by Cecily Ross
“Not really,” I replied. “They are a little beyond me, I fear. Mr. Moodie is the true scholar in our household,” I said with perhaps exaggerated modesty. “If my French were better. You speak fluently?”
“I do,” Traill said without airs.
“And Greek and Latin too, I imagine?”
He nodded and pulled our copy of the Inferno from the shelf. “Italian and Spanish as well, I’m afraid.” He arched his tangled eyebrows in an expression of amused embarrassment and replaced the book. “Perhaps while I am your guest, I can make myself useful by giving you lessons. We can read passages of Montaigne together and then discuss en français. I understand the French language is widely spoken in the colonies.”
“I should like that,” I said just as Moodie returned.
“Assez tôt,” my husband said, shaking the rain from his hat and coat and tossing them on the stairs. “Lessons, yes, soon enough. But if this infernal rain lets up, we shall go shooting tomorrow, my friend. It will be grouse for my lady’s supper or I’m a parson’s ass.”
I reminded Moodie that tomorrow we dine at Reydon Hall, where our guest (a widower!) will have the dubious pleasure of meeting five of my all-too-available sisters. In his laconic way, I do believe Mr. Traill is looking forward to it.
Despite his rather austere bearing, I like Mr. Traill. I only wish Moodie would cease his endless talk of emigrating. I fear our poor guest will doze off if he hears another sermon about mighty rivers and inland seas.
JANUARY 31, 1832
I believe Mr. Traill is wooing my sister Kate! It is an odd match, I must say, considering Katie’s irrepressible optimism and Traill’s dour outlook on the world. “I am not disposed to be sanguine about anything,” I overheard him telling Moodie the other day as my husband regaled his friend with predictions of the wealth that surely awaits us in the New World. (Perhaps this is why I have a soft spot for Mr. Traill; he is a pessimist after my own heart.) But as their friendship certainly attests, opposites attract. I only hope dear Katie is well and truly over her recent disappointment and not looking for comfort in the arms of another.
Mama and Agnes are appalled. Like Moodie, Mr. Traill is from a distinguished, though bankrupt, Scottish family. But he is more than a decade older than Kate, and he has two young sons, now living with his late wife’s family, while he has moved to London in hopes of improving his fortunes. (Moodie confided to me that his friend is burdened with debts.) I fear marrying a penniless country girl will do little to improve his circumstances. Still, Kate is radiant, and after so much recent sadness, I celebrate that.
I do not know how much longer I can endure my pregnancy. It is against nature to be this large and awkward. Only a few more weeks, surely. Moodie teases me unmercifully as I waddle from room to room, saying I resemble a giant pumpkin and speculating that if I grow any larger, we will be forced to vacate our small cottage. Despite my discomfort, I cannot help but be amused by his teasing, and laughter is better than tears. We are convinced it will be a boy, whom we will call Thomas after dear Papa. Apparently, my husband has hopes our son will be a musician, as he spends his evenings serenading my great belly with the sounds of his flute. Such nonsense.
Mr. Traill is a frequent guest. The courtship continues, often by the fire in our own front parlour, while Moodie and I retire to the kitchen hearth to allow the couple a modicum of privacy. When they are not whispering together, they are both full of questions about Canada, and Moodie is only too happy to spread out his pamphlets and hold forth on the innumerable benefits of emigration.
To pass the time (which seems to drag unbearably), I have begun collecting the clothing I shall need for our new life: flannel petticoats, a pair of sturdy boots, knitted stockings. And just this morning, Mrs. Kitson came by and presented me with two warm cloaks she says no longer fit her. She also brought a pile of swaddling cloths she has kept, she confessed, since losing her own dear little ones many years ago. I had not known until then of her sorrow and I received her gift gratefully, ruing the uncharitable opinions I had previously held of her and the captain. Even meddling busybodies have their hardships to bear.
MARCH 1, 1832
I have only the dear Lord to thank for the fact that I am sitting here on this bright spring morning with all its newness cradling our dear little daughter in my arms. That we both live and breathe is truly a miracle. I could not call myself a writer if I did not attempt to put into words some of what I endured to bring this sweet babe into the world.
My waters broke on Sunday evening a fortnight since. Moodie and I were reading by the last light of a dwindling candle, and I remember thinking, Another day done and still we wait. As I pulled myself to my feet, silently lamenting the fact that I would have to venture out into the wet and cold to visit the privy or I would surely not last the night, an involuntary cascade of warm fluids ran down my legs and I knew my time had come. With surprising calm, for I was aflame with excitement and dread, I told Moodie he must fetch the midwife and send word to Reydon Hall that the birth was imminent.
Ha! Imminent? It was to be another two days and a half, until one thirty in the morning of February 14, that my agony continued, the last seven hours beating all that I had ever imagined of mortal suffering. Thank heavens for my dear Katie, who remained at my side for the duration, never once succumbing to the panic that threatened to overwhelm me, even when the midwives (for Bessie Brown soon required the assistance of her sister-in-law Molly) openly despaired of this baby ever being be born alive. There was talk of sending for the doctor, and through my delirium, I wondered how we would ever pay him. Then, as another battering ram of pain came over me, I reflected I was unlikely to be around to care. Many times during my lengthy ordeal, I thought I would surely die, and in my great distress, I am ashamed to admit I heartily cursed the dear man whose attentions had brought me to this nadir.
And now it is as if I dreamed the whole event. But I will never forget those merciless waves of pain rising in a crescendo of agony and then subsiding like the ebbing tides, only to return again and again and again. And on the edges of my awareness, the whispering women in their dab caps and smocks, the smoke from the neglected fire, the sounds of children outside, on their way to school, people going about their everyday lives while time stood still in the realms of my exhaustion. Until, with one final Herculean effort, I pushed my daughter out into the cold, cold night.
Before they would let me hold her, they took her away to make her ready, as though it would not do for me to see my own infant in the bloody, dishevelled aftermath of her birth. As though we must put the primal mess of it behind us, out of mind—the temporary loss of reason, the glimpse of the savage within—and proceed, eyes forward, into the future, as though we had some control over that. I could hear the midwives clucking over her as they cleaned and weighed her, a bustle of handmaidens laughing softly. I strained to sit up. I wanted to see what they were doing; I wanted to see her.
At last they brought her, swaddled in a soft blanket, the dark hairs on her head still wet, smelling of soap, her face scrunched and blotchy. They placed her at my side, against my bare chest, and she nuzzled my breast like a kitten. We recognized one another at once, and a great spreading joy like melted chocolate flowed through me. “Hello,” I said.
Now, in the lap of calm reflection, I am amazed that my own mother brought forth eight of us in such a manner and never once during the past nine months did she ever so much as hint at what I, the first of her daughters to bear a child of her own, was heading for. I have asked her since and even petitioned my older sisters for their memories of what surely must have been events that rocked the old Hall. But like Macbeth’s witches, to a one they smiled their mysterious smiles, cooed at their precious new niece and granddaughter and declined to speak of it. Am I, with this account, breaking an age-old code of silence? If so, I vow here and now to shatter it.
Moodie was banished for the entirety of my labour and spent his time among his friends at the Crown, whe
re he was kindly provided with a bed and sustenance. Oblivious to my trials, he passed the time drinking, telling stories and taking bets as to the sex of our unborn child.
We will christen her Catherine Mary Josephine, dear little Kate. Our daughter continues to thrive and is a perfect angel in every way. Mrs. Kitson says she has never met so contented a baby. Even Agnes is charmed.
APRIL 16, 1832
I am sworn to secrecy, but I fear I may explode if I do not tell someone soon: Kate and Mr. Traill are betrothed. There it is. My sister will defy our mother’s obvious disapproval and link herself to a man she has known less than three months. As wonderful as this news is to me (I have seen them together and there is real affection between them, of that I am certain), it was Kate’s next announcement that catapulted me from the chair I was sitting in as though I had been shot from a cannon.
I should have guessed. How else to explain their patient interest (and what I had assumed was merely polite curiosity) as evening after evening, Moodie went over in minute detail the plans for our New World adventure? How else to account for the looks of rapture on my sister’s face, the intensity of Mr. Traill’s concentration as my husband spread out his maps and pamphlets and assaulted them with his enthusiasm for emigration. Apparently, insolvency is a powerful motivator, powerful enough to persuade a cultured linguist and philosopher to abandon civilization and try his lot in the wilderness. Of Kate’s resilience I have no doubt, but Mr. Traill does seem an unlikely pioneer. Moodie cannot see it and dismisses my skepticism.
“Once an Orkney man, always an Orkney man,” he said. “Beneath my friend’s stooped shoulders beats a heart steeped in the churning seas and buffeting winds of our homeland. He is tougher than he seems, Susie. You will see, my dear.”
I truly doubt it. Nevertheless, I was overjoyed when Kate told me. Her eagerness is like a flock of tiny birds borne aloft on a summer breeze. Already, I can feel it infecting my spirit.
Mama will be inconsolable.
APRIL 28, 1832
I have relented under pressure from Moodie and Mama and arranged for Hannah to join our party, even though in the months she has been with our household, I have been less than impressed. Nothing specific—she carries out her duties competently—but there is something, a whiff of resentment in the way she clears the table, a habit of looking past me when she speaks, her brisk way with little Katie. Moodie says I am imagining things and we should count ourselves fortunate to have obtained the services of one so young and yet so experienced. Mama too, whose household Hannah served for several months before joining ours, is to my mind unaccountably enamoured of the girl. But they are not with her all day long. This morning, as I was nursing little Kate, I was suddenly thirsty and asked Hannah, who was in the kitchen, to bring me a glass of water.
“There’s water in the jug by the bookshelf, ma’am,” she called back in a tone that seemed to me verging on insolence.
“If I could reach the bookshelf from here,” I replied, “I would gladly fetch it for myself, but as you can see . . .” By this time, she had appeared, leaning against the doorway, wiping her hands with a cloth.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, and without another word strode over to the water pitcher, poured a glass and set it by my side.
When I try to describe incidents like this to Moodie, he laughs and tells me I have too little to occupy my mind and that the boredom of the nursery has turned me into a grumpy Gertie.
“The thing is impossible, Susie. You cannot do without a maid.”
In any case, while she has agreed to the arrangement, Hannah has shown little enthusiasm for the prospect of emigration (on that point, at least, we agree). But her current circumstances leave her no recourse. It seems she has been seduced by one of the farmhands at Reydon Hall, and although she now finds herself in a position where marriage is a matter of necessity, the young man has refused to have anything to do with her. Moodie, in his inimitable way, sees this situation as an advantage.
“Children are a blessing in the wilderness,” he said. “And if we raise the young one well, it may grow into a well-trained servant someday.”
Exhaustion blankets me like a thick fog and I do not have the strength to fight him on this or any other of the myriad preparations I seem to have abdicated all responsibility for.
I sometimes think a kind of madness has overtaken us all.
MAY 13, 1832
Today, my sister Kate was joined in holy matrimony to Thomas Traill in a small ceremony at St. Margaret’s. Agnes and I were bridesmaids. Moodie gave the bride away. Mama was in attendance but only at the insistence of Agnes, who could see that all attempts to dissuade Kate from going through with the union had been exhausted and it was time to accept the inevitable.
“The heart will have what the heart wants,” is how my elder sister put it to me on the eve of the wedding, “though why Kate wants this man is a mystery to me.”
It seems that everyone but Moodie and me is outraged at the idea of Katie marrying Mr. Traill. Sitting beside Mama in church, I could hear her grinding her teeth in anger, and once the deed was done, she bade Sarah take her back to Reydon Hall without even acknowledging the happy couple. Agnes thinks Mama will never get over it.
As she and Sarah walked past where I was waiting outside the church, knee-deep in a tangle of fading daffodils and bright green grasses, beside a garden of tilting headstones, Mama stopped to grip my wrist. “Your sister deserves better. Look after her, Susanna.”
MAY 15, 1832
Kate and Mr. Traill departed from these peaceful shores this afternoon, headed for Scotland and thereafter to his birthplace at the island of Sanday. He will introduce his new wife to his family there before continuing on to Glasgow by coach and the voyage out. My sisters and Kate made their impossible goodbyes while Traill waited, leaning on the bow of the rowboat hired to take the newlyweds to the steamer Leith-bound that was waiting offshore. Then Kate and I stood on the broad scimitar of pebbled sand at Southwold, holding one another for a long time while the gulls swooped above us, their sad cries carried out to sea by the wind. We all watched in silence until the steamer was a bobbing dot on the waves and they were gone.
Moodie and I are to leave as soon as he returns from his business in London. We intend to depart directly from Leith, sailing north around the top of Scotland and on to the New World, where, God willing, my beloved sister and I will be reunited with our brother Sam and begin our new lives together in the wilds of Douro. But oh, what oceans of unknown lie before us until then.
MAY 19, 1832
This morning, I paid a last visit to my childhood, my beloved Reydon Hall. Agnes, Jane and Sarah were there, and of course, Mama. Eliza, I fear, I will never lay eyes on again, as she is, as always, detained in London by her work. We shared a simple and bittersweet lunch, and then my sisters left me alone with Mama, who made a most shocking and unsettling request. I shall never know if they all were party to it, but it has shaken me so completely that I feel as though I am embarking on a voyage to living perdition.
She was sitting in her chair by the fire with her tiny granddaughter on her lap. And I was thinking how diminished she seems in so many ways, not just physically but spiritually too. How her brittle, uncompromising pride, her insistence on keeping up appearances, has gentled now, making her less formidable, yes, but emptier, as though she has given up, defeated by all the years of trying to hold together this crumbling house and her ever-dispersing family. I was thinking as I watched her cover my child’s tiny hands with kisses how hard she has been to love, and now how sad it is that perhaps through this new child there was a chance for Mama and me to finally understand one another, a chance that is about to be swept away like dry leaves before a storm. I was about to say it, that I loved her and the thought of leaving forever was ripping me apart, when she looked up, her lined face alight with its old force.
“Susanna, I beg you, leave little Katie here with me.”
My earnest unspoken thoughts faded
like a dissonant echo. I could not believe my ears. “My baby? Here? You can’t be serious . . .”
“Oh, but I am. I am, Susanna. Here she will be loved and cared for, surrounded by family—”
“Mama, you are asking me to abandon my child? Isn’t it enough I am leaving my home, perhaps forever, and now you wish me to leave a slice of my heart, a portion of my very self, behind as well?”
The baby, who had been chewing strenuously on an arthritic knuckle, seemed to pause at the sound of desperation in her mother’s voice. I quickly pulled her into my arms and she began to whimper and tug at my bonnet string. Mama rearranged her skirt, pulled a handkerchief from her purse and began rolling the finely stitched hem between her fingers.
“It is the child’s welfare I am thinking of. You must consider the advantages of—”
“Of what? Of being deprived of both her parents? What are the advantages of that?”
“Of a proper education, of society and culture . . .”