“No, no,” the storyteller says, coming back to the table for nickels. “I’m not lying. It was the best ride of my life.” She smiles quietly, as if she harboured a secret, then she goes away again to dance.
Later that night, when I am untying the Rose and getting ready to go, for I do not want to spend any more time in this town than I have to, despite my illness, for I see I have other things to do, the woman appears beside me out of the darkness. “If you ever need a cook, mister,” she says, “you let me know. I’m a good one. I’d bring you luck.”
Then she helps me cast off and waves for as long as I can keep her in sight.
It is four in the morning, and we’re retracing our tracks down the inlet. And I don’t want to sleep on land again. And I don’t know what is making me sick, but I do know what won’t help. Doctors. Hospitals. Diagnosis. It’s not medicine I need, it’s…
“What?” asks Fan, with a yawn, stepping out on deck. “What now?”
—
The first man who had been sent to the island, the lepers told my mother (“See, Fan? I was right. I knew they wouldn’t harm her.” “You are right this time, Robert Lam, but maybe not forever.”) was the only one who had ever escaped it. He’d been left on D’Arcy Island alone, without facilities—not a shelter, not even supplies or blankets—of any kind. When the health inspector returned three months later to check on what had happened to him, the leper could not be found. India suggested that he might have died of exposure and been devoured by animals; or that he might have swum out into the treacherous currents of the strait and been drowned. But the lepers insisted that his family had come in a boat to rescue him. It was a story they repeated to each other often.
Those who could, namely Sim Lee, Ng Chung, and Nap Sing, had helped India set up a shelter in the middle of a small clearing. The dwelling was made of saplings tied together to form a frame, and it was sheathed with leftover planking and the remains of packing cases. Sacking covered the windows, and with a pair of hinges that they had removed from a cupboard in the dead man’s room, they had managed to hang a door. It had also been agreed that, at least for the interim, India would take over the dead man’s other belongings—his clothing and blankets and dishes, and, of course, his rations. Normally these goods were split amongst the surviving men, but in the circumstances, and after long discussion, the lepers had decided to make an exception. And so after cleaning and boiling and scrubbing, airing and drying, India had made her camp as comfortable as she could. She knew approximately how much time she had to wait. It would be five or six weeks before the supply boat—either the Alert or the Sadie came every three months—would arrive and she could leave the island. And in the meantime, there was the sunlight in the daytime in which to bask, and moonlight at night by which to watch the deer as they came to graze in the meadow surrounding her house. And there were plans to make: how she would take up the cause of the lepers on her return to Victoria, and obtain better treatment for them from the authorities. How she would raise funds for them, and hire doctors and nurses. How she would work for the building of a proper hospital. And while she was waiting, so as not to lose track of this brief but important experience, she borrowed writing materials from the lepers and continued to keep her diaries.
But as she wrote and made her drawings, she began to feel that the major, her father, had come to peer over her shoulder to examine what she was doing. And she would find herself sketching improvements to the water system, or working out the position of new latrines; or wondering who would help the lepers change their dressings once Sim Lee, Ng Chung, and Nap Sing had lost the use of their hands. And instead of staying by herself in her cabin, as she had planned, she was more and more drawn to these men whose appearance still filled her with revulsion. For she began to perceive the face that each carried within him: a second face of hope and youthfulness and strength. Of possibilities; what-might-have-beens.
Then her mother came to her in a dream and asked her forgiveness. She enfolded India in her arms and rocked her. She sang her a song that was like the wind or the pulse of the ocean. She sang away loneliness, and when she had finished she made India look down at her hands. At the flowers that bloomed from her fingers: the violets and lilies and anemones. And her mother helped India pick them, not without pain, and they placed them on a windowsill where the sunlight touched them and set them aflame.
—
She only knew that the supply boat had come when she heard the shouts of angry men. The other noises—the throb of the Sadie’s engine, the scraping of the keel on the sand—had been obscured by the sounds of the forest in which India dwelled. Sounds, through which the hum of the wind and the rhythm of the waves also played, and to which India had become accustomed. She was annoyed, when she heard these strange voices, that no one had come to warn her, for she had expressly asked the lepers to give her notice of the supply boat’s arrival: she had wanted to look her best. Now she hurried to divest herself of her borrowed shirt and trousers and to put on her dress. She knew that the first impression she made on the sailors who had brought the supplies would be extremely important.
Sim Lee had warned her that the unloading of supplies would not take long, and that the sailors were always very nervous and in a hurry to be gone. And so India brushed back her hair with her hands, smoothed down her skirt, buttoned her blouse, then ran.
She could hear the men more easily now as she pushed through the brush and neared the shoreline. There was cursing as well as more shouting. She could almost smell their sweat as they rushed to finish their tasks. Crates were thrown on top of each other; sacks were thumped on the sand; barrels were rolled, and they crashed and clanged where they landed on stones.
India slowed down. Sim Lee had also advised her to be cautious as to how she approached these men. It was very easy, he had said, to put them into a panic. Once, when, during the unloading, the lepers had approached too closely, the sailors had run back to their boat. Despite the lepers’ pleas, they had refused to return and had left for Victoria with half the foodstuffs still on board the steamer. Which had meant three months of hunger for the unlucky exiles.
“Do not surprise them,” Sim Lee had told her. “Call out to them first. Tell them a little of your story before you show yourself. Let them know who you are. And do not allow them to think that you have been near us. We will not give you away. We will act as if you are a stranger. That way it is more likely they will agree to take you back to Victoria.”
It was hard to believe that he was not overstating the case: surely no civilized man, she thought, would refuse her his help. It was unthinkable. It simply couldn’t happen. Nevertheless, she paused as she came to the fringe of forest at the top of the beach. She adjusted her dress and hair once more, and looked down cautiously from behind the boughs of a fir tree, at the scene below.
—
Rice, sugar, flour, potatoes, chests of tea and of dried fish, plus a case of opium had already been unloaded onto the sand near the waterline. In addition there were some small sacks of seeds and a few wooden tools that the lepers would use in their gardening. As well as the sailors, who held at a frantic pace to their work, there was another man standing somewhat away from them. He was tall and well-dressed, and, as India watched, he opened a bag that he had set down on the shore beside him. From it he took out several instruments and a rubber apron, which he put on. This, surely, must be the doctor who, Sim Lee had said, also sometimes came.
“How many, John?” this man called out to the lepers who remained above him on the slope below their cabin.
Sim Lee, as spokesman, and familiar with the routine, stood up and answered loudly, “Seven.” The lepers had agreed amongst themselves to hide the death of the seventh man. That way, they would continue to receive his share of the supplies. The doctor nodded and wrote something in a notebook. Although there were only six lepers, in fact, and just as Sim Lee had indicated would be the case, no one troubled to count.
The doctor calle
d again, this time beckoning to Chou You, who had been sitting a little apart from the others, with his axe, slivering a piece of wood. You, pleased at being singled out, smiled, and, looking shyly at the doctor, who impatiently motioned him forward, shuffled down the slope towards him. The doctor put on his gloves, and without saying anything further, when You was within his grasp, took his scalpel and sliced off a flap of skin from one of Chou You’s ears. This he tucked away in a pouch while You stood in front of him grinning stupidly.
“Get away now,” the doctor said to You. “Go on, get back to your place.” He turned away, stripped off his gloves and apron, gathered up his belongings, and signalled to the crew that he was coming. And walked away.
Chou You wept.
Surely now was the moment for India to speak, to shout out her name and call the men back. Surely now she must step out from her shelter of trees and make her appearance. For the doctor was helping the men push the boat off the beach. In moments the engine would start, and all would be lost!
But my mother couldn’t move her feet. Her hands flew to her face. She felt its roughness, from sunburn and scratches. She touched her tangle of hair, her torn dirty dress, and thought of how she must look. But most of all, angered and humiliated, she thought of what she’d just witnessed. Of the doctor’s lack of interest, of Chou You’s hurt; of the sailors’ fear of all the lepers. And she made her choice.
For the world she had known no longer existed. Or if it did, then she had changed and it wasn’t her world at all. She did not want to go back to it, not with men like this, not leaving the lepers behind, not this way, not at this time.
And as for whether India had lost her nerve—fearing that the sailors would treat her likewise—or if this was an expression of courage, there is no one to say. For the truth lay in my mother’s eyes and in her heart as the Sadie floated into deep water and the engine eased her away.
The visit of the Sadie had lasted no more than twenty minutes.
NINE
The coast between Cape Cook and Estevan Point, seventy-two miles to the southeast, presents a bold and rugged appearance. The high and jagged skyline of the mountains in the interior, upon which are patches of snow in summer, is remarkable; the mountains bordering the coast are for the most part high, precipitous and generally densely wooded. Between the above-mentioned points the coast is broken by several sounds and inlets; the principal of these are Kyuquot Sound, Esperanza Inlet and Nootka Sound. The stranger, wishing to enter any of these, is well advised to procure the services of a pilot, as the entrances, though lighted and buoyed, are encumbered by numerous above-water rocks and sunken dangers.
BRITISH COLUMBIA PILOT, VOLUME I
“Well,” says Fan, peering over my shoulder at the pilot book, “at least we’re following directions.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have our own pilot, just as it advises,” she says. “We couldn’t have done better if we’d tried.”
We are in Tahsis Inlet, making a run down its twelve-mile length. It is rocky and mountainous and too deep for anchorage. We are heading for Nootka Sound. “You know, Fan,” I say, “this is a very historical area. At the head of this inlet, near where Gibson’s Mills have their sawmill, Captains Vancouver and Quadra met to discuss the Nootka Convention. It was there, in 1792, that Vancouver Island received its name; although, in fact, it was originally called the island of Quadra and Vancouver. The two captains, you see, despite the fact that their countries were enemies, were friends. Sailors are like that,” I tell her.
“Like what?”
“Friendly. They don’t stand on ceremony. Politics mean nothing to them. What matters to them is character.”
She grunts noncommittally, giving me to understand that she’s heard this before.
“Let me read you what it says in Vancouver’s journal, Fan,” I continue, determined to keep her mind (and mine) for once on where we are, and not on events hundreds of miles away and long ago. For I need a rest from it all. There is too much to think about. And today, at least, I am free from illness.
“Listen, Fan,” I say, opening the book to my favourite passage. “ ‘Conceiving no spot so proper for this denomination as the place where we had first met, which was nearly in the centre of a tract of land that had first been circumnavigated by us, forming the southwestern sides of the gulf of Georgia, and the southern sides of Johnstone’s straits and Queen Charlotte’s sound, I named that country the island of Quadra and Vancouver; with which compliment he [Quadra] seemed highly pleased.’ ” I close the book.
“But nobody calls it that anymore,” she says.
“Pardon, Fan?”
“So much for friendship. What’s left of it now? Who cares what Vancouver thought of Quadra anyway?”
We pass the light on the western extremity of the gravel spit on the eastern side of Tsowwin Narrows. It is a bright, sunny day. Two miles on and we will enter Nootka Sound, taking Princesa Channel between Strange and Bodega islands.
“He thought he had found the Northwest Passage,” says Fan.
“Who?”
“Captain Cook, of course,” she says. “He thought he’d found a way to link the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. But he was wrong.”
“How do you know, Fan? I thought you never read books.”
“Books?” she says. “What has this to do with books? I thought we were talking about history.”
—
After the supply boat had gone, and my mother had made her way back to her house in the forest, and the lepers had set about the work of storing, as best they could, the new supplies in the lean-to next to their dwelling, it began to rain. It was the end of July, and this was the first rain that India had seen since arriving on the island. She sat in her hut listening to the drops spattering down from the boughs above onto her tin roof. She lit a fire in the makeshift stove the lepers had given her. She heated water with which to wash out some clothes. She made flat bread. She wrote in her diary. She rested on her uncomfortable bed. Then she got up and went outdoors. An old hat protected her head, and the dead leper’s jacket kept the rain off her shoulders.
Breaking out of the brush that bordered the beach, India walked slowly along the shoreline. Pools of water lay in depressions in the sand, and sandpipers, dipping and running and dipping again, drank from them. The silver-grey castings of lugworms drew a cursive script in the sand. Moon snails and sand clams lay broken and scattered, and through the haze of rain and mist they appeared like torn white messages the waves had washed in. Further on, where fine sand gave way to a muddier and coarser grain, there were other shells: horse clams, geoducks, and cockles. In the low-lying wet zones there were beds of eelgrass, matted, tangled, and covered with a furry brown coating that could be scraped off with the fingernail. Sim Lee would know, India thought, if the grass were edible. She toed her boot among the roots.
Littleneck clams, pale brown or pinkish—these, she knew, were good for eating—could be seen in abundance, and when she bent to scratch at the gravel with a stick, she unearthed more shellfish. In her immediate vicinity she found butter clams, and there were oysters and horse mussels growing on the rocks. As to why the lepers didn’t collect these to supplement their diet, she had no idea. They existed principally on salt cod and rice.
Now all that would change. For she had a program of work on which she was anxious to start. Not only would a variety of food do the sick men good, but (although aware that there were limits, because of their health) it was India’s belief that what the men needed was a change in habits. Healthy activity; plus cheerfulness and common sense and cleanliness. This was her prescription for better living.
And why, come to think of it, had they no fresh fish? The Indians caught salmon in abundance and dried them on racks. Why could the same thing not be done here? If not salmon, then some other fish…and here were crabs and mud shrimps: everywhere she looked there were possibilities for food. And since there was barely enough to get them through the t
hree-month stretches between supply-boat visits; and since she was now another mouth to feed…
Round the next rocky point, and nearing the region of the lepers’ camp, she came upon Chou You kneeling on wet sand and pushing ahead of him a large piece of driftwood. It moved by inches, and she could see from the short trail it had left that he’d only managed to shift it a little distance. He was stuck now in a patch of sea lettuce, and his trousers and jacket and hands were stained green and slimed with it.
India moved the wood to where he appeared to want it, then went back to fetch the hatchet he had dropped. Then she sat, a little distance away, to watch him as he took out his penknife and whittled. She grew chilled as the fine rain dampened her jacket, and soon she was restless.
“Would you like to go fishing, Chou You?” she said. Chou You looked up. He smiled at her and nodded.
“Come then,” she said, and got to her feet. She had in her pocket, having made it a few days earlier, not knowing then how long she might be on the island, a rough fishing kit. There was a sharpened and bent nail, and a flattened tin can threaded onto a string. She had made dozens like it as a child when the major had taken her and Fan fishing in Hong Kong harbour. He had always made her wear a hat.
They went slowly to accommodate Chou You, but eventually they stood at the top of a staircase of rocks that fell away into deep water. She held a stick, around which the line was wrapped, in her hand and jigged the line up and down in the sea. “There should be cod down here,” she said to the leper who watched her. “Perhaps we’ll bring one in for supper.” There were several nibbles—a soft tugging at the line like an infant trying a nipple—before one bit. With a quick motion India lifted the fish up onto the rocks. It lay there, blunt-faced and thick, with its gills fluttering. “Here, you try,” she said to Chou You.
To All Appearances a Lady Page 24