The Age of Water Lilies

by Theresa Kishkan

  Then Flora was quiet, remembering the months that followed. The years. There were dances in London, and parties. A series of young men sized her up. She’d had no idea what to expect of courtship, but surely it had to be more than a clammy hand pressed to her back, discreet questions to determine what came with her. Land? Horses? A sizeable sum? She had not anticipated the stubborn voice that told her mother and father that she could not imagine a life with this one or that one. It was like another girl speaking, using courage Flora had no idea she possessed (but was in the process of finding again). Two years after her coming-out season, George was planning to come to Canada and Flora was still without a suitor, dangerously close to being considered too old—at nineteen!—to interest the young men with money, or prospects, or both. And perhaps a reputation for fussiness beyond what was reasonable. She was not quite a beauty, though she had a look that was lovely in profile, and wonderful hair. The men were eyeing the new crop of girls in London. And when she expressed an interest in joining George at Walhachin, there had been a collective sigh of relief. Already it had become known as a place where matches could be made. All those single men from good families, and so few suitable women.

  EIGHT

  August 1914

  “Must you go?” she murmured against his shoulder. Her skin was flushed with sun and love; small droplets of sweat had collected behind her knees.

  “Oh, yes, of course, Flora.” He said it emphatically, as though there could be no question.

  “‘Of course?’ I didn’t think you were so fuelled by the promise of heroics as the rest of them.” She turned so she wouldn’t have to see his eyes.

  He took her chin gently in his fingers and turned her face back to his. “Sweet Flora, it’s not heroics. I don’t have war fever. Absolutely not. And I’m not even convinced that any of us ought to go out of any kind of patriotism. The idea of this country means something different to me, I expect, than it does to the other men here at least, most of whom weren’t born here. England calls to them as it never could to me. But I must go because it is my duty right now. I have shirked duty enough in the past to know that it is time that I paid attention to its demands.”

  He smiled at the young woman lying in his arms on a saddle blanket spread on warm grass in a little box canyon he had discovered. He brushed damp hair from her forehead, the delicate curls that had eased themselves out of her braided coronet. “You are so lovely. I will always remember you like this, even when we’re old and grey together.”

  “Will we be, Gus? Old and grey together?” There were tears in her eyes. He touched them with his finger, and licked the salty taste. He kissed her.

  “I will come back as soon as I can. I don’t expect this to be a long war, no one does, and perhaps I’ll even be home by Christmas. We could shock the community by appearing at a dance together, you in the obligatory gloves, I in a jacket and tie. I do own those things though I can’t remember the last time I wore them. I expect the moths have been at the jacket—though being moth-eaten hasn’t made a bit of difference to the nobs at the hall.”

  “I’ll write to you every day,” Flora told him, her hands on his forearms, his hands resting on the small of her naked back.

  “I won’t promise you daily letters in return, my love, because I don’t know what is in store for me. But as often as I’m able to, I’ll write. I expect there will be restrictions, perhaps even someone who will read every letter written by young men to their sweethearts in case vital secrets are being revealed. The secrets of the mess kitchens, the tents, the tin baths where we will be allowed to wash ourselves in a few inches of tepid water. I imagine there will be fleas.”

  They both laughed.

  Gus continued. “We should have a code, shouldn’t we, so you know if I am simply sitting in a camp eating and waiting or else on my way into the heat of battle. A line from Virgil perhaps?”

  “You will have to write it down for me so I can compare. Your Latin is far superior to mine. Is there a bit about horses? I can always recognize equus when I see it. And now, too, pressi lactis, though perhaps horses are more appropriate to war.”

  “Something from the Georgics, then. Let me think. But before I think, may I adjust my arm? What you are doing with your hand is particularly fine.”

  Much later, after they had made love again in the privacy of grass and washed their bodies in the trickle of icy water entering the canyon from the main creek travelling down from the lakes on the Bonaparte Plateau to the Thompson River, after they had dressed and were tightening saddle girths and making sure Flora’s hair was tidy, her clothing reasonably unrumpled, Gus turned to her over the back of Agate and said, suddenly, “Sed nos immensum spatiis confecium aequor / et iam tempus equum fumantia solvere colla. That will be it, Flora.”

  “And what does it mean? I recognize horses, of course, and something about distance, is it?”

  “Well, let’s see. Something like, ‘But now, a huge space we have travelled / and time has come to uncollar our steaming horses.’ When I send you this message, you will know that, hmmm, that . . . oh, please don’t cry, Flora. I’ll write it down for you, shall I?”

  “Yes, I will memorize it so that I have it by heart at every instant. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be feeble. And now, speaking of collars, could you check to make sure I have no grass seeds on the back of my blouse? I would hate to be thought a woman who lies down in fields.”

  “I can’t think of anything more appealing somehow. But here, let me just unthread this needlegrass from your sleeve. And now we should be on our way.”

  • • •

  The box canyon became a favourite retreat. You could ride by it without noticing its entrance, a narrow gap between rocks, hidden by a hedge of Saskatoon bushes. Pushing aside the bushes, they would urge their horses through. The bushes sprang back, perfect camouflage. Once inside, it was like being in a room with a ceiling decorated with tumbling cloud. The creek for water, dry grass for a bed. Within its intimate space, they talked about everything, sharing details of their lives (though there was always some reserve on Gus’s part regarding his life since leaving his family home), books they had read and loved (“When I read Cranford, I thought it amazing that a book about a quiet village in which nothing really happens could be so entranc- ing. It occurs to me that such a book could be written about Ashcroft, or Walhachin.” “Maybe you will write it. As I recall, the narrator of Cranford is a young woman who has come to the village as a visitor . . . ” “Oh, but I’m not a writer. I am keeping a journal, though, and perhaps when I am old and idle . . .”)

  The one problem was finding the proper excuse for Flora to ride off without arousing suspicion. She had her sketching and that was considered suitable, but generally her brother would encourage her to find someone to accompany her. Once the workload of the community increased in summer, with watering and fertilizing, her excursions were not so noticeable. And Gus found ways to absent himself too. Because he worked for many but for no one in particular, it could always be assumed that he was off on a job that took him away from Walhachin.

  Within the box canyon’s walls, wild baldhip roses and drifts of cinquefoil. Hawks nested at the cliff top and floated over the lovers like angels, their harsh call either blessing or warning. And once they woke from a brief nap to see the tracks of a rattlesnake that had passed close to their sleeping bodies, its scribble in the earth a text as mysterious as Sanskrit. And once after they had been absent from the canyon for some weeks, the stripped body of a deer that a cougar or a bear had brought to the canyon in secrecy for a long meal for itself and its young. All the flesh was gone; the ribs looked like the frame of a small boat, beached and ruined. Gus used his knife to remove the lower jaw from the skull, wanting it as a talisman to pack in his rucksack once the call came to travel overseas. He washed it in the little creek, rubbing at the remains of connective tissue with sand to scour the bone clean. One of the teeth was loose in its socket, ground down by the animal’s diet of le
aves and grass.

  NINE

  Late September 1914

  A young woman dozed on a blanket under a tree in an orchard of apple-laden trees, her body cooler now that she’d loosened her bodice, removed her stockings. In the orchard it seemed as though everything might go on as usual—the apples picked, Wagoners, Jonathans, Spitzenbergs, Wealthys, and Rome Beauties finally come to maturity, loaded into bushel baskets, taken by cart to Pennies. Whatever happened in the distant world, the dogs would still bark as coyotes sidled too close to the chicken coops, sheets billowing in the wind, raising their cotton hems to the sky. Sage would release its scent to the brief rain, and oh, if she watched long enough, Gus might still ride between the trees to take her in his arm and murmur into her hair. Her face was hot. It was certain she carried a child.

  Flora’s workbasket was at her side and she took out a piece of linen, one of a set of a dozen napkins she had hemstitched and was now embroidering with a monogram in fine whitework, her initial F and the A for Augustus, married to the second A for the surname they would share once he came back to her. He had been gone a month, to Quebec with his regiment, which had been dissolved almost immediately upon arrival; most of the men had been absorbed into the 5th Battalion, but Gus had been invited to join men from a detachment of Rocky Mountain Rangers from Kamloops whom he’d known for a few years. There was also a connection, Flora was not quite certain of its details, with the Victoria Fusiliers, who were also part of this first British Columbia Regiment, the 7th Battalion.

  She would not panic. Everyone said the war would not, could not, last long. George had gone too, leaving the house in her care and a detailed list of responsibilities to be divided among her, Mary, and the Chinese men who would be helping with the orchard. George had some concern about the flume but felt that enough able-bodied men, too old perhaps to go to war but certainly capable of maintaining the irrigation system, would ensure the continuity of water. For herself, Flora was willing to work hard, though how long she could depend on her energy and strength was a worry. Mary was pregnant again and came to work on her horse, her modest bulge usually concealed by an apron or the work pinafores that Flora left hanging for her behind the kitchen door.

  The summer had gone on forever; that was how it seemed now. The flats above the river rippled with heat, and the willows along its banks trilled with kingbirds. Because of the settlement’s altitude, evenings cooled off so that sleeping was pleasant in the screened rooms. Flora set up a bed for herself on the second-storey porch, draping it with a length of netting hung from a hook in the ceiling so she would not be troubled by mosquitoes in the early hours of the morning. She dreamed of meeting Gus among the trees, something she had done whenever possible. If she couldn’t arrange to ride away, she’d walk to the farthest orchard grove, the one with tall tobacco plants between the rows of apple trees. In that long summer, she had taken to wearing as few underclothes as possible to make it easier to make love with him during their meetings. The first time he reached under her muslin skirt and realized she was bare-legged and clad only in a light envelope chemise, buttoned where it met between her legs, he laughed aloud. She loved his laugh. It held nothing back. And she, too, held nothing back on the days when they met among the trees and the tall grass, unbinding her hair and opening her mouth for his kisses. She had opened her mouth to his body too, each and every part, delighting in the textures upon her tongue—the rough skin of his knees, the velvet of his upper thigh. His shoulders tasted of salt. Who among her family and friends would have known this young woman, ardent and eager for the weight of one particular man upon her breasts? She had come to life, as plain trees quicken in spring, dressed in blossom and leaf.

  The picnics with the other settlers had been lovely on the long hot summer afternoons after the men had departed. A wagon organized, food packed into baskets, one of the older men going on ahead by horseback to light a fire so that the children might roast potatoes in the coals. A small lake in the hills above the river might serve as a destination, or else the wagon would take the group to one of the gravel flats by the river, preferably one with shallows to allow for wading. Hampers were placed in the shadows cast by cottonwoods, paraffin stoves lit so urns of tea could be made, and beaded thermos flasks of lemonade were propped in the shallows of river or lake, protected by a small wall of stones. Children ran in the sunlight, their faces brown and freckled, while their mothers sat under parasols, some of them boldly removing their shoes.

  Some families had returned to England, the husbands to regiments they were affiliated with in the home country, the families to wait out the war in familiar surroundings. They had been in such a hurry in August to return that some of them left entire households of furnishings, hopeful that the war would be finished by Christmas and they could return for the spring blossoms. Gus’s horses were left in the care of a man who could not enlist due to persistent lung trouble. Flora would see them in the pasture, their lovely heads lifting as she gave them the whistle that Gus had taught her. Putting her face against Flight’s neck was as close as she could get to the body of her beloved.

  Mary was wiping the work table in the kitchen when Flora came in to pour herself a glass of water. She turned to Flora and met her eyes. In an instant, Flora realized that Mary knew of her condition. She dropped her glass on the floor and let out a small anguished cry. Mary put her cloth down and took Flora in her arms. There was a faint smell of smoke in her clothing, not unpleasant, and a firm support in her shoulders as Flora wept, then drew back to smile uncertainly. Mary continued to rub her neck, her shoulders, smoothing her hair with rough hands.

  “How foolish you must think me, Mary. You’ve had enough babies to take it calmly, yet I am like one of the quail, silly and skittish. And for something as natural as having a baby.”

  “It will not be easy for you, Missus. I have Agrippa and he is not leaving for the war.”

  TEN

  April 1962

  Tessa’s mother was feeding bark to the wood burner in the kitchen. “How is Miss Oakden?” she asked as she angled a particularly large piece of bark into the opening of the stove.

  “She’s fine. She sent matrimonial squares for the boys,” Tessa replied, putting the package wrapped in waxed paper on the counter. “They got a bit squished because I rode my bike through the cemetery before I came home. What’s for supper?”

  “Macaroni and cheese. Your brothers have Little League, so we’re eating later than usual. Set the table, please.”

  Tessa took the melmac plates from the cupboard and went to the dining room to put them around. The cloth was already laid; the napkins were kept on the sideboard, each in its own silver ring, gifts from their grandmother in New Brunswick. Once a week the napkins were washed when Tessa’s mother did the laundry in the basement where the washing machine was set up beside two deep sinks of soapstone. When Tessa helped her mother feed the sheets through the wringer, she always took care to keep her fingers away from the rollers because a boy (a friend of a friend of a friend) had his arm drawn in by mistake. His bones were all crushed and never healed properly. That boy’s hand still hung by his side, useless, all because he hadn’t been careful enough. On the days when laundry was done, Tessa loved going to bed because she would have a fresh top sheet and pillowcase, both of them smelling of the wind. Last week’s top sheet would have been shaken outdoors and then carefully tucked over the mattress to act as the bottom. You never got two fresh sheets unless you had an accident. Once, Tessa had dreamed she was trying to get to a toilet; in a panic, she kept trying every door to discover which one opened to the bathroom; each led to a hall, a broom closet, the stairwell to the basement. When she finally found the right door and sat on the toilet, the relief as she peed was wonderful. Waking, she’d wondered at first why her bed was damp. Then, in horror, she remembered her dream. She quickly got up, stripped her bed and took the sheets downstairs to pile by the washing machine, her pyjamas tucked inside them. She entered the kitchen, fully dres
sed though it was not yet seven, the time her mother usually called her to get up.

  “I’ve already taken my sheets down,” she told her mother, “so you won’t have to do it.”

  “But, honey, this isn’t washing day!” her mother exclaimed, starting to say something else, then thinking better of it. Tessa realized later that her mother must’ve known she’d peed her bed but didn’t get angry with her. But she herself worried that it might happen again, that she might become a bed-wetter—a girl in her school was teased for this very reason and couldn’t go to Brownie camp because she would pee her sleeping bag and there weren’t washing facilities to deal with the accident. After her own accident, Tessa would wake herself up early to make sure her bed was dry. She began to swish only a tiny bit of water in her mouth after brushing her teeth in case the glass of water she usually drank at bedtime was the reason she had peed her bed. But it didn’t happen again. Still, it was something to remember and worry over.

  Once she’d set the table, she went to the window looking out onto Eberts Street. The sky was deep blue with pink across the horizon. The trees stood out like black paper cutouts. On Bushby Street, Tessa could see the headlights of a car illuminating the road. The car proceeded so slowly that it seemed not to be moving at all. Perhaps there was a man driving and a woman watching for a particular address, her eyes squinting into the dusk to make out the numbers on the front of a house. The park across the road stood empty, its swings hanging still, the ball diamond waiting. In just five weeks, the evenings would be light enough for all the neighbourhood children to gather together in the park to decide on a game—to divide into sides if there were enough of them for baseball, hide-and-seek, daredevil on the swings. Tessa loved hide-and-seek the best, especially when it got to be dusk and long shadows were cast across the park by the monkey puzzle trees and the cedars. Then a girl could flatten herself against a shadow and not be seen until the seeker was almost on top of her (this happened once and she never forgot, it was that thrilling), then two girls could hide in scraggly privet bushes between the park and the backyard of a house angling over from Bushby Street, the smell of the privet bitter and sharp.