invariable compliments on dessert or roast brought a glint of pleasure, quelled by tightened lips.
“Thank you, Ellen, but no, I am satiated. That was Mr. Fairweather on the telephone. We’re to have a new girl. I’ll be bringing her tomorrow. There’s been some mistake and she’s being sold at the pauper auction.”
“Is she from the old country?”
“English. Fifteen years old. Apparently she was sent over as a Home Child.”