Sisters of Grass

by Theresa Kishkan

  Margaret hugged her father and then the mare. The wrangler returned and William bargained a little to bring the asking price down, then the two men walked to the Inland Club to seal the deal with a gentleman’s whiskey. Margaret went shopping.

  There were so many establishments in Kamloops that Margaret spent a good part of the morning window-shopping. In a druggist’s window, a mannequin held a package of headache powders in one hand while the other hand was raised to her forehead as though to massage the pain away. A little pyramid of the powders sat conveniently on a table to her right, should she need more. Passing a bakery, Margaret’s mouth watered at the sight of the new loaves arranged in baskets in the window. There was also a shop with photographs in its window, and she stood there for some minutes, looking deep into the images displayed against a background of painted cloth. A wedding party, solemn faces staring out, all except the bride, who was smiling a secret smile, her pale shoulder touching the dark shoulder of her new husband. Various groupings of men in formal suits being handed keys or certificates. One she found almost unbearably sad, the Chinese camp, located a distance from the main part of Kamloops. Margaret guessed that most of the residents were railway workers, but she was shocked at the rows of tents shown in the photograph, the crouched figures in their muddy clothing, one of them looking at the camera with desolate eyes, even some children to one side, up to their ankles in mud. The photograph captured lives lived in squalor and despair, all the more poignant for its placement among the weddings and civil ceremonies of Kamloops. She looked at it for some time, wondering why she felt the way she did. She hadn’t known that photographs could do more than provide a picture, but this one seemed to speak a language whose vocabulary she could almost understand.

  Margaret found the store she wanted at last, John T. Beaton, Clothier. A sales clerk, dressed in a lovely dress of plaid taffeta with a velvet ribbon tied at her throat, helped Margaret find riding pants of soft green whipcord and a printed broadcloth shirt to go with them. Margaret inhaled the crisp scent of sizing or starch as the clerk led her to a room where she could try them on.

  “You look dashing,” the clerk told her as she came out of the room in the outfit. “Not many women have been buying trousers, but that will change. There’s a lady photographer in town who wears them all the time, and I think she looks wonderful, but some people look at her as though she’s committing a terrible sin. Do you need anything else?”

  Margaret changed back into her shirtwaist and paid for the clothing, waiting as the clerk wrapped her purchases in brown paper and tied the parcel with string she cut from a huge roll suspended from the ceiling. She wondered if she’d be able to find her way back to the hotel, but with directions from the sales clerk, she was soon walking up to the entrance. Her mother and sisters and brother were sitting outside on chairs set under the trees, the children drinking sarsaparilla from tall glasses beaded with moisture. Jenny ordered one for Margaret, too.

  “Father bought the horse, Mother, and he wants me to ride her part of the way home. She’s lovely, quite the nicest mare I’ve seen in a long time, as nice as Daisy in temperament. And you’ll never guess! He gave me money to buy proper trousers for riding.”

  Jenny smiled. “So he’s come to his senses about that, has he? I hoped he would.”

  They sat in the dappled shade for a time, talking quietly of what they’d seen on the streets of Kamloops. Then Jenny took the children up to their rooms to help them get ready for the midday meal, which they ate in the pleasant dining room, joined by William.

  “What would you like to do after dinner, Tom? Shall I take you down to the river to watch the sternwheelers?”

  “Oh, yes, Father!” cried Tom, and then Jane and Mary asked if they could come, too.

  “Certainly,” replied William, in an affable mood because of his new horse. “We’ll give your mother and sister a break from your chattering.”

  He took the children to the river, Mary and Jane each holding one of his hands and Tom racing ahead. Jenny and Margaret decided to shop for dress lengths and some notions needed for sewing, and the two walked out to the store Jenny was accustomed to dealing with.

  On an autumn trip to the Nicola Valley to celebrate a wedding anniversary, my husband and I stay in the Quilchena Hotel in a room facing the golf course beyond a row of Lombardy poplars. High ceilings and a tall window make the small room feel airy and light. Because I want to know how it feels to ride a horse to the tree line, urge it to a gallop along the ridge I can see from my window, look back to the lake in its bowl of afternoon light, we arrange to rent horses for a few hours.

  I have dreamed of a girl, have seen her shadow among the pines.

  My husband rides Chief, a tall pinto gelding with the narrow chest of a thoroughbred, and I am given Brownie, a quarter-horse mare with a brand on her left shoulder and a sleek bay coat. While the wrangler is saddling her, I untangle a length of wild rose stem from her mane and smell alfalfa on her breath. Riding her is both familiar and exotic, my muscles remembering the shape of a horse’s body but aching in the memory. Crossing Quilchena Creek, her feet toss up little sprays of cold water, but she doesn’t stop to drink. Her eyes are fixed on the trail and the rump of the wrangler’s horse, Minnie. Along the side of the hill, working to the top, pausing to look out at the perfectly clear sky and the patchwork of hayfield and pasture, green and gold, gold and green, threaded by tawny dirt roads on the valley bottom. Southernwood and dust are in the air, and I can hear magpies and crows squabbling down by the barn when a breeze carries their argument up. A girl riding this slope would have heard the crows, smiled at their quarrel. Her horse’s feet would have turned up dust and tiny seeds, her heart might have strained as mine does with longing. My horse is willing to jog, eases into a gallop at the tree line to take me across the ridge until I’m breathless with the beauty of the air and sky. At this high point we see piles of bear scat flecked with rose hips, and there are tall firs dangling cones and aspens on the edge of turning. A hawk hangs in the sky below us.

  I have so many questions and no one to ask. How bears can sustain themselves on roses, how wind can make such a subtle perfume of dust and leaves, how a young girl can age in the blink of an eye and never understand, until she is a middle-aged woman in red boots riding a borrowed horse, that something irreplaceable is lost and no one else recognizes the loss. A girl to shadow the woman, to take her hands as they walk into brilliant sunlight or under stars, to sleep beside in darkness, her back unbearably tender in her delicate nightdress. Or to dance with, alone in the grassy field, seeds caught in a strand of hair, the hem of a dress. I swing that girl by the hands, letting her fly out with her long skirt floating in wind. I don’t know I’ve let her go until it’s too late to bring her safe into my arms and she is flung into memory.

  Eating dinner in the restaurant that evening, I watched from the window, hoping to see her return down the golden hill, swim up from the depths of Nicola Lake, float from the sky in the arms of the wind. No one came, though the little bats swooped under the generous eaves and geese settled in the rushes for the night.

  The suite of rooms at the Grand Pacific hummed with excitement as the Stuart family dressed for the concert that evening at the Opera House. Margaret had taken her rose muslin gown out of its case when she’d arrived the night before, and its creases had been eased out with the help of a hotel chambermaid. A simple dress, it suited her dark colouring, and the single strand of milky pearls she wore at her throat was a comely touch. Jenny wore her one formal gown of grey taffeta, sewn from a length brought from Astoria by Aunt Elizabeth, with a cameo on the high collar, a gift from William’s mother. She had coiled her long braid into a coronet around her head and fixed it with tortoise-shell combs.

  “You will be the loveliest ladies at the concert,” William told them, admiring the two as they finished dressing.

  “What about us, Father?” Jane and Mary had been ready for some time, having bathed upon their return from the
river. Each of them wore a dress of fine white organdy, Mary’s gathered at the waist with a blue sash and Jane’s with a pale pink sash dotted with rosebuds. Margaret had brushed out their hair from their customary braids and held it back from their foreheads with bands of velvet ribbon she had purchased with her mother that afternoon.

  “You look like wild flowers on the slope of Hamilton Mountain, fresh and sweet,” he assured them.

  Tom wore a suit given him by a Nicola Lake family whose son had outgrown it, and he fidgeted and pulled at the tie which William had helped him to knot. Since returning with his father from the river, where he’d seen the SS Peerless beached on the bank, he’d been dreaming of the sternwheelers. William had explained to him that the boats were long past their heyday, the railways had taken over the work of carrying cargo and passengers from one community to another from Shuswap to Savona, and now the sternwheelers were mostly used to move logs. But Tom loved the look of the boats and imagined himself as captain of the Peerless, venturing down the Thompson River, as Captain Irving had, taking flour to the Canadian Pacific Railway crew at Spences Bridge. He was allowed to climb on the Peerless in Riverside Park, and his father had paid a man to take Tom’s photograph, posed on the portside deck like a sailor.

  It wasn’t far from the Grand Pacific to the Opera House, just one block south on Fourth Avenue and then west on Victoria Street for slightly more than two blocks. But William had arranged for them to go by carriage so they could arrive in style. Margaret was speechless with excitement as the carriage proceeded along the wide road, past the Fire Hall, the Federal Building, the Bank of Commerce with its ornate stone window headers and rosy brickwork, until they arrived at the Opera House. The driver had to wait his turn to pull up in front of the building, there were so many conveyances delivering concert-goers.

  Entering the building and ascending the stairs, Margaret could hardly breathe at the sight of the electric lights, the luxurious wall coverings, and the beautifully dressed people waiting to be shown to their seats. Such gowns and jewels! Margaret had not supposed the women of Kamloops she had seen on her explorations that morning would possess such finery. She felt humbled in her simple muslin dress, but then she remembered how excited she’d been when Father had told the family of the concert and resolved to enjoy every moment of the evening.

  William helped them to their seats with the assistance of an usher and then excused himself to return to the lobby to speak to several acquaintances he’d nodded to as they’d entered. Returning just before curtain time, he held a brief whispered conference with his wife and then leaned across Mary and Jane to Margaret.

  “Would you like to be presented to Madame Albani later this evening? An old acquaintance, William Slavin, invited me to a reception after the concert. Your mother feels the children should return to the hotel, and she doesn’t want to come herself, but she suggested that you might like to accompany me. We wouldn’t stay late, and God knows you have so little of this sort of thing that you might like the opportunity.”

  “Father, how wonderful!”

  So it was with doubled excitement that Margaret waited for the curtain to rise upon Madame Albani. The concert was everything she had dreamed it would be. The adored soprano sang a variety of songs from Tosti’s “Goodbye” to the poignant “Crossing the Bar.” The haunting lines Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! sent a delicious shiver through Margaret, reminding her of late April evenings when blackbirds fell silent as the darkness settled down on the little valley of the home ranch. This was like poetry or the language of the Bible, this kind of singing. And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark. Madame Albani’s voice was high and true, and she sang with complete poise. She was stunning to look at in her formal gown, her eyes dark and heavy-lidded, her pale throat covered with necklaces. A young singer, the contralto Eva Gauthier, was only able to sing two songs because of the effects of a bad cold, but Margaret marvelled that someone so young could be so accomplished. She sang one duet with the baritone, the closing number, “A Lover and His Lass,” and it was wonderful to see them address one another so artfully. And then the baritone sang a rousing encore, “Land of Hope and Glory,” which thrilled Margaret to the bone.

  After the applause had died down, William leaned to his daughter to ask if she’d enjoyed the concert, but one look at her enraptured face told him all he needed to know. He led his family out to the waiting carriage and returned to the Grand Pacific. “Wait here for me. I’ll help your mother up to our rooms,” he told Margaret and left her in the carriage to muse and remember. She wondered when the performers, both the experienced and professional Madame Albani and the younger contralto, knew that they would be singers. Had they always loved to sing and pursued it as an avocation, or had someone overheard them and realized that they had the gift, persuading them then to devote their lives to the art of music? If you had a gift, would you know? Margaret wondered about her own life. Apart from horses and the ranch, there was nothing she knew or did well, as far as she knew. She could train young colts, track coyotes, spot the nests of cranes. But was there something she could do for the rest of her life? Oh, why hadn’t she thought of it before? Here she was, seventeen, and with no real idea of how her life would proceed. When her father returned to the carriage, she was deep in thought with her face pressed to the window.

  Be calm, I want to tell her. Something will come to you, will take you by your shoulders and shake you with its rightness. It will hone your eyes and give you a shape for your stories. But in her seat by the window, Margaret mourned the ordinariness to which she believed she was doomed.

  The Slavins’ turreted house on Hill Street was brilliant with light, the sound of music floating down to the street. A tennis court to the east of the house was strung with lights, and many people gathered there in the mild evening air, laughing and talking. William introduced his daughter to Mr. and Mrs. Slavin, and Mrs. Slavin led her to the receiving line and waited with her until it was her turn to be presented to Madame Albani.

  The great lady was kind and held her hand as she asked her if she lived in Kamloops. She had a way of smiling deep into your eyes and making you feel as though you were the only person in the room, thought Margaret.

  “No, we’ve come from our ranch in the Nicola Valley just to hear you sing,” Margaret told her.

  “The Nicola Valley! What a lovely name. And you must be the wild rose of the valley. That colour suits you admirably, my dear.”

  Margaret felt her cheeks go warm. “I loved the Tosti piece that you sang,” she told Madame Albani. And ‘Crossing the Bar.’ It was all so beautiful.”

  “I’m delighted you enjoyed it. This is my farewell tour of Canada, you know, and when we’ve completed it, I shall sail to England again where I always feel so much at home. But it is very moving to have been able to sing in such diverse places as your Kamloops and Vienna, one of my favourite cities.”

  “A farewell tour? Is that why all the songs, or the ones in English anyway, were all about leaving? And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark. And ending with ‘Land of Hope and Glory,’ as though to point to your new home?”

  “Indeed! And what a clever young lady you are to notice. Your Nicola Valley has taught you to be perceptive. Incidentally, Tosti, who wrote ‘Goodbye,’ a song I love to sing, is the singing teacher for the Royal Family, and I shall no doubt encounter him in my new life in London. I shall tell him you liked his song, shall I?”

  After a few more words, Margaret took her leave, and Mrs. Slavin returned her to her father. He smiled at her.

  “Did she speak as beautifully as she sang?”

  “Father, to think that such people exist! To be able to sing as she does and to think of something kind to say to girls like me. This is her farewell tour of Canada, she told me, and we won’t hear her sing here again.”

  William took a glass of champagne from a tray offered by a maidservant and put it carefully into Margaret’s hand. �
�Only one, mind you, but the evening seems to warrant it. I wonder if the ranch will be able to hold you now that you’ve met the Great Canadian Songstress.”

  Dawn saw the Stuart family settling themselves into the Nicola-Forksdale stage and Margaret mounting the new mare to ride alongside. The mare was well trained but skittish, dancing around as Margaret tried to adjust her stirrups. To get accustomed to the horse and settle her down, the girl decided to ride around the block. South on Fourth, west on Victoria, not a soul to be seen, only a few birds in the small trees newly planted at the edges of the streets. Looking west towards the Opera House, she wondered if last night had been a dream. There was no sign that anything unusual had happened on the quiet thoroughfare. The buildings cast shadows that divided the breadth of street into bars of light and dark, some of the carriage tracks across the smooth dirt in darkness, some in early morning light. Which track had been made by the carriage that had taken her family to such an enchanted evening? And could it really have happened here, in this western town, the golden hills visible even now in the distance?

  And no memory in her heart of yearnings for a life different from this one, on a spring street in a western town, the little trees pulsing with their green expectations. Shuttered windows were silent in the morning light. Returning to the waiting stage, Margaret told her father she felt confident enough to set out, the mare having settled. The long road home to the ranch was waiting.

  At times on the ride to Trapp Lake, Margaret gave the mare her head and let her gallop along the soft dirt road. The horse was sound-winded, and they made good time. Margaret stopped a few times, once to let the mare drink at a roadside slough and once to stretch her legs while the horse nibbled on a clump of sainfoin in bloom on the edge of a pasture. Sometimes they were ahead of the stage, sometimes behind it, but the day was fine, and when they finally reached the stopping house at Trapp Lake, Margaret felt she could go on until home. Her father wanted to stay with the original plan, however, and rest the mare overnight. After a meal and some conversation about the Miner trial — the police bringing the prisoners to Kamloops had broken the journey at Trapp Lake, and the family who ran the stopping house had stories to tell of the three men sitting on the backboard with blankets around their shoulders in the pouring rain — the stage proceeded towards Forksdale and August Jackson, who awaited the family’s return at the Douglas Lake road.