Ethan turned straight round, looking ahead. There was another point ahead, with yet another lighthouse on it and beyond that lay Gabriola still in sunlight. It was too far to distinguish any details, but there appeared to be two high hills, with a valley between in the center. And all the hope of his heart flowed out to it. Ah, that he might find a home there, for Jacqueline and his son!…From the left-hand hill, not far across the water, a column of deep blue smoke rose straight into the sky, then caught the wind and swept off sideways, like a great hand, beckoning. Someone was probably burning tree stumps to clear their land.
“Ethan,” Jacqueline said, looking up from her paper. “What do you know! There’s going to be a great shower of meteors tonight! Is that a good omen?”
“I don’t know what The McCandless would say, but I’m sure it is.”
Jacqueline chuckled. “Dad’d make something of it, you can be sure of that…Leonids, it says here, whatever that is. And they’ll start about ten o’clock and go on till after midnight.”
“Well, we’ll do this, then.” Ethan put his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll get to the Lodge, have a drink and some dinner, and then go down to Angela’s, if it’s not too far away, and find out where the skipper’s house is. We can’t very well look at it tonight, but if there’s no one in it we might watch the meteors from the porch, or the shore in front. That would give us a feeling of home already.”
“No, let’s don’t go to Angela’s tonight at all. Let’s just be together. We can probably find out from the Lodge where the Lovells’ lot is and we might walk over to there, if it’s not too far.”
“Whatever would make you happy, sweetheart.”
“It probably comes down to whichever is near enough,” Jacqueline said practically. And then, with a lightning change of mood, she cried, “Oh Ethan, it’s going to be so exciting. There’s a full moon, so it doesn’t matter at all that we forgot the flashlight. We’ll walk along the shore, I can see it all, already—”
Standing at the rail, with his arm around his wife, gazing toward Gabriola, Ethan could see it too, the moonlit, meteor-bright night before them. They would walk along the shore, or the road, arm in arm, it didn’t matter whether they saw the house, or the lot tonight, they’d see them in the morning anyhow. Now he saw their two figures, small, detached, standing on the lonely shore, with the burning tree stumps red and sullen behind them, among the black trees, and the sky blazing with silver moonlight and gold meteors. They would watch until the shower was nearly over, and then they would walk back, with the October night wind rising and the night full of the rushing noises of surf, now he saw clotted clouds of silver, and a wild black sea with silver breakers rushing and roaring against the rocky shore. The burning tree was flaming in the rising wind, sparks were blowing, spouting, rising and spiralling into the black forest; the small fires around the stump that had been only glowing dully were flaring and blazing like red lightning, red smoke blew, stinging the nostrils, boiling up through the trees from little fires running along the ground and hot underfoot. Now they left the fires and walked along the beach in the stinging cold salt air and shifting, changing moonlight under the blowing clouds. There were a few lights, far out to sea, that disappeared as the dark waves mounted and dropped, a lonely lighthouse light blinking, and one far freighter. They passed a few dark houses where people slept, unconscious of the night and this beauty and the dark north wind, and now the fires and the bittersweet cedar smoke smell were left behind and there was only the wild beach, with driftwood white and huge as the lashed bones of dinosaurs, a last burst of meteors, stars were falling all through the sky, a bird was calling in this wind, through this silver midnight of driftwood and burning trees, and the wind and the wind and the wind—
The shadow of the mountains had lengthened across the sea, already overpowering the ferryboat, enveloping the Llewelyns as they stood alone at the rail, and reaching out ahead toward Gabriola. Beneath them the sea looked greenish black, then black as India ink, the white bow wave breaking and foaming sternward along its edge then, aft, flattening out like marble.
They were passing the other lighthouse—and this too, he thought again, could be someone’s dream of home—another whitewashed cylindrical red-topped structure resting on a rocky point, and already sending forth its regular beam of hope and warning and invitation.
“There,” Ethan said suddenly. “Now you can see it all. There’s Gabriola for you.”
The island lay before them in the last of the sunset light, a long dark shape, spiked with pines against the fading sky. There was no splendor of gold and scarlet maples, it was a splendor of blackness, of darkness. And as they approached, there seemed no beach, just the high, foolhardy cliffs dropping straight into the sea. Behind Nanaimo the sky turned a sullen smouldering red: the mountains on the mainland melted into the twilight. Then the last light was gone and Gabriola too lay in the immense shadow. The wind blew sharp and salt and cold.
Gabriola…Ah, how wild and lonely and primeval and forbidding it looked! Not a light glimmered, not a house shone through the trees, there was nothing but the cliffs, so high the trees on the top seemed dwarfed, mere broken bottles guarding the rim, the cliffs, and the uproar of the black sea at their base.
Ethan and Jacqueline stood close together, staring at Gabriola.
Abruptly the little ferry rounded the jutting headland: at the same moment there burst forth a shattering din and everyone clapped their hands to their ears. It was the ferry, blasting on its siren with a deep, protracted chord of mournful triumph. In the sky some stars came out. Capella, Fomalhaut, in the south, low over the sea, then Algol and Mira.
And now through the twilight as the echoes died away Jacqueline and Ethan distinguished the outlines of a sheltered valley that sloped down to a silent, calm harbor. Deep in the dark forest behind was the glow of a fire with red sparks ascending like a fiery fountain; yes, someone was burning tree stumps to clear his land. The sound of lowing cattle was borne to them and they could see a lantern swinging along close to the ground. A voice called out, clear, across the water. And now they saw the dock, with silhouetted figures moving against a few lights that gleamed in the dusk…
Editor’s Note
IN OCTOBER OF 1946 Malcolm and I took the boat from Vancouver to Victoria, the bus from Victoria to Nanaimo, and the Ferry to Gabriola Island, British Columbia. As always we took notes, and when we returned we decided we had a short story, which we wrote together. But we decided it wasn’t really first rate and it was put aside.
In 1951, Malcolm wrote from Dollarton, British Columbia, to his agent Harold Matson: “October Ferry to Gabriola, another novella, a first version of which we wrote in collaboration for you though it didn’t come off. This I’ve completely redrafted and largely rewritten, and it deals with the theme of eviction, which is related to man’s dispossession, but this theme is universalized. This I believe to be a hell of a fine thing.”
In January of 1953 Malcolm wrote from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Harold Matson: “…with a rewritten (and I hope terrific) October Ferry to Gabriola as the current and besetting problem that has engrossed and forestalled, obsessed and delighted me for months and is still a problem child, for it grew to a novel on its own and is still not quite subdued and cut to size.”
Malcolm later wrote a long letter to Albert Erskine from Dollarton, British Columbia, in October of 1953, which dealt entirely with October Ferry to Gabriola and his struggles to get it into the right form.
On April 29, 1957, he wrote from The White Cottage, Sussex, England, to Ralph Gustafson: “…that makes me set a touchstone impossibly high, as a result of which I am now writing a huge and sad novel about Burrard Inlet called October Ferry to Gabriola.”
Malcolm died in June of 1957.
In 1961 I published a volume of Malcolm’s short stories, Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, and subsequently in collaboration with Dr. Earle Birney, the Selected Poems (City Lights, San Francisco) and
“Lunar Caustic” in the Paris Review, Winter-Spring 1963.
By about 1962 or ’63 I had started work on October Ferry and was sorting out the various versions of chapters, paragraphs, and even sentences. In March 1964, Show magazine published The Element Follows You Around, Sir!, which comprises three long chapters of the book.
The editing of the Selected Letters, with Harvey Breit, delayed further work on October Ferry for awhile, and the editing of Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid, with Dr. Douglas Day, took some time. But about a year ago I started the final editing of this book. Within months I had a working copy, and soon after the edition as it now stands.
And, finally, there are two themes unfinished in the book that I could not include without some writing myself, which I felt I should not do; every word must be Malcolm’s. First, the character of The McCandless, introduced in the early chapters, was meant to be enlarged upon and follow through the book. Second, and perhaps even more vital, the actual reason for Ethan’s retreat to the beach was because when he was practicing law in Vancouver, after he and Jacqueline left Niagara-on-the-Lake, he defended a man whom he believed innocent, only to discover he was guilty of a monstrous and hideous murder. It was this experience that scarred Ethan and made him, for the time being, sickened with the law as practiced; hence, his retreat. This is never brought out in the book but it was his intention. We discussed it many, many times and never decided on which way would be the best to bring it out, so there are not even any notes covering it.
Margerie Lowry
A Biography of Malcolm Lowry
Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957) was a British novelist and poet whose masterpiece, Under the Volcano, is widely hailed as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Lowry wrote passionately on the themes of exile and despair, and his tragic life made him an icon to later generations of writers.
Clarence Malcolm Lowry was born on July 20, 1909, in Wirral, England, near Liverpool. His father, Arthur Lowry, was a wealthy cotton trader and was married to Evylyn Boden, the mother whom Lowry would later describe as distant and neglectful. They were a prominent family, and Lowry grew up with the expectation that he’d eventually join his father’s business.
Lowry attended the prestigious Leys School in Cambridge, where—as early as age fourteen—he developed a reputation for heavy drinking and a restless, adventurous spirit. In 1927, Lowry convinced his father to allow him one great adventure before enrolling at the University of Cambridge: He shipped out on a rusted commercial freighter bound for the Mysterious East—India and Singapore.
Although Lowry gave little effort in his studies at Cambridge, he still excelled as a writer, impressing his teachers with his talent. It was during his undergraduate studies that he wrote Ultramarine (1933), his first novel—based in large part on his teenage adventure aboard the commercial freighter—which was published when he was just 21.
After graduating, Lowry spent time in London and toured Europe. He met his first wife, American bohemian Jan Gabrial, in Spain. The two had a passionate, stormy relationship, fueled by alcoholic binges, romantic jealousies, and periods of creative inspiration. When Gabrial returned to New York City without Lowry in 1936, the author followed her, briefly checking himself into Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, as recorded in the short and searing novel Lunar Caustic.
That same year the couple tried to save their relationship by moving to Mexico, where they hoped to escape social and professional pressures. There, with his marriage, career, and health near collapse, Lowry threw himself into writing. When, as was inevitable, Gabrial left Mexico and the marriage, Lowry had already begun to formulate his great novel Under the Volcano.
Escaping his love-hate relationship with Mexico, Lowry moved to Los Angeles, and there he met his second wife, actress Margerie Bonner. Bonner was an essential stabilizing force in Lowry’s life; and together they moved to a shack on the beach near Vancouver, British Columbia, where Lowry spent years writing, revising, polishing, and finally finishing Under the Volcano (1947). The novel drew from Lowry’s own disintegrating life and his experiences in Mexico. Critics praised the work as a masterpiece upon publication.
Under the Volcano would be the last novel Lowry published during his lifetime. In 1957, Lowry died from asphyxiation after a night of heavy drinking. However, after his death, Lowry’s reputation grew with the posthumous publication of the story collection Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961) and the novel October Ferry to Gabriola (1970), among other titles. His work continues to earn him an undisputed place in the pantheon of truly vital twentieth-century writers.
Lowry, playing the ukulele, in the 1930s. He is now buried in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist in Ripe, East Sussex, and his epitaph reads: “Malcolm Lowry / Late of the Bowery / His prose was flowery / And often glowery / He lived, nightly, and drank, daily / And died playing the ukulele.”
Lowry with his first wife, Jan Gabrial, in Mexico, 1937.
Lowry with his second wife, Margerie Bonner, aboard the SS Donald Wright on their way to Haiti, 1946.
Lowry holding the galleys of Under the Volcano, in Dollarton, near Vancouver, British Columbia, during the summer of 1946.
Lowry’s passport photo, taken in 1946.
Lowry and his second wife Margerie with William Birney, son of the poet and professor Earle Birney, at the Lieben Artists’ Colony, on Bowen Island, British Columbia, in July 1947.
Lowry holding a bottle of Bols dry gin and a paperback, in Dollarton, 1953.
Lowry inside the Lieben Artists’ Colony house in 1953.
Lowry in the backyard of his final home, White Cottage, in Ripe, East Sussex, sometime between 1956 and 1967.
Lowry walking in the Lake District of Cumbria, England, in June 1957. This photo was the author’s favorite. It is inscribed with the following: “Malcolm Lowry, author of Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, which will be published by J. B. Lippincott Company.”
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1970 by Margerie Bonner Lowry
cover design by Michel Vrana
978-1-4532-8630-2
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October Ferry to Gabriola Page 34