The Lost Diaries of Susanna Moodie

by Cecily Ross

  They hate us here. The animosity is palpable: no one comes to call; we are now excluded from local gatherings (mean as they are); and should we encounter our neighbours, their subdued greetings are underscored with an air of sneering amusement. Much of the social rejection we are increasingly subject to is, I am certain, thanks to Mrs. Diana Owen. The woman I so foolishly took into my confidence is a tireless gossip and has spread lies about our financial affairs. She also publicly mocks my literary inclinations. In general, authors are held in the highest contempt in Canada. God knows I have done everything in my power not to give offence, avoiding all discussion of literary subjects so as to convince the rubes and philistines we live among that I am no more than a simple wife and mother. I have endeavoured to conceal my bluestockings beneath the suffocating robes of conventional womanhood. I can mend a shirt as well as any of them! And yet the ridicule continues.

  OCTOBER 27, 1833

  Heavy rains have divested the oaks and maples of their fall finery, and now there is nothing to look forward to except the certainty of coming winter. And, I fear, the possibility of ruin thanks to another of my husband’s schemes.

  Mr. Clark came by this morning while Moodie was in the woodlot, cutting firewood. When I saw him ride up to the house, I considered taking to my bed and instructing Bel to say I was indisposed. But something in his posture as he dismounted, whistling tunelessly and tossing the reins around the post as though he was in a hurry and had important news to impart, made me receive him as graciously as I could, out of curiosity if nothing else.

  After dispatching Bel to fetch Moodie, I offered my guest a cup of tea, which he accepted, but only after pulling a silver flask from his coat pocket and asking if I had any objection to his “enhancing” the pot. I was sorely tempted to remind him that, in these parts, English tea is a good deal harder to come by than whisky, and that it seemed a shame to dilute the delicacy of the former with the dubious virtues of the latter. But I held my tongue.

  “So,” he said, seating himself in the Windsor chair by the fire, leaning back and crossing his long legs at the ankles. “So,” he repeated as I fussed over the kettle with my back to him. I could tell he was bursting with news but uncertain what, if anything, he should reveal to me. At last, he finished his sentence. “So your ship is finally sailing, no?”

  “Indeed,” I said, turning and smiling, though I had no idea what he meant. “You have more information?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, rubbing his hands together, though not, I decided, in order to warm them. “Yes. The funds came through. Your husband is now part owner of the Cobourg, the finest steamship to ply the mighty waters of the Ontario.” The smile that erupted on his disconcertingly chinless face stopped short of his narrow eyes, which regarded me with a boldness that bordered on indecent. “That’s right. Twenty-five shares. The last available. Your husband just made it, but now your fortune is assured.”

  I’m sure Clark could hear the clinking as with shaking hands I passed the cup and saucer to him. “Milk?” I asked weakly.

  Just then, Moodie returned with Hector, who burst in, tail wagging, until he caught sight of Clark, whereupon he stopped in his tracks and uttered a low growl. He is a better judge of character than his master.

  The commotion of their arrival allowed me to compose myself, and as I did, my shock gave way to a low-burning anger.

  “My dear,” I chirped, “Mr. Clark has brought the good news that our fortune is assured.”

  It was Moodie’s turn to blanch . . . like a peeled potato. He gave me a brief, furtive look, and then, recovering his perpetual good humour, he grasped Clark by the hand and began bobbing up and down like a minor courtier in a bad play. Furious but unable to express my anger, I left them to their mutual admiration fest and, taking up Addie in her basket and Katie by the hand, went out to the garden to help Bel, who was digging up the last of the carrots.

  After Clark rode away, Moodie called to me from the porch. “Susie? A word. Please.”

  I stood up, a clutch of gnarled carrots in one hand, trowel in the other, and wiped my forehead with a muddied wrist, watching him as he rolled along the path toward me, chest out, arms away from his side, like a sea captain returned from a long voyage. Evidently, they had emptied Mr. Clark’s flask in my absence. Hector galloped ahead of his master and, before I could stop him, stuck his head into the basket and gave Addie a wet kiss. She began to cry, a jerky, irritated mewling that made my breasts tingle. I picked her up and faced my husband, aware, though not for the first time, that standing on level ground, it was he who looked up to me. It should have been an advantage, but it wasn’t.

  “Susanna . . .” he began.

  “I have to feed her,” I said, whirling around and walking back toward the house. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it. Normally, this would have been Moodie’s cue to repair to the woods or the barn, anywhere rather than witness this most menial yet necessary procedure. Instead, he followed and waited wordlessly until I had arranged myself by the fire.

  “Yes?” I said, not even trying to keep the coldness out of my voice.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “What is it, then?” I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the back of the chair, struggling to keep my temper. Addie lost her grip and slurped noisily. She began to cry.

  “Settlers are pouring into Canada. The waterways have never been busier. Trade is growing every day. We are lucky to get in on this. Why, if it hadn’t been for Clark’s influence, we might have missed the . . .” Here, he gave a helpless shrug and grinned, his dread of me overcome by his own damnable enthusiasm. “Well, we might have missed the boat.”

  “But a steamboat?” I said. Even over the baby’s cries, I could feel the pull of his excitement, like oats to a hungry mule. “How did you manage that? I thought we had no money.”

  “Ah, well.” He drew a wooden chair up close and, straddling it, folded his arms on the upright back, leaned his chin on his wrists and smiled. “My pension. My military pension.”

  “What about it?” The oats vanished. Addie’s screams ceased abruptly as though she knew what was coming.

  “I sold it.”

  If I had been able to move, I swear I would have reached over and ripped his beard off.

  “I know, I know,” he said, raising both palms when he saw my face. “But hear me out. It was the only way. It brought almost nine hundred dollars, enough to buy an interest in the Cobourg. The Cobourg—don’t you love the sound of it?” He giggled and touched my hand. “And enough left over to buy hay.”

  I pulled back as though his hand were a nettle. “Dear God, Moodie, what about the income? It’s not much, I know that, but it’s something at least. It’s all we have. A pension for the rest of your life. And you sold it for a few shares in a boat?”

  There are no words to describe my feelings. I sat there, bodice open, helpless as the babe in my arms, while he went on to dismiss my concerns, speaking to me as though I were a hysterical child and he the patient parent.

  “I did it for your sake, Susanna. You and the girls.”

  He explained that with the unsettled political situation in Europe, giving up his military pension now means he cannot be called up for service at a moment’s notice.

  “Imagine, Susanna, if I had to leave you now, with winter coming on, to fight in some far-off war for King and country. You wouldn’t want that, would you? Oh no, I have done the right thing. You’ll see. In a few weeks’ time, the dividends will come pouring in and we’ll be as rich as thieves. Now, what’s for supper?”

  NOVEMBER 17, 1833

  The farm is sold. To Mr. Clark, of course. And for less than we paid for it fourteen months ago, though my husband would not say how much, only that our debts will be settled and we will have capital to spare. We are going to join the Traills and Sam in Douro and try our hand at farming in the backwoods. Moodie returned from another visit there earlier this month, brimming with plans, and I admit that at firs
t the idea of being reunited with dear Kate won me over completely. Our time here has been an unmitigated disaster, and it seems best to revive our original plan and head north. This morning, Moodie made arrangements for a livery service to transport our belongings once the roads are frozen and passable.

  And yet, despite all our trials here, I feel a great sadness at the prospect of leaving. From where I sit by the front window, writing this, I can see our cattle grazing in the paddock beside the barn. Moodie’s prized riding horse, a black gelding called Ebony, trots briskly through the orchard, tossing its head. Down near the stream is the cowshed we lived in all last winter, a bitter reminder of the low blows fate can deal if she has a mind to. And yet here am I, rocking in the warmth of my own house, a good house, our home. It seems a long journey from that miserable hovel to this genial parlour. And now I am going to give it up?

  Why is it I can never make up my mind what I want or where I stand on anything? I am as changeable as the weather, like a goose separated from her flock, flapping through the thick, murky air, honking loudly, changing direction with the fluctuating currents, uncertain which way is up, which way is down. Doomed to indirection, I drift over a landscape of alternating promise and heartbreak, stretching before me, as unending and unfathomable as the dark forests. I don’t know where I am anymore, only that I can feel the chill of coming winter in my bones.

  FEBRUARY 17, 1834 (WESTOVE, LAKE KATCHEWANOOKA)

  It is two weeks since I was reunited with my dear sister and long-lost brother, and sitting here now in front of the Traills’ wood stove while the winter winds buffet their modest log home, I already feel transformed in some unknowable way—no longer Susanna of the Suffolk heath and broads, but a changeling I am only barely coming to know.

  The circumstance of my rebirth comes to me as if in a dream: Our journey north from Hamilton Township. The sledge poised on the crest of a fallen tree, the horses struggling to haul it down the other side, the driver calling out, urging them on, his whip cracking, and then slowly, slowly, the whole conveyance teetering and finally crashing onto its side, our worldly goods spilling out, pots and blankets, axes, barrels, tools, the paraphernalia of a settler’s existence. And then the box of china—the blue-and-gold Coalport tea set Mama gave me—tumbling through the air, emblems from another life, smashing into a thousand pieces against the immoveable frozen shield. I fell down weeping, ridiculous with exhaustion and rigid with cold after an eleven-hour bone-shattering journey from Hamilton Township (our drivers having decided to push through and make the two-day trip to Douro in just one day).

  Shards of porcelain glinting in the moonlight—remnants of my old life. To think I carried that tea set across the vast ocean and over mud roads and forest tracks, that I stored the cups and saucers with such tenderness at the bottom of the flour bin all through our first winter huddled together in a lowly cattle shed. On the worst days, when the wind coming through the walls was like knives, and the sour smell of tallow and woodsmoke turned my stomach, and I thought I would give my first-born for a cup of real coffee, in tears, I would take the box out, dust off the gold crest embossed on its mahogany surface and press the cool, civilized sheen of a cup or a saucer to my rough, wet cheeks and think of Reydon Hall, of the lilacs in bloom, of the carpet of rosemary spreading between the flagstones in the back garden, of Sarah playing Mozart on the pianoforte. Foolish, foolish woman.

  On my hands and knees in the snow, I began frantically gathering up the bits of crockery, making little piles, fitting this splinter onto that fragment like pieces in an unsolvable puzzle. But everything was destroyed, all except the sugar bowl’s delicate lid with its gold-leaf handle, which I slipped into my pocket, a grim reminder.

  Moodie pulled me to my feet. “Praise God, no one is hurt and the horses have been spared. Leave the china, Susanna. It doesn’t matter.” He helped me back to the other sledge, where the babies slept on in blissful oblivion. And I knew he was right. None of it mattered. The past. England. The woman I used to be.

  We were within sight of Sam’s house when the carnage occurred. And the only thing that kept me from coming completely apart was the figure of my brother emerging from the shadows like a knight errant. I didn’t realize who he was at first and watched, numb and emptied out, as this bearded, barrel-chested man clad in a great fur coat took charge of the situation, calming the horses and directing Moodie and the drivers in their so-far-fruitless efforts to right the overturned sledge. But when I heard his voice, resonant with the scenes of my childhood, though deeper now and suffused with self-assurance, I knew it was him, and the broken china was forgotten. I climbed down onto the moonlit snow and went to greet him, weak with joy at the sight of my own flesh and blood at last. But Sam, dear no-nonsense Sam, with a brusqueness that makes me gasp to think of it now, merely took me by the shoulders and ordered me back into the sledge.

  “We’re not there yet,” he announced. “You’ll be staying at Westove. Kate and Mr. Traill are expecting you.”

  “But Sam,” I protested, as horrified that he had barely acknowledged me as I was that our ordeal was not yet over. “Sam, it’s me, Susie.”

  He paused and flashed me a broad grin, aware perhaps that he should make more of our long-anticipated reunion. “Sister. You look well,” he said. His smile faded imperceptibly. “Different. But good. Good.” And then he was off, grabbing one of the horses by its bridle and heading into the trees. A man of action, not words. I had forgotten.

  In the end, it was only ten minutes more until I was transported into the consoling circle of my dear sister’s arms. I can barely recall it, but Moodie tells me I half swooned and had to be almost carried into the smoky comfort of Kate’s little home, into the halo of her embrace.

  After an orgy of greetings and tears, once our wet clothing had been removed and our stomachs filled with a sweet and spicy stew—“Venison,” said my sister, “from my Indian friends, and juniper berries”—we lapsed into a formidable silence. Too much has happened. Too much to say. Her little son, James, awakened by the invasion of noisy visitors, sat on his father’s lap and regarded us with solemn curiosity. Addie, almost the same age as her cousin, brazenly reflected his gaze from the safety of Moodie’s arms. Kate, who has not seen her namesake since she was a tiny baby, turned her full attention on my shy two-year-old, coaxing her onto her lap with promises of songs and stories. Sam left the cabin, returning with an armful of wood for the blazing hearth. My little brother Sam. Who is this sturdy pioneer? What do you say after so long?

  But Kate, my sister Kate, is hardly changed—thinner, and if anything prettier, but still Kate. And as I watched her putting out bowls and pouring hot coffee, laughing like the young girl she once was, her cheeks red from the warmth in the room, the incredible swirling warmth, then all the months and miles, all the oceans and rivers and lakes that have been between us, melted away. We were together again.

  I pulled my sister’s shawl closer. It smelled of chamomile and woodsmoke. While the men stood by the fire and talked of land prices and the weather, and Kate amused her niece, I looked around the cabin, at the walls hung with maps and hunting prints, at the green-and-white curtains covering the tiny windows, a rug woven in zigzags of colour covering the rough planks of the floor, tidy rows of jars and tins lining the pantry shelves, bouquets of dried weeds and flowers strung from the rafters, baskets decorated with dyed quills and coloured beads, a row of moccasins by the door, a quilt, both simple and intricate, draped over the back of a pine settee. I surveyed all this and considered Kate, so competent, so resilient, whereas I . . .

  The room seemed to wobble and then fade, and then come into focus again. And for the next hour, Kate and Sam and I revelled in our memories, in the shared language of our childhood, finishing one another’s sentences, speaking in a code that must have bewildered Moodie and Mr. Traill, who listened in amused silence and then finally took the children to their beds, leaving my sister, my brother and me to our talk and laughter until I thought
I might pass out from happiness.

  The next day, Moodie, Kate and I bundled the babies into a hand-drawn sleigh and walked a mile back along the tracks in the snow made by our own horses the night before, to visit Sam at his farm, called Homestead. It is, according to Moodie, the first home to be built in North Douro, just three years ago. Palatial by backwoods standards, my brother’s log house stands on twenty-five cleared acres—the best land around here, Moodie says. As we tramped over the hard snow in the crisp sunshine, through thickets of cedar and birch under a labyrinth of oak trees, their bare branches clutching at the sky, and pines poking at the heavens, I was humbled by the monumental task that lies ahead. Kate boasted that with Sam’s help, Mr. Traill has already cleared nearly five acres on their own farm, enough that they were able to plant a small crop of wheat before the snow came. As we walked through the clearing, I noticed it was dotted with piles of brush waiting to be burned next spring.

  Mary Reid, my sister-in-law, is a flit of a thing, all busy-ness and bustle, as intent upon her household duties as a nesting sparrow. Not once during our visit did she sit down or cease her constant movement. With four little ones, plus Sam and his first wife Emma’s son, Richard, the Strickland household is a carnival of activity, and I was reminded of the happy circus that once prevailed at Reydon Hall. Later, while Moodie and Sam went out to investigate our own sixty-six-acre holding a mile up the shore of the lake, past Westove, Kate showed me the root cellar she dug with her own hands, half-filled still with carrots, turnips and potatoes from her garden. I helped her prepare a simple soup from the vegetables and a bag of pork bones Mary had sent home with us. Now, after two weeks together, our new life is taking on a patina of everydayness. Can it really be this easy?