Alma

by William Bell

  She kissed Alma on her forehead and pulled open the inside door. “Remember to put the latch on behind me.” And she disappeared.

  Alma sat where she was. How could it be good news? Was Miss McAllister toying with her? Being cruel? Miss McAllister was strict, and sometimes at the end of the day she was grumpy, but never cruel. Perhaps she hadn’t been phoning about the crayons, perhaps it was something else. But what?

  Alma heated water in the kettle, then washed the dishes in the sink under the window that looked out on the alley. She worked slowly, anticipating the moment she would curl up on the couch in her room and lose herself in a book. She dried the plates and tea mugs and cutlery and put them away. How nice it would be if all the dishes had the same pattern, if the cutlery was heavy sterling, if there was a proper milk jug and a proper sugar bowl instead of a chipped teacup with a tarnished spoon. Alma wiped the table down with the dishcloth, swept the plank floor and put the broom and dustpan behind the curtain that hid the cubbyhole where coats were hung.

  When she had filled the kettle again and set out the tea things for her mother’s return after midnight, she turned on the night light beside the toaster, switched off the overhead bulb, checked the locks on the inside and outside doors and left the kitchen.

  Alma’s room was also the sitting room. There were a couch, which pulled out to a bed, and an easy chair with a threadbare rug between. Under the window was a bookshelf made of bricks and boards. The top shelf held books borrowed from the library, along with a cookie tin in which Alma kept important things, like the small pocket knife she had found in the alley last spring, a pencil sharpener, paper clips, a brooch with the pin broken off—and, recently, almost a dozen crayon stubs of different colours. Alma thought again about the phone call from Miss McAllister and wondered if she should throw the crayons away. Reminding herself that her mother had said the call was good news, she decided to wait.

  The bottom shelf was given over to Alma’s own books. Alma’s mother had read to her almost every night when Alma was little. She had encouraged Alma to get her library card as soon as she was old enough, but drew the line at buying new books.

  “It’s not a waste of money, exactly,” Clara had said, “but it’s cash we can ill afford.”

  But once in a while she would buy Alma books at the Turnaround, a used book store on Reedbank Road, and so there was a row of picture books and novels on the bottom shelf—the The Rianna Chronicles, Hallsaga, Lords of the Marshlands—some a little the worse for wear, but hers to reread whenever she liked. The honoured place on the row was given to the Centreworld Trilogy and the Alterworld Series of four books, all by RR Hawkins. They were Alma’s favourites. She treasured them most because of their stories and because they were a matched set with real cloth covers, scuffed to be sure, and each with DISCARD stamped on the inside of the cover—Alma’s mother had got her hands on them before they ended up on the “For Sale” table at the library—but each with RRH inscribed in golden Gothic letters just under the laurel insignia on the spine. They were the best of the best books Alma had ever read.

  Whenever she reached the final page of a story she particularly enjoyed, Alma would savour every word, linger over each sentence, reluctant to reach the end. She would close the book and slowly turn it over in her hands, run her fingers along the spine, read the words on the cover once again.

  Sometimes Alma wished that they would put the author’s phone number in the book, on the page near the front that told the copyright date, so she could call and say how much she liked the story and ask the questions that overwhelmed her when she reached the end. Where do you get your ideas? Is the tale based on your life? Are the characters in the story like people you know? How did you make everything so real? But Alma would never have the courage to telephone a real author. She’d be tongue-tied. She’d be embarrassed and utter stuttering apologies for wasting the author’s time. She’d be frightened the author would be angry at her for disturbing him.

  There were some stories, though, that captivated Alma so completely she felt that, if she ever did meet the author, it would ruin everything, diminish the enchanted state in which she found herself and which she would prolong as much as she could. At these times, Alma felt that the story was hers, that, without being the characters in the story, she was still part of the narrative and it was part of her—so deeply that, if a teacher asked her why she liked the story she’d be able to say, “I didn’t like it; I loved it!” and that would be all.

  One of the strange things about the magic of books and stories, Alma thought, was that, when she had to write a book report for school, she would always choose a story she hadn’t liked very much. It was easier to talk about. But if the tale drew her in and swept her away and made her a willing captive for as long as the story lasted, she not only couldn’t talk about it, she didn’t want to. Somehow, answering questions about main characters and crises and themes wrecked the magic, like breaking a china vase to see what the inside looked like.

  RR Hawkins was one of the writers Alma wished she could meet or call up on the telephone—even though she would probably trip over her words. There were so many questions she would ask: about the language Hawkins had created for the Alterworlders to speak, about the invented places, like the Craggy Mountains or the Plains of Poison Grasses; the maps that showed mountains and raging rivers, wide expanses of lake and sea and vast arid plains. About Centreworld and the creatures who lived there, the Renrens, who were just like people except their skin was a silvery scaled covering, and the Wairens, who used magic and nasty wiles to take over Centreworld and turn it to their evil designs. About how to become an author. Alma had decided long before that writing would be her vocation.

  Early in her reading of Hawkins’s stories, Alma had pictured the writer as middle-aged, wearing a rumpled tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows, with a floppy red bow tie, not a normal one, because he was creative and a little outlandish. He’d have a round face with rosy cheeks and a friendly smile and blue eyes twinkling behind wire-framed spectacles, and a domed forehead because his brain was so big. Bet he’s so smart people have trouble understanding what he says, Alma thought. Bet he memorized the dictionary when he was in school. She guessed at his names: Robert Randall. Rupert Rudolph. Richard Reinhart.

  As soon as she finished the seventh RRH novel—it was just after school had let out last summer—Alma had paid a visit to the Turnaround. It was a shabby, narrow shop with an antique spinning wheel in the front window. Alma had pushed open the door with the little bell overhead and approached the grey-haired man who had somehow made his way to the top of a ladder that stretched to the shelves near the ceiling.

  “G’day,” he had said, placing a thick book on the shelf.

  “Hello,” Alma said.

  “Kin I do for you?” the man asked over his shoulder as he crept down the ladder. Alma wasn’t sure if it was the ladder or his bones creaking.

  “Do you have any books by RR Hawkins?” she asked.

  The clerk scratched his head. “Hmm. Believe I’ve heard the name.” He led her to the wall of books and ran his finger along titles under H. “There’s six of them here.”

  “Oh,” Alma replied, scanning the titles. “I have those. And a seventh. I was looking for something else.”

  “Don’t know if there’s any more,” the man said, pushing his hands into the pockets of his cardigan as if he wanted to stretch the garment to his knees. “But, to be sure, let’s take a look. Come this way.”

  He led Alma down one of the two narrow aisles between tables piled with books to a counter at the back of the store. He pulled a thick red volume toward him and put on the half-moon glasses that hung from his neck on a black ribbon.

  “This tells us all the books in English that are in print,” he explained, turning a few pages no thicker than onion skin, then running his finger down the columns of fine print. “Here, ‘Hawkins, RR.’” He squinted for a moment before going on. “No, nothing else l
isted.”

  Alma’s shoulders slumped.

  “You’re a fan, are you?” the man asked.

  “Yes. I have both sets. My mother got them for me. Is RR Hawkins dead?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. Don’t know much about him. Never was a fan, myself. I prefer realistic fiction.”

  “Well, thanks anyway,” Alma said. The bell tinkled as she left the shop.

  Alma now took up the library book she was reading, a story of an orphan girl sold to a farming family, and turned to where she had left off before supper. In the pub upstairs she heard the band tuning up, and soon after that the Celtic music began, reels and jigs and hornpipes, sad airs about lost battles and faraway homelands, raucous drinking songs. She read until her eyes refused to stay open, then put on her pyjamas and went to sleep.

  She woke briefly to the odour of cooking oil and cigarette smoke, and the touch of a kiss on her forehead.

  CHAPTER

  Four

  On Saturdays, Alma was quiet because her mother slept in, behind her closed bedroom door, until noon. This morning Alma slid back the bolt and opened the milk box beside the outside door, removing the bottle of milk and loaf of bread left there during the morning’s delivery. She counted the change in the envelope her mother placed in the box each night with enough money for the milk and bread. She put the milk in the icebox, pulled on her jacket, checked to be sure she had her key, grabbed four cookies from the jar on the counter and slipped out the back door.

  It was a sunny morning and the air was crisp and clean. From the street in front of the Liffey came the cloppity-clop of Gertrude, the ice man’s horse, hauling the wagon that squeaked under a ponderous load of ice blocks buried in sawdust. Alma walked over to Little Wharf Road and turned toward the harbour. The old buildings on either side were made of wood, with shiplap siding, built one against the other so that there was one long front with many doors and small porches. The owners had painted them in different colours so they looked like boxes lined up in a row from the harbour to the square.

  As she walked past the Customs House under the tall maple trees, a movement in the window of the house next door caught her eye. She stopped. The Stewart house had been uninhabited for half a year. It was one of the oldest buildings in Charlotte’s Bight, and Robbie Thornton, who was in Alma’s class, claimed it was haunted. Robbie was silly. Ghosts weren’t real. A shadow slowly passed the window again, a figure in dark clothing. Alma ducked behind the tree, held her breath and, craning her neck till it hurt, took a peek, alert for the slightest movement. Who was creeping around in the Stewart house? Alma crouched in her hiding place for some time, but saw nothing further.

  She sauntered to the harbour and strolled through the little park beside the empty marina. Little Wharf had been the original harbour of Charlotte’s Bight but in modern times had been eclipsed by the main commercial harbour to the west, where the Reedbank River met the ocean. Little Wharf had become a marina and tourist attraction with its small fleet of fishing boats, its seafood restaurants and shops and snack bars, all of them closed for the season.

  When Alma was little, her mother had told her that her father had “gone away for a long time.” Alma had imagined that her dad had sailed off on one of the tall ships she had seen tied to the wharf the summer before last. She pictured him standing at the rail, a pipe clamped between his teeth, waving to her. The gull-white sails grew smaller and disappeared into the curved fold where the sea met the sky. Since then, even though she now knew her dad had fallen from a potato harvester and broken his neck when she was less than a year old, the harbour with its marina, park and wharf was her favourite place, and whenever her feet took her there, the first thing she did was scan the horizon, searching for sails.

  Alma’s mother had tried to keep the farm going. Making ends meet had never been easy, but with Alma’s dad gone, it was impossible. The family had sunk deeper and deeper into debt until finally Clara had to give in and sell out to the Farmrite Corporation. By the time back taxes and debts were paid, there was little left. Alma and her mother moved to town, where Clara barely supported them with part-time work.

  “You’ll not find a speck of red dirt under my fingernails ever again,” Clara had vowed. “Never take up with a farmer or a fisherman,” she told Alma on another occasion. “There’s nothing but hardship living off the sea or the land. And there’s too much danger.”

  The jetties projected from the shore in orderly rows, then each branched on either side to make more space for pleasure boats. Some sailors had screwed nameplates on the planks where they docked. In summer, the harbour swirled with life, sailboats coming and going, tourists strolling along the shore eating ice cream cones and snapping photos, buskers playing the fiddle and tapping their toes.

  Today, the empty jetties and abandoned moorings gave the waterfront a forlorn air, and the water, captive between the breakwall and the shore, unable to form proper waves, sloshed randomly against the pilings. At this time of year the Springwater River’s estuary was dotted with thousands of Canada geese, grazing the bottom at low tide. When the tide turned, the geese rose in great honking clouds, beating toward the harvested grain fields across the river.

  Alma had read that Canada geese mated for life. Like my mom did, she thought.

  Alma walked back up Little Wharf Road on the side opposite the Customs House, sneaking glances toward the dwelling where she had seen the mysterious shape. There were curtains in the window.

  “Someone has taken the Stewart house,” Alma told her mother when she sat down to her dinner. A toasted egg sandwich lay on her plate, with ketchup oozing out the sides, just the way she liked it. “They’ve put up new curtains.”

  “Have they? That’s nice,” Clara replied, sipping her tea and turning a page of yesterday’s newspaper. Her hair, still damp from her bath, fell to the shoulders of her faded dressing gown. “It’s a shame to see a house sit empty. Are you coming shopping with me today?”

  “Sure.”

  Alma was half hoping her mother had forgotten about the telephone call from Miss McAllister, and at the same time anxious to find out what it was about, to get it over with, to end the suspense. She wondered if she should bring it up.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday. What would you like to do?” her mother asked idly.

  “Let’s go to the show.”

  “We’ll see what my purse looks like after we do the shopping this afternoon.”

  “Then the Turnaround.”

  “Listen, girl, I’ve got to put money aside for your winter coat and boots. You’re growing like a weed. We can’t be throwing money away on books right now.”

  Alma lowered her head. Her mother constantly worried about money, and her worrying put a hard edge on her words sometimes.

  “And now we should talk about Miss McAllister’s phone call.”

  Alma put down her glass. Suddenly her sandwich was a hard lump in her stomach.

  “Your class had a visitor last Thursday.”

  “Yes. She walked up and down the rows, talking to the teacher.”

  “Well, it’s good news. Her name is Olivia Chenoweth.”

  “That’s a funny name.”

  “Funny or not, she wants to hire you.”

  “Me?”

  “You. Miss McAllister, as usual, wasn’t very clear what kind of work it is. Probably housekeeping. She lives with her mother, Olivia Chenoweth does. They’re new in town. From away. I’ve got her phone number.”

  Alma had never had a job. It might be nice to earn some money, she thought. Suddenly she felt more grown-up.

  “So what do you think?” Clara asked, getting up and adding hot water to the teapot. “We could use the extra money. But first, let’s find out what’s astir.”

  “All right, Mom.”

  Clara went through the inner door to use the phone in the Liffey. She came back after a few minutes.

  “Small world,” she said as she shut the door. “Olivia Chenoweth is expecting you at three o�
�clock. She and her mother are the people who have taken the Stewart house.”

  CHAPTER

  Five

  Across the road from the Stewart house, Alma stood under the maple tree where she had crouched that same morning. It was the only dwelling in the row with an upstairs dormer. The green paint on the window trim and shutters was flaking away and the porch railing had been broken off and tossed onto the lawn.

  Alma crossed the road, trod up the creaky wooden steps and pulled open the storm door. The hinge squeaked. Robbie Thornton would love that, she thought as she lifted the wrought-iron lion’s-head knocker and let it thump against the door.

  Plump was the polite word to describe Olivia Chenoweth. She was wearing a grey cardigan over a green paisley dress, with a string of glass beads around her neck. Close up, she looked older than when she had visited Alma’s class. There were grey strands in her hair and crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes.

  “Come in, dear,” Olivia Chenoweth said, “and give me your jacket.”

  She preceded Alma down a short hall piled with cartons that read “Atlantic Moving” and into a sitting room jammed to the walls with furniture—stuffed chairs on either side of a huge radio set, a long couch, end tables with doilies that drooped over the sides, a thick rug with burn marks near the hearth. The only new things in the room seemed to be the curtains.

  “Take a seat, dear,” the woman said. “Would you like something to drink? Tea? Or juice? I’m afraid we don’t have soda.”

  “No, thank you,” Alma replied, sitting down in an upholstered chair by the window.

  “Well, then.” Olivia Chenoweth perched on the edge of the couch opposite Alma, as if she expected to jump up at any minute. “I suppose I should let you know what your duties are—if you decide to accept, that is.”

  Alma was pleased that she hadn’t said, “If your mother decides.” The decision was Alma’s. “By the way, you may call me Miss Olivia. I am companion and secretary to my mother, who is the person you’ll be working for, strictly speaking, although your contact will be almost entirely with me.”