Flora took Jane and Allan into the theatre by the side door and introduced them to Ann and the others. Ann insisted that she would return home to relieve Grace’s minder and that Flora should go with her friends and have a meal with them. Quickly Flora put herself together, making certain that the cast did not mind her leaving them to clean up the dressing room she had shared with Ann and several members of the Chorus. She looked at the woman in the mirror, a little older than the girl who had first known Jane and shared stories of her coming out, her white dress and beaded slippers; Jane, the first person she had told about Gus: she saw the older Flora in the mirror, shadowed by the knowledge of Gus’s death, her brothers’ deaths, her father’s death, Andromache hovering behind her like a ghost. She took up her coat and pocketbook and left the room.
• • •
Over a late supper of roast chicken and a bottle of hock, the two women filled each other in on the years of their separation while Allan sat quietly, adding a mild sentence from time to time.
“And will you come to us over the summer? We could sew again under the spreading cottonwood—I still have my bodice, you know, although it would not fit me now—and the children could play or ride with Allan. After Grace has found her seat of course. And think of the picnics we could have down on Oregon Jack Creek!”
“We’d love to, Jane, if you’re certain. I know that my situation is . . . well, irregular and might cause you some embarrassment.”
“I hope you’re not serious? Of course we’re certain! Why on earth would you think otherwise?”
“My mother never refers to Grace in her letters and so I know that she, for one, is sensitive about my unmarried state of motherhood. Gus’s mother won’t see us, though his father has been a tower of strength and love. I know that some in Walhachin would not be pleased to see me. And I would understand your reluctance to have us come when you know the train would stop in Ashcroft where you are so well known and thought of.”
Jane and Allan both laughed. They began to speak at the same time: “Flora, do not even consider . . .” “Nonsense, Flora . . .”
Allan let Jane continue. “You are a beautiful and accomplished woman, Flora, and you have a daughter with a proud name. Your mother has cut off her nose to spite her face, it seems to me. And I know that Grace’s father would delight in every inch of her.”
“Bless you both,” said Flora quietly. “I don’t feel the stigma here any longer because Ann has been so supportive that many other women simply wouldn’t dare to shun me.”
At this point, Allan mildly interrupted. “I know they have a most delicious apple charlotte if I can interest the two of you?”
As they nodded, he said to the waiter, “Three portions of apple charlotte, please. And I think three glasses of your finest port to go with it.”
• • •
“There is a review in today’s Colonist,” said Ann as Flora came in from tea with Jane and Allan, two days after the performance.
“And . . . ?” Flora was removing Grace’s coat and hanging it, putting her hat on its hook, and smoothing her child’s hair with one hand while she unfastened the buttons of her own coat with the other. She looked expectantly to Ann, who was holding the newspaper open as she greeted them.
Ann reached down to give Grace a kiss. “First, will you tell me about your tea, Grace? Did you like Thomas?”
“He has a pony, Ann. And he says I might ride it if we go to visit. I’m going to draw a pony now.” Grace ran to her room where paper and pencil waited to receive this new dream.
“So—do tell, Ann! Have we been praised or condemned?”
“It’s quite positive, on the whole. You are cited as dignity personified for the way you portrayed Andromache. He didn’t quite see the point of Sara and Nancy, but we knew that would probably be the case. He does see the point of Greek tragedy, though, and that’s something for which we can be grateful. Let me read you that part. ‘A Greek tragedy was a religious experience in the form of a ceremonial, a ceremonial, moreover, which was not the affair of the actors merely, but of everyone who was present at it. There was in it, accordingly, what will be found in no modern tragedy, even the greatest: the rhythm of a high experience, rising with the natural inevitability of rhythm from the beginning, reaching the summit of exaltation, and ending at the last in calm. The form here perfectly expresses the inspiration.’”
“Well, that’s something, isn’t it? Anything about the staging? The others?”
“He is quite kind. He has good words for Mary and her beauty and her presence. And he admires my Hecuba, saying that her laments are uttered not by her precisely but by humanity through her. I thought that very perceptive and of course I wonder how this person has been allowed to say these things in print, in a newspaper not known for its pacifist views. But we can be grateful for this in any case.”
“And who is he?”
“I don’t know. He signs himself Didascalia, which is perhaps a little coy—I believe that was the process of teaching drama to the Chorus by the playwright? But he is obviously familiar with this play and with its tradition as well as the other performances. For instance, he seems to have attended at least one of the Granville-Barker productions with the marvellous Lillah McCarthy, though he doesn’t say which one. Anyway, we haven’t been drawn and quartered, not yet, and judging from the cards that have arrived in today’s post—you’ll see them on the mantel, Flora, just there—there are some in this city who feel as we do. Though I fear they are almost all, to a writer, women.”
They continued to talk about the play. It had taken up so much of their time, it was hard to believe it was over. There had been several unpleasant phone calls to say that women had no right to question the patriotic requirement of men to serve their King and country or that the cef were hardly a pillaging army, taking women as their slaves. As Ann observed, subtlety was lost on some. They waited for what they hoped would be a ground-swell of support for their message, but Ann reminded Flora that this might take longer than they hoped.
Flora told Ann about her second visit with Jane and Allan, how warmly they treated Grace, and how charming was their young Thomas.
“They’ve asked that Grace and I visit them this summer and you know, Ann, I think we will. I don’t imagine I would care to return to Walhachin, having left in a cloud of disgrace! That won’t be forgotten, or forgiven. But it would be lovely to spend a week or two at the McIntyre Ranch. You won’t feel we’ve abandoned you?”
“Of course not, Flora! Not as long as you both return!”
THIRTY
1962
“Your dad has some news, kids.” The three children looked up from their pork chops and Minute Rice, a favourite weekday supper. Their father was smiling from his place at the head of the table, his napkin tucked into the neck of his shirt (he was notoriously messy with his food).
“Well, it’s good news, kids. At least I think it’s good news. I’ve been given a new job, one which I applied for and never thought I’d get! Doing research in field corn and peas, at the Morden Research Centre in Manitoba. It’s a chance to really dig into the diseases that affect our food crops and I’m awfully happy to have this opportunity.”
“Manitoba, Dad? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, completely serious, Teddy.”
“That’s pretty cool. When are we going?”
“Well, they want me in the new year. So the plan is, we’ll have Christmas here and then head away just after. It’s a long drive—your mother and I figure it will take us about five days, depending on weather. But an adventure, I think, and a change for us all.”
Tessa was completely quiet. Manitoba? She knew it from the maps she’d been looking at. One over from Saskatchewan. Three over from British Columbia. Which was where they lived, where their home was. How could her parents think of moving? And was it forever? What would happen to their house?
She slipped away from the table and went into her room to think about it. She couldn’t thi
nk with everyone else talking and Mick and Teddy giving each other high-fives. She lay on her bed in the dark and closed her eyes. She saw the cemetery, the trees all covered in spring growth, ground dotted with daisies. Little birds entering the dark centres of trees where their nests were concealed from the crows who patrolled in groups, loud and energetic as boys in a schoolyard.
And what about school? She couldn’t say she’d miss her teacher. Some of the kids, yes. She’d made one close friend this year, Melody Sangster, who lived on the other side of the Moss Rocks. When Tessa visited her after school one day, she discovered that Melody’s mum had a job and her father stayed home. He had a condition, Tessa wasn’t sure what it was, but it made him too nervous to work. It was odd but not unpleasant to be served milk and cookies by a father for a change, and he let them fasten wax paper to their feet with strips of soft cloth so they could skate up and down the wooden floors of the long hall. So she’d have to leave Melody. And the Godwins. And Miss Oakden and her tree frogs. When she thought of this, she got a hard lump in her throat. She swallowed. A few tears trickled down her cheeks. And then she realized her father had come into her room.
“Is it upsetting for you to think of us moving?” he asked.
She couldn’t speak at first. She swallowed again and the hard lump moved a bit. “No. Yes. Well, you know. Exciting but sad. This is where we live. If we don’t live here, I’m afraid I’ll forget everything I know about it. Will we come back?”
“I can’t answer that, sweetie. Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see how it goes. We might end liking Morden so much we’ll never want to leave. We won’t sell our house, though. Or at least not right away, not until we know how we feel about everything.”
It seemed her mother was always too busy. There were lists to make, movers to consult—they came with stacks of paper for wrapping things and big wooden boxes they called “tea chests,” and padded blankets to put around wooden furniture and other objects before fitting them into the back of the huge moving van. The family had Christmas in a house bereft of half its furniture, but the tree was lovely in the window as usual, decorated with lots of candy canes and tinsel and one string of lights (most of the ornaments had already been packed). Santa Claus came, bringing oranges for their stockings, and little whistles shaped like birds that you filled with water and that gurgled like red-winged blackbirds, a Chinese fan for Tessa, and the wrapped parcels under the tree held wonderful surprises: a camera for each child with two rolls of film; knapsacks with canteens and first-aid kits; heavy parkas and snowboots for the Morden winter they’d be driving into.
Although the basement was cold, Tessa worked daily on her map. She didn’t want to forget anything, not a building or a tree or a particular gathering of birds. She drew a dead dogfish on the beach below the cemetery, a group of three children around it, one with a stick. The school at its five corners and the Annex perched on its rocks. She added the Guracks’ house, with the shape of the grandmother beyond the big window.
THIRTY-ONE
Winter 1920–21
In later years, Flora would be grateful for the play, for the intense relationship with Ann as they rehearsed while folding sheets, doing dishes, or walking the quiet lanes through the cemetery. (Hecuba: Death cannot be what Life is, Child; the cup / Of Death is empty, and Life hath always hope. Andromache: O Mother, having ears, hear thou this word / Fear-conquering, till thy heart as mine by stirred with joy.)
How bitter it was for her to return from Jane and Allan’s ranch to discover that Ann was suffering from an invasive cancer (“I had been feeling slow, even before the play, though it was easier to put any concerns aside during that time! And I had no appetite. Robert advised a consultation with my doctor. I’d not expected such bad news, I’m afraid, and was rather sharp when the doctor gave me my death sentence. ‘You will not see another summer,’ he said, which was not a pleasant way to put things.”) and would be dead within three months. How could such a robust and vital woman die, with so many projects planned, so many years anticipated for seeing them through? It was almost too much for Flora, and for Grace too. The child had bloomed in Ann’s care while Flora had found work with James McGregor. When Flora would return from work, weary from the long ride home, it was reassuring to walk into a warm home with a bathed child waiting in sweet-scented flannel to be kissed and cuddled and put to bed.
“Let’s do what we can, Flora—put in some bulbs, walk by the sea, and I’ll sing while I can. What about this? My cousin in England sent me sheet music for some Robert Burns songs. They are very sentimental, I’m afraid, but the melodies are pure gold. Do you know this one?”
She was rustling some music at the piano and then playing the opening bars of something Flora thought was familiar. It wasn’t until Ann began to sing that Flora knew it was “Ae Fond Kiss,” a song she had first heard at a Scottish aunt’s home when her family had gone up for the grouse season. But she had not heard it as Ann sang it, a melody of abiding sweetness, and lyrics to break the human heart. ‘Had we ne’er loved sae kindly, / Had we ne’er loved so blindly, / Never met, not never parted, / We had ne’er been broken hearted.’
Flora listened and thought of her own love, her “first and fairest,” the way her life had changed as a result. What would have happened if I’d answered otherwise when he asked if I minded when he kissed me? she wondered. And she could not imagine.
In Ann’s last weeks, she was permitted to come home to Hollyhock Cottage with Robert Alexander’s promise that he would be available at any time to come to ease her suffering with whatever means were available to him. (“My own doctor felt my place was in the ward with the nuns tightening my sheets and bringing me dreadful puddings. I do not have his blessing for this, but Robert was persuasive.”) Flora filled Ann’s bedroom with late asters and roses and brought her cups of beef broth or plain soups. She’d walk around the block to the grocery store on Eberts Street and ask Mrs. Sturgeon for a block of special chocolate or a wedge of nougat to place on a tiny porcelain dish to accompany Ann’s tea. She sat up many nights while Ann weakened, holding her friend’s hand, reading poetry to her. The beautiful sonnets of William Shakespeare, the glorious odes of John Keats.
“I am leaving the house to you, Flora,” whispered Ann one night as Flora bathed her face during a particularly sleepless spell. “I made the arrangement when I first knew about the cancer. So you will always have a home. It has given me so much pleasure to have you here, to have had a child to love and share responsibility for, and to have watched you make a real life for yourself after losing your lover and your family. I have been so proud of you.”
“How could I have done any of it without you? Lie still and I will change your nightdress. Oh, smell this, Ann! This fresh one still has the smell of the outdoors in it. You taught me to love that. We have done a lot of laundry together.”
Mornings were best. Ann had lucid hours when she sat up in her chair and laughed. She was very thin, but there was still beauty in her long fingers, her spirit. She quietly gave up singing because she could no longer gather enough breath.
“Shall I play for you, Ann?” asked Grace.
“I’d love that, my dear.”
Ann had been teaching Grace piano before the summer, simple songs, which filled the house, never again to ring with Ann’s voice practising arpeggios, scales, the full-blown beauty of a Bach cantata, or the sweet sadness of a Robert Burns poem. Though Grace said later, “I hear her every morning,” and would add no more to that.
The Trojan Women visited and brought food—cold hams, poached fish with parsley sauce, dishes of small minted potatoes, all designed to tempt Ann, who loved the sight of such pretty dishes but who couldn’t eat much at all. And who finally couldn’t see anyone but Flora, who knew to expect the sudden gasps, the odours, the grinding of teeth that made her suspect that Ann was dreaming of something terrible. Calls to Robert Alexander became more frequent. He would arrive with his medical bag containing the precious vials of morphine t
hat allowed Ann to relax into a state of painless oblivion.
• • •
One morning Flora woke to silence. She had been so exhausted that she had slept deeply and wondered whether she had missed Ann’s call in the night. Fearfully she pulled on her wrapper and ran to Ann’s bedroom. The bed was empty. The bathroom? Empty. Rapidly Flora determined that Ann was not in the house and not in the garden—or not that she could see. Checking the bedroom again, Flora could see that Ann’s shoes were not there and checking further, she discovered her coat was missing from the coat rack near the door.
I will not panic, she thought as she put on her clothes and drew on her warm coat for the day was drizzly and grey. She is so weak that even if she was able to get herself up and out, she could not have gone far. But thinking she would not panic, and stilling her racing heart, were two different things.
She went into the garden and searched carefully, thinking that perhaps Ann had wanted air in the night and a last look at the trees she and Phillip had planted more than two decades earlier. Perhaps she’d fallen and Flora, sleeping deeply, had not heard her call for help. Nothing. She tried to think as Ann might—a favourite neighbourhood location, a . . . well, what? Where?
Ann loved the ocean. She kept the windows open to hear the waves at Ross Bay crash to the shore during windstorms and she loved the iodine smell of the sea. Checking first to make sure that Grace was still asleep, Flora quickly ran the scant block from Hollyhock Cottage to the shore. The water was calm under the soft rain, swells coming in to the sand and rock regular and precise as a human pulse. And then she saw the scarf.
It was Ann’s paisley cashmere scarf, a gift from her one sister still in Scotland. She always wore it with her winter coat, the one that was missing from the rack. It was draped over some rocks by a little sandy area. Flora’s heart beat rapidly, fluttering in her chest so that she bent double to catch her breath, and her blood chilled as she saw the footprints in the sand, leading from the rocks to the water. They disappeared as the wet sand showed the progress of the tide’s recession. Flora put her own foot into one of the prints—she and Ann had the same size feet—and sure enough, the fit was exact.
The Age of Water Lilies Page 25