by Iona Whishaw
I can stretch my hand across the fields of time
to pull a child from where she grew alone
and with a breath that might be mine
exhale a garden of her very own.
Well, she could see where that had come from. So much here—the beautiful days, the exuberant gardens of the Armstrongs and Hughes’—had set off explosions of memories of her childhood summers. Hence this drivel of sentiment. Proof positive that this was going to be hard. The alone part was right, she decided. Somehow, though she had been surrounded by people as a child: her grandparents, her nurse, even her distant father, she had always felt alone. Perhaps it was her mother dying, and her father being so forbidding. Or maybe everyone felt they were singular and solitary. The only intrusion into her aloneness had been Angus. She’d let her world expand to include him. When he’d died she had thought she could not go on and yet she found, alone again, that she was on familiar ground. She only thought now how glad she was it had happened. It would not matter that she would not get another shot at love. Some never even got what she’d had. Was it her grandmother or some friend, she could not remember, who had introduced her to that cliché? Yet she saw now that it was true. She stared at the page again. Should she be writing about that? About love? No. Not that either. It was the spaces in between things that she needed to capture and she could not think now what might be there, because what she could not bear to think about was in shadows. Still, she had promised herself she would never reject or erase anything and so she pulled the paper out of the machine and placed it neatly beside the Remington on the table. It would, she decided, soon have chums, and maybe some of them would be better.
Sitting in the sun reflecting on her near-maiden words on her new typewriter, she had just reached the conclusion that the rhyme-bound metre was stultifying when she became aware of the ticking of the clock in the thick silence of the morning. “Gorblimey!” she exclaimed aloud. These four lines and her subsequent ruminations had effectively dispatched two hours of her time.
Sandy would be here to pick her up for the fishing trip. She cursed under her breath and hurriedly packed the lunch she had offered to bring, with some misgivings. This “fishing trip” with Sandy; why had she agreed to it? She’d much rather be at the beach with Angela and any number of noisy boys. What increased her sense of unease, as she wrapped ham sandwiches in greaseproof paper, was that she knew she ought to pay attention to this feeling, not talk herself out of it. But still, she gave her head a little shake and placed the thermos of tea—she had decided against wine, which she would have taken on an English picnic—into the basket with two mugs. She had a fleeting thought that this packing of tea instead of wine was the one reflection of her misgivings. Reluctantly she placed her only remaining box of chocolate biscuits on top of the sandwiches.
She wondered if they would walk to the lake, or drive. She had been down to the lake and the wharf, but could not see where anyone kept boats. She took the filled basket off the table to heft it for weight and then put it back and looked down at her clothes. It was going to be hot and she wanted to wear shorts but, and she blushed at her own vanity, perhaps this would be more provocative than she wanted to be. She opted instead for a light cotton pair of short pants in a pale green, to make a concession to the coming heat, and a sleeveless shirt in Indian cotton with a waist tie. She put on her espadrilles and then worried that they were impractical if they were going to have to scramble along rocks on the shoreline, and ruefully put them away. They reminded her of Yvonne, and she felt a sudden gust of sadness. How she could have used the steadying influence of Yvonne in this crisis!
Tying on her canvas shoes, she chided herself. Honestly, it was all rubbish. She had misread Sandy at the beginning, but he had proved to be a decent fellow after all, and had the added attraction of being hard done by in his mad family. Going out on the lake with him for the day was going to be good fun. She had just completed this mental act of pulling up her socks when she heard the car at the top of the drive.
She took the basket and went to the door. Sandy was coming down the grassy path looking vaguely military in khaki pants and a tan shirt with short sleeves. He smiled broadly at her and reached out for the basket.
“You look nice!” he said.
She smiled, feeling suddenly like even saying thank you might commit her beyond what she felt comfortable with, and she looked past him at the car. A small white rowboat with a wide band of red was upturned and roped to the top of his little Morris.
As he negotiated the turns down to the lake, Sandy looked sidelong at her and asked, “Have you fished before?”
Lane thought about this. Such a common thing, fishing. But she had really done no more than stand by the river in Latvia as a child and throw in a line with her governess. She realized now it was a kind of pretend fishing. An “adventure” you would take a child on. It involved no messy catching or killing of actual fish. “No, not properly, in a boat.”
“It’s very relaxing. Did you bring a hat, by the way? It can get quite hot sitting on the lake.” She hadn’t but he had an extra, he told her as they pulled out to the end of the wharf. He untied the small boat and then she helped him lift it off the roof of the car and they carried it between them to the edge of the wharf and upended it into the water. The oars were tucked under the seats, and he fixed the rope into a metal ring. She unloaded the basket and then stood with it at her feet while he backed the car up to the little parking area at the top of the wharf. In the silence of the morning, the rhythm of the car moving over the heavy boards took its place in her mental encyclopedia of sounds. When the car stopped and its engine was off, she just heard the slight sucking sound of water lapping under the wharf. It was a beautiful morning and she decided she was glad she had come.
Sandy expertly fitted the fishing rods, fish basket, net, and picnic basket into the boat and then held her hand as she stepped into the bow and settled onto the seat. He followed her and locked the oars into place.
“Ready?” She nodded, enjoying the liquid rocking as they pulled away. “We’ll row around the point over there and into the next cove. I’ve had good luck there before.”
They moved in silence, with only the sound of the oars hitting the water and the creaking of the oarlocks as Sandy got into the rhythm of pulling them out toward the point that marked the outer edge of the cove and into the open lake.
Lane looked out beyond Sandy, and tried to avoid looking at him as he moved toward and away from her. She found he was watching her, and the sudden intimacy of facing him the whole time made her uncomfortable. “It’s beautiful.”
Sandy looked at her and then turned away toward the lake and pointed toward the middle. “Did you know the river runs right through the middle of the lake? At the Nelson end it’s really a river but here it is a true lake. Lovely fresh water. Perhaps later we’ll swim, when we’ve had our lunch.”
Lane felt herself colouring at this and was grateful for the hat she had borrowed, a cotton hat with a low but narrow brim that threw her eyes into shadow. She didn’t bother saying coyly, “Oh, but I didn’t bring my swimming costume.” She wanted to glance at him to see if he was being flirtatious, or if he was just reflecting some local habit of going on the lake, having lunch, and swimming in or out of whatever clothes one had. Good God, she thought. How desperately innocent she was! She was alone with a man who knew she didn’t have swimming things. He was pushing to see how far he could go. “I don’t think so, thanks,” she said brightly.
Sandy smiled and shrugged and then looked behind him to adjust the direction of the boat. “Here we are,” he said eventually. Lane looked around and saw that they were in a much bigger curve of the lake and they could see what looked like the whole length toward the north, the blue-green mountains folding down to the edge on either side. The sky took on a deep azure intensity against the green of the mountains. It was mesmerizing. She could feel the weight of the water holding them on its surface and she found she wou
ld really like to have been alone and just bobbing and floating, letting her mind melt into the beauty around her. She resolved that she would get her own boat so that she could come here alone. This cheered her.
Sandy was pulling out a fishing rod and preparing it. She was slightly dismayed to see him pull out a jar with worms in it. Impaling worms on hooks was going to be required, she realized. She’d done it once, as a child, and she guessed now that that was probably why all her fishing expeditions with her governess were pretend. Sandy must have sensed her hesitation and competently baited her hook and handed her the rod.
“I’ll go off this side, and you off that side,” he said and swung his arm to send the line far out into the water. Lane watched his procedure and swung her arm as she’d seen him do, and was pleasantly surprised to see the weighted line sail off, more or less in the direction she’d intended. “Nice work!” he exclaimed, and began to slowly reel in his line.
They sat like this for some time. Lane settled into the quiet of it and wondered again why she had been so nervous, and indeed still had lingering misgivings, about the trip.
“See that long stretch of forest over there, leading up to the rocky outcrop?” Sandy touched her shoulder to make her look where he was pointing. She turned, letting her line go slack. The area he was pointing at was a dark, velvety green from where they were, leading in a long, gentle slope upward. She estimated it was just to the north of King’s Cove. “That’s going to be mine. My dad bought it. Its lower border abuts onto Harris’s bit of forest.”
“I didn’t know Harris had a bit of forest,” she remarked, but was remembering that Sandy had told her he had been disinherited. Did this mean things were better between father and son? Or had that just been a turn of phrase, meaning his father was furious?
“Yes, you know where the prospector cabin is? It’s on his land. Father has been trying to buy his forest for as long as I can remember and Harris won’t sell, which is ridiculous because he never does anything with it. It got pretty scorched in ’19 and there’s nice strong wood in there now. I’m having that too.” He said this matter-of-factly.
“What are you going to do with it all?”
“Going to log it. There’s a building boom on. King’s Cove is going to become a real little hive of industry! I just have to get Harris to sell—the old bastard. ’Scuse the language, but he holds on out of spite. When I get my hands on it, things are going to look up around here.”
Dismay flooded through Lane. She’d been stuck behind massive logging trucks that lumbered along the Nelson road from farther north, choking on their dust and feeling sorry for the community that was losing its forest somewhere up the lake. The bare patches of mountain where logging had already happened were a blight. She struggled to think of something to say, but could think of nothing but “Are you mad?” and decided against this.
The boat wobbled as Sandy turned full around to look at her. Oh God, she thought, he’s going to see what I’m thinking, but to her surprise, he turned on her with a look of full seriousness.
“My father is a remittance man; did you know that? Do you know what that is? It’s a useless git that someone in the old country wants to get rid of, so they pay him to stay away. That’s my grand old dad! He doesn’t want to log all this land he bought. He never had any intention of it. It’s his way of pretending he’s not useless. That’s why he disowned me—because I can make it happen. He just wants to sit on the land and pretend he’s a land owner with vast tracts, to show the people back home.”
Lane glanced longingly at the shoreline. If this was going to be a long afternoon of Sandy expanding on his theme of being hard done by, all the sunny views in the world would not make it palatable. And she was confused. She had thought Reginald wanted to log the cove; now Sandy was saying he had been disowned because he wanted to do it. She felt all at once that she couldn’t be bothered with any of it. “You know, I’m feeling a little queasy, Sandy. Do you think we might go back?”
He looked stricken and reeled in his line. He laid his fishing rod along the floor of the rowboat, dripping into the puddle gathering at their feet. Reaching around her so that his arm curved around her back, he took her arm, his hand lingering for a moment on it. “Here you go, my girl. Not used to being on the water yet. You’ll learn.” She could feel his breath on her neck, as he leaned in from behind her. Then he wrenched the oars into place, and they were moving vigorously toward the shoreline, but not toward the wharf.
They crunched on to a small beach of combined pebbles and sand and Sandy leaped out of the boat into the shallow water, pulled it full on to the beach, and then held out a hand for Lane. Chagrined that having feigned sickness, she must now continue to appear weak, she allowed herself to be helped out and then reached in for the basket. Sandy pushed her gently away, his hand again lingering on her bare arm, and took the picnic out of the boat.
“Come, we’ll set up here,” he said, pointing at a spot under an elm tree that shaded an upper corner of the sandy area. It was lovely. She’d really wanted to go home but here she was on a “date” with a man it turned out she didn’t like. It was not the first time. She remembered some wartime outings with men who had bored her rigid within minutes, but she’d had to stick out a whole evening, pretending to enjoy herself. This, she decided, was the rural equivalent. She spread out the blanket she had brought and opened the basket, while Sandy went back to the boat to pull the oars out of the locks.
“No wine?” he asked, when he saw the tea thermos, and then chuckled. “I thought you Limeys liked wine on picnics. Suppose it is early.”
Lane was sitting cross-legged on the blanket, arranging the food she’d brought. At least it was beautiful, she thought, but it was going to be a strain if he was going to continue to be offensive. The lake before them was as still as the sky, and the sky was that intense shade of blue that she just could not get used to. In London you never got that kind of sky, even in the summer, when there were few coal fires lit. She remembered it from her childhood and it filled her with nostalgia now. She wanted to lie back, forget the lunch, and just stare upward through the green branches of the trees. The ever-attentive Sandy, however, put paid to this plan. She would, instead, have to think of a topic of conversation.
“You have never gone in for apples, like everyone else?” she said, handing him a paper-wrapped sandwich.
He frowned slightly, as if trying to remember. “My dad never did, no. I’d see all the others going out into their orchards during the season. I even had jobs when I was a teenager working for Harris during the picking season. Dad was always scornful of them. Dad’s scornful of everyone.” Sandy bit into his sandwich and stared out at the lake. “You know, he never liked me. When I’d done something wrong, he’d stop talking to me. He would act like I didn’t exist. Funny thing is, I never knew when I’d done something wrong. I spent my whole life trying to please him, and for what? You know what he told me one time? I must have been fourteen. That he wished he had another son, one that was worthwhile. Can you imagine? I told my mother and she just looked blank, but I heard them shouting later.”
Somehow Lane hadn’t thought that bringing up the harvesting of apples would lead to another orgy of inappropriate self-revelation. As she had already several times that day, she felt like she was being forced into an intimacy with him. It struck her how far away from anyone else they were and she wondered, frantically, how far the main road was through the bush from where they were sitting. She imagined herself crashing about in the pathless wilderness and chided herself for an overactive imagination. He was harmless and pathetic, really. Still, she didn’t know how to respond in such a way that would not lead to more uncomfortable disclosures. And she cursed herself for her curiosity; she was interested in what made people tick.
“I’m sorry. It all sounds difficult,” she said, lamely.
“I shouldn’t be maundering on about myself,” he said, turning on her, suddenly bright. “Tell me about you. You’ve lan
ded among us like an angel and we know nothing about you!”
With a sinking heart, Lane tried to think of what she could say that would not deepen this atmosphere of camaraderie. Why had she come on this bloody fishing trip? “There’s nothing much to tell, really. I’ve moved here to begin a new life. I’m English, and I hope to be Canadian one day. I was left a little money by my grandmother, I’ve used it to buy the Armstrong house, and if I use it wisely, I should be able to live comfortably.”
“A new life. That’s intriguing. What was the old life, I can’t help wondering, eh?” He winked at her, causing her to recoil inwardly. “I’d like a new life too,” he added, suddenly reflective again. “We could begin a new life, you know.” He said this so quietly that it allowed Lane a moment to pretend she hadn’t heard it. In the midst of wondering how she could go on pretending she hadn’t heard, she found to her horror that he’d reached out and seized her hand.
“I say . . .” she found herself saying weakly, extricating her hand. His hand even in these circumstances had that slightly clammy feel. He didn’t try to hold it but he sat up and with his other hand picked up some sand and tossed it along the beach.
“Really,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about this. You and I. Why not? We are young, we could combine our land and really do something.”
“Are you proposing to me because I own land?” Lane wanted to laugh. She felt like a character in a Victorian novel. She didn’t wait for an answer, but got up and began to pack up the basket. “Come on, get up. I’ve got to shake out the blanket. I should get back.”
It all happened very fast. She was folding the blanket and suddenly he was there in front of her. She instinctively backed away, and found she was blocked by a tree. He pushed into her and seized her chin, pressing his fingers painfully into her face. She closed her eyes for an instant because of the pain, and his mouth was on hers, his tongue trying to pry her lips open. Without thinking, she pushed with all her might into his ribs with both hands, and he sprawled back on to the sand. Wiping her mouth, she looked at her handiwork, appalled.