“Well, Fan,” I say with great restraint, “you could have fooled me. I didn’t know you felt like that. I thought you were proud of me and my job. You should have told me earlier. It would have saved a lot of argument.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she says.
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
We listen to the put-put of the Rose’s sturdy Crown engine and the thump of the bow as the Rose drops off the tops of the waves into the troughs. I feel myself tensing as we climb each high comb. The Rose is not a youthful boat, and I never intended her to voyage on this coast. Each jolt is a threat to her framework. I am afraid of more spread planks or worse, and on these shores there’s no prospect of help. We are all too old for this.
We leave Kyuquot Channel and round Rugged Point. We pass the two-story-high black pinnacle of Grogan Rock at the entrance to Clear Passage. There are a score of islets around us foaming with petrels, pigeon guillemots, and tufted puffins. My intention is to reach the town of Zeballos off the northern arm of Esperanza Inlet. We need fuel and food, and I am desperate for human contact.
“If you didn’t mean what I thought you meant, then what did you mean, Fan?” I finally ask her.
She sighs. Then she takes several measured breaths. “It’s not your job I don’t like,” she says, “it’s what it has done to you. All that emphasis on safety. Rules for this, rules for that.”
“But I love my job!” I tell her. “It’s all I have. What’s more, I’m suited to it!”
“That’s what I mean,” she says. “You are too comfortable. You know it inside and out. You don’t have to think. You go from home to Pilot House to ship and back again, and that’s it. You know so little about the rest of the world or the people in it.” She folds her hands and refers herself to her surroundings as if they would back her up. The white froth of water round the black jagged rocks, the occasional splash of grassy green on the islets, the white beaches where the fossilized shells, which record the history of these islands, have been ground to powder by the ocean.
From here we can see Tatchu Point, the ceremonial beach, known for its abundance of shellfish, of the Ehatisaht band of Indians. There is also a shoal, which extends far from shore. Tatchu Point is at the northwestern entrance of Esperanza Inlet.
“What I do is dangerous, Fan,” I tell her. “You should know, you’ve seen it for yourself, and when you did you wanted me to quit. How could I be in a rut when, every time I go out, I’m in danger for my life?
“Only a short distance from here, a few years back, a pilot drowned while returning from a ship in a small local boat. We take chances all the time—with ourselves, that is, not with the ships. Maybe that’s why we seem closed to outsiders: no one else seems to appreciate, let alone understand, what the job involves. It’s quite a burden to carry. If I give the impression that we think we’re better than everyone else, then I can only apologize. That’s not what it feels like inside. It’s a lonely job, Fan, but it is very worthwhile.”
“Listen to you!” she says. “You’d think there was nothing else to life but work! You should get out, meet more people, enjoy yourself. Why is it, Robert Lam,” she asks, “that you won’t try anything new? What are you so afraid of? You won’t have a family, you won’t take a holiday—this trip certainly doesn’t count. You behave like a criminal, keeping your head down, hoping you won’t be noticed, burying your nose in books. Why not, for a change, take my advice?”
“Why not, Fan? Because you won’t accept me as I am. You want me to be someone different. I don’t know who you are thinking of, but I’ll never measure up. I like my life as it is. I’m happy, Fan. And if that’s enough for me, then it should do for you.”
“Should it?” she says. “Why are you unwell, then? What’s wrong with you? What’s making you sick?”
“You won’t let up, will you, Fan?” I ask resentfully. “You won’t let me be.”
“No, Robert Lam, I won’t!” says she.
—
So it was that my mother’s future husband, Robert Haack, was tried and convicted for his part in the robbery of the Tai June opium factory. For there was much circumstantial evidence against him, plus his confession, for why pretend in his innocence, he thought, when his reason for living was lost. For my mother, who had stumbled into the robbery, had been abducted by Smiling Jimmy. And no one knew where she was.
There were painful interviews with India’s friends. With Sing Yuen and Lam Fan, who pleaded with Robert Haack for information, and with Lam Fan’s uncle, the herbalist, Lum Kee, who could hardly believe that Haack was the same man who had searched with him one night through a network of snowy tenements for his missing niece. As if it had suddenly become unclear who had been looking for whom, and what had been lost.
But to all of them Haack had little to say. Jimmy was dead and Jimmy was the only one who had known what had happened to India. And the opium was gone. And he had failed Lum Kee and deceived Sing Yuen. And Lam Fan didn’t like him. No, he had nothing to say to them. There was nothing left of the world that had been.
—
D’Arcy Island. Six miles out in Haro Strait from Cordova Bay on Vancouver Island, seventeen miles from the harbour at Victoria, with the islands Sidney, James, and San Juan (on the American side) nearby, and with Vancouver Island extending the length of the western horizon. D’Arcy Island. The lepers’ island. Where there was no traffic. No boats landing or casting off. No passengers, no observers or witnesses. No customs officers. Where at the south end only there was a settlement, and the rest was forested. And the island was inches (or so it appeared on the map) from the Canadian-American border. The perfect place to hide some cargo if a man had the courage to do it. If he could outface his fears.
It was here, after a nightmare journey in the dark in the bilge of a boat, her hands tied with ropes, with the odour of opium surrounding her and with laudanum befuddling her mind, for Jimmy had forced her to take a number of drops before they set out, that India woke up. Her head, cut from the blow that Jimmy had given her when she’d stumbled upon him at the Tai June factory, was aching. She did not know where she was. And in her memory was a series of confusing images: Smiling Jimmy and half a dozen other men, the jolting of a wagon, the neighing of horses, and, beneath her feet, the treacherous give-way of sand. Plus a glimpse of a group of small cabins, then a boat painted green. Lamplight. A ladder to climb. Then the cold, fetid blankness of a boat’s hold.
—
She pulled herself up from the sand. Her hip and back were stiff from the damp. Her dress was torn. Her hair had come undone and lay tangled over her shoulders. She was cold.
She looked about her. The sun was low on the eastern horizon; to the west lay the long parabola of Vancouver Island. And she was standing on the northern end of a piece of land that was set among islands. As to what islands they were, or on which one she’d been landed, she had no idea. A tangle of forest and bush shut off all views to the south, but in the surrounding waters, most notably in the passage to the east of where she stood, there were ships. Most likely, she thought, if she could build a fire she could attract their attention. For it seemed to her, just by the sense of things, that the island on which she’d been cast was not inhabited, and that any activity thereon would be sure to be noted. Certainly, she thought, she was in an unpleasant predicament, and no doubt there were hardships to come, but it was clear by the logic of chance that soon she’d be out of it.
How could she not be? For there were settlements on most of the islands. There was Vancouver Island itself, only a few miles distant. There were steamers and fishing boats and freighters nearby: she could see them. And there were her friends—Sing Yuen, Lum Kee, Lam Fan, and Robert Haack—who would move heaven and earth to find her.
India followed a trickle of fresh water, which gullied through the sand, up the beach to the edge of the forest. Here the stream deepened enough for her to cup her hands and
drink from it. She washed her face, then dabbed the blood from her temple with a handful of leaves. She combed through her hair with a dry stick of wood. She tried to think, in spite of her headache. She needed to reconnoitre, to gain a better idea of where she was, for one thing, of how big the island was and what it held by way of supplies—that is, food and water and shelter. For if she had to stay here after nightfall she would need (at the very least) a fire and something to eat. There might be—and she would never know except by looking—a farm, or a fisherman’s or Indian’s cabin farther round the coastline. Since the men who had abducted her must have left her where she was for a reason: that being how much time they needed to get away. For certainly, if they had intended to kill her they could have done so easily. And since they had not, she was expected to survive. And so it was up to her to further that end and get on with it.
So my mother reasoned.
India rose from her knees by the stream and brushed the sand and earth from her dress. She tied the edges of the tear in her bodice together: the dress in which she had set out on Sunday, lightweight and summery, just right for the weather. She wished she had chosen something sturdier: but how could she have known what she was in for? And so she kilted up her skirts, loosened the buttons at her neck, bent down and removed several pebbles from her shoes, and set out in a clockwise direction, with the woods to her right, to survey her island.
There was uneven sand and gravel underfoot; there were stretches of jagged, broken red rock. There was mud and marsh, and slipways of boulders oiled smooth with seaweed. The waves washed gently in, softening the shoreline with a thin fringe of foam. And as the sun rose higher, and the sky deepened in colour, India began to feel much better, almost cheerful. In the forest there was predominantly Douglas fir, but there were also yellow cedar and lodgepole pine. Arbutus trees, sculpted by weather, smooth-skinned and peeling, clung to the cliffs overwatching the sea. In their branches the seabirds rested. Wild roses and broom grew close to the ground, and there were honeysuckle vines in flower. A raven flew up ahead of her, crying loudly, and an osprey circled over the water. India hummed. Bees buzzed over her head, and she moved her hands carefully while climbing the bluffs, to avoid the tufts of flowers and clover where they probed for nectar. At the top of one such cliff, she rested.
The sea stretched below her, silvery and dazzling with light. A gentle wind cooled my mother’s face, and as she watched, two seals surfaced in the water and called to each other. They were curious, as seals are, and when she called back to them: “Here I am, I’m here, where are you?” they turned their heads to look for her. She sat, hugging her knees to her chest, ignoring her hunger, and thinking, “I’m free, at last I’m free.” Although she did not know, herself, what she meant. Except that it was years since she’d had such a thought: not since, as a girl, she had first ventured alone into the streets of Hong Kong. Not since, briefly, at the moment of her father’s death, before grief had set in, she had looked ahead to the rest of her life.
When she had rested enough, she again began to walk.
D’Arcy Island. Wave-lashed, verdant, and perfect. Seaweed lay in long, pale drifts on its shores, and there were cascades of broken shells where sea gulls had been at work. There were clam shells, mussels, abalone, chitons, barnacles, and small crabs: these were pink and white, whole and in fragments, some with mother-of-pearl undersides. And in the tide pools, spiky purple sea urchins and orange or ink-coloured starfish idled. The air was heavy with the scents of sun-warmed herbs and grasses. A raccoon washed its dinner, and two deer crossed the tidal flats ahead of her.
Was she happy? If happiness can be found in Nature, then she was. If happiness is believing that one is doing what one wants, and that the will is free…
After an hour more of walking, she reached the southeast tip of the island. From here she could see across the strait to Mount Douglas on Vancouver Island. Just behind it, not many miles distant, lay the city of Victoria, where her friends lived. Where her home and work were. “It won’t be long,” she thought, “until I go back.” It was a pleasant thought, but mixed with a sense of regret at having to leave her newly found island. She wished that she could stay where she was, surrounded by beauty, and with no one to fill it with misery; no human failings and human needs; no robberies and opium addictions and love gone askew; but she also wanted the world she’d left behind; for she had important work to do, and there were many loose ends in her personal life (such as her relationship with Robert Haack), plus the fact that the city was what she knew. With its tangle of friendships and business. Its buildings of wood, brick, and stone. Its meetings, partings, reformings, and failings: its fast-spinning changes.
And so, realizing that it was time to act, and keeping an eye on a fish boat straying within signalling distance as it followed a shoal of fish through Haro Strait, my mother tore a strip from the hem of her petticoat and began to wave it. Back and forth her arm moved. She shouted and smiled. She waved and waved and waved. Surely they must see her, how could they not? But the fish boat steered away.
This was disappointing, but not entirely unexpected, for there was no guarantee of instant success. Still, she was a little puzzled. She’d have thought they’d have responded in some way even if they hadn’t wanted to stop to pick her up right then. Surely they could see that she was female; surely they’d have guessed she was in distress. They might at least have sounded a whistle to indicate they were sending help. Why not give a sign that she’d been seen and heard? But perhaps the fishing was good, and they did not think she was serious. She shrugged and walked on round the point and onto D’Arcy Island’s southernmost shore. She would keep on trying. There were many other boats in the region.
But twice more, as she waved with her petticoat, as she shouted and called at the top of her voice, vessels that had appeared to be on the point of sighting her suddenly veered away.
They had to have seen her, they must have! And of course (as we know) they had. But what they had seen was not my mother. Not a stranded woman calling for help. No, what they had seen was what they believed would be there in the first place: a Chinese leper. With long flowing hair, and wearing a long Chinese dress, unlikely as that seemed. But then anything was possible in such a place. Hallucinations, even a ghost.
For so it is that we resist the pull of facts and of our senses, and refuse to believe our eyes. And so it is that we deceive ourselves with what we know to be truth. And so it is that we turn our backs on knowledge, on our own valid experience.
—
The island is as it has always been. Time goes backwards and forwards around it, spinning from top to bottom as if it were never ending. Long, long ago, lava spewed up from the earth’s core, and the sun was eclipsed with ash. When the dust had settled there were mountains; when time had passed there were oceans; and then there were fires and middens and burial sites. And then there were the lepers. And then there was my mother, India Thackery.
And now, as my mother, in the pages of her diaries and in Lam Fan’s stories, prepared to look behind her, still puzzling over what had happened, as she sensed a strange new element in her surroundings amidst the buzzing of flies in the seaweed and the grating of pebbles in the undertow, as she caught sight, for the first time, of the lepers’ dwelling, I turn to my stepmother for help.
“Was it so long ago, Fan,” I ask, with the sound of my voice echoing off the drying rocks that silt up our seaway, “that we started out on this journey? That we spent a night, our first night away from the city, anchored at D’Arcy Island? It seems like aeons have passed. How could I not have known my mother had been there? How could you not have told me? I would have made better use of my time.”
“What would you have done differently, Robert Lam?” she asks me.
“I would have paid more attention to my surroundings, for one thing. I would have thought about my mother, understood her better, perhaps. I don’t know, but it would have helped, I’m sure about that.” And then I remember
what I can’t believe I’ve been able to forget. “Fan, it was there, at D’Arcy Island, that you made your first appearance and frightened me half to death! I suppose that should have told me something.”
She nods. “What else, Robert Lam?” she says. I try to think back to what I had done before meeting my ghost. It seems so far away, as if in another life.
“I went diving and I found something,” I say to her. “I had forgotten about that, as well.” I reach down from my post at the wheel and draw out from the debris on the bottom shelf of the compass table the fish-tackle box. Inside, where I had carelessly placed it that long-ago day, is a spoon with a large, looped handle. I look over at Lam Fan questioningly. She raises her eyebrows.
“Of course it belonged to the lepers?” I say.
“Presumably.”
“It might have been used by someone my mother knew.”
“It is possible.”
I turn it over and pass my fingers along its corroded metal, then I fit my arm through the handle. “When I found it, it didn’t mean anything,” I say.
“And now it does?”
“Now it does.” I lift the spoon to my mouth, then lower it. It is easier, with my numbed fingers, to manipulate than an ordinary spoon. I put the implement away, and looking ahead, checking my bearings so as to steer safely between High Rocks and Obstruction Reef, I attempt to remember what I’d seen of the island in the few hours I’d had.
There were, behind a ribbon of bush at the shoreline, fence posts that had once marked out a garden. There was a long-overgrown house foundation. There was a muddy cistern receiving a thread of water; and overleaning the beach, an arbutus tree with hatch marks carved along its ancient length. That was all. Evidence of human history. Of people who had gardened and lived and cooked. Who had stood by a tree above the beach and marked off…what? Years? Burials? Boats? What?
—
We are anchored at Rolling Roadstead, between Catala Island and the west coast of Vancouver Island. I am not feeling well, and although this is not a quiet anchorage—the swells roll in here from both directions—we are safe enough. Zeballos will have to wait. I can eat nothing, drink nothing. My stepmother sits at the table humming, turning over papers, as if nothing has happened.
To All Appearances a Lady Page 22