The Sister's Tale

by Beth Powning

  Flora could hear the quiet, absorbed chirpings of caged budgerigars and a clatter coming from the back of the house; a cook, she thought, in the kitchen—where I should be. She thought how childless women bore a slight wariness, as if they were in the midst of something which they had abandoned and expected to be asked about.

  Carrie’s eyes cleared of the things of which she had been speaking.

  “Oh, Flora,” she said. “I do apologize. I start on this topic and I am a runaway horse.”

  She rose, brisk. “Let’s walk to the market. I told my cook I would buy some fresh halibut. And we can deliver that parcel to Lucy’s boarding house. You can tell me about Josephine and Ellen and your boarders.”

  They lifted coats from the hall rack, worked buttons into holes.

  Carrie opened the door and they stepped down onto the street. Flora heard the searing shriek of gulls, smelled salt on the winter air.

  “And who is this man who makes miniature houses?”

  * * *

  —

  On the train coming home, Flora struggled to stay awake. She had not slept the night before; the day spent in Carrie’s energetic company, meeting women in the market and in the shops and on the streets, hearing their bold words, seeing their intelligent, forthright eyes shining beneath fur hats, had left her exhausted.

  Flora is from England. She works with my cousin Josephine, they run a boarding house together. She’s studying at home.

  Carrie had prompted her to recite the names of her textbooks and to tell about “her” tenants; in response, the women had asked her if she had brothers or sisters, and so she had talked of her search for Enid. Encouragement, advice, kindness. One of us. Come to the next march. All day long, she felt as if she were a suffragist, a member of the sisterhood, not a servant but Carrie’s friend. Now, in the train, she returned to herself in her brown wool coat and red scarf, a brand-new basket in her lap filled with gifts of cheese, butter, maple-cured bacon, pamphlets.

  Mr. Tuck was watching her.

  “Slept on the way down, now you’re sleeping on the way back.”

  “Sorry. Did you have a nice day?”

  “Nice enough. Got my stuff. Got some bits of carpets for you to cut up.”

  “Me to cut up?”

  “You’re my helper, aren’t you?”

  “Sometimes.” She yawned. “When I have time. Which isn’t much because I am busy taking care of the likes of you. Your sheets. Your dinners.”

  “You’re a sassy one.”

  A chill in his tone, a warning. She wondered if he knew that she had crouched on the other side of the barn wall, watching him fondle his money. She wondered why he was no longer working at anything other than making the houses.

  “That’s why I like you,” he added. His eyes slipped away from her, rested on a strand of blonde hair lying against the wool coat. His finger touched the hair, stroked it, moved it gently from side to side.

  “Take your hand off me,” she whispered.

  He picked the lock of hair up between finger and thumb, rolled it thoughtfully, set it behind her shoulder.

  “I wouldn’t hurt you,” he murmured. A question. Would I?

  She snatched up the basket, held it like a shield. “Why would you even say such a thing?”

  “It’s what you were thinking. He’s dangerous.”

  Her heart began to hammer.

  “And you like that about me,” he added.

  The white flash of teeth.

  Behind them, a man snored. Oil lamps flared and guttered, their reflections bent up against the black windows. She stared straight ahead, clutching the basket, thinking of the long walk through the winter’s night from the train station to the house, and how Jasper Tuck was meant to protect her from anything untoward—a rabid dog, a drunken man.

  * * *

  —

  Josephine was visiting the Fairweathers for the evening, since Permelia’s brother and family were visiting from Boston. The son, an accomplished pianist, had brought a book of songs. The parlour was filled with women—Josephine, Permelia and her four daughters, the sister-in-law with her two daughters—and an excess of ornament, the women’s dresses with shawls and lace-edged ruffles, the room’s fringed tablecloths, peacock feathers, stuffed quail in a glass case. The daughters sang duets and trios; the young man urged his father to join them.

  “We need a tenor. Come on, Father.”

  Permelia’s brother waved away the suggestion. He leaned forward and engaged Harland, shifting his eyes only to his son as the story progressed. The girls clustered around the piano, held in check.

  “One minute I look out the window and see a moose. Belly deep in snow, staring at the train. Then my eyes fall on a headline—Captain of German ship Goes Insane at Sea, Jumps Overboard. He had an obstruction of the bowel, apparently. Made insane by the pain. They gave him laudanum and he seemed to recover but then he decides that various members of the crew desire to shoot him and begins to fire at random. Subsided after assurances to the contrary. Smoke was smelled, it seems he set his cabin afire. Jumped overboard.”

  His eyes widened, unfocused. He narrowed them, satisfied, lifting a glass of port.

  “No, darling. You couldn’t possibly have read that.” His wife laughed. “Impossible.”

  “What would you know? Do I ever see you reading a newspaper? No, you only ever study your Godey’s Lady’s Book.” He turned to Harland. “And they talk of wanting the vote.”

  Josephine felt a headache begin, a slender fracture zig-zagging its way from temple to eye. At the far end of the parlour, tables were set for whist, but after each song the young man swept the page over and the girls remained standing, flushed, and sang again.

  Harland spoke into Permelia’s ear, then beckoned to Josephine. She followed him down a hallway into his weather station. The long room was cool, smelled of geraniums and leather.

  “I told Permelia I had an important message to give you regarding Flora. I mentioned, also, that you seemed to need fresh air.”

  “I do have a slight headache. I am not accustomed to wine.” She felt the fatigue of being a widow in the midst of other women and their families. The effort of repelling regret.

  “I never touch it, as you know. Permelia’s brother was unaware of her temperance pledge. We said nothing, not to offend. They arrived with lavish gifts.”

  He struck a match, held it to the wick of a kerosene lamp. She saw a table laid with notebooks, pencils, graph paper.

  “My weather notes.”

  She saw how he marked the passage of his life, in solitude, and had become accustomed to it.

  “I received a letter from my acquaintance in Halifax. She knew nothing of Enid, but has discovered the person who delivered her to the train station. A Reverend Snelcroft. I’ve written to him.”

  Her eyes went to his fingers spread on the letter. She considered what would happen if she should lay her hand over his. She wanted, only, to be held in a man’s arms. To lay her head against a man’s chest. To be easily, thoughtlessly, part. Not apart.

  “You and I both seek forgiveness, Josephine. In my case, it is necessary. But you have no cause for guilt. It is I who asked you to purchase Flora. And you know that you did not truly buy her.”

  “I take money from the government. But I give it to her.”

  “Well, there. You see.”

  She had not thought she was seeking forgiveness and saw no way forward in the conversation, since it seemed to be not about Flora but about themselves.

  Wet snow adhered to the windows and slid down the glass, dissolving.

  Undone, she thought.

  I am undone by a man’s kindness.

  He set a glass paperweight onto the letter. A posy of glass cane forget-me-knots floated in its interior.

  “We are on the hunt, now. We wil
l find this lost child.” He looked at her but she could detect only concern.

  “I do hope so,” she said, taking a step back from the table, seeing his anxiety to return to his duties as host.

  He extinguished the lamp’s flame.

  TWELVE

  Soft as Flannel

  March 10, 1889

  Halifax, Nova Scotia

  Dear Mr. Fairweather,

  I am in receipt of your letter concerning one of Miss Maria Rye’s girls. I did indeed receive three girls into my home and assisted with their placement with farmers or families that had requested them. I am happy to report that one of them was Enid Salford. She was placed with a farmer on the Northumberland Shore, in a place called Black Creek. I delivered her to the train but did not accompany her to her final destination. I trust that she was received as arranged by mail with a Mr. Albert Mallory. I have not heard from Enid although I have sent several letters, as I promised Miss Rye I would. It is too great a distance for me to travel in order to make an inspection, and I am not myself a young person nor am I in good health. I would be grateful if you would undertake this yourself if possible, although I see that you are in New Brunswick and realize that it will be a considerable journey. There is no financial compensation available, of course. We do these things out of the goodness of our hearts to raise these English children from the gutters in which they were found. I am sure you understand and feel the same.

  I am,

  Yours truly,

  Reverend Charles Snelcroft

  Harland stood by the window, holding the reverend’s letter to the light. Permelia, in the kitchen, was engaged in a shouting match with the cook.

  “Let me go, then. I’ll go back to me own people.”

  There had been a burned crust on the apple pie. He was certain that Permelia raised her voice for his benefit, since the stove was, in fact, in need of replacement. She had brought him an advertisement for a nickel- plated range, pointing out the capacity of its water reservoir, the size of its oven, its nickelled towel rod and teapot stand, its handsome skirting.

  Against the sky, the flag’s snap or sag revealed the wind. Just now, it hung limp, as if spent.

  Variation within a pattern, he thought, looking at his notebooks, yearning to sit at them for an entire day, comparing temperatures, humidity, pressures and wind speeds for all his recorded Marches. He would comfort himself with the earth’s renewal, how its season of torment and persecution faded in fits and starts, how it did not cease its stubborn efforts.

  He would take the letter with him to the store; from the quiet of his office, he would write to Josephine. Please tell Flora…He imagined travelling to Nova Scotia with Josephine and Flora. Dismissed the idea, as if should it linger in his mind Permelia would prise it out like a spider in a cupboard.

  * * *

  —

  Sailor lay at Josephine’s feet, snuffling for fleas. The piano had been shifted to provide a bulwark, giving her privacy in the turret room, although on this Friday morning the house was empty save for Ellen, in the kitchen, and Flora, who sat facing her. Pots of geraniums—coral pink, red, white—bloomed in the deep windowsills.

  “You know, Flora, I can’t help but think that it is bad for us to wear these corsets,” Josephine said. She sighed and then coughed. Sailor looked up, sharply, and she dropped a hand to stroke his head. “They make actual dents in my flesh. And I can’t breathe, you know. I really can’t. I’ve read that the organs are displaced and that the muscles of our backs become flaccid.”

  Flora, sitting on a satin-cushioned chair, felt incomplete without handwork and was unaccountably nervous, not knowing why she had been summoned and sensing, in Josephine, some unwarranted mood. Josephine would never invite Ellen to visit her in the parlour—like a friend, come for a visit.

  “Carrie doesn’t wear one,” Flora murmured, embarrassed by the subject yet emboldened by the currency that intimacy offered. “She told me so. She said it is a thing that men want us to do so that we can be beautiful objects, like a horse or a fancy house.”

  “She might be right,” Josephine said, pulling back her shoulders.

  They sat listening to the patter of rain on the window. Flora gazed up at the trees, indistinct against the sky, like charcoal sketches. The smell of smoke from the kitchen stove sharpened the room’s bookish odours.

  “This room is so special,” Josephine said. Sailor raised an eyebrow.

  “Why is it special?” Flora asked. She folded her hands; unclasped them, pressed palm to palm; slid her fingers into a fist.

  “Simeon asked me what I wanted in a house. Tell me one thing, he said. One thing I had always dreamed of. Would it be a widow’s walk, he asked? So I could stand in all weathers and watch for his return? Would it be a gazebo in the garden? Or a library of my own? I said I would like a place of windows, round, with cushioned seats and stained glass and deep sills for ferns and flowers. So that I could have summer in winter. We sketched it together, drawing after drawing, until we created a room that both of us loved. He added the pointed roof, like a dwarf’s cap from a fairy tale. I designed the stained glass. Calla lilies.”

  She leaned forward to trace one with a fingertip.

  “I couldn’t sell this house—how…how could I?”

  Tears welled in her eyes.

  “You know, Flora, I thought that when I arrived on Ocracoke Island I would find that there had been a misidentification. That they’d given me some other man’s possessions. I have a dream that comes night after night. A man appears at the far end of a beach, so far away that he is but a black speck, and he walks towards me, and suddenly I see that it is Simeon. He begins to run and I, too, run. The sand drags at my feet, and I stumble, panting, calling his name, holding my arms out. For months, I have dreamed this same dream.”

  “I have a dream just like that,” Flora said. “I dream that I see Enid on a road. At first, I can’t tell if it’s her or not. Then I begin to run. I always wake up too soon.”

  Josephine lifted her finger from the stained glass, slightly bewildered, and Flora realized that she had awakened to the fact that she spoke not to a friend of her own status, but with a workhouse girl, who, once, might have been called a guttersnipe. She turned to the table and lifted a letter, worked spectacles onto her nose.

  “Mr. Fairweather has found someone who knows where Enid was placed.”

  Flora’s hands flew up; she slid to the edge of her chair.

  “Enid? Enid, my sister Enid?”

  Josephine put the letter down, pulled off her spectacles. “Oh, Flora. I’m so sorry. I read it just like an ordinary thing, didn’t I? She was placed with…let me see…a Mr. Mallory. Mr. Albert Mallory, on a farm in Black Creek. On the Northumberland Shore of Nova Scotia.”

  Sailor opened his mouth in a sudden pant. He looked back and forth between them, his eyes anxious.

  Flora flushed with a complexity of feelings she could not control or disentangle, stunned that Josephine could have held this news inside of her while speaking of stained glass and corsets. She could not speak.

  Sailor scrambled to a sitting position but did not wag his tail. Josephine looked at Flora, waiting for her to react, and when she continued to stare, silent, reached down and stroked the dog.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s extraordinary, but it affirms that that is where she is. We can look on a map. You can try sending her a letter, although…” She picked up the letter again. “…this Reverend Snelcroft says he sent letters and didn’t hear back.”

  “Oh, but Enid would have written.” Flora felt a visceral power—in her jaw, in her voice—as she spoke in defence of a sister. A family member. Here, in Canada. She felt taller, her eyes saw more clearly. “She’s not well lettered but she would have written back. I know she would’ve. Maybe she’s not…maybe there’s been a mistake. Maybe it’s not her but some other
girl.”

  “No, no. Don’t worry. He says right here, see?” She handed Flora the letter, pointing at the sentence.

  I am happy to report that one of them was Enid Salford.

  Flora went back to the beginning and read to the end…raise these English children from the gutters in which they were found…

  She stared at the letter. The words were true, she was now convinced; but she felt a great mistrust of the people who had been put in charge of her little sister and wondered at the reasons for her silence.

  “Why hasn’t she written? It must be the people she is with won’t let her. Or don’t mail her letters. Like what happened to me. Or don’t want her to be found.”

  Her voice raised. Hard. Wild.

  Josephine took off her reading glasses and set them on the table. She contemplated the stained glass, chin in hand.

  “Mr. Fairweather said he would try to send for Enid.”

  “You can’t send for someone you don’t hear from. This Mr. Mallory doesn’t even write back. We can’t just…just…send letters.”

  Josephine turned on her chair. Flora had slid to the edge of her chair, holding the letter with both hands. She stared at Josephine, furious. Accusing.

  “Someone needs to go,” Flora said. “Someone needs to go to Nova Scotia. Find her and bring her back.”

  “We will write…”

  “No. No!”

  “Flora, I—”

  “It’s not enough. She could be in danger.” Her voice trembled, broke.

  Sailor scrambled to his feet and nosed Flora’s skirt. Josephine, too, laid a hand on Flora’s skirt. Patted her knee.

  “I will talk to Mr. Fairweather again, Flora. I’ll tell him that someone should go over there.”

  Flora stroked the dog’s silky black hair. Through tears, she saw Sailor’s eyes soften, relax.