What the Heart Keeps

by Rosalind Laker

  “I know. I’m not used to the idea yet.”

  “Why do you have to live in this particular place? Wouldn’t it have been better all along for you to have settled somewhere near Agnes at Granite Bay?”

  “From here Alan has swifter access to most of the camps and outlets where his skills are needed. He can travel by sea, or inland by skid-road, or track or river tugboat. If he wants to get to the camp near Granite Bay he can even travel by an old lumber train from the Lucky Jim mine that lies a distance from here.”

  “Have you no neighbours at all?”

  “There are some Lekwiltok Indians a few miles away, and an elderly missionary, officially retired, who still ministers to their spiritual welfare.”

  “Have you ever been afraid here?”

  “Of Quadra Island? Never.” Harriet seemed quite astonished by such an idea. “I was raised on a farm miles from neighbours, so isolation doesn’t alarm me. In any case, Leo would savage any intruder who attempted to attack me, and I know how to use a firearm. But this is a peaceful place. These environs are more natural to me than bricks and mortar. When Alan is in a financial position to open up a movie house again, I’ll adapt to city life as I did when I was younger.” Her voice suddenly quavered.

  “It’s my own company that has become dangerous to me, particularly in the house. That’s why I needed a companion and a friend, somebody else to think about in Alan’s absences.”

  Lisa was moved by her distress. “How can I help?”

  Harriet shook her head wearily. “By talking to me and hearing me out? The truth is that I’ve brooded and wept over a miscarriage for a long time now.”

  Lisa understood that Harriet, knowing she had not led a sheltered life, felt able to speak out more freely than she would otherwise to an unmarried girl.

  “The shock you suffered through the burning down of the cinema in Winnipeg was no fault of yours,” Lisa said consolingly.

  “That was the first miscarriage. A second happened in this house. That’s why I’ve grown to hate being under its roof without Alan. He had warned me never to clamber over the rocks in his absence, but I did, and I fell getting down the bluff to collect clams.” She dropped her face into both hands in abject misery at the memory. “Somehow I managed to get back here and lost the baby that we both wanted so much. I’ve never told him about it. I can’t. Only you know the truth of my present state of mind.”

  Lisa put a companionable arm about her shoulders. “Nobody can help an accident. We all do foolish things sometimes. I only know that regret can linger on against all common sense. At least I can understand what it is to feel as you do about wishing the past undone.” It was then that she in her turn made Harriet a confidante of her secrets. She told her of the ordeal of being raped and how it had been instrumental in splitting her apart from Peter Hagen, whom she still loved dearly and could never forget. “So you see,” she concluded, “I think you and I can help each other.”

  Harriet raised her head again with an attempt at courage. “I hope so, dear Lisa,” she said. “Your suffering has been more than equal to mine.”

  They spent the rest of the day in the forest and gathering oysters from the shore, Harriet having taken a basket, stout gloves, and a knife for the purpose. During those hours together and in the days that followed, Lisa soon realised that her first impressions of Alan’s wife had been correct. Harriet was a woman, who was all emotion, guided by her heart and never by her head, loving her husband to distraction and as easily elated as she was cast down. At first it was not easy being a companion to her. Self-blame was a difficult conviction to shift, strengthened as it had been by hours of loneliness. Fortunately, throughout the rest of the summer and into the autumn there was plenty to do tending the vegetable patch, picking berries and other fruit, making preserves, and stocking up shelves for the winter months ahead. Yet there were still times when Harriet gave way to bouts of depression that seemed to drain strength and all will to move from her.

  One day, unable to find her, Lisa rushed searching from place to place, gripped by rising panic at what might have happened. To her overwhelming relief, she found Harriet sitting on the rocks from which she had fallen on a certain fateful day, staring numbly and unseeingly in front of her. Clambering down the bluff to her, Lisa sat down beside her and simply held her hand. When finally the tears gushed forth, Lisa held her as if consoling a child. The incident seemed to cement a bond between them. Afterwards Harriet never again went off on her own. The improvement in the state of her mind was almost imperceptible for a long while, but gradually it became apparent to Lisa that Harriet had emerged at last from the threat of a nervous breakdown that had been far greater than ever her husband had suspected.

  In spite of the isolation of the house, more people came to it than Lisa would have anticipated. A farmer’s boy came once a week by boat with fresh meat, eggs, butter, and milk. Indians brought fish to sell, their squaws offering beadwork. Sometimes loggers travelling from one camp to another, on foot or on horseback, would notice the curtains at the windows of the cabin or washing on the line, and know that there were women there. Not once was there any trouble. They were without exception pleasant, ordinary men lonely for their wives or the sight of womenfolk, making some pretext to come to the door, hoping they would be invited to a meal. Harriet always found something for them, and they would wash their hands and slick down their hair before entering the house, reminding Lisa more of shy schoolboys than grown men engaged in some of the most dangerous work that was to be done anywhere. They were of all nationalities. More than once they were Norwegian. Their accents twisted a knife in her heart and she was always quiet and subdued after they had gone.

  Henry Twidle arrived in his gas-engined boat with mail and news of Minnie. She had made friends with a girl of her own age, the eldest daughter of a manufacturer’s representative who had moved into an empty house at Granite Bay. The wife had been a schoolteacher, specialising in music and the teaching of the piano. Minnie was attending the family lessons and enjoying sessions at the keys under expert instruction. The couple, whose surname was Jackson, were willing to take Minnie into the family until such time as she could rejoin Lisa, if that would be agreeable. The amount they wanted for her keep was negligible and Lisa knew she would be able to manage it by passing on the pocket-money wages she received from the Fernleys. She arranged with Henry how payment should be made through the post office and gave him letters to take back to Agnes and to Minnie.

  While her friendship with Harriet strengthened and deepened, Lisa’s relationship with Alan improved to a certain extent. A dangerous current reverberated between them. Lisa was uncomfortably convinced that Harriet was well aware of the tension that each brought about in the presence of the other, although she never made any reference to it by look or word. An open clash often occurred when Harriet was out of earshot. It happened when Lisa sought him out one day in his workshop to request once more that he make some accommodation for Minnie.

  “I know you don’t want her here,” she challenged heatedly out of her troubled conscience at leaving the girl at Granite Bay indefinitely.

  “You knew that from the start,” he gave back, not taking his attention from the reel of film he was re-splicing after removing a damaged length. “But I’ll fulfil the obligation thrust upon me sooner or later.”

  “Minnie will be grown up and married by then!”

  “That should solve the problem nicely,” he stated drily, still at his task. “Would you like a motion-picture show this evening?” “I’d rather have Minnie here.”

  “I’m not offering alternatives.”

  She swung out of the room. Trying to get the better of Alan was like beating one’s head against a brick wall. Later she watched the one-reel movies, the projector of polished mahogany and brass lit by an inner lamp and hand-cranked. The reels were old, products he had bought outright very cheaply from a contact he had in New York, but they were a wonder to Lisa. There was a love drama, cowbo
ys and Indians with plenty of arrows and smashing of furniture in saloon fights, and lastly a comedy that made her rock with laughter. Harriet shared Lisa’s enjoyment, not having seen them before herself, and she had had Alan move the piano out in order that she could play accompaniments to suit the mood and pace of whatever was being shown on the screen, which was what she had done during their cinema days in Winnipeg.

  Not long afterwards, the couple left in the boat with his cinematographic equipment to put on a movie show further down the coast at Heriot Bay. Lisa declined an invitation to go with them, since it had come from Harriet and not from Alan, and she remained with Leo at the house. When they returned they had given shows almost non-stop for three nights at the local hotel. The hired room had been packed for each performance, lumbermen and others having come from miles around. The mirth of those recognising themselves and acquaintances on the lantern slides that alternated with the movies sealed the enormous success of the enterprising venture.

  For over a year Lisa lived on the east coast of Quadra Island. During that time she did visit Minnie, travelling with Henry and staying with Agnes and him. Although Minnie hugged her with love when she arrived and wept when she left again, there was no question of the child wanting to leave the Jackson family that was fostering her. Then the day came when Lisa made a special visit to Granite Bay.

  “The Fernleys are moving to the site of one of the sawmills along the Puget Sound, in the United States,” she told Mr. and Mrs. Jackson. “Alan Fernley has secured a highly paid position as chief engineer of a vast area, which means he will be away from home more than ever. That’s why I’m going with them because, although the location will not be lonely, it has just been confirmed that Harriet Fernley is expecting a baby, and she wants me to be with her. I have come to give Minnie the chance to accompany me to this new place. There will be accommodation for her this time.”

  “Oh dear!” Mrs. Jackson exclaimed with dismay. “We don’t want to lose her. She’s become one of the family.”

  Minnie was called into the room. At the age of thirteen she was maturing fast, fulfilling an early promise of good looks. Under Mrs. Jackson’s elocution instruction her speech had improved and she no longer dropped her aitches. Lisa was not sure that Evangeline Jackson, with whom Minnie had formed such a close friendship, was entirely the right influence, being a somewhat vain, flippant girl, but the steadying guidance of the parents seemed to be keeping a balance.

  “There wouldn’t be a school in the forests, would there?” Minnie questioned.

  “Not where we’re going to be,” Lisa replied. “You would have to rely on my teaching again. I’d do my best for you, but there wouldn’t be much in the way of treats. I daresay I could take you into Seattle to see the shops once or twice a year.”

  Minnie shook her head. “I’d like that, but if you don’t mind, I’ll stay here a while longer at Granite Bay. You see, most of all I’d miss my music lessons, and I’m learning to play really well, I believe.”

  Lisa returned to the east coast of the island in time to take over the packing from Harriet, who was into her fifth month of pregnancy and felt that the danger of losing this baby was over. Both she and Lisa were looking forward to the move from Quadra Island for reasons of their own. Lisa was thankful to be escaping the cramped quarters of the log house and Harriet was overjoyed to be returning to her homeland. All along she had wanted her baby to be born on United States soil. How else could her son be President one day?

  As for Alan, he was jubilant over his new appointment. “Just one more stint in the forests,” he told his wife in Lisa’s hearing, “and then we’ll be free to return to civilisation. I think Seattle should suit us. I looked over property while I was there being interviewed for my new appointment, and the city is growing like a mushroom. Just the place to open our own motion-picture house, wouldn’t you say, my love?”

  For a moment Harriet was speechless with joy. At the back of her mind there had always been the fear that when the right time came Alan would make the decision to open his cinema back in England. After all, he had not come to the States to settle in the first place, only to gain experience in the cinematographic world and return again, but they had met and been married and she had persuaded him that his future lay on this side of the Atlantic. As a compromise they had gone to Canada where she, loving her own country as she did, felt that at least she was only a railroad journey away from it, and all the time she had sustained the hope that one day she and Alan would live there. Now that dream was to come true.

  She threw her arms about his neck in sheer delight, and they kissed rapturously. Lisa, seeking tactfully to leave them on their own, was spotted by Harriet, who slipped from her husband’s embrace to hurry after her and pull her back by the wrist.

  “Isn’t it the greatest news, Lisa?” Harriet laughed in her exuberance. “In Seattle we shall find a rich and handsome husband for you!”

  Lisa laughed with her. “I’ll keep you to that promise,” she joked merrily. Then over Harriet’s shoulder she met Alan’s eyes and was chilled by the look she saw there. It was almost as if he had been startled into sudden hatred of her through her acceptance of his wife’s light-hearted vow.

  Eight

  “I’m home again! Back in my own country!” Harriet almost ran down the gangway in Seattle’s early-morning sunshine to step once more upon her native soil. Alan rushed after her, fearful that she might trip in her haste.

  Lisa followed at a more leisurely pace with Leo on a leash. She was still taking in the sight of the city with the deep-water harbour at its very doorstep. The sojourn was to be short, no more than twenty-four hours, which was long enough for Alan to report to the head office of the lumber company that was employing him and afterwards conduct some business of his own. Lisa intended to make the most of the day ahead and see as much as she could of the city, which rose in terraces of parks and boulevards from its busy commercial area to a residential spread with lawns and flower gardens. Even the city’s setting was spectacular, bounded as it was by lake and sea, with the distant Mount Rainier dominating the whole Cascade Range.

  Harriet was resting in the hotel room when Lisa went out to explore. As she walked along she was soon struck by the number of Scandinavian names that appeared everywhere on shops and stores and the offices of companies. Manson and Foss and Nordstrom. Grothaug and Svensen and Dahl. There was no end to them. She even spotted a drugstore with the name of Hagen on the fascia, reminding her of another she knew by that name.

  Not that she needed any reminders of Peter, for even though she kept him locked away in her memories, he came forever between her and any man to whom she might otherwise have responded with liking and perhaps, eventually, with love. It was as if his rejection had gradually blended with the old scars of the past into an impenetrable barrier she had put round herself. Yet within that defence her lips yearned for a man’s powerful kisses and her body for male embrace, so that her heart and mind warred with physical desires. The conviction that she would never marry, which she had first held after her rape, had returned in full force and gave her much sadness. It meant that she who loved children would never bear one of her own.

  But this day was not to be spoiled with dismal thoughts. Dodging a streetcar and horse-drawn vehicles and one of the noisy automobiles, she crossed Second Avenue to gaze upwards at the new skyscraper of the Alaska Building and was suitably impressed. Afterwards she went to see the State University and sat for a while to gaze at the blue-green sweep of Lake Washington. She also did a little shopping before the day’s expedition was over. Some new gloves for next winter in the store called Frederick and Nelson. A box of chocolates in Roger’s candy, store for Harriet, who had developed a sweet tooth in her pregnancy. And a copy of the Seattle Times to discover what local employment was being offered to females. Maybe it was the indirect association of the city with Peter and his homeland that had reinforced the liking she felt for all she had seen of it, but the idea was growing tha
t she might get work as a shop assistant or a cashier with a small apartment of her own when Harriet no longer needed her close companionship. And that time was not far distant. One of the arrangements Alan had made for this day was to take his wife about the city to view possible sites for their forthcoming cinema enterprise. As Lisa drew pencil rings around advertised employment for which she might have applied, she was forming dreams of her own.

  They departed with Leo by train from Seattle next morning. The journey was long, for after some hours they changed to a lumber train on its return journey from a delivery of cured planks at a point on the Puget Sound. It was to take them on the final stage of the journey, deep into the forests where the logging had still made little impact on the giant trees that almost shut out the sky.

  The train was full of loggers and other lumber workers returning to camp in various stages of drunkenness after much needed respite from their slogging labours, most of them sleeping or lounging on the now empty wagons. Three seats were vacated in the single passenger compartment for Lisa and the Fernleys. Harriet was immediately concerned for one man with a bruised face and bandaged head who lay on the floor, a pillow of a folded coat for his head.

  “Poor man,” she exclaimed. “Was he in a fight?”

  “He was mugged,” a logger replied. “It’s crazy to go to town looking fresh out of the woods. He hadn’t shaved or cut his hair. Muggers lie in wait for lumbermen, knowing they can have a season’s wages in their pocket. Don’t waste yer pity on him, ma’am. It was his own fault.”

  Harriet, who never blamed anybody for anything, continued to look sympathetically at the victim. By the time they reached their destination, she herself was suffering a similar exhaustion, due in her case to tiredness and discomfort.

  The manager of the sawmill, George Dunn, and his wife, Bertha, a kind-looking woman with a rosy complexion and greying hair, were at the railhead to meet them. Also present were two young women, wives of foremen, both with babies in their arms. Harriet was cheered by the sight. From them she would hear what facilities were available for confinements. Alan had spoken of her returning to Seattle a month before the baby was due to be delivered there, but she would not face that wearisome journey again, not even with Lisa to accompany her.