A Map of Glass

by Jane Urquhart

  Annabelle walked to the east window and stared out at the vacant shipyard. She tried, without much success, to solve the puzzle that had been presented to her. How was it possible that her father could render the very landscape that had been the source of his humiliation with such meticulous affection? There was something wistful and tender about the maps, and Annabelle, strolling once again among them, began to understand that her father must have been bruised by experience or filled with longing at one time or another. None of this made any sense at all in the face of the tyrant he had been in his prime, or even the confused old man he had turned into later, and yet there was no denying that the younger man who had made these maps was one with vision and heart. The loss she felt in the face of this was more intense in that it was the loss of a gift she had never been given. She felt overcome with shame that she had not known all this before. She could not bring herself to remove the maps from the floor, to roll them back up, return them to the shelves. Before she left the office she sat slowly down on the hard chair behind her father’s hard desk, put her face in her hands, and wept for the first time in years.

  Summer after summer, beyond the bright windows of the Ballagh Oisin, the Great Lake roared or whispered against a sand beach on which visiting children made miniature towns, elaborate castles, or complicated drainage systems. Cumulus clouds bloomed like distant white forests far out over the lake, but never ventured inland to disturb the sunny afternoons. At night the constellations moved above the waves against a clear black background, and sometimes, in the very early mornings, or just before sunset, the water became entirely still as if intent on merging with the sky. Gulls rode the wind, ducks practised flight patterns for future migrations, and each year, on one spectacular July day, a flotilla of enormous arctic swans sailed regally past.

  What a place it was! Perched on the very last finger of the arm of the peninsular County, the hotel was like a sturdy wooden ship that had come into port after a long journey, leaving fields and farmhouses and woodlots in its wake … almost as if it had created or had given birth to such things. The exterior of the building was painted bright white, as were the rocking chairs on the porch. Guests emerging from its doors wore white as well, the unspoken dress code of the place. Women in pastel skirts drifted down halls past Branwell’s turquoise landscapes, eager to enter the piercing light of the long summer days.

  The natural talents that Marie had first begun to show evidence of in Mackenzie’s kitchen on the island had now blossomed to such an extent that her culinary accomplishments were acquiring a reputation. Her lemon meringue pies and decorated cakes, for instance, were famous as far away as Toronto and Montreal, and her sauces for fresh lake trout were discussed well into the winter. The guests gorged themselves three times a day in the pale blue dining room while the darker blue of the Great Lake swell heaved beyond the panes of a multitude of windows and the Tremble Point lighthouse shone on a sandbar islet offshore.

  There were walks in the evenings along the sandy shore or inland through a wood of flickering poplar and birch, then into a meadow filled with daisies, black-eyed Susans, and the soft blue flowers called bachelor button. Later, Ghost would be called in from the stables to dance and sing. (Marie, though fond of Ghost, was superstitious, and insisted one had to go out to the stables, in daylight, to have one’s fortune told.) Even one or two of the guests could be persuaded to entertain: Mr. McIntyre, a bank manager from Grimsby, might sing a song, one of the young ladies might play the old piano (which could never be kept in tune because of the humidity), and inevitably someone would recite a poem by Mr. Tennyson. If this took place during the summer of 1889, just after the great poet had published “Crossing the Bar,” one of the company would inevitably deliver the mournful lines and everyone’s eyes would fill with tears. Everyone’s eyes, that is, except for Annabelle’s, if she happened to be in residence on her yearly visit. She considered the laureate to be a pretentious romantic and therefore she had always disliked his poetry. One June evening she announced to the guests, all of whom had removed their handkerchiefs during a shoe salesman’s particularly sensitive recitation of “The Lady of Shallot,” that, in her opinion, the girl in question was a simple-minded infant who had undoubtedly died of starvation rather than a broken heart since, beyond a brief reference to barley, there had been mention of neither food nor drink in the story, unless one took into account her name, which, if Annabelle remembered her French correctly, had something to do with onions. This had shocked the gathering so thoroughly that Branwell had found it necessary later in the evening to upbraid his sister in private concerning her frankness.

  “What can it possibly matter to you what Tennyson says or doesn’t say about romance?” he asked. “Why would you care enough to state your case so vehemently?”

  “Well, what would you have me say?” she reportedly replied. “That his ‘Lady’ made the right decision? She should have stuck to her loom, or, better still, she should have gone outdoors into the fresh air and got some exercise. Reaping barley with the other early reapers would have been a much wiser choice than dying for the likes of Lancelot.” In truth, she thought that the line “only reapers, reaping early in among the bearded barley” was quite beautiful, but she was far too stubborn to admit this.

  She wondered, suddenly, how her brother saw her at this moment. As an aging, ill-tempered spinster, undoubtedly, an eccentric maiden aunt. Allowing such a thought to form in her mind increased her irritation in any number of ways. She decided she would spend the following day away from the Ballagh Oisin and asked Branwell to hire a carriage and driver for her so that she could make a tour of the County. She travelled along shore roads near bays and inlets filled with fishing boats, moved slowly down the main streets of several towns where hardware and grocery stores were doing a brisk business, and passed by cultivated fields that would soon be ripe with the barley that was rapidly becoming the staple crop of the region. All this evidence of industry and practicality soothed her wounded spirits somewhat, though she couldn’t say just why, and she returned to the hotel at twilight in much better humour.

  A few days later, while helping Marie roll pastry dough in the kitchen, Annabelle glanced out the window and was the first to spot the arrival of her nephew at the end of the leafy lane that led to the hotel. The arrival itself was not unexpected; he often spent some of the summer there with his parents, though, by this time, he had little in common with them and was mildly embarrassed by their station in life, which, to his mind, was entirely defined by their position as innkeepers. What was surprising was the letter that preceded him, a letter in which he had stated his intention to stay for a considerable length of time—long enough to oversee the completion of a house nearby. Maurice, it would seem, had decided to become a gentleman farmer. Neither his parents nor Annabelle could quite fathom this; Maurice, to their knowledge, had shown not the slightest interest in the natural world. In fact, Maurice had shown interest in next to nothing beyond his employment as assistant manager of the Bank of Commerce in Kingston. Added to this was a further surprise. Seated beside him in the approaching buggy was a fair-haired woman. Annabelle, who was standing by the kitchen window watching the couple disembark from the buggy, knew by the woman’s unmistakably commanding gestures, and by her nephew’s obvious attention to those gestures, that this woman had the devil in her as big as a woodchuck. There is going to be trouble here, she thought. She considered returning to Timber Island in order to avoid the drama she sensed was about to take place, but her curiosity got the better of her.

  It wasn’t long before she came to know that the trouble she had intuited was not to be of a short duration, for the Badger, as it turned out, had married it. “My name is Caroline Woodman,” the young woman announced as she entered the hall and began removing the pins from her hat. “Maurice and I are married.” Maurice, who was at that very moment struggling with hatboxes and suitcases, and a variety of assorted pieces of feminine luggage, looked uncharacteristically sheepi
sh at the mention of his marriage, but said nothing. “He would have written to you,” the woman called Caroline continued, “but I thought he should tell you in person. After all, I had to tell my papa in person and that was not an easy thing to do, I can assure you.” Having delivered this piece of information, the young woman swept past the small assembly, entered the sitting room, and collapsed on one of the chairs, throwing her feathered hat onto one of the sidetables as she did so.

  Annabelle followed the girl into the sitting room in order to observe her more closely. The eyes, she decided, were too small and too close together. There were too many freckles on her otherwise milk-white skin and, by the look of her, she might fatten as she grew older. These were the only physical deformities that Annabelle could find on the person of Maurice’s bride, but they would have to do for now.

  “Maurice,” the young woman called in the direction of the hall where her husband and his parents were still standing as if frozen to the floorboards, “come in here and introduce me to this elderly lady. Is she a relation of yours? And who were all those people on the porch?”

  Maurice walked into the room and sat down by Caroline’s side. “She is my Aunt Annabelle,” he said. “But,” he added, vaguely embarrassed, “those people we passed on the veranda, those people are the summer patrons.” He seemed to have forgotten altogether about his parents, who were now standing quietly in the doorway. “I am Maurice’s father,” Branwell offered. He put his arm around Marie. “And this is his mother.”

  “I’m not elderly,” said Annabelle, glancing at Marie. “Not quite yet.”

  “Was it a Catholic ceremony?” Marie asked her son.

  Caroline began to laugh. She put her hand on Maurice’s arm. “The state father was in … can you imagine what he would have said had we been married by a papist?”

  “We were married secretly,” Maurice said, “by the first minister we could find. A Presbyterian, I think.”

  “Lutheran,” Caroline corrected. “A German. Papa wasn’t too happy about that either. He’s always said that he runs a good Methodist business in a good Methodist town, and that all his ships are good Methodist ships manned by good Methodist men.”

  Marie, much to Annabelle’s astonishment, had brightened somewhat. “You’re not really married then,” she said to her son, “if there was no priest.” She turned to Caroline. “If your father doesn’t approve, you could tell him that because Maurice was baptized a Catholic, you’re not really married. He might be pleased to hear that.”

  Maurice continued to gaze at his bride. “No,” he said, “we are most certainly husband and wife. And, anyway, Mister Gilderson cheered up a bit once we began to talk about the barley.”

  “Gilderson?” said Annabelle. “Can you possibly mean Oran Gilderson?”

  Maurice nodded.

  “Of course,” said Caroline. “I don’t believe there is another Gilderson in the vicinity.”

  It took Annabelle a moment to digest this information. Oran Gilderson had been writing letters to her of late, letters in which he had offered to be of assistance with the salvage operations of what remained of the Woodman empire. Annabelle, remembering her father’s distrust of his primary competitor, had grave suspicions about these missives. What exactly had this gentleman in mind for the diminished business toward which she had developed a surprising protectiveness. Thank God Father is dead, she thought, recalling his last words. She was about to say something but changed her mind. “What’s all this about barley?” she asked instead.

  The land that Maurice had purchased with his grandfather’s money comprised one hundred acres, the narrowest, easternmost parameters of which touched the grounds of his parents’ hotel just at the spot where the grass tennis court ended and the poplar woods began. The western edge joined a further hundred acres—acres that were under cultivation and that had been given to him, reluctantly to be sure, by his new father-in-law. Their house would be built on the far side of the woods and was to be, as his bride explained, made of brick and very modern. A great many bay windows and round towers and oddly shaped windows were to be seen in the plans Maurice pulled from a suitcase and unrolled at their feet. The meadow was to be ploughed and the poplar woods cut down.

  “Why would you want to do that?” Annabelle was genuinely incredulous.

  “Barley,” Caroline said before Maurice had a chance to respond. She went on to explain that there were already ten acres of barley on the property, but they wanted more.

  “That’s all very well,” said Branwell to his son, “but what will you have to look at if you are surrounded by nothing but fields of barley?”

  “Look at?” asked Caroline. “Why should we need something to look at? We’ll have a view of the lake, after all, and even barley can be quite lovely when the crop is high.”

  Annabelle noted that the young woman had stiffened in her chair. She had the defensive air of one who was vaguely frightened by the company and was asserting herself as a result. Her eyelashes, Annabelle noted, were almost as thick as Marie’s but of a lighter hue, offsetting, quite beautifully, the blue of her eyes and the gold of her hair. Annabelle could see that the young woman was very attractive, but would not have called her pretty. There was something significant missing, and suddenly Annabelle knew what it was. Caroline gave off no light. She did not glow. Rather, in the manner of a coal fire, she smouldered and seemed, somehow, to be just on the edge of emitting a poisonous, though odourless, gas.

  “Barley,” said Maurice, “is very profitable. It is right now selling to the Americans at eighty cents a bushel and —”

  “Eighty cents a bushel,” interjected young Caroline eagerly, “and bound to go higher and higher. The Americans have a great thirst for beer and other spirits. They simply can’t get enough barley.”

  “I fear,” said Annabelle, who was once again wondering about Oran Gilderson’s business plans, “that reapers, ‘reaping early in among the bearded barley’ are more likely to reap profits than those who appear later in the day.” All of this, she thought, might very well be interpreted as the beginnings of the robbery of the lake.

  Caroline looked confused.

  “Tennyson,” said Annabelle.

  “We shall become very rich, Aunt,” said Maurice. “You’ see.”

  Now it was Maurice who became the focus of Annabelle and Marie’s ongoing inquiry into the bewildering nature of the male psyche. When they were once again alone together in the kitchen, the subject of Badger and what he had been thinking when he decided to marry this spoiled young woman was instantly raised. Although Annabelle had become aware early on that, because he was a son, not a husband or lover, Maurice’s character was one that should be discussed with great delicacy, this seemed not to matter in the present circumstances. Normally, when Marie praised the boy, it was best that one nod in agreement. When she complained about her son’s faults and weaknesses, it was best to disagree, the more vehemently the better. But now, when Marie angrily suggested that the catastrophe had occurred because Maurice was quite simply trying to improve his standing in life, was, in fact, like the girl or loathe her, marrying money, or “marrying up” as she put it, Annabelle agreed that, indeed, cold ambition had likely played a large part. “But, there is something else,” she said. “He seems stunned, entranced. I suspect he is actually in love with her.”

  Marie looked horrified. “Sacré Dieu,” she said, crossing herself and turning toward the wall.

  “And as for ambition,” Annabelle continued, “it will be Caroline’s ambition that will rule the day, not that of poor Maurice, her besotted husband.”

  “He should run like a deer,” said Marie.

  “Where would he run to? Back to the bank? I’ve heard a lot about this man Gilderson. He would likely have him shot. And, as I said before, Marie, Maurice is smitten. He’s a goner. From now on his life will be all bricks and barley.”

  What neither woman said, but both knew, was that come early autumn just before the harvest of t
he last crop of barley, the entire peninsula would be transformed into various shades of yellow: the poplars, the maples, and the field after field after field of barley, bordered near the water by the paler yellow banner of the sand. Moving through this landscape they had likely felt surrounded by radiance at one time or another: golden September sun, golden apples in the orchards (which were becoming scarce now because of the spread of barley,) golden clouds of sunset coming earlier and earlier to the sky, glasses filled with the dark gold of whisky in the evenings, or the bright gold of beer in the late afternoon. Sometimes in August, before the harvest, the fields of barley would turn a peculiar shade of lavender at twilight, mysterious, unfathomable, the deep purple shadows of the maples that edged the fencelines like pools or clouds. The prosperity of the previous decade had been both directly and indirectly connected to the increasing production of this crop, a fact that would, in the future, cause the whole epoch to be referred to by citizens of the County as the Barley Days.

  These Barley Days might just as well have been called the Brick Days, for central to the years when barley was making people rich was the building of larger and larger brick houses, houses much like the one that rose with alarming swiftness a quarter of a mile from the clapboard hotel. During the early stages of its construction, when the frame of the nuptial home was being erected, the noise of the carpenters’ hammers disturbed the guests, as later did the sound of poplars and birches crashing to the ground. By the time the bricklayers arrived the half-finished skeleton of the house was clearly visible from the upper veranda.